Nostalgia: a sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. As gamers, we are no strangers to the sentiment labeled "nostalgia." As our stacks of games build higher and higher, each in every one of us has games in those stacks that sometimes we make a return to. Although we may have beaten said games on every difficulty available; know the story and characters inside and out; have memorized every little gameplay advantage, item location, map layout, and any other tricks that can help us along the way; and probably played through the game more than just a several times; we still come back to these games time and time again. Why, you may ask? For the simple fact that games that leave us with that feeling of nostalgia, that keep us experiencing them over and over again, have left an impact on who we are as gamers.
A Goomba: the most useless minion ever
I know of many gamers who like to delve into more retro gaming, such as the original Super Mario Bros or Contra, others prefer to return to somewhat more recent classics like Half Life 2, while others will get their daily dose of nostalgia from multiplayer hits such as the original CoD: Modern Warfare, Counterstrike, or Team Fortress 2 but whatever the case may be, many of these gamers play these games almost exclusively for their nostalgic effects (not to mention that they’re still simply fun to play). That in of itself says something grand about who we are as gamers. We are a special group of people, people who respect and admire what has been accomplished before in our industry, people who don’t mind living in the past, future, and present aspects of the thing we love so much: gaming.
Fun Fact: A barnacle can have a pen** 40 times longer than its body
For me personally, I have a couple games that I dust off every so often and experience the same things as when I was years younger. Some of these games are a bit on the older side, and example being Bosconian which I played a lot last night, others a bit on the newer side, another example being Dead Space which is my favorite game of all time. However, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was the first game I can really remember playing over and over again. Although Sonic has lost a lot of his momentum present day, I still will pull out my Sega Genesis once in awhile, blow on the cartridge to remove any dust that may have accumulated during its idle state, and start a new game ready to take down Dr.Eggman for the thousandth time.
As I sprint through each and every level for a speed run, I actually remember playing them when I was a young kid. All the little tricks that shaved off five seconds or even a mere second of my final time flood back to me, sometimes a bit too late. Then, when I complete said levels and take a look at my time, I think to myself, "Wow I was a lot better at this back then." I had convinced myself as a child that I was the master at Sonic the Hedgehog 2, but now I look at myself and think, "What happened to that?" I always laugh at the fact that young me was better at a game than current me. It just seems so unbelievable, yet comical at the same time. The countless hours I spent perfecting my gameplay and the best I could do now was a time of 1:02 on Green Hill Act 1!?!?!?
Yet, even with my deteriorated skills, I still returned to Sonic the Hedgehog 2 just to experience the same happiness I felt playing it so long ago. This, I believe, is something that many gamers, if not all, experience at some point. It shows just who we are as gamers. At one point, we all may have considered ourselves "experts" at a game, but eventually a lot of us just grew apart with our favorite game at that time. We moved on to what we thought were "bigger" and "better" hits, games that would become the next big thing in our gaming lives, but yet, here many of us are, people like me, who still return to games of the past just to feel what was once felt. No matter how much the graphics have aged or even how clunky the controls may be at times, we still have those games that hold a special place in us.
I used to think this was the greatest level ever
Just a few days ago I had a few friends over to simply “hang” out as we young people say. One of my friends is more of a PC kind of gamer, the other is still more into Nintendo, and I currently play mostly off my 360. Now all three of us being gamers at our cores, I thought we would just play video games of course. As I dug through my mountain of games for something to play, I knew I wanted to have an old fashioned, local FPS FFA full of glorious screen peaking and glaring at the person who just killed you. Just as I was about to pull out Halo 4, an original Xbox game caught my eye, Halo 2.
I cracked up when I saw this XD
Halo 2, the follow up to the only reason I bought an Xbox in the first place, the game that I hosted countless local gaming sessions with friends, and the reason why my mom would always be screaming at my brothers and I to stop fighting; nostalgia at its finest. To the bewilderment of my friends I put Halo 2 into my 360 tray, “customized” our Spartans after arguing over whose Spartan armor would be colored white, and started a three hour marathon of good old FFA madness.
I’ll tell you this; we had more fun playing Halo 2 than we could have ever had playing Halo 4. All three of us all had played Halo 2 back in the day, and all three of us were sorely rusty during our FFA’s. Constantly pressing the wrong button to melee and to perform other actions always got a good laugh out of us and trying to remember all the weapon spawns and map hotspots was like attempting to take a trip into the past.
*Full on battle rages around him* Strikes epic pose
Experiences such as the one I had with my friends but a few days ago are the reason why the word “nostalgia” is used so much in gaming. Games of the past, that many of us had seemingly shelved so long ago, still can provide us with just as much entertainment and joy that they once had in the past. As much as we gamers look toward the future release of countless games and new technology, we still take the time to look back onto the past and remember all those games that made us the gamers we are today. That, I hope, never changes. Look around in that stack of games that’s collected dust from months or even years of idleness, and pull out that game that you swore you couldn’t live without before. For after all, you can never have too much nostalgia.