Is it possible to be too old for nostalgia towards Genesis games?

I've done a lot of auction browsing lately and it's been borne in on me how little I want to be reacquainted with many of my old Genesis cartridges. Dragon Warrior or Mario 3 beside a box and manual still give a tug, but in Genesis carts all I see are cold prospects of gaming. I'm 33, so have known--and not always loved--the NES as long as two or three marriages nowadays, whilst the majority of members here seem to be 25. Nostalgia isn't normally associated with youth, but for most of you it will have been either a first console or a total retro adventure. I still prefer the Gen's library to the NES's, or, for competition's sake, the PS1's, but the sentiment's not the same. So I ask whether it's possible to be too old to feel nostalgia towards the Genesis.

Maybe you're not a Genesis fan?

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Originally Posted by Orchid87

Maybe you're not a Genesis fan?

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Wrong. I was going to dilate on some of the other factors, but it'd be more interesting to hear guesses and contributions from others. As I said, "cold prospects of gaming": I like to play the games, only that's where it ends.

As for me, I feel nostalgia towards a certain long gaming period: 1990-2004. I know it may seem strange, but it is my personal golden age.
From the awesome later NES games, to the Genesis and SNES masterpieces with some fighting games addiction, to the DOS PC stuff like Dune 2, Doom, and Duke 3D, to the Half-Life, Resident Evil 1/2 and other great titles on PC and PS1 (yeah, I wasn't in the Saturn boat, sorry folks), to my Counter-Strike addiction, to the Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 release (I was a PC gamer during the PS2/GC/Xbox1 period). And then, in 2005, the current console generation started with it's Hollywood-like games. I have almost no interest in the modern games (with some exceptions for Valve stuff).

I would ask the question: "Is it possible to be too young for nostalgia towards Genesis games". I don't know how anyone 10 years old can have nostalgia for a Genesis seeing how they didn't exist when the system was around, and by the time they were born SEGA was already done with console games.

There are people in their late 40s, 50s, and 60s that are fond of the Odyssey, Atari 2600, and NES. So I don't see how anyone could perceive something strange about 30 somethings having nostalgia for the Genesis or SNES games.

I think it's the opposite, actually (like said above). The older you get, the more nostalgic you will become about the subject matter. I giggle inside whenever I see a comment by a 16 year old reminiscing about games he played when he was young. But I suppose it's part of the ackwardness of growing up. So that's what I do, I just let them grow up.

P.S.> I sure hope my video game passion is intact when I'm 80. Otherwise, why the heck am I doing this for? ;)

One of my friends is in his early 30s now and I think he's more delighted with my NES and Genesis collecting habits than I am heh.

It depends on many things. The Genesis was the first system to break many kids out of the Nintendo orbit. I remember buying my Genesis thinking it would never do as well as a Nintendo system but it did quite the opposite. For that reason alone I feel very sentimental about it. While Sega was by no means a little company to me the Genesis was always like a big customers way of saying FUCK YOU to overly greedy companies, mainly Nintendo. This is also the reason why hardcore SNES sheep annoy me.

I will say I found the 16-bit era to be a bit long winded. Nintendo wouldn't stop beating the SNES drum and everyone was shitting their pants over DKC which was crap. The endless stream for SFII clones made it much worse for me. It was like games were devolving. 3d seemed like such a breath of fresh air at the time. However that era never felt the same to me. That console war just wasn't interesting to watch. Everyone knew Sega was going down no matter how hard they tried. All Nintendo had to do was rest on their laurels, which did cost them dearly, and the kiddies would buy whatever they shoved down their throats.

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Originally Posted by StarMist

I've done a lot of auction browsing lately and it's been borne in on me how little I want to be reacquainted with many of my old Genesis cartridges. Dragon Warrior or Mario 3 beside a box and manual still give a tug, but in Genesis carts all I see are cold prospects of gaming. I'm 33, so have known--and not always loved--the NES as long as two or three marriages nowadays, whilst the majority of members here seem to be 25. Nostalgia isn't normally associated with you, but for most of you it will have been either a first console or a total retro adventure. I still prefer the Gen's library to the NES's, or, for competition's sake, the PS1's, but the sentiment's not the same. So I ask whether it's possible to be too old to feel nostalgia towards the Genesis.

