For all our fear-mongering about entering the technological age and its threat on the retail experience, there’s an ironic trend happening in the world of shopping…
Break out those bellbottoms and fire up that Nintendo 64 because retro is so hot right now! According to Business Insider a new trend is on the rise with consumers demanding retro family-friendly experiences from their malls and as we’ve seen before, shopping centres are taking the hint and remodeling the consumer experience to meet demands.
Along with the traditional popcorn and choc-top movie experience, shopping centres are now giving customers more options for their out-of-the-house expeditions by putting the spotlight on the classic games arcade. In the last 18 months several new Timezones have been opened in malls across the country and business is booming. General Manager Kane Fong equates this to the recent wave of nostalgia.
“We’re finding a huge trend where people who were brought in by their parents 20 years ago are now having their own children and they’re bringing them into our centres. It’s almost like a passing on the baton kind of situation; this is what I did as a kid and I want to pass this experience onto you because this is what me and my mum or my dad did back in the day. It’s fantastic to see.”
Shopping mall landlords continue to empty their pockets to fill their centres with more and more fun for the family and they’re not the only ones taking advantage of the nostalgia trend. In the world of gaming there has been a recent string of retro releases that have got retailers and consumers very excited. Starting with Sony’s rerelease of the original Crash Bandicoot games for Playstation 4, there has been a surge in nostalgic gaming with Supermario and Zelda being the fastest-selling games from Nintendo and its new console, the SNES Mini disappearing faster than hotcakes. A smaller version of the SNES, –Super Nintendo Entertainment System- which was released in 1992, it’s not so much the console as the games included that have got gamers scrambling. Amongst the 21 retro classics are Super Mario World, Super Mario Kart, Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting, Donkey Kong Country, Final Fantasy III, and Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island.
Of course none of this is that shocking as record players and vinyl sales have been on the incline for years, weekend markets with vintage shops always do a raging business, and there have been so many movie remakes in the last three years that I’ve stopped counting. Everything old is new again and no doubt the cycle will continue on and on and on.
