Looking Back For Comfort Forward
In the later month of June of 2020, a time when the Coronavirus was expected to fade away but continued, the U.S.A. did its best to return to a normal standard of life. At the same time, a Reddit user, Michael Jones, created a post fondly speaking of a gift he and his brother had given to their father for Father’s Day. It was a video game, Mortal Kombat 11 to be more exact, a brutal but complicated fighting game, their father had begun playing it and instead of buying a guidebook for all of the move sets and information on all characters, he decided to write them down all by hand. Jones took a short video showing page after page filled on both sides of arrows, squares, triangles and circles with side-notes and scribbles all around that their father had inscribed with the command inputs to make several characters do what they do best. But it wasn’t just a fact of a father going to these lengths just because he was introduced into this video game and didn’t know a better way, but because he had done this a long time ago.
“My father sometimes watches us play Tekken and other fighting games and mentioned how he played Mortal Kombat a few times here and there, so me and my brother decided to surprise him and see if he’d like how it is nowadays,” Jones said.
“When we got it for him, he told us how he and his buddies would take turns fighting each other in Mortal Kombat 2 arcade style in a laundromat back in the day and how he loves this game because it reminds him of it.”
Jones mentioned as well of how the game makes his father happy also because most of his friends from that time he doesn’t hear from anymore and some have died, so it brings back good times.
This would be named best as nostalgia. Nostalgia is described as something that brings back memories of a time of happiness, of things that can never occur in the same way again, In a way that is what makes those times so special to each of us personally. Of course, the influence of nostalgia in video games hasn’t gone unnoticed, with the average gamer currently by 75% being 35 years old and older. Demand for earlier model video games to become available and remastered on current and future consoles has become more of a desire over the years and is expected to continue rising. Many have looked forward to their childhood games becoming revamped with today’s technology and holding the disk, or cartridge in their hands, brand new, just like they did when they were children. This also is supported by the fact that according to Nielsen Holdings, a data collecting company, two thirds of console gamers prefer a physical game format to digital when playing.
However, here and now with the dangers of the Coronavirus, many expectations have been put on hold. Specifically regarding the video game industry, the Coronavirus has forced many production companies to shut down and work at heavily reduced numbers. Slowing down the creation of all game consoles and many expected games scheduled to become available this year. Martha Cabral, a writer currently working in the gaming industry shared notable examples of these delays.
“We’ve seen games getting delayed since the first quarter of the year because of these new working conditions. Most notably, I would point out the delay of “Halo Infinite” which was supposed to release as a flagship game for the Xbox Series X this holiday season,” Cabral explained. “It has since been delayed to 2021, and the developer has cited the ongoing pandemic as a reason for the delay.”
Visiting stores that specifically sell video games such as Gamestop, the issue continues past just new video games as new model controllers and accessories for game consoles have been coming in stock at a snail’s pace because of extra restrictions of overseas transportation out of precaution. Along with a notice of another delay of a remaster for one of Japan’s most popular game on Nintedo, Fire Emblem: Awakening, which had been pushed back to early 2021.
Along with the job losses of many individuals and the restrictions with staying home, there is not much new to look forward to for some time. But Covid-19, for all its devastating effects, has pushed opportunities for individuals all around the world to conduct activities they have put off for many years. And some have used this opportunity to play older games they have not played since they were children. Searching through social media and group chats, many others just like Jones’s father are taking time to look back at times past, like Aman Kanugo.
“Yeah Covid hit some games I had my eye on, so while I’ve been waiting I’ve been going back to old games I loved as a kid like Mario Kart on the old 64 and Spiderman on Gamecube through an emulator on my PC.” Kanugo said, while elaborating into what made these games important as well.
“I also miss the simpler days when developers put more time and effort into each of their games and everything wasn’t digital for money and in segments. Those made those type of things made gaming real special to me back in the day.” Another was Ronin Taylor.
“Covid didn’t have much to do with it, but I have been going back my old games just for some memories. Like the first Halo, Battlefront 1 and 2, things like that.” When asked what made these important to him?
“I mean it’s my childhood, I didn’t have an Xbox when I was younger, so I would play at a friend’s house and It brings back a lot of good memories now that I’ve got my own system.
There are even businesses that make their living off the influences of nostalgia and one is here in downtown Atlanta that has been around since 2012. This place of business is called Joystick, which is known specifically for its drinks and its old style arcade games, some of them over 40 years old. The founders, Johnny Martinez and Brandon Ley, added extremely enlightening insight on just how much those old times mean to many.
“We have hosted a plethora of people from all over the world who’ve come to this locating specifically for our antique arcade games. I have to say games really do cut across all demographics,” Said Ley. “We have had Aryan children, people 80 years old, gay and lesbian, even parents who just wanted to show their children what they used to play 20 or 30 years ago.”
“We even let the homeless in from time to time if they’ve got a quarter and just want to remember a better time in their lives,” Martinez added. “It’s kinda sad, but at the very least, we can give them an opportunity to get away from their troubles for a bit.”
Nostalgia is a powerful emotion that can help us past these troubling times. According to Barrett Grim,
“With respect to subjective well-being, nostalgia has been found to counter aversive states such as negative affect and boredom.” Grim continued, “Participants in a negative mood condition were more nostalgic than participants in either a positive or neutral mood condition, these findings are consistent with the idea that nostalgia can serve to counteract negative mood (Barrett et al., 2010).”
In other words, there is no better time to be nostalgic than when you are affected emotionally in a negative way. With video games being more popular than ever with the number of people playing video games rising from 1.84 billion in 2014, to over 2.5 billion in 2020 and an expected additional 200 million people by the end of 2021. Alongside making even more money than Hollywood movies with the global box office revenue in 2018 amounting to $41.7 billion, while the gaming industry brought in over $120 billion. With the current pandemic, now could not be a better time to use older video games to reach out to an extremely large number of people around the world and bring positivity to their emotional state. Older video games also have the slight benefit of already having a large portion of the work done already for remaking them.
So, if you want to more childhood games remastered and improved upon, then please, make your voice heard for the gaming industry to hear. Even if it will take some time or even if the possibility of your favorite game being remade is low, never forget that you will always have the original copy of your childhood happiness right in a plastic cover case. Whether you are brutally ripping someone’s head off in Mortal Kombat, doing a spine buster in Tekken or simply flying around in pixelated space in Crash Bandicoot. Dust off an old game and take a trip down memory lane for a happier and healthier emotional state of mind.
