Talking Point Is There Such A Thing As "Bad" Nostalgia?

Bad nostalgia can't exist. That's like asking for hot ice cream.

I have deep love for some bad games too, I am sure. None I can name off the top of my head, but surely some games I love are considered bad by most.

Would I play them again now? Probably not, but probably more for lack of time than anything else.

Definitely is bad nostalgia, modern politics does a particularly good job of weaponising it.

Corporations have caught on too realising that a title can be re-sold to those who miss the 'good old days'.

Unfortunately alot of games from this era are terrible by modern standards and are very hard to enjoy again.

The best of these releases are the ones leaning into the history and culture around the games and providing context and unseen materials for those genuinely interested in the history of the hobby.

This release, easy money, nothing more

i agree that anything you can look back fondly on shouldnt immediately be taken as a bad thing, but there are 100% cases where nostalgia bait is used for cheap engagement and brownie points

going back to movies i enjoyed shark tale and chicken little as a kid, even liked the CL gamecube game. but i wont defend it as anything good that shouldve paved our future

It's not my place to judge what games others like or feel nostalgic for. Someone could feel nostalgic for Bubsy 3D or Superman 64, and you know what? Cool, good on them. Glad they managed to make good memories with those games. Who am I to call their nostalgia bad?

It's good that Jedi Power Battles is being re-released, for preservation's sake at the very least. A game being perceived as "bad" shouldn't prevent it from being experienced, so I appreciate when companies are willing to rerelease even the less-liked games rather than just the ones everyone loves.

Given the misplaced hype for a Croc rerelease I'd say yes. That game was bloody awful.

I think nostalgia can be a problem when people nitpick modern games to death while ignoring glaring problems with the versions they feel nostalgia for. Logic goes out the window.

The only bad nostalgia is the false nostalgia for something that never existed. Enjoying something from your youth is harmless, but trying to return things to an idealized past is harmful, either personally or politically.

There’s definitely such a thing as bad nostalgia, but it’s all subjective. For example, the Star Wars prequels were objectively worse than the original trilogy, and I think they’re pretty lousy. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t have emotional heft for people who were kids when those movies came out. They’re just wrong about liking them (kidding)!

"Bad nostalgia" completely misses the entire root of nostalgia itself, which comes from the Greek "nostos" (return home) and "algos" (pain). Nostalgia is always tinged with negative connotations, the yearning for a place and time long gone.

@RadioHedgeFund

It is not a Masterpiece, but far far away from being awful.
I have played many Games on the C64 and Super Nintendo that could be called awful.
I even count the Ninja Turtles on NES as a very awful Game.

@MasterChiefWiggum
There were some Scenes that were bad, but overall the Prequels had many very good outstanding ones, be it the Battle with Darth Maul, the Pod Racers or the Colosseum Battle.

Personally, I feel like there such a thing as "bad nostalgia," but its less in the form of what people enjoy, and more so people just using nostalgia like a buzz word for any old thing ever like its the only reason to check something out. Like I watch Spawn Wave a lot, and no offense to Jon, but my man says nostalgia way too much when talking about a lot remasters & rereleases, like him only really saying a NSO or PS Plus Premium month is good if a game is "nostalgic" from that era, just saying to check out a remaster or something because it's very "nostalgic." I just kinda groan when people say that because I feel like it makes old games sound like they have no value in going back to unless you have nostalgia for something, and that every little old thing needs to be nostalgic. Just kinda tires me hearing it, but that's just me.

@Medic_alert Yeah, the commercialisation of nostalgia has been sucking the fun out of entertainment for well over a decade now.

Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: Yes there is.

Nostalgia is bad when it blinds you to what's wrong with a work of art. You have to accept that there is such a thing as a guilty pleasure.

I have a handful of games that I would count as guilty pleasures, but that hold a sweet spot in my heart because of when I discovered them. Sonic the Fighters is hideously unbalanced and barely works as a multiplayer diversion-- but the animation is snappy, the aesthetic is cute, and it was my gateway drug to Tekken and Virtual-On and all the classic low-poly fighters I love now.

But that's a fairly innocent example. I think nostalgia gets much messier when the work in question has a point of view. I used to love Terry Gilliam's Brazil because of its style, its score, and the way it bounces between tones and entire genres while staying in the same story. Nowadays, my skin kind of crawls watching it, since the plot hinges so heavily on the 'stalking for love' trope. Anyone who doesn't admit what's wrong with that movie is probably engaged in a harmful lifestyle.

