Are you a Veteran or a Youngster?

It's almost been 24 years since the Super Famicom was released and when we say "retro", most of us probably still mean the same kind of retro as people in 2004: SNES, 16-Bit, Cartridges, even though it's been 10 years since then. With time passing by quickly and Millennials growing up, more people become interested in retro gaming just naturally because the audience grows, and the old audience sustains.

My question is, are you a

Veteran (someone who consciously experienced the big years of 2D-gaming, 1988-1996)
or are you a Youngster (you only became interested in old consoles way after they were discontinued)?

Personally, I am a Youngster I suppose. I started gaming on the GameBoy Pocket in 1997, got an N64 in 1999 and an Xbox in 2002. I had never played Dreamcast, Saturn, SNES, NES, Mega Drive or any other console until 2004, when I started collecting retro games. My hobby grew and grew, I became obsessed with classic arcade gaming, learning more about it, even studying Japanese. At this point, I made retro games part of my life through which I gained many great friends, real-life and virtual, and caught up on many great retro gaming memories by playing them with like-minded people and on arcade-conventions as if it's still 1995. I guess 'youngster' is really the best definition for me, because I was never in touch with any 2D-games (except for some freeware soft for DOS, back in the day) and yet I built my collection and passion for this genre later in life.

I would have loved to be born in 1975 or so, in order to experience the whole spectrum of gaming in its glory days. Looking at it in retrospect, however, also has some advantages, as I am not deceived into spending too much money on overpriced imports and I already know which games are good and which are not (my friend imported Rise of the Robots for $200 back in the day). I love to talk to veterans and hear their stories of the golden gaming era. When I was less knowledgable than I am now, I was however also often discredited by people who doubted my knowledge and passion as I was just a noob.

People like me become more numerous in presence online, and veterans are naturally vanishing because of increasing family and job obligations, understandably. It would be nice if some of you could share their stories of how they got into retro gaming (as this is basically a thread only for people who are playing/collecting retro games predominantly) and what they think of Veterans/Youngster-companions.

 

I guess I am a Vet ,

I started off with an Atari playing pitfall , next thing you knew I had a Nintendo playing Donkey Kong and Ninja Gaiden.

When I was growing up we didn't have money so I still remember this day renting the Super Nintendo from Blockbuster , my mom had to put a 400 check so us kids could play Mario and F Zero.

Thank god my mom was a cool drunk and her boyfriends liked Video games or I might have never played them.

 

I grew up with NES and Sega Genesis, I guess that makes me a Vet.
I have always been into those games, But from say 97 to 2009 was mostly using emulators, even though I still had my genesis and played it from time to time.
I started collecting and using real hardware about 4 years ago.

 

i guess i am a veteran. i have been gaming since i was five years old (1974). i have seen the gaming market and trends change for the last forty years. albeit i wasnt into the markets or trends until after i turned probably twelve years old. i have seen all the trends and even was gaming during the big bust of 1983/84. i still have a majority of all my consoles from the last 40 years or so with the oldest being my super pong console from 1974, my favorite the Vectrex from 1983 all the way up to my latest being the PS4.

i love gaming and i really loved the arcade scene from 1977/78 - 1984/85 till it just vanished. big into collecting also and finally built my new dream home with a bonus room soon to become my gameroom with full sized arcade machines, well once i locate my favorite arcade machines.

i enjoy hanging out and reading all gaming related info and posts. it doesnt matter if you been gaming a month, year or 40 years, we are all here for our favorite hobby and past time.

 

I'm a vet too. I was playing on the Sega Genesis since 1995 when I was 5 years old. Played the Genesis well into the early 2000 time. We finally got a Gamecube in 2005 and a N64 2006. I never played anything else until I grew up and moved out. Played so much Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario 64.

Once I got a stable source of income I went back to my retro roots and moved beyond them. I still have the original Sega Genesis I grew up on somewhere in my "museum". I always wanted an Xbox when I learned about it in early 2002 but my stepdad was (and still is) a major dick who hates technology. Only reason we had a Gamecube and N64 is because they were gifts to us from close family members. Sega Genesis was something my mother had before stepfather showed up. Birth father bought it for here back in 1990. It was among the last of the model 1 Genesis before Sega went to the model 2.

