Lack of retro gaming discussion - have your say here

'Retro gaming' is the least active section of our forum in terms of total posts, and there doesn't seem to be many of us regularly looking in here unfortunately.
I don't think this is due to a lack of interesting threads, as there are quite a few top quality topics within this section - but I feel they aren't receiving the attention they deserve.
Do you have any ideas on how we could get people more active in here? Should retro discussion be allowed in GGC?

Please post your thoughts, cheers!

Merging it with general games chat could be good, NeoGAF's retro game topics often get a lot of attention, which is probably partially due to that website's insane popularity, but also I do think having less sub-forums is often better and does encourage more discussion. But on the other hand it could conflict with the more modern stuff in GGC and leave some deserving threads going back several pages.

As long as we're able to continue retro chat I'm happy!

Yeah we need more retro talk here. Hopefully when we get the Retro podcast up that might kick start some retro discussions?

I'd like to talk more about modern retro, by that I mean games like MegaMan 9 and new gamers just picking up these retro releases via the wonders of downloads.

Retro Gaming has always been a bit of a graveyard. Condensing it down into one thread in GGC might be the way forward, maybe as a temporary experiment. I can see it being a very active topic as long as it has an enthusiastic creator at the helm.

Serious suggestions only please, Mocky.

Mine was serious.

To be honest if it was lumbered in with GGC I can quite easily see the threads disappearing at record pace.

Yeah, the truth could be that the majority of people here just don't really give a gooseberry fool about old games.
It feels kinda harsh every time I have to move a retro game thread from GGC to here though, it's like a death sentence for the thread.

Over on another forum I was on they had a really cool idea that got quite abit of attention

Basically every month we choose a specific console (SNES, Dreamcast etc..) then everyone interested and had the means to play it would recommend games and everyone would play this console for the whole month

Or another idea is everyone could start a certain game(say LoZ: OoT) at the same time and see how far everyone could get without using cheats/guides by the end of the month

Just a couple of ideas we could try

I thought Mockmaster's post was serious. There could be one (stickied) thread dedicated to retro game discussion that either changes its subject regularly (as the thread -sub- title changes) or has several people talking about several different games at once.

But magicmilner's ideas sound better. Most retro discussion just isn't in-depth enough, it's mostly along the lines of 'yeah, I played that years ago', and that's about it. Either people aren't too interested in going on about about their favourite games(s) or have a poor memory (like me).

Really, I don't see why the odd thread on an old game couldn't be started (and left in) General Games Discussion. When does a game become retro? Could I create a thread on Manhunt asking what people thought of it? I think if you're not up to date on current gaming like I'm mostly not then GGC isn't much use. (I mostly buy games years later when they're cheap)

edit: just occured to me there might be a virtua console discussion thread.

Don't want to see this section merged with GGC. Topics will die quicker than Fanboy's mums. Least in here if no one posts for a while it's easy to find the topics.

Johnny Blaze wrote:Don't want to see this section merged with GGC. Topics will die quicker than Fanboy's mums. Least in here if no one posts for a while it's easy to find the topics.

This. Well, to be honest I have two minds about this.

On one hand I think posting a retro-related topic on GGC has a chance of being noticed by most people, thus gets people to post on it if they wish to do so. But on other hand, there IS chance where it gets overshadowed by many gamers who isn't even that interested into retro games or just not bothering about em anymore & thus drops off from first three pages on board.

Maybe GRcade staff could do some kind of annoucement in GGC folder directing to Retro Section, to have those who are interested in discussing about retro games, to courage them to post thread there and hopefully it'll be one of active boards.

Still, if anything goes by from Gamesradar UK, which used to have many and many of members, Retro Games section was always quiet. I mean, look at this thread. It was created on Fri Jan 28, 2005, and is still going on until last day of Gamesradar UK. It really shows how quiet the section was due to not many new threads made & as well posts (so they get purged quicker, N64 Vs PSone kept going on because new members still managed to find it on first page, and thus bump it up no matter how old last post was) - so we may as well do nothing about this section, except try encourage people (especially new members) to post retro-related topic here.

sw26's Resident Evil retrospective thread should really be in here:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6437

It seems to be have been a bit of a hit in GGC though - 8 pages long with over 1700 views in a couple of weeks and still on the front page. It's been more active in terms of both views and posts than any thread in Retro Gaming since GRcade opened over half a year ago.

Poncho posted a topic about Grim Fandango a while back, in GGC. When he first posted it, quite a few people were replying to it. Then it got moved into Retro and the replies slowed down considerably. I felt it was a shame it got moved to Retro, since the discussion had really been kicking off beforehand.

How about we do a sort of trial; we keep Retro but if someone decides to post a retro thread in GGC instead, it stays there. If those threads sink like a stone and Retro is still used, we keep Retro. If they thrive, it's good evidence that Retro isn't needed.

Topics for popular series like Metal Gear, Sonic, RE etc will last longer in GGC due to them being more mainstream titles, but I would fear the lesser know ones would drift off the front page rather quickly if this section was merged with GGC. I regularly visit RGC as I know there will be topics I want to read here on older titles, it's not as if this area is hidden away in some subsection of the forum, it's visible to all from the index.

Retro Gaming is slower-paced, but there is still stuff worthy of page 1 that would have dropped off the radar in GGC as soon as a new game was announced.

RG is a slow-burner, but I think it still has its place. You would gain nothing from merging it.

Let's just keep it the same then.