Aging With Games: the Past Meets the Present

[2000cc]

My parents were away a lot when I was a child, they were always away on holiday & I was left at home with the hired help who weren't overly interested in hanging out with me, plus I have no siblings, so I spent a decent amount of time playing games in my youth even though I only played a few games a year (probably 4 or 5, I am the type of gamer the game companies probably hate, I only buy a few games a year and do everything in them and play them to death). I play rpg's almost exclusively (I only liked games I could really sink my teeth into), Lets just say till I was 16 I was bit of a shut in. My Dad loved electronics so we always had gaming machines around 

I agree with you fully, I started playing final fantasy at FF6, I played ultima and I even had an old amiga 500 with games like golden axe and the atari 2600 with things like Wizard of Wor (a game older than me). I am an obsessive FF fan and I will be the first to admit it, Every time a new numbered FF comes out I play through all the numbered ones in order before release of that game (probably gives an idea of how repressive my life once was and, I can still do it today (even though its more difficult to find the time now, even though the games are shorter because I know them so well) because I am gainfully unemployed). I do this exactly becase of what you mention, I find mainly that the old ones are still good but my top 5 in order, with using this system are 12,13,8,6 and 10, I don't expect anyone to agree with me and I am not looking for that but note that 3 of the top 5 are new FF's simply because, when constantly compared you lose the proverbial 'rose tinted goggles' effect of nostalgia on your older games and in my opinion, more accurately compare them to what is out there today, once again this is just my opinion, I'm not saying the order I have them in is 'right' I simply think that for my personal perspective (for me personally) it is the most accurate it could possibly be

Going back and playing games I adored at the time of their release like Baldurs gate 2, Planescape, Arcanum reveals them to be nowhere near as good as I first thought and games like diablo are positively awful (once again personal opinion here).  To cut a long story short I agree that nostalgia can make a game seem artificially good, starngely the games I find most resilient to the effects of this are the oldest, almost text graphics ones. Wizard of Wor is still intense 2 player and Nethack (an extremely early D&D styled diablo) is so interesting by degree of its complexity and difficulty that it makes Demon's Souls a cake walk by comparison (This and the original impossible mission are the only games I have never finished). But By and large I think you will find a lot of your older games are not quite as good as you thought they were if you replay them, at least from personal experience thats what I find, things are evolving slowly over time imo