Despite what you might believe, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time isn’t the greatest game of all time.
People often say games were better when we were younger, but that isn’t the case. Ocarina of Time might be your favorite game of all time, and that’s fine; it’s mine, too. But it isn’t inherently better because it’s older or more original compared to the games of today. You’ve just seen a lot more.
When you’re young, you have less experience — not just in gaming, but in everything. You aren’t as familiar with storyline structure. You haven’t seen a wide range of mechanics. The jump from 2D games to 3D games was huge, but graphics have improved in smaller and smaller increments since then. Your 100th ray-traced scene is a lot less impressive than exploring the castle in Super Mario 64 in three dimensions for the first time.
In short, those games from back in the day that you view as perfect experiences? You’re looking at them through rose-colored glasses.
Bear with me, though. Just because your memory of a game is tinted with nostalgia doesn’t make it any less valid or important. I have a clear, distinct memory of when I was roughly eleven years old. I’m walking down the street with a close friend on a crisp autumn morning. The sun is shining, and we’re brimming with excitement over The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask‘s Goron Racetrack sequence and how much fun it was. It was a single-player game, experienced together.
Watching videos of the course, it doesn’t look anywhere near as good as I remember. The mechanics are clunky, and the N64 controller was better suited to being a home defense tool than a game controller. But to an eleven-year-old who had stayed up all night playing the game with his best friend? That experience is unforgettable and unbeatable.
Ask yourself, is it the games that stand out so much to you, or the memories forged around those games?
Final Fantasy VII is another example. It was the first JRPG I played that had an overworld map I could explore. Unlocking the Highwind and flying around the world absolutely blew my mind, and finding the secrets hidden around the map felt as rewarding as finding real-world treasure. Every day at recess, my friends and I would talk about what we found (and then we started trading notes on Chocobo breeding).
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my first playthrough of Pokémon Blue. No other gaming experience has quite enthralled me like the ten-hour binge I undertook with my first Charmander, pausing only long enough to replace the batteries in my Game Boy. It was a formative experience in my formative years — but there’s no way I can argue that Pokémon Blue is a better game than later Pokémon titles. I wouldn’t have the patience for its slow battle system today.
And therein lies another key reason why older games seem better: Nostalgia tends to filter out the negative. Things annoyed you about your favorite games as a kid; you just don’t remember them as clearly as you remember the positive memories. Social media also loves to talk about nostalgia without acknowledging the downsides. Again, to use Ocarina of Time as an example, I can name two parts of the game you likely despised: the Water Temple and anytime Kaepora Gaebora showed up to chat.
Let’s not even talk about how freakin’ buggy some games could be back then (although, let’s be honest: most Bethesda titles can still give them a run for their money today.)
I don’t write all of this to disparage Ocarina of Time. Like I said before, it’s my favorite game, and the most influential thing I’ve ever played. It made me want to tell stories that left an impact on someone like Link’s adventure did on me. Without that experience, I probably wouldn’t be here writing this article.
A young gamer today might get the same experience from Breath of the Wild that I did from Ocarina of Time, or from Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 that I did from Final Fantasy VII. My feelings on those games are the result of timing and circumstance, not some inherent magical quality that video games have since lost.
Yes, there’s a discussion to be had about a perceived lack of risk in games today versus yesteryear and the factors that surround the industry today, but there have been plenty of games launched in recent years that show the magic is alive and well.
Clair Obscur is the most recent example that comes to mind (Sorry, Gio, I can’t be normal about it). I began playing it to find out what all the hype was about, and I’ll be honest: I expected a run-of-the-mill RPG. Not much surprises or impresses me these days, especially working in games journalism. So when its story, characters, and gameplay essentially reached through my TV screen and grabbed me by the throat, I was caught off guard.
Clair Obscur has that special element in spades. A sort of je ne sais quoi, you might say. Every theory I had about the story? Wrong. At no point did I know what was coming next. The graphics and cinematic elements made me think of Final Fantasy VII in the best ways (the fixed-camera shots especially), and the music? Chef’s kiss. Now that I’ve finished the game, optional sections and all, I still want more — and that doesn’t happen often.
But what also made it special was the interest my wife took in the game. She sat beside me and became just as invested in the story as I was, and we would discuss what we thought was going to happen long after I’d turned off the console. The experience is a precious memory. A single-player game, experienced together.
It made me realize that every key memory I have about my favorite games involved other people, whether that was playing Majora’s Mask with a childhood friend, battling for the top spot in Halo 2 clan tournaments, or spending too many tokens trying to beat each other’s Dance Dance Revolution score at the arcade.
Games haven’t lost their magic, nor have they gotten worse over time. It’s still there. You just have to look for it.
