Retro Home
by ted2112, HSM team writer
Nostalgia has a special place in our hearts. Anything we have loved in the past that has returned to us in the present is a wonderfully experience. This is going on all around us. The music industry is patching up and rolling out nostalgia bands, playing their hits from way back. Even the snack food industry is getting on board, reintroducing old discontinued products. Just the other day I bought a bag of sour cream and onion Doritos. I loved them as a kid, and couldn’t help myself when I saw them in the store.
Home is no different. The retro thing has quietly been going on with costumes for a while now. Street Fighter and Galaxy Express stuff are my favorite examples. Yes, I bought the Captain Harlock outfit. There is something about these things that make us feel good. We loved them in the past and having them available to us in the now takes us back in time, and reconnects us to these warm and happy feelings. Even EU Home has reintroduced the Home Square — their equivalent to our Central Plaza. Wow — nostalgia for early Home already!
However, the grandest nostalgia gesture so far in Home has to be Atari. Have you seen the Action District lately? Home has transformed the space into a three-dimensional retro arcade. Tanks from Battlezone play sentinel in the streets, Asteroids and Pong are in motion above our heads, and the entire skyline tips its hats to the heyday of the Atari 2600. Upon entering the space you get the sense that you have walked into an alternate reality — what we would see if Atari took over the world. Thank God it was just an 8-bit system!
I loved the Atari-2600. It was the platform that opened my life to the world of video games. Sure, games have come a very long way since then, but ultimately the core of the gaming experience hasn’t changed much since the Atari days. Take Adventure — you wield a sword, fight dragons, and navigate through a maze-like environment. Today we call these games RPG’s — things like Mercia, World of Warcraft and Dungeon Siege. Pole Position has become Grand Turismo, Need for Speed and Sodium 2. Combat has become Battlefield 3, Birds of Steel and Dust 514.
Yes, you were just a tiny square on a screen versus the highly detailed designs of today, but your imagination filled in the rest. Back then, it was considered high tech, although now we sneer at such low-rez entertainment. Just like someday gamers will look back at our high tech 3.2 GHz processor system and think it primitive. Like Yoda said, “Always in motion the future is.”
These classic games are like comfort food for gamers, and now they are available for purchase in Home — and, equally as exciting, the first Home tie-in with the Sony Vita. Atari has Asteroids, Centipede, Lunar Lander and Adventure. Konami also threw its hat into the ring with Frogger and Time Pilot. It will be just like going to your local bowling alley… in 1982!
I find it fascinating that these games have really never gone away. They hold a power that is beyond the sum of their parts. Games over the years have come and gone, but this first generation of classic video games have somehow found a soft spot within our hearts. The Atari 2600 even taught us the harsh lesson of overdoing things with E.T. and the parade of bad games that the platform eventually turned into. This lesson was not learned by Nintendo with the Wii console and the flood of terrible games that drove away customers, and turned its motion sensor hardware into a side note gimmick.
What makes games special is the emotional attachment we feel for them. I’ve played the Resident Evil series so many times I feel like an unofficial resident of Raccoon City. Want directions to a burger joint in Silent Hill? Go to Happy Burger on the corner of Neely and Saunders Street. Need a drink in the Final Fantasy city of Midgar? I suggest the 7th Heaven bar run by Tifa Lockhart. You see, it’s all in the emotional attachment. Once you relate to a game, it doesn’t matter about the graphics or how old the platform is. If you love a game, you will always love a game. This is why I am so happy that a game as massive and technically advanced as Home is tipping its hat to the classics.
The Atari 2600 classic games are available in the Games store, and are offered in the classic stand-up arcade style cabinet or the table edition. They also come with a free T-shirt and costume.
February 28th, 2013 by ted2112 | 6 comments
ted2112 is a writer and a Bass player that has been both inspired and takes to heart Kurt Vonnegut words...."we are here on planet Earth to fart around, and don't let anyone tell you different."
