How Nostalgia Is Holding Games Back

[@ArchitectofGames]

Remember when money used to be simple? Back in my day, we used to give a nice local crafts-person a few chickens and they'd go and make a video essay for the whole village to enjoy - when did it all get so complicated?: www.patreon.com/ArchitectofGames Follow me on myspace, friendster and bebo plz XOXO- twitter.com/Thefearalcarrot

[@oyahmon1]

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

[@jordansmith3809]

Stop spreading disproven anthropology

[@akasakasvault7597]

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

[@ashishgeorgechandy8501]

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

[@jessegartung294]

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

[@didnt_ask_for_handle]

I suppose the phrase "Steal like an artist" may work here. It means to borrow ideas and make them your own, to pick and choose from what works and hopefully create something just as good if not better. Even if you're great at forging Van Gogh, down to the smallest detail. If that's the only thing you do, you're just a glorified photocopier

[@Dominik-K]

Yeah I very much agree to this

[@samanthak.2706]

love this. thank you for sharing!!

[@jneilson7568]

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

[@Bustermachine]

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.

[@BigFalconar]

@@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.

[@Quintuplin12]

I think it's a tricky balance, because the point of nostalgia is that there genuinely is something worth carrying forward in those games. The number of forgettable clones boils down to the fact that making something good is hard, and that making something better than the original is almost impossible... at least at first. But it's worth the attempt because eventually an evolution is discovered that leads to the next development, and hopefully, a progression in the medium.

[@writershard5065]

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.

[@Howitchewstofeel5gum]

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 KZbin 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.

[@AnotherDuck]

@@Howitchewstofeel5gum 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.

[@Howitchewstofeel5gum]

@@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.

[@chukyuniqul]

@@Howitchewstofeel5gum I'm really glad I can replay my literal favorite game of all time even to this day and only really appreciate it more.

[@unknownbystander8145]

"Is it still nostalgia if you play old games not to relive happier memories long gone, but because old stuff does stuff you want that new stuff doesn't do?"-Yahtzee

[@Kapt_Klaw]

@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.

[@totally_not_a_bot]

@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.

[@coderaven1107]

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

[@Kapt_Klaw]

@@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.

[@xXYannuschXx]

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.

[@Exarian]

I'd like to expand on the shovel knight point a bit, in that I think there's a case to be made that not all pixel-based graphics in games are specifically intended to be nostalgic in the first place, or at least that's not necessarily the only reason why one would go with older aesthetic styles. It could simply be that in the sorta post-generation era of game design that we're in now, a willingness to weigh the qualities and drawbacks of older styles could lead people to choose those styles simply because of their inherent qualities rather than simply trying to be a "throwback."

[@Buglin_Burger7878]

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.

[@yokcos]

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

[@hackr6751]

@@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.

[@theoceanman8687]

And to also save time in development.

[@Exarian]

@@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.

[@zanethezaniest274]

“There is an expression in the Wasteland: Old World Blues. It refers to those so obsessed with the past they can't see the present, much less the future, for what it is.” “The hard part isn’t finding it, it’s letting go.” I always think back to these specific quotes when the topic of Nostalgia is brought up in media, people will forever want to return to a time when things were happier so they will turn to products that invoke a sense of childhood to remind themselves that. It’s really damaging and stunting, and is likely another contributing factor as to why many game companies refuse to change up the formula unsure whether fans will appreciate the change or hate it.

[@ArchitectofGames]

Hands down the high point of fallout as a franchise was in that DLC, so good!

[@WolfHreda]

It was Dead Money that centered around that line.

[@supervillainx6761]

@@acrane3496 I'm not sure how this would help, you see Nostalgia is a way to help define who you are. It will stick with you forever. You will never be able to experience it the same way and playing those old games is not even close to a determining factor for whether or not those people like those "old games". Nostalgia does not determine if I like turn-based battles or action combat, my reaction to that nostalgia can only help at most. You are assuming the old games are bad which isn't true, just what you think. I'm also not sure why you had to insult people, I assume you knew your point wasn't good so you turned to insults. Edit: original comment was deleted, but the person linked at the beginning was very unpleasant

[@Lernos1]

On the other hand, old games are not necessarily much worse than you remember them either, and you can still get a ton of fun by playing them or even their more modern carbon copies. What I find even more fascinating is that there is no single standard to anything in human nature, we are very contrarian and someone will always either be plain different or will find a way to circumvent stuff and flip some pathos-filled truism on its head. By which I mean, of course, that I enjoy the troll ending of Dead Money that involves escaping with ALL the gold much more and find it more fun and cathartic, as an act of raw defiance to a message that was stated with such conviction and pride. I'd rather have that than just giving up and accepting the message of letting go. Some people just hate letting go! And I see beauty in that too.

[@beclauss]

Nostalgia in and of itself isn't a bad thing. The problem is people flack to the past so much that they don't embrace the present or future.

[@stevencurtis7157]

"Nobody remembers the aimless wandering after the great plateau." Oddly enough, the first thing I remember about Breath of the Wild is the roughly two or three weeks I spent playing a few hours a day meandering and collecting everything I found, actually pretty engaged with the world but wondering when a game was going to emerge from the sandbox. I wouldn't consider it a flaw, but it was the reality that it took me ages to really get a grasp of the world around me. I had to run over the same ground a couple dozen times until I recognized the same features and oriented them in my head, and then I could really see the scale and how far I was from making any progress. Maybe people forget and just remember that the game becomes about dominating the landscape once you know what you're doing. That's what objectively defines that game, learning to do better than just make do, and then conquer. Maybe I'm just immune to nostalgia. When everyone says that Doom was about slaughtering demons in big arenas, am I the only one who remembers walking back and forth for hours in the hallways you'd just cleared out trying to figure out how to make one step forward? Nobody remembers the frustration of not being able to fit a sword sideways in Diablo? The camera getting stuck in Mario 64? Not being able to tell wtf a Zora was in LoZ because of the RF connection? (I thought it was a warship) The rosebush has always had thorns as I recall. Sonic was my childhood favorite, but everyone seems to think that boost is great, because they want speed. I wanted the pinball platformer I used to look forward to.

[@praetorfenix69]

Shovel Knight is also a good example of taking inspiration from older technical limitations rather than copying them slavishly. I've heard over and over again that it "could have been an NES game" and no, it could not have fit within the NESs technical limitations at all, not even close. And if they had tried to make something that fit within the NES limitations, it would have been a much worse game. Instead they made something that FEELS like it could have been an NES game (if you haven't actually played an NES in the last 30 years) and so much more effectively tapped into that nostalgia.

[@GeneralBolas]

"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.

[@DannYIIF]

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

[@AnotherDuck]

@@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.

[@valletas]

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

[@KennyTew2]

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

[@jamiemccreath3959]

Yeah every time I try to think up a Pokemon-like game it's all "well the combat would be completely different, and of course the progression would be different too, and obviously we'd do something different from fighting 8 type specialists, and it would be nice if catching was different, and we might as well change things up from starters and rivals at this point, and... oh look at that it's not Pokemon anymore, it's just a really cool monster tamer game." And at first I'm disappointed I can't put my favorite Pokemon and Pokemon characters in it, but then I realize I get to design creatures and characters however the hell I want now.

[@popopop984]

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.

[@arenkai]

This reaches way deeper than games. Movies and TV too. I believe they call that "key-jangling" in those spheres, where the directors just jangle some things you like in front of you like you're a toddler and expect you to clap regardless of substance.

[@tymondabrowski12]

@@capturedflame thank Odin I haven't read any comics and every new MCU (or other comic book, like Batman even, or Wolverine) character is new to me... for quite some time I didn't even know they were from the same studio, let alone universe, I just thought that's how "funny character-based action movies" are made nowadays (I went to cinema for several movies, for sure Guardians of the Galaxy 1 and 2 and first Spider-man before I learned about MCU; I didn't watch or like action movies but those were fun enough). Now some MCU movies and shows are good and some are not. But really, quite a number of them is entertaining even when they can't count on nostalgia in someone. Like in the Loki show, do you think I had nostalgia to that grey-haired dude? Nope, he was just a character I liked a lot. Maybe now they can exploit my nostalgia to him in a sequel though ;)

[@popopop984]

@@capturedflame MCU is pretty good

[@popopop984]

Imma be honest though, bad or repetitive games will always have their nostalgic addicts, people who are desperate for the same content because it’s safe. But something good will always find it’s fandom.

[@willmungas8964]

“I clapped, i clapped when I saw it!”

[@arenkai]

@@popopop984 I think you would be surprised to look back and see that there is more bad content in the MCU than good content. And it's not getting any better these past years. The MCU on average was meh but was getting salvaged by its great characters. Now we don't even have great characters anymore, so it's just bad overall.

