So it’s time to have family from all over, and you happen to be a retro-gaming enthusiast, or maybe you just have some old Nintendo consoles gathering dust in a box. Either way, Christmas is the perfect time to blow out those cartridges (actually don’t do that) and set up some old-school gaming fun for these reasons.
There’s a New Generation of Gamers to Educate
Those darn kids with their cozy games and walking simulator interactive movies need a lesson in what real gaming is all about. So take this opportunity to bring out Contra, Battletoads, or even Super Mario Bros to give the greatest gift of all—humility.
Just make sure you put in some practice yourself before your guests arrive!
Retro Consoles Are Instant-On Fun
Every year, we like to remind our readers to update consoles before Christmas so little Billy or Sally doesn’t have to spend the day staring at an update screen instead of playing games. Of course, unless you bought an Xbox, online activation and updates are entirely optional, though it will give the best experience, and most importantly allow online multiplayer, where updates are not optional.
Retro consoles, on the other hand, don’t have any online capabilities. Just pop in the disc or cart, switch on the console, and start playing.
If You Have a CRT, You Can Set Up a Dedicated Gaming Station
If you’re the sort of retro gamer that’s invested in an old-school CRT for gaming, then it’s the perfect time to set it up in a corner somewhere and free up your big modern TV for sports, or holiday music, or a video clip of a fireplace.
Not only does this designate a specific place for all the gaming to happen, it’s the perfect time to introduce people to the wonders of retro games playing on the screen technology they were designed for. Many younger people today have never even seen a CRT in person, so it would definitely be fun to watch a few jaws drop!
Retro Consoles Have Far More Local Multiplayer Options
While you can still find a fair few couch co-op games on modern consoles. the truth it that local multiplayer is dying. Those amazing holidays you remember playing four-player Goldeneye on the N64 just isn’t something modern developers are doing anymore, and realistically you need to effectively set up a LAN party to approximate that feeling using modern hardware.
For retro consoles from before the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 era, local multiplayer games were extremely common, and you’ll have no issue finding fun things to play for two or more players on the same screen. Though, you may have to get more controllers, and even a multitap for some consoles that only have two controller ports.
No Retro Consoles? Whip Out the Emulated Games Instead
Retro gaming purists usually insist on using original hardware, and that really is the best way to experience most retro games. However, perfect is the enemy of good, as they say, and retro gaming emulation has come along in leaps and bounds.
So if you don’t have any real retro gaming hardware, but you’d still like to do something fun and different with your family and friends over Christmas, why not set up some emulated retro games? If you own a modern console, then you don’t have to do anything special other than buy the games or access them through a subscription service.
For example, Nintendo offers a huge catalog of NES, SNES, N64, and Game Boy games through its Nintendo Switch Online subscription service. Likewise, Sony’s PlayStation Plus has lots of retro PS1 and PS2 games on some of the higher tiers of the service. Xbox isn’t old enough as a brand to have truly retro games, but there are some excellent titles available from the original Xbox era thanks to the Xbox backward compatibility feature. If you want to do things manually, you’ll find endless resource in our writing about emulation over the years.
Games don’t become obsolete, and a good game will remain a good game forever. So have some fun with the gaming gems of yesteryear this holiday season, and you might even add a few more people to the growing hobby of retro gaming.