I hate to admit it, but I think it does for me at times. I love experiencing new games, but there is something comforting for me playing an old SNES game or any other early memorable games in my life that ends up with multiple sequels.
Do you think your good memories from playing games at important moments of your life skews your thoughts on sequels?
This could include Animal Crossing games, or any others!!
For sure. Even though Tears of the Kingdom has more than Breath of the Wild, I still prefer BotW since it's super nostalgic to me. It was the first Zelda game I played and it's what got me hooked to the franchise! I didn't have that same feeling with TotK, I haven't touched the game for a while now.
Dragon Warrior is one for me. Back then the first 4 games (I think) were called Dragon Warrior. The series was later renamed Dragon Quest (in the US). I am no historian, but the names changed!
I love that even the newest games still include slimes, drakees and the frustrating-as-heck metal slimes!
I think if I played any of the newer games first, I wouldn't appreciate the nostalgia of a "blue slime".
definitely. i loved animal crossing: new leaf as a child and i still play it occasionally to this day but i don’t have quite the same sentiment for new horizons. i quit NL for a few years to play NH because of the hype and cuz that’s what everyone else was doing but i just never had as much fun as i had with NL
in retrospect new horizons was an upgrade but also a downgrade at the same time. i feel like with new leaf i could play it daily and almost never run out of things to do while new horizons got boring and super tedious after a while. maybe i feel that way because i was 9 years old when i started with my first NL file and NH released by the time i was nearly 15 years old and i had other things to do than play video games extensively everyday.
It does. I think where we are at in life, in terms of our age and interests, who we play games with (or whether we play alone), games you've played before, your expectations, and playing a game at the right or wrong moment can have a huge impact on whether a game has a meaningful impact on you.
There are games, or memories of playing those games, that are pure joy for me. But if I would have picked some of those games up for the first time ever today and played them for the first time, my feelings could, and likely would be, very different.
I've always felt oddly about nostalgia. While I do think I would like something from an easier, simpler time, I cannot deny that I've just had more time to actually just do that singular thing. With how much multitasking is done these days, I have significantly less time to appreciate things as before as attention is pulled between multiple things. I would definitely savor and remember things a lot more in the past, and appreciate the little things. I don't like all older games I've played, but I do replay a bit of them from time to time.
I find that replaying the old games from my memories pretty much "ruin" the nostalgia effect. Or maybe not. But I do have fond memories of playing Wild World, but when I start the game now I just see a super outdated game that's missing a lot of quality of life updates.
And I don't find old looking games particularly interesting. Pokémon is like the only exception. I don't need games to look good though.
One old-looking game I enjoy is GTA San Andreas. But for me I think I only have nostalgia for the first playthrough, the first experience.
But maybe I just miss being a kid without adult worries.
to be honest yeah i think nostalgia does affect my enjoyment of stuff. i'm a pretty big sucker for nostalgic stuff, it's just really comforting and familiar to me!
I rarely feel nostalgia for games. Occasionally when I play Scribblenauts again I’ll get chills, but otherwise I feel neutral on them. Ever since the pandemic games feel less fun to replay than when I played them the first time. That’s the same for any media though. I’d rather consume new stories than revisit what I already know.
That being said, it is sometimes nice to play some Pokemon games again since those games always make me feel at ease.
