Why Old School Gamers are Nostalgic for Titles of their Youth

 

I was playing a lot of World of Warcraft recently and I have been thinking to write a lengthy article about what went wrong with "modern WoW" and why so many people prefer Classic. I have lots of ideas so it will be a long one. 

However, before I could begin on WoW, I suddenly got a revelation of sorts about the general pattern here. WoW is not the only one, there is also Heroes of Might and Magic, that I already wrote on, Legacy of Kain, old Fallout, Diablo II, Doom and many-many more. Why gaming community so consistently reject sequels and keep asking for remakes and remasters of the original titles they fell in love with. Is it just nostalgia, or there is more to it than that. 

There are many theories that fundamentally miss the mark. It's not, that games were harder. Neither it's the pixel art.

The real reason why gamers keep coming back to old titles is because old titles were smart games made by smart developers and were played and understood by equally smart audiences. Modern games are dumb entertainment made for normies and casuals. That is why old school gamers cannot find enjoyment in modern games and keep coming back to old titles.

Back in the days video games were seen as something nerdy, Mainstream people shunned both games and gamers. Gamers were somewhat of an outcast.

Nowadays video games are much more mainstream and socially acceptable, fashionable even. Game stores sell game merchandise and people wear clothes with game characters.

At first glance its good, finally the society have seen the light of gaming and embrace it wholeheartedly. Now we are no longer nerds and outcasts, we are the core and center, right? 

Turns out not so simple. 

Influx of the normies and casuals into gaming brought with it change to games themselves. Average normie is much less smart that average old school gamer. The do not even understand, much less appreciate complex narratives games like Max Payne or Legacy of Kain had to offer. The only entertainment they understand is basic and simple.

In order to appeal to normies and casuals, game developers started to dumb down their games, both in game mechanics and in narrative. Complex long stories give way for simple episodic content that even a 6-year-old kid can get. 

From getting at precipice of philosophy and existentialism, games went on to be interactive Looney Tunes. After all everyone who can get Thus Spoke Zarathustra will get Looney Tunes, but hardly 0.00001% of those who get Looney Tunes will get Thus Spoke Zarathustra. 

For dumb normies Thus Spoke Zarathustra is boring, as is Lord of the Rings, or Classic WoW. All these works require you to think to understand and appreciate them. Normies are either too stupid or too lazy to think.

Game developers do oblige. After all there are a lot more normies than old school gamers so there is a lot more money to be made from normies that from hardcore games. 

Normies did not get any wiser and ascended to the level of enlightened games old school gamers enjoy. Instead, developers came down to the level of common pleb and dumbed down their products so that plebs may enjoy them. 

Old school gamers did not turn mainstream. They simply went from being nerds because they play games to being nerd subset of the overall large pool of gamers.

Now normies shit on old titles that old school gamers hold dear, while most developers either cater to their views or go out of business.

Fundamentally this dissatisfaction with modern game industry is because games just stopped being a highly intellectual entertainment for highly intellectual people they used to be. 

We are sick of being treated like idiots. We hate that our medium is being taken away from us and dumbed down for plebs. We are puzzled that playground that was once ours no longer feel this way.

Because of that old school gamers complain that new WoW is worse than Classic, modders keep refining HoMM III even when developers released 8th installment, well-made remasters fly of the shelfs and get huge critical acclaim and many more.

Many feel that things are not right but consistently fail to pin down the root cause of the problem. People like Ben Yahtzee Croshaw tries to express these feelings in his Fully and Semi Ramblomatic. He became very popular essentially complaining about modern game industry. His many videos about many individual aspects he finds issues with.

However, Yahtz and many others fail to see the forest for the trees. 

We want our highly intellectual entertainment back. 

Occasionally some developers oblige and do a remaster or even a true to core gameplay Doom 2016. However, for every good remaster that captures what people liked about the original, there is another that fucks everything up and earns record low scores on review sites.

Fundamentally however this is not a solution. What about new games that are as good as old ones were? Why cannot writers write as good as they used to? Is there a hidden censorship that prevents the same level of creativity? Even if there is money to be made by making games for filthy casuals, there are still robust old school community that wants more titles in the spirit of their beloved classics.

Possibly the answer is indeed that studios simply do not understand what made 90s games so popular. Because of that they do not understand what went wrong in 2010s and by extension have no idea how to fix it.

If studios really want to recapture the appeal of games of the past, they need to employ people like me as consultants and/or writers to make sure games they make can recover from the dark ages they plunged in 2010s.

Things I mention above are general observations. They do apply to every game, but each individual game also has other unique to itself issues that needs a dedicated article or even series of articles to fully explain. I plan to eventually cover other games like WoW, just like I covered HoMM III in a separate article.

Aldnoah.Zero: Ame no Danshou - The Penultimate Truth Review

Overall Rating 5.3 out of 10 - Epilogue that makes bad ending of second season even worse

I do not recommend watching.

This OVA was released at rather inconvenient time. I already forgot how I disliked the ending of the second season but still remember that I liked the show overall. Thus, I jumped rather enthusiastically on this one only to be disappointed. 

