4 ms·

There is something so charming about the N64/PS1 era. They were so unique in their own right and you could tell at a passing glance which system was displaying

There is something so charming about the N64/PS1 era. They were so unique in their own right and you could tell at a passing glance which system was displaying on the screen even if you didn't know what game it was. Two radically different systems at the dawning of 3D console games. I bought a MiSTer for me and my son and we played the heck out of Mario Kart 64 and Mario Golf. I think he picked up my "gaming is dead now" outlook since he doesn't really have any interest in new systems or games anymore

kevinminehart 3mo ago
I love that. My wife and I are hopefully having kids soon and that's one thing I really want to encourage. Not to say that modern games aren't any good, but there's an increasing lack of respect for the player's time and wallet. The goal is shifting to maximizing value because they're getting more expensive to produce, but increasing the game price itself is a cardinal sin. Not to mention that live service games just out-earn non-service ones. I hope it works out. I can see it working in the reverse: I play n64/ps1/ps2/gamecube games with my kid, they go to school and their friends are playing fortnight or valorant, and then you become the bad guy for trying to be an obstacle in that.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  Let your kid go over to their friend's house to play Fortnite or Valorant. And let your kid's friend come over to yours to play Mario Kart. I think as adults we get locked into a few things. I remember as a kid I would play anything I had access to and liked. Now it's more of one or two games at a time.
- operation_moose 3mo ago
  One thing that's absolutely shocking is how "hard" it is to actually play games these days. Sit down with anything modern and between software updates, EULAs, load times, network congestion, etc. it can easily be 15-20 minutes before you actually do something; especially if you're an infrequent player. Pop in a game on N64/Gamecube and you're controlling the character within 10 seconds every time. The modern upgrades for those generations really make them great - the 8BitDo kit to make an N64 controller wireless, N64 Summercarts, replacing the optical drive in Gamecubes with a memory card reader...
  - coldpie 3mo ago
    That's true for the big-advertising-budget AAA slop games. Go do a search for "best indie games 2025" and you'll find more amazing games made just last year than you could spend several whole years playing.
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    of course with the GameCube your 10 seconds is significantly Ur into with the big long dyobololodololo dobololodelolodelolode PLOP
    - inigyou 3mo ago
      significantly cut into*
- auto 3mo ago
  As a lifer of gaming (with a wife with similar tastes), prior to having kids my friends and I would have the discussions about "raising our kids right on the old games". I can't claim to be some classic purist, my last 25 years of gaming has been 90%+ Halo, with other competitive shooters and hardcore racing sims, but we still own almost all of our old systems. My oldest is 7, and my youngest almost 5, and they came into gaming in a round-about way. My sister was visiting when the oldest was 3 or 4, and asked to play "an old Sonic 3D game". So, I pulled the Dreamcast out of storage, hooked everything up, and she played for all of 15 minutes before getting bored. However, my daughter was enamored. Immediately asked to play and even knowing how janky old Sonic was, I obliged. Honestly, the rest is history. I'm not exaggerating when I say that our living room TV currently has a Dreamcast, a Gamecube, an Xbox One, PS3, PS4, and Switch hooked up to it. Both girls are huge Sonic fans, and play everything from rereleases of the Genesis games, to every brand new Sonic game that comes out, along with a whole mix of other age appropriate games (3D Marios, Animal Crossing, Smash Bros, and Mario Kart all being staples in our household). My point in all of this is that if you expose them to the older stuff at a young age and it clicks, they'll explore the gaming landscape in their own way. I've also got an 11 year old brother that plays Fortnite with his friends every day, but also is trying to collect every single Lego game that's come out since they started the Lego Star Wars, Harry Potter, etc. series of games. Kids will like what they're going to like, but having parents that are enthusiastic about the breadth of what the medium has to offer will encourage them to dig being the modern offerings.
- kjs3 3mo ago
  I dug out the Wii I bought for my daughter for my 6yo grandson. He thinks it's great...it's about the only thing that he'll put down Roblox for.
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    I heard that Roblox is itself a slop platform to the point where someone AI copies every single popular game onto Roblox full of micro transactions, and the Devs of these games are saying they'd rather you pirate the game than play the crappy Roblox knock-off of it.
    - kjs3 3mo ago
      Wouldn't surprise me. It's an endless stream of ruthlessly annoying, seizure inducing 'games' seemingly trying to one-up each other as to how over the top silly their visuals and audio track can be while having virtually the same gameplay for Every Single Game. Add to that, it's filled with every dark pattern imaginable to try and trick kids in to paying for something, anything. Seems like it was from the start designed to be the perfect slop utopia.
