You know what’s funny about getting into retro gaming at 40? Everyone assumes you’re chasing some childhood memory, but I never had those memories to chase. When people talk about hearing that Nintendo startup sound in their dreams, I just nod along, but honestly? I first heard that sound in 2010, sitting in my living room in Denver with my daughter trying to explain why Super Metroid was going to change my life.
Growing up in rural Wyoming, video games weren’t even on my radar. My dad worked construction, mom cleaned houses, and we had four kids to feed. The Atari 2600 was something rich families had, like cable TV or a second car. I saw one once at my neighbor’s place – played Pac-Man for maybe twenty minutes – but it didn’t stick. We were outdoor kids by necessity. Hunting, fishing, working on my uncle’s ranch. Video games seemed like something for city kids with money to burn.
Fast forward thirty years. I’m going through my second divorce, questioning everything about my life choices, working sixty-hour weeks as a construction foreman and wondering what the hell I actually enjoyed doing besides work. My daughter Sarah was in college then, probably 20 or 21, and she kept sending me pictures of old games she was collecting. “Dad, you have to try Chrono Trigger.” “Dad, look at this mint copy of Castlevania I found.” I thought she’d lost her mind paying fifty bucks for a game older than she was.
But she was persistent. Brought her SNES over during Christmas break, set the whole thing up without asking, started playing this game called Super Metroid. I was half-watching from the kitchen, making coffee, occasionally glancing over. The atmosphere got to me first – this lonely, alien world with that haunting music. Then I noticed how the game never explicitly told you where to go, but somehow you always knew. As someone who’d spent decades reading blueprints and figuring out how things were built, the design clicked with me immediately.
“Let me try that,” I said, expecting to play for maybe ten minutes to humor her. Three hours later, I was still exploring Zebes, completely absorbed. Sarah was grinning like she’d just converted a heathen, which I guess she had. That night, after she went to bed, I snuck back downstairs and played until 4 AM. Had to work the next day with maybe two hours of sleep, but I couldn’t stop thinking about that game.
That’s when I realized what I’d missed. Not just individual games, but entire generations of creative expression. It’d be like someone showing you the Beatles for the first time when you’re 40 – except there were Beatles from the 70s, 80s, 90s, and 2000s, and they were all still available if you knew where to look.
Started buying systems after Sarah went back to college. SNES first, obviously. Then a Genesis because I kept reading about this console war I’d completely missed. Then NES because everything seemed to reference it. Then… well, it got out of hand pretty quickly. My friends thought I was having some kind of breakdown, showing up to work talking about games like Contra and Mega Man. “You know you’re 40, right?” my buddy Jake asked when I explained why I was excited about finding a working TurboGrafx-16. Yeah, I knew. But I also knew I’d spent forty years not doing things because other people might think they were weird.
The thing about experiencing these games without nostalgia is you can evaluate them honestly. Everyone told me I had to play Final Fantasy VII – it was life-changing, revolutionary, the greatest RPG ever made. When I finally played it, I thought it was… fine. Good, even. But revolutionary? Nah. The story was confusing, the graphics hadn’t aged well, and the pacing dragged in places. But suggest that to someone who played it at 13, and they’ll fight you. I get it now – they’re not really defending the game, they’re defending the memory of being 13 and having their mind blown.
On the flip side, some games that never get talked about turned out to be incredible. Picked up this random SNES cart called ActRaiser at a flea market for five bucks. The guy selling it said nobody ever bought it, probably wouldn’t work anyway. Took it home, cleaned it up, and discovered this amazing hybrid of action-platformer and city-building sim. Spent a week obsessed with it, then looked it up online and found this whole community of people who considered it a hidden masterpiece. Made me realize how much great stuff gets overlooked when everyone’s focused on the obvious classics.
