chapotraphouse

I feel like mobile games have only gotten worse as well. Like I saw my nephew playing some last year and there's just stuff happening, he doesn't even react to the stuff half the time and the game keeps going? It felt like when video games get portrayed in tv in the 90s and early 00s where the games are just completely incoherent, and the reactions of the characters don't seem to align at all.

Don't know if that'll happen 'cause I played flash games as a kid and despite some very small curiosity I have about some of them I'm not nostalgic for them at all and wish I spent my time as a kid playing any other game.

this take was reviewed by the Committee of Gaming and your sentence has been determined

The games people get nostalgic about and remember are determined by a mix of actual quality, how many people played them new, current availability, and whether they're tied to any ongoing franchises.

Everybody remembers the old Mario games because they were actually good, they were the most produced NES carts, Nintendo keeps re-releasing them, and Nintendo keeps making more Mario games which openly advertise 8-bit Mario. A lot fewer people remember The Guardian Legend (which owned btw) because it had a smaller distribution and has no franchise or rereleases and its parent company spends all its time barely managing to market Puyo. Nobody remembers the Adventure Island series, even though there were five thousand of them, because they were just kind of bad. If you go to my personal nostalgia mines of late 90s mac shareware, nobody remembers any of this, because approximately nobody played these, none of the companies stuck around, and it's a pain in the ass to set up the emulators (Bumbler Bee-Luxe is great, Escape Velocity Nova is great and also available outside a horrible mac emulator).

So for old mobile game nostalgia, I think it's going to run into a wall. There's a trillion of them and everybody played different ones, so there's no critical mass for the Tiny Wings nostalgia fandom. They were made by tiny companies, or just one random developer, who eventually abandon them (either because they move on, or because they don't want to have the old version compete against more predatory sequels). And the app stores constantly change standards and require apps to be updated, so the apps eventually stop being listed in the store.

Slay the Spire is a mobile game

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is a mobile game

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is a mobile game

Hyper Light Drifter is a mobile game

I mean yeah I know what you mean when you refer to "mobile" games but another way to look at it is that the gender gap in gaming basically disappears if you include mobile gaming, so the view that mobile games are not real games is arguably springing from male chauvinism.

I don't buy it. I grew up in the 8 and 16 bit era and I only have a small collection of about 5000 retro roms... oh...

It's already happening. Young gen Z is already having nostalgia for angry birds, geometry dash, subway surfers/temple run/minion rush, jetpack joyride, fruit ninja, smash hit, etc. These are all games I played over a decade ago when I got my first smartphone in high school.

Eh, I'm an old fart and I certainly don't get nostalgic for everything from my youth. There weren't any mobile games, but there sure were a lot of plastic "collectables". They'll probably find something to be nostalgic for, but don't underestimate the amount of "How the fuck was this blatant cash grab legal?" that they will feel about their old classics.

You have become the very boomer you once despised

I’m already nostalgic for angry birds :(. That said, the vast majority are terrible and ads cause me physical pain at this point.

I genuinely don't think this will happen. I know it's easy to bash whatever the new, current thing that wasn't the thing in my day, but are Gen Alpha actually passionate and emotionally invested in their mobile games?

Without a pulling story, a world that captures your imagination, that ensnares your mind and makes you think of all the possibilities in that world and/or at least meaningful social aspects, I don't think people have much to really remember or get nostalgic for. Maybe I'm very ignorant of mobile games, but I think an extremely small percentage of these really manage that, at least a far smaller percentage than other games. (And if mobile games like that really do exist, let me know, because I'm still waiting to personally experience a single one)

I've seen a few guys feeling nostalgia for a mobile porn game

Gacha Trash, the Movie, with a nostalgic soundtrack by the Costco Guys

what do you mean 10 years i'm already nostalgic for infinity blade