Well, I thought that I’d share a few theories about why 1990s videogame nostalgia seems to be one of the strongest types of nostalgia. Yes, these are just theories based on looking at my own feelings of nostalgia about it, but it interested me enough to write this article. I’ll also be focusing more on console gaming than PC gaming here too.
And, yes, this was something I ended up thinking about when – whilst tired one evening – spending about half an hour watching Youtube footage of someone playing an old SNES game called “The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past” (1991/2). This game, along with a small number of other SNES games – like “Super Mario World” (1990) and “Super Castlevania IV” (1991) – instantly evokes a ridiculous amount of childhood nostalgia in me. And I wondered why videogames in particular do this.
There are probably three main reasons for this, which all combine together into a stronger type of nostalgia. These three things are scarcity, tribalism and time/interactivity.
1) Scarcity: Back in the 1990s and early-mid 2000s, videogames – on consoles at least – were a bit less common. This wasn’t quite as much of a cost-based thing as you might think, since things like second-hand games (anyone remember those?) and budget re-releases of games meant that console gaming was more affordable back then than it is sometimes portrayed.
For example, although the three SNES games I mentioned earlier were from the early 1990s, I mostly played them during the mid-late 1990s. The console and the games were a hand-me-down from a relative. Likewise, I also remember buying second-hand Game Boy games for just £5 each from a local second-hand shop during the mid-late 1990s too. Whilst videogames weren’t ultra-cheap back then, they weren’t always as pricey as the “buying a new copy on release day” prices might suggest.
No, games were a bit less common because they usually had to be released on physical media back then. This meant that most games available were mid-high budget games. Yes, this resulted in higher quality games – especially since the lack of online updates meant that games actually had to be finished before they were released. Even so, games from back then are often a bit more memorable because there were fewer of them.
Your game collection wasn’t a gigantic digital list of tens or hundreds of games, but often a small pile of physical cartridges or discs. Each game was something you knew a bit better and something which mattered to you a bit more. As such, these games can feel a bit more nostalgic than you might expect.
I mean, I can still remember all of the other SNES games I played back then – whether it was the ones I didn’t really enjoy that much like a “NHL” ice hockey game or one called “Pit Fighter”. I can remember SNES ports of cool games like “Doom” and “Mortal Kombat”, which were technically inferior to the originals but still surprisingly cool.
I can remember the 3D graphics in “Starwing” and how I misheard one of the gibberish phrases spoken by one of the other pilots as being “W..W..Wing! Dammit!“. I can remember the Mute City music from “F-Zero” and how cool all of the futuristic racing tracks looked – and how dramatic it looked when one of the cars accidentally flew off of the track.
I can even remember playing a rotoscoped platform game called “Another World”… where I always got completely “stuck” on the very first level. Plus, I also vividly remember playing the very first level of “Super Star Wars” at a relative’s house once too. Fewer games makes each one more memorable.
2) Tribalism: Everyone who grew up around videogame consoles during about the early-mid 1990s knows about this already. But, back then, you were either – to use the American terms – a “Nintendo kid” or a “Sega kid”. In other words, you either played games on consoles manufactured by one of those two companies. Yes, PC gaming was its own thing back then and it sat above all of this old “console wars” stuff with a smug grin on its face (and, yes, I also played PC games as well back then).
Still, if you played console games back then, you probably either picked a side or – more commonly – accidentally found yourself on a given side. And the game companies played into this rivalry, with quite a few games and recurring characters who were exclusive to each manufacturer’s console. Each console had it’s own “atmosphere” and personality too – whether it was the style of graphics that they used or even the attitudes taken by their parent companies (eg: Nintendo was less “edgy” than Sega was).
This artificial rivalry and tribalism was a cynical and divisive marketing tactic, but it gave younger players a feeling of identity in a way that you just don’t get with modern games. Yes, there are still a few “exclusives” these days (especially Nintendo games…) but games are often much more multi-platform than they used to be. This is really good, because “exclusives” are an anti-customer thing, but it means that modern games don’t really evoke the highly-specific type of nostalgia that older games do.
Again, it was more of an identity thing. Virtually all of your console nostalgia back then was focused on just one manufacturer and/or console. For example, people who were “Nintendo Kids” back in the 1990s will get nostalgic about characters like the Mario Brothers, Link, Pokemon, Donkey Kong, Kirby etc… and people who were “Sega kids” probably get nostalgic about… Sonic the Hedgehog? Again, the console games you played back then were almost part of your identity.
3) Time and interactivity: This one also applies to paperback novels to a lesser extent, but videogames are such a potent source of nostalgia because not only do they require active effort from the audience but they also take up a lot more time too.
You can watch a film in about two hours. But, due to the “scarcity” thing I mentioned earlier, older videogames were much longer and often more difficult than they are these days. These were games that you’d start and probably never actually complete – but you wouldn’t feel cheated because you’d still sink literally tens or hundreds of hours into trying to complete them. They were also often gameplay-focused enough to be inherently fun in their own right, even if you didn’t progress that far through the story.
All of this time and the high degree of active interactivity due to the solid focus on actual gameplay means that nostalgic memories of 1990s videogames can often be a lot more vivid than other memories from the time. They were a skill that you learned and a “place” that you spent quite a bit of time in.
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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂
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