We talk about nostalgia like it’s harmless, but is it? I wrote some thoughts about gaming, memory, and the cost of looking back. #blog #gaming #retro - ThreadSky

innerspiral.lol • 54 days ago

We talk about nostalgia like it’s harmless, but is it? I wrote some thoughts about gaming, memory, and the cost of looking back.
#blog #gaming #retro

Comments

kapenguin.bsky.social•54 days ago

OMG YES!! It's heartbreaking what the retro game market has become. But also I'm so glad you highlighted the hacking scene, because I love seeing the new life that other players have injected into these old games! Romhacks, nuzlockes, randomizers...they've been my new gaming drug lately. 😁

innerspiral.lol•54 days ago

Thank you! It’s wild how it feels. The communities have such creative ways to play these games, and they add so much charm. Obviously, I'm a pokemon fan so I'm deep in that world, but there's so much stuff out there nowadays☺️

kapenguin.bsky.social•54 days ago

Yesss me too!! I love running Pokemon randomizers, especially as a nuzlocke with friends. They're so much fun. 🥰

innerspiral.lol•54 days ago

Heehee they really are 😊

captainleona.bsky.social•53 days ago

An exquisitely written article that says everything that NEEDS to be said. Bravo, love!

innerspiral.lol•53 days ago

Aww, thank you so much!

innerspiral.lol•54 days ago

As always, reposts are appreciated! ^_^

l0stsect0r.bsky.social•49 days ago

thanks to this im grabbing an emulator for my rpi sitting in a drawer

great article
great writing
many thanks

innerspiral.lol•49 days ago

Thank you and hell yeah~

peashooterman3.bsky.social•53 days ago

one time i tried to get a spongebob squarepants jellyfish dodge plug and play on Big A but instead i got the older 5-in-1. 45 dollars

innerspiral.lol•53 days ago

lmaoo goodness

peashooterman3.bsky.social•53 days ago

i did eventually manage to get TWO jellyfish-model dodges from ebay later on though! and then it got dumped and now you can play it on mame whenever you want for free :)

innerspiral.lol•53 days ago

Oh, hell yeah! Happy ending then, I'll check them out :D

onlyfeatures.bsky.social•53 days ago

Agreed. This is why I think piracy and emulation is ethically and morally correct. This also bumps into the bizarre domain that we don't buy software, we "lease" it.

innerspiral.lol•53 days ago

Like if they’re not gonna make these games accessible, what else are people supposed to do? It's literally just preserving what they won’t. and the whole leasing thing is so dystopian, you don’t even own what you buy anymore.

bento-bongos.bsky.social•53 days ago

Pirate games, do not buy from scummy companies.

Emulators are your friends as bootlegs, while vary in quality, are now unexpected allies

Nobody knew what a Telefang was until "Pokemon Diamond and Jade" (Telfang Speed ver. and Telefang Power ver.)

innerspiral.lol•53 days ago

True, also telefang bangs so hard. That recent fan translation is incredible.

bento-bongos.bsky.social•53 days ago

Yeah, the fan translation is absolutely incredible! Polishes what's already there, fixes what's broken and rips the band-aid off, with the denjuu reclaiming what was lost.

I think Cassette Beasts is more in-line with Telefang than Pokemon, honestly!

innerspiral.lol•53 days ago

It does, I’m so glad it exists.

And yes! Cassette Beasts definitely does give more Telfang vibes. One of my favourite games last year.

grimmsage.bsky.social•53 days ago

Great post, you nailed it. The speculative market for games is abysmal, it's just a bubble being inflated by scammers just like the crypto shills who swear their token will "go to the moon". Emulation and romshare sites are awesome though, and it's super easy to get a Raspi arcade set up.

innerspiral.lol•53 days ago

Thank you! Yeah, the current scene is such trash, it’s crypto bros but with childhood memories lmao. You're absolutely right, emulation and the sites that host it are for sure the real heroes though, and I honestly love how people just keep finding ways around the greed.

cloudyjn.bsky.social•53 days ago

I hate that it’s being used like some sort of aesthetic to up prices for things like video games and movies

innerspiral.lol•53 days ago

Right? Like why can't some child who wants to try some older games or media... just go to a secondhand store and just... buy them? Cause some scalper thought "let me buy up this entire stock, it'll make me some bank!" It irritates me to no end. (Also niceeee to that follower count lmao 6️⃣9️⃣)

backlogger.bsky.social•53 days ago

The music in this article is so good😭

innerspiral.lol•53 days ago

Here you go haha, I love using specific music for my articles~

nf.id.au•53 days ago

This was an interesting read. It felt a bit disorienting to me, though. I grew up in the 90s with the NES and Gameboy, and nostalgia for me has always been about emulation. When I was in high school it seemed like every kid had a NES emulator on their PC, it was so ubiquitous.

nf.id.au•53 days ago

At times in my life I have owned retro consoles but they have always been more expensive the older they are. Same with retro computers. Supply/demand etc. In my mind retro gaming on actual hardware is a rich guy or obsessive collector thing to do, not something people should expect access to.

nf.id.au•53 days ago

I really worry for the future or retro gaming as emulation becomes harder, and even maintaining the old hardware can be very difficult. Online service games make this worse. 😥

ratttz.bsky.social•53 days ago

I feel like emulation is the easiest it's ever been, it's just that tech literacy is at an all-time low.

