Or do you pick up an old game, also when you never played it? How does that went?
Which games does not stand test of time and which do?

For example I play Heroes of Might and Magic II, but because of nostalgia, I really don't know how the game is standing. I could give it 5 star review, but this opinion is heavily skewed by my happy childhood memories.

On the other hand, I've never played Eye of the Beholder as a kid. There, I could give a proper review after my recent playthrough. (I'd liked it by the way, but I'm lazy to play it without the automapper. The ending was also pretty abrupt.)

The only one of my old favorites from my youth that I even have in my GOG library is Daggerfall, and only because it came free with Morrowind -- and I technically haven't even played the GOG version anyway (though I do have the Wiwiland version installed and ready to go should I once again feel the urge to delve into some insanely labyrinthine subterranean complexes).
As a general rule, I don't really feel the need to revisit the games I already played to death back then; after all, UIs (as well as graphics and game mechanics and stuff, obviously) have come an awfully long way since the '90s, and I'd rather leave my fond memories of most of these old titles relatively untarnished.

I play old games because they're good games (though I have a higher tolerance for not-so-good old games than some people). In fact, sometimes old games do things you don't see in newer games, or do things better than newer games do.

In fact, there are times when an older game is far better than later games in the series. As an example, I consider Final Fantasy 5 (a game I didn't play until years after its original release due to the lack of an English release at the time) to be by far the best Final Fantasy game, surpassing its successors.

Nostalgia makes objective reviewing difficult, Some games were great only in their times(and in fans minds of course) but now their mechanics, graphics, etc. are old and make game unplayable for modern player. There are also old games that are great today too and sometimes are unbeaten by newer games (with better graphics and mechanics) like "The Longest Journey" or "Atlantis". Now mainstream games are expensive to make so developer have to make them popular so if you have original likings you may not find anything for yourself but not so long ago games were made by people with passion (not so limited by budget and greedy publishers) who were creating art and that's why old games are WORTH a try. I play old games because they have soul and are better than most modern, overpriced, short, easy, recurrent, made for casuals, made by greedy developers/publishers products.


P.S. Besides, old games are cheap and don't need strong PC.

I play old games if they're still fun (or I think they will still be fun), but I only have a limited threshold as far as dated and awkward design goes. If I find a game's mechanisms work against my enjoyability I tend to drop it right then and there. It doesn't matter whether I've had any fondness for a game in the past. If it's "unfun" now it goes directly into the pile of rejects. Because nostalgia has bitten me in the ass on several occasions, I tend to be very picky as to the old games I pick up these days.

Yes, all the time, especially for N64 and SNES games. I must admit to shamelessly to loading up Youtube videos/sound tracks of the music and gameplay just to feel that nostalgia I once had. All vaild points for which I must agree. Well said sir!

How old?
Judging by the fact that we are on an old games store, and that almost all companies now re-release old games/consoles I would say there is a big demand for it, nostalgia or not. Sure today's games have lots of flashy shaders and he graphics and such like, but are they better than older stuff? Cod for instance is a big one which went from being a fun ww2 shooter, to being a linear 12 year old USA shouting anti rest of world snooze fest. Is that improvement? As with anything there are peaks and troughs, there are some great games now, as there were then.

No, I play old games because they are usually good, whereas modern games are garbage ~90%+ of the time (especially modern AAA games, which are almost always the worst games out there). I think the opposite is true in terms of of how you mean that statement. Mechanics and UI have come a long way alright - but by becoming much worse in modern games.

When I think of "modern mechanics and UI," what comes to mind is:

- UI is clunky, awkward, stripped-down, and dumbed-down in order to work with console controllers

- Mouse and keyboard controls are terrible, because devs only programmed the game to work properly with console controllers

- Can't rebind keys

- In general, the game is as dumb as it can possibly be because that is how publishers/developers of modern games think that their games are supposed to be

Graphics in modern games are often worse too. I.e. Diablo 3 has way worse graphics than Diablo I and Diablo II, because the first two games are gritty and horrific as they need to be, whereas Diablo 3 is bright and happy and looks like it belongs in the My Little Pony or Barbie universe. Doom (2016) also uses a My Little Pony color palette and art style, which therefore makes it have much worse graphics than Doom I and Doom II and Doom 3. I have no idea why every review I've seen of Doom (2016) was written and/or performed (for video reviews) by Yes Men who lie and say that Doom (2016) is just like Doom I and Doom II even though it is not. And those Yes Men also never comment on Doom (2016)'s cartoony & bright graphics which are absolutely nothing like the real Doom games.

