It has come to my attention that both Nintendo and PlayStation have revived retro gaming by offering emulation of their older consoles released in the 80s and 90s. This has sparked fan excitement among gamers who were born in the in the 80s and 90s. Let's jump right in.
Hello, everyone. Man, this post is gonna bring in some good news for us gamers of the 80s and 90s. Now, if you have been living in a pineapple, retro gaming was created when the consoles of the first generation were released. Nintendo was impressed by the production and success of the Color TV-Game series and it gave the company faith in the console business. That led to them developing their first dedicated console, the Nintendo Entertainment System. Also known as Famicom in Japan.
Fast forward to when the Wii was released. Nintendo threw in their Virtual Console system, which had games that were released on their older consoles. Virtual Console doesn't offer just games that were released on their older consoles. It also offered games that were released on non-Nintendo consoles. Nintendo did something really amazing. However, when the Switch comes out, the retro games we know and love were gone, until they brought in a new subscription service, Nintendo Switch Online. It offers emulation of NES, SNES and Game Boy games. It's like Virtual Console, but they are locked behind a pay wall.
Then the second tier came along to offer emulation of GBA, Nintendo 64 and SEGA Genesis games, but criticized for being too expensive. If you watched the Direct, GameCube games are coming to the Switch 2 through the Switch Online + Expansion Pack tier. GameCube games have been a huge demand and they are coming. This has sparked excitement that people that were born in the 90s will finally be able to revisit GameCube games, despite the fact that the GameCube was met with a mixed reception and sold poorly. In short, Nintendo's beloved retro games come with rewinds, upscaling, quick saves, video filtering and online multiplayer in certain games that have multiplayer.
Playing Nintendo classics on the Switch isn't that bad because it is faster than downloading an emulator and ROMs on PC. In fact, CoolROM no longer has ROMs for Nintendo's retro consoles. I was eight years old when playing the SNES games. Today, I get to play them on the Switch. And the NES games.
Nintendo is not the only one that is reviving retro gaming by offering emulation of NES, SNES, GB, GBA, N64 SEGA Genesis and GameCube games because PlayStation is following suit by using PlayStation Plus Premium, the third tier that offers emulation of PS1, PS2 and PSP games. Like Nintendo's retro games, they have rewinds, upscaling, quick saves and video filters. But they don't offer online multiplayer sadly. And they are also purchaseable so that you wouldn't require the Premium tier to play them since it is cheaper than subscribing. In fact, it is better than having full backwards compatibility because I don't have to switch discs like in the time when I played the PS1, PS2 and PSP games.
Both manufacturers now offer emulation of their retro games released on older consoles beyond the 7th generation era where the Wii and PS3 came out. I am not mentioning them because these systems are technically the first modern consoles.
Retro and modern are two factors in gaming, so as a fun fact, playing retro games puts you in the shade while playing modern games puts you in the sun. There is one concept that you have to take the first half of the gaming community, the retro gaming community, which likes to play mostly retro games and the other that likes to just play modern games. Unifying them is quite the balancing act.
Nintendo became the kings of their time in the NES and SNES eras that both of them reigned supreme. However, as soon as later retro generations came in, things took a turn for Nintendo. The N64 and GameCube didn't come close to the renowned the NES and SNES did. And they didn't come close to the worldwide sales of the PS1 and PS2.
So here are the charts that determine the worldwide sales of the 5th and 6th generation consoles. Both of Sony consoles were very dominant while the others, have came very far from them. It's due to the first two Sony consoles using CD-ROMs rather than game cartridges, having a ton of games from their widespread 3rd party support, critically acclaimed high quality games like the original Crash and Spyro games and backwards compatibility. Both of them being dominant benefitted a longer life cycle.
Now, I have learned what makes it so interesting and special about Sony's first two consoles selling very well and reigning supreme over others in both generations. Since the PS4 came out, we gamers who were born in the 90s desired to revisit PS1 and PS2 games. We have beared this desire since. But the PS4 lacked backwards compatibility and the PS5 can only play 95% of PS4 games because of the PS3's structure. That applied to what Jim Ryan, the former PlayStation bigwig, stated. He stated that time, money and resources are finite when it comes to developing a new system after he regretted saying all that about what we gamers of the 90s loved and talking down to the golden media that is retro gaming.
Fortunately, PlayStation Plus Premium has resolved this enigma and fulfilled our desire by offering emulation of PS1 and PS2 games. It is better than backwards compatibility that they come with rewinds, quick saves, video filtering and upscaling. With it, we can be able to finally revisit our games from back in the day. Even by a longshot, we got the original Sly Cooper trilogy back, which became the best thing that happened to us. However, it doesn't use online multiplayer on certain games that use online multiplayer. And that's something Sony should add and it doesn't have to be just with friends, but with anyone across the globe. But you need PlayStation Plus Essential to play retro games online when you purchased them.