[@Bellyofthebeast6]

Superliminal and Portal are two of my favorite games and I never once made the comparison between the two games. Yeah, they both have a narrator, but Superliminal stands fine on its own and I'm surprised to see it here as just an example of Portal nostalgia bait.

[@Tigersight0]

I just played superliminal for the first time the other day, and I thought it was incredible. Unlike how the architect calls it out on running out of ideas partway through, it felt to me like they kept adding more and more, combining each previous mechanic you learned in different ways. By the time they may have actually started to run thin, it wasn't really an issue, because the narrative focused end had kind of already taken over by that point.

[@dazza2350]

Kind of a cheap shot to the game, honestly. I never even compared it to Portal during my playthrough

[@kgoblin5084]

On Boomer Shooters: Oh hell yes, I agree with that. I'm a 40-year-old millennial, my parents ARE Baby Boomers, and you can't possibly imagine a generation more out of touch with video games & technology than actual boomers. For some god-forsaken reason everyone born circa the 90s seems unable to grasp who belongs to what generation. Classic FPS was the domain of Gen-X & Millennials folks, end of story. On the topic of classic shooters though: While you might not like the maze like aspect Adam... that is actually a big selling point for a lot of us. See the success of Tunic (not an FPS, of course, BUT it is a game with exploration at it's core). On Metroidvanias: I strongly disagree... most newer metroidvania's take much more inspiration from the Castlevania heritage than they do Metroid. Axiom Verge is a relative rarity. Guacamelee is arguably one of the heavier metroid-influenced games, but it is also VERY in your face with it's own unique mechanical spin - namely the wrestling moves but also the quite tricky platforming elements

[@dominiccasts]

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)

[@Wobbothe3rd]

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.

[@Schraiber]

I'm not sure this video is JUST about nostalgia. I think there's also just the issue of ripping games off too directly, regardless of how old it is. Like most of what you say here would also apply to a game that just came out and inspired a bunch of clones (like say Doom did back in the day). I don't think it's reasonable to call that nostalgia, which definitely has to have some aspect of being old. So for example I don't consider the things you bring up about Sekiro to be driven by nostalgia rather than just design choices that those devs like. Maybe they could go outside their comfort zone or take some more risks or something, but I wouldn't call it *nostalgia*

[@AnotherDuck]

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]

@Deothius Yeah, no.

[@lifetake3103]

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

[@supervillainx6761]

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

[@AnotherDuck]

@@supervillainx6761 I thought the original soundtrack to Minecraft sounded nostalgic the first time I heard it.

[@smileyjojo4913]

I see Sekiro less as trying to accommodate "builds" from earlier games, and more like making you play one way while giving you supporting tools/moves, like Zelda. Have zero clue how that's fromsoft being held back by the rpg mechanics of older games when Sekiro is very against that. It just sounds like you personally were trying to approach the game as an older Souls game.

[@bubbleburster2813]

Yeah his take on Sekiro is bad. Prosthetics were not "mostly useless", there are lots of cool moves and techniques you can get out of most of the prosthetics, you just have to allocate them as a secondary tool. He says that Isshin and Genichiro are the best because they laser focus on one thing, implying that they're good because they don't involve prosthetics; but, I found the most fun I had fighting them was by incorporating multiple different prosthetics into the fight. Mist Raven to counter the lightning without taking any damage. Shuriken and its follow up move to close distance between him and I aggressively. Perfect parrying with the fire umbrella and its fire follow-up attack to deal heavy posture damage. Charging the axe after jumping over his sweep attacks to deal heavy damage. These strategies added extra style and oomph to the fight making it even more fun than the standard battle.

[@Bamboo_bazooka]

honestly yea sure just going for the sword is great but when you have a moment that you can use one of the tools to gain advantage it feels like you are a ninja a favourite of mine is using the flame tool and following it up with the skill that applies it to the sword

[@allenl5960]

Seriously, learning to incorporate combat arts and prosthetic tools(and to lesser extent, consumable items) into your fighting style let you pull off dozens of cool tricks, and since they're very side tool in nature, it let people unfamiliar with them mostly ignore their use, while letting more skilled player stomp enemies much faster and effectively. They especially shined when fighting mobs imo. Try to fight like 3~4 soldiers with just your sword and you're gonna do a lot of running, but start mixing in tools, combat arts, and maybe a ninjutsu and you can kill a miniboss _with_ their buddy group in one go rather than having to pick them off one by one. Plus dead mobs give emblems letting you spend them more liberally. Like, sabimaru is definitely not useless if you know how to land the hits reliably to proc poison. Or need to smack something 6+ times really fast.

[@spnked9516]

Saying Sekiro is "unfocused" is a bit of a garbage take. Sure, Sekiro has issues, like with any game, but alongside Bloodborne, Sekiro is probably the tightest and most well-focused of the From's Souls formula games. The game is built around giving players a more narrow optional toolset (i.e. weapons and items), but with much more fleshed out mechanics (i.e. movement, parrying, etc etc). Like with Bloodborne, the narrower toolset allowed for Sekiro to have better balance and overall more consistent encounter design than the mainline Souls titles. Bar one or two things, almost everything in the player's optional toolset is useful in some way or another - which is a hell of a lot more than I can say for the mainline From titles where most players won't even use over 75% of what they acquire over the course of the game.

[@TheBrazilRules]

To me all the upgrades in Sekiro are enforced, they are just situational. I can't see myself fighting human bosses without the samurai techniques. They allow you to punish them for massive stance amounts and even make them flinch mid attack when used properly

[@IrvineTheHunter]

I wasn't expecting to agree with this video nearly as much as I did, nostalgia is often used as a "gotem" when talking about why old games are good, but I think this video was more about why trying to copy experiences can be painful and counterproductive.

[@sealeo5772]

I think you are kind of merging all kinds of inspiration and influence here and just treating it all as nostalgia, when most of the games aren't really nostalgic for the influences, just inspired by them. Like most of the first person puzzlers you talked about aren't really portal spiritual successors or trying to pay tribute to the series, they are just influenced by possibly the most influential entry in a genre of all time.

[@retropulpo]

I remember a book that was called "The Pirate's Dilemma", because one of the better points it made was on the power of the Remix. I feel that this nostalgia-driven economy is very soulless, and it may be just because what you are explaining: No innovation, no changes, no being themselves, just doing the same thing again, with little to no exploration of the media, because is the things that will surely sell. And the games that do explore tend to be little or forgotten. It's hard being original nowadays, but some of the most interesting experiences have come from this remixes that worked to be their own thing, not just "it's this IP but..."

[@swishfish8858]

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?

[@ictogon]

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

[@Alphasoldier]

I feel like in this video there's a very thin and not mentioned line between a game just falling under the same genre, and it being nostalgia bating. A lot of games were accused of the latter, despite still trying to do their own thing.

[@AnotherDuck]

People love to see patterns and categorizing things as something they've previously seen, the more the better. Tons of games are called clones for sharing some surface elements to older, popular games.

[@jameso2290]

@@AnotherDuck I remember when the the term "first person shooter" didn't exist, and all games in that genre were just called "Doom clones". Fast forward to today, and many of the games that fit the FPS genre are still essentially, mechanically, and functionally Doom clones (they all use the same WASD movement, same perspectives). The only thing that changed is that people stopped calling them "Doom clones." It begs the question: At what point do so-called "rip offs" become an established genre? And why is it "bad" to like more of the same thing that you like? I mean look at music too: rock n roll replaced jazz as the "rebel" music. Then hip hop and punk replaced rock and roll. Now even those fevers are considered mainstream and stale. But Jazz is still good music on its own merits. There's nothing wrong creating new jazz in 2022. Is that "nostalgia baiting"? I dunno. I think the whole discussion is mostly stupid. It's just the age old "posers vs hep cats" gate keeping cultural bullshit anyway. Just enjoy what you enjoy, and if you want to break the mold and make something new, then do that. If you want to make a comfy old jazzy game that isn't really original or challenges anything, then do that too. None of this stuff matters in the end. We are all trying to capture some sort of feeling, some small slice of "what it means to be human". There's no right or wrong way to do that.

[@AnotherDuck]

@@jameso2290 The "whole discussion" about whether something is a clone is mostly stupid. Whether something is nostalgia baiting isn't. And sometimes that's what calling something a "clone" means. Which is a shameless ripoff for the sake of selling something. That's a discussion worth having, because it's about quality, not categorisation. It's just important to be clear what you're talking about.

