Nostalgia and Game Preservation: What do we Remember?

Now more than ever, I find myself thinking about games that I enjoyed when I was younger. This is partially because I have been watching (or listening to) video essays about game franchises, long-forgotten developers, or hidden gems that people may not remember now. For a while now, I’ve begun to realize that there is a sad reality to our current “Remake, Reboot, Reimagine” process of preserving gaming history.

The sad reality is that there are two types of games when we talk about game preservation. There are the classics, which are likely to be preserved through the “Remake, Reboot, Reimagine” process, such as the Final Fantasies, Silent Hills, Resident Evils, etc. Then there are the “Cult Classics” and more obscure games, which as much as we wish for it, may not be preserved.

I say “may not” because there are exceptions to this rule. Tomba: Special Edition is a cult classic, and a nostalgic masterpiece that I was practically positive would never be remade, simply because it didn’t make a lot of money back in the day, and it is fairly obscure. There are exceptions to every rule, but this got me thinking. What games did I grow up enjoying that will one day be lost to time?

RPGs like Lost Odyssey, which fit snugly on the Xbox 360 in 2008. Lost Odyssey was criticized for being too text-heavy and slow-paced despite being one of the better RPGs of the era. Had Lost Odyssey been released now, I think it would be well-received, but do I see it being remastered? No. This is mostly because the developer (who also created Blue Dragon, another stellar RPG) is Mistwalker.

Mistwalker’s last major release was Fantasian for Apple Arcade. Fantasian was released on PC and consoles in 2024 as Fantasian: Neo Dimension, so perhaps fans could get lucky and find a remaster on the horizon as Mistwalker’s next project.

Then there are games that are beautifully nostalgic, but the dev teams have given way to the gaming industry’s pressure of “bigger and better” games that must sell a certain number of copies to be successful. I think about Tri-Ace, which created the Valkyrie Profile franchise.

While we did recently see a new entry in the franchise, Valkyrie Elysium, it was developed by a dev team known as Soleil, and was largely divorced from what made the original games so profound, and was marketed as a “Spiritual successor”. Tri-Ace is now owned by a Mobile Gaming company, and after Star Ocean: The Divine Force’s release was considered insolvent. As such, the likelihood of seeing the franchise continue or the Star Ocean franchise, for that matter, is very low.

You also have the issue of great franchises from development teams that aren’t making games anymore. Franchises like Shadow Hearts, Arc the Lad, Clock Tower, and a lot of other series are at risk of disappearing, all because they either underperformed toward their end or have IP rights in the air due to studio closure.

Now, I should mention that in Clock Tower’s case, the first game was remade by WayForward last year. Clock Tower Rewind carries on the franchise’s legacy, so there may be hope for it yet.

What I’m getting at is that there are a lot of games that you may remember fondly that, due to poor sales or a lack of interest from shareholders, may not ever be revitalized. It’s sad. I can remember having formative experiences with games that barely managed to get a seven-out-of-ten review score (if that).

Of course, the irony is not lost on me that Phenixx Gaming scores its reviews. However, the scores themselves aren’t the issue. Even if something gets a mediocre score, the review itself is not only subjective, but it also has context.

If a game is buggy or broken at launch, there are times when the developers will fix bugs after release. On the other hand, sometimes the bugs are minor and impact the enjoyment just enough to be annoying, but don’t diminish a game’s overall experience.

It isn’t the review scores that people remember. Reviews help you make a good purchasing decision, but a few years from now, what you’ll remember is the fun you had with the games you played. Sure, some of that enjoyment will come from big-budget titles or heavily lauded games. However, some of the enjoyment will come from the smaller, lesser-known games or the ones that maybe didn’t review so well but still resonated with you.

This is why preserving games is so important, because even the mediocre games are a part of gaming history and its ever-flowing tapestry. Vanillaware is a development team I hold very dear for games like Odin Sphere and Muramasa: The Demon Blade, but even I can admit that the games aren’t award-worthy. They are just beautiful stories wrapped in fun gameplay experiences.

I hope to see the gaming industry veer away from a reliance on graphics and games that have to be at peak sales or studios face closure. These closing studios still have stories to tell, and the developers in these studios work together to create beautiful works of entertainment. We should be trying harder to preserve gaming history and those who create it.