Yesterday I was browsing aimlessly through the “personal adds” section of the Facebook app, (You know, that place where people dump stuff that they want to get rid off without ever having to log out of Zuckerville) when I came across a guy selling off his NES – Retropie setup. I decided to got for it and went to pick it up today. While spending my morning run immersed in the audio book “Armada” (From the same author as “Ready player One”) I found myself in a very retro mood and topping it off with a slice of retropie seemed appropriate.
Little did I know that this guy also had a massive vintage game collection waiting for me in the basement. So after shooting some shop talk he dragged me down into memory lane. An old p1 pc, a crt monitor, a classic clackety clack keyboard and 2 massive boxes of original game titles. It was all there, in pretty much pristine condition, waiting for a new owner.
It took me a couple of hours of pondering wether or not I should take it of his hands, but in the end I decided to bite the bullet and go for it. The only question I”m still asking myself is: Why ? Why, in a time where deepfake porn movies and virtual reality headsets let you spend the evening with Emma Thompson, do we insist on delving back into the past ? Nostalgia for our childhood ? Escapism from the mortgage-dominated worries of adulthood or just plain getting old ? Is playing retro games the modern day equivalent of sitting in a rocking chair on the porch, screaming at kids to get of your lawn.
The answer to that question still eludes me, but I will investigate. Starting tomorrow I will be dragging a horizontally oriented beige-box with an AT powersupply up my geeky attic to try and relive those magnificent days of playing Wolfenstein, Duke Nukem, Quake3 and many other forms of digital entertainment that kept me from getting a hot girlfriend in the early 90″s.
So before I open up my investigation, I curiously inquire YOUR thoughts on the matter.. Were things better in the old days or not?