Nostalgia is a wonderful thing, and video games may well be the very best form of media at harnessing it. Pick out a pop culture symbol representing the 80s, and the NES will be in there with MTV, E.T, and The Breakfast Club. Looking back wistfully on the early 90s? Sega Genesis and SNES will be rubbing shoulders with MC Hammer, Michael Jordan, and Seinfeld. Mid-late 90s, you’ll have the PS1 and the N64’s trident controller up there with AOL, Spice Girls, The Matrix, and frosted tips (and let’s be honest, those consoles were better than at least two of those other things).
As gamers, our memories of past eras are tinged with whatever we were playing at the time— cross-legged, wide-eyed, and hunching towards colourful game worlds behind a layer of CRT scanlines.
I’m as nostalgic as the rest of ‘em. Coming in from a day in the summer sun to spend balmy later afternoons on Morrowind, craning my neck to look at the uncomfortably high screen at Toys ‘R Us to play Battle Arena Toshinden on the PS1, hogging my sister’s NES to play Super Mario Bros. 3 in her room before it became apparent that she cared way less for it than I did and it got transferred to the living room; these are fond, powerful memories for me, and I cherish them.
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But something else I’ve noticed is that nostalgia can also lead to a kind of stagnation in online discussion, where critiquing and questioning aspects of games loaded with nostalgia can lead to kneejerk responses of‘Just leave things as they are,’quite often accompanied by‘Things were just better back then,’or‘Take me back to those days,’and a personal insult or two at the person making the critiqueThe nostalgia can even become toxic, like whenCapcom made Ashley less of a sap in Resident Evil 4 Remake,and a vocal minority of weirdos bemoaned the fact that she wasn’t a helpless little damsel thirst for Leon any more. Like jeez, keep your nostalgia in your pants, people!
It’s like people are terrified that by, say,updating certain aspects of Silent Hill 2 for the remake, or wondering whether thequestionable dialogue in Gex: Enter the Geckowill fly in the upcoming re-release, somehow that’ll ruin the childhood memories people have of these things, and thereforetheir entire childhoods. The aggressive responses to any kind of spitballing on things from the past that are being brought into the present are indicative of an unhealthy attachment to that past—and a lack of imagination—that prevents interesting ways of bringing things into the present.
It’s a sad way to go about life if you’re so obsessed with the treasures of your past that you preemptively scorn their sequels, reboots, remakes, or reimaginings in the present, or the suggestion that maybe certain things need to change. This isn’t just made up either;a recent studyhas linked nostalgia “in the course of everyday life” with sadness and depressive symptoms.
Other studies (viaPsychology Today) have shown that we reach for nostalgia when we’re experiencing loneliness, feelings of meaninglessness, and social exclusion. It can be an aid in these times, but over-relying on it can lead to it becoming toxic, as eloquently outlined in the above-linked article:
The difference between helpful and harmful nostalgia is the difference between incorporating the positive emotions of reminiscing into the present versus renouncing the present for the sake of reinstating and perpetually reliving some moment in the past." – Valentina Stoycheva Ph.D.
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I’m part of a few retro gaming groups online, and while I enjoy the photos of, say, fully boxed editions of old games or people showing off their retro gaming setups, I’m always disappointed by the negative reactions to modernity. For example, in a discussion aroundBaldur’s Gate 2, some people expressed theirexcitement for the imminent Baldur’s Gate 3, to which others responded as if the very existence ofBaldur’s Gate 3is sacrilege, dismissing the game and hurling abuse at it while knowing seemingly nothing about it. Apparently for some, if things don’t stay exactly as they were, then that’s an instant failing, which is an absurd and unproductive stance to take.
Clearly, being made by a different studio 23 years later, Baldur’s Gate 3 is going to have a very different feel to Baldur’s Gate 2, but that’sfine. Both things can be great, and our fuzzy feelings for the old thing shouldn’t be this weird mucky lens through which to dismiss the new thing (though we can alwaysask for certain classic elements to make a comeback).
Inevitably, we can draw comparisons once we’ve played both, but don’t shit on the thing on the grounds of ‘it’s doing something new/different, therefore it’s bad.’ If Super Mario Bros. 3 were to be remade, whether it’s good or bad, similar or different, will have no bearing on my cherished memories of first playing it in my sister’s room. It won’t ‘ruin’ the original, because it’s a separate thing.
The refrain that ‘things were just better’ in some semi-mythical past is a common one on comments across the internet, and it’s a surefire way to get upvotes. This goes beyond gaming too. On one electronic music group I’m part of, I always hear the greying old-timers whine about how back in the day ‘no one had phones and just lived in the moment.’ Sure, maybe there’ssometruth to that, but at this point I think the tedium of people constantly fishing for likes by pointing that out outweighs the actual issue of people recording gigs on their phones (besides, if you’re really in the moment at a gig, then what do you even care if other people are recording on their phones?).
When watching a Requiem For a Dream clip the other day (I was feeling nostalgic for depressing early 2000s cinema, OK?), someone left a much-upvoted comment that ‘women back then were more beautiful than they are today.’ It was in reference to the actress Jennifer Connelly; what a weird thing to say, and what an abnormally high barometer for ‘beauty’ when you pick a famously beautiful Hollywood A-lister as some kind of generational gauge for ‘this is what women were like.’ Again, it’s taking idolisation of the past to ridiculous and unhealthy extremes.
So this whole phenomenon isn’t unique to gaming, but it does feel particularly prevalent in games. Luckily, for the most part developers tend not to pander to the vocal minority of those who’ve been blinded by nostalgia and become hopelessly resistant to change, and understand that certain aspects of the past need modernising if you’re to pay the best tribute to that past.
Nostalgia should be like a nice soft blanket you can sometimes wrap yourself up in, not a heavy duvet cover to stick your head under and stew in it while grumbling about how things just aren’t what they used to be.