Defunct video game companies became a factor of nostalgia in gaming. It's possible that Sony and Nintendo are releasing their old games produced by companies that don't exist. That's why we don't consider SEGA, Bandai Namco, Capcom, Square Enix, Konami, Ubisoft, Koei Tecmo, EA or Activision as nostalgic since these companies as a whole are still prevalent and they still exist in today's market to produce games of this generation. No, the ones that are nostalgic were Bandai, Namco, Square, Enix, Koei, Tecmo, THQ, Acclaim and Midway. These are the nostalgic ones that produced games in retro generations and they became defunct before the modern generations, as well as nostalgic sound integrations and middleware like Dolby Pro Logic II, Sofdec and ADX. But Criware and Unreal Engine as a whole are not nostalgic.
The PS1 and PS2 being ranked among the best was because of backwards compatibility, handling of high quality games and a huge library of games. However, the PS5 was ranked the worst because of its remasters of PS4 games and its first-party games being ported to PC and doesn't have that much first-party games. The graphics do look real, though. It shows that we like to play PS1 and PS2 games more since the systems became the best. And since the Switch 2 is offering GameCube games, we are interested in playing them.
April's lineup contains Alone and the Dark 2 and War of the Monsters, the next existing PS2 game to have all of the bells and whistles. The lineup came with an interesting touch. Alone in the Dark 2 was produced by Kokopeli Digital Studios and Infrogrames. This is the game produced by defunct video game companies, marking the opportunity to continue to release classic games by defunct video game companies and Kokopeli was considered THQ.
And speaking of THQ, one of the games that has the THQ logo is Up, a game based on the movie by Disney and Pixar with the same name. It is published by THQ and has a copyright screen. However, the logo flow took place ingame and it's the PSP version. But there is one Disney game that I know has met my expectations and that's Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue. The game has a copyright notice that only points out to toys and not the elements of the game, the original ESRB rating design with a white letter and black pixels on the outside, and was published by Activision in association with a defunct video game company, Disney Interactive and developed by Traveller's Tales in their old logo that was better than the current logo.
However, May's lineup became disappointing as it contained only one classic game that I am not familiar with and is NOT in my wish list. And that is Battle Engine Aquila. The game was developed by Lost Toys and published by Infrogrames Europe. This marks another classic game produced by defunct video game companies and the trend of bringing us retro games produced by defunct video game companies is continuing. It is now available on the catalog, so boot it up and there's a copyright notice with the Lost Toys and Atari logos and the Ziggurat Interactive disclaimer below the Lost Toys logo that has the year we're on now, yet Battle Engine Aquila came out in 2003. I am disappointed in May's lineup that it would give us only one PS2 game that is not in my wish list, but at least it met my expectations that it has a silent copyright notice screen before the cinematic logos. It's only a matter of time before June's lineup drops, hoping it has at least one game to meet my expectations.
The Nintendo side of things comes with something interesting. First off, the beloved fighting game for the Nintendo 64, Killer Instinct Gold, also known as Killer Instinct 2, is coming to the N64 Classics catalog this month. It is a sequel to the original Killer Instinct for the SNES and arcade. It was first developed by Rare when they were with Nintendo until they shifted their business to Microsoft. And there are four new Game Boy titles coming this month also. It was revealed to be Survival Kids, Gradius the Interstellar Assault, Kirby's Star Stacker and the Sword of Hope. While the Game Boy is nuanced and is not a mainline console, it is a part of retro gaming like the GBA and PSP and they are being played on the big screen.
The only takeaway from all this is that we desired a revival of retro gaming from not only one manufacturer that would be dominant on their first two consoles and is working on epics like Ghost of Yotei, but two manufacturers. They are releasing their beloved retro games monthly in their infancy. When both manufacturers fulfilled our desire to play GameCube, PS1 and PS2 games, excitement of gamers of the 90s have been sparked. But they are not done yet. There are still a lot more retro games to come and us retro game fans wouldn't be raped in the butt by those who want to focus on the future and playing remasters is bullcrap.
And speaking of getting raped in the butt, it is not as bullcrap as the part where the mods of the Skullheart forums penalized users for a low content post just because they made a post about how excited they are about the update. That's the bigger bullcrap part I have experienced. I have the link to my rant about it below, so if you're interested in reading my rant, go check it out.
