Nostalgia is a strong human feeling that everyone has felt before. My earliest memory is sitting down in my dad’s basement playing Lego Star Wars on our Xbox 360, playing the game on a Friday night. Many teenagers are into gaming, making up most of the ‘gamer population’. Video gaming has existed for decades by now, but it feels like certain games make a comeback yearly, why is that?

Early video games often had simpler storylines and limited technology, which meant they focused more on gameplay than complex narratives or repeated story adaptations. Games like Street Fighter were one of the first successful arcade games and that’s because of the series’s ability to keep up with newer video game styles. Games, like Street Fighter, change their designs but keep the same characters to maintain its nostalgia for the older generation it was originally given to. Just like Sonic or Mario, their characters and how their lore is set up, have been able to produce multiple video games that are usually all unique.

Retro video games may have had a pause in popularity in the 2000’s, but within recent years with our technology, like Nintendo, apps like Steam, and inspiration, have helped keep the progression of these well beloved video-games. The internet has made it highly available for anyone to play, including the recreation of older games, like how Nintendo has the original Mario and Donkey Kong available on the Switch.

Another factor contributing to the resurgence of old  school games is newer devices and marketing of these retro-games, the media has been a huge help online. YouTubers who played the games as a kid, will tend to play a newer version or the same game for content, which influences the younger generation. Teenagers tend to find a liking to these older games due to the person they look up to playing it, which tends to be adults like parents, or social media stars. Doom, The Sims, GTA and Zelda still have huge, active fan bases ranging from any age, and are still being heavily streamed and recorded, along with online marketing being extremely common. 

The attention the games already get from all of these factors only progress the video game more, bringing in cash for the companies. Besides using the money for new games of the similar franchise, many companies put it towards film production. Street Fighter, Pokemon and Final Fantasy all have their own films, movies, and animes. Sonic has had a total of 3 movies already, and brought sonic to the younger generations after Gen Z. The Mario movie only further influences the younger generation into the franchise, which continues to bring memories of these older games towards teens. Another example is Marvel games, Marvel is always coming out with new movies, the first movie coming out in 2008 but the first game coming out in 1982.

Teenagers within the past five years have reverted back to older trends, within fashion, speech, and also video games. It’s safe to say this doesn’t happen randomly- and a large part of it comes from the nostalgia parents are feeling now that things from their childhood are coming back bigger and better. Companies can target their advertisement to whomever they want, but it will always circle back to the missed memories of our parents as kids who sat down and played some of the first of the biggest video-game franchise games in history.