Is all nostalgia equal?

[GSZX1337]

This is something I've been thinking about instead of important things for a while now. Around the time that the Black Mesa mod came out and Yahtzee's review, I replayed the original Half-Life to see how it held up. I won't talk about it since I made a huge post about it in another thread. Basic point is that it lived up to my nostalgia. When I was being nostalgic, I couldn't help but think back to Yahtzee's review where he says he was 15 and first experiencing puberty when he first played Half-Life. In the same review he speaks of PC Gamers' excitement over technological advances and innovations which now seem quaint. And of course, he talks about how the game has qualities not found in modern shooters as to be expected by anyone who reviews something notable.

I've had an experience similar to Yahtzee's when I first played Half-Life. I first played the game when I was 13 and in seventh grade. I obsessed over cool techie shit that's now dated and always compare the next shooter I play to Half-Life. The difference is played Half-Life five years later than him. Half-Life was released in 1998 and I played the game in 2003. So I'm left wondering: "Does this difference in time matter when it comes to nostalgia. Do memories have some sort of value to gamers?"

Would my nostalgia have more value if I played the game at release in '98? Would they have less five years later in 2008? How about another five years later in November of this year? Do any of you think memories have more or less merit based on the player's age or the time the game was played?

[TheGrimAngel]

Would my nostalgia have more value if I played the game at release in '98? Would they have less five years later in 2008? How about another five years later in November of this year? Do any of you think memories have more or less merit based on the player's age or the time the game was played?

Not necessarily. If you played the game in the past, it doesn't matter when, and enjoyed yourself then you'll get that feeling.

I have mixed feelings about old Nostalgic things, because some games I know are bad, I still love like the Power Rangers fighting game for the Sega Genesis. Age has very little to do with this, its more this was the only multiplayer game for Sega my family owned, so my family played the crap out of it. It all depends on the fun / bad times you had with the game in question. There are multiple games I played for Sega that I have no feelings of Nostalgia for.

[8bit]

I think the younger you are the more impressionable you are and therefore the stronger feelings and memories you can develop over something. The older you get the more likely you have seen something or experienced something similar or simply are not wow'd as easily.

When I was younger much more frequently new games would provide first time experiences and really make an impact on me. Today it takes a real blockbuster of a game to make an everlasting mark. I think its a big part of the reason some of us older folks are much bigger retro gamers than current gen gamers.

[BoringSupreez]

I think nostalgia is less about when you played a game, and more about how much you got out of it when you played. I feel much more strongly attached to N64, old PC games, DC, etc. than the vast majority of my peers. They played the same systems, and, since my family didn't have much money when I was little, they played them years before I would. You'd think they'd be more in love with them, but most only care about the latest generation.

[GSZX1337]

I guess I'm a bit of a hypocrite when it comes to this. I wouldn't put my nostalgia over first playing Ratchet & Clank in its release year over someone who first played it in 2007 (five years after release or the nostalgia I feel for anticipating Half-Life 2 in 2004 and building a rig capable of playing it over someone who first played it a few years ago. However, I feel weird waxing nostalgic over games like Sonic the Hedgehog and Quake which I played years after they were "relevant" (1995 and 2004 respectively) with guys who played them as kids when they first came out.

It is nice to see that the first replies to my thread weren't nostalgia rankings or elitism. Not that I expected that, but with a thread about the value of one's nostalgia it was something I thought might happen.

[BoringSupreez]

If you played it when you were a kid or teen, you can be nostalgic about it. Even if it was already old. After all, how many kids grow up watching Scooby Doo cartoons that are older than their parents? Yet it was still part of their childhood.

[Menegrothx]

I feel nostalgic even for many games I didn't play before 2011/2012 and by that I mean I love the era they represent and feel nostalgic for those times even though I personally didn't play the game after they were 10+ years old. I absolutely love the worlds of some games that are considered to be graphically outdated and "not impressive anymore". Even with out any previous experience or "nostalgia goggles" going into games like Unreal, Quake, Thief, Jumping Flash! etc I felt really immersed in the games and fell in love with them, many modern games that look a lot better utterly fail to give me that same feeling.

You can also appreciate the tech side of old games even if you never played them when they were cutting edge. I don't know how to program but yet I'm often amazed by cool stuff in old games. A cutting edge programming trick/special effect in an 1980s game can be a lot more impressive than shiny HD graphics in a new game, it's all a matter of perspective and putting things in scope (doing something primitive on old hardware might've required a lot more skills and been way more impressive and cutting edge (at the time) than something way more advanced on modern hardware)

[MrNash]

I think the nostalgia is not just about the game but how it works itself in with whatever else you had going in your life at the time. If it was super fun that'll be a big part of it, but, at least for me, it starts triggering memories of other fun stuff from that period as well. Parties, concerts, movies, something in school. I find it almost turns into a big cascade of nostalgia where the game is the trigger and it just builds up from there.

[Key-Glyph]

Lots of interesting thoughts here!

I'm a little confused as to what we mean by being nostalgic, though. If we just mean "feeling the sensation of adoring a game and actively wanting to re-experience it," than I am technically nostalgic for every game I've ever loved, for every waking moment I spend not playing them.

On the other hand, if we mean "remembering the sensation of a first playthrough of a game and wistfully wishing to relive that exact moment of innocence," then by that definition I'm not often nostalgic. When I replay games I may think to myself something like, "Oh, I remember I love(d) this part," but I'm not generally musing on my memories of direct interactions with the game, at least not beyond whatever present moment I happen to be in. I'm not really sure if I'm explaining this well. It's that I'll be nostalgic for the stuff I have associated with a particular gaming experience -- my childhood house, certain friends, special foods -- but I've only rarely wished I could re-experience a game itself in complete ignorance of its twists, puzzles, and necessary techniques.

So basically, what MrNash's just said.

I suppose this means that all pure gaming nostalgia, on its own, is equal to me, but my nostalgia for different games' surrounding circumstances is not. But I also don't miss childhood memories as a group any more deeply than I miss other types, which seems to be a common thing that contributes to the extra pull some people feel from the classics. Everything in the past is equally gone to me.

So in that way, OP, I would say that playing a game at release versus a few years later, or in my childhood versus my adulthood for that matter, would not be the factor to affect the deepness of my feelings for it in retrospect. I will wind up nostalgic for every stage of my life eventually, regardless of what game I'm playing in it, and every game will wind up associated with a certain stage of my life whether I want it to or not. It's just a crapshoot which games gets associated with the stronger surrounding memories and which ones don't.