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FFD: is nostalgia a good or bad thing?

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Nostalgia FFD

We can all point to early gaming experiences that shaped our lives. Whether it was playing Tetris at a friend’s house, that first time playing Starcraft, or the first time you really identified with a character in a game, we all have gaming experiences from the past that we remember fondly.

I’ve recently revisited some of my most nostalgic experiences. I reviewed the NES Classic Mini, as well as the Ezio collection. I was really looking forward to both, excited to revisit the wonderful games I loved, the experiences that my nostalgia claimed were far superior to current day gaming. But while both were good, they were also both underwhelming.

Yes, Ezio is still a charming assassin, but the core gameplay doesn’t live up to the improvements seen in more recent iterations of Assassin’s Creed. And while it was cool to replay some of the retro games of my youth on the NES, they weren’t quite as amazing as I remembered.

But, if you discuss a franchise like Assassin’s Creed, people will swear up and down that it hit its peak with Assassin’s Creed II and has been going downhill from there. They will swear that early version of any genre or franchise were far superior, citing Final Fantasy VII, Call of Duty Modern Warfare or Warcraft III as the pinnacles of gaming. Our nostalgia is strong. It’s so strong, that I’d bet there are a good many new games that aren’t given the credit they deserve because they don’t live up to unrealistic or inaccurate memories of older versions.

But is nostalgia actually a good thing? If we keep remembering old school games as being far better than they actually were, will we continue to falsely rag on new games as not being as good? Des our nostalgia set inaccurate expectations for games? Or, is it actually a good thing, holding our industry to a high standard, pushing for continual improvements and new experiences we can grow nostalgic about?

Last Updated: November 25, 2016

37 Comments

  1. Ottokie

    November 25, 2016 at 10:31

    Nostalgia is awesome. Until you load back up that game of years back and you get a reality check xD

    Reply

    • Admiral Chief Argonian

      November 25, 2016 at 10:39

      ^this

      Reply

    • Lu

      November 25, 2016 at 11:02

      Deus Ex comes to mind…..

      Reply

  2. Lord Chaos

    November 25, 2016 at 10:36

    Is it really nostalgia to expect quality from games?

    Reply

    • Zoe Hawkins

      November 25, 2016 at 10:44

      of course not! my point is more about games we remember as being really high quality, but looking back weren’t as great as we remembered them.

      Reply

      • Lord Chaos

        November 25, 2016 at 10:47

        That depends, like konfab said, some games stand the test of time (I regularly go back to Septerra Core) and others, while still fun, are sometimes let down due to graphics.

        Reply

        • Alien Emperor Trevor

          November 25, 2016 at 10:50

          Yesterday I was hard at work playing Duke Nukem. The first one. It’s game play & graphics are better than half the indie pixel graphics BS people like fawn over these days. Apogee FTW.

          Reply

          • Lord Chaos

            November 25, 2016 at 10:50

            Haha, so true.

          • Civ Scrub Bob

            November 25, 2016 at 10:51

            Commander Keen will destroy Duke Nukem. 😛

          • Admiral Chief Argonian

            November 25, 2016 at 10:51

            IMPOSSIBRU

          • Civ Scrub Bob

            November 25, 2016 at 10:52

            He’s been fighting aliens far longer, platforming better and he does it with less colour.

          • Alien Emperor Trevor

            November 25, 2016 at 10:52

            Silence you Vortican!

          • Admiral Chief Argonian

            November 25, 2016 at 10:51

            Duke1 and Duke2, gold!

      • Marc O Polo

        November 25, 2016 at 13:04

        The thing is they were, for the time they were released, as time progresses so does the standards that we hold games to!

        Reply

    • Pieter Kruger

      November 25, 2016 at 10:49

      Difference is what your 5 year old brain perceived as quality might not apply anymore….

      Reply

  3. Admiral Chief Argonian

    November 25, 2016 at 10:39

    No, but don’t act on it.

    You will tarnish the memory

    Reply

  4. konfab

    November 25, 2016 at 10:40

    I think it is a good thing as it provides the only objective way for a person to see how good a game is.

    If you go back to game 10 years later and still find it as fun as you did all those years ago, it must be a good game.

    I can go back and play my very first PS1 game (Future Cop: LAPD) and still have an immense amount of fun in the multiplayer.

    Reply

  5. Andre Fourie

    November 25, 2016 at 10:41

    First game I played was Black on my old PS2, which I still have. I was hooked instantly. Now I can’t stand the dodgy graphics, although for its time, the graphics wasn’t bad. Nostalgia……..

    Reply

  6. konfab

    November 25, 2016 at 10:43

    Obligatory to any discussion on nostalgia:
    MORROWIND WAS BETTER

    Reply

    • Lu

      November 25, 2016 at 11:04

      “I’m watching you scum”.

      Reply

  7. Alien Emperor Trevor

    November 25, 2016 at 10:46

    It’s both. I have fond memories of many games I’ve played over the years, some I’ll happily replay if the mood strikes me, others I’ll never replay because they’ve aged badly & have been superseded by newer & better titles.

