![]() Shigeru Miyamoto made The Legend of Zelda, channeling his childhood experience of exploring caves. Satoshi Tajiri created the original Pokemon game, influenced by his experience bug collecting as a kid. Good games have an experience at the root of them, many times a nostalgic root. Keeping this in mind, we ask: how might nostalgia be utilized in future games? It’s hard to say the specifics, but looking at some effective uses of nostalgia in the past, we can imagine how future games may utilize the same properties of nostalgia in the future. While nostalgia for specific eras can function as a trend, as we’ve seen in this series, it can also be used to create a purposeful, unique and meaningful experience for players. We are already beginning to see Dreamcast/PS1 era graphics utilized in indie games for nostalgia factor, and it’s likely that will only increase as we enter the 2020s. In the 80s, the 50s diner aesthetic was nostalgic. But this definition of what constitutes as “nostalgic” will shift. Disney is currently pumping out live action remakes of all their 80s and 90s hits. Stores like Hot Topic stock t-shirts of 90s Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network cartoons. Shows like Stranger Things invoke our nostalgia of E.T., Dungeons & Dragons, and wood-paneled basement interiors. ![]() But what does the future of nostalgia look like?Ĭurrently, nostalgic trends focus on the late 80s and early 90s (nostalgia, like fashion, runs in thirty-year cycles, particularly targeting audiences in their 20s-40s. Games like Undertale, Shovel Knight and Five Nights at Freddy’s are known for utilizing nostalgia to create a powerful gameplay experience. For one person, nostalgic games might reference Atari game properties, while for someone else, 64-bit graphics. ![]() Nostalgia is a relative term, particularly when it comes to video games. In all of these, we’ve taken an analytical lens to what games have done with nostalgia in the past-but what about the future of video game nostalgia? We’ve taken a look at how specific games utilize nostalgia to create an experience, as well as different properties of effectively utilized nostalgia in games. ![]() In this series, we’ve had the opportunity to see how nostalgia has been utilized as both a conscious and unconscious tool in video game design. ![]()
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