Nostalgia. The word brings to mind a blissful familiarity that comes from participating in something in the present that we really enjoyed doing in the past. Games are no different. Everyone has games that bring back memories of what we now consider to be better days. Hindsight is like the snob pointing out what you could have done, hindsight tells us that our childhood may not have been as bad as we thought. As adults we know how the world works. When we were children, we never had control over the world. Hindsight tells us that those days were better, safer, less complicated. Games that bring nostalgia put us back in the mindset of a child. It makes us feel safe, secure and protected. Human beings have a natural tendency to want security and protection. Especially adults, because as adults we know how quickly the world can go from okay one day to horrible the next. As gamers, we seek safety and security in games.
I started playing when I was very young like most players my age. I grew up playing Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64 with my mom and sister. Super Mario, Kirby and Mario Cart were some of the titles we played. Zelda was perhaps the biggest game we played. My mom has a problem with fast games like Call of Duty and other very graphic games. So we played Super Nintendo and what a moment! Zelda on the Super Nintendo we beat him many times. I say “we”, but it was my mother who was playing, not me or my sister. Even thinking about it as I write this makes me nostalgic. We kept getting closer to the end and then the game erased our save so we started over like three times. They were good times. That was when I was about six or seven or eight years old. Long ago. Nostalgia gives us hope for the future. It tells us that if there were good times in the past, there will be more good times in the future.
Later I started playing on my own. It’s hard to think which game came next in chronological order, but they all had one theme: single player strategy. A broad description of the game that can include many games. Games like Pharaoh and Cleopatra, Age of Empires II, and of course Sid Meier’s Civilization III. I wasn’t allowed to play shooting games because they had bad words and so I was restricted to single player games. My parents were very protective and games weren’t as prevalent twenty years ago as they are now. Pharaoh is a city builder who places you in ancient Egypt. The objective of the game was to build big cities using the resources at your disposal and it was quite a challenge for an eleven year old boy. Age of Empires II is a completely different real-time strategy game than pharaoh. You have to balance resource gathering and troop production to take down the AI or other players. Civ III was probably my favorite game growing up. To this day, I still play pharaoh and age of empires II.
Think about nostalgia again for just a second. It is a feeling that comes from a memory. A throwback to “better days” that may or may not be accurate. The games we played a long time ago, that bring back those memories, might not be fun anymore. Civ III I played it for hundreds of hours when I was younger, it’s not as much fun now that I’m older so I don’t play it as much now. Sometimes nostalgia lies.
In conclusion, nostalgia in games is a good thing. It allows us to relive parts of our childhood that we might not otherwise have a reason to bring back from the depths of our minds. Many people say that video games lead to antisocial behavior, violence, and a drop in school grades. Video games teach us what the world is like. When you play multiplayer of any game, you will usually find people who are toxic. He prepares himself to deal with the worst society he has to throw at us. The human being is prone to violence. The first murder occurred when Cain killed Abel in Genesis. I’m pretty sure they didn’t have video games back then. So this point is always going to be moot. The only point that really makes sense is the drop in school grades. It takes a lot of discipline to do school work on video games. This discipline builds character. So the next time you feel homesick, take some time to stop and smell the memories. Enjoy the thoughts of better times and the hope that there are still good times ahead, no matter what the world tells you in the present. This is what video game nostalgia teaches us.