    Reply

  8. Pieter Kruger

    November 25, 2016 at 10:47

    It’s good, I have fond memories of Atari, Sega, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 & PC, but do I still want all those games today, no thanks, I moved on thank you very much!

    Reply

  9. Civ Scrub Bob

    November 25, 2016 at 10:47

    It’s neither a good nor a bad thing. It’s a very subjective and personalised thing. Tastes change over time. When you initially played the game you enjoyed it and spent many hours with it. A few years later you may or may not think differently. Doesn’t invalidate the prior experience.

    Reply

  10. konfab

    November 25, 2016 at 10:51

    Then there is the glorious feeling of playing a game you really enjoyed but with modded graphics.

    I am currently having a ton of fun playing a fully modded Oblivion.

    Reply

  11. Aries

    November 25, 2016 at 10:55

  12. Original Heretic

    November 25, 2016 at 11:05

    Nostalgia isn’t a bad thing. As long as you don’t live there.

    Reply

  13. Kromas Ryder

    November 25, 2016 at 11:09

    I like Star Wars: I hated episode 1,2 and to some extent 3. I loved 7.7 had tons of nostalgia.

    That being said 1-3 was aimed at kids. 7 was aimed at true fans. Also no Jar Jar and they did not try to science away the force.

    For gaming it is the same. If the game adds a touch of nostalgia but maybe drops us in a different area … maybe a different galaxy … but improves on the existing mechanics then I might just wet myself for Mass Effect Andromeda. 😛

    Reply

  14. VampyreSquirrel

    November 25, 2016 at 11:13

    Depends on the person and game really. I tend not to go back to a game I’m nostalgic about, especially if it’s pre 2000.

    You tend to have fond memories of the game, but a lot of the time it just hasn’t aged well. Of course there are exceptions to this rule like Super Mario Bros, Commander Keen, Titan Quest, Theme Hospital, AquaNOX to name a few (for me).

    Reply

  15. Pariah ???

    November 25, 2016 at 11:16

    Nostalgia isn’t a problem. Nostalgia is great. Because Nostalgia is about memories. But if you go back and play those same games, then your expectations need to be managed. Your expectation (yours, mine, everyone’s) is the problem. If you go back expecting the SAME experience, with years of improvements, no your expectation is false. But if you understand what it is, go back expecting to refresh the memory, with knowing exactly how it played back then, then yeah that’s great.

    Like Mass Effect 1. The Mako was clunky and horrible, but I still loved going back to it. One of the 2 things I loved the most about the whole series. (Fyi, the other one is the great gun upgrade system that 1 had, and 3 brought back). But I don’t expect mind blowing graphics, and i don’t expect to be surprised by plot twists. Those can only happen once, really.

    Reply

  16. Magoo

    November 25, 2016 at 11:35

    “If you judge a fish by it’s ability to climb a tree, it will live it’s whole life thinking it’s stupid.”

    When you say that games way back then were not as good as we made them out to be, I absolutely disagree 100%. Your mind the day before X game was published = intact, your mind the day after X game was published = blown. That should be the scale to measure on.

    It’s like you are discrediting the invention of infrared because, by today’s standard, it’s an outdated technology.

    But on topic, I think nostalgia is a great thing. It is a reminder that you have had a good time.

    Reply

  17. Mike Doutchevitch

    November 25, 2016 at 11:44

    While quality of games continues to improve every year, i think a lot has to do with how a game made you feel at the time. A game might not measure up to modern games now, but at the time it was ground breaking / fun / had a lasting impression. Our expectations now are higher, but I still want that same feeling of enjoyment when i play a game.

    Reply

  18. Sageville

    November 25, 2016 at 11:46

    I’m still baffled by the wont for these old pixelated games… we strove for better graphics every time back in the day… now our gaming experiences are closer to want we wanted back then than ever before… but peeps now getting excited about 8 bit games?

    Nostalgia… I doubt revisiting these ancient games will give you those same feels all over again…

    But each to thiey’rere own I guess…

    Reply

  19. Sageville

    November 25, 2016 at 11:49

    “Back then 99% of the graphics rendering in games occurred in your imagination…” – Sageville 2016

    Reply

  20. Captain JJ

    November 25, 2016 at 12:08

    In some cases nostalgia can be good, but the problem comes in that companies use it as an excuse to flesh something out or give it a fresh new approach. SW Ep VII being the example

    Reply

  21. miaau

    November 25, 2016 at 12:21

    Nostaligia, by its very definition, is a good and a bad thing. Nostalgia is part of who we are today, those experiences THEN and our memories of them, shape who we are NOW. I read somewhere that it is believed by certain scientists that each time we remember something, we remember the memory of it. Psychologists also use this, in therapy.

    so, Nostalgia good. And bad, see Rose Tinted specs and all that.

    Reply

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