While it may seem that gaming is a widespread pursuit practised by pretty much everyone, there are certain pockets of society that have no knowledge of Red Dead Redemption or what a Master Chief is! But then there are those who are firmly in the era of Sonic the Hedgehog and retro gaming. If you have made the most of your lockdown effectively you have, no doubt, expanded your gaming horizons. But with various lockdowns coming in and out of force, now is the perfect opportunity for everybody to expand their gaming horizons. For those retro gamers, how can you guide them in the right direction?
Bring Out the Big Guns
You can choose to acclimatize the individual or you can just get them a PS5 right away! We all know that keeping abreast of changes in the gaming world is all about the latest and greatest. And why don’t you bring out the big guns right away? But a word of caution for the retro gamer who thinks they can easily plug in a control pad and get going; it’s about so much more than a modest cartridge. It is all about expansion packs and external hard drives. And this means for those retro gamers that want to improve their experience, they’ve got to continue to purchase the additional extensions and hard drives if they want to get the most out of it. You can purchase plenty of external hard drives, and the great thing about most of these external hard drives is that they are compatible with PS5. The PS5 is the latest and greatest, so if you want to bring them firmly into the present, purchase this for them as a present!
Using Benchmarks That They Know
A retro gamer has a very limited frame of reference. For those gamers who are over the age of 45, their knowledge may only go up to 1995. There are people who didn’t even have a PlayStation One! If you want to get a retro gamer into the modern world of gaming, it is important to use retro references to ignite their understanding. Modern gaming can be a very cliquey endeavour, so make sure that they can use their old knowledge to their advantage. If they spent their childhood on the NES or the SNES, the Nintendo Switch is still repackaging the old formats. And any retro gamer will always tell you that the old ones are the best. With Mario being repurposed every few years and even when you start to look at something like the DS, for all of its faults, the Mario packages on there feel exactly the same as the Mario All-Stars and original Mario games back in the 80s and early 90s! In fact, if you look at the contemporary versions, they are so much easier. This is, arguably, one of the biggest benefits to the retro gamer. We don’t know we were born! We have so many save options and yes, while the difficulty has increased somewhat, think about the poor retro gamer who was always burdened by having to pause their game when they were so close to the end to have their tea, or even worse, a power cut meant they had to start all over again!
There’s Plenty of Great Games on Mobile Devices
You can play great games online and for the retro gamer that’s not got much time on their hands to get into modern gaming, this is probably the best way to retrain their senses. There are plenty of fantastic packages on mobile devices these days. And even the basic games can be a gateway to a whole new world. For the retro gamer, the Sonic packages are just as good as their retro counterparts, if not better! It is the stepping stone from a mobile device to a Nintendo Switch. So even games that have a massive impact from your Candy Crush type games as well as Pokémon Go, these can turn your phone into a super machine. Any might be worth reminding the retro gamer that they can get a controller for their phone. The touch screen experience is incredibly limited.
The Human Factor of Modern Games
Something that retro gamers will have no knowledge of in the modern world is the wide variety of RPGs that go beyond Final Fantasy 1, 2, and 3 on the Mega Drive. Games are now a more immersive experience in comparison to 25 years ago! A game like Perception is an amazing experience that isn’t just an RPG with some scares, but it’s a visceral horror. Playing the part of a blind woman navigating through a mansion using echolocation is something that was unheard of 30 years ago! Speak to anyoine that grew up in the heyday of the 1990s and they will still tell you how amazing Flashback was! And in fact, if you’ve never played Flashback, now is your time! But now we have to look at the human qualities of any game, in conjunction with its playability and plot points. And while we can be very snobbish and talk about the gaming world now in comparison to a few decades ago, we can learn from retro games as well. Look at the classics like Mario 64. It was absolutely mind-blowing at the time! And it still makes many people’s top 5. It’s as much a lesson for us as it is for the retro gamer. So if you want to create a symbiotic relationship with a retro gamer, it’s so important to remember that they had it much harder than us!
So whether you are looking to get your parents into modern gaming or they need brushing up on their knowledge, there is plenty to get involved in. And no doubt they will tell you that the 8-bit experience is better and mind-blowing. And while realism in modern games is improving all of the time, we’ve got to tip our hats to the older generations. 8-bit gaming is rough around the edges, but it laid the foundations for everything that we know of today.