Do any of you ladies and gentlemen enjoy retro gaming as much as I?

Recently I've started playing through the Mega Man games after finally beating 9 and 10 when I got them for free with Playstation Plus.

Right now I'm on #3 and I'm having so much fun. The difficulty is incredibly frustrating at times but the platforming and boss fights are top notch. And that music, oh my god, that music. So good.

I recently have been collecting them on the Vita (which is an awesome Mega Man playing machine is you ask me) and I can barely wait to get on the bus or go on break to play them again.

I'm going to start making my way through the rest of them, slowly but surely, and try and beat every one of the core Mega Man games, leading up to Mighty No. 9.

So do you guys enjoy tough, retro games? If so, which ones? I want to enrich my gaming experience so give me some more ideas.

I love old games, but I'm a nostalgic old fart who grew up with the likes of Mega Man. Mega Man 2 still has the best soundtrack of any game ever.

What is the deal with BESbswyB anyway?

@sinusoidal: I have no idea what that is, I'll try and fix it

I certainly enjoy a whole lot of old home computer games (PC, Amiga, C64 etc.) and would probably say I play older titles much more than more recent stuff. I especially love the flight sims of the early 90's (LHX Attack Chopper, Flight of the Intruder, F29 Retaliator, TFX, Birds of Prey etc.) , which I think struck a pretty much perfect balance between being approachable while still feeling real enough, something I think started to get lost in the late 90's or early 00's when we got a pretty strict division between extremely hardcore stuff like Eagle Dynamics' flight sims (in 1998 it was Flanker, nowadays they do the DCS games), and straight up action games with little to no realism like Ace Combat.

I've also been building a Genesis library over the past few years, mostly focusing on traditional PC genres as I think it's pretty interesting to see console ports from that era, the early FPSes like Zero Tolerance, early RTSes like Dune II and a whole bunch of simulator games.

Also, even though the fourth Elite game has been out for a couple of months by now, I keep returning to Elite II: Frontier, and still play it a few times a week. I'm enjoying Elite: Dangerous, but it does feel pretty scaled back compared to what Braben did with Frontier in 1992.

@fisk0: That's awesome! I wasn't much of a PC gamer but I can get behind the Genesis collection. It's an underrated system in my opinion. I had so much fun with Sonic, Gunstar Heroes, Phantasy Star and Contra.

I often go back to older PC games. Not so much out of nostalgia, usually just because you have to go back a decade or more if you want to find the best games in certain genres.

I play old games all the time.

I barely played any 80s and early 90s games when they first came out, so for me it's not really nostalgia I don't think.

For example I played the original X-com last year for the first time ever, and loved the hell out of it. Did you say you wanted a tough older game? Well there it is. The toughest of them all.

Examples of games I just never stopped playing would be Lord of Destruction and Age of Empires, especially now that the HD version exists.

Also recently:

• Parasite Eve
• Snake Eater
• Tactics Ogre
• Final Fantasy VI

It's some weird bug.

On topic, I really can't play old games unless it's something I already have nostalgic feelings toward. I can still play the shit out of Street Fighter II or Starfox, but the idea of sitting down and playing "classics" from that era that I've never touched like, say, Mega Man X or Yoshi's Island, is totally unappealing. It's kind of a shame, but there it is.

No.

Honestly, I feel like most games have improved tremendously since the early days. Retro style gaming has way too many cons at this point for me to go back to them. Hell, the fact that Contra has just 3 lives (30 if you're a filthy bastard) is reason enough for me to not go back, even though the rest of game is sublime. And even the best games of that period have some major design flaws that do not exist in their respective genres anymore.

Hell, this might be blasphemous for some people, but I feel like Gears of War, especially Horde mode, is the modern Contra. And what's more - it's better in every single way. And when there are modern games that are massive improvements over their older counterparts, why should I go back to retro stuff, besides for nostalgic reasons? I'm not bashing people that do that; wanting to go down memory lane is a great way to relax. It's just I do not understand people who claim that old games are way better. Again, not saying they're wrong, but it's an opinion I'm never gonna get.

Old games are some of my favorites. I still enjoy playing NES and GB games from time to time.

Of course, old games have so much to offer.

I just picked up Super Mario World again and it exceeds most platformers of today, despite 20+ years of polish since then.

Well how old is retro? I love playing games from my childhood, but I was born in the early 90s. I still go back and play games like the N64 Zelda games (Majora's Mask is one of my favorite games of all time) or Super Mario 64, etc. But I don't often go back and play games like the early MegaMan games or original Final Fantasy games or things of that nature.