[@Alphasoldier]

​@@jameso2290 There's only so many genres and genre elements. Saying FPS were called Doom-likes is because the genre was too new to have a proper name. It's why Metroidvania has become a genre name, despite being a portmanteau. Same goes for Rogue-like/lite. Metroidvanias could be called action adventure backtrackable story world explorers, but who's going to bother with that. Does that immediately mean that every roguelike is a Rogue clone? That every Metroidvania is a Metroid/Castlevania clone? Of course not. They share a clear collection of gameplay elements that can be found in any unrelated game. Do we have a genre where you control a character? No, because that's an element, one of many that turns a game into... well, a game. So when you create a game that's clearly "borrowing" all of the elements of a game, and even tries to go for a similar theme, you can start talking about nostalgia baiting, because they're trying to give you the same feeling. If it's JUST the elements, it can easily be a game that simply shares the same genre. Do you make a Pokemon clone where you "gotta catchem all", with monsters and evolution and rpg battle and items? Or do you make a rpg battle game where you collect every day objects and you can keep 6 of them and throw at enemies in specific ways until they die, and you have to survive a Neolithic world? Big difference IMO, despite being very similar functionally.

[@akiradkcn]

I hate that too

[@DEGRUCTable]

"Nostalgia is a constant conflict between making those satisfying connections to the past, and making something that's good in the present." So well said, and it could apply to every medium these days, not just video games.

[@OblongBurrbank]

Kind of a miss for me. I don't really think nostalgia clouding the designer's vision is the difference between orignial/popular successes vs. games chasing similar mechanics. There are more consistent analyses that could be made re: team size and experience. And also some statements that I think miss the point of niche genres. Re: Portal Vs. Superliminal, Q.U.B.E.2 and The Turing Test. Looking at the credits alone there's a big difference in team size between portal (which lists the 150 Valve staff associated with the project), vs the small teams making Superliminal, QUBE2, and Turing Test (averaging around 14 people). Like you can say the smaller games have less unique ideas because they're blinded by nostalgia or just didn't understand Portal "objectively" (whatever that means), but it's a much better/simpler hypothesis that it's because they didn't have the people to create a game as varied as portal, or have the team diversity to have both game designers and good character writers. And sure successful games like portal have an overstated effect on games that come after them, but I don't really think you've demonstrated that this accounts for why inspired games fail to have the same impact. (and that's leaving out Valve's decentralised development style from the conversation) And I just think you're incorrect about "boomer shooters", some people like/miss the actual mechanics of old shooters not just how they made them feel 20-30 years ago. Just because you don't fall into a game's niche appeal doesn't mean they failed at achieving nostalgia like DOOM 2016, they are appealing to people who actually still like the genre of play from DOOM 1993. You could say they fail to achieve mass appeal because of that, but also I don't know if the point of making a "boomer shooter" in year of our lord 2022 is to achieve mass appeal, it's to deliver a niche style of gameplay/design that isn't available from the zeitgeist of modern game design. Some people just want chunky tomato sauce. Something similar could be said about those pokemon clones. You are not the core audience for that genre, you've said so yourself in this video. In the same breath you basically say you don't like Pokemon games, and then say that these new renditions fail at pleasing you, like, no shit? They're small indie games riffing on Pokemon, you as someone who only barely likes Pokemon as an adult beyond you're nostalgia isn't going to like them past their initial novelty.

[@zelokorLocalGodOfChaosAndBread]

thank you for saying it, I was wondering when someone would put it into words

[@Vitz_atelier]

Also the fact that the only inspiration he saw from Ion Fury was Duke Nukem 3D shows how much he knows about old school shooters. Not even mentioning the obvious inspirations from Build Engine games like Blood and Shadow Warrior alongside other old fps? What a shame. In a broader sense I see his points, but he fails to give us proper examples to illustrate his points because of his lack of attachment to the subgenres he is talking in the video.

[@juliagoetia]

I agree, I think his vision is too obscured by his own biases to convey the topics he is trying to.

[@Triumph263]

I find it odd how many people assume the rise of Boomer Shooters is just because of nostalgia, I was born in '98 and wasn't allowed to play Quake or Half-Life and the like until I was ~14 when much more modern games were also available; yet I've been drawn to 90's shooters because many modern shooters are just... so uninspired... sure, I'm sure you *could* do something creative with the Call of Duty formula that has been distilled to this point, but I haven't seen them doing anything creative with it (or at least anything I'm interested in). I don't think developers should feel limited by retro ideas but I don't think many Boomer Shooter devs are; I've seen more innovative gameplay running on the DOOM engine then I've seen from CoD in the past decade.

[@Blazercraft100]

Thank you for putting my opinions into better words than I could

[@AFnord]

As the devs of Thimbleweed Park said, the trick to making a successful nostalgic game is to make a game that is like how people remembered them being, not how they actually were.

[@geofff.3343]

Nostalgia by its own definition is quite literally not about creation or innovation of or on something that exists. A feeling of nostalgia is about repeating the past. Nostalgia is literally about reliving something that you enjoyed in your misspent youth.

[@necromax13]

I had grown jaded by pokemon by the release of Pokemon emerald. Coromon and Nexomon are just grating in their presentation and design. Imagine my delight when I played Ni No Kuni Wrath Of The White Witch, and found out, after the third time the game does a switcheroo on you, that it's actually a Pokemon game. Featuring real time combat, and a party management system, and skills and spells. It reeled me in with a visual style I was nostalgic about, made me remember games I was nostalgic about, and then goes off to do something of its own. Incredible game, even if very flawed.

[@peculiaroreo]

oh yeah Ni No Kuni FUCKS It's definitely not a phenomenal game but people complain about the real time-turn based fusion way too much its not that bad to play and learning the timing gets very dull by the end but its pretty novel for a while

[@necromax13]

@@peculiaroreo oh yes it's very flawed and it definitely loses steam like in the final final stretch, but it features everything I like in a Pokemon game, plus so many improvements or ideas I would've wanted in Pokemon. Controlling your monsters hands on, having it be semi real time, team battles being actually team battles, having options when out of monsters, wild monsters actually roaming the overworld, proper separation between overworld and the towns, monster equips (!!!!), Etc. I really loved the game, top to bottom, flaws and all. I was floored when the Pokedex equivalent was literally a fully fledged 360 page digital book with hand drawn art.

[@peculiaroreo]

@@necromax13 Gorgeous, but also Swaine and Esther are dead weight as just their characters which is admittedly pretty funny LMAO

[@BlueBeetle1939]

I played through the demo for coromon and really enjoyed it but my favorite pokemon game is the original sapphire and its basically just an optimized version of that

[@necromax13]

@@peculiaroreo I actually really liked the secret character a lot, it just arrives at a very awkward point in the story.

[@JanbluTheDerg]

I'm wanting to develop a metroidvania and it's a problem I'm very aware of, I know myself that I am at risk of simply making a Hollow Knight clone (ah, you thought I'd say Super Metroid... I need to play that game actually) rather than my own unique thing, but now that I'm finishing up my prototype, and thinking of some new ideas in preparation for my design document, I'm feeling fairly confident that my game will turn out to be... well, my own game.

[@andresfgp13]

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.

[@LucasStraub]

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?"

[@nujuat]

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.

[@asddsa8203]

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

[@JanbluTheDerg]

@@andresfgp13 Very much agreed

[@Lishtenbird]

"Past is a different country." I remember replaying original Sonic ROMs on a PDA that could force save-load, and it felt like cheating. But... time was different, and the pace of life changed, so the game had to, too. The games being challenging was how I remembered it, but beating them like that was no longer realistic for someone busy with more important things. Even more so today: there's so much choice, so many things have been perfected, so many no longer fit the modern context - yeap, purely replicating something is a recipe for failure (or at least, a ticket to a very, very niche market). You have to, ehm... _evolve_ eventually, and turns out, the new classics don't really even have to look like the old ones anymore - they just need to feel right today.

[@DrawciaGleam02]

That's kind of what happened with the Sinnoh remakes. They were too faithful.

[@handsoaphandsoap]

​@@DrawciaGleam02 Not just that, they were also just incompetently made. While I think it was a good move to outsource the development to a different studio, giving it to a studio that has never created a full game probably wasn't the correct move. The game is just a bad buggy mess that should not have released in the state that it's in, it needed several overhauls and rounds of QC.

[@DrawciaGleam02]

@@handsoaphandsoap I think the studio WANTED to do more but were restricted by GF as well. Partially because GF didn't want Legends to be outshone ....at least that what I've heard from the rumors.

[@handsoaphandsoap]

@@DrawciaGleam02 I don't think so, I'm pretty sure it's just a classic case of a studio being in over their heads and being rushed to finish development. I can believe that the whole "faithful" aspect of it has something to do with Legends but I just don't believe that the Pokémon company was willing to release a buggy unfinished product unless they had to. After all, it would've been far better for everyone involved if both the remakes as well as Legends would've been successful.

[@MrBenMcLean]

I started gaming with Commander Keen which let you save anywhere. PC Master Race

[@athamicis]

Really hit the nail on the head with the pokemon clones: I never thought any of them managed to capture the essence that captivated me as a kid. Maybe some day I'll find or refine that essence myself

[@rmv9194]

He only hit the nailed in that. In many other this guy is way off.