This OVA has all I hated about this show and almost none of what I liked. Complex and well thought plot twists, spectacular and tactically though through battles, brightness and ingenuity of main characters are all thing of the past. Instead, there are just dialogues that try to sell authors' values to the audience. Suddenly this show tries to be philosophical and existentialist but fails to say anything significant.

Seeing Slane in prison is too hard and unpleasantly sad, yet that is what they do in this in OVA pretty much the entire duration of the show. When it's not prison, it's the girls who were never this show's strong point. 

Overall, only achievement of previous seasons of Aldnoah.Zero prevents me from just giving it 3 and move on.

Kanokon Review

Overall Rating 6.2 out of 10 - Flawed, but mostly enjoyable and sometimes funny ecchi comedy

I can recommend watching

Kanokon is rather mixed bag show. I took half part of what I like and another half of what I hate, put them together in a blender and thoroughly mixed together into this show. It ended up a levelled experience with occasional ups and downs.

As much as bigger girl, smaller guy does not work, they put that here. Fox Girl (Chizuru) personality is mostly flaws, but she is very devoted to Kouta and willing to sacrifice anything for him. That is something I appreciate in women. Wolf Girl ( Nozomu) is somewhat better and more to my taste, because she is always very calm and gives stabilising feel. She is rather stubborn, however. 

Best girl is of course the Frog Girl. Frog Girl is very polite, caring and attentive towards that Weazel guy with spiky hair she is in love with. Clearly, Weasel Guy won jackpot in love and I want my own Frog Girl in maid outfit. Alas, Frog Girl also gets the least screen time of them all This is the shows biggest flaw. I cannot even remember if they even mentioned her name.

The Long Kaguya Style Hair Girl gets an honorable mention as the second-best girl in the show. I cannot remember all their names. 

Worst girl is of course the glasses one.

Show has moderately complex plot, that more or less keeps show from getting boring and gives some sense of progression.

There are a lot of fanservice like moderate nudity, pantsu shots and so on. My favorite maid outfits and bunny suits are also there, which gave this show certain score boosts.

Overall, just the fact that I can watch it without getting annoyed already means it's better than average, so you watch it too.

K-On! Movie Review

Overall Rating 7.7 out of 10 - Nice continuation for K-On! series with only minor issues

I recommend watching

In the very beginning K-On movie got me worried that movie team does not understand characters well enough and the movie will be a flop. If anything, one can expect Ritsu to support playing like Death Devil. It would be Mio who will be against.

Fortunately show got back fast enough to being the K-On we all know and love. All in all, almost two more hours of the goodness. 

Core plot is somewhat predictable as in OVAs at the end of last season they were getting passports and preparing for the journey. In the movie they finally got to do it, and they went to London of all places. 

London with its many iconic places is possibly the best fit for K-On! They went to Kyoto in second season and that was a blast with many jokes and silly behavior that was both unpredictable and at the same time very in character for them. London should have taken all that to a whole new level.

The actual movie somewhat disappointed in that regard. Many famous landmarks were left unvisited. They could have messed with Beefeaters in The Tower, take photos with celebrities in Madame Tussauds wax figures museum, try to get luck out of British Museum exponents or try to uncover some mystery in Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes Museum. Alas, creators of the movie missed all these opportunities.

That said while it could have been so much better, it was still fun and enjoyable. K-On! girls are still as likable as before: silly in a cute way and devoted to each other to the level of self-abnegation - something I very much like in female characters. These girls are few anime characters that still bring joy to my eyes and heart. They are not the "woke" mess more "modern" anime likes to place in their shows. In this regard movie have not disappointed so I gave it the high score I gave.

In those moments when show is not focused on London, it focused on another subplot from the second season centered around Azusa. I will not spoil more here.

Overall, it's a pleasant experience. I can recommend it for everyone. It is better to watch it after the series as plot continues from where the series have left it.

Meaning Behing Jigoku Shoujo Anime

This anime holds special significance to me. A lot of people misunderstand what it is about, including even those who made 3rd and 4th season. Many call it a horror. I made a review about it a while back but felt there is more to be said about it.

While some scenes are indeed cruel and gruesome, this anime is not about scaring people. It's about providing victims of abuse, bulling and other kinds of wrongdoing with relief and justice.

We all (at least most of us) would like to live in a helpful and supportive environment that cares and nurtures us. Something close to what Gochiusa or Bofuri depicts. 

However not everyone is lucky enough to be surrounded by such a nice people. Sometimes cruel and malicious people enter your life and stay there to keep causing you pain misery and suffering. No matter what you do, they do not stop. Sometimes it's the very knowledge that it hurts you, motivates them to continue. No matter how much you protest or cry, they keep causing you harm. 

Sometimes you or someone else can stop them, but other times they are too powerful or have too much control over your life to allow you to simply get rid of them. Back then I was in such hopeless powerless situation. There was nothing I could do to end the suffering they caused me.

I personally had to deal with a number of people just like that. There were certain cruel classmates in Russia, who thought that beating me and throwing away my belongings into rubbish bin was fun. Then they were my stupid parents who though that their crazy principles and rules are more important than my wellbeing and insisted on forcing them on me no matter how much I protested and cried. A true testament to "inhumanity of human nature", to quote Diablo II.