@afabs515: retro is relative to your age I guess, but the established meaning is anything from NES, SNES or Genesis. Anything post-collapse, late 80s, early 90s

I think the Retronauts podcast used to draw the line for retro games at 15 years or two console generations ago (meaning PS2/Dreamcast/Gamecube are becoming retro at this point).

They are of course not some singular authority on the subject, but I think 15 years is a reasonable timespan when it comes to games.

I wish I did. I feel like I should. But most of the time I end up preferring my memories of "what they were in their day" than how they play now.

As someone who played a lot of retro games when they were new, I actually prefer the new stuff. A decent amount of game today are just straight up better in how they handle saves & progress. Not to mention appearance. Now that 2d platformers and older genre styles are alive again, I find myself not pining for the olden days much.

Still love the old stuff, but I have always liked playing new-ish things. If I'm being honest with myself I rarely ever play anything older 2000, maybe once a year at this point, same goes with anything pre 2006 really.

That's a large part of the appeal for me in video games is to see what ideas and innovations games have. This medium evolves so rapidly there is always some new wonder to see.

Yes, I have gone back and played a few older games, although not as many as I would have liked.

It is interesting to see what people these days tend to think of the old games that I still love. I'd really like to see somebody play Donkey Kong Country 2 for the first time - the first one has problems, the third one is kinda bland, but goddamn that second game is so good. I didn't really like Donkey Kong Country Returns - that may be because I played the frame-y 3DS version, but I didn't feel like I had a problem controlling it. I just didn't find myself loving it. I do really want to play Tropical Freeze, though, if only because of its soundtrack.

Not really much of a fan of retro gaming since I have been playing for a long time now. What used to be new games then are now considered to be retro games.

Most of the games used to be platformers or some form of arcade games where you move along and shoot at stuff coming at you in various patterns and shapes. Also with age you tend to
become slower in your reaction times which makes playing those kinds of games a pretty annoying experience at times.

Why yes, yes I do. DOSBox is the first thing to get installed on a new PC for me, and a VM is the second. I love modern games and the advances they have made, but a video game isn't a video game without a nag screen telling me what a registered copy will get me if I go to my local software vendor and buy it (or send money directly to the developer). Or, of course, a thank you message for having registered. Episodic gaming? Pshhh... let me tell you about games split into episodes. Let me tell you about the Apogee fanfare, while we're at it. Startup logos used to be awesome, not annoying! Mario Kart? Hah! We had Wacky Wheels and Skunny Kart!

*ahem* ... I mean, yeah, I like classic games a good deal.

Nope. I have no nostalgia for anything from before the 1990's, so there is no appeal for me.

Yes. I play NES and Genesis quite a bit. I even film teaching my dad how to play older games. I'm not a huge fan of emulation but sometimes I do use programs like open emu with a DS4 or a wii remote.

Here's a video of me teaching my dad how to play Duck Hunt:

@billyhoush: Nice video dude, very entertaining. Personally I played "retro games" back when we called them "new".

Considering I have been playing "retro" games since they were newly released, yes I do enjoy them. I seem to go back and forth between older and newer games quite often. Since being introduced to retroachievements.org by @jeff on the Bombcast I have been playing way more of them.

Which reminds me, if anyone else is into the retro achievements, shoot me a friends request, need to build up that leaderboard. I would only like to add people who just play the games though and not cheat their way to the achievements. Here is my profile.

I really wish there was a PSN release for Streets of Rage 1 on the EU. The US store has so many more retro games available. I'm also very fond of the Sega Genesis and regularily play games like Shadowrun, Sonic 1/2/3, Golden Axe series, Super Hang-On, Streets of Rage 1/2, Revenge of the Shinobi, Strider, Contra: Hard Corps and so many more. I never owned the console but regularly borrowed it from a friend.

It's still crazy we're living in an era in which SEGA as console manufacturer has died and I'm wondering how different the current console landscape would have been if Sega was still making consoles.

I don't play as much retro stuff as I used to, but back in the olden days, before I had a good computer, I played a lot of old CRPGs and wrote about them on this very website and to this day those games inform a lot of my tastes.

I love me some old PC games.

Also, the NES Mega Man games are great.

Yes, I love retro games. In fact, I spend more time playing retro games than I do playing modern games.

Here are some retro classics you should definitely try out:

• Ninja Gaiden
• Sonic the Hedgehog 2
• Streets of Rage 2
• Secret of Mana
• Final Fantasy VI & VII
• Chrono Trigger
• Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals
• Alundra

old games is kinda all I play for the most part. mostly NES stuff. new games are too complicated for me.

love me some 2d platformeres

I play a lot of old PC games. Thank you GoG.
I really like old arcade games as well, but playing something on Mame doesn't live up to the real thing.