Do you know retrogaming, this passion for old games? In Cannes, a festival was dedicated to them this Friday, January 3. The opportunity for the youngest players to discover the first video games that have become classics, but also for people in their forties and fifties to relive their youthful adventures.
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It’s a real machine to go back in the history of video games. At Retro Gamers festival organized by the MJC Giaume in Cannes, some young players came to discover machines they have never known: the visible pixels and jerky movements could frighten, but most are on the contrary delighted to take charge of Pac-man , the first Sonic or even Tekken 3, now classic titles. “It’s stylish, I only play on current consoles, confides a young person gamer. I’ve never tried this console before, and it’s good!”
The games are really good. Today we are very dependent on technology which has evolved a lot and we are not necessarily able to enjoy what we loved before
“We wanted to give young people who didn’t know the consoles of the time what children in the 1990s played,” admits Raphaël Parmentier, director of the MJC Giaume leisure center.
Other visitors come to find the consoles. “I used to play these things when I was young. We don’t find consoles like that anymore,” assures another player in front of an arcade machine, nostalgic.
Having fallen into it when he was little, Nicolas is one of these retrogamers, that is to say, players who are passionate about titles and consoles that are no longer published. With his daughter, he set his sights on an Atari 2600, produced until 1992. “My parents gave this one to me forty years ago. It’s fun to be able to play with that again,” he smiled.
The retrogaming has become a popular phenomenon among adults, with the first players now becoming in their forties and fifties. “It’s trendy, like many things vintages, underlines Geores Galinier, president of the Gamers du Grenier association. But for us, it’s not nostalgia! It’s been our hobbies since we were fifteen, so we’ve never really stopped!”
With Dominique Poulain.
