Are there games you wish you had nostalgia for?

[J.F.C]

Nostalgia is overrated. I'm honestly glad i only truly started getting into Vidya when i was 13 because i was a fucking idiot when i was younger than that and wouldn't have been able to beat 80% of the games i like.

 

[Num]

In my case it would be The Elder Scrolls franchise. I love those games, but I have zero nostalgia for them because I played them like 8 years later of the initial release of Skyrim.

just means youll get nostalgia for them later down the line

 

[MegaHiro91]

You're right, I still end up having a great and memorable time. I guess it's just the feeling of missing out on being at the "Ground Zero" of something new.

That's the thing exactly! Many of these games still hold up, but when we say "miss out" we are refering to the feeling of playing them when they were new and all the rage.

Post automatically merged: Feb 18, 2025

Well, some would say that those games hold up really well nowadays and have nothing to envy from the soulless mass of generic action games made nowadays. Some of the people who would say that might be in this thread commenting right now.

There's no reason to feel like you missed out because the graphics now have retro charm, the stories of those games are just as applicable today as they were in the 90s and the gameplay is still fun.

You are right that they hold up, but you can still feel you missed out because you "weren't there" in the game's hayday.

 

[CardcaptorEd2019]

Halo or pretty much any game on the 360 as I never had one growing up. I guess in general I didn't have many games when I was little so a lot of games fell in the cracks in terms of me getting to play them when I was a child

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

You know don't be sad you didn't get to experience that made you want to be nostalgic for be glad you got that experience from the game.

Personally it would be age of mythology , and WarCraft 3 there is something so cozy about AOM that makes me so relaxed yeah yeah I know its not the most relaxing of games since all you do in it is kill pillage steal and destroy but the overall vibe brroooo I miss that game been long time since I last played it commnading the greek hoplite armies , the Egyptian chariots and the norse giants....a game worth experiencing as a child.

 

[Ikagura]

Well, I have some weird nostalgia about Klonoa despite only getting involved around the time the remake was announced. I've barely played the demo of 2 on the PS2.

 

[Mini_Man.XW]

Halo. Everyone I know fw halo cause they grew up playing the games together. I played the halo games after high school. I enjoyed aspects of them, but I think they play bad. I just didn't like the high times to kill and how slow it feels.

 

[Parasite_Steve]

I wish I had nostalgia for the pokemon franchise. It was virtually always present in my life in some form so I’m aware of the tropes, the characters and many of the first generation pokemon but I never got into any of the shows or games and it kind of pains me because for some reason I keep ending up with romantic partners who love the franchise and it’s an integral part of their childhood and I can’t ever connect with them on that level. I’ve been trying to catch up but I’m just not ten years old anymore so it’ll never hit the same way.

 

[Ikagura]

"Anemoia" is a term for nostalgia for something you didn't have before.

 

[nemui-enbi]

I used to feel like this about certain bands amd musicians more than games, but I totally understand the sentiment. I think with games, since playing them was largely a solo experience for me growing up, I can get nostalgic for games from any stage of my life after enough time has passed. Playing older games, or games aimed at younger audiences now is still me enjoying them somewhat in a vacuum at the end of the day.

But with music, despite it still being a deeply personal experience, was much socially involved for me when it came to finding new artists, appreciating composition, vibes, etc. So when people connect over music I was disinterested in growing up, that's when I wish I had that nostalgia.

 

[MegaHiro91]

I wish I had nostalgia for the pokemon franchise. It was virtually always present in my life in some form so I’m aware of the tropes, the characters and many of the first generation pokemon but I never got into any of the shows or games and it kind of pains me because for some reason I keep ending up with romantic partners who love the franchise and it’s an integral part of their childhood and I can’t ever connect with them on that level. I’ve been trying to catch up but I’m just not ten years old anymore so it’ll never hit the same way.

