Generation X cringed at the news last month as a video of Bo Jackson having to explain his greatness to an unbeknownst teenager went viral.
Jackson, the two-sport professional from the late ‘80s, was a pop culture icon who transcended sports. Yet, it was painful to watch as he struck up a conversation with Drake LaRoche, the 13-year-old son of Chicago White Sox first baseman Adam LaRoche. Jackson rambled off his impressive resume, but nothing stuck a chord.
The kid obviously never played Tecmo Bowl.
Parents of the Capital District don’t seem to make the same mistake as the elder LaRoche, with the advent of a handful of vintage video game stores peppered through the area.
“I find a lot of parents want their kids to play some of the older games,” said Ryan Huges, co-owner of Jay Street Video Games, a retail chain of stores devoted to the sale of vintage video games and game consoles. “They want them to enjoy and have the same kind of experiences.”
In recent years, a market for vintage video games has emerged, partially stoked by Internet sales through Amazon.com and eBay. Video game chain stores like GameStop have profited from used game sales for years. In 2010, GameStop reported that more than a quarter of their overall sales were of used video game products (26.4%), surpassing new video game hardware (19.3%).
It seems only natural for the trend to trickle down into its own marketing outlet.
“We’re not reinventing the wheel,” said Hughes. “Here’s nostalgia. You used to have fun playing with them. Want to try it again?”
Games on chips housed in plastic cartridges continue to be durable over the years. As are the games from the generations that followed, so long as the CDs aren’t scratched. The challenge lies mostly in the hardware, the console and controllers, that played the games. Should you break or lose your game machine from 30 years ago, there is a replacement available. Mad Catz has developed a series of Retrocon consoles that enable gamers to play vintage games from several different systems, on one machine.
“I almost exclusively play NES and SNES games,” said 41-year old Delmar native Timothy Pittz. ”I have both original systems and a slew of cartridges, plus a Wii that serves as an emulator and is loaded with every game for both systems. I have a thing for pixelated side-scrollers.”
Emulators allow fans to play retrograded games on present-day operating systems. For example, fans of the Commodore 64 computer system of the mid-‘80s can download a free emulator and an entire library of games called Roms, and proceed to play them on a Pentium-class computer.
The 8-bit technology behind the games of the past can even be stored, and played, on certain smartphones.
“I just got the N64 set up,” said 24-year old Clifton Park resident Amani Ripley. “Mario Party!”
Right now, the most popular vintage system is the Nintendo 64 that came out in 1996. Hughes said the reason for it leans towards demographics. “There’s more people alive now [that played the Nintendo 64]. You and I may have had an N64 after owning a Super Nintendo, but for many the N64 was their very first console. The generation behind us, that was their first console. … There are two different generations looking for the exact same product.”
Nevertheless, when walking into a vintage video game store, it all comes down to personal taste. Hughes estimates that 90 percent of his customers are “just parents with their kids coming in to play a game.”
Games from decades past can’t compare to the complexity and aesthetics of those from today, but some continue to remain entertaining. And, when you can buy a game for $5 versus $60, the older game could win over the kids without breaking the budget.
“People collect everything,” said Hughes. “It’s real simple. There’s a level of the nostalgia that takes place. There’s nostalgia behind remembering cracking open a Nintendo game, sitting with your sister and your brother playing with it. It’s just a formula for fun.”
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