[@codenamexelda]

For me. nostalgia only works if it's obscure media, not media that i've seen a thousand times at this point. Hell, sometimes I get a sense of anemoia for something I've never even seen before. It's almost like I'm experiencing someone else's childhood. As an aspiring game designer, I think this is the best video I've seen all day.

[@tonystarrk4859]

Your take on Sekiro is a stretch to say the least, it's the one Fromsoft game in which they actually changed and streamlined the most mechanics. There's no leveling (progression is based on beating bosses and mini-bosses), no builds, no multiplayer, one main weapon, a fixed main character, no corpse-running, no stamina, etc. So what if there are Mega Man style hard counters for some bosses, this can be considered a reward for experimenting or studying the lore (as is the case with your Snake-eyes example where in lore descriptions it's said that the sabimaru was used against the Okami and that they are the Okami's descendants), the previous titles didn't have a similar system really (closest would be enemy resistances). In fact most people complained that the 10 prosthetic items were not useful enough. I agree that the game is at it's strongest in fights like Genichiro, Isshin, and Owl but I really don't think the prosthetic tool system has much in common with the build variety of Dark Souls and Elden Ring, and I don't think that was their intent (things like using shuriken to stop Owl's posture recovery, the umbrella to stop Genichiro's flurry, or High Monk to leap over sweeps add variation and flavor to the combat while keeping the same style). If anything Sekiro should be the example of them not being tied down by previous titles and coming up with new ideas for the genre (like the deflect-centric posture breaking based combat).

[@fluffy_tail4365]

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

[@theinternetsightseer2935]

@@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.

[@dangernoodle5831]

@@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

[@guitaraobscura8802]

@@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.

[@soterion5687]

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.

[@benedict6962]

m8 I will fight you on sekiro. Most of the prosthetics are amazing and give you multiple options to tackle the same problem or control the tempo of your assault. It makes any Rock Paper Scissors moment into a situation where you have at least 3 solutions with varying levels of cost, difficulty, and rewards. Combat Arts are less about straight damage and more about controlling reach and dis-engaging to allow a smoother flow than R1 spam or poking ever 2 minutes.

[@cattysplat]

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.

[@Titleknown]

The depressing thing about all those Pokemon clones is like, "Mons" games used to be a whole genre back in the day, it's just that most of them died out or fizzled into obscurity. Digimon, Monster Rancher, Medabots, Dragon Quest Monsters, Jade Coccoon, Azure Dreams, Spectrobes, Robopon, the list goes on! And, like, it pains me that they're drawing from just Pokemon, the lone survivor, and not the whole mechanical and aesthetic diversity of that genre of games to make a new era of mons games, like, even if you're taking from the past, there's so many others you can learn from rather than just copying Pokemon!

[@KitCloud1]

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.

[@DaShikuXI]

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

[@aruretheincomprehensible20]

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.

[@miwestraveler3986]

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.

[@Titleknown]

@@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...

[@keiyangoshin3650]

“Nostalgia is a double edged sword.” - Adam Millard may 2022. Indeed. It’s a bitter sweet moment when we realize that we can’t travel back in time in our memories either. 😭 But we do love to try. ☺️

[@DrawciaGleam02]

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

[@tylerhammond4947]

idk why but Chao always being the last patron to be named just makes me happy. It's very nostalgic

[@thhkhht]

While many important and intresting points were made, the one and only hill from this video I am more than willing to die on is the mudkip supremacy.

[@thomasallen9974]

*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!!!

[@SidheKnight]

Totodile

[@metalicarus8372]

well said

[@shubhamghoshal2939]

All 3 hoenn starters were quite good ngl

[@jaspervaneck3258]

You say nostalgia, but it seems to be superficial game design, as displayed by: - Remakes that improve graphical fidelity but that tear out the soul. - Games that try to combine other successful games, with no regard for how different elements interact. - "X with a twist" or "X but better" games that are so hyper-focused on improving/playing with a single part of a game that they miss the larger picture. All of this seems to be caused by arrogant novices that have the temerity to call themselves game designers while having no understanding of what they are doing and why they are doing it, as a result, varying elements in the games are at war with each other. With games that cater to nostalgia being the result of a checklist put together by someone who really enjoyed the original, but never understood what made it work. As any competent cook can tell you, you can't just pile different foodstuffs that you like into a pan and expect it to result in something good. And you can't just alter a recipe without understanding WHY the recipe is what it is.

[@Buglin_Burger7878]

This is what people think nostalgia is. This is what ignorance does to people.

[@HoFo-sw3cc]

Exactly, people just see everything's front view. It takes time and effort to turn your head and look for side or even back view of a thing. and little to no one will do so.

[@popopop984]

X can be replaced with Pokémon X

[@AnotherDuck]

Yeah, the overall problem is the "follow the leader" syndrome. One thing gets popular, and everyone wants to repeat the success. This video just focuses on older games, but the process is pretty much the same for any pseudo-creative work. Almost of them forget or more often just don't realise what made the originals work. So they copy what they can see. That's why I like remakes like FF7 and RE2. They're placed in the same worlds with the same characters, but the games themselves are very different, even if they're in the same genre. The gameplay is remade with modern standards, and thought is put into trying to figure out why people liked the originals, rather than just slapping a new skin on them and calling it a day.

[@elemangell2981]

Icons: Combat Area was a perfect example of this. A group of Smash Bros. Melee players got together to make a game that was similar to it, but its characters and mechanics were SO similar to Melee, that there wasn't much of a reason to play it over the OG. The most successful platform-fighters nowadays simply take the base of the genre, and the developers add their own ideas to make a new, but still familiar and competitively engaging experience. Rivals of Aether's characters have interweaving movesets, Sentinels Inc. has an EX meter, Multiversus is focused on 2v2, Fraymakers is built for custom content, and even Icons, now known as Rushdown Revolt, has cancelable air dashes and a stamina health system instead of the traditional percent-based one.

[@aruretheincomprehensible20]

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.

[@tonybarnes2920]

When I created Strider 2014, I specifically wanted to make a game that encompassed all things Strider vs. just being a remake of any particular game. It is a love letter to all things Strider and was built to remind you of how you "felt" about Strider or how you wanted Strider to be vs. how it actually was. It was also important to stand on its own as a fun game (which is how I treated every license I worked on). I feel like a lot of the modern nostalgia-mining people are doing is surface level, because they really don't understand what makes them nostalgic about said game. Same goes for sequels, too.

[@arfarfarf256]

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.

[@tidepoolclipper8657]

Dread is clearly more so inspired by Fusion; especially by the sharp jumping controls.

[@thewrongsorcerer]

12:43 Monster Crown actually gives 5 choices for starting monster, which is not 3 like the video says. You can actually see the 4th monster in the video if you pay attention. In a game where you collect and battle monsters, how would not having a monster to start out with even work? If you think about it for more than 5 seconds, the criticism falls apart, much like the rest of this video.

[@RyanGatts]

actually, the aimless wandering just after getting off the plateau is the section of the Breath of the Wild that I remember most clearly and fondly. If I were to diagnose this feeling, I'd say I remember it because it was the first time that I felt like the game was going to let me actually get myself into trouble, so I was super tuned-in. I remember seeing my first moblin while sneaking around some ruins and having no idea how dangerous it was. I likewise remember the Guardian that pushed me off my intended path and the Talus I ran into while climbing over the mountain range to Kakariko.

[@JM_Traslo]

I remember watching the "8-bit-ish art" GDC talk from one of the original Lucasarts artists, talking about how to bend the limits of 8-bit and what can truly be done with limits whilst also making people feel like they get an authentic experience without actually restricting yourself in authentic ways. It feels like that carries over well to this video where a great deal is about working out what to bring over to create a new contemporary experience based on previous things rather than just having the equivalent of a buzzword by using the one or two best parts and hoping that wings it.

[@cattysplat]

"You think you do, but you don't". An infamous quote about World of Warcraft developers shutting down the possibility of reviving the game of old. He brought up negative things that had been "solved" in modern game design, but those "problems" were exactly what many players wanted, or perhaps something that had been unintentionally removed by improving the game's systems. For example the automatic system for creating player parties means you can get a group of random players and be teleported to a dungeon and teleported back once finished, compared to the old way of players forced to socialise and spend time travelling in game in order to play with each other.

[@hiiistrex2838]

Ahhh, remember the start of this video? Good times, very nostalgic.

[@MizoxNG]

I'd say there's one big disadvantage Yooka Laylee had relative to banjo... it's levels are SIGNIFICANTLY larger and emptier relative to the amount of actual stuff to do in them. Kazooie has very small levels, roughly similar in size to mario 64, while Tooie's levels, while large, are broken up into smaller, more coherent chunks than Yooka Laylee's are. there's also other disadvantages like the NPCs having seemingly nothing to do with anything and just being scattered at random. they're not really tied to the level theme like tooie's are, if anything, the game feels more like Banjo Kazooie: nuts and bolts, but trying to navigate those worlds without the vehicles.