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I think I get what you're saying. I'm just two years younger than you and DO feel some nostalgia for the Genesis, but much MUCH less for 32-bit era stuff. The golden age for me was the early-80s to the mid-90s (2600 and contemporaries to TG-16/Genesis/SNES).

My earliest gaming memories are of the TI-94/a and the 2600, followed by the C64, NES and SMS. Then the Genesis came into the picture and I can totally remember when one of my friends actually got one. We were addicted to Altered Beast and Moonwalker. One friend had a Turbo as well, but it was just Keith Courage and Bomberman that I remember. If it wasn't for Sonic, NHL Hockey and Evander Holyfield Boxing, I'm pretty sure everyone would've ditched their Genesis for an SNES. By the time the Street Fighter II/Mortal Kombat craze was cooling off, I was too much into chasing tail to care as much about games anymore. I still had a Saturn and PS1 then... but didn't care nearly as much as I did (despite the awesomeness of Dragon Force!).

Having a middle aged man talk about genesis games is just awkward.

I don't feel nostalgia for anything anymore. I either still like it or I don't.

I was already starting to feel nostalgic towards the NES, Genesis and SNES back in 2001, when I was 14. Sheesh. I pretty much ignored my PS1, N64 and Dreamcast (sold the former two), and picked up a Genny and NES, going to town collecting on the aforementioned 3 systems. And ever since I discovered emulation in 2002, I've been in an 8-16 Bit time warp ever since.

Nostalgia... Never had an Atari 2600 growing up and I can still enjoy games for it.

I feel zero nostalgia to the Genesis, because I never had one as a kid. Some of you might banish me for saying this... But I'm an ex-SNES refugee (well, technically I didn't have a SNES when it was new either, but work with me). Yes, at some point in my early years I was playing classics like Mario World, All-Stars, Donkey Kong Country 2 and Tetris Attack.

However, I'm not completely green to the world of Genesis. I had some of the Sega PC titles. Luckily, I had good ones. Sonic & Knuckles Collection, Garfield, Sega Smash Pack Vol. 2 (Sonic 2, Comix Zone, Shining Force, Vectorman 2, Super Hang-On etc) and Sonic CD.

In more modern times though, I've had a real Genesis for at least a few years. I've got a HDG M1 Genesis, a VA0 M2, a M2 Sega CD and two 32Xes and a very modest collection of stuff all around. Probably my most impressive is 19 32X carts with boxes and manuals, which isn't that impressive when you think about it. Yes, I'm a very uninteresting person, that's why I hide behind a veil of anonymity.

Who needs nostalgia? Genesis is awesome, period. It's not necessary to reminisce about old times to appreciate it. There are quite a few gems that I didn't discover until way after the fact (and thus have no nostalgia for), and I don't like them any less for it.

I am in my mid thirties now and had a MD as a teenager, my first console was a 2600. I still love it now every bit as much as I did then.

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Originally Posted by Orchid87

As for me, I feel nostalgia towards a certain long gaming period: 1990-2004. I know it may seem strange, but it is my personal golden age.
From the awesome later NES games, to the Genesis and SNES masterpieces with some fighting games addiction, to the DOS PC stuff like Dune 2, Doom, and Duke 3D, to the Half-Life, Resident Evil 1/2 and other great titles on PC and PS1 (yeah, I wasn't in the Saturn boat, sorry folks), to my Counter-Strike addiction, to the Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 release (I was a PC gamer during the PS2/GC/Xbox1 period). And then, in 2005, the current console generation started with it's Hollywood-like games. I have almost no interest in the modern games (with some exceptions for Valve stuff).

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I think I'll have to agree with that period. It's not just that I grew up then, but the overall games made in that period are just awesome, and it's the peak output years for some of my favorite genres. (including graphic adventure games and space/flight combat games)

It's not just nostalgia in general as there's tons of games that I missed out on back then (including the entire Wing Commander Series and FreeSpace -both of which I still haven't gotten around to yet, and I still need to get Freespace and FSII -I have all the WC games), many, many games that I like or know I will like once I get around to playing them. (there's also most of the PS1's library I almost totally missed -almost everyone I knew had an N64 that generation, pretty much everything on Sega's consoles that didn't go muliplatform -and a lot of those that did go to PC too, including Panzer Dragoon)

Actually, that timeline sort of defines the best years in PC gaming in general. (1990 saw the real start of PC gaming pushing towards mainstream -and also the time where gaming PCs were actually pulling ahead of the likes of the Amiga, then you had the build up through the early 90s and the explosion of PC gaming into the mainstream in the mid/late 90s, then tapering off in the early 2000s to again fall well behind console gaming popularity)


I certainly like a lot of stuff that's older or newer than that, but nearly all of my favorite console and computer games came from those years.

