As a player of video games now in their 40s, I’ve had a lot of consoles come and very few of them go. A collector, maybe? A hoarder, is what my wife would say. Either way, I’ve plenty of gaming systems from the 1980s, ‘90s and ‘00s in my home (alongside the modern, 4K-ready offerings, of course), many of which I regularly play on – and not simply to feel a nostalgic kick. Because retro gaming is much more than a history lesson in how we got to here – the classics of the past really can hold up beside today’s engrossing open worlds and multiplayer socialising, as experiences that don’t need remakes or remasters, or any of that. But, you know that. Anyone who knows games knows that. Yet there’s still a question hanging over retro, in 2022: where do we draw the lines?