[@adahnliegl740]

There is another reason nostalgia isn't doing all that well, especially when you try to bandwagon on it: You had the original experience without being nostalgic for it. You were living instead of re-living it. Fishing for nostalgia by coaxing the audience into remembering/reliving some other experience diverts attention away from your product. You actively dilute the experience someone has at that very moment, forcing blandness. And since the creators bind themselves to their beacon they have a hard time leaving a mark of their own without breaking in style in case they want to spice things up to counter that. Essentially I agree with your first statement: nostalgia is the surest way to a fast cash grab, but you make things incomparably harder for yourself if you actually want to leave a lasting impression. And more often than not I'll approach any follow-up product by the same creator with the taste of stale bread in my mouth.

[@davidmoon3776]

Another great video! I always wince when someone recommends me something and the first thing they say about it is the nostalgia element. I think you captured the distinction between the lazy kind of nostalgia and those that can build from it. Those 2D pixelated Mario moments in Odyssey aren’t just callbacks designed to pluck on your heart strings, they invent new things with them, they fit neatly into the world design, and are part of the variety of gameplay that always makes those games so damn good. Nostalgia gives you ingredients, but it shouldn’t be the whole recipe.

[@bld9826]

There are some takes here I don't really agree with, and think they could use some further explanation. To play Devils' advocate here: 1) I've watched a few friends play those puzzle games you mentioned as taking inspiration from Portal - They seemed like lots of fun and seemed to have plenty of their own ideas, actually. What if it's your own nostalgia for portal that blinds you to what these games do right? 2) A lot of people really love Ion Fury too, for that matter. I've heard a lot of praise for the level design in particular, and I know my friends who enjoy those old "Boomer shooters" liked Ion Fury specifically for its level design. Maybe it's wrong to call it reductive to want to make a game like that, especially in the face of an industry that churns out games like COD that are strictly focused on action setpieces? 3) To stop referencing "My friends" all the time - I think your take on Metroid Dread (and I'm assuming you're referencing it here, since it's in your footage but you don't call it by name) is contradictory. I mean, it doesn't seem like you enjoy it, while I very much did, but that's fine of course. But it just seems like you're slamming it on the one hand for being too beholden to Super Metroid, while also praising other games for being better at hitting the exploration parts of Super you enjoyed than Dread was. Which I just can't parse - Dread isn't Super, and isn't trying to be. IFf it were trying to be super, Samus would control like a floaty dog turd and bosses would be messy affairs that you're encouraged to tank through instead of the reaction-based action affairs of Dread. Yes, there are visual references, which your editing seems to be highlighting as a negative, but like - of course there would be? It's still a Metroid game, it's still in the same universe. Again, totally fine not to like Dread, but from what glimpses I'm admittedly reading way too much into, it just feels like you can't decide if you want Dread to be more or less like Super Metroid.

[@skydiamsteam6005]

If anything, Dread is way more inspired by Fusion honestly

[@samy29987]

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.

[@rmv9194]

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.

[@thewiirocks]

Excellent analysis and insights. What's funny is that as you're going through all of this in detail, I couldn't help but think of the Netflix Voltron series. When the creators made the series, the said that they "wanted to make the Voltron we all remembered, not as it actually was". Which... THANK GOD! If you've ever gone back to the original Voltron (or honestly most 80s cartoons) you've find that it was utterly awful and held together with tape and bailing wire. The Netflix Voltron series is a pure master class in how to hook into Nostalgia while advancing the art and hooking an audience on the new thing.

[@Deathkyun]

The fact that this didn't build into a Palworld punchline got me feeling conflicted. More pokemon with guns please.

[@jomoe666]

Great video Adam; although your video speaks about games, the concept can be broadly applied to other forms of media and entertainment as well, all of which serves to highlight the limits of nostalgia. We all want to recreate our fondest memories, but part of enjoying life to its fullest is welcoming new experiences. We always look back fondly on novel and engaging experiences but chasing the high of the past is never really all it seems. Excuse my existential musings, but I guess my point is that I would be more willing to welcome new and novel games and experiences that I can look back on fondly one day as opposed to nostalgia marketed games or remakes that either keep too many of the old flaws, or fails to build on what makes the old games great and expand upon it in thoughtful and imaginative ways.

[@dman10187]

I just want to bring up one counter point. As far as boomer shooters go the whole reason why that style has come back into popularity is because fans want that style of game that we hadnt had in years. Thanks to COD and Gears cover shooting and regenerating health was the norm. The pokemon clones came out into a world where we still get one to two pokemon games a year, but retro shooters had been mostly dead for a long time. Thats why the people who buy these types of game are usually satisfied with them replicating the exact feel of those games. I like Ion Fury alot and HROT is my favorite new boomer shooter and that one is just Quake ... again lol.

[@matteste]

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

[@ElliotKeaton]

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

[@vizthex]

haven't played superliminal, but damn you're right about them zeroing in on a single thing. i forced myself to get the last few achievements in The Turing Test so i could finally be fully done with the game, and even though i thought the story was kinda neat i just didn't feel like continuing until i treated it as a background activity - watching a YT video on my left monitor while playing the game on my main one and just kinda going through the motions. I doubt i'll ever replay it due to it never really doing anything with its concept beyond what you see in the first few chapters. i think the fact that you get the portal gun halfway through the original game is one reason it's so well-loved over a decade later - it demonstrated that it didn't need its core gimmick to work. i've often thought that you could remove GLaDOS (and Wheatley in Portal 2) and still have the games work fine, and while i do still partially believe that i do think both of them are one of the reasons to play portal - and that is one reason so many "portal clones" feel samey. They just don't do it quite the same in one way or another - whether it be gameplay or writing (sometimes even both).

[@snowpoint720]

Since this video tears into Monster Taming games, and rightly so, I want to list my favorites. 1. Monster Sanctuary - Amazing Combat. 2. Monster Hunter Stories 2 - the GOAT - Good Roster, Good Battle Mechanics, decent story. 3. Patch Quest - Not even an RPG, but a bullet-hell game. It's amazing.

[@thejeffwade]

"I'm way too young to have any nostalgia for the NES games it references..." You know words hurt, Adam. XD

[@XanthinZarda]

I've been seeing people saying that Yooka-Lalyee's failings are as an individual game, but I'd like to challenge any player who thinks that to go back and play _Beaver Bother_ or _Mr. Vile's_ minigames. Rare was great at creating levels & platforming challenges, but the minigames were the worst part by a long shot. I didn't play Diddy Kong Racing for the Silver Coin Challenge, I played it because it was a genuinely good kart racer dragged down by other aspects. The thing people miss about cloning Pokemon is that and I'm going to be blunt here, _the actual pokemon _*_game_*_ is crap._ We willfully endured a *tediously slow on purpose* battle system of arbitrarily limited choices because we wanted to immerse ourselves in the _designs_ and the _world itself._ Hacks like Crystal Clear are great because they take away most of the obstacles and allow you to fully enjoy the world without artificial barricades. This is why people are so critical of Sword and Shield because the world is crap. It's why my dream Pokemon game would eschew the battling altogether in favor of researching these fantastical creatures; so that they have a reason to exist beyond, "Galar needs a crappy bird you'll replace too." _Wow!_ Plastic trees that wouldn't look out of place in Hyrule Field on the N64! I'm glad this company that makes _BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN ANNUAL SALES_ couldn't be bothered to hire 6 extra artists. We're not critical of Sticker Star because of nostalgia; we're critical of it because previous titles had interesting character designs, and the "paper" aspect was but a stylistic element instead of a constant double ear airhorn punchline, and there _wasn't a death mandate from above that enforces gentrification of the franchise._ Say goodbye to any Toad that had anything other than spots on their cap and a blank vapid smiling face.

[@robrick92]

1:40 "We certainly like to remember it this way." Ah yes, Nostalgia about Nostalgia

[@LordEpos]

Not sure if labelling the Pokemon BDSP footage as "Digimon" was a mistake or a joke. I'd also like to defend Coromon specifically a bit. I haven't finished it yet, I was actively playing through it when I clicked on this video, actually, and while the start is derivative of Pokemon, once the main plot starts up, the expectation that it's just going to be Pokemon gets subverted in such a way that I think it really enhances the experience.

[@internetguy7319]

Temtem is extremely different the further you go in. It pissed me off hearing the intro of this video.

[@endyj9423]

pretty sure it was a bait for people to comment on, but i dont know if people didnt comment because they were dodging the bait or genuinely didnt see the bait

[@waltermundt]

Monster Sanctuary is a great example of a game that takes a bunch of inspiration from Pokemon while still having a real identity of its own. They really thought through why almost everything in the game is the way it is, rather than just picking and old game and making some tweaks.