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Originally Posted by j_factor

Who needs nostalgia? Genesis is awesome, period. It's not necessary to reminisce about old times to appreciate it. There are quite a few gems that I didn't discover until way after the fact (and thus have no nostalgia for), and I don't like them any less for it.

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Originally Posted by Kamahl

Nostalgia... Never had an Atari 2600 growing up and I can still enjoy games for it.

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I didn't have a 2600, Intellvision, Colecovision, Atari 8-bit, C64, Genesis, Sega CD, 32x, Jaguar, PSX, Saturn, Dreamcast, etc, etc, growing up, but I like games on all of those. (technically we did have a 2600, but I didn't get to play it until around 2000 -I don't own all of those systems either and haven't played games on real hardware for a few -C64 and Jaguar- but I know there's plenty of games I like)

I've always liked old stuff (and history) in general too . . . heh, how many 10-year-olds in 1999 would be bugging their parents to set up an Atari 2600 to try out? (I would have set it up on my own, but the power supply and RF switchbox were missing)
For that matter, how many were trying to get a ~34-year-old tube TV working again. ;) (and yes, I did end up having the 2600 hooked up to that old portacolor, in my room . . . I need to get that TV working again -the power switch broke and it's really difficult to replace without damaging the chassis or total disassembly)

I am 35. I think playing games will teach your mind on how to concentrate properly.

Games is about to solve a problem, similar when you do math. If someone who do a math is also odd. then all people in the University is not normal.

I pick Genesis because this is what I got when I was a kid. I don't use PS1 or PS3 because I think it is too much sophisticated to play and to use..

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Originally Posted by StarMist

I've done a lot of auction browsing lately and it's been borne in on me how little I want to be reacquainted with many of my old Genesis cartridges. Dragon Warrior or Mario 3 beside a box and manual still give a tug, but in Genesis carts all I see are cold prospects of gaming. I'm 33, so have known--and not always loved--the NES as long as two or three marriages nowadays, whilst the majority of members here seem to be 25. Nostalgia isn't normally associated with youth, but for most of you it will have been either a first console or a total retro adventure. I still prefer the Gen's library to the NES's, or, for competition's sake, the PS1's, but the sentiment's not the same. So I ask whether it's possible to be too old to feel nostalgia towards the Genesis.

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It's hard to feel nostalgic for a system you didn't grow up with. You might feel a slight tug from playing a game on a system that's from the same era as what you grew up with, but it's not going to feel the same if you didn't have said other system during that era. The attachment isn't there, the memories aren't there, and having experienced that system's life span as it happened isn't there. So what you're left with are more like residual bits of nostalgic tendencies that come from playing a different, yet similarly old system's games that wind up getting viewed through your beloved childhood system's rose-colored nostalgia glasses.

It's a bit like second-hand nostalgia if you will, and this is never as strong (or even noticeable really).

I don't think I'm that affected by nostalgia really, I've sat down on many occasions and tried to work out whether my opinions are being illogically swayed in one direction or another and generally I never manage to think of examples I can't back up with solid reasoning.

The Spectrum is also one of my favourite game machines ever made, and I didn't own one at the time, I prefer it to all of the systems I owned in my youth, bar, possibly the NES, the Saturn on the other hand I played a lot back in the day, and I have a lot of memories of playing the system with my old friends and such, and I really feel nothing for the machine at all.

I spent most of my teenage years hating on the PS1, and I still hate Sony's as a company, and their effect on the gaming market, but I now like the actual machine a helluva lot, simply because I played a lot of games on it since (say, ~2006) that I really enjoyed.

no

I agree with you.

I am in my mid thirties also, and was a teenager in high school when I was playing on the Genesis. I do have a sense of nostalgia when I play, but it's not just that. The games are just FUN to play and that's what really counts right?

