I'm no angel myself really, if you start talking to me about Silent Hill or Shin Megami Tensei then I'm going to find it at least a little difficult to reel myself in on that topic. Lord help you if you say something like "Homecoming was best Silent Hill" or "Persona is better than Nocturne" because I might pop the fuck off and bore you to death with series factoids and long drawn out plot explanations but that's about the worst of it.
I understand this kind of reaction though. If you really like a thing and then you FINALLY meet someone who also likes a thing but they aren't quite as up on it as you think they should be, you want to sort of "educate" them. It's not a case of belittling their opinions but it's a case of trying to help them appreciate the thing as much as you do. A lot of the time however, it never really comes off that way and things get out of hand pretty often, it's why I don't like talking to "fans" of even things I enjoy doing.
But with people who enjoy retro games this is a completely different barrel of fish. Now for the most part, people from the retro game community are actually extremely friendly and accepting. A bunch of people who love sharing their love of old games from their youth or even accepting younger gamers who enjoy that retro style of game and want to learn more. But when a retro game snob does rear their ugly head good lord the best bet is to run away. For these people, retro gaming isn't so much a hobby as much as it is a competition and they just HAVE to let you know about it.
For example I saw a post on a retro gaming group that said "Some "so called" retro gamers didn't know you could put two NES advantages into the system at the same time" thus implying that if you weren't aware of this one fact then your entire love for the sub-hobby of retro gaming is now brought into question. I never had an NES as a kid but I thought that plugging in two controllers would have been pretty simple. The point is though that for a retro game snob, you cant just enjoy games from the past, you have to be constantly judged on what you play or even how you play it. Forget controller knowledge, if you bring up the idea of playing on an emulator for convenience then you might as well be sent to the firing squad.
But that level of snobbery, while obnoxious, is sort of similar to what I said before. What really gets my back up is the CONSTANT one upmanship that these people also employ. For example I met a guy once who, if you brought up a deal that you found for literally ANY retro game, he always had found one better. You could say "Yo, I'm so happy today, I found X for Y price" and he would respond with "oh yeah? well I was on holiday and got it for Z price" where Z is always at LEAST half of whatever you said Y was. I've seen other examples of this with people saying stuff like "oh well you can't REALLY call yourself a retro game fan if you haven't at least beaten Takeshi's Challenge on original hardware, can you?" completely straight faced and unironically.
Like I said, most retro game fans are fine people who are helpful and will be happy to suggest their favorite obscure gems to you so that you can discover some cool new games but if you encounter one of these special breeds of gaming snob run for the hills and sound the Silent Hill siren because no one needs that shit near them.
I understand this kind of reaction though. If you really like a thing and then you FINALLY meet someone who also likes a thing but they aren't quite as up on it as you think they should be, you want to sort of "educate" them. It's not a case of belittling their opinions but it's a case of trying to help them appreciate the thing as much as you do. A lot of the time however, it never really comes off that way and things get out of hand pretty often, it's why I don't like talking to "fans" of even things I enjoy doing.
But with people who enjoy retro games this is a completely different barrel of fish. Now for the most part, people from the retro game community are actually extremely friendly and accepting. A bunch of people who love sharing their love of old games from their youth or even accepting younger gamers who enjoy that retro style of game and want to learn more. But when a retro game snob does rear their ugly head good lord the best bet is to run away. For these people, retro gaming isn't so much a hobby as much as it is a competition and they just HAVE to let you know about it.
For example I saw a post on a retro gaming group that said "Some "so called" retro gamers didn't know you could put two NES advantages into the system at the same time" thus implying that if you weren't aware of this one fact then your entire love for the sub-hobby of retro gaming is now brought into question. I never had an NES as a kid but I thought that plugging in two controllers would have been pretty simple. The point is though that for a retro game snob, you cant just enjoy games from the past, you have to be constantly judged on what you play or even how you play it. Forget controller knowledge, if you bring up the idea of playing on an emulator for convenience then you might as well be sent to the firing squad.
But that level of snobbery, while obnoxious, is sort of similar to what I said before. What really gets my back up is the CONSTANT one upmanship that these people also employ. For example I met a guy once who, if you brought up a deal that you found for literally ANY retro game, he always had found one better. You could say "Yo, I'm so happy today, I found X for Y price" and he would respond with "oh yeah? well I was on holiday and got it for Z price" where Z is always at LEAST half of whatever you said Y was. I've seen other examples of this with people saying stuff like "oh well you can't REALLY call yourself a retro game fan if you haven't at least beaten Takeshi's Challenge on original hardware, can you?" completely straight faced and unironically.
Like I said, most retro game fans are fine people who are helpful and will be happy to suggest their favorite obscure gems to you so that you can discover some cool new games but if you encounter one of these special breeds of gaming snob run for the hills and sound the Silent Hill siren because no one needs that shit near them.
No comments:
Post a Comment