On Nostalgia, Which Needs to Settle Down

My grandfather was the first person to introduce me to the wonder of computer games. He had a computer in his office when I was a kid, which was still a pretty big friggin' deal in the early 90s, and trying to entertain a six year-old for several hours every Sunday was a nightmare, So he turned his Packard Bell PC, which to that point basically only had QuickBooks and TurboTax on it, into a part-time gaming machine

He bought or acquired a bunch of typical 90s computer games, either via CD-ROM or shareware, and played them with me (and certainly snuck in some rounds on his own when I wasn't around). Myst, Hocus Pocus, SimTown (NOT SimCity) and the Are You Afraid of the Dark? click adventure game were staples of my youth, particularly on rainy Sundays. They were the first computer games I'd played outside of school, which meant they were the first computer games I'd played that weren't Stickybear Spellling. But the best of them all was MegaRace.

Styled like a futuristic gameshow (hosted by your creepy, fast-talking uncle Lance Boyle), MegaRace came free with new Packard Bell computers. It was pretty simple: blow up a bunch of cars, and don't get blown up yourself. Everything about this game screams 1994, from the full motion video to the perceptions of the future. Twenty-two years later, the graphics have held up about as poorly as the gameplay. And I couldn't care less.

Well, I should clarify: five year-old Kaz couldn't care less, because at the time, MegaRace was the coolest thing since the last cool thing I'd seen that morning. To older Kaz, MegaRace mostly reminds me of going to my grandparents' house and discovering cool new things my grandfather had, like his woodshop in the basement, or the large garden he maintained in his backyard, or the mystical demon-box called a "computer."

Occasionally, to scratch the itch of nostalgia, I'll look up games I haven't played in years to see if I can get my hands on a cheap copy. Tonight, that led me to look up MegaRace again. As it turns out, MegaRace produced two sequels and...oh no....oh God no...a planned IndieGoGo campaign to make a new one. Now. Like, now now.

Now, to be fair, this campaign doesn't officially exist yet - there is no IndieGoGo page for MegaRace 4 - The Racening or anything. Just promotional videos of the dude who played Lance Boyle over 20 years ago, looking a lot older and sounding much, much sadder to still be doing this shit today. But the threat is out there. And it's because that's just what we do nowadays.

Bad Santa 2 is coming out more than 10 years after the original Bad Santa. A Veronica Mars movie was made well after the TV show got the shaft. Fuller House, Girl Meets World, Jumanji...okay, I made the last one up. But you believed me for a minute! And you know it's coming! (ed. note: upon completing the post, Kazblog has learned that it is, in fact, coming. Run for your lives.)

Many of these reboots, like the Veronica Mars movie or the new MegaRace game, are crowdfunded in advance, meaning there's already a strong market of invested parties waiting for it. And as a free market guy, I think that the crowdfunding thing is great. My question about these specific projects is, "why?"

We liked the originals for a reason, and thinking of them now reminds us of our easier, better times (as filtered through our brains, which tend to remember the good times more than the times we were beat up or failed geometry) That's the main reason we get nostalgic in the first place - the memories. So wouldn't it be better to just, you know, enjoy the originals again instead of dragging Phil Moore out of retirement to stump for Nick Studios?

My brother has two interested theories that I've co-opted. One, two many things exist as a result of the Internet, in the sense that communities who think that the lead singer of Gogol Bordello looks like Nigel Thornberry from The Wild Thornberries shouldn't exist. (True) Two, we (millennials) are the most nostalgic generation of all. I don't think that's necessarily true, but I do think that we have much greater means to fulfill that nostalgia thanks to...wait for it...the Internet.

With the Internet, you can download ROMs of old games or find old books on Amazon (you know, those things what with the paper in 'em). You can also crowdfund a new version of those old favorites...if you want to. But I'm willing to bet the originals will do the trick too. There's a magic in your first experience with the first version, and I'm willing to bet the remakes don't quite have that. I certainly don't need a crypt-keeper Lance Boyle to remind me of my grandfather's house.

Note - None of this applies to The Force Awakens, which is great and you should shut up if you don't think so.