[@marekkapusta7825]

It's a really good blend of monster taming and metroidvania.

[@denysvision]

but is not pokemon since pokemon did not create the monster taming genre

[@Ashtarte3D]

Okay I have to HARD DISAGREE with the whole bit about Sekiro. Saying the game is the best as "sword only, no prosthesis" smells of pure elitism the same way some of the Elden Ring crowd insist that using Ashes of War or Spirit Ashes is for babies and not INTENDED DESIGN BY THE DEVS. Every single enemy in Sekiro has at least one prosthetic tool weakness, bosses usually have a few, and knowing how and why the tools work is part of the charm. It reeks of the sort of people that think me beating Malenia with the help of a spirit ash is less valuable than them beating her with some nonsense like "naked, fist only, rune level 1 wretch." Was mine easier than that? Hell yeah. Was it more fun than tryharding? Double hell yeah.

[@joezcool]

calling the end of the video segment the "true ending" is a reference only you would make, and only your audience would appreciate. Another great video, keep em coming

[@RainMakeR_Workshop]

I love "boomer shooters", I play loads of them and I watch a lot of channels that play them. And honestly, I've never heard anyone who is actually INTO them, call them a "boomer shooter". Most people call them "old school fps/shooter".

[@torgranael]

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.

[@RainMakeR_Workshop]

@@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.

[@cattysplat]

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.

[@RainMakeR_Workshop]

@@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)

[@noob_jr_2sjrkc]

And yet, when an original indie IP like Levelhead comes out that tries to do its own thing, it gets completely glossed over because it's not Mario or some other platformer that people are familiar with.

[@megamangos7408]

I have to disagree with your assessment of Ion Fury for the reasons you described: it really does feel a heck of a lot different from Duke Nukem and heavily updates a lot of the problems presented in the Build Engine. Each weapon fits a role rather than having a hard default, and the bowling bombs really make the old pipe bombs boring and slow in comparison. And no flying explosive bastards that scream at you when they see you. Maybe give it another shot? Also, if you're itching for a more Hexen/Doom clone, try Hedon.

[@necrosteel5013]

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.

[@necrosteel5013]

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.

[@megamangos7408]

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

[@zedrake]

I love that this popped up on my feed! I literally just made a video about Kao The Kangaroo 2022 and how it leans too much into “I’m an old game”. Great job on this video man

[@pdiddlers3268]

Not gonna lie Adam, you missed the mark on this one. I agree with your conviction in/with nostalgia in video games, most notable being the Super Metroid slump Nintendo stuck themselves in. You seemed to go a little too hard on indie titles for not being more ambitious (without directly saying it mind you). Also you visually showed Doom 2016 without mentioning how wildly successful that reboot was by them blending old and new ideas under a very heavy weight of nostalgia. I understand the video was meant to address the anchor that is nostalgia, but I would have liked to see the few exceptions of those that very Blatantly took our treasured memories and created something great with it.

[@pandaman_5607]

I can agree that taking too many concepts from a game without concern for why those concepts were there to begin with can damage a game, I feel like the examples shown didn't really have these faults. These examples feel more like the creator saying "I love [INSERT GAME HERE], I want to make a version of that game with my own spin". These games can be great if you loved a certain game/series, and wanted a gameplay experience similar, but still different. In the case of Superliminal, I feel like it worked well as a puzzle game. it held similarities to Portal in terms of: levels layouts use the same "test room" design, a voice leading you through the game while adding comedy, gameplay revolving around 1 concept, etc. But there are enough differences, some include: overall style, Superliminal is a shorter experience which solely revolves around the perspective mechanic, Level themes/settings usually change while Portal usually stays in the underground white test room environments, story wise, these games diverge completely, etc. Though you can clearly see the similarities that Superliminal took, I feel like the creator took their own spin on what a portal like game would look like if they made it. its like a chef having their own little spin on a popular food. The food item may be your favorite which you prefer over the chefs version, but when your tired of the favorite food you may be looking for a spin on the flavor. This idea reminds me of one of my favorite games Civilization (I've played the 5th and 6th). I have played hundreds of hours into these games, though after awhile they start to get stale. I tried other games in the genre (ex. Stellaris, Old World, Endless Legend), but they never scratched the same itch. Then a new game came out called Humankind, and I loved it. both Civ and Humankind were about forming a civilization from the stone age into the atomic age, and if you played Civ 6, you could easily jump into Humankind w/ minimal tutorials. Though Humankind took a lot of inspiration from Civ, I saw it as a big plus because I loved Civ anyways. And getting to play Civ in a new way w/ some new rules was amazing. All this to say, I feel like games that are a spin on a one specific game aren't inherently bad its just for people who want a remix of some of their favorite jams.

[@FelisImpurrator]

Great video, but it is hilarious to me that you namedropped "Metroidvania" and then proceeded to say the genre was held captive by one game, not two. Symphony of the Night is where we get the "vania" half. There's also something to be said about recent trends like roguelite elements and deckbuilding. I love roguelites and enjoy a good deckbuilder, but it seems everyone and their mother wants to be Slay the Spire now.

[@lizhutchinson6978]

"Nostalgia's great, right? Well...we certainly like to remember it that way. Don't we?" LOL this is perfect.

[@Qaosbringer]

They are not "Boomer shooters". They are "Retro FPS" or "Doomlike". Like the games console players call "Metroidvania" or "Soulsborne".

[@anto_point]

Although Portal is clearly an inspiration for Superliminal, I think that they are substantialy different. Not only because they don't use the same puzzle mechanics (ayoooo portals goes brrrrrr and ayoooo headaches goes brrrrr), but also because their structure, their message or even their characters are really different. I'll start off with the characters. In Portal, we have GLaDOS, one of my favorite antagonist ever. She doesn't miss an occasion to insult chell, or to trick her. She's mesquine and has this sense of dark humor (I'm talking bout her in portal 1). And also, she have a body. On the other hand, there is the somnasculpt therapy lady robot, which of course can throw back memories at you about glados, like with the "this way is forbidden" and everything. But, it turns out that all of that was a part of the therapy (not like in portal where we really go off the trail), and also, the somnasculpt lady doesn't have any recongnisable character traits. She doesn't have that much personnality. And that's not a problem, because the real "narrator" is the doctor Glenn Pierce, which reminds me more of the narrator from the stanley parable than GLaDOS. Let's talk about the mechanics. While portal slowly introduce mechanichs for later puzzle chambers (or the part where you escape from the main path), Superliminal throws away everything you think that you already know to surprise you at every new room. Surely the mechanism of the size based on perspective stay the main mechanism, like in portal, where the portals are the main mechanism, but Superliminal is always trying to break it's own codes with unnexpected mechanics twist. And finally, for the structure of the levels, Portal (1) and Superliminal share similarities, for sure, but the part where you go off the path to break in four GLaDOS is not as contemplative as the last dreaming part in superliminal. Also the delimitation of the different phases of the dream in superliminal make the structure of it kinda different from portal. In superliminal you have 8 (? not sure, it's been a while since I replayed it completely) big levels, but in portal you have for the first act a huge amount of small test chambers, and after that a enormous zone to explore which constitute one single giant "test chamber". I like both of them of course, portal is one of my favorites video games ever, a real classic, and superliminal is a refreshing and really cool experience.

[@anto_point]

Story if I've made mistakes, as a french guy who's english is certainly not perfect, I can make a lot of them😅

[@anto_point]

And I forget to talk about the music, the UI, or even the aesthetic which are very important to prove my point but... ahem... I'm too lazy to write specifically what's different😅😂

[@kellwillsen]

I came here to say this, but you've said it better than I could! I think that Superliminal deliberately evokes Portal vibes in order to fool the player. Going off-piste in one room triggers threats from Scary Computer, but actually leads to a dead-end. The annoying doctor is deliberate. The ending explains that the player "wins" by understanding that they are the player. Not by following all the instructions or rebelling against them, but by discovering when to obey and when to question. Basically, growing from obedient child, through rebellious teenager, to discerning adult.

[@Skaatje]

Surprised you didn't mention World of Warcraft and their classic server. I knew I would hate that nostalgia attempt because I was a different person with other people around me when I started with the original world of warcraft. Some things just don't work when you yourself have changed.

[@Jamesthe1]

I like this kind of take on nostalgia. A lot of your analyses always seem to boil down to decisions and the importance to having a purpose in them, as well as being aware of the consequences. As this was going on though, I kept thinking about my own experiences and remembered something that made the nostalgia powerful in the first place: context. Without it, a moment cannot stand on its own; the thing itself is just a thing otherwise, which is a problem among games and other media alike *ahem* new star wars *ahem.* You did mention the concept of feeling versus the existence of something, but it felt more like a side-note which brushed away something I found rather important to go into. I feel as though encouraging the audience to think of a more recent moment, that of which felt meaningful to them, would have been better, because it completely removes the nostalgia aspect and gets right to why they felt good to a viewer's perspective (i.e. the catharsis of solving your first major puzzle in a new game). It would also express the importance of making new memories, rather than sticking to the ones you're so familiar with. I wish this was better phrased and more emphasized, something I saw inferred but didn't really see in the video. It's a glue that I felt could have helped make this stronger.