Building a collection as an adult with actual money is different from being a kid saving allowance. I could afford to buy entire libraries at once, which was dangerous. Probably spent more on retro games in my first two years than I should admit. But I was trying to catch up on forty years of history, and patience has never been my strong suit. Sarah would call and I’d be like, “Found a complete-in-box copy of Earthbound today,” and she’d be like, “Dad, you bought three games yesterday.” Yeah, well, yesterday I didn’t know about Earthbound.
The PlayStation era was when things got really expensive. Everyone wants those RPGs – Final Fantasy games, Xenogears, Suikoden II. I watched a copy of Suikoden II sell for $300 on eBay and wondered if the people bidding had lost their minds. Then I played Suikoden I and understood. Still took me six months to justify spending that much on a single game, but eventually I caved. Worth every penny, even if I had to eat ramen for two weeks afterward.
What really got me was discovering how these games connected to each other, how you could trace ideas and innovations across decades. Playing through the Castlevania series chronologically, you could see how the developers learned and improved with each entry. Symphony of the Night didn’t come out of nowhere – it was the result of years of experimentation and refinement. Same with the Mega Man series, the Final Fantasy games, even Mario. Each entry built on what came before in ways I never would have understood if I’d played them as they came out.
Started documenting what I was playing partly to share with Sarah, partly to process all this gaming history I was absorbing. Turns out there are other people who came to retro gaming late, or who never had access to these games when they were new. My perspective as someone experiencing them fresh, without childhood memories attached, resonated with folks. Not everyone grew up with a Nintendo in their living room.
The community aspect surprised me. Found these retro gaming forums where people would spend hours debating the merits of different controllers, or arguing about whether the Genesis or SNES had better sound. As someone who approaches everything from a builder’s mindset – what works, what doesn’t, why – I found myself getting drawn into these discussions. Which games were built on solid design foundations versus which ones were held together with duct tape and good intentions.
My relationship with Sarah changed too. We’d always been close, but now we had this shared interest that bridged our age gap. She’d recommend games, I’d try them and give honest feedback, we’d argue about whether certain titles deserved their reputations. When she comes to visit now, we’ll spend entire weekends working through co-op games or taking turns on single-player RPGs. It’s time together we never had when she was growing up and I was working constantly.
Twelve years later, I’ve got most major consoles from the 80s through early 2000s, hundreds of games, and a dedicated game room that my friends think is weird but my daughter thinks is awesome. Still work full-time managing construction crews, still deal with deadlines and building codes and workers who call in sick on Mondays. But I’ve also built this connection to gaming history that I never had growing up.
The thing is, being late to something doesn’t mean you can’t participate in it or have valid perspectives on it. I missed the original experiences, the excitement of waiting in line for new releases, the playground arguments about Genesis versus SNES. But I can still experience these games, understand their historical importance, appreciate what they contributed to gaming. Sometimes approaching something without preconceptions gives you a clearer view of what’s actually there.
Current challenge is deciding how deep to go with certain systems. Neo Geo games cost more than my first car. Saturn collecting requires either luck or a second mortgage. PC Engine stuff is getting ridiculous. I have to make choices about what’s actually accessible and worth pursuing versus what’s just collecting for the sake of collecting. Also trying to actually play through my backlog instead of just acquiring more games, which turns out to be harder than it sounds when you see a mint copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga for a reasonable price.
Sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if I’d gotten into gaming as a kid like everyone else. Would I have the same appreciation for the craftsmanship, the evolution of design ideas, the way certain games influenced everything that came after? Maybe not. Coming to it fresh, without nostalgia coloring my view, let me see these games as they actually are rather than as I remembered them being. That’s valuable in a scene where everyone’s chasing their childhoods.
The best part? I’m still discovering new favorites. Just last month I found this weird Game Boy game called Trip World that nobody talks about. Beautiful animation, clever design, completely charming. Been gaming for twelve years now and there are still surprises waiting. That’s the thing about starting late – you never run out of history to explore.
Timothy discovered retro gaming at forty and never looked back. A construction foreman by day and collector by night, he writes from a fresh, nostalgia-free angle—exploring classic games with adult curiosity, honest takes, and zero childhood bias.
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