60
votes
Who’d be into a book club but for retro games?
Hi everyone,
I was never so lucky as a kid to have a gaming console (forbidden by my parents) so I could only be jealous of my school friends getting gameboys and super nintendos. But I’m an adult now, so I got myself a RG35XX H to try all these games out, and enjoying myself.
So I was thinking why not create something like a book club but for these old games? We’d play (and attempt to beat) one game per month or something along these lines and then discuss the game itself, the story, context around how and when it was made, etc.
I’m looking to share this hobby with others (as it is rather solitary otherwise), and create a social aspect around it.
What do you think? Would anyone be interested?
I'd be interested, but I also tend to fall off these things pretty quickly, so I'm not sure I'd go off my opinion.
My main ask is that we include old PC games too, as that's where most my nostalgia lies.
As long as old pc games means things that run fine in dosbox without special configuration steps. Setting up old games to run on modern systems is enough of a pain as it is, and it’s much harder when you aren’t running Windows.
Most actually run pretty well in Retroarch or ScummVM, needing minimal configuration, which means they play well on Android too.
I just looked up which PC cores there are for Retroarch, and it looks like the only ones on offer are VirtualXT, which only emulates an 8088 and therefore will only be the earliest PC games, and PCem.
I don't use Retroarch, but PCem hasn't seen a major release since 2020. I've used a newer fork called 86Box which is pretty great and if you have a powerful computer you can use it to emulate systems up to the late 90s. But actually getting such systems running properly is a lot of arcane setup because it emulates the actual hardware, and there were a ton of incompatibility problems in that era. A while back I tried to get Ultima Underworld working in it and it took me hours of work only to get everything but sound to work. If the people who made the libretro core have some magic way of getting everything working instantly I would be more than interested in how, especially with anything that has to deal with Windows.
No need to get complicated with it. If you're running Windows, most DOS games on Steam and GoG run through DOSBOX and GoG games run without tweaking or messing about with them. I've also used PCEm and 86Box, which are fun, if a bit overkill. DOSBOX Staging works well for Linux, as well as being a good emulator for Windows, though requires more setup than just running stuff directly from GoG.
For me Ultima Underworld worked out of the box off GoG Galaxy. The only thing extra that I did was setup special sound emulation for the Roland MT-32 to get different sounds and music.
As for Retroarch, it has the DOSBOX Pure core, which is excellent. Couple that with Save States and Fast Forward/Rewind and it's a great setup, especially for emulation handhelds. I've run a good amount of DOS on my Android based handheld and it's been a joy, aside from the screen maybe being a little small.
Ah, so we're paying for these games.... >.> <.<
Jokes aside, there's a lot of old computer games I'd like to play again, including but not limited to PC games.
Definitely. I like both PC and console games, I just feel when these things come up and with stuff like retro games YouTube, PC tends to be ignored or generally just smaller.
I started PC gaming somewhere around 1994, which is a big reason I started exploring retro games, thinking about all the consoles that came out after then that friends of mine had, but I never really touched; I really like going back to PlayStation games for whatever reason.
There's a Building Sim City novel where the dude mentored with Will Wright in the early Maxis days that I'd be keen to read. I'll be proposing that and I hope you're into it!
Well, I think this is specifically for Games, rather than books.
That said, I'll be adding it to my reading list! I was never in to SimCity as a kid, but reading these books from the pioneers is always really interesting. I was never in to Civ or Sid Meier games as a kid, but I absolutely devoured his Autobiography when it came out a few years ago.
And here I read "book club for retro games" literally. Super niche, but I'm onboard ;).
This works, too. I picked up a Retroid Pocket 5 so I'm ready to roll.
I'm in that same niche! I love books about video games.
We can make reading an associated book an extra credit assignment for each month.
Super down, though I'm going to be hard pressed to make it a monthly ;). Bimonthly perhaps?
Twice a month? Now we're talking! XD
Today I learned that Bimonthly can mean twice per month and every two months.
Who invented this language???
If anyone is looking for books, I loved the
Worlds of Power books
as a kid. They're short, about 100 pages of large text, but the stories were really good from the perspective of 10 year old me. I don't know what I would think of them today. I really liked Before Shadowgate, Blaster Master and Ninja Gaiden.
