Walking through a shopping center, I found a shop selling retro video games and toys. The curious thing is that these were not mere pirated copies; they were, for the most part, at least, the same original models that left the factory many years ago and are still fully functional; it is worth noting that they also sold the same old consoles. The prices varied depending on the rarity of the title and whether it came with its original box (this last detail could even double the price of the product).
I remember that some time ago, a friend had given me boxes with original Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong games for SNES, and I thought of asking the owner how much he would give me for them, you know, like a joke. Anyway, the price offered wasn’t as optimistic as I had initially thought, so I said goodbye politely, but not before looking at every detail of the place.
Something caught my attention; I don’t know if it was partly because of the nostalgia of my first consoles or the fact of being able to find the same Saint Seya figures I had as a kid; the point is that everything seemed to enhance the cheerful melancholic energy of the place. A question arises here: Why are some of us fascinated by certain collectibles and can pay ridiculous prices to acquire them even if they are totally outdated for today’s age? Why spend on a first-generation Nintendo instead of a PS5?
The answer, in my opinion, would be that it is a resuscitation of sacred fetishism; since everything in this world, regardless of its category, has an attention stream, fetishism is no exception. Sacred fetishism, in this case, would come to be focused on objects, that is, to give them an added value beyond the object itself but, in addition to that, to take this action (which we all perform at some point) to a level of sacredness. What is the difference between going crazy over an Atari console that has never come out of the box or wanting to buy the latest Ralph Lauren perfume? The difference would be in what each one represents, i.e., the background to each object of desire.
In the case of Ralph Lauren, we are talking about a reasonably modern industry based basically on the odoriferous aesthetics and the image that an individual wants to project to his social environment (in this case, that of someone capable of spending a reasonable sum of money to smell well). However, it would be rare decades from now to find a shop selling this as a collector’s item, i.e., it’s not impossible, but it’s not something you’ll find so easily.
On the other hand, why would you want to buy an Atari? From a pragmatic point of view, it’s got fairly simple games that are quite outdated beyond belief in almost every sense of the word. I say almost because back then, those games were produced with two ingredients that seem extinct today: imagination and affection.
I think the best graphics card is creativity, and the best gameplay is inversion into a good story. When the entertainment industry stops having that paradigm and starts releasing formulaic products, we get the subjugation of substances by form. It is the precise moment when any art form begins to lose its soul.
A large part of the reason why it is becoming more and more feasible to hold festivals of retro video games, series, and toys is because of the call of the desperation of those accustomed to the pursuit of entertainment in sublime, innocent, and sincere. Still, most importantly, it is honest and faithful to the fundamental epicenter, which is the creator’s soul, that is, to be sure that what you are enjoying came straight from the developer´s guts.
The malice in the handling of these kinds of products nowadays, the will to industrialize, corrupt, and distort creative talent, is directly subsidized by the impulse of usury, which has infected our civilization to the core. That is why I believe that sacred fetishism of the object as an act of protest against the usurpation of the purity of the creative act, sacred fetishism would come to represent one of the pillars of the instinct of preservation of the lost ideal, rescuing small pieces of light lost in the darkness (which in a way would also be more or less the aim of this project).
Having reached this conclusion, I invite you to comment: What object of this kind has made you nostalgic? Transport yourself to that place and time and think: What did you find back then that you no longer find now, and that has, as a consequence, triggered your search for the real thing?