People would not still be playing Monopoly if it wasn't good. It's around 100 years old now.

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Originally Posted by Pras

I am 35. I think playing games will teach your mind on how to concentrate properly.

Games is about to solve a problem, similar when you do math. If someone who do a math is also odd. then all people in the University is not normal.

I pick Genesis because this is what I got when I was a kid. I don't use PS1 or PS3 because I think it is too much sophisticated to play and to use..

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I'm 24, I own 400+ CIB Genesis games, I play a few each day. When I complete my collection, I'm going to play through AND BEAT each game in the library.

Devotion. Love. Sega.

I'm 19(not 21 as it says on my profile - would someone correct that for me?), and I play games that are much older than I am. Hell, the oldest console I have is an Atari 2600 and even though I find myself having absolutely no idea what to do in some games, I still have fun with 2600 games. Simply put: you can never be too old(or too young, for that matter) for nostalgia towards ANY console. Mind you, the only ones I've actually had when I was a kid(and still have to this day) were an NES that my father bought in 1985, a Nintendo 64 and a GameCube. I loved all 3 systems, and the NES was made before I was even born. It just goes to show you can never be too old or too young for nostalgia towards any game console.

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Originally Posted by The Coop

It's hard to feel nostalgic for a system you didn't grow up with. You might feel a slight tug from playing a game on a system that's from the same era as what you grew up with, but it's not going to feel the same if you didn't have said other system during that era. The attachment isn't there, the memories aren't there, and having experienced that system's life span as it happened isn't there. So what you're left with are more like residual bits of nostalgic tendencies that come from playing a different, yet similarly old system's games that wind up getting viewed through your beloved childhood system's rose-colored nostalgia glasses.

It's a bit like second-hand nostalgia if you will, and this is never as strong (or even noticeable really).

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I was 21 when I first played the Genesis back in 89-90. I have many fond memories of the gaming time I'd spent by myself and with friends playing the Genesis. You don't have to grow up with something, to have nostalgia for it.

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Originally Posted by gamevet

I was 21 when I first played the Genesis back in 89-90. I have many fond memories of the gaming time I'd spent by myself and with friends playing the Genesis. You don't have to grow up with something, to have nostalgia for it.

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Do you really think you're no more "grown up" now than you were then? I bet you don't, but why split hairs about that one small bit? You were there when the system launched and went through everything as it progressed through and beyond it's official life span, giving you pretty much everything I mentioned from what you wrote.

So yeah, you don't necessarily have to "grow up" with the system, but doing so does give you a different perspective.

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Originally Posted by The Coop

Do you really think you're no more "grown up" now than you were then? I bet you don't, but why split hairs about that one small bit? You were there when the system launched and went through everything as it progressed through and beyond it's official life span, giving you pretty much everything I mentioned from what you wrote.

So yeah, you don't necessarily have to "grow up" with the system, but doing so does give you a different perspective.

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I'll put it this way. I grew up with Pong and the Atari 2600, but my nostalgia was more for playing games in arcades, then on the 2600. I have a few great memories of playing Missile Command, Asteroids, Pitfall and Demon Attack on the 2600, but the Genesis was a far more memorable gaming experience. I'd say the C-64 (I was in my teens) had a far greater impact on me as a gamer, than the 2600 did.

Nostalgia yes but also there is more than that

Cartridge = NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO loading times. I hate waiting 30 seconds.
Genesis games are harder and simpler. I dislike 3D.
6 buttons controller owns all the shitty controllers that came afterwards.


so purely objectively

so give me simple yet complex and hard to finish fast 2D games with the Sega 6 buttons controllers

subjectively, gorgeous 2D animations like Alien Soldier AND megadrive raunchy sound chip music!

There's nothing wrong with feelings of nostalgia towards something you enjoyed in your youth, I know plenty of my friends parents that are nostalgic towards the age of Atari and NES

I am 16 and I promise to enjoy a lot of what the sega genesis has given us,


kinda of a silly thing to do, but when I'm around my 40's or 50's, I wanna donate my rare titles in a game museum like alien soldier, pulseman , you know

I'm 34 and I have nostalgia for all consoles, starting with the plug-in-plays from the 70's.