I went back and bought all of them on Amazon or eBay 5-10 years ago, but haven't gotten around to reading them yet .
Wow, that's interesting. I thought I'd hit gold when I found the first Doom novels (Knee Deep in the Dead) but didn't realize that they existed before that.
...for a second I thought you'd linked to the unofficial/unauthorized players guides you'd see at the library back in the 80's and 90's.
No pictures, just 500 pages of text on how to beat The Legend of Zelda by renowned author Rusel DeMaria. Did you ever see these?
https://www.amazon.com/Nintendo-Games-Secrets/dp/1559580623
No, I never did. I vaguely remember a Nintendo Power special edition or something on one of the Zelda games. I remember my cousin called one of the maybe 900? Numbers to get the answer to how to get to the dungeon in the dark world of the forest in the NW corner of the Link to the past game. Had to use a fire wand on a skull with a long nose.... I think.
For DOS games I recommend checking out https://www.dosgameclub.com/
One game per month with a subforum opening up for each game, followed by a roundtable podcast episode.
I actually do have the Podcast followed on my phone, though it's been awhile since I listened to an episode. I'll have to give it another go here in the future, as I do love some DOS Games.
I'd be interested but I think for something like a game, especially retro ones, the time commitment can vary wildly. I know FFVII is a classic but would I want to subject someone to it with only a month to play it in? Meanwhile, I might've gotten my fill of Renegade on the NES in a week.
I’d also be more interested in games that aren’t time sinks. RPGs would be like a book club going from reading Nancy Drew to Dostoyevsky.
Same. Those old RPGs are a slog that I don't have time for. I'd probably just cheat and watch a Let's Play
There's something like this at Insert Credit forums if you want to join something existing as a player, rather than try to get something new off the ground as a founder. Or you might get inspiration from how they do it.
Another existing thing with a similar concept is the Retro Game Club podcast, which chooses a couple retro games each episode then invites feedback and has a discussion in the following episode (in addition to interviews, retro gaming news, and other various segments).
love the IC forums <3
I'm all for any new excuses to keep using my insanely overpriced Analogue Pocket, so I'd be in for games on any systems that has cores for.
Is Analogue Pocket really insanely overpriced? Several years on, I don't have any pricing regrets, I think around $200 was kind of a steal but it might be because I'm thinking about the price of my steam deck or eventually picking up switch 2, and not seriously considering the price of cheaper non fpga emulation handhelds because they are kind of a non-starter by my tastes anyway.
I've always felt it was priced appropriately, maybe even the short lived pre launch price was a bit under.
On a separate note, you said you're in for games the pocket has cores for, does that mean you're out if like a retro PC game or an N64 game or something gets picked?
I actually picked up one of the aluminum ones (I wanted a Pocket for ages, and aluminum pre-orders opened on literally the same day that I got a nice bonus at work, so I was particularly vulnerable to the impulse purchase). I think after tax and shipping I was around $580 poorer. In other words, most definitely overpriced.
But I think even when looking at the normal Pocket, at its normal price after taxes and shipping in the US you're still probably looking at well over $250 for something that to most people (who don't care about physical carts and either don't know or don't care about the whole software vs FPGA debate) has less functionality than they'd get if they were to pick any of the $60 Chinese handhelds on Amazon at random. Some of those Chinese handhelds even have decent build quality rivaling the Pocket (which is one of its main selling points, in my opinion).
As for non-Pocket retro games, I do have other setups in my house that could handle N64, PS1, and arcade/MAME stuff. For PC gaming I'd probably only participate if it was something that runs on Win11 with controller support that I could stream over Moonlight (I don't have any good way to play mouse + keyboard games).
edit--Just to clarify my point on the overpriced thing... to your average retro gamer I think it's overpriced, but maybe not to people like you and me who are nerdy enough to care about FPGA accuracy and physical carts (I also picked up some everdrives so I'd have proper RTC support in games that need them). But even then the aluminum one is/was still insane.
