Double-Edged Nostalgia

It's easy to get a rose-tinted view of the past.  One of the saddest things I have read so far this year is a Reddit user post that states  "it's depressing when you play one of your old favorite games and realize that you haven't missed the game, but rather how you felt back then."  You'd think with all the hardships that are happening in the world right now I would have gone with something else, but it hit me hard.  It hit like the ending of the "Great Gatsby" or that scene in "Amelie" wherein she returns the tin box of childhood keepsakes.  It felt very personal, and yet it's an emotional reaction that many people know all too well.

Reaching back to the furthest recess of my memory, I can still recall some of my earliest experiences with video games.  I grew up in the golden age of arcades so it's tempting to say that I was there from the beginning.  However, the truth is arcades have been around in one form or another all the way back to the 1800s.  Originally the machines were purely mechanical, but eventually gave way to electromechanical designs.  Oddities of that bygone era include Mutoscopes, Baffle Ball, and fortune telling machines.  Some featured elaborate dioramas.  In general though, the vibe was similar to that of a carnival (seedy atmosphere and all).  A few of these electromechanical games are around to this day such as Skee-Ball, air hockey, whack-a-mole, and pinball.  I actually got to see all these machines growing up, but the purely electronic arcade games were where the future was headed.  They were fairly ubiquitous even outside arcades, and could be found tucked into the corners of bars, laundromats, restaurants, college campuses and even supermarkets.  The games were, what are now considered classics (Asteroids, Centipede, Galaga, Pac-Man, etc.)  For me, the big draw of video games wasn't the flashing lights or bombastic sound effects but simply the fact that players could influence what was happening on-screen.  Unlike film, television, novels (excluding choose-your-own-adventure stories), or stage theater - video games have an interactive component that sets them apart from other forms of media in a big way.

Of course, there is an equally bad flipside to video game nostalgia; newer is better.  It's hard to argue with older games being inferior to some degree simply because they were designed to run on what is now outdated hardware...not to mention that a lot of really old games were sadistically hard...and not in a fun challenge (i.e. Dark Souls) kind of way.  Strange as it might sound, there are some games that straddle those two opposing views surprisingly well.  The point-and-click adventure genre is one example, but there's another I have been getting back into after a very long hiatus.

The first-person dungeon crawler has been around since Wizardry released back in 1981.  My first delve into the subgenre though wasn't until Tales of the Unknown: The Bard's Tale in 1985.  The last time I played one of these games in earnest was fittingly enough Bard's Tale 3: Thief of Fate which released in 1988.  So after three-and-a-half decades I'm playing Labyrinth of Zangetsu and not all that much has changed from a gameplay standpoint.  Granted, there have been some much needed improvements - automapping being the big standout.  Overall though, I see little reason why a fan of the earliest dungeon crawlers wouldn't also like Legend of Grimrock or Undernauts: Labyrinth of Yomi.

When it comes to evolutions in game design, I feel like it tends to be one step back for every three steps forward.  A lot is gained, but something is also lost along the way.  Thankfully, there are retro throwbacks and even the originals (preserved by emulation software) for us to go back to should we wish to be reminded of where we came from and where we are going.