30 second load times is pretty damn hefty. (a ton of games with only a fraction of that, even on the MCD) ;)

Hard drive installed load times also are a lot better. (thank you games with full-install support . . . and virtual CD ;) )

Tbh, I bought a Genesis after wanting a slice of nostalgia since well, emulators just werent the same, but after a while, I started buying games I never had when I was younger, and it's not just nostalgia, a fair few Genesis titles boast really impressive graphics, music and gameplay, even today.

It's less a nostalgia thing more than it is, alot of these games haven't even aged that much at all and are still undeniably really really fun.

Only if you get so old you forget it all!

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Originally Posted by kool kitty89

30 second load times is pretty damn hefty. (a ton of games with only a fraction of that, even on the MCD) ;)

Hard drive installed load times also are a lot better. (thank you games with full-install support . . . and virtual CD ;) )

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load times sucks. period. got another proof last time we played EC on the MCD. We get this blue screen with absolutely no music and no picture. same bullshit when fight is finished.
10 secs is already too much.
Original EC is better, you can chain fights without slow downs. 1 second Maximum, keeps the sense of action =:).

I am still loving all Genesis-MD 16-Bits, even now, still on hunting and collecting mostly fighting games, first time played this console in 1986

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Originally Posted by Mordan

load times sucks. period. got another proof last time we played EC on the MCD. We get this blue screen with absolutely no music and no picture. same bullshit when fight is finished.
10 secs is already too much.
Original EC is better, you can chain fights without slow downs. 1 second Maximum, keeps the sense of action =:).

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Yes, but anyone in Europe . . . or comptuter gamers in the US would have dealt with far, far worse from the days of casettes and (to lesser extent) floppies. (well, lesser extent for MOST floppies, but the C64's slug of a drive -or rather the onboard DOS- was slower than some contemporary tape drives ;) -without fast loaders in either case)

Load times are a necessary evil, use of low-cost/high-capacity media opens up so many more possibilities compared to ROM. (and better examples have very short and/or infrequent load times anyway)
The GameCube had oddly fast loading (by any standards), I wonder if that has anything to do with the smaller discs. (faster seek times, faster max speed?) Though cache/buffer design could also be a huge factor. (the main reason MCD games load faster than PCE CD/Super CD stuff -especially since the MCD has so much more RAM to load into and should thus take much longer for many things -ie games using most of the RAM)

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Originally Posted by kool kitty89

Yes, but anyone in Europe . . . or comptuter gamers in the US would have dealt with far, far worse from the days of casettes and (to lesser extent) floppies. (well, lesser extent for MOST floppies, but the C64's slug of a drive -or rather the onboard DOS- was slower than some contemporary tape drives ;) -without fast loaders in either case)

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Ah yes, the old cassettes. Pop it in, hit "play," then find something else to do for a while and hope the game loaded all right when you got back. Those 5 1/4" floppies were better, but the constant swapping for the bigger RPG games was a pain. That, and the rather delicate nature of the medium, wasn't the best idea for impatient kids :lol:

Like most people have said, a lot of those ol' Genesis games are still fun. Nostalgia definately has something to do with it (in my case), but I doubt I would be spending much time with it now if it still wasn't fun.

I'm 34 and started out with the Colecovision, and then jumped over to the NES and Atari 7800 before I ended up with a Genesis. I still feel a little something for the other systems of my childhood, but i still collect for my Genesis. If I feel something more for the Genny, it's probably because it was the first system I was able to buy with my own money, so there was that added sense of pride with every game that I bought for it. Sonic absolutely blew my mind the first time that I played it, which is a sensation in gaming that I have felt very little of since.

Hehe...I love the early 90s so much that I'm starting to feel like one of those guys that is stuck in the past by claiming that the music, movies, games, etc. stomp on anything that has come out since. I think I'm right at least half the time.

I am 35. I got Genesis back in 1993.

Compare with today modern gaming like PS3, XBOX 360, WII. I honour Genesis for its wonderful graphics and music although the size of the program is just only 0.5 MB to 5 MB (4 Mbit to 40 Mbit).

The time needed to finish every games of Genesis would not be more than 3 hours (except for RPG). This is the advantage of classic games compare with the modern games. I play video games for traning my mind, so I could concentrate and focus on solving a problem in a real world.