And to the point of what the other commenters have been saying: I am extremely sick of corporations weaponizing nostalgia. There is nothing inherently wrong with being a nostalgic audience member, but there is everything wrong with shoving a near-dead Bill Murray into your Ghostbusters sequel while original IPs and... everyone in the film industry, frankly, get shoved aside.

As a 46 year old, this speaks to me.

I don't think there's any such thing as "bad nostalgia" per se. I revel in many of the things I loved in my younger years, and have a fairly robust setup for enjoying retro games (among other retro media).

I do think that nostalgia can become problematic, though, if it prevents you from enjoying and engaging with new experiences entirely. The nostalgia itself still isn't "bad," but anything enjoyed without balance can still have negative consequences.

Do I find comfort in old games, movies, and music? Of course! And I always will. But I'll always seek out new things. After all, one day I'll find myself nostalgic about those too.

I don’t think I totally understand the question? What is bad nostalgia? There is, I think, excessive or harmful nostalgia. There’s also nostalgia that’s cheap or shallow, as in the constant usage of nostalgic references in modern films. Then there’s nostalgia for things that are bad, as the article mentions. What are we talking about here?

I recognize several levels of video game nostalgia in life, including but not limited to:
"Guilty Pleasures", things which are largely considered objectively bad but retain personal satisfaction for one through personal experience - this is the most relevant experience the author is mentioning here.

I have lots of NES games in my collection which are largely overlooked as inferior, or just plain bad, or no one even knows they exist (less guilty pleasure and more a deep cut in those cases): 8 Eyes, Magic Of Scheherazade, Xexyz, Caveman Games, Bayou Billy, Dino-Riki, Kid Niki, all these fall under this for me.
"Rose-colored glasses": this one's easy, and mentioned a number of times in the comments. Something is deeply wrong in one way or another with something you have fond memories of. This one is trickier to define, as one person's example of RCG is another's GP, but for what it's worth, the NES games Amagon or Rescue The Embassy Mission fall on this side, slightly. They used to be guilty pleasures to me, but there's little they do now that hasn't been outclassed dramatically since.
"Crap-colored Glasses": This is a term I've been thinking of whenever a game I saw loved in it's day gets spat on for it's flaws in hindsight, but those flaws are not as egregious, if you look at them more clearly. the NES TMNT and Top Gun, and Simon's Quest are top examples. I LOVED every one of these, but I keep hearing on the internet the "crap" and" not crap" arguments all over the place. For everyone who brings up "The Dam Level" or "Carrier Landings" or "Nonsense clues" there's another reference to "well-represented avs of each turtle" or "tight graphics and the carrier isn't so bad" or "the game doesn't NEED so much grinding if you're a Castlevania vet" arguments, but all of these, in the face of how I felt back then, and how I feel when I revisit them now, are irrelevant to me. These are the games where one must simply not be afraid to form their own opinions, regardless of the internet chatter.

Maybe I'm not understanding well, but I have 2 ideas of "Bad Nostalgia".

1. When I played something I didn't like or outright hated back on its day, played very recently and I still hated it, if not even more than back then.
Something like Sonic Spinball on the SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis falls on this category.

2. When I enjoyed something as a kid and played recently and I realized it probably wasn't as good as I remembered.
Donkey Kong 64 comes to mind, it was one of my favorite games on the N64 back in the day, but when I did my triple playthrough in 2021 (Wii U Virtual Console version on January, American N64 version on June, Japanese N64 version on October), I realized how tedious it can get. Maybe the fact that I also played other Rare collectathons on the same months didn't help matters either: Banjo-Tooie on January, American N64 Banjo-Kazooie on June and Japanese N64 Banjo-Kazooie on October.

Then there are games I didn't quite like as a kid but as an adult I really enjoy. Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures and Yoshi's Story are examples of this.

This is a great article! It really got me thinking.

In my opinion, as to whether or not bad nostalgia can exist, I'd say both "yes" and "no."

If we mean "should we gatekeep old stuff that is bad from being ever released again?" Then no, bad nostalgia is not a thing.