I did try to talk to my parents, but they mocked my complaints instead of doing something. I tried to complain to teachers about bullies, but they did nothing.

Sure, not all people are like those above. Some are nice and helpful. Some can even be friends. There were certain periods in my life when I was surrounded only by friendly people, and these were happy times when I could forget about past troubles.

However, one cruel monster often enough to eclipse 100 good guys. The amount of pain they caused leaves psychological scars that occasionally come back to haunt you in your nightmares.

Back then I could surely wish that I could just contact Jigoku Tsushin and get Enma Ai to solve my problems. Watching Jigoku Shoujo now let me feel glad that at least on-screen victims eventually got their relief and justice. That was the help I did not have, I had to constantly wake up back to the same old nightmare, my evil parents decided to plunge me into.

Nowadays I often blame bad things in my life on my parents. I somehow feel they are creeping somewhere around me discreetly to poison my life as much as their diminishing ability still allows them. However it could be some other malicious actors, who act against me in secret. 

I am far too familiar with spiteful and malicious side of human nature and can easily suspect that such people are behind the hard times we are currently experiencing. Everything around us is a sick joke by these bastards. These bastards are too evil to be defeated by 'no kill policy' Batman or other superhero. They way they will break out and cause more harm. Only one way trip to hell for them will save us from misery and suffering they are spreading around.

One of the rules of Enma Ai's contract is that a person who made a pact will go to hell after their death. For most of the victims that is still a relief as their abusers make their lives worse than hell and getting out if this hell even briefly is still a relief. Many of the victims, whom Enma Ai helped, especially in the first season, saw her as a savior. 

I can fully understand that sentiment. I can also understand a desire for revenge, people who caused me harm, deserve to suffer in return. 

First season is the best in that. It takes on the matters with utmost seriousness. First it shows just how bad humans can be and makes sure very person Enma Ai sends to hell certainly deserves it. Then it executes justice in a somber and dignified manner.

Perhaps there are people out there that blame themselves instead of perpetrators like Shinji Ikari from Eva. There are also people who like to do victim blaming either out of favor or bribe from the abusers.

I am not one of them. I blame those who caused me suffering and want to see them suffer in retaliation for pain they have caused me. When it comes to depicting this psychology, there are surprisingly little anime out there. Other than Jigoku Shoujo there is also Elfen Lied and that is all.

I do hope that Enma Ai will eventually send everyone who ever caused me pain to hell. This is the kind of happy end that will make me happy. 

Hamidashi Creative Review

Overall Rating 5.7 out of 10 - Random Filler Anime

I recommend watching it instead of other fillers

More like Hamidashi - Lack of Creativity

This is an anime that has nothing in particular going for it but at the same time nothing in particular going against it either. It is just 12 mostly unconnected to each other short episodes with half of the screen time are taken by an outro. Even then scriptwriters struggle to fill the remainder of 4 minutes long episode with dialogue. I presume most of "creativity" went into girl's design and most creative time into drawing their very detailed eyes.

On the other hand, there is nothing in this show that annoys me. That is an achievement in itself as world is full of woke agenda shows that are hellbent to deny man his rightful entertainment. I can recommend it just for that reason if you have nothing else to watch or simple need a show to watch in breaks to something heavy like Kaiji, Akagi or Umineko. Despite its lack of creativity, this show has a purpose. 

Kimi wa Meido-sama Review

Overall Rating: 6.2 out of 10 - Relatively OK show.

I can recommend watching.

Komi-san, now in maid flavor

Problem with popular tropes is that they often attract creators who would rather make a different show. However, either producers or editors insist that they go for proven receipts or they themselves opt to do it, craving fame and publicity.

Maids are one such trope. Feminist "liberation of women" left men unable to find women who cleans, cooks and serves man. Entertainment industry figured out how to fill the void with maid cafes and shows about maids. Thus, anime about maids near guaranteed to sell.

Creators of Kimi wa Meido-sama seems thought that women who simply cooks and cleans would be too boring, so they decided to spice it up with assassin backstory, "challenge of being normal" and a few more twists. Some of it good, some not so much. All of it however takes the show too far from its core purpose. It's clear that creators want to make this show into a sober narrative about one's approach to live. While I can understand what they trying to say, it hardly makes the show more enjoyable to watch, it adds some sympathy towards Yuki but that is about it. Neither does it covers the existentialist questions sufficiently enough. It's just too far to be next Umineko, Byousoku 5cm, SEL, Utena, Kaiji, Akagi or any other decent attempt at literary fiction.

Maid in question, Yuki, is likable enough and that should be a good enough reason to watch this show. Due to trends in anime industry, even half decent shows are hard to find. Pink haired girl, that appears in second half of the show is also likable. The same cannot be said about male protagonist's sister and nurse that later became PE teacher.

Still show somewhat recovers closer to the second half. More than half of the scenes are enjoyable to watch. Not a stellar endorsement, but so many other shows are horrible in almost every scene. 

Overall, it's OK and can be enjoyed during periods of few good shows.