How Nostalgia Is Holding Games Back 

A nostalgia filled comment on a nostalgia video! xD Very nice content master craftsman!

Stop spreading disproven anthropology

Fun fact, hollow knight's art style is way more inspired by the old anime "Angel's egg". Check it out

You made some wrong points and some correct ones, just check my other comment for context.

I think Nostalgia is holding films and Shows back not games.

Yeah I very much agree to this

love this. thank you for sharing!!

Well described, that's how it should be, really.

Intrinsically that's how the gaming industry used to progress. By taking what you liked about games that had come before and applying those lessons to your own vision. I mean, DOOM took inspiration from Mario . . . And in that I mean that the boys at Id making a name for themselves first tried to sell Nintendo on a PC port of Mario, and then when that didn't pan out, they sought to apply what they liked about Mario, the simple, lean, and 'fast' controls to their own project.

@@Bustermachine Masters of Doom is unironically one of the best books I've ever read. It reads like fiction while being a mostly accurate telling of the process of ID.

@Dawn Razor I am a 90s born and someone with a huge nostalgic rush. I believe you should give a try to late 90s till 2008 games. That's were the gems are.

@Dawn Razor That isn't nostalgia. It's preference. You personally enjoy those old games rather than yearning for their essence decades after playing them.

@@Kapt_Klaw Can you name some examples? I am really curious to try old games out :)

@@coderaven1107 claw, blood, hexen, heretic, Impossible creatures, jagged alliance 1.6, Fallout series, Diablo series, Age of mythology, Gun(2005), painkiller, Commando, Warcraft 3, Thief trilogy, Hitman series, Splinter cell series and metal gear solid.

As someone who loved the PS2-era platformers: so true. The only recent games that fill that gap are A Hat in Time, Psychonauts 2 and Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart.

There is a reason for pixels, the human brain fills in the gaps making it more generally appealing. If I see a hyper realistic tree I see... a tree. I stop looking at it. I never think about the tree. If I see a sprite of a tree it will look different to me then you. I see a tree flowing in the wind, you see it with an animal in it shifting. The biggest successes have been those what make people think, the things that stick for generations. The MonaLisa made people think off what was otherwise just a painting of a girl.

yeah my reason for making pixel art games as opposed to more high res styles, is that 1: it's easier and 2: it looks cool imo

@@yokcos agreed. My first system was the wii and I wasn't even alive during the 8 or 16-bit eras but I still friggin LOVE pixel graphics bc they look cool af.

And to also save time in development.

@@Buglin_Burger7878 If you *really* wanna get technical, a lot of pixel art at the time was made with the limitations of consumer CRTs in mind, leading to effects intended to take some advantage of that, resulting in smoother looking sprites and images than what the machine itself is capable of rendering. Not all pixel art did this of course, but there's certainly some stark differences to be found comparing some pixel-perfect versions of an image to how they'd appear on a CRT.

"Could have been an NES game" Those are the rose-tinted glasses talking. The amount of gems that spray out of chests *alone* would break the NES's sprite budget, let alone its per-line sprite limit. Shovel Knight is a fantastic way of tricking people into thinking you're respecting limitations when you're really not.

After having replayed NES Metroid not too long ago - shit was _rough_ back then

@@GeneralBolas You could probably make a NES game that feels the same, but it wouldn't look the same. You'd get closer on a SNES, but there are limitations there as well.

Im doing the same with the game im developing Im using pixel art and the nes pallet but in will also use more colors per sprite then the nes could handle and a LOT of parallax layers

I thought it was supposed to be like a SNES game?

I kinda disagree on the boomer shooter bit. While your parents and mine (though mine are at the border of Gen X and Boomer) aren't into video games, at least one of my uncles and great uncles have both been playing video games regularly since before I was born, and I expect you have uncles or aunts that have been into video games for a long time as well. The market for games around the time games like Doom and Quake came out was still largely older Gen Xers and Boomers, simply because they were adults with computers at the time those games released. Sure, we existed and had access to computers, but kids and teens playing on their parents' computers weren't the intended audience of the early FPS games, even if we happen to also really like them. That being said, I would say that Gen X is more the generation that was in the prime position to play and enjoy these games, where Boomers tend to be more into sim games (both aforementioned uncle and great uncle were big into the Mechwarrior games when I was growing up, and I expect they are still fond of them)

Boomers that played games loved boardgames and especially wargames amd sims. My father (quintessential boomer) introduced me to Doom. I get what you're saying but you aren't totally correct.

Now that I think about it, that’s probably why Pokemon can’t change too much or it might no longer be Pokemon. Yet, I still dislike it’s insanely repetitive gameplay. I tried to replay a game I finished by deleting my data and it made me want to die.

