cdbeck
Posts: 1374
Joined: 8/16/2005
From: Indiana
Status: offline
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Jeff,
I'm not sure that anthing really CAN capture the nostalgia factor in games, at least 100%. Just like Deathproof (the movie you quoted) wasn't exactly like the old Grindhouse films (although, there was a lot of nice pops, hisses, skips, and stuff added in to make it feel like an in-theater viewing). The issue with games is that, so often, the technology changes but the mechanics do not. So instead of evoking nostalgia, you get a "been-there-done-that" of "oh, we are killing Aliens in turn based missions again?" Part of the nostalgia factor, at least for me, is that these games (Ultima 7, X-Com, Command & Conquer/Red Alert, etc...) evoke the both the halycon days of my youth, where I had time aplenty to play, and also the halycon days of computer gaming's youth, where every new game was literally something NEW and you never knew what to expect. When you shot the walls in X-Com and they BLEW UP and demolished, leaving smoke and rubble, you went "OMG! THAT IS SO NEAT! I CAN DESTROY THE ENVIRONMENT!!!" Today we hold that mechanic as nearly required in such games. Or when you sent finally set up that nuclear missile in C&C and destroyed an entire base in a flashy explosion - now you expect a superweapon and know when, how, and why to use it. Think back to your first "complete set" of blue items in the Diablo series, your first infested terran base in Starcraft, the first time a Crysalid turned one of your X-Com soldiers into a Crysalid zombie, the first time the Guardian's face popped up in Ultima to mock you for going the wrong way, the first time a super-mutant melted when you shot him with plasma in Fallout. All this stuff was new technology back then, now we expect it, and denigrate games that do not have this type of stuff.
I was playing a neat game called Eschalon:Book 1 a while back. It is a "retro" isometric RPG. It certainly evoked a little nostalgia, but it didn't hit the "tone" that I remember from Ultima or other classic RPGs. Sorta like playing Pong on the computer - if it isn't with one of those round controllers and on a grainy TV screen on a saturday morning, it isn't the same.
Partly, this is subjective. I remember the great memories associated with these games at the time of playing - so no other game will recapture that. I remember my dad mailing me my Zerg copy of Starcraft to my Freshman dorm, my excitement about getting a new game magnified by the assuaging of homesickness that mail from home gave me. I remember selling my old toys in a yardsale, working all day in the heat, to get the $100 needed to buy my Nintendo Entertainment System. I already told the X-COM - X-Files memory. I remember waking up on the day after Christmas to play this new, strange, and very immersive game called Civilizations. No new game can bring these memories back, they are intricately linked to those specific games.
I'll never regret my decision to be a gamer, rather than play sports, or other activities. I have so many great memories associated with board games and video games, so many friendships made, so many things I have learned about life, history, people, and society (you can observe much in a PBEM or multiplayer game, as well as a board game).
Wait... what were we talking about? UFO:ET?! Oh, I better go redownload that...
SoM
_____________________________
"Neca eos omnes. Deus suos agnoscet!"
(Kill them all. God will know his own.)
-- Arnaud-Armaury, the Albigensian Crusade
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