Aemanyl on 20/2/2020 at 20:18
This is a question to older TTLG members. As someone who was born in 1995, I can barely remember these years, but I find them very nostalgic for a variety of reasons. There were no social media, the Internet connection was not as widespread as it is today and downloading anything was an arduous task. Communication online was definitely more text-based. In real life, everything seemed to be simpler, slower, and less complicated. Do you feel nostalgic for the late 90s/early 2000s? If you could bring back a few things or trends from these years, what would you choose?
Starker on 20/2/2020 at 21:48
Yes, because many of my favourite games were made at that time. Just picking things off a list... Thief, SS2, Deus Ex, Arx Fatalis, Morrowind, Silent Hill 1-2, Max Payne 1-2, KotOR, Planescape: Torment, Fallout 1-2, Baldur's Gate 1-2, Icewind Dale 1-2, Microprose's Magic the Gathering, Alpha Centauri, Caesar 3, Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic, Age of Empires 1-2, Warcraft 3, GTA 1-2, Beyond Good and Evil, Grim Fandango, Curse of the Monkey Island, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Blade Runner, Theme Hospital, Tomb Raider 2, Jedi Knight series, Half-Life, MDK 1-2, Hitman 1-2, Blood, Oddworld games.
That said, I feel an even stronger nostalgia for the late 80s / early 90s, as this was around the time when I seriously got into gaming. I really needed the escapism as the world was collapsing around me, and the games at that time had a much greater impact on me -- no matter how impressed I was with Grim Fandango, it never completely blew me away like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis or Hero's Quest did.
I would not want those days back, however. The internet sucked and a lot of things, from clothing to internet sites was so uniquely 90s wacky.
Renzatic on 20/2/2020 at 21:59
I'm gonna feel old saying this, but the only thing I'm really nostalgic for back then were video stores. Right now, I have practically any movie or TV show I care to watch at my immediate disposal, but there was something special about riding my bike down the street to grab a couple three movies to watch over the weekend. It made watching movies feel like a treat, something to really enjoy.
Now? I have tens of thousands of movies and TV shows to choose from right from the comfort of my couch. The glut and ease of access of it all has lessened the magic of it somewhat.
Renzatic on 20/2/2020 at 22:22
Oh, and I miss the days when practically no one had a cell phone. The idea that anyone could reach you any time, anywhere seemed the absolute height of cool back in the day, but shit got real old real quick once that idea became reality.
Tomi on 20/2/2020 at 23:22
Quote Posted by Renzatic
Right now, I have practically any movie or TV show I care to watch at my immediate disposal, but there was something special about riding my bike down the street to grab a couple three movies to watch over the weekend. It made watching movies feel like a treat, something to really enjoy.
The same applies to games and music too. It kind of lessens the value of music that you can stream just about any song that you can think of in seconds. Not to mention that most of my favourite music is from the 1990's and early 2000's, for me that was a great era.
Gaming on the other hand is better than it has ever been, even though I too have some nostalgic favourites from the past decades. Jet Set Willy, Sensible Soccer, Nethack, Ultima VII & Underworld, Civilization 2, X-Com, Doom, Thief, Wing Commander, Syndicate... Just to name a few! All amazing games in their time, but I'd still say that games are better in just about every way nowadays. Perhaps with the huge game libraries that many of us have and the lack of physical product has just made us feel less attached to our games? I do love the nostalgic feeling that some of these old favourites still give me though... the (
https://youtu.be/AHXKrBjEqh8?t=188) opening scene of Ultima VII for example - goosebumps and a little tear of nostalgia
every single time.
But yeah, I do feel nostalgic for that time period, but I suppose that we all feel nostalgic for the times when we were young. I'm not saying that everything was better then, because it really wasn't, but... some things were. :)
Nostalgia is a funny thing.
catbarf on 21/2/2020 at 00:47
Quote Posted by Tomi
The same applies to games and music too. It kind of lessens the value of music that you can stream just about any song that you can think of in seconds. Not to mention that most of my favourite music is from the 1990's and early 2000's, for me that was a great era.
This is very much YMMV, but I love how online music services give me access to contemporary music from around the world and can't imagine going back. There are some niche genres that I listen to nowadays that I never would have been exposed to if it weren't for Spotify.
I'd say I have some nostalgia for the start of music streaming in the early to mid 2000s. I fondly remember listening to Pandora around '06, and being amazed at how it could recommend all these bands I'd never heard of but fit my taste. It was a wild west as far as licensing, before the lawsuits inevitably transformed it into the commercialized system that it is now.
heywood on 21/2/2020 at 03:36
I have nostalgia for the days of the early internet, which spans the whole 1990s; email, listserv, usenet, gopher, MUDs, NCSA Mosaic, personal home pages, IRC, pic sharing, gaming news sites with daily updates, .plan files, etc. And I feel nostalgic when I think of Linux back in the late 1990s. It was still small enough that I could compile my own distro on top of a minimum Slackware base, and all configuring and customizing was done through text config files, and we all read Slashdot. And I definitely feel nostalgic about the early days of first person 3D gaming, especially Doom, System Shock, Quake, Unreal, Half-Life, SiN, Thief, SS2, Deus Ex and all their mods. Also multiplayer, I could get a group of friends together for a LAN party and I've never had more gaming fun than that. Back then, every year was a big step in gaming, a new favorite game, and a hardware upgrade.
There was definitely some good music in the late 1990s. That period was also good for me career-wise, when talent scarcity allowed me to jump careers, out of the Air Force and directly into software engineering. And it was the height of my social life, post-college.
But was it simpler, slower, and less complicated? Only if you're talking about cars. If you're talking about life, no, it was the opposite. Things were developing so fast at the end of the 1990s that some people might have been feeling a bit of Future Shock. And routine things consumed more of our free time back then because they couldn't be done online.
Also, for me, the goodness of the 1990s really culminated on New Years Eve 2000. It was downhill from there.
Sulphur on 21/2/2020 at 06:16
Nope. And the less threads that remind of M.C. Hammer and Kriss Kross, the better.
demagogue on 21/2/2020 at 12:20
I liked that period from 1988 to maybe 1992, end of the cold war, this new era in music and culture that the Pixies first started to hint at, but before grunge/alt-rock went too mainstream and soured, video gaming was just on the cusp of its golden age, it was the pinnacle of the call-in billboard scene (protointernet) ... music and culture seemed more serious and more ambitious and it seemed like anything was possible in this new world. I'm always most captured by these moments in history that are just on the cusp of the revolution or golden age, when people just start to see it coming and start to dream big and anything seems possible for a brief exhilirating moment.
Dia on 21/2/2020 at 13:09
Yes, I definitely feel nostalgic for the late 90s and early 2000s. Back then my husband was still alive and my kids were still young and living at home. I'd just discovered I was a gamer (Tomb Raider and Thief) and the whole family loved playing Donkey Kong on my son's old Nintendo on cold winter nights. Life was simpler then, or so it seemed. Granted, even though now I'm widowed and my kids are grown, I find myself with a whole passel of grandkids and some of them are even gamers! But I'll always feel a certain nostalgia for those days; good times and warm memories.