You will not have to spend long in a debate about most series that were firmly established by 1996 before you realise the strength of the nostalgia for the mid-90s era of gaming. The best example is probably Final Fantasy VII because of its subsequent remakes, while The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is another notable example. Still, a lot of games get looked back on as almost impenetrably good like nothing will ever beat it.
Because nothing will; nothing. Gaming will forever look back on that era and cry. You’ll cry, I’ll cry; it’ll all be very emotional. Gaming is ruined, folks, and you’re bound to be a bit sarcastic if you’ve spent time on any of those forums, which also peaked in the 90s. Still, there’s a lot of logic as to why these games get revered in the way they do, even if gaming has got to a point where we can all move on.
Maybe not Dr Kawashima, but still a brain game
From a mental perspective, it’s fascinating but also explains a lot behind this nostalgia.
That era of gaming required you to suspend your disbelief by having what was on screen be aided by your imagination, turning something not very big into the largest most vibrant world. Let’s be honest here, somewhere like Midgar or Hyrule are not that big or impressive in hindsight. It is your imagination filling them out to be these vast expanses as you were playing.
It’s part of what makes these games so well-remembered in retrospect because no one else could produce something more suited to the player than a location aided by the player’s brain. Add a good for-the-time location, typically a pre-rendered background, and then the player’s mind does the rest. It’s accidentally genius, to provide a template and let the player’s imagination run wild designing their dream game location.
The problem that gaming soon encountered after leaving this era in the early 2000s, was that people’s imagination started losing the war. Graphics improved and developers had more control, there was less for your brain to do outside of making cities seem far more vast, but even then the template so to speak was far more restrictive. Towns, dungeons and areas between them had so much more detail. Developers could share more of their vision, without needing the player to fill in so much of the rest.
Now, take the difference between Final Fantasy VII and X. The former has simple texture colours for much of the open world and the actual detail is not great, while dungeons and towns are mostly 2D pre-rendered backgrounds. The latter however no longer had a typical world map as the game could provide that much more detail in numerous paths between places. Another change was that 2D backgrounds as complete towns became very scarce.
The problem is that this was a transition that gaming didn’t have the technology to fully complete.
The worst offender is…
RPGs are pretty much a case study of this issue with nostalgia, so let’s jump in solely on them. They often had a world map that saw cities represented with small tiles which, when you walked into them, transitioned to much bigger areas. So the player icon would typically be close to the size of a town on the world map, but then after walking into it would be the size of just another person inside the town.
Yet with the advent of the PlayStation 2, gaming realised it could provide much more detail to towns, smaller areas and character models. The downside to this was that the character models and the towns would look very jarring if put into an icon on a world map approach. However, gaming was still a long way off having the ability to have larger areas to replicate the vastness of these maps. Certain graphical styles worked with it, sure, but competing for crisp ‘realistic’ graphics made things difficult for a long time.
I think it’s telling that Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth couldn’t be on the PlayStation 4, and instead had to be on the PS5, some three generations after the problem first came about. This replicated the feeling our imaginations provided but with a fully fleshed-out world with nothing left to the imagination but with the same sense of scale. That game captured everything our imaginations did in the ‘overworld’ sections, which then got criticised for having too much to do. You can’t win ’em all.
Styles avert trials
Some games managed great worlds in the meantime, but these typically used a much more cartoonish/anime style where the ‘town as an icon’ approach still worked. These had some stunning locales across this PS3/4 era though, Tales Of Berseria’s Taliesin or the whole presentation of Ni No Kuni are easy personal standouts. As the PS4 era came about these worlds started to be able to take shape. However, this usually came with some sort of caveat, like sections which could only be travelled to via a loading screen but not able to be walked to and from.
The implicit confession here is true though: for a long time, it meant that those nostalgia purists had a point: in a lot of ways those games just were better. They offered a sense of scale that modern games were struggling to address, the mix was just not as clean.
Now though I’d say that even RPGs have caught up; Rebirth proved that. So imagination no longer plays as much of a part, so now games resemble movies as opposed to books in that regard.
Dimension comprehension leads to development apprehension
There’s another aspect as to why these purists are also understandably right as well though. It’s the simple business of game development and this stretches across the industry. Yes even you Mario, it’s also-a-you.
So I’d personally argue that The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time is now a pretty basic Zelda game, yet so often it’s held up as the best in the series. The same could be said for a lot of those mid-90s-era games. That’s kind of the point though, they are basic and that is exactly why they get so beloved.
When it came to these games the core elements of the series were the exciting selling points of them. If the latter games in the series replicated that approach then they’d be unoriginal and feel like the same product repackaged differently so the game series had to innovate.
In the late 90s, though the big innovation was the arrival of 3D graphics, even to franchises which were long-established at this stage the idea of seeing a similar game but in 3D was exciting. This was enough of a huge change and innovation for these franchises. So for those core fans then they’re the most uninterrupted examples because outside of the transition to 3D. The core formula was relatively unchanged outside of updated combat and exploration options as games entered an unfamiliar dimension. The innovations since then though prove divisive because they lurch a series away from its core formula.
I don’t mean to understate the challenge of going into 3D, heck I’m a fan of Castlevania and I’m still not over their fruitless attempts to join the third dimension. The thing is though, even if your formula or gameplay loop doesn’t work in 3D, that wasn’t the aspect that was changing. That ultimately is what players come back for.
The sentimental part…
Let’s not forget another basic point: if you played any of these titles within seven years of their release, you’re probably not far off 30 at the youngest (he writes, sobbing after another nightmare about the looming cake with ‘30’ on the top). The games you played back then will always be beyond special. It’s how I got into RPGs, my 10-year-old self would escape into the PlayStation-era Final Fantasy titles or the Pokemon or Zelda games on the Game Boy Colour and Advance for hours. Those series have never lost that childish sense of escapism so I always come back to them for those hours where I can have that feeling back again. It’s special, beyond mere nostalgia and into the realms of something much more personal… This is now the most sentimental thing I’ve written and that includes my wedding vows (Editor’s note: he’s not married – we’ve spoken to him about this).
Anyway, anyone who spends any time on the internet will encounter these arguments, and while they are tedious and quite admirably pointless, they are rather fun. Fans of gaming should at least acknowledge why these games are in such a weird position in retrospect, and maybe engage more with later titles.
The future is very much now, and it is rather underrated.