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THE POWER OF NOWSTALGIA by Mr Biffo

4/3/2015

16 Comments

 
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Apparently, the term ‘nostalgia’ was first used by Swiss doctors in the late-17th Century as a way to describe a specific kind of homesickness among soldiers fighting on foreign soil (yes – apparently the Swiss engaged in foreign wars back then: who’d have thought?). 

In the early 1800s nostalgia got a bad rap, considered a pyschological malady, and a form of melancholia. Basically, there was a time when, if you dared to get a bit wistful about the past, you risked being locked up in Bedlam.

That’s all changed now, of course. Nostalgia is big business. You can barely move on the BBC iPlayer for ancient episodes of Top of The Pops (well, the ones they can still show…). Yet there’s still a school of wisdom which sees nostalgia as a dangerous thing. An indulgence. Something that’s inherently unhealthy, akin to smoking or sticking sporks in your eyes.


But is it?

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CHEESY MOMENTS
Pick up a self-help book, and they tell us not to look back. To live in the moment. Don’t worry too much about tomorrow. It’s all about The Power of Now, apparently. But you can’t underestimate The Power of Now-stalgia either. Geddit?

A 2008 study by the University of Southampton (of course) concluded that – rather than the sentimental indulgence that nostalgia is often dismissed as – it could be a vital part of our mental health, a resource of positive emotions that we can choose to access to boost our mood, or increase social connectiveness with those around us.

That’s probably over-intellectualising, and stripping away a bit too much of the romance, but it makes a certain kind of sense; that nostalgia is evolutionary, vital, and very human. We’ve all sat in pubs talking about old kids TV shows, remembering when Starburst were called Opal Fruits, and Cif was Jif, and how Snickers should still be called Marathon, and - hey - whatever happened to white dog poo?


Nostalgia seems to be something that is part of our make-up, and when it comes to games it’s a sub-industry all of its own - from the retro titles available on the Nintendo eShop, to Retro Gamer and the back pages of Games TM. There’s a hunger for the past, for a time when the industry wasn’t quite the depressingly corporate hellscape we’re now forced to endure.


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SAPPY BIRD
At the risk of getting overly sentimental, those early days of gaming at least look like a more innocent time. 


Before all the money got involved, bedroom auteurs had free reign to work on their singular, quirky, visions. There was no brand strategy. No deliberate franchising. They were making it up as they went along. Quite literally.

But more importantly, we – all of us of a certain age - were more innocent back them, before life handed us our baggage. Everything seemed new, because it was new. It was an adventure of discovery that we were on together - those who played games and those who made them. We all built this industry, as a community, whether we knew it or not. 

And for a while, it felt like it would always be like that, and those days – those games - are still a constant of stability and safety, which we've absorbed into ourselves like we're big, fleshy, memory sponges. 

LOSSTRICH
As I've gotten older, I've realised how much of life is about change and loss. Whether it's the indescribably brutal pain of watching my kids growing up and slowly slipping out of my hand, losing people I love because they died or just drifted out of my life, moving home, getting divorced, going grey, getting pains in my toes... 

Life might stay one way for a while, but the tectonic plates underpinning it are constantly moving. Sooner or later those plates shift abruptly, and the landscape can change in a heartbeat. Life is a constant cycle of mourning and adaptation to change, and we can't avoid it. It's when we try to run from change, when we don't face it, that problems arise.

Yet, if you're trapped on shaky ground - as we all are, to one extent or another - it's instinctive to reach for something solid and immutable to hang on to.

And that's nostalgia. That's why retro gaming is so important to so many of us.

CONSTANTINOPLE
The one constant we have in life is the past, and - unless we learn something that casts the past in a different light (see the Top of the Pops reference above, sadly...) - that ain't gonna change. Jet Set Willy will always be Jet Set Willy. You can always return to that mansion, and it won't have changed a bit. No moss will have grown. There'll be no subsidence, or cracked masonry. Maria will still be there flicking her finger at you, denying you a bed. 

From the stuttering screech of a Spectrum loading screen, to the tick-tick-tick of Eric’s footsteps in Skool Daze, the pick-pock-pick-pock that soundtracked your progress in Atic Atac, to the hideous, dysfunctional rasp of Manic Miner’s wonky interpretation of The Hall of the Mountain King... any one of them can teleport me back to a time and a place that's safe. Somewhere I can rely on, and lose myself in. A bubble that the judgements, stress, and bruises of the outside world can't get through.

And the strength of that feeling - that sensory time travel - can be profound. 

However big I might be on the outside, however thick the external scar tissue... as with all of us, the kid version of me is still inside, still scared of the world, still floundering for stability, still wanting the world to take care of him. That kid still needs somewhere, from time to time, to retreat. He still needs that bubble, the safe place that is going to be there no matter what else might happen. 

For me, it has always been old games, and it'll always be old games. I'll still be watching videos of Knight Lore, or trying to finish Jack the Nipper, when I'm a bib-dribbling pensioner.


FROM THE ARCHIVE:
  • REVIEWS ARE STUPID by Mr Biffo
  • BOTH SIDES OF THE FENCE by Mr Biffo

16 Comments
Hans Ondik
4/3/2015 02:49:50 am

Well put good sir. Tomorrow I'll remember yesterday.

