Crippled by Nostalgia: The Fraud of Retro Gaming

[Diff-chan]

Usually the only thing I feel nostalgic about are games that I don't play anymore. I will play Doom today, but it's because it rocks. There's no game being made today like it, and if there is, show it to me.

Even if there were, you probably wouldn't enjoy it as much. Doom comes with all these positive associations that make the game better. It's like this with everything. I like Revolver or whatever because it's a great album, but for my dad, it was part of his growing up experience. So he likes it more than I do.

[Fe 26]

So the key is to not have bad taste in the first place, so when you grow up and go back to something, you won't hate it?

[Diff-chan]

No, the point is that you don't play a game (or watch a movie, or listen to an album) through some dispassionate objective filter. You are a person bringing your experiences into it and judging it from there. And those experiences change the more life you live.

[Fe 26]

Even if there were, you probably wouldn't enjoy it as much. Doom comes with all these positive associations that make the game better. It's like this with everything. I like Revolver or whatever because it's a great album, but for my dad, it was part of his growing up experience. So he likes it more than I do.

I don't know. Some of this true, but I think it is more true for some than others.

I really can't think of an album that I like just because it is connected to other memories. THE ONLY one I can think of is the monkey's song "I'm not your stepping stone" because I would sing it when I was 4 when my parents would take us up through the smokey mountains in the parks. And even then, it hasn't biased my other preferences. I don't like or dislike anything because of the Monkeys. I'm not really that in love with the song. I don't seek the song out, but if it comes on the radio I remember that event and think of my mother.

If anything, I've always had the same general likes and everything reaches out from that. Like walls being built on a foundation that I was mostly born with.

But I understand that some people aren't like that. I've seen people here and irl that like god awful shit, sometimess coming into great contrast with who they are now and it goes back to some early event like it being one or two cds they had at their first job or something.


What you're saying is true. Experiences build upon each other and we see everything through those previous experiences. But I think some people are more nostalgic than others.

Some people are always going to like AC/DC and things that sound like AC/DC. And others may only like them because of that one girl they fucked that one time in that one car when that one song was on.

[dave is ok]

I got a handjob from some 40 year old whore at an AC/DC concert when I was 17 while she was standing next to her husband.

I have no nostalgia for that event.

[GohanX]

Dave shoots from the hip.

[Chux]

No, no, the tip!

[gamevet]

I got a handjob from some 40 year old whore at an AC/DC concert when I was 17 while she was standing next to her husband.

I have no nostalgia for that event.

Given the dog a bone?

[jyoung]

I just played Super Castlevania IV for the first time recently and was hooked. No nostalgia involved at all.

On the other hand, I had fond memories of playing Combattribes in the arcade. But playing it again a few months back, I realized the game was shit and didn't want to touch it.

Nostalgia ain't shit.

[Changeling]

Nostalgia ain't shit.

Sure it is. I like playing Avengers (Capcom) even though I know its awful. It was a machine I always played at my barber shop as a kid. Will I go look for an Avengers board, hell no. But I will play it on a Capcom collection disk or on Mame.

Lots of arcade stuff is a product of the times made to take your money, but it stil has a place in my heart.