There's always been a "follow the leader" syndrome with... well, just about everything. With nostalgia it's about old stuff, but it's no different. The problem is still the same, though: They copy the surface level recognisability, but fail to build on what actually made the leader creation work, leaving them seemingly the same but without knowing why the original got popular. I mean, the RE2 and FF7 remakes hold the story and world to the nostalgia, but the actual games are very different. That's what makes them work, since they tap into the nostalgia, but at the same time they refresh the playing experience and graphics to modern standards.

@@AnotherDuck FF7 Remake is a bad representation of a remake. When you're remaking the game, you need to be faithful to the original while giving QoL changes that makes the gameplay not as clunky or poorly tuned as the original. What Square did with FF7R was make a bad alternate version of FF7, designed to mostly be a cashcow.

@@xDarkomantis Yeah, no.

@@xDarkomantis what you just explained is a remaster not a remake

It does not have to be old to be nostalgic. Anything can be nostalgic, from last week, to a time before you were even born. Either way, everything made is a sum of someone's experiences that come from other people's creations and it will continue this way forever. There really aren't any original ideas, just new takes on already existing ones

Not to mention that people who try to explore tend to immediately get thrown out the door. The Last Jedi tried to explore the ramifications of some of Star Wars' core concepts, and was immediately dismissed as "ruining what came before it" by fans. All people want is to glorify what they loved as kids. But what about this new generation, what will they have?

@@swishfish8858 bruh what even happens in the sequels I forgot

You cannot get evolution without trying something new though, and that's the point he's making. Nostalgia is understandable, and it's important to study and learn what made those old successful games so good at the time. But it's also important to make something new. Without anything new... you might as well just play the original game.

The whole point here is that nostalgia is not an accurate recollection of the past, so you cannot assume that there automatically is something truly useful in those old titles to bring into a modern video game. People just tend to remember the past and especially their childhood with rose-coloured glasses. Go to any RU-vid video about any shitty game from more than ten years ago and there will be people in the comment section saying that said game is "aCtUaLly rEaLly uNdErRaTeD", and if you probe them why they think that, it *always* turns out that they were really young when they played it and hence, had absolutely no frame of reference and a brain that was full of dopamine all the time.

@@Christopher-md7tf But then you'd have to judge which games were shitty, and not confuse them with decent, good, or great games from the past. And the comment sections of those games are probably somewhat similar, although probably with a lot more positive comments.

@@acrane3496 I really disagree on the Banjo/Yooka point. I replayed Banjo for the first time in decades just a few months before I played Yooka and it's just flat-out a better and more engaging game. The levels are designed with purpose instead of being giant empty wastelands, your moves actually have weight behind them and are satisfying to pull off, the music is a million times better, the challenges are more engaging, and the characters are more likeable and memorable. Yooka didn't fail because it supposedly was too much like Banjo-Kazooie, it failed because it's just not a good game.

@@Christopher-md7tf I'm really glad I can replay my literal favorite game of all time even to this day and only really appreciate it more.

Someone else knows about Jade Cacoon! XD. You hit the nail on the head, pokemons combat system is definitely high tier, but the actual monster raising and the side content and atmosphere is so cool in these other franchises.

Dragon Quest Monsters was legit man. I especially liked the DQM: Joker game on the DS.

I heavily preferred the Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker games on the DS over the original Pokemon. Heck, I was so burned out from the main series Pokemon games by the fifth generation that I strongly preferred spinoffs over most of the main series games, and have more completed spinoffs than main series games. They even did 3D graphics before Pokemon ever tried them in their main series games, and they still might hold up against the graphics Gamefreak is using in their title now.

Digimon never died though. It just got more quiet outside of Japan. And even then games like Cyber Sleuth brought back a bunch of people into the franchise. Sure it's not as big as Pokemon, but cmon, almost nothing is as big as Pokemon, even outside of monster games.

@@miwestraveler3986 Well, that's why I added "fizzled into obscurity," because of that period of mega-quiescence in the US, but fair enough! I recall a decent amount of those did survive, it's just again, they get overshadowed by Pokemon...

there is nothing wrong on using an already existing work as a base, the problem is if you dont try to make it unique, add your own ideas to it, make it yours.

I'm a game developer and I'm in the same situation. I'd like to do a "minecraft like game" and always got me thinking "why it would be a good game? Why not just make a mod for Minecraft? Why would people play it instead of Minecraft?"

@@LucasStraub Don't worry about whether or not people will play it. Just make something you would like to play and make that, chances are your taste isn't that bad and people, even if only a few, will enjoy it for what it is.

