This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things.

Nostalgia is an interesting thing isn't it? All it does is make you remember things from your past in a favorable light, but that little detail influences so much of our lives that it's astounding. Nearly all of human history is based on trying to recreate the positive nostalgic feeling of the past, in the present day. Everything from the conservative effort to return to the traditional values of the last century, to archaic video game design being tied to modern graphics in the “2.5D Game” genre.

The entire video game industry is based on exploiting nostalgia too. The very first video games were electronic adaptations of classic real life games like tennis and tic-tac-toe. Modern games follow this principle as well. Cliffy B has admitted that the inspiration for Gears of War was a series of games that he himself had personally played and enjoyed, and attempted to recreate the feel of.

The New Super Mario Bros. series exists solely because nostalgia is a real thing. People will sit around their homes and say things like, “Remember when we used to play Mario as kids? That was fun, we should do that again.” Nintendo is of course always ready to take your money, so they developed an entire subset of the Mario franchise based on being similar to the old games, in lieu of new gameplay or progress. These games then go on to sell quadrillions of copies and make a small fortune for Nintendo, when they offer very little in terms of new features or improved gameplay.

There's a reason this game is about collecting money.

So why do we do it? Human scientific progress is based on moving forward, to the future, but as a species we still have such an attachment to the past that it’s baffling. The scientific community has even classified nostalgia as a medical condition, which seems a little odd, it would be like declaring that shyness is a medical condition.

Oh. Wait.

As far as the why, it’s difficulty to say. Nostalgia affects different people in different ways, and to different degrees. I’m sure that some people are just, for whatever reason, unhappy with their current life situation, and wish that things could go back to the way they were when they last considered themselves “happy”, which is usually some degree of their childhood. Is that healthy though? To constantly wish that life was the way it is in your mind? Well, yes, that’s what dreams and goals are when you think about it. I guess even progress toward an ideal of the past is still progress.

That sure is a lot of words about video game psychology.