Do you play more old games or new?

[samanosuke]

I really enjoy my retro and I mainly play modern games which are of old school genres too.

This.

I used to be strictly retro and stopped playing new consoles after the DC/PS2/GC/XBox era. Of the following generation I played about 20 hours total on a mate’s XBox 360 and to this day have never played a PS3 or any console released since. I scaled back my consoles massively to just a MD/SNES and also my gaming collection to just a small carefully curated collection. I did and still enjoy play the same old games over and over again without any overwhelming desire to add more games to my collection. Honestly, every time I fire up Silpheed, Final Fight, R-Type 3 or Super Metroid it wraps me up in this comfort blanket that I literally never tire of.

That all changed a few years back when my other half, to my absolute surprise and joy, got me a Switch for Christmas with BotW. That game was absolute magic - the charm of LA or LTTP but with this incredibly realised open world to explore. I spent the first ten hours or so just running around exploring without pushing the plot along at all.

I then discovered that the Switch was home to some of my favourite genres, namely JRPGs, VNs and SHMUPs. There was even a new Wonder (Monster) Boy game for it!

So I went from someone who played exclusively retro to someone who plays marginally more retro over modern. The fact that NSO means I can also play MD & SNES on the train to work makes it all the more suited to my tastes.

[nonny]

Bit of both.

I got rid of all my retro gear due to moving countries multiple times... but I'm enjoying playing emulators on the Series S and introducing my kids to some classic games.

To me that is a much better introduction to games than the advertisement laden tablet crap available.

[hudson]

A bit of both. There are times later in the evening that the thought of hopping into an open world AAA game I've been enjoying can have me feel "can I be arsed with this right now?" And so I will turn to retro for that more immediate, non story heavy fix. Usually SotN or Super Metroid.

[Super Nintendo Chalmers]

I will turn to retro for that more immediate, non story heavy fix.

That really is the main thing for me. I just want to play something fun, quickly. That doesn't seem to be a priority in modern games. Neither does the challenge factor or "one more go" feeling.

[Anpanman]

Not played anything modern on PS4 for over a year, may end up getting EDF 6 in the summer.

Playtime time is mostly NAMCO based on the PSP, Galaxian, RR & Tekken. Also do some of the Capcom and Neo Geo emulators.

[dataDave]

That really is the main thing for me. I just want to play something fun, quickly. That doesn't seem to be a priority in modern games. Neither does the challenge factor or "one more go" feeling.

Sounds like you’re playing the wrong modern games.

The only games I play which are not “one more go” are Skyrim, CP2077, and Witcher 3 - and maybe BotW (which is more like “one more hour!”).

[Wools]

I think like most here, it's 50 / 50 for me.

When I was a kid in the late 80's my first console and PC was the Master System and 386. From that point, all I cared about was new games; I needed to play the latest games talked about by school mates, the pages of CVG and Sega Power Magazines. By the time of the Saturn and PlayStation came along, my little Brother was born. He was gaming at just a few months old, while sitting on my lap, I carefully placed his fingers on my Mega Drive controller so Sonic the Hedgehog jumped. Small step and all that!

When my Brother was around 5, I saved up my pocket money and picked up a Mega Drive & 2 controllers (£10!) so for that Christmas he had his first games console but 1 generation behind Sony's first console and Sega latest and greatest. But he loved it and was flying through the 16bit finest games. It was then that I started to see the huge gulf between the modern 32-bit 3D games and the past 16-bit 2D powerhouses. But, good gameplay shines through and it was because of my Brothers Mega Drive and becoming a teenager, I started to then enjoy playing older games.

Now in 2023, I feel I'm very much stuck in the middle. I love brand new games and sequels to classic games but I do sometimes find myself being bored by the big AAA+AAA games and stick in my happy place of some big hitters and a few more art house style games. Away from them, I get some real pleasure in indie games along with Switch, but after that, it's slim picking for me.

So when M2, Bluepoint or another Dev port a classic game to modern systems, I'm usually in love. I used to play on PC and hoovered up Emulation but found myself spinning games up for 5 minutes then moving on. I'm now selling my PC as I've picked up an Anbernic device and have fallen in love as the emulation is great and as it's a lovely little handheld device, it makes me feel comfy playing an old game through to competition, whereas I didn't have that compulsion on PC.

So now I tend to probably compete only a few games a year, 2 of them are big new games and a handful are older games through emulation or as a re-release.

[Super Nintendo Chalmers]

Sounds like you’re playing the wrong modern games.

Maybe. Or maybe I've outgrown gaming. I really am beginning to suspect that but won't say any more on the topic in case I offend the devotees of joystick waggling on this board as that wouldn't be polite.

I've picked up an Anbernic device and have fallen in love as the emulation is great and as it's a lovely little handheld device, it makes me feel comfy playing an old game through to competition, whereas I didn't have that compulsion on PC.

