Near the end of this documentary about retro gaming, collecting is compared to an addiction. People get a rush looking at the games and consoles they own, the new ones they are able to buy and comparing them to others. It’s a feeling almost everyone can understand and I myself was into buying and playing old consoles. I still have quite a lot of them, although I never look at them anymore. I’ve stepped away from them years ago and with that they aren’t as treasured as they once were and when I make the time to properly go through it all I will sell everything so someone else will be able to enjoy it. Distance changes your perspective. The same goes for movie watching. For the last couple of years I saw an amazing amount of films every year, but this year I decided to take a break from blogging (I actually stopped on the Dutch version of my blog) and I lost the need to try and see every movie that comes out and actually am fine with that. But back to this documentary.
The people who are interviewed in The Bits of Yesterday are avid collectors. Some have a complete collection of several systems and get a lot of joy out of them. For many it is their way to relive their childhood, get the things they weren’t able to when they were young. They all have similar stories to tell, whether it is about the value going up for some games making them almost impossible to get, to resellers who are in this just to make money. The collections these (mostly men) have are awe-inspiring and it is clear they are very passionate, which clearly comes across.
Technically though, this documentary isn’t very compelling. At 1 hour and 48 minutes it drags a bit and even though it goes through various subjects it doesn’t always feel very structured. Visually it doesn’t feel very coherent. The various subjects are introduced by a badly acted scene which has something to do with video games. They feel out of place. There were various moments were the footage was overlit. All these points took a bit away from my enjoyment of this documentary. If you are into game collecting yourself it still is worth checking out, but for other who aren’t they probably won’t be pulled in enough to make it to the end credits.
[score6]