Now that I can do as I please I have finally gone back to my gaming roots as well as the other consoles I never got to play on growing up. Finally got my Xbox around mid 2012. Took 10 years but I FINALLY GOT IT!!!

So yeah. Veteran for me.

 

@sonicdude
I think veteran only qualifies if you lived through the era. I played tons of old games in my life, but yet I'm a youngster as I never consciously experienced the era 1988-1995 from the view of a gamer, which is what veteran refers to in this thread.

 

so I'm an ace veteran then

 

I am definitely a youngster, I got into a lot of old consoles years after they were released. I started gaming on a Sega Genesis when I was 4 or 5 years old, later when I was 6 I got a lime green gameboy color and both Poke'mon games. I found a Turbo Grafx in a thrift store when I asked them for SEGA. My parents didn't buy me alot of games, I rarely ever went to a Funkoland in White Plains, but I do remmember getting Super Mario Deluxe for GBC and Gold and silver version. I actually had a lot of Genesis games too but I only got to use a N64 at my cousins house, they had all the best games. Like Wave Racer, Mario 64, Yoshi's Story and Smash Bros. Much later on they gave me the N64 and the games which I now cherish, because my aunt used to babysit me and I would spend hours with it. That N64 and a few genesis games are the only things I have of my gaming youth. Someone stole my green gbc.

When I was a tween my mom bought me a PS2 and I mostly rented games from Hollywood video, I also had a Gamecube but no Xbox. I realized 4 years ago when I got a good job and became a hard core collector that I had traded in most of my PS2, PS1 and Gamecube games to Gamestop for newer ones when I was a teenager. The only PS2 game I have from when I was a a kid is Batman Vengeance, I also found Pikmin 2 and I never traded in Pokemon xd for Gamecube.

Now I collect games for every retro system because I love sprite animation and 2D games(it's what I grew up with). For the Genesis my favorite games were Quackshot, Volleyball and Jurassic Park. I'm a youngster because I didn't use a Dreamcast until 2010-2011, I got a Saturn a little earlier. I had a NES around 2007 but it hardly worked and I threw it away(before I knew to replace capacitors and pin connector), I actually bought a top loader 2 years ago and it is really sweet).

I've collected every system except Neo Geo AVS and CD, I might get a 3DO but I doubt it. I know I won't buy a CDI. I spend alot of time on retro gaming but I spend alot more on modern. I'm able to play anything on any of my cartridge systems thanks to Krikzz but I will probubly never stop hunting for rare complete games. I am a youngster on the scene but there are a lot of other gaming cats who don't know anything about retro gaming. Plus we all know retro games, 32-bit and lower are much more difficult than today's games. I can't say I'm a veteran but I am a proud retro gamer.

When I was in Elementary School I had a birthday party at an Arcade in Yonkers with pizza it was seriously badass. Free tokens for everybody. I wish I could find the pictures.

 

Well I'm not a 70s child, I'm and 80s the first console in my home when I was a kid was the wood atari 2600 I remember my favorite game vangard and second asteroids. After that my dad bought me the Nintendo and I want a Sega master, so I have to go to my friend house to play the Master System. It may sound stupid but I still play the atari 2600 using a genesis controller cause I hate the atari joystick. From that I got the mainstream consoles from my parents and I work cleaning yards and cars to make some money to buy consles like the sega cd and the saturn even the atari jaguar that I still have those from my days.

 

I remember my parents buying an nes when I was in ... the first grade. He bought it from a co worker that was upgrading to the SNES. I started collecting everything as a kid until I finally sold everything so I could by a Playstation. Still have the playstation. A couple of years ago I realized I needed to pick up a few games that I missed and now here I am importing tons of stuff from Japan and collecting dev stuff.

 

I was 12, when I got my SNES ( I am born in 1982, do the math). So am I a veteran , or a youngster ? I really do not know. Cause I did have an Amiga 2000 with screen and the likes before the SNES, I also had an SMS (Sega Master System). Before that. But again I first got them in the 90s . Because my family did not have money either. And I know that for a fact. But quite simply, it was smashing great back in the day playing some SF2 and SF2 Turbo and KI , coming home from being bullied.

