This week, we don't want to hold down the B button as we talk about fans of retrogaming with special guest, Mike, from Lost Without Translation!

Next week, we'll be continuing the feel-good beeps and boops to talk about Chiptunes!

Where can I learn more about Mike?

Mike is an avid collector, but _also_ part of a YouTube channel that reviews and runs retrospectives on games... without an English translation. If you want to check out their work, visit YouTube.com/lostwithouttranslation!

Episode outline

Fandom Facts

History and Origins:

Retrogaming is the playing or collecting of PC, console, and arcade video games; usually these games are for systems that are obsolete or have been discontinued. To make a distinction, it can broadly be broken into vintage retrogaming (i.e. on the original hardware), emulation retrogaming, and ported retrogaming.

Whether or not they go by the name _retrogamers_, _classic gamers_ or _old school gamers_, one thing is clear: there is not a ton of agreement on what constitutes the 'retro' in retrogaming (though the first usages date back to 1997 with the RetroGames video game store, and 1998 with the emulation website retrogames.com).

Some commonly used definition include:

• Consoles from the 70s, 80s, and 90s
• "Anything older than the consoles that came out when I was younger"
• "Anything that doesn't work with my TV"
• Anything before the 6th generation (e.g. Nintendo Gamecube, Sony Playstation 2)

Search Data:

Based on the search data, interest in Retrogaming has been on the upswing since around October 2012 after generally being on the decline (and in general, dwarfs interest in video game collecting). The most notable spike in interest is probably December 2017 (Christmas after the release of the SNES mini), though it isn't very dramatic.

The top 10 countries, by search volume, are: United Kingdom, Japan, Ireland, Canada, Australia, Sweden, Greece, United States, Netherlands, France.

Fan Demographics:

From a 2017 demographic survey on the RetroGaming subreddit. Of the over 600 respondents:

• _Age_: The largest group was people ages 25 to 34 (42%)
• _Years Playing_: The largest group was people who had played for 26 to 30 years (23%) but its worth noting that only 1.7% of respondents had been playing video games for five years or less
• _Top five retro platforms_: SNES (71%), NES (57%), Genesis (47%), N64 (40%), PlayStation (38%)
• Most prefer to _play on original hardware_ (59%)

Worth noting, the top five platforms more or less line up with Game Stop's survey of PowerUp Rewards members (all five platforms were in their top 10).

From earlier this year, Ipsos Connect's GameTrack consumer survey also has some nugget about European retro gamers:

• 41% of retro gamers believe that older games are better than current ones (23% disagreed)
• 66% like to revisit games from their youth
• 38% stated that classic games are never as good as they remember

Last Episode's Famous Last Words

G

Classic rock still means music from 70s... is retro gaming the same? Does retrogaming expand as time goes on?

T

What more is there to retrogaming fandom than collecting?

Z

Why do people bother making their own NES or SNES carts (as in, new games)? Why do they go that extra mile?

The Verdict

G is in. Still loves the SNES, loves retro-style ga