Adam Rolnick from People Play Games
A retro-gaming store owner believes a certain Nintendo someone is just the superest.
Ryan Smith
Welcome to Defend Your Taste, wherein Chicago's cultural curators go to bat for the art they love. This time around, The A.V. Club chats with Adam Rolnick, owner of the newly christened classic gaming shop People Play Games. Sandwiched between old Playstations and Power Gloves, Rolnick continues to seek out what to him is the pinnacle of modern gaming: the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.
The A.V. Club: The original Nintendo has the bigger nostalgia factor and the Wii has the newfangled motion controls. What gives with your SNES choice?
Adam Rolnick: It's the best gaming system with the largest variety of quality games. It has a ton of great roleplaying games, action-adventure, Mario, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Zelda… it's got all the good ones on there. The original Nintendo was classic, but I wouldn't consider it the best system because the games are a bit limited.
AVC: Are retro-gamers just living in the past?
AR: Maybe, but why do you think Nintendo has so many older titles available for download on the Wii? Because people still like them. Memories are a big part of it. I think that's how a lot of people think about People Play Games. They come in and it's like a timewarp. They come in to remember their childhood.
AVC: Super Nintendo games seem simple, though, compared with today's games.
AR: Good for kids? Yes. Simple? Not necessarily. There are plenty of games that happen to be deep and complex for SNES. War and military games, shooting... it's not for everybody.
AVC: Remember when Nintendo took all the blood out of Mortal Kombat?
AR: Nintendo tries to keep it more kid orientated and scaled the real violent games down, but I don't have a problem with that. I actually prefer games that don't have a lot of violence, but it's probably more of a coincidence. I've played some first person shooters like Goldeneye 64. There's no blood, but you can shoot someone in the face from two feet away. You know he's dead, do you really need to see all the blood?