So now I tend to probably compete only a few games a year

Same here, its interesting how the form factor makes so much difference. True pick up and play with instant on.

Handhelds suit the old style of games perfectly and they look great on small displays.

[Asura]

Bit of both, leaning towards "new".

However, I play very few of the big, tentpole franchises - the Assassins Creeds, Call Of Duty's and Battlefields. I tend to play indie stuff a lot more than things like that. Plus VR.

[dataDave]

When my Brother was around 5, I saved up my pocket money and picked up a Mega Drive & 2 controllers (£10!) so for that Christmas he had his first games console but 1 generation behind Sony's first console and Sega latest and greatest. But he loved it and was flying through the 16bit finest games. It was then that I started to see the huge gulf between the modern 32-bit 3D games and the past 16-bit 2D powerhouses. But, good gameplay shines through and it was because of my Brothers Mega Drive and becoming a teenager, I started to then enjoy playing older games.

This reminds me of the summer of 1996. I had a PlayStation and could help myself to the entire library when I felt like it (I worked for a video game rental business), however, this left me feeling a little bit disconnected from the 32-bit offerings of the time as I was only playing Ridge Racer Revolution, Tekken 2, and Wipeout 2097 anyway, despite all of that choice. Modern games, by large, felt very disposable. There was of course a huge deluge of people dumping their SNES and MD collections for next to nothing - as well as quite a number of market stalls offering huge choices of used games, and also a few gaming pop-up shops appearing throughout the town center propped up of course by all of these old games that no one wanted anymore. There was hardly a boxed and complete 16-bit game that couldn't be bought for a tenner. I remember trading PSX Need for Speed for five SNES games and a boxed/like-new controller. Even the rental firm I worked for started selling off. It was great.

Besides Ridge and Tekken I spent most of that summer on the SNES while reading the JP N64 launch feature in NMS.

[Asura]

Sounds awesome @dataDave but it hits me with a pang of sadness because one of my biggest gaming regrets was selling off my GBA stuff.

When Gamestation was closing down, I went to one of the branches nearby where I had a rapport with some of the staff (we used to play Street Fighter) and they told me when it was gonna be fire-sale day. Sure enough, one of them said that they were closing for good that Saturday, but weren't allowed to tell anyone in advance. They were going to remove all the high-value stuff and then slash the price on everything else. I got a literal shoebox of GBA games, some boxed but many unboxed, for £25, along with a stack of PS3 games a foot tall for a £20 (many of which were used titles which would've been ~15 each at the time).

I would later sell all my GBA stuff to fund the purchase of my first smartphone, an iPhone 4S, which was probably in 2013, and through eBay, the collection of stuff in that box, plus a pretty basic GBA and green GB Micro (aka the colour no-one wants) went for £350. Given it was 2011, that should clue people in to just how many games were in that box.

On the one hand, I generally like to "travel light" when it comes to games. In around 2006 I sold off practically everything before a big move to a new city and new job, keeping just a DS and a handful of carts, and since then, I've never built up a massive collection, and just keep on-hand the few games I habitually play from the older stuff. Still... There are times when I really wish I still had that GBA

[dataDave]

Maybe. Or maybe I've outgrown gaming. I really am beginning to suspect that but won't say any more on the topic in case I offend the devotees of joystick waggling on this board as that wouldn't be polite.

What games did you like the most? I jump from my MiSTer to Switch/PC frequently and there's very little that doesn't also have a modern take that provides the exact same (or in most cases improved) gameplay offering.

The only thing I'm struggling to find is a good modern JRPG. Octopath Traveler just doesn't have the writing or character/world-building like the mid-90s Squaresoft RPGs, not anywhere close. As a result, I'm probably skipping the sequel which I should have collected on Friday along with the Kirby remaster (which is great, btw). The Live A Live remaster is good so far - must get back to that sharpish. Triangle Strategy has been pretty ****ing grand as well, although that's an SRPG.

[Deuteros]

The only thing I'm struggling to find is a good modern JRPG.

Have you heard of Chained Echoes? It's a western-developed JRPG that has been getting a lot of praise!

[Super Nintendo Chalmers]

The only thing I'm struggling to find is a good modern JRPG.

I do like a lot of JRPGs, preferably with a good combat system. The last thing I played on new hardware was immersive simulations like Prey but that genre isn't getting much attention. Neither are racers. Or shmups.

What does come out is often not as good or just a boring retread. Plus so many new games don't have the charm the old ones did. Thats a bit hard to explain but if you've seen it you know what I mean.

[MartyG]

I generally do not buy new releases as I'm not prepared to pay the prices that are asked for them given the state they are released in the majority of the time, bar a couple of exceptions.

So by definition, most of the games (Game Pass stuff that's day one aside), are old games. It just depends on what you think the window for something being new is.

But this is a bot account, or Sketcz has created another secondary.