But if we take bad nostalgia to mean "Old people love a property so much that they will tyrannize the makers of said property into forcing us all into a death loop of remaking the property exactly as they remembered and no new ideas are ever allowed" then yes, we can absolutely have bad nostalgia.

(I don't care about Star Wars, but I think in this case it's not bad nostalgia.)

If you mean "Nostalgia, but as a negative emotion rather than a positive one", then yes of course. There are plenty of games/media that I didn't like when they were new and thus will have a loaded opinion of now, even if any remakes end up being great. I have zero interested in this Power Battles game for the same reason you do.

Interesting factoid alert. The word nostalgia was not originally meant as something all fluffy and warm about the past, it was a negative word.

The route nos, is similar to the nox in noxious, basically meaning bad, 'algia' still used in medical terms means pain.

So literally nostalgia is a painful longing for something past.

Well I think it is interesting.

@Medic_alert Also I learned recently that "decadent" has a much bleaker original meaning — that you were so absorbed and lost in the pleasurable thing you were doing, that you would forget to pay attention to your own wellbeing and start to literally "decay"

@Damo Let me just first say, welcome to the "Ol' *****'s 45th Year Extravaganza!"-- You're in good company. Let me just say... I ABSOLUTELY went to sleep on Star Wars Ep2: AotC, no lie... thought it was just me. Second, as a Ghostbusters fan, love the reference 👌

Now as far as bad nostalgia, it's already a subjective beast to begin with. But I do believe bad nostalgia exists in one of two flavors:
1) You have nostalgia for something and remember it fondly, however upon a closer look, you realize it wasn't as fond a memory as you recalled. Example: Having great memories of a game, returning back to play it again after many years, and realizing it that it wasn't all that good despite your good memories about it.

2) You recall something knowingly bad, but despite its badness, you're able to see the silver lining of where it brought you to today. Example: Anything that's so bad, it good, such as seeing the live action Super Mario Bros. movie, knowing it's bad, but it'sa part of you, that time in your life, etc.

@Andee that's cool and gruesome!

I like!

@RadioHedgeFund I remember croc getting panned at its time of release but recently it seems like that’s all been forgotten about I remember it as a pretty lame attempt at a Mario 64 clone but all that has been distorted by numerous retro gaming sites

Every game, good or bad, deserves to be archived and made accessible, either reasonably monetary or public domain.

Does every game deserve nostalgic celebration accompanied by re-releases... doubtful

As bad as Star Wars Episode 1: Jedi Power Battles is, it is still better than....

• Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire
• Star Wars: Demolition
• Star Wars: Masters of Teräs Käsi
• Star Wars: Rebel Assault
• Star Wars: Rebel Assault II

I think our generations get nostalgic way too much but it’s fine in very small doses. Being nostalgic all the time leads to some very bad things. There’s a reason people can connect it with having a fascistic mindset.

it feels like a complex situation.

you can often for example see something from the past which is celebrated dismissed due to "nostalgia goggles" or "rose tinted glasses" or whatnot, though a lot of my favorite classic games were ones i ended up missing out on as a kid either due to not having a snes (had mega drive) or that a lot of rpgs ended up outright missing europe. i even ended up finding some games which werent considered "classics" which i ended up really enjoying.

naturally as well theres also the fact that tastes can change over time though this also can go either way, some games i remember enjoying i ended up enjoying less when returning to them years later, sometimes there were games i ended up enjoying more due to being able to appreciate aspects of them more (such as how movement worked in certain platform games)

there are also some aspects where its not someones memory playing tricks on someone such as certain quirks with some modern ports and remasters, such as the higher res character models clashing with the psone backdrops in modern ports of FFVII-IX or the whole buisness with the silent hill collection a while back, theres also certain subtle visual details in some games which can look off on HD-TVs

while i generally enjoy retro gaming there are naturally still some quirks of back then i dont miss, such as region locking, 50hz, the growing pains of the early 3d era and whatnot.

in the end there's always going to be something that will affect someone's judgement or feelings towards something though the key is often just looking at things from various angles, theres lots of good games out there both new and old and sometimes theres a game which ticks some oddly specific boxes for you which is why im always cool with seeing some lesser known games make a return.

long ramble i apologise.

@Medic_alert something that can be said for some of these old games is that theres often a semblance of a good game there and with a bit of quality of life improvements they can be fun to revisit.

@TransmitHim yes I think that's why nostalgia can often feel bitter sweet.