Nostalgic Gaming – Should we buy games just for the nostalgia?

Recently I’ve been reliving the past by playing Lost Odyssey again, a game I haven’t played for a long time, I had no real interest in playing it again and in fact, the first time I played it I didn’t really enjoy it.

After a few weeks of playing I found that as well as the game reminding me of my younger years, I actually enjoyed playing it this time, but is it really worth buying something just for the memories? And why does replaying an old game give us this nostalgic feeling?

In the same way that looking at photographs or messages from friends can bring back fond memories of the past, we tend to hold memories of the games we’ve played years ago and even who we played them with.

So when I’m in the game shop browsing the shelves and I see a game I used to play as a child, I’ll pick it up, remember when I used to play it and want to relive that feeling of excitement I got as a child.

Sometimes this this can be dissapointing though, wanting to play an old game is fine but when that game isn’t as fun as you remember, well it sucks but with the impriced graphics of games today and better consoles to play them on, can an old game really ever be as good as what we have now?

Of course there are always remakes that bring the old games we love (Sonic, Mario, LoZ etc.) back to life with great improvement, but with gaming today, across all platforms, we expect a certain quality that the games we used to play wouldn’t be able to match.

So gamers, maybe it’s better to leave the past where it is and save yourself the possibility of disappointment. But it really depends on the person.