      - inigyou 3mo ago
        Btw they're getting sued for actual child labor violations as it turns out all the dark patterns they used to entice children to make games for them amounted to actual employment, paid in company scrip which is obviously illegal and super illegal when the employee is a child.
        kjs3 3mo ago
        The only thing surprising about that is someone might be held accountable. Maybe good news?
- rightbyte 3mo ago
  Don't forget NES, SNES and Genesis. 2d games are way easier for small kids like 3-4yo. I personally would recommend Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck in World of Illusions as you do Coop and can save the kid a lot. I was surprised that children that didn't grow up with the graphic revolution, does not seem to care about graphics. They don't seem to care they are playing 40-30 year old games.
wsc981 3mo ago
I'm a bit of an old-timer now (almost 45), but I enjoy a lot of the classics on GOG. And at a price that can't be beat. Totally no interest in playing modern games.
- ifjeicjwidj 3mo ago
  “Old timer” “44 years old” Now come on. The greybeard act was never believable nor interesting.
3form 3mo ago
>I think he picked up my "gaming is dead now" outlook since he doesn't really have any interest in new systems or games anymore This is interesting, as I was about to say that gaming has never been more alive than it is now - but it's true that at least the developments in hardware are not nearly as exciting as they used to be in the past. Maybe that's what he's feeling?
- newswasboring 3mo ago
  The hardware thing is a yes and no type of deal. Yes next gen hardware is largely boring but retro gaming hardware is amazing right now. I recently acquired a r36s which is an amazing system and apparently can also run things like Undertale or Stardew valley (yet to try out this part). I'm having a blast playing the Pokemon games.
  - 3form 3mo ago
    It's true that open handhelds are where it's at right now. Steam Deck is also just simply a wonderful thing. Yet I know it's just somehow not the same as it's been before; architecturally, there's less innovation, just more of doing the "obvious right thing" here, and the big players, especially PS and Xbox are just sad attempts at dumbing down PCs to keep their walled gardens. So, nice things are still there, it's sadly just not as exciting.
pizza234 3mo ago
> "gaming is dead now" One gets the impression that gaming is dead when one's only contact with modern gaming consists of reading headlines about a handful of AAA games. In reality, the gaming landscape has never been better, as game production has expanded in several directions: - The barrier to entry into game development has been lowered; People who are talented in design but not programming now have the opportunity to create games - AAA budgets have increased; those who enjoy large-scale productions will find increasingly large games - There is still a market for old-school games, so plenty of (especially smaller) companies produce retromodern games Heck, they even still produce commercial Commodore 64 games o_O Of course, there is less room for radical innovation, but people do not play only radically innovative games. And regardless, innovation still exists today, especially in smaller-scale productions.
- Forgeties79 3mo ago
  Hell with emulation the sky is the limit now too. I’d be bummed if my steam account exploded today but I’ve got countless other options available to me. Whenever I hear people act all snobby and claim there’s nothing to play today i tell them stop playing modern games and go play all the old games that are allegedly so much better and perfect. How they can’t find anything among modern Indies in particular is beyond me, but hey, emulation’s right there waiting for them. Hell I have RetroArch on my iPhone. I was playing a PSP game all last week on mine.
- officeplant 3mo ago
  it should instead say "AAA gaming is dead now" All we see out of mainstream AAA gaming is abused devs, private equity scalping, and mindless remaster regurgitation. Basically going through the same problems as Hollywood is with major films. You get a massive banger of a production every few years, and the rest is just endless money burning and developer harm. Meanwhile the good indie devs are a dice roll on if they are gonna get recognized by the world at large and find success, just like small budget films. My game library gets older by the day and I prefer it that way, but love it when an indie game bubbles to the surface and gets beloved by enough fans to break into the news cycle. Itch.io is the only place I look for games anymore unless something I need for the collection hits GoG finally.
ryan_n 3mo ago
I grew up playing diablo II and super smash bros (super nintendo before that!). While I don't have as much time for it these days, gaming couldn't be farther from dead, IMO. There are incredible games and worlds being created both from AAA and indie studios alike.
- tayo42 3mo ago
  It's interesting people have this perspective, there are some Numbers that support it. But there endless layoffs, studios closing and it's impossible to get a game dev related job at the moment.
bluedino 3mo ago
> you could tell at a passing glance which system was displaying on the screen even if you didn't know what game it was I always felt the same about the look of PS2 games
StilesCrisis 3mo ago
I demand Sega Saturn representation in this list!

