Let's get things straight: when it comes to old games, I'm as nostalgic as the next guy. The moment New Super Mario Bros. comes out, I go out of my way to get it as fast as I can. I'm a sucker for all things Mario, I'm a sucker for Pac Man, Space Invaders, all of that jazz. The thing is, I didn't use to play most of those games when I was a kid. You could say that's part of my class B status.
You see, this is Poland we're speaking of. Sure, during summer vacations I did spend considerable amounts of time at the arcade -- but then again not that much, what with the price of tokens (yeah, over here you didn't even use coins back then) being more of an issue than, as I can imagine, the amount of quarters tossed into coin-ops in, say, the US. But what's more, I have never owned a console in my life -- that is until I bought my DS some six months ago or so. Over here consoles were never that popular and most people my age have always had home computers instead. So when you guys might have played on your NES, I owned an Atari 65XE; when you guys might have played on your SNES or Mega Drive, I owned an Amiga 600 (as a matter of fact, I still do). And from there I moved on to PC and that was it.
That is not to say that I'd never held a gamepad in my hands, that I didn't play a good deal of Mario on some kid's original clunky Game Boy, that I didn't spend countless hours playing Micro Machines on the Pegasus (a NES clone that made Nintendo titles popular over here back in the day) during one particular summer camp, or that Asteroids isn't the first game I ever remember playing on what appeared to me a huge looming arcade machine. (Even today I could lead you to the exact spot it used to stand in a cafe quite near here.) Regardless, you could say all those were just "incidents," and that's not where I come from as a gamer, to use some unnecessarily lofty wording. However, nowadays I do feel genuinely nostalgic about those things, despite the fact they aren't a part of my childhood memories per se. And when I play SNES games with my friend on an emulator (and we do that a lot), I feel like I'm returning to something, even though the vast majority of those titles is actually new to me.
So it makes me wonder: how come that's possible? Is it just the vibe of the late 80s and early 90s, universal for all gaming platforms? Is it the legacy of actually remembering playing (however briefly) computer games on a black-and-white TV set? And finally, is that why now, as I kind of finally introduce myself to the world of console gaming, I feel much more drawn to Nintendo rather than any of the other platforms, even though I don't technically remember collecting those super mushrooms? And is that why peeps just a couple of years younger -- young enough to have already grown up with a Playstation -- don't generally share that sentiment? Or am I just raving, really trying to create my own nostalgia?
You see, this is Poland we're speaking of. Sure, during summer vacations I did spend considerable amounts of time at the arcade -- but then again not that much, what with the price of tokens (yeah, over here you didn't even use coins back then) being more of an issue than, as I can imagine, the amount of quarters tossed into coin-ops in, say, the US. But what's more, I have never owned a console in my life -- that is until I bought my DS some six months ago or so. Over here consoles were never that popular and most people my age have always had home computers instead. So when you guys might have played on your NES, I owned an Atari 65XE; when you guys might have played on your SNES or Mega Drive, I owned an Amiga 600 (as a matter of fact, I still do). And from there I moved on to PC and that was it.
That is not to say that I'd never held a gamepad in my hands, that I didn't play a good deal of Mario on some kid's original clunky Game Boy, that I didn't spend countless hours playing Micro Machines on the Pegasus (a NES clone that made Nintendo titles popular over here back in the day) during one particular summer camp, or that Asteroids isn't the first game I ever remember playing on what appeared to me a huge looming arcade machine. (Even today I could lead you to the exact spot it used to stand in a cafe quite near here.) Regardless, you could say all those were just "incidents," and that's not where I come from as a gamer, to use some unnecessarily lofty wording. However, nowadays I do feel genuinely nostalgic about those things, despite the fact they aren't a part of my childhood memories per se. And when I play SNES games with my friend on an emulator (and we do that a lot), I feel like I'm returning to something, even though the vast majority of those titles is actually new to me.
So it makes me wonder: how come that's possible? Is it just the vibe of the late 80s and early 90s, universal for all gaming platforms? Is it the legacy of actually remembering playing (however briefly) computer games on a black-and-white TV set? And finally, is that why now, as I kind of finally introduce myself to the world of console gaming, I feel much more drawn to Nintendo rather than any of the other platforms, even though I don't technically remember collecting those super mushrooms? And is that why peeps just a couple of years younger -- young enough to have already grown up with a Playstation -- don't generally share that sentiment? Or am I just raving, really trying to create my own nostalgia?
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