Reply
Scott
4/3/2015 02:53:36 am

Yep.

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Chinny Hill
4/3/2015 02:59:52 am

The weird thing with me is that while I got new systems I always also moved on to new things. So when I got my Amiga my CPC was still being used. When I got my PC I still used the Amiga. And I've carried on like that really. My Xbox 360 sits next to a SNES and on a shelf above a Master System (well two Master Systems if we're being pedantic).

You don't throw away books or movies because a new one has come out. A good game is a good game and there are thousands of them I still haven't played on old systems.

There is one exception to this. I owned a PS1 and PS2. I have no affinity for them and don't want to go back to them. Odd I know but there you go. Felt the same way towards them as I do towards the washing machine.

Reply
Superbeast 37
4/3/2015 03:45:46 am

I had nostalgia until I discovered YouTube channels showing all my old games from the 80's.

It made me realise that I'm nostalgic for that period of time but definitely not the games.

The games are symbols of that era to me but they aren't what I miss!

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Mr Smith
4/3/2015 03:56:38 am

Ironically, I find I actually enjoy discovering old games I hadn't played back in the day. Apart from the simpler mechanics, there are styles of art and audio, pacing and narrative, unique to each era.

About a year or two ago I discovered Lunar Rescue for the first in a retro arcade. 1979, with ZX Spectrum style graphics. I put more coins in than most of the other games - strangely hypnotic, and still fun on MAME now.

Recently I also saw a YouTube video for a Spectrum game, a sort of platforming adventure title, where you had to give an item to a giant knight or something to pass. It was action-y but with adventure-y bits. Can't recall the name or the video (argh!). Never played it, but I have the definite urge to. If only I could find it again.

I definitely think there are old games you can discover now, and enjoy them on their own merits.

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Frank Chickens
4/3/2015 05:42:24 am

The game sounds like Finders Keepers starring Magic Knight.

Wilb
4/3/2015 11:36:27 am

This.

Reply
kelvingreen link
4/3/2015 12:20:44 pm

As someone who counts Turrican on the C64 as one of the greatest games ever, I can only agree with all of this.

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Superbeast 37
4/3/2015 12:49:06 pm

Yeah now I do remember Turrican and Turrican 2 being excellent and ahead of their time. I had them on C64 as I didn't get an Amiga until very late in it's life.

Yet Turrican doesn't receive the same gushing praise as Metroid for some reason?

I'm assuming this is due to the US dominated press and Turrican being more of a European hit?

Growing up I never knew anyone with a NES as consoles would have been considered limited and lacking in educational benefits versus a computer in our parents eyes. Also all of our parents were too poor to buy those expensive cartridges so the availability of £2.99 C64/Speccy games in WH Smith was also a determining factor.

So regardless of whether Metroid came out before Turrican, to all of us lot Turrican was the original and Metroid was a knock off copy that we found out about when Super Metroid was released!

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Mr Smith
4/3/2015 01:15:34 pm

I've always felt that The Sacred Armour of Antiriad (ZX/C64/CPC) was a precursor to the original Metroid. You start of getting the boots, then the armour, and you explore a strange alien landscape. Great game.

Leigh
5/3/2015 01:56:11 am

Blimey, this is a bit dark for Digi. Good though. Also, I saw some white dogshit the other day, true story.

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CrispyF
5/3/2015 12:42:51 pm

I saw some last year on the way home from work. Wasn't quite excited enough to take a photo, but I did experience a strange nostalgic sensation. People of England: please start feeding your dogs the cheapest WoofChunx dog food you can find - we can bring this sensational phenomenon back into the mainstream.

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Leigh
6/3/2015 09:41:50 am

Or just washing powder and chalk.

Dacanesta
5/3/2015 06:23:23 am

Well I think that was beautiful, and timely for me personally as I suddenly cant stop thinking and talking about the past, specifically the 80s.
I think the comment above is totally wrong regarding the games not being good. Some of them are a bit naff, and playing SNES games you realise how many of them were carbon copy beat-em-ups in the Final Fight style. But the originality of the gameplay and graphics (limitations force creativity and that) beat any of the murky, undestinctive stuff of today. I wont forget those games. Todays games, barring a few of course, will disappear like that blonde robot man's tears in the rain.
If you want a movie version of all of this, re(watch) The Wizard. Now that is bloody awful, but at the same time.....just brilliant. Those days were more 'sod it, go do it' as opposed to 'sorry, the market says people want games/movies that are about special effects'.
Now where's my clippers, im off for a side-spike.

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HAPPYFLAPS
6/3/2015 01:19:52 am

I miss not knowing who exactly made the games I played rather than the faceless publisher / developer thing we have now. Names like Andrew Braybrook, Tony Crowther, Kevin Toms, Sensible Software and the Bitmap Brothers to name a few that get me all teary eyed and nostalgic.

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Bananasthemonkey
12/6/2015 12:44:20 pm

'Whether it's the indescribably brutal pain of watching my kids growing up and slowly slipping out of my hand, losing people I love because they died or just drifted out of my life, moving home, getting divorced, going grey, getting pains in my toes... '. You and me both Biffo loves. Dear god man, you have made me maudlin. MADE ME MAUDLIN.

Reply



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