'Neo-Retro' Gaming: The classics of the past... only newer?

Ben Jackson takes a look at a few Golden-oldies still too spritely to be deemed true 'retro'.

Over the past few years many things have come and gone in the world of gaming. It seems like only yesterday I received a shiny new Super Nintendo along with a version of Mario. Oh well… we shall never see the likes of those games again…. Stuck somewhere between ‘retro’ and modern, a gaming limbo if you will. But hold on a moment, why not? Why don’t we go and buy one? And a Megadrive whilst we are at it, then perhaps a Virtual Boy too! There’s plenty of them lying around, but what are they all, are they any good? Let me guide you a little...

Let us start at the beginning, so to speak. It’s not quite retro and it’s no longer new, it’s the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, or Super Famicom if you prefer. This console was one of the best systems in history, it had the games (lots and lots of them!) and it had the support from ,at the time, the world’s biggest computer games company. You either owned a SNES or you at least knew someone who did, it was excellent fun and everyone wanted one. At the SNES’s heart there was a 16-Bit processor, almost identical in performance to Sega’s Megadrive (that’s later), capable of decent sprite scaling and minimal polygon handling (the later addition of the FX chip did improve the 3D capabilities, making games like Doom and Starfox possible). The games were what made the SNES a winner, as a console without games is as useful as a chocolate teapot; only not as tasty. Looking around now you can find a SNES with games for as little as £10, it’s a bargain for such a fun console, and reminds you what Nintendo was all about before bloody polygons showed up.

The SNES had some of the best 16- Bit games around. Titles such as Super Metroid kept me at the console for hours on end (I still play it now) with it’s sci-fi platform RPG style; it’s superb. Mario had to make an appearance and all of his SNES incarnations were great at the time, classic platforming at a bargain price! But you can’t talk about the SNES without mentioning the SNES version of Zelda, it had one of the best story-lines of any RPG, and being Zelda, was immense fun to play. Of course there are many excellent games for the SNES, it’s just a matter of finding a few that you really like, there should be something for everyone here, from kids to adults the SNES had it covered. Neo-retro chic, if you will.