Old School Video Games

Forget Xbox:Old School Video Games

For people growing up in the ‘80s and ‘90s, a mustachioed Italian plumber with red overalls played a huge role in childhood memories. As the time has passed and video games have become more and more advanced, the idea of a side-scrolling game seems laughable. But today, kids are turning back the clock and playing old school video games for a number of reasons.

Self-proclaimed “old school gamer” Everett Kaniarz, 19, says that he spends about 20 hours a week playing one of his 40 Super Nintendo games. “I play the old games because the gameplay is so much better; they’re much simpler,” he says. “There’s so much stuff to do in the new games that it takes away from actually playing. The old games have the best music, best accessories and the best storylines.”

Kaniarz owns newer systems and will play the more recent systems at friends' houses, but at his house they usually end up playing one of the older consoles. “People will come over and they’ll see Duck Hunt and they’ll be like, ‘Oh really, I remember Duck Hunt, I loved it, let’s play.’ Or they’ll mention another old game and I’ll have it right there and they’ll have a lot of fun,” Kaniarz explains. “People have heard about all these old games, seen them on YouTube or played one of the sequels, so they want to play the original.”

Though he does maintain some interest in the newer games, Kaniarz knows where his true gaming love doth live. “I’ll play the new ones, just to see how they are, but they’re just bad,” he says. “The brand new Zelda on the Wii I thought was pretty disappointing. There’s so much stuff to do. I put five hours in, using a player’s guide, to just get past the first dungeon. It was ridiculous. I don’t want to find a baby, find a monkey, get a sword, go back to the baby and go fishing. It’s cool that you can do all that, but that you have to do all that to move on, it’s a waste of time.”

At college campuses and suburban basements, the Nintendo 64 has become popular because of its numerous multiplayer games, like Mario Kart, GoldenEye and Super Smash Bros., that allow a lot of people to be involved while playing short games so everyone gets a turn. The new systems have focused more on two or single player games, leaving the Nintendo 64 as a group favorite.

Brian Bosler, 18, would go over to a friend’s house to play Smash Bros. on the N64 every Friday after school with a bunch of his friends. They would play the game with the loser rotating out so everyone could get in. “We just like to play video games, and Smash Bros. was simple enough for everyone and was still fun,” he says. “It’s very easy to pick up, very accessible. It’s a four player game, so everyone gets to play. It had that arcade feel to it without spending the quarters.”

Bosler says there are two reasons why they continue to play a system that dates back more than a decade: “Maybe it’s nostalgia on my part because it was my first experience with (the now infamous) first person shooter video game. Plus, PS3 is $600, and our parents would kill us if we blew our money on that.”