Nostalgia is something that we all succumb to at one point or another.We fall into the idea that we miss something from our childhood and can't help but proclaim it's greatness. Then we sit down to enjoy that thing and we realize how poorly it's held up over time. We sit down to enjoy some of the original Mortal Kombat only to realize most of the characters were just pallet swaps with new fatalities. It became "which version of Subzero looks cooler" vs "which Scorpion has the best fatality?" While nostalgia may seem charming it really does make us all look stupid when we abandon logic to make false claims due to nostalgia.It's rare that things hold up well over time. While something may have been great in it's time it could be considered horrible today. Novels may be the only thing that holds up well over time. Even comic books can become heavily dated with poor jokes you no longer understand, outdated concepts and art that was nowhere as good as you remember. Sure it may be fun to look back at these things but if you look at them with eyes that aren't clouded with nostalgia you'll understand that sometimes things just don't hold up well. You can enjoy old films and there truly are some great ones like Casablanca but for the most part, they haven't held up well. The acting is terrible for the most part, the plots are too similar and the ending usually end with murky territory, but the good guy always came out on top.
We rarely admit it, but sometimes the squeal actually is better. We may like to sit and say that "the original Toy Story was the best one." But, in all honesty the next two expanded on the comedy that we loved as well as giving us some emotion besides the jealousy between Buzz and Woody. Sure there are some sequels that are just horrible but for the most part they improve on the series and continue the story. The first Grand Theft Auto isn't as good as Grand Theft Auto 5 and the first Final Fantasy is as good as XXII or any of the other numerous sequels. We sit here and say it's great to go back to the originals but all it does is allow people to cash in on our nostalgia.
We somehow caused a resurgence in the Ninja Turtle brand and do you know what happened? Nickelodeon created a new horrible cartoon version. It's not like the original cartoon was great or even the comic books series. They seriously looked like actual turtles with weapons. It also wasn't kid friendly. They didn't eat pizza they killed people. They frequently cursed while decapitating foot soldiers and Shredder was a mass murderer not a goofy failure. The Ninja Turtles were murderers but our nostalgia never goes that far back. But we still allow people to cash in on it. The most memorable moment from the first Ninja Turtles movie was the Ninja Rap. We can say what we want about the new film we haven't seen but aliens make a lot more sense than radio active turtles that eat pizza and kill people.But it's not just movies that cash in our nostalgia. Video games do it to. The PSN Classics series is doing big numbers. However, we often turn on those games to realize they weren't as great as we remember. Sure some games like Psyconauts held up well over time but for the most part they didn't. Sure there were some great games at the end of the PS2 but most of the early games from that generation and playstation one that crowd the PSN store are horrible games and we don't want to admit it.
For the most part our nostalgia is just happy memories we had with the games, not the actual games. We have memories of playing horrible games like WWE NO Mercy with our friends but that game was horrible. We remember that we had a family trip to the movies we don't remember that the movie was horrible. Nostalgia is fine. But we need to realize it's mostly due to happy memories around the object. The object itself most likely hasn't aged well and isn't as good as we remember. When we realize that we can pay attention to how dumb nostalgia really makes us.
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