The Retro Paradox

Retrogaming is a phenomenon that has been gaining ground for over a decade, driven by the desire to replay the gems of the recent past. Replay is a new magazine about old video games: it comes out bimonthly, runs 26 pages, and boasts a design quality that stands out.

The project's editor, Juan Ignacio Papaleo, is 37 years old, a graphic designer -- which explains the magazine's quality -- and a retrogamer. He decided to embark on his own editorial odyssey with Replay. A feat that deserves a standing ovation, because publishing in print in 2016 is harder than crossing a minefield blindfolded with a broomstick up your ass.

Through a successful crowdfunding campaign on the platform idea.me, around 415 people backed the project, reaching the far-from-negligible sum of 40,000 pesos. In early November, Replay arrived in the hands, at the doors, and in the mailboxes of all its supporters and readers.

Nostalgia is the first thing you feel when you see the magazine. And it's inevitable. Replay's slogan is: "The magazine for the 8- and 16-bit generation." The publication is laser-guided like a missile straight at the most cherished memories of a '90s childhood surrounded by video games. But is there anything beyond nostalgia?

8-bit consoles included the Family Game or NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) and the Sega Master System -- which practically never made it to Argentina. Fun fact: the NES and the Family Game are the same console, even though, for marketing reasons, they had different names and designs depending on the country where they were distributed.

16-bit consoles were the SNES -- or Super Nintendo -- and the legendary SEGA. Consoles that left a lasting mark on the childhood of everyone born at some point in the '80s who grew up during the '90s in the midst of Argentina's Menemist state of grace, convertibility, and social disintegration. The 8- and 16-bit designations come from the processing architecture of the console's chip. A console is a computer. But for playing games.

Retro vs. Classic

In his book Retromania, Simon Reynolds tries to find the causes behind the music industry's obsession with its recent past. We can find similarities between his analysis and the world of video games.

Reynolds distinguishes two categories that we generally use as synonyms but aren't: retro and vintage. Retro is a new product that emulates a product from the past. For example, a game from 2016 with the aesthetics and gameplay of one from '92. Vintage, on the other hand, is something old. A Family Game cartridge from '92 is vintage. So when we talk about retrogaming, we should really say vintage gaming. It might seem like a trivial distinction, but it isn't. There's a key there to understanding how things work.

For example, when we listen to Paranoid by Black Sabbath, we don't say we're listening to retro music. The same goes for books. Reading Ulysses by James Joyce is reading a classic. Nobody talks about retro literature. The difference in common usage between retro and classic is that the first term carries a pejorative bias. As if what common sense labels as retro were kitsch or had no value of its own. With 44 years of history, video games are already an independent artistic expression with their own intrinsic value. And we're now in a position to list and enjoy the classics within this art form.

There's something about the video games from this generation that makes us play them again.

Simon Parkin, a journalist for the New Yorker, argues that the retro phenomenon is partly shaped by video games' tendency toward obsolescence. With each new generation of software and hardware, the previous generation of video games becomes obsolete. While this has happened in music and film, in the case of games it depends not only on the medium but on the computer or console that interprets that medium. So video games have a sort of built-in disposition to be forgotten and replaced by the newest, the best, the next generation.

In the act of rescuing the past, there's an attempt to rediscover the value of each game, the value it contributed in its context, the fact that it was a link in the industry's evolution, and the possibility that it might be unique. The limitations of each platform influenced game design and aesthetics in particular ways. They produced unique, unrepeatable pieces. This is the inherent value of each generation beyond the nostalgia effect.

Super Mario World, Sonic, Contra, Tetris, Zelda, Castlevania, and many more titles are still considered classics a quarter of a century after their release because of how brilliant they were despite the constraints of their era. Playing them is still fun.

The Retro Paradox

Replay is based in Jose Marmol, which places it in the noble tradition of self-published magazines from the southern suburbs, like Burra and NAN. It can be found at newsstands and various points of sale listed on their website, where it can also be purchased.

Juan Ignacio decided to create the publication primarily because he couldn't get the Retrogamer magazine at his newsstand. Retrogamer has been published since 2004 in England and is the genre's benchmark. But as he immersed himself in the small but active local retrogamer scene, he discovered two values that, in my view, can serve as Replay's pillars.

On one hand, Juan Ignacio highlights in some way the paradox that something from the past can be current -- the retro paradox: "All of this is super active today. You can have 'old' games you never owned via emulators, which are essentially new to you. The Nave project is an arcade video game made here in Argentina, but it's new, it's from today. The expos are happening now, they're here, you can go. It's not something old, not everything is old -- on the contrary, it's all new."

And on the other hand, he emphasizes a very local component that has to do with how '90s gamer culture was absorbed in these parts: "There's something really cool in Argentina, which we also think is worth talking about, and that's that a lot of alternative stuff made it here. Since we didn't have official Nintendo, we all had clones and some insane bootlegs. For example, Mario hacks from all over the place, and tons of games that were all hacks with labels. They were wild. Not having the official stuff is actually great because there are tons of bizarre things, plus you can get all those cartridges that are gems and are relatively cheap."

I believe it's in these two values where Replay can make an interesting contribution to the gamer scene. It showcases the present-day relevance and return of classic gaming without the stigma of retro, helping us understand the inherent value of games from this era; the unique value of bootleg games, pirate culture, hacking, and video game modification in an almost punk gesture that connects these efforts with other black markets: Chinese LEGOs, the resin figure toymaker scene, and mockbusters in cinema.

These are Replay's fundamental contributions to culture at large. Something much more than a simple nostalgic gesture.

This article was originally published in NAN on November 23, 2016.