Like, you can download emulator frontends with autodownloaders and great netplay, but what children have access to laptops or desktop computers at home? Who's setting that up for them?

innerspiral.lol•53 days ago

Exactly. That goes into a deeper issue. When we were younger, we were tinkering with these pcs, because they were easier to mess around with and would just... stumble onto emulation or this info either through word of mouth, or the local forum you were using. But they've been steadily eroding

innerspiral.lol•53 days ago

that. You don't learn the complete basics of the PC at school anymore, because it's assumed you already do. You don;t learn what a file manager does and why. Which is so bad, because how tf are you even going to get to that point when you don't even grasp the fundamentals?

yacabonis.bsky.social•53 days ago

You make a good point about low-income gamers waiting for those generational hand-me-downs. I remember gen waiting back then and, even though some games' prices still stayed up there, it's gotten worse over the years. This is something I hadn't thought about much as an adult.

innerspiral.lol•53 days ago

They were such a lifeline back then. You knew you’d eventually get to play the big titles once they weren’t 'new' anymore, even if it meant waiting a few years. Now it’s just... insane. It’s locking so many ppl out from participating. It’s sad to think how much worse it’s gotten over time.

tttttsd.bsky.social•53 days ago

Trueing so hard. Accessibility, AFFORDABLY, is something that can and should be achieved in our lifetimes. You also can't look forward without knowing what back looks like

tttttsd.bsky.social•53 days ago

Worth noting it is not impossible at all, the retro market in Japan is afaik far less messed up and I think something like that might be achievable, optimistically

nf.id.au•53 days ago

I think it *was* less expensive to buy retro stuff in Japan as they culturally take better care of their possessions, and second hand marketplaces in general are very good there, but last time I looked at retro gaming stuff in Tokyo the prices were also very high.

tttttsd.bsky.social•53 days ago

Image of Tom from Tom and Jerry sitting on the train tracks

innerspiral.lol•53 days ago

It should definitely be achievable but it’s wild how far we are from it though. They do have that cultural mindset of taking care of things and big secondhand marketplaces, which helps. but as said by adg above me, even there, the prices are creeping up, especially in big cities like Tokyo and Osaka

innerspiral.lol•53 days ago

still, it feels like there’s something to learn from their system... like how they normalize secondhand goods in a way that doesn’t just turn absolutely everything into high-end collectibles. def worth thinking about how to make that more global

lele.disctwo.net•53 days ago

nice read! the low-income gamer is something that is often ignored when talking about this topic so it's great to see it brought up. It's because of things like this that I switched to PC, buying even an old console isn't worth the price for me. I've seen people leave gaming cuz of this. It sucks.

innerspiral.lol•53 days ago

Thank you so much! They’re so often left out of these convos. Switching to PC makes total sense, but yeah it sucks seeing ppl leave gaming altogether because of this mess. The industry really needs to stop gatekeeping its own shit but until then I’m glad we have emulation and other avenues.

thatonefinkrat.bsky.social•53 days ago

As someone that has what I've made up to be called "retro bias", the retro gaming market sucks so much, Gamecube games are way too much now

innerspiral.lol•53 days ago

Way, way too much.

watcherjoshua.bsky.social•51 days ago

I visited a local retro game store a couple weeks ago. A mother and young son (10-13) came in. The kid clearly has a bundle of Christmas cash, and he really wanted a Gamecube.

The store attendant (really nice guy) was honest with them: Gamecube is great but every good game is $100+.

watcherjoshua.bsky.social•51 days ago

The kid thought it over for at least half an hour and finally left empty handed. I felt so bad.

I see $300 price tag for a Gamecube + The Wind Waker and say my memories are worth far more than that, but the price of the next generation sharing those memories is insane.

innerspiral.lol•51 days ago

Good god. That’s so sad… There should at least be things like maybe libraries renting out old consoles or something. Most of the games I played (Like Wind Waker), I first rented out, loved and bought which were also the best things about places like blockbuster.

innerspiral.lol•51 days ago

Cause these kids are never going to go back to these older games, they’ll just download Fortnite and a $20 V-bucks card because that’s easy, cheap and their parents won’t complain.

painiac.bsky.social•52 days ago

Other people said it, but I feel seen as the low-income kid who even with a PS2 didn't get to have many 'new' games, and therefore anything Nintendo was already off limits because my mom thought it was too expensive in the 90s-early 00s. If only she knew how bad it'd get for those very same games.

innerspiral.lol•52 days ago

Yeah, back then it was about compromise. Nintendo stuff especially felt like some unattainable dream for so many of us. (I sold my Nintendo DS lite for an animal crossing Wii game lol, that's how bad) and yeah, it’s such a weird feeling seeing it all play out like this.

thunderfury1208.bsky.social•52 days ago

U know. I genuinely liked this blog post. Eye catching for sure haha great read!

innerspiral.lol•51 days ago

Thank you!

mooises.bsky.social•53 days ago

📌

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