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Videogame Nostalgia Isn't What It Used To be
Thanks to GameSpy for its 'Pixel' column discussing the dangers in letting videogame nostalgia run unchecked, as the author explains: "Number one: Just because it's old, doesn't mean it's particularly good. And number two, loosely based on Sturgeon's Law: 90% of all video games ever made are either mediocre or crap." He gives an example: "Case in point: A little PlayStation game called Gunners Heaven. It was a very early Japanese release by Sony... [and] the American import magazines covered it a bit and described it as a Gunstar Heroes clone", but the game, once acquired, "was thoroughly mediocre", showing "the dangers of unchecked nostalgic anticipation."
My take: I'm all in favor of classic game remakes, it's just that many tend to go wrong. Whether it's pricing (Capcom releasing half decade old RE games on the GC at full price), or poor quality porting (Sega's DC Smash Packs), the majority of them seem to go wrong. Some even manage to be overambitios, such as the GBC port of that SNES DKC game, putting games on hardware they're too advanced for, despite their age. However, for every one of those there is a Zelda Bonus Disk (I speak of the promotional GC one) that does our nostalgia right.
I agree with the essential thrust of the argument, although not with the author's means of making his case (there are better arguments to bring up than some obscure Japanese remake).
A lot of gamers just don't really how good we have things today. As far as gaming goes, the "absolute stinker" is all but obsolete. Sure, you get some complete duds from Valusoft and the like (cf. the somethingawful reviews), but when you buy a game today, you are pretty much assured of decent production values, a reasonable length game, decent graphics and a certain degree of gameplay depth. When we talk about "bad" games these days, we generally have titles like "Enter the Matrix" in mind. Mediocre though these are, they are still, to the dispassionate observer, actually better than any "classic" games of their equivalent genre.
So why does nostalgia still sell games and influence opinions? First of all, I think there's the gradual diminution of the "wow" factor. A lot of people who rave about classic games do so on the basis of happy memories of playing that game during childhood. Back then, games were pretty much a new thing and the "wow" factor could be achieved by a game having more than 8 sprites on screen at the same time, or actually managing to scroll smoothly. The "wow" factor basically seemed to die in the mid-late 90s. Doom was mind-blowing... it drove forward graphics and gameplay far beyond anything we'd seen previously (including in Wolf3d). Quake felt like a bit of a step back in terms of gameplay to most of the non-hardcore crowd, but the engine was fairly jaw-dropping. Quake 2 and the first generation of 3d accelerators were impressive, but already, the impact just wasn't the same. The next "milestone" was Quake 3... well... it did have curves. I think a lot of people go back to try classic games in the mistaken belief that they'll be able to recapture the sense of exhileration they used to get when a game really impressed them. Problem is, it just isn't there any more. Our standards have gone to high.
The second and more depressing reason behind ostentatious nostalgia for classic games is one-upmanship. You see this a lot on slashdot. There's a school of though which goes that if you played a game long before it was "big", you are inherantly superior and have some kind of divine right to look down on those who have only played the sequels. Refuse to play anything more recent than Doom? That clearly makes you superior to people who play the Quake series, but inferior to those who refuse to play anything with colour graphics. I often wonder how many gamers got into the Final Fantasy series with VII or X, and then went back and forced themselves to play through IV or VI, so they could join in when their friends started moaning about how it all went downhill from VII onwards, even though they don't actually agree (not that they would admit this).
Classic games *are* important and need to be preserved. Like the old silent movies, they represent the birth of a new medium. However, it's not as if I'd even consider watching a silent movie every day.