Why old tech is more cherished than ever before.
Why old tech is more cherished than ever before.
“Nintendo’s miniature-size NES Classic Edition was one of the hottest Christmas presents of 2016, selling out nearly everywhere, with re-sale prices soaring. Meanwhile, rare Atari 2600 and NES cartridges routinely sell for four figure sums on eBay.”
Progress means that newer is better, right? But what if newer doesn’t make you happier, instead, it’s older tech that warms you up inside? From retro games to vinyl records, from film cameras to manual cars, these old technologies have that certain ‘something’ that diehard fans are still stubbornly in love with. It’s a good time to be a gamer. Virtual reality headsets, augmented reality apps, seamless online connectivity, 4K displays delivering billions of pixels a second at 60FPS - video games have never been more realistic or immersive. And yet, one trend can’t be denied: retro gaming is on the rise.
Nintendo’s miniature-size NES Classic Edition was one of the hottest Christmas presents of 2016, selling out nearly everywhere, with re-sale prices soaring. Meanwhile, rare Atari 2600 and NES cartridges routinely sell for four figure sums on eBay and an extremely rare copy of Nintendo’s Stadium Events recently sold for a record US$35,100. But what’s the appeal of retro gaming? How can eight bits compete with billions of pixels per second?
For the past decade or so, the top three best-selling games of the year have remained nearly unchanged: Call of Duty, Battlefield, FIFA. You’ve probably bought at least one of them yourself.
Now think back to your favorite Sega or Nintendo games. From platformers like Sonic and Mario, to RPGs like Zelda and Final Fantasy, and even lost genres like side-scrolling fighters like Golden Axeor puzzle adventure games likeMonkey Island, there was a much wider range of games available. You can still occasionally find games in these genres, but they’re mostly relegated to small indie titles from independent studios.
One of the reasons gaming has become so dominated by FPS and sports titles is because these games are ideal for multiplayer, and it’s hard to find a game today that isn’t made with multiplayer gaming in mind.
Call of Duty and Battlefield have single-player campaigns, but they’re generally around six or seven hours in length, and the bulk of the game is the multiplayer experience. Some triple A titles like Titanfall 1 forego the single player campaign altogether.
But look back a few decades when online connectivity wasn’t a thing and you’ll find a completely different experience. Entirely single player games like Zelda and Legend of Mana delivered some of the deepest and most tightly tuned gaming experiences ever.
Even when a modern game does focus on the single player experience, that experience has changed. It costs a lot of money to make a video game, so it makes sense that developers want that game to appeal to a wider, more casual audience.
Consider this: in the original Super Mario Bros, you had three lives; you could gain more from 1ups scattered around levels, but once you lost them all, that was it, you had to start all over again.
In New Super Mario Bros Wii, if you die eight times in a row, a green ‘!’ block appears, hit that and a system-controlled Luigi will arrive to escort you through the rest of the level.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but with the exception of certain titles like Dark Souls, modern games are less challenging to serious players, and without that challenge, you don’t get the same sense of achievement when you beat the game. And of course, video games are all about achievements.
Best of both worlds - modern video games with retro vibes
DARK SOULS
The Dark Souls series has built a reputation as one of the hardest modern video games around. But just like notoriously difficult old school video games Ninja Gaiden and Contra, the seemingly unbeatable bosses actually have predictable movesets. Master those patterns and they’ll go down easily.
OBDUCTION
Obduction is a throwback to point and click exploration puzzle games like Myst. Obduction may seem slow-paced by today’s standards with no weapons, nothing to kill and not even a way to die yourself, but the atmospheric slow burner’s gorgeous environments and mysterious setting offers an entirely different style of gameplay.
Text: Team HWM / James Lu / Photography: Tan Weite / Art direction: Ken Koh / Picture: IG
