Here’s where a particular technological shortcoming offers a big upside. Old-school console games were not built around online play, the way contemporary ones are. This wasn’t a choice, but a byproduct of where technology was at the time. The effect of this baked-in characteristic turns out to be an interesting benefit: to play against friends, you have to actually get together, and sit down with one another. Add in the fact that cords on old controllers are kind of short, and you’re not only sitting in the same room, but relatively close to each other. Playing retro games can be very social, and not in the pseudo “social” sense of much interaction today where people do things separately and share them online.
Chomping down pizza, and rocking through a boisterous game of Atari’s Warlords with friends is a fantastically fun time. Gameplay is simple enough that no one can dominate by putting boatloads of time in to level up their skills. Variability due to surprises means that everyone stays on their toes. And being seated together around the TV means reactions and excitement are amped up - with a significant difference…
The separation of playing online, and the anonymity that often occurs in online play, work together to create a well documented spike in bad behavior. As long as “online” has existed (going back to the 80s, and BBSs), anonymous strangers coming together for interaction has meant people being less inhibited, and more likely to act in ways they wouldn’t act in person. Trolling is not new, and flame wars date back to the early days of online computing. Dropping the key elements that contribute to this can make a difference in the tone of play.
It isn’t about being unable to handle that behavior, it’s about wanting an experience that doesn’t have it as such a prominent feature.
In that real-world interaction, you are actually socializing, having an in-person, non-virtual shared experience, and you find a whole other dimension to your gaming enjoyment. I’m personally an introvert, but hanging with friends and having a noisy, fun time together, interspersed with shared food, drinks and other spontaneous tomfoolery, is something I really enjoy doing.
As an important note on this point - I recently had an online interaction with Tommy Tallarico, video game music composer who has worked on hundreds of games since the 1990s. He is the man behind the reboot of the Intellivision, which is slated for release in 2020. This single aspect of in-person play is so important to the Intellivision Amico, that there is no online play in their games. You can see the importance of this principle in the fact that their tagline is “Together Again.” It’s also noteworthy that several of my points are also echoed on their site as well. Clearly, people are seeing these issues, and Tommy & Co. are looking to address them by creating a brand new console that follows some of the key experience touchpoints as retro games. It’s new tech, deeply informed by wisdom reclaimed from old experiences.
As I hope I am making clear in this entire article, real advancement includes being able to go back and retrieve things you realize you’ve lost, but need. I believe that a modern console built with a retro philosophy makes the Intellivision Amico the most forward-thinking systems out there. This is because they are not just pushing the envelope based on what tech can do, but consciously shaping it based on what they believe would create better experiences - as measured by a more fully-dimensioned understanding of “better.”
retrogamestart.com
https://retrogamestart.com/answers/why-retro-video-gaming-so-popular-its-much-more-than-nostalgia