Yeah, super metroid is just so good. 100% would recommend. Good luck with your metroidvania! The last big game I made was heavily based on the metroid aesthetic, so you should be able to do better than me haha. My gimmick was that the whole map etc was randomly generated.

How about instead of making a metroidvania game, you make a good game instead?

*sigh* I do respect that you at least went with a water type, but that hill was forged by the OG Water type, Squirtle. And Squirtle only got more awesome as you played with it, THEY GET HYDROCANNONS FOR POKEMON'S SAKES!!!

Totodile

well said

All 3 hoenn starters were quite good ngl

I fully agree with you, that take felt a bit under cooked tbh, I never felt that the side weapons took anything out from the game, and as you say it feel more like it's an evolution that evokes both dark souls and tenchu nostalgia without being hollow....I'd say elden ring tends to fail to meaningfully evolve the series

@@fluffy_tail4365 Elden Ring really isn't trying to evolve the Souls formula though, it's more of the open world that is being pushed forward. Taking into consideration all the Ubisoft copy/pastes, it's no wonder why Elden Ring was like a breath of fresh air for so many.

@@theinternetsightseer2935 I’d say that in itself is a ‘development’ or ‘evolution’ of the series. FromSoft’s games commonly have varying degrees of nonlinearity but successfully applying their design to a fully open world structure that very rarely locks/gates the players, is a feat. From player progression to boss encounters, etc

@@fluffy_tail4365 I honestly don't think Sekiro should even be viewed as the next step or "Evolution" of Dark Souls. Sure it has Dark Souls elements but it honestly has more in common with a character action game than the core RPG style of Dark Souls making it a fundamentally different game at its core. I don't agree with the video either. I don't think Sekiro is a step backwards or forwards for the series. It's more like a step to the side imo.

Agreed on this. Plus, I made an educated guess that the sabimaru would work on the Gun Fort Snake Eyes boss, because I had already fought the Poison Pool Snake Eyes boss, and accidentally discovered the cheese method of letting her walk through the poison. I figured that poison was worth a try on the other Snake Eyes, and I was rewarded for that experiment.

Example: Honey Trees in Pokemon Diamond and Pearl. WHY WASN'T THIS FEATURE REFINED IN THE REMAKES?!

You worked on Strider? Cool! I think you succeeded at your goals. I felt it was a nice mix of the arcade and NES gameeplay. Never got through that final area but I had fun.

You forgot Brawlhalla in that list of platform fighters. It takes the core of Smash (the freeform movement mixed with %-based combat) and changes so much about that core with its mechanics that it creates something unique. It's probably the platform fighter most different from Smash, and it's far and away the most popular and successful indie platform fighter on the market today because of how much is separates itself from Smash.

It's also a form of optional difficulty in a very difficult game. Have a game that is binary skill check like most games of old is simply too frustrating in todays era.

If anything, Dread is way more inspired by Fusion honestly

@@skydiamsteam6005 Which makes sense, since it was supposed to be a direct sequel to fusion all the way back in 2005. It really feels like a game that had been marinating for that long, while still refining itself to be more presentable to a modern era. I think it hits the nail on the head for innovating while still being reminiscent of older experiences

I had the exact same problem when he brought up Metroid Dread. It is not trying to be Super Metroid, like at all. The movement and combat is miles better, it has a more focused narrative and even brings back the X parasites as a plot device (which makes sense) and incorporates it into the game. It is more reminiscent to Fusion, but not just for the sake of nostalgia, the events in the game have relevance and they fit the narrative presented within the game. Sure, Kraid shows up, but if that alone is going to make the game unispired because of nostalgia, then it seems to me the problem lies elsewhere. As you mentioned, it's probable he didn't like the game altogether (which is fine) and labeled the game as a nostalgia trip.

Guacamelee combat system is nothing like the Super metroid, or like any other metroidvania for that matter. Hollow knight improved a lot in terms of exploration, non linearity, bosses, controls and general gameplay. Also, the healing dyamic makes the combat system very different. It seems like this guy didnt play those games at all.

Most common term I've heard is "classic shooter" from someone who grew up with them. I'd never heard "boomer shooter" at all until this video.

@@torgranael Classic Shooter only refer to games that are actually old, not modern games that look or play old. (Like how classic cars are actually old and classic rock is actually old) So games like Doom I & II, Duke Nukem 3d, Quake, Wolfenstein 3d, GoldenEye 007, Blood, Heretic, Shadow Warrior and so on are all "Classic Shooters" "Old-School FPS/Shooters" are modern games with either retro gameplay, retro aesthetics or both. So its games like Dusk, Ion Fury, Project Warlock, Doom Eternal, Shadow Warrior 3, Prodeus, Hedon, Amid Evil, Devil Daggers, Strafe, Wrath: Aeon of Ruin, Hellbound, Ultrakill, Dread Templar and HROT are all prime examples. Though "Retro FPS" is also a fairly common term for them. "Boomer Shooters" (from what I've seen, a term only really used by people who don't really play them) seems to be an umbrella term for both Classic Shooters from the 90s and Modern Retro FPS games.