[@samsibbens8164]

The issue isn't nostalgia, the issue is cloning. Every game is the best version of what the creators were TRYING to achieve. You're never gonna get better results than what has been achieved, if you're trying to copy what was already done. That's why 99% of Minecraft clones were just worse than Minecraft, or why clones in general are not better than what they're imitating. The only way you're gonna make something better than what was done is by doing things that weren't done. My friend and I have been creating custom content in the Halo games for more than a decade. There's always things we would have wanted to do that we haven't been able to do, so we try to implement it next time. We don't just copy exactly our previous idea, we try to add things that we didn't get the chance to add before

[@infamousXsniper055]

Bringing up Monster Tamer games like Coromon, Nexomon, and Tem Tem is really interesting. They're great examples of working from an already complete game and then making changes to it. However, when making a new game, you'll either lack player buy-in to your new IP or you'll miss the reason that original game had that parts you're changing. This can cause your changes to have unforeseen consequences. Coromon and Nexomon both simplify the type chart in Pokemon. I imagine this was to help ease in new players and streamline the types and their relationships (like removing the redundancies of Ground and Rock). However, what they might not have realized is that Pokemon's large type chart with its many interlocking relationships, that's expanded upon with dual types, is a very core part of its battling system. Each trainer's teams of 6 match up in very unique ways. Due to switching allowing trainers to effectively choose where their opponent's attacks land, the type chart leads into many interesting decisions about whether or not to switch out and whether or not to assume your opponent is doing the same (unfortunately, the AI in the games is too dumb to switch out so players miss out on this in their story playthroughs). Coromon and Nexomon, by removing dual types and shrinking the type chart, lost this mechanical complexity and depth. Pokemon is already a very simple game so this loss really hurts the games. However, there are other games which are inspired by Pokemon. Monster Sanctuary is a great example. It's a game which takes the experience of bringing together a team of monsters you've obtained and using them to explore and battle, while doing its own thing. The game is a sidescrolling metroidvania with 3v3 battles where each monster has its own skill tree. Monster Sanctuary was able to capture the excitement I experienced with Pokemon games when discovering new monsters and expanded on it. In Pokemon, it was always neat to reach a new area and find new Pokemon to see their interesting designs, moves, and abilities and possibly use them on your team. Monster Sanctuary takes this experience and expands on it due to monsters each having their own skill trees. Each monster has a lot of depth which is interesting to discover by looking at their skill trees. Additionally, due to the player using 3 monsters at a time in battle, the player also needs to consider how a monster and its skills work with the other monsters in their party. I would stay up late playing Monster Sanctuary always pressing on just so I could see what new monsters could do based on their skill trees and how their skills would work with the skills of the monsters I was already using. A good way to think about this is that games people remember fondly usually show the player something new which games are capable of. Doom showed players that it was possible to have a fast paced shooter with a first person perspective. However, when further games do the exact same thing, they don't do anything new for the player. Maybe the player will enjoy more of what they like, but they'll lack that new thing which really engrosses the player. Doom 2016 and Overkill captured the experience of Doom well because they also showed a new way a first person shooter could be fast paced and aggressive. Their mechanics which incentivize the player to be aggressive are something new the player learns video games are capable of. This causes them to be engrossed by them. Games that will be remembered as classics will typically show players something new video games are capable of. For a game to capitalize on nostalgia, it needs to do something which expands the player's perspective on what the game they're nostalgic of can be.

[@bakdorz]

I don't think Sekiro's skills and prosthetic trees are a holdover from Soulsborne. They are a independent yet similar progression system that supports the core gameplay. I think using the justification that prosthetics can trivialize some bossfights doesn't follow as evidence that its upgrade system is tacked on.

[@sheldonzs]

Great video! I'm working on making a "retro tribute" game, but I made sure to take influence from multiple sources, anything that feels flawed I try to make my own improvements, and most importantly, never let the source that inspires you get in the way of your own ideas.

[@mrblackhouseprez]

I understand what he's saying but i dont think the problem is as big of a deal as he's making it. Tomten, shovel knight, and the banjo sequel are not mainstream games that sell in the millions like cod, halo, gta, or sports titles. So nostalgia isnt really a problem with mainstream games. The problem is mainstream games have abandoned innovation but not for nostalgia but for micro transactions. Valve, bathesda, bioware, the cod developers, rockstar, bungie, dice and EA sports especially have not made any significant or cultural impactful games in 10 years. No nostalgia just half finished games forced to be live service. I love indy but the death of the middle market is to blame. A developer gets real money to make a great game. Its a mild success but it makes enough money that they can try again but refine it. Eventually their audience gets big enough that they become mainstream. This used to be the norm. You don't get the blockbuster witcher 3 without the ok witcher 1 and the more refined witcher 2. You dont get gta 3 without 1 and 2. No mass effect without jade empire and kotor. You see it now, no elden ring blockbuster without dark souls 1,2, & 3 and bloodborne to refine and learn from. You sell 1 or 2 million and get another chance to make a great game. That dosnt exist anymore on the grand scale. Pubg, witcher 3, breath of the wild, and Destiny are probably the most influential games last gen but there should be way more. I could name 15 from the ps2/ps3 era. The ps4 era leans so hard on rereleases because there are no middle market devs that carried innovation except maybe fromsoft. I can barely think of anymore. larian and obsidian maybe

[@charleskuhn382]

Thank you for naming the music. It's genuinely appreciated

[@tidepoolclipper8657]

This seems less like a problem with nostalgia and more a problem that these people were either inspired by a past game and wanted to create their own interpretation of that experience or the company compromises of people that once actually did work on specific IP, but no longer have legal access to it due to no longer working for the company holding onto that IP. Fan games are not always the suitable option; considering some companies are still hostile towards them; ESPECIALLY Nintendo.

[@AdelarLerigon]

1:55 *talks about living in memories* *shows Sekiro with the bell at the buddha statue* That joke did not go past me, well done. :D

[@Sleksin]

This is a comment about how the prosthetic tools in Sekiro are actually useful without being gimmicks or reducing from the gameplay -- sometimes even enhancing it -- made by a player multiple NG+ cycles in who has had so much time to adjust to them and go through the entire game with everything from the start, that they are completely detached from that first run experience in which the main time the tools actually felt like an enhancement of the game was when using the shuriken to knock Lady Butterfly out of the air. This comment also ignores how the shuriken and finger whistle (with all upgrades) are still basically the only tools this player uses regularly, as they can specifically be used to increase engagement with the base gameplay of high aggression swordfights and satisfying deathblows.

[@mothcub]

I really love what Puppet Combo and similar developers are doing with nostalgia for PS1 spooks, it's been amazing to see those types of games develop in lots of new and interesting ways and thrive on itchio. The Bloodborne demake as well!! Lots of really cool stuff out there!

[@ReleeSquirrel]

Focusing on recreating nostalgic games can be a pretty big mistake, as you show here. It's been pretty weird for me, now that I'm 40 and everybody is trying to shill nostalgia to me, and sell what are effectively 'antiques' from my childhood etc. I grew up with that being stuff my parents were into, and I guess you'll have your turn eventually. There are some games where people wish they'd make another one, because they liked the mechanics but ran out of content or it just looks old or fugly or whatever, and sometimes they don't get one. Like, Chrono Trigger's story was great, sure, but the groundbreaking thing was the enemies in an RPG being on the map, AND the turn-based combat takes place on the same map instead of moving to a battle minigame. Then Chrono Cross comes along and it's nothing like that. On the other hand, if you look at things like the different Sid Meier's Civilization! and Sid Meier's Pirates! games, there's way more than just nostalgia in those. Also, I'm a bit surprised you didn't point out that game developers working on a remake or remaster aren't making the new game they all want to make one day.

[@TheCaliforniaHP]

This is why I enjoy new IPs especially if they pull from ideas to make their own unique rather than try to copy a familiar set.

[@opinionhaver5910]

4:25 Exploration == aimless wandering? I get that some people will just never appreciate breath of the wild but I seriously do not understand most criticism thrown at the game. I had never played a zelda game before in my life and I still loved every moment of it.

[@cattysplat]

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

[@SageofStars]

I actually find that I enjoy Nexomon for the take it took on the Pokemon formula, spinning the story off into some neat ideas, and, most importantly, saying this world SUCKS because of these creatures, since their creator made them specifically to kill all the humans, something you are repeatedly told throughout the games. Heck, it even tries to introduce, if somewhat jankily, the idea that you might not be doing the right thing, and in fact, tells you directly that if you want to keep going, you're going to probably hurt a lot of people, and you still do it, since you could also do so much good.

