Nostalgia Tripping

The Crash Bandicoot re-masters have just took this weeks number 1 spot in the game charts. They also managed to have the biggest single format launch of the year so far, beating the blooming brilliant Horizon. And if facts don't sway you then how about some anecdotal evidence? I know people in real life that bought it. Yeah not just twitter people, actual people...

The biggest shock and the one that'll get this blog to its point.. Crash Bandicoot is over 20 years old. My wife and two other ladies I know bought this package because they loved the game when they were younger. It was nostalgia for them. A chance to relive their youth without using 20 layers of make-up (I'm joking, don't kill me) Another lady I know told me that the PS1 was her first console. What in the actual fudgery... If ever a comment made me feel old.

PlayStation is now at a point were it can create nostalgia. It's something Nintendo have done for years and something I never really considered other game companies would do. Reminding people of their productive weekends in front video games and cashing in on those precious memories. Crash Bandicoot, it alarms me to say, was probably the first game for many people. Not Mario, or Duck Hunt but Crash Bandicoot. Or Wipeout.

Hell even I have some nostalgia for Wipeout. The futuristic visuals and the dance soundtrack combined to make the example that videogames were suddenly cool. So cool. And I played it every Saturday night at my local church youth club. All the coolness. Wipeout got re-mastered as well, and just a month a go it topped the charts. People want those old games again and only now have publishers caught on that we're willing to buy them. What will be interesting to watch though is what happens next. Do people really want a brand new Crash Bandicoot game? Or was it enough to get the old games with nicer visuals? I'd say the latter but I've been wrong plenty of times before.

Of course the real nostalgia kings are still Nintendo. If you need proof of that then you've oblivious to tech news in the last 12 months. Pokémon Go was last summers phenomenon, reuniting 30 year olds with another childhood favourite. The NES Mini was released in November, or so say the rumours because nobody could seem to find stock of them. Its successor the SNES mini has only just been announced and it's already sold out. Amazon have enforced a one per customer policy and there isn't an online retailer in the UK still taking orders. Nintendo can't make enough of them. And just to confirm, this is a tiny replica of a 25 year old console that plays 25 year old games. Its easy money for Nintendo.

So why is nostalgia doing so well? Are you thinking I'll come up with an answer? Did any of this blog suggest I'd have an intelligent thought in my head? Some other people like to say that it's all about the state of the world, that Brexit and Trump has made the nostalgia drug a bit more potent. Maybe we all want a bit more escapism. Others would say that the business men have just been clever, looked at a bunch of 30 years spending their life savings on avocados and thought 'we'll re-sell them their childhood.'


Could be loads of things. Could even be that the stuff we liked as kids is still really good, and unlike films or TV it's not easy to get old games. So they can resell them to us. Forever. But hey lets not fret about pocket money and we'll just be kids again, carefree and square-eyed from staring at pixels too long.