Could always call them "doom clone" just like they were described from back in the day. But I guess that's not really accurate when Doom 2016 is such a modern game.

@@cattysplat Plus a LOT of Old-School Shooters are nothing like Doom. Look at Ultrakill for example. Very much a Retro FPS or "Boomer Shooter" but very much NOT Doom like. Plus as you said even modern Doom games aren't really anything like OG Doom aside from being fun as hell (pun intended lol)

Oh so true. They brought back a style of play long belived dead.

It's why FreeSpace 2 was considered the best Space Sim for nearly twenty years. No competition.

I never played the game but this sounds to me like that one kid that insists they were actually there and saw with their own eyes when their cousin caught mew from under that damn truck xD

My favorite trivia bit about that line is that its a euphemism for getting married, not that they all litterally got shot in the knee.

Hmm, maybe that one gets a pass - if only for Noir Spiderman

Into the Spiderverse wasn’t nostalgia bait (outside of the character himself I guess being called back from decades and decades of media.) No Way Home was.

That's not how the internet works. Certainly not the comment section.

sir i cant see your eyes

@@kerb5989 👀👀👀👀👀

I think telling modern devs that is talking to a wall. They don't like that style of level design because it's not easy to navigate without that experience. It isn't meant for new FPS fans and occupies the niche on the opposite end of hardcore tactical FPS. I love both extremes, especially hideous destructor, a doom mod which somehow fuses both seamlessly together. People who love old school doom love the old school FPS map design while new FPS fans and devs can't stand that style of level and think it's a flaw. They are obviously wrong because it can be proven by just looking at the fan made mappacks like Sunlust and BTSX which makes vanilla doom maps look like they were designed for the mentally disabled to navigate and fight through with how straightforward and easy they are by comparison.

Also I recommend ashes 2063 and afterglow. If you like build engine style stuff then ashes will absolutely blow it out of the park, especially afterglow.

@@necrosteel5013 Funny enough, I recently beat both episodes, and it absolutely was a treat.

Another example was the original Paper Mario game.

The cappy monster control didn't really change the fundamental way you played the game, it was mostly just short gimmicks. Odyssey was like playing a greatest hits version of 3D Mario ideas. It's only so positively seen because there is literally nobody making quality 3D platformers with new ideas.

Monster Sanctuary is gold, and it has its own identity, loved the whole game. Meanwhile I wanted to drop Coromon after an hour...

So if you don't want innovations then you really must dislike Ion Maiden having a headshot mechanic yeah? Otherwise I think your point about not wanting innovations is a tad hypocritical since it comes off like you just hate specific mechanics rather than _actually_ wanting doom/build engine clones (you can just download a new map pack/mod like people have been doing for 30 years now if you want that) Speaking of which, no new content? What are you talking about? Many of these games have map editors and source ports that are publicly available that countless people have been creating maps and mods with for decades, some of which would be downright _impossible_ back during release due to hardware limitations (vanilla style quake maps can look downright _gorgeous_ thanks to modern hardware). It's fine to want games that riff on the old because you want more of the same but don't frame it as if it's because these games are all dead lol, all the popular oldies that most people have nostalgia for thrive in the modern era just fine (and i can link you some sites for em if you haven't heard of them already) . Yes, I'm well aware that many boomer shooters riffing on the old fps game style _do_ have many new mechanics and ideas that justify their existence as a modern game quite nicely and give them their own identity, I'm just saying that your comment seemingly frames it as if the sole reason boomer shooters started getting big was because the old games died (which is kinda backwards if you meant that) when the truth is that it was because the games that inspired them never actually fully left the public consciousness thanks to dedicated fans keeping them alive all this time. Also, how on earth is GK extraneous? For starters he didn't actually glory kill there, that was the chainsaw, but also GK saves ammo, restores health, gives a speed boost with a rune, temporarily makes you invincible (which can give you a chance to catch your breath/escape damage if the fighting gets too hectic), charges blood punch/the sentinel hammer, and allows you to essentially teleport if you equip Seek and Destroy. Sure, if you don't like it there are a number of great and very effective alternative mechanics and strategies for some of the stuff it does _(especially_ if your main interest in GK is for the health/armor, blood punch can be just as if not more effective depending on how good you are at herding demons), but just because you *can* use alternate mechanics if you put in the effort doesn't mean that it doesn't have a place in the game loop that makes sense. That being said, I personally think the comparison falls flat for entirely different reasons, the bigger one being that Doom Eternal is more similar to _quake_ in my eyes than any classic doom/build engine game with how movement focused it is (and vertical). I mean for Christ's sake the super shotgun can literally make you fly and you got dashes, GK speedboosts, S&K letting you zoom around the map, ballista boosting, double jump, and hell, it even has quad damage lol. Yeah most of that list doesn't have exact parallels to quake, but you really can't deny that movement is a big focus of quake style shooters (especially since quake 1 codified the rocket jump and the b-hop lol).

