This past week we talked about how nostalgia affects how we remember older games and how some newer games are made. Nostalgia affects the way we perceive games that we used to play, especially the ones during our childhood. We tend to remember things based on our experiences, causing us to experience restorative or reflective nostalgia. Vanderhoef’s “Shovel Night: Nostalgia” discussed in great detail how the game brought out both restorative and reflective nostalgia when playing the game. We discussed in class that restorative nostalgia is the act of returning to a previous time in its purest form. It would be like going back and playing 007: Golden Eye for the Nintendo 64 and enjoying it on the original console with all its positives and negatives. Even though the controller isn’t very comfortable for a shooter and the game would occasionally freeze if the cartridge slot was dusty, you wouldn’t want to have it any other way. Reflective nostalgia is when we reminisce on past games and enjoy the good times but also recognize the negatives. For example, I used to love playing Super Smash Bros for the Nintendo 64 with my brother. I don’t think I was even in elementary school yet but I remember having a ton of fun. I’d love to go back and play it but at the same time I kinda don’t want to either. I really hated the N64 controllers and much preferred the Dreamcast’s controllers which had a similar layout to modern controllers. Something I also realized is that compared to newer Smash games, many of the characters in Smash 64 had incredibly broken move sets. Some characters had obviously overpowered moves while others had near useless attacks or were even missing moves in their move set. It was definitely an incredible game for its time and I’d love to go back a play a few matches but I think I’d much rather play the newer games on a regular basis.

Regarding nostalgia, many times we tend to forget the worst aspects of the game. Buinicki’s “Nostalgia and the Dystopia of History in 2K’s Bioshock Infinite” shows an excellent example in which people may look back on terrible events and twist them into a positive event or time. In Bioshock Infinite, the Battle of Wounded Knee is remembered as a glorious and heroic victory over the attacking Native tribes when in reality, it was a severe overreaction that led to the massacre of hundreds of unarmed Natives. It serves as an exaggeration in which some people may look back at the event with nostalgia and see the event in a much more positive light than it actually was. I feel that this tends to be common when experiencing stressful and difficult events. I seem to notice this quite frequently in military veterans. Their service in a combat zone is marked as one of the most stressful times in their lives. Many service members who fight in a combat zone can’t wait to leave and get back to their normal lives. Yet many veterans become nostalgic of their time overseas. I remember one veteran described it as the only thing he had to worry about was getting shot in the face. Meanwhile as a civilian, he has to worry about taxes, rent, work, wife, kids, mental health issues, politics, etc. Meanwhile, he reminisced on his time overseas as being comparatively carefree when in reality it probably was not the case. And I know at the time my brother wanted to rejoin the Army as well but I did my best to make him remember that through all the nostalgia it wasn’t worth going back. The film “They Shall Not Grow Old” also seems to touch on the topic as well except this time for soldiers during World War One. Towards the end of the war, neither side really cared who would win at that point. A common sentiment felt by the soldiers on the frontlines was “screw the war, we just want to go home.” Yet once the armistice was signed and the news was spread that the war was over, there was no cheering to be had in the trenches. Soldiers began to wonder “what do we do now?” after this long and brutal war has ended. Many veterans began to feel nostalgic and miss the armed forces, so much so that many veterans would volunteer as World War II erupted twenty years later.