In praise of the big pixel: Gaming is having a retro moment

A boy plays the ‘Pacman’ retro game at the Gamescom gaming fair, the largest in Europe. (AFP)

• For some old school gamers, it’s a welcome blast from the past

COLOGNE: Clunky games consoles with blobby pixels might not be the latest thing — but they’re still cool even if you’re no longer at school.
Video games producers plying their wares at Gamescom this week in Cologne may primarily be out to push the frontiers of high-tech and virtual reality as they eye a bigger slice of a booming market.
But their commercial antennae are sufficently honed to realize numerous hands on the joystick belong to gamers for whom retro hasn’t so much come back as never gone away.
That much was evident from the interest shown toward those who brought along vintage hardware which the uninitiated might have thought had long been left to gather dust in the attic.
So-called “retrogaming” — digging out favorite classic games of yesteryear to be played on equally aging hardware — is right on trend at Gamescom, Europe’s gaming fair.
That much is clear from seeing a sea of enraptured faces as visitors drool over machines from right back in the early days — including the kind of machines once a staple in cafes and arcades.
For some old school gamers, it’s a welcome blast from the past.
For others the past is their present, be it indulging original vintage passions on old machines, ‘emulating’ a game simulated on a new machine or ‘porting’ to enjoy old content on new hardware.
“It reminds me of my childhood and today I realize that the games in those days could also be complex,” said Jackye Mueller, a 21-year-old student trying to snaffle virtual bananas while playing old favorite Donkey Kong on a Super Nintendo.
Nearby, a father is waxing lyrical on the attractions of another classic game, “Pong,” to his young son.
The arcade game, launched in 1972, involves each player manipulating a virtual cursor-like tennis ‘racquet’ to ping the ball back across a screen of simple 2D graphics.
“Retro is everywhere — in films, music, cars, clothes. So why not games?” asks Christian Gleinser, creator of a cohort of new games which work on computers ‘boasting’ 1980s graphics.
“People like to have fun among friends and appreciate the ease of use, the short charging times and even the old pixels,” he said.
What is striking is how the rising retro trend has lifted the average gamer age as veterans who got the bug in the 1980s and 1990s pass on their memories and old-time savvy to youngsters, often their own, even as the latter more often than not are coming to the genre via shiny and new hardware.