Seth Rogen is a child of the 1980s and witnessed the evolution of modern video gaming. Is Rogen a gamer himself and, if so, what does he play?
Seth Rogen does play video games. His preferred games are now considered retro, with the majority dating back at least 20 years, though he has also talked about owning a Wii and playing with his wife and friends. As part of his retro gaming hobby, Rogen owns at least two arcade cabinets.
For more on Seth Rogen’s passion for classic video games and how he enjoys them today, keep reading.
Vintage Video Games
Rogen has stated that his first gaming device was the “Commodore 2000”, a name that could describe a few different consoles.
Given that he was born in 1982 and he has also talked about owning an Amiga, he is presumably referring to the Commodore Amiga 2000, released in 1987. The machine was groundbreaking for its time, able to be upgraded by adding hardware components much like a modern PC.
He also owned an Atari 2600, which he says was his favorite gaming device as a child.
Rogen frequented garage sales and flea markets in the hope of inexpensive games and has talked about finding the 1982 game “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” for his Atari, widely considered one of the worst games ever made.
Atari famously paid the city of Alamogordo, New Mexico, to dump 800,000 of their unwanted games in a landfill site. When the city decided to excavate and sell the contents of the giant trench three decades later, a brand new copy of “E.T.” was found to be worth more than $1500, surely a lot more than Rogen paid for his second-hand copy.
As Rogen grew older and video gaming moved into the 3D era, he acquired a Nintendo 64, discovering his most beloved game, “GoldenEye 007”.
The 1997 James Bond game is widely considered one of the most influential ever made, essentially defining modern first-person shooters with groundbreaking level design. The game’s multiplayer was also groundbreaking, allowing four players to compete against each other at the same time in a variety of modes.
The multiplayer of “GoldenEye” planted the seeds that grew into the once-unimaginable 150 simultaneous players of a game such as “Call of Duty: Warzone”.
What He Plays Today
Today, Rogen owns a PlayChoice-10, an arcade machine released by Nintendo in 1986.
Following the great success of the Nintendo Entertainment System, which made its way to the US in 1985, Nintendo decided to bring some of their home console games to arcades.
The PlayChoice-10 contained a couple of core games, such as the original “Super Mario Bros”, but also allowed its owner to add other games by adding pieces of hardware to the machine.
Rogen’s cabinet contains such classic games as Mario, “ExciteBike” and “Contra”. While he does own a few modern consoles, he says that the PlayChoice-10 is by far the most popular option with guests when he hosts a party.
Rogen says that the physical feeling of inputting commands on a classic joystick and arcade buttons cannot be replicated when playing classic games on modern emulators such as the Wii’s Virtual Console.
Rogen’s wife, Lauren Miller, started playing video games with him on the Wii, with its accessibility meaning he could finally play alongside his partner.
He has dabbled in playing modern games against strangers online but didn’t enjoy getting beaten and insulted by children from across the country, so it’s probably safe to assume that he won’t be playing “Fortnite” any time soon.
When asked if he would consider starring in a movie based around video games, Rogen, perhaps with tongue in cheek, said that he felt the genre had reached its peak with the 1989 Nintendo product placement cult movie “The Wizard”.
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