Mine is the plastic launch model in black, the price pre launch was 199 not 219 or whatever it is today, and I didn't get dinged as hard on shipping as many others did, so that probably creates a big gap in what you and I paid I suppose. I did buy an everdrive too, but as it's not strictly necessary and also can be used with other hardware, I consider it sort of separate. After spending a similar amount on Analogue Super NT a couple years prior, the idea that their first handheld wasn't like double the price or more of their home consoles was kinda mind blowing to be honest, which also probably informs why I look on it's price point favorably.
Anyway thanks for sharing your perspective, definitely fair points there.
I love this idea. I would definitely join in!
Over the years, I’ve done the thing (multiple times) where I spend hours setting up emulators and getting everything going perfectly, only to then not really play any games on them. I’ve currently got the absolutely amazing RetroDECK set up on my Steam Deck, but I never use it!
A “Game Club” would give me a reason to dive in and a deadline to meet. As someone who’s very deadline-motivated, this would definitely get me playing more retro games.
I have set up wonderful emulation platforms so many times over the year only to play like 10 minutes of games as well. I could only stomach the games I was reasonably good at where the muscle memory had not left, the rest are fair to judge by modern standards and of course the old stuff hardly holds up.
Game design has come a long way besides just the hardware capabilities. Something like shove knight is the perfect example of how far modern game has come along, retro sprites without the retro jank.
That said some masterpieces hold up, I think ps1 era rpgs and forward can still be great, though by now many of them have been remade (for good or for ill sometimes).
But yeah, I'm just another person who can't drop the value of those games I had growing up, but really don't want to play most of them again when there are so many new and great games out there.
Just gotta have the right mindset for the old stuff and be willing to meet them where they're at, rather than write them off quickly, honestly.
I've played so many old games in the past 7 or 8 years after getting in to retro gaming and boy, there's some quality stuff in there, stuff I can earnestly call my favorite games of all time, in spite of only having played them recently (System Shock).
Again, you just gotta be ready to meet them on their level and remember that many times you need to "RTFM", which yeah, is maybe bad game design by today's standards, but it doesn't mean the games are bad or "too old", it's just a different mindset.
One of my favorite things to do has been to load up a classic game and then do my best to play it using only the manual and the guide books. You can find most old guide books (Prima Guides) on Archive.Org, so I load them up on my tablet and avoid googling as much as possible, which I find often spoils the game (not only for all the detailed information, but largely due to the many opinions on various retro games and how they're supposed to be played). It puts me in the mindset of being a kid again and just going off what we actually had access to at the time.
Damn game guides is a blast from the past! I never had any but some friends did and they were awesome. I think I might try this if I can find a game that I wanna play like that haha.
I actually never used them as a kid either, but had a friend who bought them whenever he picked up a new game.
It occurred to me a couple of years ago to see if I could find them in PDF form and since then, it's been an awesome way to experience Retro games. GoG often has them bundled with old PC games as well, which is how I was playing Might & Magic 4. The cool thing is, those guides are still relatively cheap, so I actually picked up the physical book off eBay for $25, so I'm using that now. Unfortunately, the older console games are pretty expensive to do that with; I wanted to get both Dragon Warrior 3 on GBC and Final Fantasy Tactics Prima Guides, but they're prohibitively expensive, so the PDF on tablet has been just fine.
Here's just a search for Prima guide on Archive.org. Pour one out for the folks that scanned them in, because a high quality scan like these destroys the original book.
Thanks for the link. I'm definitely gonna dive down this rabbit hole tomorrow. This is the kinda thing that makes gaming fun again. Well for me anyway. As much as in love all the digital platforms i do miss the physical element of games from time to time.
100% and it's a big part of the reason I've gone this way. I still play modern games, don't get me wrong, but there's something tedious about the endless dissection that happens to games these days. I'm not immune to it either and can easily get caught up in the, "Well this is the optimal way to play, so I better do that." So it's nice to use the guides which aren't judgemental of how you play and aren't giving you optimal strategies.
Yea the guides are there to help you get the maximum amount of joy out the game with some background info. Scrolling through that list iv been reminded of games I'd like to try out from back in the day so guess I'll also be looking for them while in the rabbit hole.
That's exactly what started me on old games many years ago. Thinking back that there were games I'd really wanted to play and never did and a "well why not now?
In the same vein, GameFAQs has some amazing user-submitted guides for retro games. It was THE place to go online for video game help for years.
