Before we get things started here I have to be honest with all of you, this is a difficult topic for me to write about. Way too often in life we tend to focus on the past in order to give our lives meaning. The truth of the matter however is that it isn’t always the best thing to do, because as fun as those things were to us many years ago, they may not hold up as well from a technical standpoint today. What am I talking about you might ask? Well, I am referring to one of the most controversial topics in all forms of entertainment, Nostalgia.
Nostalgia by definition, at least to me anyway, is a longing admiration of something from our past that reminds us of how good things used to be. That in itself is already a double standard for the simple fact that not everything new is bad, and not everything old is good. Unless you are setting a trend, or changing the game completely, most things are just a product of their generation, for better or worse. What may have made an impact long ago may just look like a quick, mindlessly fun experience now.
It all boils down to perspective, especially in the realm that I’m applying it to, video games. People from the 8 and 16 Bit generations of gaming think of their era as the best because it’s what they grew up with. Same goes for anyone who started their journey into this hobby during the PlayStation and Nintendo 64 era, and so on. One is not always necessarily better than the other, but they are all unique in their own way. Also, just because something may have been a crowning achievement years ago doesn’t mean it is still functional nowadays either.
This of course brings me to the reason why I decided to talk about this topic in the first place, Turtles in Time for the Super Nintendo. During our most recent show, Chad and I reviewed the game, going over our likes and dislikes, most memorable moments, and so on. For a while it was a fun ride just reliving a beloved memory, but when it came time to actually give the game a proper rating, something strange happened to me. I immediately put on my Nostalgia goggles and started handing out high scores left and right, completely ignoring all of the standards that should have been set to review a game in the first place.
When he called me on it, I immediately got defensive, treating it as a personal attack on my past, when all it really was was him trying to get me to realize that despite my enjoyment of the game, there are some aspects of it that just don’t hold up. The voices sound bad, the gameplay is repetitive, and while there was some variety here and there, most of the game was the same concept from beginning to end. As mad as I wanted to get at him for pointing these things out, in the end, the facts are there regardless. He challenged me to think about it on a critical level, instead of letting my passion for it get in the way, and I thank him for that.
The moral of the story here is to make sure to get the facts straight before talking about something from your past. Have fun reliving a memory by all means, but just remember to be open to seeing something for what it is, not for what you want it to be.