(Re)Playing (with) Video game History: Moving beyond Retrogaming

Abstract

This article will argue that the current literature on retrogaming as a practice and the retrogamer as a subject has been lacking in fully describing the variety of practices and subjects that engage with old games. Based on data collected by interviewing nine self-described Danish retrogamers, three motivations for engaging with old games, besides nostalgia, are identified. These motivations are typologized into three player types: amateur archaeologists, amateur art historians, and techno-historians. Following the analysis, it will be argued that retrogaming might be an imprecise term to encompass the many different ways that individuals engage with old games. The concepts historical play and nostalgic play are presented to alleviate this.

Rethinking Remakes: Value and Culture in Video Game Temporalization

“…This distinction, I believe, will have real use for future research into temporalization practices, but only on a case-by-case basis for the simple reason that nostalgia can only ever describe one element of many that characterize game temporalization. As Kristian Redhead Ahm (2021) has recently noted in his study of retrogamers’ motivations, nostalgia is unstable, with retrogamers moving between Boym's categories over time. Furthermore, the market realities of temporalized games are such that they need to appeal to newcomers as much as longt-time fans, meaning that nostalgia is, at least as a rule of thumb, only ever partially highlighted in the design and marketing of temporalized games.…”

Gutenberg Galaxy to Google Galaxy – Contemporary Literature, Technology, and the Legacies of Modernism and Postmodernism

“…58 Years before, the invention and threat of photography had a particularly large impact on the visual arts, which was faced with the creation of a new art form that, as Kenneth Goldsmith argues, was "so much better at replicating reality that, in order to survive, painting had to alter its course rapidly", resulting in impressionism. 59 More than simply affecting the way we represent reality, technologies such as X-ray imaging changed the way reality was understood, giving us sight of things that were once beyond our perception. Suddenly, as with photography's ability to capture moments in time, and the radio's ability to allow us to hear what isn't present, x-ray imagery allowed humankind to see the unseen, and reach beyond our sensual capabilities.…”

“…Serge, focusing on the positive aspects of such hybridisation, is thrilled by the idea when "he imagines the whole process playing out backwards: brain and connecting rod merging to form one, ultra-intelligent organ […] a whole new, streamlined mechanism." 59 McCarthy depicts Serge as a man interested in the physical connection between man and machine, and the ways in which technology can create something new in conjunction with humanity. This newness is erotically exciting to Serge, and McCarthy shows us how reliant he is on this technology when, in the air, his spark set stops working and "it feels as though he were flying naked as though […] he himself were the thing riding the air's frequency, pulsing right up against it."…”

“…58 Finding nothing particularly emotional to cry about in the contexts of the film being shown, the speaker initially assumes that his eyes are watering for one of the "other functions" of tears, but after determining "the tears kept coming long after smooth blinking would have been restored and foreign bodies washed away," the speaker decides that "apparently my friend was expressing emotion and was not fine, not okay, no". 59 The speaker struggles to understand their friend's emotional being, and, like the scene analysed above, his emotional outcry is described as a bodily function rather than an emotional one, his emotional expression a mere "function" of his eyes. 60 This is a similar sentiment to that of the typist in The Waste Land discussed in the first chapter of this thesis, whose technologically mediated life is similarly depicted as mechanical and affectless.…”

“…The Space Mutants (Acclaim, 1991), Charlie answers, "Well it's just uh… uh… to relive sitting in that small living room with the old striped carpet and looking out at the apple tree while I try to progress further than the first f cking stage." 59 Early poems in If All the World and Love Were Young such as "Yoshi's House" and "Yoshi's Island 1", reflect this exact scene, of the child playing video games on the carpet of a living room, which has become a part of many people's collective memory. 60 In his review of the text, John Casteen praises the collection for being "aware of us", claiming "the power resident in these collections derive from specific gestures between the life the poet knows and the world the reader inhabits".…”