Valuable Childhoods: Nostalgia, Intersectionalities, and Vintage Game Fairs

This paper examines nostalgia surrounding retro gaming, the resale market for childhood games, and the intersectional dimensions of play through a duoethnography of two researchers' shared player biographies. The authors, based at University College London, draw on their respective childhoods in Brazil and England, with a focus on memories of Sega Mega Drive games, arcade play, and informal shared play. Their central argument is that nostalgia for these games is strongly sensorial, shaped by the tactile handling of cartridges, the location of play, and the company kept during it, and that these affective memories diverge sharply from the monetary value assigned to the same objects in the secondary market.

The methodology pairs the duoethnographic method with a walkthrough of a "vintage" game fair in London, where second-hand cartridges are encountered in boxes and reframed as objects of cultural reflection. Despite the authors' differing national and social contexts, their tactile recollections of Mega Drive play proved markedly similar, which they read as evidence that class and shared material experience may matter as much as ethnicity, nationality, or gender in shaping gaming memory. The study therefore argues for interconnected rather than nationally bounded approaches to game history, and it highlights how experiences outside mainstream play spaces can be erased from historical narratives.

The paper further considers how the affective power of nostalgia is commercially exploited, both through international products aimed at particular age cohorts and fan groups and through informal collectives around game markets. Drawing on the concept of erasure, the authors conclude by reflecting on what remains marginalised in the ontological model of game fairs, including which players are "marked" or "unmarked" within discourses of retro gaming and reselling.