kevinminehart 3mo ago

I love that. My wife and I are hopefully having kids soon and that's one thing I really want to encourage. Not to say that modern games aren't any good, but there's an increasing lack of respect for the player's time and wallet. The goal is shifting to maximizing value because they're getting more expensive to produce, but increasing the game price itself is a cardinal sin. Not to mention that live service games just out-earn non-service ones. I hope it works out. I can see it working in the reverse: I play n64/ps1/ps2/gamecube games with my kid, they go to school and their friends are playing fortnight or valorant, and then you become the bad guy for trying to be an obstacle in that.

inigyou 3mo ago
Let your kid go over to their friend's house to play Fortnite or Valorant. And let your kid's friend come over to yours to play Mario Kart. I think as adults we get locked into a few things. I remember as a kid I would play anything I had access to and liked. Now it's more of one or two games at a time.
operation_moose 3mo ago
One thing that's absolutely shocking is how "hard" it is to actually play games these days. Sit down with anything modern and between software updates, EULAs, load times, network congestion, etc. it can easily be 15-20 minutes before you actually do something; especially if you're an infrequent player. Pop in a game on N64/Gamecube and you're controlling the character within 10 seconds every time. The modern upgrades for those generations really make them great - the 8BitDo kit to make an N64 controller wireless, N64 Summercarts, replacing the optical drive in Gamecubes with a memory card reader...
- coldpie 3mo ago
  That's true for the big-advertising-budget AAA slop games. Go do a search for "best indie games 2025" and you'll find more amazing games made just last year than you could spend several whole years playing.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  of course with the GameCube your 10 seconds is significantly Ur into with the big long dyobololodololo dobololodelolodelolode PLOP
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    significantly cut into*
auto 3mo ago
As a lifer of gaming (with a wife with similar tastes), prior to having kids my friends and I would have the discussions about "raising our kids right on the old games". I can't claim to be some classic purist, my last 25 years of gaming has been 90%+ Halo, with other competitive shooters and hardcore racing sims, but we still own almost all of our old systems. My oldest is 7, and my youngest almost 5, and they came into gaming in a round-about way. My sister was visiting when the oldest was 3 or 4, and asked to play "an old Sonic 3D game". So, I pulled the Dreamcast out of storage, hooked everything up, and she played for all of 15 minutes before getting bored. However, my daughter was enamored. Immediately asked to play and even knowing how janky old Sonic was, I obliged. Honestly, the rest is history. I'm not exaggerating when I say that our living room TV currently has a Dreamcast, a Gamecube, an Xbox One, PS3, PS4, and Switch hooked up to it. Both girls are huge Sonic fans, and play everything from rereleases of the Genesis games, to every brand new Sonic game that comes out, along with a whole mix of other age appropriate games (3D Marios, Animal Crossing, Smash Bros, and Mario Kart all being staples in our household). My point in all of this is that if you expose them to the older stuff at a young age and it clicks, they'll explore the gaming landscape in their own way. I've also got an 11 year old brother that plays Fortnite with his friends every day, but also is trying to collect every single Lego game that's come out since they started the Lego Star Wars, Harry Potter, etc. series of games. Kids will like what they're going to like, but having parents that are enthusiastic about the breadth of what the medium has to offer will encourage them to dig being the modern offerings.
kjs3 3mo ago
I dug out the Wii I bought for my daughter for my 6yo grandson. He thinks it's great...it's about the only thing that he'll put down Roblox for.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  I heard that Roblox is itself a slop platform to the point where someone AI copies every single popular game onto Roblox full of micro transactions, and the Devs of these games are saying they'd rather you pirate the game than play the crappy Roblox knock-off of it.
  - kjs3 3mo ago
    Wouldn't surprise me. It's an endless stream of ruthlessly annoying, seizure inducing 'games' seemingly trying to one-up each other as to how over the top silly their visuals and audio track can be while having virtually the same gameplay for Every Single Game. Add to that, it's filled with every dark pattern imaginable to try and trick kids in to paying for something, anything. Seems like it was from the start designed to be the perfect slop utopia.
    - inigyou 3mo ago
      Btw they're getting sued for actual child labor violations as it turns out all the dark patterns they used to entice children to make games for them amounted to actual employment, paid in company scrip which is obviously illegal and super illegal when the employee is a child.
      - kjs3 3mo ago
        The only thing surprising about that is someone might be held accountable. Maybe good news?
rightbyte 3mo ago
Don't forget NES, SNES and Genesis. 2d games are way easier for small kids like 3-4yo. I personally would recommend Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck in World of Illusions as you do Coop and can save the kid a lot. I was surprised that children that didn't grow up with the graphic revolution, does not seem to care about graphics. They don't seem to care they are playing 40-30 year old games.

