Old consoles are resisting, thanks to old-timers who keep the passion alive, but also because of the curiosity of younger generations. Old machines and retro video games are thus experiencing a new lease of life.
While the latest generation video games have certainly been popular during traditional end-of-year gifts, an old game console has found itself in the video game news for fall 2023: the Atari company is marketing the 2600+ , an official reissue of the eponymous console (also called VCS for Video Computer System) initially released in 1977 in the United States.
The official trailer announced the “return of an icon”. The new version, technically very different from the original and compatible with today’s televisions, imitates the design of the console as well as the original joystick. Compatible with vintage cartridges, its release is accompanied by the promotion of a new game recently published in cartridge.
How can we understand the current interest in old consoles, when many games are accessible in a dematerialized way and when in the field of video games, compared to other cultural industries, technological development is originally omnipresent and highly valued?
Dee reissued “cult” consoles
The Atari 2600 has a special status in the history of video games, analyzed by specialists in gaming platforms. The first cartridge console to have reached such a wide audience (27 million units distributed worldwide), it influenced the creativity of game designers, initiated genres and pushed the popularization of the medium. Its tumultuous history is also linked to notoriously mediocre titles and the economic difficulties of the sector in the early 1980s.
In the current dynamic of video game heritage, it is regularly presented in exhibitions on the history of the medium, and preserved in the Charles Cros collection of the National Library of France.
This re-release also follows in the wake of a long series of official recreations of popular home consoles, initiated by Nintendo’s NES Classic Mini in 2016, distributed more than 2 million copies worldwide. Like other industrial sectors, this type of product is a form of retromarketing, which innovates by drawing on the heritage of a brand, banking on a promise of authenticity and attempting to exploit nostalgia. of the first generations of consumers.
Public appropriation of “retrogaming”
The attachment to old consoles is not, however, reducible to this recent strategy; it has also constituted for several decades one of the facets of a video game culture with multiple appropriations.
Access to old games has in fact been made possible since the 1990s by communities of enthusiasts experienced in programming and hacking, who have made it possible, through alternative means such as software emulation (program imitating the operation of old machines) , to collect, archive and widely distribute classic games, thus participating in a dynamic of informal heritage of video games.
The cultural practices relating to these games, generally grouped under the term “retrogaming” – gaming practice, collection, archiving, information sharing and creative activities – reached a wider audience on the YouTube and DailyMotion contributing platforms from their launch in the 2000s.
As part of research in information and communication sciences on the mediations and mediatization of old video games, we observed through corpora of videos the way in which amateur contributors maintained the aura of these consoles. cults”, like the Atari 2600.
Discover old games, without a console, thanks to videos on the internet
It is through its games that a console and its specificities can be understood. Longplay type videos present games in their entirety, without commentary, allowing you to discover the contents and the particular aesthetic of the beginnings in motion.
Other types of videos, commented by videographers, allow you to discover a console and its games through a heterogeneity of information emanating from a recorded subjective experience. These productions, articulating memories, emotion, creativity and reflexivity, are part of the variety of contemporary nostalgic expressions.
Experienced videographers thus devoted videos to the Atari 2600 at the beginning of their channels, symbolizing for them the origin of video games, such as Joueur du Grenier (who by producing humorous content on retro games became one of of the most popular videographers in France) or the videographer Hooper. The latter, also a pioneer in the exploration of old game libraries, knew this console at the time, and dedicated a series of tribute videos to it. The Metal YouTuber Jesus Rocks (United States, 9 million subscribers), presented in his series hidden gems (hidden gems) a selection of games that he considers interesting to discover today, retrospectively rehabilitating the machine’s catalog.
Other smaller audience videographers from later generations are trying out these classics for the first time in 2023 by recording their reactions, like the game test Adventure (Atari inc., 1979, one of the first graphic adventure games), by the New Game Plus channel. Videographer Erin plays also recently demonstrated a series of games, including two-player games with videographer Mike Mattei, during a live session on Twitch.
Replay, but also preserve and exhibit
Other videos, favoring real shots, concern the material environment of old video games through the activity of collecting. It is not only a question of “displayed” pieces but also of preserving machines in working order, and copies of original games to favor a vintage experience in search of a “period experience” concerned with materiality .
The channel “The game is serious” details for example the packaging and instructions then the content of the game Joust (Williams electronics, 1983). The use of the original hardware allows these connoisseurs to find the sensation sought in the original interface: the videographer of “Old School is Beautiful”, for example, considers that the joystick is inseparable from the experience of Atari 2600 games .
Some fans don’t limit themselves to the vintage experience frameworks, modifying a console or creating new software. These appropriations make it possible to consider the practice of video games also from the angle of a technical culture, as well in terms of function, use as well as appropriation and power relations.
The videographer Doc Mc Coy, for example, offers a video tutorial to learn how to modify a VCS by installing a dedicated card in order to optimize the display quality. Furthermore, many amateur programmers create new games (such as “homebrews”, new unofficial creations, or “rom hacks”, modifying existing games) on these machines which are no longer used commercially, taking up the challenge of Technical constraints. The Canadian channel “The New Retro Show” has been devoting videos to the many games developed for the VCS for several years.
These contributions thus appear essential when one is interested in an old console: their authors have contributed to maintaining continuity with the past, and to nourishing the collective memory of video games. If such machines have continued to function, to hear their analog sounds, the clicking of their controllers and to display their minimalist graphics, it is also the work of players who have been able to go beyond the status of consumers to share online a video game culture detached from commercial news.
Boris Urbas, Lecturer in information and communication sciences, Bordeaux Montaigne University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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