How often do you actually properly play your retro games?

[Escape-To-88]

I sold pretty much everything to play and collect arcade gear almost exclusively. Arcade titles fit in currently to my lifestyle and play style infinitely better. I'm sure that might change going forward, but at £400-500 a board I feel like having a much smaller collection of retro gear allows me more enjoyment and I actually play the things! Part of that was getting rid of multigames, MAME and MiSTer etc. As my old brain finds it too overwhelming now. I play anywhere between everyday to 2 times a week.

[Baseley09]

Actually finding myself playing more and more, deffo had some fallow gaming times but back to a few times a week mainly vintage with the odd pc game thrown in. Am mainly using originals too, do have the odd multi game thing but everdrives and the like bring me limited joy, hollow experiences.

[Yakumo]

You should start a YouTube channel about it

Lol, you know, that might be a good idea

[dataDave]

MiSTer, Switch, PC. That’s all I play, and in that order when considering frequency. With the MiSTer alone I’m set for several lifetimes even if I never buy or pirate another game again.

[dataDave]

Am mainly using originals too, do have the odd multi game thing but everdrives and the like bring me limited joy, hollow experiences.

The exact same thing happens when you find yourself with a massive collection. It’s a matter of building a library of guff because of reasons.

[Hirst]

I would say at the moment I don't play games as much as I like, but it's because I have been investing a lot of time in properly reorganising everything to be hooked up properly and decided at some way in I'd like to start doing YouTube stuff so then I had to rethink a lot of the set up so I can record anything immediately without having to switch wires. I think I'm only a few hours and another switch box away from being finished though and then I can be back onto my usual arrangement of playing games for at least an hour or two most days. I wish I could be playing them for hours on end like I used to do before life got in the way with jobs and that, but that's the drawbacks of being an adult I guess.

One point I would say is that even when I am playing games, I probably spend an equal time looking for and buying them, but it's due to the somewhat hotchpotch way I do it to save money - skulking around second-hand places looking for bargains, buying up things I've no interest in to sell or turn into trade-in credit, looking at systems where nobody's interested at them right now, locating stuff on Japanese auctions, breaking up joblots, buying incomplete games and making them complete later - cleaning up and swapping boxes, all that kind of thing. It's just the way I've always done it to be honest.

[devilcrush]

About once a week for me. Like a lot of us on here, it is time permitting but some retro games are perfect for this. As much as I would love to sink my teeth into something like Elden Ring, I get a lot more out of playing something like SMS Shinobi.
In around 20 minutes, I can get to Mandara all powered up, lose, curse at the TV and my remaining attempts to beat the boss with no power-ups, then blame the controller. With a modern game the first 10 minutes is probably a forced cutscene, if not a 15 minute wait to download and install a patch.

I recently picked up and went through Super Metroid for the first time doing the odd hour session here and there over a few weekends which I loved every minute of, but it was a commitment. No spoilers from me but, I didn't know about the other ending and when I saw it on YouTube, I thought it was a lovely, very tiny bit of detail by the developers.

[Protocol Penguin]

Haven’t played any retro recently. I just don’t have anyone who enjoys retro gaming to hand these days, and it’s not so much fun on your own, even with single player games. Also, the retro gaming bubble has meant I haven’t bought anything in the last three years or so, other than some random cheap Game Boy carts.

(Bought bits to build a MiSTer, incidentally, but the main board won’t arrive until July!)

[danstan21]

I've long since given up the pretence of buying only games that I intend to play right away, but I've never bought a game that I don't intend to play eventually. With retro prices ballooning as they are I'm basically snapping up everything I can while it's still affordable. (I live in Japan at the moment where the secondhand market is generally more reasonable, but currently considering a move back to the UK and in which case who knows when I'll be back...)

With that said, I do play retro games a lot - a few times a week for sure. Just not nearly at the same rate I acquire them. It doesn't help that my two favourite genres are strategy and shmups, polar opposite experiences but equal in their time commitment.