Mine is video games. Like, I’ve sworn to myself that I was going to cling to that until at least 10 or 15 years while I still have the cognitive ability to play them. But it’s mid-30s and they say the 30s is generally where your love for video games go to die unless you’re in the industry or having some working part involving games.
I’m having a harder time picking up a controller and getting excited for any game. I know I’m isolated by choice which is part of the problem, but, I can’t even get that worked up for nostalgic games that I grew up with.
To be fair, the video games industry has turned into a myopic late-stage capitalist hellscape, so I think it’s kinda hard to continue to love what’s on offer these days
I find that this is mostly a AAA-title thing.
Yeah, the Indie-Market is at its peak. I don’t care about any of the large titles/licenses, but there are a lot of gems out there
Yeah it’s actually an incredible time to be an enjoyer of games if you ignore that AAA+ space. If you look at the “III” space (or mid sized dev studios putting out mid level games) it’s kind of where many of the “big” game dev shops were at in the 90-00s.
So if you miss the popular games of this era, then you should be looking at studios that operate at a similar size/ethos. Indies, in other words.
That’s where those games are now. The good games.
Sorry I totally agree with that caveat! I grew up in the ps1/2 golden era and didn’t really get into indie games back when I was into gaming.
I disagree. There are still tons of games available that are amazing and aren’t developed by companies that enable shitty behavior and decision making, but you definitely have to shift through the chaff to find them.
This right here. I’m getting more and more disillusioned with my consoles, more into indies, and way into retro. I’m currently working on a self-contained arcade stick with a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W in it that will have USB and HDMI on the outside so I can teach my 12-year-old stepson what it’s like to get his ass beaten in Street Fighter II.
I also got us a Retron 3 HD and I regularly scour the local retro shops for good NES/SNES/Genesis games. He’s currently obsessed with Dragon Warrior 1.
Please do share the instructions once you get it up and running.
In case I forget, I can give you the gist (all the extension cords are internal just to get the jacks exposed outside the case):
Main hardware:
Power:
Video:
Control (waiting for these to arrive):
Basically that particular fight stick opens very neatly and includes a decent amount of open space where the Pi Zero can fit along with a big (~7x120mm) slot out the front that the cable goes out. Once I get all the right cables run, it should be easy peasy. The 3D printed part is mostly to keep it from just having three little cable jacks hanging loose out the front, but if you’re not a neat freak, you can get it done with 2-3 online orders and an afternoon.
What a cracking summary! Thanks.
Let me know if you try it! I’m pretty excited. I’m setting Retropie to boot straight into a selection of arcade games on MAME so you’ll just plug in power, plug in HDMI to whatever TV, press the button, and after ~2 minutes of boot, you can fire up Golden Axe or Darkstalkers.
I started playing chess on lichess, it has tonnes of tutorials and an AI you can set the level of. Really helped scratch my itch.
I’m in my 30s but I think this is the real reason why I’ve quit playing games as half the big games out there are sequels of games that first came out 20+ years ago.