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Game Nostalgia: The unfair advantage

Snow Queen

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So I got into an argument with some NES fetishist on a chat on another site who kept telling me all the NES titles are the best ones because they make him feel "nostalgic". Now personally I think this is a load of bollocks because nostalgia, at least in the gaming world, tends to be a quality only applicable to older games meaning that newer games are incapable of invoking this feeling. I think nostalgia is an unfair reason to give a game praise, which is why I'm wondering if you people think this sort of argument is even valid at all because bugger if I'm going to argue all these bloated neckbeards who haven't seen their winkie in years.
 
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Jirohnagi

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First of all nice use of Bollocks, second Nostalgia is never a good argument using that logic i can say Sega is the greatest due to Sanic due to nostalgia we all know that to be false, when people view things through a lens of nostalgia they don't see the bad points only the good and thus it is our duty to stamp the bad points through their skulls and disperse this nostalgic crap straight up.
 
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What exactly is 'fairness' when determining someones personal reasons for liking something? If someone tells you that "NES titles are the best" for some personal reason then it would mean it's the best to them, and/or the best that they know of up until now. There are many reasons which someone may find valid or invalid as to why a game gets praise and/or why it doesn't.
 
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It depends I guess. Some games you can go back to (just as with any other media) and enjoy it and introduce it to others and they'll enjoy it. Some games you go back to and suddenly see all the problems it has, or you've outgrown it. I love the NES and SNES, they are to me, the best consoles ever made, because they were part of my childhood and I still have a lot of fun with them, but there are games I go back to and yeah. Not good.
 

misskitten

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To partly rehash something I said in another thread today, there's a difference between expressing personal preference and stating something as a fact. Nostalgia isn't really an argument that can be made when stating something as a fact, because nostalgia comes from the history you personally have with the game. NES titles may be nostalgic for me because I grew up with them and have a lot of history with them, but it would not be nostalgic for someone who got into gaming at a later point.

And honestly, nostalgia is a factor that can in theory be attributed to any game made, because all games will eventually become "old". Those getting into gaming today, will in a decades time or more probably think back to a couple of the games they played in the beginning and have nostalgic feelings towards those games. It's the experience and history that makes up the nostalgia. It isn't a "quality" a game either has or hasn't.
 

Spacefiller

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What's to argue?
All statements claiming anything to be "best" are nonsensical in matters of opinion regarding observations from subjectivity.

The adventure of link makes me feel nostalgic for 1987.
Ocarina of time makes me nostalgic for 1997.
Twilight Princess makes me nostalgic for 2007.


All great games!
And to be fair, I like them for what they are (outside of the element of nostalgia.) I recently got into retro gaming emulation and have played some games that I never played in the past, games that were made before I was even born and so there really isn't a "nostalgia" component beyond feelings a familiarity generated from media influence from a bygone era.
 

Dio

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So I got into an argument with some NES fetishist on a chat on another site who kept telling me all the NES titles are the best ones because they make him feel "nostalgic". Now personally I think this is a load of bollocks because nostalgia, at least in the gaming world, tends to be a quality only applicable to older games meaning that newer games are incapable of invoking this feeling. I think nostalgia is an unfair reason to give a game praise, which is why I'm wondering if you people think this sort of argument is even valid at all because bugger if I'm going to argue all these bloated neckbeards who haven't seen their winkie in years.

I think that games that really gave you a great experience deserve praise no matter how long ago they came out. Generally the older games were the ones you play first when you are new to gaming, you are probably thinking how amazing those games are because you are experiencing a new kind of enjoyment that you have never had before. Yet rarely a new experience wows you just the way the oldies did and I get the same feeling towards them after playing, when I remember how good a time I had playing them.

Liked for Winkie!
 

Ventus

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First of all nice use of Bollocks, second Nostalgia is never a good argument using that logic i can say Sega is the greatest due to Sanic due to nostalgia we all know that to be false, when people view things through a lens of nostalgia they don't see the bad points only the good and thus it is our duty to stamp the bad points through their skulls and disperse this nostalgic crap straight up.
You couldn't argue that Sanic is the greatest due to nostalgia; Sanic '06 and especially '14 are empirically ****ing terrible titles that should never be repeated again (although I gotta hand it to '06 for at least being funny-stupid at times). You could argue that for Sonic though, especially the Genesis titles and the Adventure series; although they have a couple kinks, they do have the feel of older games that nostalgia-whores so often crave while still feeling playable on today's times (especially with the recent surge in speedrunning communicites.)
 

Hanyou

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I more often see the reverse. If I say Ocarina of Time is my favorite game (and it is), and that I think it's the most well-made Zelda game for its balance of gameplay elements (and I do) there's a knee-jerk reaction on the part of many gamers to claim that I simply prefer it due to nostalgia.

