Utter Nostalgia Trips? Experiences welcome...

[Luvly KM]

Ok so i have never cried at a game before like i have with cinema and you know, switching on Jet Set Radio HD i just wasn't prepared for the nostalgia trip!!


I knew the music was memorable, i remembered how characteristic the graphics were but Its just all about the tiny little things that you could never wilfully recall... the sound of the skates, the incessant dancing, the load screen, the colour, the animation, the Dj telling you to go brush your teeth and of course that music: It all rose up to a compendium of nostalgic awesomeness to which i actually felt like crying with happiness.

It took me back as if i was holding a dreamcast controller in my hand and my room, the same room i had my dreamcast within, regressed back to how it was. the TV may as well have been one of those old portable ones. I felt like i could press the 'open' button and slip in Shenmue, or perhaps Crazy Taxi or Virtua Tennis. It took me back to a place in my living memory where times were more simple, naive and in a way more true. Even now i can barely mouth the correct words to describe it and in fact doing so merely diminishes the purity of the experience.


I didn't actually cry, but it is the nearest i ever have from playing a game. And that is not to diminish games, it is perhaps questioning whether emotion in games is in the playing, this is true of course, but is true gaming catharsis to be found in actually re-playing our older memories?




Your experiences are welcome. What games have made you cry?

[Spokane]

Sorry to burst your bubble but we just had a topic like this and its not old.

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=45084

[Luvly KM]

damn. i haven't been here in a while. But anyway, mine is more emotional and is asking a more artful question :>

[St. Elmo's Fire]

JSRF holds some great memories for me too, so if I download it from XBLA, or can find the first-gen Xbox disc that ahd JSRF on it, I'll probably feel the same.

FF7 last time I played it took me back to a good era. I still get the feel good vibes just from listening to some of the tunes from that game on Youtube.

Burnout 2, used to only play that when my mate came round and we played multiplayer. I gave him my old Xbox, so still only play it when we're hanging. As well as still being a superb multiplayer experience, it also is guaranteed to work. Probably heightened 'cos it's one of my best mates too, and we don't see each other that much anymore...

[OL]

In recent years, it's become more and more difficult for me to become properly overwhelmed by the emotions that nostalgia used to evoke, since the games that always used to have that effect on me are ones that I constantly seem to come across, see visuals from, and hear music from, thanks to the over-saturation of information that is the internet. I still look at them and fondly think back on my memories of them, of course, but it's usually not the teary-eyed shock to the system that it always used to be (and that I love feeling so much).

I'm actually (very happily) experiencing one of those shocks right now, though, with the Zone of the Enders series.
I've always loved it. It's always been a favorite. But I always seem to leave it behind at some point and not think about it for a long time. I don't really know why that is. It's not a reflection of the quality of the series, or the intensity of my love for it (both are unbelievably high). It's almost like I subconsciously ignore it for a long time, so that when I finally do feel the inspiration to return to it, I can be swept up in how good the whole thing feels all over again.
The HD release coming out at the end of the month has got me bouncing off the walls with excitement. I've ordered the anime complete collection (haven't seen it all the way through yet), I'm messing around in the games a bit here and there (trying not to play too far... I want to be blown away all over again with the HD ones), and I'm even, at this very moment, sifting through cutscenes from both games, trying to find a sound clip of ADA saying something like "Incoming transmition" (I feel like she says that somewhere...) in that iconic, robotic tone of hers, so that I can convert it to an MP3 and use it as the text ringtone on my phone.
Just going a bit nuts for it right now. And I know it probably comes off as all kinds of ridiculous to some people, being so impassioned over a videogame, but videogames have truly been the source of some of my favorite memories over the course of my life, and ZOE is no slouch in that regard.