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Yeah, I *might’ve* squealed like a girl when I saw these. Then ran off and bought EVERYTHING!!! lol. It’s been one of my dreams to have a retro arcade in some form or fashion and Home has *nearly* given it. All that remains is an appropriate place to make the arcade. I’ve used my neon lit Sodium Lounge for the time being, which is kinda cool, but the age of the arcades being as they are I think a proper arcade hall would be best. I did think of getting Game Mechanic’s space but it was just a tad too disheveled.
My first proper gaming moments acctually came from school! They had a BBC Acorn Micro (lol at the “micro” bit) and after doing a bit of work, they allowed us to play some games -- always educational ones though. Not long after that I was given access to an Amstrad CPC -- 464, then a Commodore 64, a Sinclair Spectrum and finally an Atari 2600 -- WITH AN ACTUAL JOYSTICK!!! It was like having an arcade in your HOUSE! And even though Britain’s bedroom coders fought off the consoles with cheap, funny and original games for the “computers” we had, it became obvious that a world of kids making and selling games wouldn’t last forever against newly forming companies like Atari and Nintendo. And Imma shut up now coz I could wind-bag about this era forever…
Nice read Ted, cheers.
Saw a friends arcade he did in his Pub that looked really nice Krazy. It worked well with the back room there and he did it in the whole front as well.
Yeah Burbie, I already stuck my Namco arcades in there a while back, then swapped them around as more (playable to friends) arcade cabinets became available in Home. The pub space feels fine with a few in there but nothing meets the mind-blow of walking into a full-on arcade hall with machines for walls lol!
I had already turned my free garage space into a sort of arcade a long time ago with all the stuff I already have. I loved arcades growing up, but the ones I had only had pool tables and a few pinball games. Later I would occasionally frequent ones with Pac Man and Asteroid consoles, and I got to use those quite a bit in the bars I worked in as well.
I met a guy when I was working in the early 70’s who had a home computer he had pieced together. He showed me the “computer game” he had been cobbling together on it. I was fascinated by this new idea, having never seen a computer in my life or in someones home. I hope his dream of being a game creator came to pass.
Nostalgia is a fun thing. Nice read Ted.
Great article. I love nostalgia. I loved my Atari 2600 and playing Adventure and Space Invaders. I loved arcades too and was addicted to Pacman and then Ms. Pacman. When those games came on the Atari 2600, I was thrilled. I think I am going to purchase a few of these games on Home. Sometimes hearing the sounds and music from them brings you back to childhood! I am so glad Home is doing all this and I really need to check out the Action District! Speaking of nostalgia, I sure miss Twinkies and Drakes Cakes. Like you found your favorite Doritos, I sure hope to find those cakes again one day on my supermarket shelf! Again, great article!
There is a HUGE retro gaming culture all of it’s own and the gaming industry is just waking up to realise the demand is ‘stil’l there and that nostalgia (as with anything, food, multi-media) is big business. I can’t think of anybody I haven’t met, who hasn’t downloaded a gaming emulator of some sort (A gaming ‘grey’ area I have to admit) to relive his / her childhood every once in a while.
What gamers of today won’t know, is just how BIG Atari was, Atari was the early 80’s ‘Nintendo’ of it’s day. What followed from TV advertisements are T-shirts, Mugs, Keyrings and all manner of merchandise you probably will still SEE today,
(Some most notably Pac-Man & Space Invaders)
Home first came out with Namco’s earlier games (Galaga, Pacman ) to play in your Private space. Your friends had to also own the game in order to play it. (Which didn’t feel right if you invited them over and they come back to you disappointed in that they couldn’t play simply because they didn’t have a download copy of the game.)
These were the games that I wanted to see in Home’s first recreational space (The Bowling Alley) I really didn’t like the selection of arcade games they had back then, but if Sony placed those Atari or Namco Arcade games in the Bowling Alley now, it would be one of THE places for people to go if they wanted to play a good retro classic that was easy to pick up, yet harder to master.