The ones I wrote when I was an early teenager are actually still up on the site. (No, I’m not telling you which ones!)
Somewhat related, there is currently a book club covering the UFO 50 games on a weekly basis on the podcast Eggplant Presents. The podcast and the discord community are both excellent. They are about 85% done, however.
Thanks for the recommendation, I've been wanting to get more into it and I feel like that might help.
As long as beating the game isn't 100% mandatory I'm in. And thats mostly because I suck at games 😅
I actually really love this idea. I've been looking for an excuse to go play a lot of old classics I never got to as a kid. Retroachievements.org has sorta given me a nudge to start doing that, but having a small community here to talk about the games with could be nice. At the very least it would help me narrow down a specific game to play.
What's the range of games are you including? I'm not sure what range of game consoles that device plays, but I'm open to playing anything from NES up through gamecube/ps2.
Sorry for getting a little excited lol. Yes there's at least one person that would participate in this.
Maybe, it depends. Time is a constraint, and my retro gaming nostalgia is all about the arcade originals. Atari Star Wars is my favourite game of all time, but stuff like Mr. Do!, dig dug, robotron, defender, berzerk, that sort of era. I'll watch this space and see what comes up
Don't forget qbert
Who could? Or Bomb Jack, Pengo (I have the theme from this on my ringtone), Battlezone, Punch Out!, Galaga, Astro Blaster, I could go on :) I spent many many hours in arcades in the 80s.
The sounds of qbert in particular are burned into my brain.
I would be interested, but ideally the games would meet the following criteria:
Short(ish): Depending on the interval, it would be good to select games that can be completed (not necessarily to 100%) in just a few active hours of gameplay.
Accessible on multiple devices: I think this would be more attainable if the games are verified to work on mobile phones (Delta is a good emulator for iOS, and I'm sure there's tons on Android). If it runs there, it should also run in a PC emulator without issue. It would also be good to set up some type of troubleshooting guide for getting the games running.
Community poll to determine next game type: some people hate turn-based games, some hate platformers, etc. While we don't have to necessarily vote on specific games, voting on the genre might be useful to make sure there's enough people who actually want to play that type of game. (I would be happy to play more obscure/less popular games as long as they meet the other criteria.)
RetroArch is available on Android.
(I used it with a little Bluetooth controller/phone holder several years ago before the Steam Deck was a thing. Though speaking of which, it looks like it hasn't been updated since 2021, admittedly.)
Don't bother with RA from Play Store, go directly to the source.
Ah, good point. And I see from there that it's on F-Droid with an up-to-date version as well.
This is a neat idea and I'd love to participate!
I'm here for some NES - SNES era retro games
+1 interested. Not sure how much time I can put in, but I guess I could try most
Great idea! I've got a Miyoo Mini ready to go with everything up to PS1 or so. Count me in.
Yeah I'd be down. I'm curious what "retro" entails though. If I see "Warcraft II" or "Starcraft" as retro, I'm gonna cry /j
I'm with others, let's include some PC games too. Let's see some of those Sierra adventure games!
The time that has passed since Starcraft II released is longer than the gap between Starcraft and Starcraft II.
We're like, OLD old now.
Do you one better: the gap between StarCraft's release and today is longer than the one between Super Mario Bros. and StarCraft's releases.
That said, I wasn't born in '98, so you're the old ones and I can mock you all from my kingly throne of youth. Huehuehuehuehue.
It'll happen to you...
Then I'll just swap over to yelling about the young whippersnappers playing Fortnite 2 and about how, back in my day, you couldn't sprint in Minecraft!
😭
There are some real classics there. From the age when we technically had graphics, but they were quite bad, and the strength of the game was in the quality and depth of the storytelling.
I remember the King's Quest series fondly, as well as the Quest for Glory series.
I seem to vaguely remember hearing about how amazing the graphics for the original King’s Quest was for the time. It was the flagship game title for the PC Jr for a reason.
Completely fair. In the context of the graphics of the time, that is likely true. Maybe my conclusions about the why are incorrect, but I remember those games having very good storytelling.
I miss that. Today we have very good graphics and some developers can just lean on that.
