One of my guilty pleasures is in retro gaming and retro computing. My basement storage room is filled with arcane devices and hundreds of games: a venerable Commodore 64, an Apple ][e rescued from a garage sale, a local family’s Apple ][gs that was donated to me, a MAME arcade cabinet, a Mattel Intellivision II - the list goes on indefinitely. I just can’t bear to see these things tossed out. Lately I’ve found myself playing Ultima VII: Serpent Isle on my 486 DX2/66 (now with a Roland MT-32!), and my 360 has sat untended for months.
But does playing these old games matter? Does writing about them matter? What value is there in sweatin’ to the oldies? Is it only for reminiscence or nostalgia? In this article I make a few arguments about retro gaming/computing that outline the meaningfulness of tying together the past and the future in the present..




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