The funny thing is that if I claim Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is my favorite movie (and it's close), movie buffs wouldn't give me the same answer.

If someone states that they prefer a game due to nostalgia, that's perfectly fine because that's their personal response to something. If they state that they think a game is better than others because they're nostalgic about it, that's inane, and their statement should be criticized as such.

But don't infer that people who like an older game enjoy it simply because of nostalgia. I never owned an SNES, so I didn't play some of my favorite older games until the end of the last decade. Nostalgia plays no role in, for example, Final Fantasy VI being my favorite FF game. But if I were to say I enjoy it much, much more than FFX, both of which were released before I touched a single FF game, I'd face accusations of nostalgia.

I'll add this, and it's a matter of personal preference: I love RPGs, adventure games, and platformers. I don't care for FPSs. If I had been born ten years later than I was, I likely would have had far less of an interest in gaming because, all other things being equal, FPS games would never have engaged me. Arguably my first major game was Wolfenstein 3D. I played it before I played Super Mario Bros. While I enjoyed navigating the maze-like first and second level, I never had fun with the actual shooting. Even post-Doom, there were very, very few FPS games I cared for, and I've tried many. So when I say I prefer earlier eras, particularly the pre-Xbox 360 era, it's not strictly nostalgia. It's also the fact that games I like aren't as widely represented anymore. After Sega went belly-up, the industry moved in a direction that does not appeal to me.
 
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when people view things through a lens of nostalgia they don't see the bad points only the good and thus it is our duty to stamp the bad points through their skulls and disperse this nostalgic crap straight up.
Most Ocarina and Majora's Mask fans suffer from this nostalgia. They are not capable to seeing the flaws in the N64 originals and the flaws in the 3D remakes. All of these are very good, but not perfect.

Also saying a game is better because of nostalgia, is technically not wrong, but you need to understand the context. Nostalgia makes a game fun to play years after release. And a game that fun for someone had to be doing something right. Those old games are technically not the best anymore but we all know if a game is not fun it will not be played. And some old games can be more fun today then other more recently released games.

Gaming was not better back then. NES was notorious for having loads of shovelware and poor quality control.
Every Nintendo console had it's fair share of shovelware. The NES is not unique in that. One could argue the Wii had the most shovelware of all. And back in the day what we consider NES shovelware now was considered not too bad. I grew up in the NES era late 80s and early 90's as a little child. And this is me speaking from experience. And like any console, long after said console is dead, only a select number of the old games will be worth keeping and playing again.

I think that games that really gave you a great experience deserve praise no matter how long ago they came out. Generally the older games were the ones you play first when you are new to gaming, you are probably thinking how amazing those games are because you are experiencing a new kind of enjoyment that you have never had before. Yet rarely a new experience wows you just the way the oldies did and I get the same feeling towards them after playing, when I remember how good a time I had playing them
I have to say not too many newer games did wow me like in the past. I think that's simply because our standards have increased as we aged and we expect better from our games. A couple of games that wowed me that are post 2000's are Metroid Prime and Super Mario Galaxy 1/2. All of these wowed the pants of me from start to finish. World of Warcraft wowed me when it first came out. I've since retired from that game (I left early Cataclysm). Of very recent (literally last week), I saw an indie game on a steam sale (I'm new to steam) called "To The Moon". Had a great review so I tried it. Very short but it totally wowed me. Just some examples of more modern games that have wowed me.

I think the difference between the past and now is this:
- back in the day we were children and gaming meant only one thing to us, fun. If we had fun then we were wowed. Nothing else mattered to us. Our blissful ignorance due to our youth was our blessing.
- Today when we look at games, we ask ourself, does the game look good? Does it have good reviews? Is the game value for money? Is there too many game bugs? etc etc. So much technical thought about the games, which is not a bad thing overall. But we can lose sight of the whole forest while inspecting each individual tree. Today we have so much criteria to be forfilled before we can be wowed, simply playing a fun game is not enough like it was back when we were children.

Liking a game because of nostalgia does not make that game better or worse. it just makes that game still fun to play all those years later. And if you consider gaming to be an artform, then the develoeprs who create the games people are nostalgic decades later about have won. Their art will be remembered whereas the technically more HD but infinitely less fun games will long since forgotten. The overall point here is, do you consider the more technically advanced game to be better or the more fun game to be better? A game can be both and neither as well, the options are not mutually exclusive or mutually inclusive.
 
Most Ocarina and Majora's Mask fans suffer from this nostalgia. They are not capable to seeing the flaws in the N64 originals and the flaws in the 3D remakes. All of these are very good, but not perfect.

See, this is what Hanyou was saying in the very post before yours. I happen to prefer the N64 games over other Zelda titles, but just by saying it I am accused of being blinded by nostalgia. It gets really old, just because I think those games are better doesn't mean my reasons aren't legitimate and can just be hand waved away like that.
 

