How Disney tricked us all with fake nostalgia at E3. (Photo by Holly Frey, copyright 2012 HowStuffWorks.com)

WE’RE GONNA WRECK IT! “Wreck-It Ralph” got us really excited about old video games. Including old video games that never existed, like “Fix-It Felix.” Kudos to you on that, Disney, for making a game we miss playing that we never missed before, because it wasn’t a real thing back then.

Here’s what came up when we talked about video game nostalgia:

• “Fix-It Felix Jr.” and its Blair Witchiness
• Pac-Man
• Arcades, Putt-Putt game rooms, and other places to play video games in our youth
• Nintendo, Magnavox Odyssey, Pong, Atari, and other classic game systems
• Holly’s love for video game booklets
• My old loves: classic Atari games, old Sierra games, “Baldur’s Gate” (and the amazing transition from many-CD installs on a computer to WiFi to a tablet)
• Arcade bars and hipsters
• Chiptune music (and my favorite: Tom Milsom’s “All My Little Words” cover)
• VGO – Video Game Orchestra
• Text-based RPGs and the live-action Parsely Games versions
• The 20-year nostalgia cycle
• The “Golden Age” of video games: from the late ‘70s to the early ‘80s
• “Grim Fandango” and “Okami”
• Nostalgia for games we didn’t actually play as kids, like the Zelda franchise
• “Burn Cycle”
• “XCOM”
• Obsolescence and the complete loss of old video games
• “Playing the Past: History and Nostalgia in Video Games”
• “Fruit Ninja”
• Games made for motion control vs. classic games adapted to use motion control
• Wii U
• Watching final boss fights and closing cinematics on YouTube
• Theories of fun, nostalgia and board games
• “L.A. Noire” and “Red Dead Redemption” as games that appeal to nostalgia for places or genres
• Reenactments and romanticized history
• The 1940s House
• Nostalgia for things that were really difficult, like living through the Blitz or the Great Depression
• Shigeru Miyamoto
• The Videogame History  Museum and the classic arcade game room at PAX East
• Emulators and iPad ports of classic games
• MC Frontalot’s “Jacquelyn Hyde”
• “Updated” version of classic games
• A graphic update of “Oregon Trail”
• Listener mail! From Alison! She writes about Lego Friends in response to our Lego episode.

My research:

• Davis, Fred. “Nostalgia, Identity and the Current Nostalgia Wave.”  Journal of Popular Culture. Volume 11, Number 2. Fall 1977.
• PBS: Video Game Revolution: History
• Retro Wreck-It Ralph Trailer Delivers Vintage Videogame Nostalgia
• Video Game Features: Nostalgia Reigns
• Whalen, Zach and Laurie N. Taylor. “Playing the Past: History and Nostalgia in Video Games.” Vanderbilt University Press. 2008.

Holly’s research:

• How Video Game History Shows Us Why
• Video Game Nostalgia Is So Important Now
• The Video Game Revolution
• The Past as the Future? Nostalgia and Retrogaming in Digital Culture
• Video game failures: Nostalgia reigns
• Video Game History Museum
• Visualized: the Videogame History Museum’s touring exhibit
• Video Games: Resistance Is Futile
• The 20-Year Nostalgia Cycle—or Is It 40 Years? 15?

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