Welcome to the Golden Age of Neo-Retro Gaming
Welcome to the Golden Era of Neo-Retro Gaming
by The Common King
When I set out to write this blog post, it was only after I had randomly sat down with my 14 year old son and my wife to play Super Mario Brothers Delux on the Nintendo Switch.
We played all at the same time, as the game allows, and it was absolute mayhem. I, without any understanding, had chosen the "easy" playable character. A weird, little, purple thief of a thing, I ran around the stages largely untouched.
Meanwhile my son and wife were losing their minds as they found themselves burned, crushed, zapped, eaten, hammered, presumably bitten by turtles, mushrooms, and ghosts, as well as being blown to bits at every turn.
To say that this was a really fun time as a family would be an understatement. It truly was a special moment. We, having no idea where we had left off years earlier, stumbled our way into actually beating the game. B, T, dubbs - Bowser is massive in the end. I can only imagine a child's first experience with this boss fight as nothing less than mesmerizing.
Afterward, we all returned to our tablets, XBOXs, gaming rigs, smartphones, and televisions. While I felt productive in actually finishing a game, a rarity for me, for I am no completionist,
I, quite the opposite, am a gaming butterfly. I land on a game and, if the wind blows ever so slightly, I tend to pick up and flutter to another, only to rinse and repeat ad nauseam.
Why was this long outdated game still so fun? I guess as good a place to start as any is in the 80's. My family wasn't rich, so we never had Nintendo, and even in 92' the Genesis was "--out of the question," if you even mentioned it to my mother. She had seen something about Mortal Kombat on the news, she wasn't a woman mired in dogma, but the violent imagery in that game was a bridge too far. It was 1988, four years after Super Mario Brothers dropped on the O.G. NES. I still wouldn't even sniff a Nintendo system of my own for decades. However, my brother, ten years my elder, had somehow purchased his very own Commodore 64. And this is where everything started for me.
That year, a fledgling company called Mastertronic ported the game Rogue to the Commodore 64. Originally released in 1980, the game was freeware for Unix based computer systems.
While I never actually played the Commodore 64 myself, I must have spent an embarrassing number of hours watching my brother play Rogue.
I would sit perched just over his shoulder as a small "@" symbol traversed a black, white and slightly green maze. "H"s (hobgoblins) would chase the "@" in a strange mirrorlike dance, and "R"s (rats) and "S"s (snakes) were everywhere in the Dungeons of Doom. Every so often, you would be unlucky enough to stumble into the dreaded "D" (dragon) and would meet your untimely demise as you were greeted with a tombstone emblazoned with:
The finality of the death only to do it all over again, and again, and again -- we were hooked.
I mean, I didn't even truly play it, and I was hooked. I miss those days to some degree, the simplicity of gaming back then, and both the time and love that developers, almost all of them, would devote to a project.
Shortly after this first spark ignited my passion for gaming, 1992 rolled around and my brother and I stumbled upon a DOS based computer game called Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss developed by Origin Systems. This game was a magnificent leap in programming. It was the first RPG set in a first person, three dimensional world. Just like Rogue, I would perch over my brother's shoulder and watch the main character, Avatar, traverse a first of its kind, non linear story. Everything about this game was a giant leap forward. While the combat system had elements of the game Wizardry, the HUD included an interactive inventory and item management system. Additionally, unlike Rogue, saving the game was extremely important. I often would whisper to my brother just prior to pushing Avatar deeper into the catacombs, "Magic 'S' word..." in a sing song voice, reminding him of the pain in having to start a quest all over again if he forgot to save the game.
More than any music, movie, show, toy, or game, these two video games, which I never actually played, indelibly marked me for life.
Maybe that's why I am a gaming butterfly, I grew up never seeing a game in full, but instead in nonsequitors. The story never mattered to me, still doesn't. What matters to me is finding out what is just around the corner, whacking it over the head and taking its sweet, sweet loot.
So, here we are 32 years later, I have an obscene collection of consoles: NES, SNES, Genesis, GC, XBOX (all), PS1-4, and Gameboy (all), etc. etc. But something odd keeps drawing me in, I just can't get away from my Nintendo Switch and Steamdeck (OG). Weird, right?
For me, the Steamdeck has become my go-to of systems because it plays every one of these golden era games as well as the neo-retro masterpieces dropping daily on Steam.
And, if it doesn't, some super nerd will post a reddit thread about how to do it. The Switch has become a veritable cornucopia of nostalgia as well with its game pass type exclusive library. But, that isn't the best part of either of these. It is all the incredible neo-retro games that are dropping all the time! Games like, Valfaris, Undertale, Rogue Legacy 1 & 2, Blasphemous I & II, Darkest Dungeon 1 & 2, Vampire Survivor, Halls of Torment, Skald, There is No Light, Heroes of Hammerwatch, Noita, Iron Meat, Shovel Knight, Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, Axiom Verge, Hotline Miami Collection, Dead Cells, Owl Boy, Narita Boy, The Binding of Issac, Dave the Diver, Terraria, Minecraft, and Octopath Traveler 1 & 2 all pop into my head as being the benchmarks of quality neo-retro gaming today. I know there are thousands of others, believe me when I say I likely own them all, but for some reason these stand out to me. And, that is just it, they just keep coming!
Am I alone in this nostalgia driven game subtype? I can't be. Some of the games above are wildly popular even years after their release. Curse of the moon, alone, has several sequels and Shovel Knight is continuously churning out a new iteration. So, what is the point of all this?
Well, I am here to say that while we are currently living in what is known to the gaming community as "The Modern Era," we are, in fact, living in "The Golden Age of Neo-Retro Gaming."
It is completely wild to me that Dave the Diver can top Steam charts in the same year as the newest derivative skin is slid down over Call of Duty - are we still wall running? Don't get me wrong, I rock a solid +3 KD on Rebirth but, to me, there is nothing more fantastic than unpacking something as simple and special as The Binding of Issac. An infinite loop of shooting tears at weird childhood nightmares, picking up bonuses and abilities, beating the boss, and rinse-and-repeat. It hearkens back to the Rogue days, to pushing sweet, sweet Avatar around just one more corner. Just one more corridor, one more door lock picked, "Magic 'S' word..."
When looking at the publicly available data points, Minecraft, the OG of neo-retro gaming has the most sales of any game ever - 300,000,000.
The next game isn't even close - GTA V with 205,000,000 in sales. Terraria (60,700,000) sold more units than Overwatch, Humans Fall Flat, and The Witcher: Wild Hunt (all at 50,000,000). Stardew Valley (35,000,000) sold more than The Legend of Zelda: Breadth of the Wild (33,990,000). According to Gamespot, Minecraft is the 17th most popular game of 2024; you read that right -- 2024. According to Steam data, Factorio, a neo-retro sandbox game that hearkens back to games like Sim City, is listed as 10th most popular as of the week of 11/5/24 by revenue. These little neo-retro gems; they come at you like spider-monkeys!
Even Loop Hero (1,300,000 sales on steam) eclipsed Star Wars: Outlaws (1,000,000 in sales) as of last September 2024 according to Insider Gaming.
The point, the point, yeah, the point. Welp, if you read this far, you are a gentle-person and scholar, and I thank you.
The point here is this: neo-retro gaming is not only here, we are living in its golden era.
So buckle up, and like good little baby birds, wait to be fed the next incredible gem some indi-developer cooks up. What an amazing era to live through in gaming, and I am here for it all!
The Common King --