Previous Zelda games are generally more linear, which some fans prefer.

Monster Sanctuary is the only monster tamer game I've found that doesn't feel like a worse version of Pokemon.

@@andrewdrost6786 I like digimon games, if they count. Though I generally tend to always go for the Omnimon route... because nostalgia... (And Angewomon for different reasons...)

@@icarue993 I don't think Digimon is Pokémon like, at least not half the time. Survive doesn't look like any previous Pokémon game and has me excited.

@@commonviewer2488 How about Cyber Sleuth and Hacek's memory? I say most of the time. Pokemon doesnt retain the main gameplay either for some games (like snap, conquest or arguably mystery dungeon).

@@icarue993 Cyber Slueth/Hackers memory are more patterned off of a shin Megami Tensie model with other more general RPG mechanics. They're also an anomaly within the franchise, there is no "mainline" digimon franchise as with pokemon, every game in digimon is snap/conquest/mystery dungeon.

Reminds me of my experience with games like zone of the enders and armored core. They're not similar, but I feel that they have a distinct "feel" that I can't find in many modern games. I'm following a few indie projects and trying to develop my own game in a similar vein but this video is helpful in recognizing how I can avoid nostalgia traps and make something other people can appreciate

You make a very good point about the inability to be hit on all fronts constantly. When I think about some of the closest franchises to dethroning pokemon like Halo and especially Minecraft, while the internet rather quickly supplemented a lot of official advertisement neither of those things had an immensely popular anime to launch with them followed quickly by a movie and multiple annual releases some of which explored all kinds of random facets of the setting like pokemon snap and hey you pikachu.

Yeah, wish breath of the wild 2 has a bucket too

The irony is Tooie was trying to be more ambitious. Make levels sprawling large was a technological achievement, but it lost the tight design and level signposting that made the original such a classic. It also put in many gimmicks like the multiplayer games and even more collectables. Adding more stuff does not always made a better game. DK64 showed how much worse this could be, with the constant character swap backtracking and mountains of collectables.

For what it's worth, I enjoyed the minigames in Tooie (except Canary Mary). Not so much in Yooka-Laylee. They felt long-winded.

It has improved grinding a lot with new spots, and increasing how much exp you gain. As well as this, people have proven you can win 20 levels underleveled.

no, temtem goes out of its way pretty hard to make sure grinding isn't much of a factor. there are severe level caps for each area, so you're almost guaranteed to stay roughly alongside the intended power level. doesn't necessariliy fix the problem of catching a low level tem and having to train it up 10 or so levels to the rest of your team, but y'know. temtem is just pretty brutally difficult, even the first few routes before the first gym have trainers with stacked teams instead of just youngster joey with his level 2 rattata. every route in temtem is like on of those labyrinthian caves in early pokemon games, a long test of endurance until you can make it to the next checkpoint. that's what the temessence phial is for, a one use portable healing station so you can keep on trekking forward without having to run all the way back to the center after every fight. and if you are at death's door and need to cut your losses, they give you dozens and dozens of escape ropes so you can go back and cut out half the long walk. temtem really goes out of its way to keep the main campaign as comfortable and as lubed as possible; or at least as much as a 16 inch dildo can get. but of course, temtem is also trying to be an MMO. if you've ever played lategame pokemon and enjoy breeding and grinding and catching them all, that's another big focus of temtem. but just like pokemon, that's all easily ignorable side content until the campaign comes to a close. that said, temtem gets pretty draining to play after a while. its still a great game, just only one i have the attention span to play for a few hours before i start mindlessly spamming the a button at every enemy and dying over and over. temtem isn't a easy baby game like pokemon where you can just use the biggest moves and burn through half the game in one night under the covers on your ds.

I think the thing that bothers me the most about Temtem is the writing. The game has curse words and sexual references and alcoholic references etc. Yet the game still talks down to you and treats you like your 12. It's so jarring