RetroGaming

• Mario 64?
• Ocarina of Time?
• Turkish?
• Goldeneye?

This kid is about to meet one of the gaming gods.

Kid'll be fine.

Besides, what super awesome lifestyle changing game is out right now that the kid will miss?

as if everybody gaming in the 90's we were all in sync with each other. lol i was rocking pc win98 tie fighter, and old floppy disc knock off games/ sim city, one kid down the street, she had a Nintendo with 3 Disney games Aladdin, lion king etc, one had a Sega with zombies ate my neighbors, that paper boy game and some sanic. it was pure chaos even later when "everyone" had a ps1 everyone's tastes were completely different. sure there were trends but nobody felt they were stuck in a outdated bubble like op is implying except for that Atari kid. only played pong, fuck that bubble kid neanderthal mutherfucker. lol

we are currently playing stardew valley and I don't think harvest moon would hit as well, but maybe that's an exception overall, they truly just enjoy hard simpler games like the classics are

Now my daughter brings her friends home to play Mario 64! Masterpieces have no expiry date!!

I have had an N-64 plugged into the back of my TV for 25 years straight. The TV has changed. My kids were raised on this shit.

Cant force the shit, same with any culturally significant thing from your childhood. Think of it in reverse: if you aren't willing to engage with their zeitgeist in good faith, how could you expect them to engage with yours?

There are plenty of games up to the PS3 era that every kid would do well to play at least once. Stuff that is objectively good, that aged well, or close enough.

The problem, as I see it, is that if they get too used to mobile games, they won't have the patience for typical console or PC games, because those, on average, aren't dopamine dispensers and won't be rewarding every second click or button press - more importantly, they should NOT nag the player with cash shops.

Also important: limit the amount of games available - this is valid both for current and retro games. The moment you have "all the games" at your disposal, several things kick in: analysis paralysis, appeal to familiarity (will only play what you already know or someone knows), seeing no value in the games^[If, when you were small, you only had a limited selection of games, which was common during the cartridge era, you would be very careful with choosing new games to ask your parents to buy, though renting was an option to see which ones were good or not. You had to make do with the little you had. When you got bored with one, you either looked through your collection and played something else, or did something else entirely; you never threw away a game (unless it really sucked) and you never got a new game on a whim. That is good.].

Others mentioned the social aspect, which is true as well and something they just can't experience nowadays anymore. Minecraft and Roblox are famous because they're easy for kids to pick and play with friends. Back in our days, we had to physically sit beside one another and play together, or pass the controller on death; we also physically lent and traded games, so the games also had value within our little social circles. While fully digital games are extremely convenient, the "scarcity" gave them a social value that they completely lack today and which I suppose boardgames now fill out (yes, you can play them online, but playing on an actual table is almost always better)

God I tried. And it told me a lot out myself.

The VAST majority of that old stuff, the stuff that I remember so fondly, was only fun because it was the best we had.

My first game was Yars Revenge. By today's standards, it's about 30 seconds of entertainment.

Even Super Mario Brothers, the pinnacle of games for years, had no save button and you have to pull off a long series of perfect play with only a couple of lives or get sent back to level 1. It was almost all single player taking turns.

Compared to even old current systems, there's just no draw there and there's no social aspects for them.

Given all the child predators on Roblox, can't blame ya

I grew up playing games with my dad. I wouldn’t change a thing. I miss it dearly.

He never went easy on me in Soul Calibur.

This is the responsible way to raise a child on video games IMO. Modern games have predatory practices like microtransactions.

The look on her face says everything to me though.

I got a Miyoo Mini plus for mine, installed onionos and loads of games from internet archive. They love it, maybe one day I'll set up my dusty wiiU but i only have Mario kart for it. Or some kind of minipc set up.

Telling my five-year-old that if they can beat Ecco the Dolphin in front of me I will take them out for ice cream, but I'm not sitting down to watch more often than once a week.

Counterpoint:

The reason they will be out of touch is that they will have better impulse control and better spending habits than kids raised on modern games with their FOMO MTX and gacha bullshit.

So basically, actual 'nerds' are rasing another generation of 'nerds', except this time, nerds 2.0 will probably actually be more socially intelligent than the brain dead zombies being raised on fornite, roblox and tiktok, who have negative attention spans and cannot fathom the concept of doing any actual thought-work, when chatgpt can just do their homework for them.

They'll also be more tech savvy, like being exposed to or having to learn at least some of how emulation works, which kinda de facto makes you understand things like a file structure, which an increasing number of kids (now adults too) raised on modern mobile UIs... have no clue about.

Oh, they'll also likely just be generally more literate.

This one dad wrote an article about introducing his kid to retro gaming, starting with the old Atari console and progressing through newer generations every few months.

https://medium.com/message/playing-with-my-son-e5226ff0a7c3

(some of the image links are broken on the original article so here's an archive link)

Yeah, if she plays an N64, she won't be exposed to any popular series from today, and will instead play things like Mario Kart, The Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong, Smash Bros., and Pokémon.

I think Guitar Hero was a good investment for my kids, as they came to love all the classics I grew up on.