I can think of almost no reasons why new games would be preferable to old games, with perhaps a few rare exceptions of new games that are actually good.

I don't really play for nostalgia, as that means games mainly from my childhood, meaning something like Commodore Amiga games or older. I consider most of the pre-Amiga (and even many Amiga) games quite crude by today's standards that I don't enjoy them anymore. I am not referring to the graphics, but the user interface, playability etc.

However, I might try them out though, to refreshen my memory how the games were, but I don't normally start playing them seriously, like trying to finish them or anything. Most of the oldies I play are games that I may have heard of (and maybe even owned myself for a decade or two, but never got around to play them), and I am finally ready to play them.

Also, in some cases I might try to play some old game for historical reasons, to see where the roots of some famous game series were and how it developed from there. For instamce, I am finally thinking of putting my teeth into the HOMM series... and I am actually going to start from the first HOMM game, to see how it started. It might be though that if I find the UI and playability too crude, I might play it only slightly and then move to the next game.

Same happened with TES games. I've never played any of them before, but I decided to start from the first game (TES: Arena). I finished it, moved to Daggerfall, but after awhile came to a conclusion that Daggerfall is too painful to play, so I think I am not going to play it anymore but move to Morrowind.

EDIT: When talking about "old games", it kinda blows my mind to think that games like The Witcher, Portal and Mirror's Edge are already a decade old games. I don't consider them old myself, to me they have quite modern graphics and playability. Then again I consider even Half-life 2 a pretty recent game (technology-wise), but then I think it has received some major graphical updates along the years (like the one that came with the free Lost Coast add-on), so maybe it could be almost considered a remake of itself.

Not only no. A lot of these old games still hold up, and often offer something that simply can't be found among any release from the last 10 years at least. Perhaps most of all the nostalgia helps you to look past, or even enjoy the old graphics and sound, which I imagine can easily put off gamers that started with incomparably better looking games.

I usually don't play old games, if we are talking about older than 5 years. Most of the old games are really bad and often painful to play, I can't think of one old game that I liked without having the nostalgia flavor from playing the game in my younger years.

If it's a serie then I can appreciate the older ones more and willing to play through them for the story. Those games that seem to suffer the most from old age are FPS and Strategy games. I used to think older games were much better, then I replayed some of my favs and they weren't that great as I remembered.

I play them because as a kid I never got to play those games.

I find that 5 year limit quite restricting. Games like Portal, Mirror's Edge and The Witcher are more or less a decade old games (twice of that 5 years). Do you really feel they are painful to watch and play due to their age?

I guess I myself at this point consider pre-2000 games old (as in that it might deter me from my enjoyment of the game), and even that doesn't apply to all games.

Games from the 80s and very early 90s I consider more such that the game has to be quite exceptional that I don't mind its archaic user-interface, maybe bad 3D graphics etc. And some genres age much worse than others, e.g. racing games and flight sims.

Truth to be told, I don't enjoy the pre-Quake era FPS games anymore either, like Doom, Duke3D, Blood etc. i just feel their fake pseudo-3D engine just gets on my nerves nowadays, you can't even watch up or down (without the view distorting heavily). So when e.g. GOG re-releases some older pre-Quake FPS game (using the Build engine or similar), I am usually not interested because I know I will probably never play it anyway.

I play Diablo 2 because it's still active, addictive and fun

Star Wars Rebellion - nothing quite like it

Star Wars Racer - most fun multiplayer racing game ever in history of mankind

Half Life 1 LAN multiplayer - funniest multiplayer shooter

so for me, it's the gameplay. Most new games can't give me the gameplay I want

This, exactly this is why I prefer old games. The Rebel Galaxy freebie in the recent sale for example. The console controls irked me off instantly. Hold "E" for warp? With so many keys available I now need to hold some key.

Also graphics are another point. Aesthetics beside, new games they are usually too graphically "busy". I am lost in all the colors and motion and overlook the important information.