Musicfan

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Most Ocarina and Majora's Mask fans suffer from this nostalgia. They are not capable to seeing the flaws in the N64 originals and the flaws in the 3D remakes. All of these are very good, but not perfect.

Also saying a game is better because of nostalgia, is technically not wrong, but you need to understand the context. Nostalgia makes a game fun to play years after release. And a game that fun for someone had to be doing something right. Those old games are technically not the best anymore but we all know if a game is not fun it will not be played. And some old games can be more fun today then other more recently released games.


Every Nintendo console had it's fair share of shovelware. The NES is not unique in that. One could argue the Wii had the most shovelware of all. And back in the day what we consider NES shovelware now was considered not too bad. I grew up in the NES era late 80s and early 90's as a little child. And this is me speaking from experience. And like any console, long after said console is dead, only a select number of the old games will be worth keeping and playing again.


I have to say not too many newer games did wow me like in the past. I think that's simply because our standards have increased as we aged and we expect better from our games. A couple of games that wowed me that are post 2000's are Metroid Prime and Super Mario Galaxy 1/2. All of these wowed the pants of me from start to finish. World of Warcraft wowed me when it first came out. I've since retired from that game (I left early Cataclysm). Of very recent (literally last week), I saw an indie game on a steam sale (I'm new to steam) called "To The Moon". Had a great review so I tried it. Very short but it totally wowed me. Just some examples of more modern games that have wowed me.

I think the difference between the past and now is this:
- back in the day we were children and gaming meant only one thing to us, fun. If we had fun then we were wowed. Nothing else mattered to us. Our blissful ignorance due to our youth was our blessing.
- Today when we look at games, we ask ourself, does the game look good? Does it have good reviews? Is the game value for money? Is there too many game bugs? etc etc. So much technical thought about the games, which is not a bad thing overall. But we can lose sight of the whole forest while inspecting each individual tree. Today we have so much criteria to be forfilled before we can be wowed, simply playing a fun game is not enough like it was back when we were children.

Liking a game because of nostalgia does not make that game better or worse. it just makes that game still fun to play all those years later. And if you consider gaming to be an artform, then the develoeprs who create the games people are nostalgic decades later about have won. Their art will be remembered whereas the technically more HD but infinitely less fun games will long since forgotten. The overall point here is, do you consider the more technically advanced game to be better or the more fun game to be better? A game can be both and neither as well, the options are not mutually exclusive or mutually inclusive.


I have never played an orginal nes or snes. I have not played many older games when they came out.

Yet I can still say I enjoy them. It is not always nostalgia.
 
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See, this is what Hanyou was saying in the very post before yours. I happen to prefer the N64 games over other Zelda titles, but just by saying it I am accused of being blinded by nostalgia. It gets really old, just because I think those games are better doesn't mean my reasons aren't legitimate and can just be hand waved away like that.
I was talking in general. And in general what i said is true. There are a few exceptions to this, like you, and most of us here who can see the games for what they really are. Just cause you like Ocarina a lot, does not make you blinded by nostalgia automatically. I didn't accuse you of nostalgia blindness at all. It's cool you can like the older games as you do.
I have never played an orginal nes or snes. I have not played many older games when they came out.

Yet I can still say I enjoy them. It is not always nostalgia.
There is nothing wrong with this. My point is you today look at these NES and SNES games not through little children's eyes but through adult eyes. It's just like movies, you can like games made before you were old enough to play games. Being able to appreciate the golden age of gaming is something the young people of today really struggle with.

I did not say anyone here was blinded by nostalgia. I get the impression that people here feel I said this. Sorry if it sounded like that, but that was not my intention. What I meant was, nostalgia is associated with how fun a game is and not how good a game is (technically speaking). A very fun game is a good game. And people remember the fun they had with the game. All the little flaws are forgotten as the years go on. I don't think nostalgia blinds people to the flaws of games. It just that with games so fun, the little flaws don't really matter. And when people say "this old game had that flaw" others go "no way, that game was just fun". And both sides are correct in their own point of view. One focuses on the flaws of the old game and the other focuses on the fun of the game and puts the few little flaws aside and for the most part forgets about them.

I was also talking from a personal perspective, as I am someone who was alive and playing the NES games in the late 80's. As a little child, very little. And I basically grew up with Nintendo, from the NES to the WiiU. I understand you all have different perspectives, because you are all different people and were not playing the NES and SNES games back then (for whatever reason). That's cool and your perspective is very interesting as well.

I think nostalgia as a concept is misunderstood by some people and that's why people can have a hate for the word. Nostalgia is a good thing, if we understand what it is (our memories of fun) and what it is not (how good a game technically was).
 

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