 

My first memory was when the nes was released,going over to my friends house and seeing super mario bros for the first time was awesome,ending up getting one soon after that.But when the snes came out that's all I really played and its still my favorite console to this day.

 

I've been playing videogames since the early 80's. I remember playing Pole Position arcade machine and my brother's Atari 2600, probably around 1984. My first console was a Master System and it was a christmas gift from my parents.

Guess i'm lucky to have lived during the great era or arcade games and the whole evolution of home consoles. And yes, i miss those times.

 

Im definitely a youngster, born in '96 so its impossible for me to have experienced the "glorious 2D days" hands-on.
I started playing videogames with my cousins gameboy color and pokemon yellow when I was 3 I think, the player was named ASC (for whatever reason) and I still play all my pokemon games with that name ._.
My cousin also had a chipped PS1, where we played a lot together, but the push over the edge was when my dad bought a PSone together with crash team racing and a demo disc (it has the sonycode SCED-03175), after that, I grew up with crash, tigger from winnie the pooh and spyro.
After getting a PS2 in, I think, 2006 (it was the very first slim released in germany), I mostly played games, the collecting just started recently (and never intentional) when I got a second PS2 (to play games off HDD), ending in me getting most of the consoles of my cousin (so the GBC and PS1 that started it all are now mine).
However, I never really got into consoles older than the PS1, probably because I made my gaming baby-steps with the same and never really looked into oldskool 2D gaming.
Not having seen the glory of the 80s, Im still happy that I got into gaming at that very early age, allowing me to witness the rise of 3D and a pretty vast change in the priorities of game developers (GFX and reality being at the top of the list for example), and maybe I will get to know consoles like the SNES and co. later, but they will never dethrone my two favourites (PS1 and 2)

 

By that criteria I would be a vet. I started gaming with Pac-Man on the Atari 2600 when I was 3 (1985) and gradually moved up with consoles and computers from that moment onward. By the time I was entering elementary school, Nintendo had revived the industry after the crash. I wasn't a spoiled kid and had a lot of siblings and cousins, so trading and borrowing games back and forth allowed me to experience the majority of console libraries without breaking the bank. The NES and Game Boy gave me many fun memories throughout my childhood. The heated 16-bit era felt like a golden age where there were great games all abound at all times. Unfortunately, that kind of feeling will probably never return as modern consoles are more worried about profits than innovation.

 

I'm a Vet too
Never had any of the 2d consoles.
Back in the days it was relatively rare to have a console, where I come from.
1 in 5 kids had some sort of video game.
My first experience was when I visiting a family friend and they had this early PC sort of thing with PacMan, this was in 1993 I guess. It was so cool with all the colours and the funky computer sounds and music.

The next thing was a NES, that was also at friends place. Don't remember what the game was.

And then finally in 1995 our family went to our mothers friend and her son had a Mega Drive.
I remember we were playing Aladdin.
Wow, that game blew my mind with those true-to-the-movie-graphics.
We kids started going to this guy all the time to play aladdin

Then we moved and the neighbours kid had a PSX, around 1998, the whole neighbourhood's kids used to come to his place.
We'd play Crash Bandicoot and Tekken, some times fights broke out for who got to play lol
Then in 2001 or 2002 my cousin grew up and gave his PSX to me.
The games that define PSX imho are RR4, Tekken 3, Crash Bandicoot series.
Played through all the Syphon Filter and loved it, Medal of Honor 1 and Medal of Honor Underground was awesome.

Later, in 2006/2007 I bought a Dreamcast, that thing was something I'd wanted for a long, long time.

 

Youngster here. We had a Mega Drive and an original Game Boy home and played that until we got a Dreamcast 14 years ago. I'm from a quite poor neighbourhood so most of my friends also had a Mega Drive or a SNES, when most people in other parts of the world had a Playstation since years ago and were waiting for the PS2. That's why I've always liked retro games and despite being a youngster, grew up with 1990 era games.

 

I'm reluctant to call myself a vet, because I feel I might have been too young to really appreciate what I was playing when I started.