[@HansLemurson]

This was also a big problem with the Star Wars sequels, focusing too much on trying to copy what people remembered about Star Wars, but not what actually created Star Wars in the first place. Samurai movies, ww2 dogfights, and Flash Gordon.

[@cattysplat]

Or great characters you rooted for. The sequel trilogy characters are a bunch of dummies who all act like children.

[@GregHuffman1987]

20:08 i remember when mudkip was a big meme in 2008

[@xenos_n.]

This made me realize that, even though I am 38 and my first video game was Super Mario Bros on the NES, and maybe because of that, part of why I didn't like Mario Odyssey nearly as much as Mario Galaxy aside from the Moon system, was all the pandering nostalgia. Galaxy didn't have that, and it's much more nostalgic and memorable for me for that period of time that I played it and I like that. Mario Odyssey was super forgettable to me and I think it is the worst mainline Mario game above Sunshine. I still want a Super Mario Galaxy 3. Odyssey just didn't scratch that itch and all of the nostalgia bait in that game didn't give me the warm fuzzies, like a game like Shovel Knight, it was more akin to the feeling of being alone in a room full of people.

[@cattysplat]

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.

[@RosszCsillag]

It always amazes me how you manage to continuously come up with such interesting comprehensive perspectives on all of these facets of gaming. Keep em coming!

[@CanuckMonkey13]

One little nitpick: during the video you seem to imply that Terraria started out trying to be a clone of Minecraft. I used to think that, but as your description points out, they both came out in 2011. I know Minecraft was around before that (I started playing in 2010) but I don't think the timeline works out for Terraria to have been developed as a 2D Minecraft clone. Maybe that wasn't what you meant at all though! It just came across that way to me.

[@andresfgp13]

minecraft had betas available before 2011.

[@CanuckMonkey13]

@@andresfgp13 Which I addressed in my original comment which you clearly read all the way through before responding, right? Or could you not be bothered to click "Read More" before posting a reply?

[@QuintaFeira12]

You fell for the "release date" trap. Terraria is a clone of Minecraft for the simple reason that it openly and unabashedly copied Minecraft's concept. Because Minecraft was a 2 year old game in 2011.

[@CanuckMonkey13]

@@QuintaFeira12 I think you are right. I did a bit more looking into it. I had originally believed that Terraria couldn't have been developed so quickly to have started development after Minecraft was in public alpha, but according to the Wikipedia page, Terraria's development STARTED in January 2011, so its development was much quicker than I had expected.

[@RapiereGridoro]

a better definition to terraria is Sandbox Metroidvania than Minecraft 2D

[@hyperx72]

"Duke nukem" *Shows Johnny Bravo*

[@beardalaxy]

"this dude is the bad guy btw" is simplifying senator Armstrong way too much

[@RobLang]

There's a facet of nostalgia that you missed (or I missed, I was doing the washing up while I watched) but entertainingly nailed right at the end. With many of the games you've listed, they were the first to do that thing really well. So when you first played it, you were playing something that was completely different. Back then you were younger, had played fewer games and might have had a simpler life with less responsibility. You're remembering the new, the carefree. This hammers home your point about not trying to reproduce or hark back to precisely because you can't reproduce the new feeling. That can only really happen once. Great video!

[@majorfallacy5926]

7:47 unturned is actually a pretty fun game and not a minecraft clone at all. It doesn't even copy the aesthetic and doesn't try to capture minecraft nostalgia. It's more of a zombie-valheim, except it came earlier

[@AnotherDuck]

It's really more from DayZ and part of the few games that popularized the zombie survival games that were flooding the market back then. Unturned at most took inspiration from simplified graphics that Minecraft popularized, but not the mechanics. However, people only see the surface, so that's what they compare it to.

[@majorfallacy5926]

@@AnotherDuck It was originally a roblox game, so it just kept the "style"

[@Deadflower019]

3:16 I for one, very much so appreciate the joke and the effort you had to go through to made it.

[@globalistgamer6418]

Out of the Pokemon clones, I've only played Nexomon: Extinction, but reducing the number of typings and removing dual-typing was NOT a good idea there. Although in theory reducing the number of types could make balancing easier, NE is actually more unbalanced while being so simplistic that its imbalances are obvious, to the extent where Normal is a straight-up unviable typing and waste of a team slot. In Pokemon, dual-typing and many other asymmetric and game-space expanding mechanics like abilities makes almost every evo line somewhat distinct and valuable, and each time you select a team member, it influences the pool of remaining synergistic teammates in many complex ways (e.g. building around Mudkip gives you most of the advantages of regular Water types while also having an immunity to Electricity instead of a weakness, which makes it easier to run Flying types, which also help cover its extreme weakness to Grass, where as Lotad is much more moderate, being neutral to both Electricity and Grass but not resisting Fire, increasing the value of a Rock teammate). In Nexomon, there are just a handful of very rigid team templates that safely cover match-ups with every other type, within which the monster for each typing "slot" can easily be independently disposed of for a higher stat alternative when you find one. The entire monster-catching focus is devalued when each specific option has so little distinctiveness and marginal value.

[@justsomejojo]

I love monster collecting games (or monstertamers) - it's my favorite subgenre of games, mostly because they allow for lots of replay value with different creatures and just generally are collections of many different interesting designs. It's like going to an exhibition to see lots of different art and you get to interact with it too. That's the reason I seek out new games of the genre. Of the mentioned ones, I only played Nexomon so far - specifically Extinction. And while it's a decent game overall with some very cool designs, it always felt like a cheaper less monetized version of Pokemon. The monster taming games I enjoy most are the ones that take the selling point of huge varied roster (that Pokemon set and is known for) and do their actually own thing with it. Monster Sanctuary is one that I think does it really well, because it doesn't try to create the same gameplay loop as Pokemon, but rather builds a unique experience out of elements from different genres. Gotcha Force is an old but gold favorite monster collecting game of mine because it takes the big roster idea and creates a toy-based action game out of it - the quality in this case is definitely contested, but the unique experience keeps me coming back to it. Metal Walker, back when the Gameboy Color was a thing, was panned as a pokemon clone, despite featuring a unique battle style (basically Marbles) and barely any collecting. The monster collecting genre gets a bad rep as its more widely used name is "Pokemon clone" even when the game in question is barely similar to Pokemon. Digimon with its V-Pets and later the Digimon World series is a vastly different experience than Pokemon, whereas when playing Nexomon, I just wanted to play an old Pokemon game after a while. The fact that there's quite a few games out there now that use capture devices akin to pokeballs but a different geometric shape certainly does not help - in fact, I think it reinforces the idea that anything with monsters to collect is a Pokemon clone.

[@SenialHobo]

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

[@encryptico]

19:36 "Sometimes, the best way to honour the past is to take its legacy (...) and use that noise to build something newer and better rather than languashing in the past foreva." It's literally the approach id Software and Bethesda finally took with Doom 2016, even though at the beginning it was going to be a Call of Duty-ish game; they took the elements that made the og Doom and Doom II great and translated them into the XXI century perfectly, without relying too much on that nostalgia trap, and they even went further with Eternal, making it even feel like a "fresh" game. Also, as shown at 19:15, Doom 2016, while being fresh and trying to fit into the new century, had these og Doom levels hidden as, well, secrets. id Software and Bethesda didn't throw them at your face like "LOOK! YOU'RE GOING TO PLAY THIS OG DOOM LEVEL AS A MANDATORY SECTION! ISN'T IT NOSTALGIC?!", rather they included one on (I think almost) each level as secrets, rewarding exploration of and/or curiosity for the environment. As some comments here have said, this video feels like it isn't talking about the topic of nostalgia itself but rather of the newer games trying to mimic that nostalgic feeling. It is true that nostalgia can be a problem when creating any piece of media nowadays but fortunately there are people/developers who get inspired by it and not consumed by it. The good example from my own experience is 10:36 with Dusk. It's not a copycat from the og fps but rather a game inspired by them and trying to be a modern homage to them, as you can see and feel when you play it. Btw, happy to see some Guacamelee! at 15:25

[@kodyly]

Great job on this vid. Some of your best analysis of individual games and mechanics put into a coherent whole.

[@Sam-rk6wo]

Undertale and Deltarune are fantastic examples of utilizing nostalgia for themes, visual imagery and game mechanics but adding novelty and something transformatve to their respective games to create a whole new fun, nostalgic experience.

[@Aperson-62]

This is a great example actually. While Undertale is chock full of classic references to old RPGs and is inspired by Earthbound, would it be completely obvious unless you were told that? The battle system is so fundamentally different from any of it's inspirations and it's own original material and characters are so well done that ultimately it is more popular than any of the games that actually inspired it.