I'm Glad I Enjoy Older Stuff
Before my daughter was born, I hosted a retro gaming night. I had recently acquired a PS2 and 32" Sony CRT and was looking forward to a night of fighting bots in Medal of Honor and chasing each other with RC helicopters in 007 Nightfire. I loaded up the 1TB HDD (total overkill I know) on the PS2 with every game from my childhood that had split screen.
When the night finally came around, we booted up the PS2 and started with Rising Sun. Immediately the comments were "wow these controls are clunky", "how did we enjoy this as kids?". Feeling bad, I suggested we switch games to Nightfire, which brought on the same comments.
I get it, modern games have refined controls, faster frame rates, better graphics, etc. But to me, those older games had more charm. Mastering the controls is part of the competition when playing split screen.
We eventually landed on a copy of Worms we burnt to a CD-R and threw into the PS1. That stuck for the rest of the night and was a absolute blast. I guess Worms is timeless no matter who you are!
While I can't blame others for not wanting to revisit the past, I'm glad that's not me. I find a lot of joy in the same games I played as a kid. Last night I played Outrun 2006: Coast 2 Coast on PSP before bed, it was the perfect game and handheld to unwind after a day with the kids.
It's not just games either. Browsing the shelves of thrift shops for CDs and DVDs, reading through the pamphlets in the case, finally placing the disc in the stereo or DVD player to discover if you got a treasure or a dud. It's a great experience!
I'm glad these things bring me joy, because it means there's a near infinite backlog of games, music, movies and books for me to discover. And the best part is, it's much less expensive to discover media of old versus new releases. Games are a ROM file away. CDs typically cost $5-$15. DVDs can be found for $2-$15. Even better, the library has all of them for free. Compare that to games coming out at $80 these days, or the stack of streaming services most people pay monthly for.
I'm also glad my son seems to find the same joy in these things. A few days ago we were getting ready to go somewhere and he showed up with his hands full of "The Transformers" DVD cases (the original show) that he wanted to take. Yesterday he and I beat a new level in Sonic 3 on my Sega Genesis and 13" Toshiba CRT.