I lived in a small fishing community where it was tough (if not nearly impossible) to get games without leaving town. Me and my brother had a Sega Master System (this was around '93 or '94), which my father bought from one of his friends, and I didn't even know what a "Nintendo" was. I spent the first few years of my life playing Double Dragon, Bomber Raid, Spy vs. Spy, and some other random games... oh, and I guess the snail maze game (I'm sure most of you with a master system know that one). I still have them all, and we never received any new games for it. Actually, I kinda irritates me that I never got to play Sonic back then.

Eventually, we moved to Saskatchewan, and we finally got a Super Nintendo with Yoshi's Island (it was a bundle with a bunch of colorful Yoshi's on the front). So, that was pretty awesome. I experienced most of the great stuff on SNES around that time, like Super Mario World, A Link to the Past, Mario Kart, Donkey Kong Country, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy "II," and so on. If nothing else, I definitely don't feel like I missed out on anything.

I got a PS1 eventually, but honestly, I didn't become a hardcore gamer until the Gamecube era. As a result of moving around all the time, and not being able to keep a tight group of friends, I became pretty introverted, and therefore had a lot of free time to dedicate to gaming.

 

I guess I'm a vet, but I wouldn't call myself one - I got into consoles when my lil' brother got a SNES, but I had been gaming on the Atari ST and PC for some years before that. The NES I was gifted for christmas '13 is the first one I've ever owned though, so I'm very far removed from e.g. an Atari 2600, which is what to me is "true retro".

It just feels weird/wrong when people call things like the N64 (which was the first console I bought with my own money, shortly after launch) or even the GameCube "retro"... Even though technically they're right.

 

I am not sure what I should describe myself as... I was born in 1987 and started playing video games consciously, like as "those games on the computer that are fun!", in... ca. 1992 I'd say, on various Commodore computers (mainly the C64 and A500).

Several years afterwards, in maybe 1996 and likely because of two things - the decline of Commodore and the Amiga platform and hearing about Nintendo, the SNES and the Game Boy - we got our original brick Game Boy, on which I played mainly Zelda: Link's Awakening. I also played SNES (namely Goof Troop) at a friend's house sometimes around that time, and I started absorbing everything Nintendo from magazines and such, with a side dish of Sega (ex. heard of Sonic but couldn't play it anywhere, I think, and the Saturn looked sooo cool!).

I don't think we got many other games for GB - just Tetris, Mario & Yoshi, Donkey Kong Land? - until Pokemon Red/Blue hit Europe in 1999. Had a GB Pocket by that point, too, because mom broke the brick trying to open it to fix some missing pixel columns on the screen.

Anyway, by 1998/1999 I was as deep into console gaming as a poor 12 year old could be. I was a bit of a Nintendo fanboy, hating on Sony and all that (but by now I have a bunch of PS1, PS2, a PSP and want a PS3 ), but at the same time admiring that white, 900DM expensive Japanese import with the orange swirl, that I'd never be able to afford. This generation was, I think, also gonna be the first one in which I had a new home console during its retail lifetime, namely the GameCube, which I got for Christmas in 2002. Although the N64 might count, because I got that Christmas 2000? I must've also gotten my first Saturn sometime before the Cube, because I distinctly remember playing Virtual On vs. my best friend at the time, the day I got it even.

From there on, I got one of the aformentioned white machines, the Dreamcast - but very cheaply and in PAL, a year or two after Sega went 3rd party -, I got a SNES at a flea market, I even got my first import console around 2003 or so - a Bandai SwanCrystal with one of the Digimon RPGs.

I also gotta say to be perfectly honest, without emulation and piracy, I might've never gotten/bought some of those systems or the games I played on them. I would've never gotten that WonderSwan without Cygne or WSCamp, I probably wouldn't have been compelled enough to get a SNES without having tried ex. Super Metroid, Mario World and Yoshi's Island, Chrono Trigger, or Super Puyo Puyo 2 - first played that one in 2001 or thereabouts on ZSNES; "Meeh, meeh" "I can't understand you!" "Dame, dame..." or somesuch, damn sheep...

tl;dr: I don't know. I think I'm a youngster, but my roots are just barely in the veteran's days?