It’s fair to say that everyone has their standout favourite video-game from their childhood, whether it’s Sonic, Spyro or huddling around the N64 with your friends to play Goldeneye.
For me it has always been Pokémon. Since getting an original Gameboy along with Pokémon Yellow for Christmas back in 2000, I’ve spent far more time than I care to admit completing the Pokédex. So much so that I had exhausted my interest in the series. A few years had passed since I had played the games, between balancing work and playing other games I hadn't found much time for them. That was until I found an old Gameboy Advance in my local CEX with a copy of Fire Red in the window.
I was immediately reminded of when my parents had sold my older games, including my Gameboy for a mere £5, something that still pains me to this day. It was then that I knew full well what my weekend was going to consist of.
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Armed with several packs of batteries and a screen light, I began my playthrough. Immediately I was thrown back to when I used to run through Kanto with incredibly questionable Pokémon in my party, spending countless attempts trying to sweep Brock's Onix with just a Pikachu.
Whilst running through Viridian Forest I realised that the wealth of sentimentality we get from retro games is what makes them so popular.
They remind us of days spent trying not to dislodge the link cable during deep trade negotiations with our friends, throwing eachother off of rainbow road or frantically running through jungle paths from raging boulders.
They have become time machines in their own right. We can hold hundreds if not thousands of our hard-played memories in our hands, all on one humble games cartridge. Having this physical representation of our efforts serves as a proud symbol of our achievements. There is a sense a reliability that comes from revisiting our childhood favourites, a ‘what you see is what you get’ if you will. The trend of DLC and microtransactions has often left players dissatisfied with the quality of the games they buy. Modern titles have frequently been released with base content that feels unfinished, only to then charge their communities for additional features at a later date.
It seems that the games which most often stand the test of time are the ones that we can always rely on. The timeless classics that can always be revisited, the masterfully written stories that immerse players in a wealth of content or simply those that let us launch adoring fans from very high places.