You bring up an interesting point. In the manga Medalist there is a quote that (paraphrasing): "Sometimes it's okay for an adult to become a kid again if you feel you haven't made enough special memories. So you make those memories, then jump back to being an adult, and then find yourself more 'whole' than before".
E.g going to DisneyLand for the first time as a 25 year old because your family couldn't afford it when you were a child. The thing is, like you said, I'm not 10 years old anymore, so while I'm proud to say that I DO still have my inner child intact and can't find joy and excitement in the smallest mundane things that many take for granted or overlook... I can never SEE the world, nor the media I consume, through the untainted eyes of a kid again. I can PRETEND, sure, but the feeling will never be 100% authentic.
I mean I did enjoy that trip to DisneyLand, but imagine how much I'd've enjoyed it had I been 7 and not 25.

So while you can indeed start playing Pokémon today and even gather some friends to battle and trade and pretend it's 1999 again, it will never be exactly the same. Like you said.

 

[Tonberry]

Ironically, Dragon Quest.
I didn’t have the patience for the ones I tried when I was younger (8, 4DS and 9) and only started to love them around 2014, when I was 19.

Then again, they didn’t really exist in Europe until 8 and the DS remakes, but it was sort of one of those ”damn I missed out on this?!” moments.

 

[MegaHiro91]

Ironically, Dragon Quest.
I didn’t have the patience for the ones I tried when I was younger (8, 4DS and 9) and only started to love them around 2014, when I was 19.

Then again, they didn’t really exist in Europe until 8 and the DS remakes, but it was sort of one of those ”damn I missed out on this?!” moments.

Yeah Europe got screwed over with a lot of things. I imported Final Fantasy Chronicles for my modded PS1 when I was 11-12, so I was at an age where I think I can just barely say I'm nostalgic for it. But my god, the list of stuff we missed out on in that era. For some reason Square and Atlus really hated us back then.

 

[Ian Naxieas]

Quite a lot of things actually. I think my biggest one is 80s-90s PC games in general. My boyfriend and a couple of my best friends grew up with PC games and I feel like I missed out when they talk about them. There's a lot of classic PC games that I've tried my damnedest to get into, but they're just too rough, complicated or esoteric for me. Not always the case thankfully, but I wish there were more that I could get into. Not saying I regret growing up with consoles, but a mixture of both would have been nice.

I also don't regret having a Genesis, but ultimately I wish I had an SNES instead. x) Though I suppose it's a case of "The Grass is Always Greener" because a lot of my favorite SNES games only got fan translations so I'd not have quite as big of a library as I do now. But it'd still be really nice to grow up with the Breath of Fire games or the Final Fantasy games or stuff like Wild Guns and Super Metroid.

Finally, the Zelda games in general. I do have some nostalgia for A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time, but that's about it. I don't hate the series or anything, I just wish I had The Adventure of Link and Majora's Mask when I was younger. I've tried many times to get into them, but it has not been successful. Boo.

But yeah, ultimately my reasons are stuff like being way more tolerant of jank and playing the hell out of the few games I'd probably have had at the time. So I guess it might not necessarily be nostalgia itself, but I feel like a bit of nostalgia would help me appreciate games I've been unable to get into better.

 

[_-_AceDragon_-_]

Symphony of the night was such a difficult game to come by in the early noughties. I don't ever remember seeing it in any store. I spotted it in a second hand store one day but had no money to buy it, when I came back it was gone. Didn't play it until years later. It would have blown me away. Also demons crest on snes.
I did play a lot of the older games that I'm glad to have enjoyed at the time, like terminator 2 (nes), power blade, altered beast, gunstar heroes, Zelda a link to the past, Yoshi's island, ff7, time crisis, Megaman X4 / legends, tomb raider 2, ocarina of time, banjo kazooie, etc etc BUT you're lucky in a way if you didn't, because you are able to experience them for the first time now and some of them really do hold up especially if you're able to appreciate them for what they are. I'm actually glad I didn't play super Metroid as a kid coz I'd have struggled to beat it and really enjoyed it despite it being super old by the time I got to it.
Right now I'm planning to play the X-Files point and click fmv adventure game which is a huge blast from the past, never played it before. Even though there's no nostalgia, it's still cool, like going into a time machine playing some of these old games that developers don't really make anymore / can't make anymore (because it's a lost art.)

 

[bigthecat_]

I get nostalgia for games I stop playing for like, five months or so.