I think a great way to execute this is simply have users give reviews at the end of their playing experience. I saw a recommendation for a book club set up once that was: everyone reads a different book and then gives a presentation on their book at the meet up. I think this might be a great way to do this gaming book club. Have everyone pick a game to play and then come back and review it to the group. That could get around the time commitment issue (users only play gales they have time for).
And wouldn’t you know it, we have a tildes discord for time strapped gamers that I think would work great for an async discussion forum (if you don’t do it in tildes itself)
I would definitely be interested.
One thing that has worked well for film clubs that I've run, is to curate the title list so that each entry builds on top of previous ones, rather than just having a random selection of films that people would like to watch. This of course requires far more work from the person running the club, and means that there will be a long-term focus on something, possibly for years, which may not interest all potential participants.
For instance, we liked to run through a specific director's filmography chronologically, sometimes with months alternating between the director's films and related films (influences, remakes, contemporaries, thematic connections, and so on). It took years to get through the filmography, but the context that a chronological approach gave really helped us to see those films in a new light.
Somewhat similarly, some years back I played through the history of arcade games chronologically, from the early 70s to the mid-80s, which is an era of gaming that I never personally experienced. I didn't play every released game of course, just a list of the most influential games that I found somewhere, which was something like a hundred titles. It really helped me to understand why some games like Donkey Kong were such a huge thing, as I had more context with which to appreciate them.
Another possible approach, which I also used in a film club once, is to have a main title and supplementary titles for context. With retro games, you could for instance have Super Metroid as the month's main title, but suggest that participants also take a quicker look at games like the original Metroid, Montezuma's Revenge, Brain Breaker, The Legend of Zelda, Impossible Mission, Prince of Persia and Castlevania II. Perhaps even watch Ridley Scott's Alien if they so feel.
Any updates on this?
I have a lot going on rn and no spare energy to organise this. I’m glad there is a lot of interested people, I can’t make any promise if/when I’ll get something going. That’s probably not what you wanted to hear, sorry.
No worries. I totally get it (I’m in a similar boat).
Would you be okay with someone else running it?
Yes ofc
Hey I am someone with an interest in video game history and more free time than I know what to do with(mostly from neglecting more important things but whatever). Would it help if I were do some some research on the history of certain tech constraints or game mechanics in order to help build a curriculum.
I can't say I'd do it every month, but I'd absolutely join!
Love the idea. Count me in.
I'll throw out a few more ideas, and with some of these it occurs to me that maybe you might want to include a batch of smaller games some months. My first games I ever played were
Willy the Worm - though this version seems to be broken - the balls should reset and start over again once they get to the bottom. This one also seems to run a little too fast ..... or maybe it's just me that's gotten slower.... It also had a level editor.
Bouncing Babies
Others I used to play, but I'm not going to link (on mobile)
Pathways into Darkness
Marathon (all 3) I spent a lot of time building maps on these - they're all on steam now for free
The Zork games - though I don't remember specifically which ones.
Great idea, sounds like fun! How retro can we get?
It would almost be as interesting as it would be impractical to make one of the games we play be an electromechanical beast from the 1950s.
Nominating C A T H O D E R A Y T U B E A M U S E M E N T D E V I C E
Commenting just to get my name on the list of people who get notified.
I'm in for some classics! I don't have a lot of the old hardware anymore but I can emulate anything.
I like the idea, but my life is going to be pretty busy in the near future. I have only participated in two book clubs here on tildes and one backlog burner. I love that both exist, and want to do more in the future, but I don’t participate very often. If you started this, I would definitely consider, especially for shorter games.
I'd be in. It would give me an external reason to play games to the end, and I'd be glad to play a variety of games I wouldn't have thought of trying otherwise.
...in theory, at least, though I tend to fall out of any habit I try to take, no matter how enjoyable.
I'd be up for this. We did it on the old Smashing Pumpkins o-board phpBB forum back in the late 00's and it was great fun, think there were 6 of us doing it, lasted about a year before it ended.
Tried to get it off the ground with a couple friends a few months back but it didn't end up happening.
I'm also popping a comment down to keep up with this. I would love to join, always happy to play something new (old and now new). I'm not sure how much time I can reliably commit to it but its a great idea.
I've already commented in a sub-thread on this post, but here's a top-level comment to explicitly note interest.