wsc981 3mo ago

I'm a bit of an old-timer now (almost 45), but I enjoy a lot of the classics on GOG. And at a price that can't be beat. Totally no interest in playing modern games.

ifjeicjwidj 3mo ago
“Old timer” “44 years old” Now come on. The greybeard act was never believable nor interesting.

3form 3mo ago

>I think he picked up my "gaming is dead now" outlook since he doesn't really have any interest in new systems or games anymore This is interesting, as I was about to say that gaming has never been more alive than it is now - but it's true that at least the developments in hardware are not nearly as exciting as they used to be in the past. Maybe that's what he's feeling?

newswasboring 3mo ago
The hardware thing is a yes and no type of deal. Yes next gen hardware is largely boring but retro gaming hardware is amazing right now. I recently acquired a r36s which is an amazing system and apparently can also run things like Undertale or Stardew valley (yet to try out this part). I'm having a blast playing the Pokemon games.
- 3form 3mo ago
  It's true that open handhelds are where it's at right now. Steam Deck is also just simply a wonderful thing. Yet I know it's just somehow not the same as it's been before; architecturally, there's less innovation, just more of doing the "obvious right thing" here, and the big players, especially PS and Xbox are just sad attempts at dumbing down PCs to keep their walled gardens. So, nice things are still there, it's sadly just not as exciting.

pizza234 3mo ago

> "gaming is dead now" One gets the impression that gaming is dead when one's only contact with modern gaming consists of reading headlines about a handful of AAA games. In reality, the gaming landscape has never been better, as game production has expanded in several directions: - The barrier to entry into game development has been lowered; People who are talented in design but not programming now have the opportunity to create games - AAA budgets have increased; those who enjoy large-scale productions will find increasingly large games - There is still a market for old-school games, so plenty of (especially smaller) companies produce retromodern games Heck, they even still produce commercial Commodore 64 games o_O Of course, there is less room for radical innovation, but people do not play only radically innovative games. And regardless, innovation still exists today, especially in smaller-scale productions.

Forgeties79 3mo ago
Hell with emulation the sky is the limit now too. I’d be bummed if my steam account exploded today but I’ve got countless other options available to me. Whenever I hear people act all snobby and claim there’s nothing to play today i tell them stop playing modern games and go play all the old games that are allegedly so much better and perfect. How they can’t find anything among modern Indies in particular is beyond me, but hey, emulation’s right there waiting for them. Hell I have RetroArch on my iPhone. I was playing a PSP game all last week on mine.
officeplant 3mo ago
it should instead say "AAA gaming is dead now" All we see out of mainstream AAA gaming is abused devs, private equity scalping, and mindless remaster regurgitation. Basically going through the same problems as Hollywood is with major films. You get a massive banger of a production every few years, and the rest is just endless money burning and developer harm. Meanwhile the good indie devs are a dice roll on if they are gonna get recognized by the world at large and find success, just like small budget films. My game library gets older by the day and I prefer it that way, but love it when an indie game bubbles to the surface and gets beloved by enough fans to break into the news cycle. Itch.io is the only place I look for games anymore unless something I need for the collection hits GoG finally.

ryan_n 3mo ago

I grew up playing diablo II and super smash bros (super nintendo before that!). While I don't have as much time for it these days, gaming couldn't be farther from dead, IMO. There are incredible games and worlds being created both from AAA and indie studios alike.

tayo42 3mo ago
It's interesting people have this perspective, there are some Numbers that support it. But there endless layoffs, studios closing and it's impossible to get a game dev related job at the moment.

bluedino 3mo ago

> you could tell at a passing glance which system was displaying on the screen even if you didn't know what game it was I always felt the same about the look of PS2 games

StilesCrisis 3mo ago

I demand Sega Saturn representation in this list!