Reliving 10 years old: Descriptive Insights into Retro Gaming

As video games and players age, some are drawn to retro titles (defined here as games the 1980s–early 2000s), with nostalgia and the comfort of positive social memories potentially supportingwell-being. However, little is known about naturalistic retro gaming—who plays them, and whattime periods they revisit. We analyze 660 players’ logged session histories on Nintendo Switchclassic consoles (e.g., Nintendo Entertainment System, Nintendo 64), totalling 12k hours. Wefind that retro gaming increases with age until around 40; that people tend to revisit consolespopular when they were 10 years old (personal nostalgia) but that some play games predatingtheir birth (historical nostalgia); and that there are no stable differences in wellbeing betweenthose that do (not) play retro games. Retro gaming may yet have more localized or short-termimplications for psychosocial health in older adults and is set to significantly impact the futureof the games industry.