A few weeks ago, I started playing Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time, one of the many products of that #retro #nostalgia wave that has now invaded every form of entertainment: from #videogames to music, from movies to fashion, makeup and, of course, furniture, comics, and practically any other product that can be sold by leveraging nostalgia.
To make this article understandable for everyone, I need to do a long premise. But I assure you, much like old thrillers, you’ll figure out the “killer” long before the book ends. Here, there’s no murderer—just a question: why do we crave so much for nostalgia if we won't actually recreate the experiences of the past?
“I liked you better before”
To explain the difficulty of today’s video games, we have to start from a long time ago—from the concept of nostalgia itself. Without diving into massive linguistic rants, nostalgia is a word that contains the meaning of “return” and “algia,” a compositional element.
The funny thing about words that include “algia” is that all of them, or almost all, denote pain: neuralgia, myalgia... So, in practice, nostalgia means “pain of returning.”
The word itself carries a red flag (to immediately switch back to a more international vibe), signaling that we should think carefully about the type of emotion we’re experiencing.
Are we naturally drawn to the pain of remembering?
Fantastic. Let’s move on.
Photo by Mitchell Orr on Unsplash
Nostalgia as a Marketing weapon
The “nostalgia effect” has been around for decades. Every generation looks back fondly on something: some miss the PlayStation 1, some the landline phone, some the telegraph, some the Pony Express, some even the bubonic plague (to sell plague doctor masks, of course). It's difficult to pinpoint when, how, and why nostalgia takes root, but everyone experiences it for certain aspects of their past—whether those aspects have improved or worsened.
This sentiment was already a reality years ago, but with the rise of the Millennial generation (also known as Gen Y) and the unstoppable evolution of the digital world, the generational lamenting for what was lost has grown stronger. More importantly, it has been weaponized by marketers like social media Rambos, wielding heavy machine guns.
The result?
We now swim in a sludge of Philip K. Dick-esque dystopia and a calculated reassembly of generational lost loves, carefully packaged to serve as marketing bait.
Kids born in the '90s—who still haven’t realized they’re in their 30s—used to eat the “Twister,” a kind of abomination made of cardboard and food coloring that tasted like everything you’d find in a bottle of hydrochloric acid—minus the irritation part. Or at least, rarely, you know.
This particular product, which ignored any ethical manufacturing standards, was actually very popular among kids in the '80s and only made it to '90s kids thanks to a mix of a completely unregulated market, flashy colors made from what might as well have been radioactive waste, and, ultimately, the fact that generational product turnover was much slower than it is today.
Despite this, it’s extremely likely that kids born up until 1996 (that is, the “late” Gen Y) feel nostalgic for this stuff, even though it actually dates back to 1982—just a year after Gen Y officially started.
Unfortunately, the sociological concept of “generation” has been fading in recent years due to excessive meme culture, but it wasn’t created by accident.
People born between 1981 and 1994 share many life experiences that define them as a group, naturally with some exceptions. For marketers, this translates into an incredibly broad target audience: Italians aged 41 down to those who haven’t quite hit 30 yet all react in some way when they see “Super Twister” on an ice cream menu.
Nowadays, it no longer looks like nuclear fission waste but rather like a normal, aesthetically pleasing fruit-flavored ice cream. Point remains, though.
Why not just create a new ice cream and play on the nostalgia of the “Twister”?
Because, in a way, it's already a market-established product. This isn't just about nostalgia; using a brand that lasted nearly twenty years—like the Twister—allows you to skip many steps in building a brand identity. Instead, you can tap into the most powerful weapon in marketing: personal resonance.
That’s why we have film adaptations of old comics, reboots, remakes, '90s and 2000s fashion trends making a comeback, and even home decor styles from forty years ago. We’re now at the point of re-remakes and re-reboots. Marketing is most powerful when it resonates deeply with individuals on a personal level.
Virtue signaling, nostalgia marketing, branding—these are all ways to create a connection between the product/company and the customer (or potential customer).
I'm not selling you a product, I'm telling you why you'll buy It
Paul Watzlawick, from the Palo Alto school, was a sociologist of near-fundamental importance.
His concept of “it is impossible not to communicate” holds the same weight in social sciences as “I know that I know nothing” does in philosophy.
Marketing is not simply a tool for selling something; it is literally the manipulation of any communication for a purpose, which may or may not correspond to selling a product.
Marketers and industry professionals need to connect “intimately” with people as an organic response—made of flesh and nerves—to the human drive for socialization. The only way to build customer loyalty is to establish some kind of bond that persists beyond the first purchase and lasts until the next.
Whereas in the past, the goal was to create a desire to choose one product over another through imaginative slogans and honestly genius commercials (if you’re over 25, I’m sure you remember Nike’s The Cage ad, where footballers pulled off crazy tricks in a metal cage).
Today, the way to sell something is by reminding you what you used to love, and making you want it again.
And I don’t even have to sell you anything—I'm just telling you why you’ll buy it.
In short: large-scale gaslighting.
“Okay, but can you talk about GAMES now?”
We already talked about it.
I just explained why Crash Bandicoot 4 exists, why we have remakes of games barely 20 years old. That’s why Final Fantasy has reached its 16th installment, even though the newer games barely resemble the original series.
With this axiom, we can also explain why some games are painfully easy while others are frustrating, impossible, and seemingly unenjoyable.
Nostalgia-driven strategies operate in two ways:
1. I give you the product as you remember it
But with some improvements to “refresh” it—maybe by changing the ice cream wrapper (hint: the graphics) and the price (hint: the actual price).
2. I offer you a product very similar to what you remember
But I slap a “2.0” label on it.
The clearest example? Pokémon.
Since it struggles to retain longtime players (who often don’t bring in much money), the formula gets reshuffled—not just to appeal to new players, but also to give longtime fans a little “consolation prize.” So what happens?
- Difficulty is lowered
- Creativity is reduced
- The game world is made more accessible
So much so that even a fifty-year-old parent—too lazy to even turn on a console—can still play alongside their child, drawn in by Pokémon’s nostalgia factor.
Small Digression: regarding simplification as a means to sell a video game to old/lazy adults rather than, as they want us to believe, “small children,” I refer you to this video: note how the guy's solutions to ensure his mother reaches the end of the game are the same criticisms aimed at recent games.
Pre-made paths, zero difficulty, forced sequences, and removal of “confusing” content.
The Flip Side: making games “ChaLLeNgInG”
The other side of this ugly coin is, instead, making the game “challenging.”
Kids who played Crash Bandicoot back in the day remember it as a hard game. But after 20 years of gaming experience, would they still find it difficult?
The answer doesn’t matter. The goal is to keep players glued to the screen.
So, the final product of Crash Bandicoot 4 is: a game that's moderately easy to complete**, but nearly impossible to 100%.
That way, it satisfies both casual gamers who just want another Crash Bandicoot game and die-hard fans willing to sink 30 hours into clearing a single level perfectly, collecting every gem, and nailing every time trial relic.
Despite these fence-sitting strategies—which help in marketing—the final product will be nothing more than a watered-down rip-off of the original material.
Thus, Crash Bandicoot 4 feels like a fan game rather than a real sequel. The Bomberman reboot looks like a child’s fever dream turned into a video game.
And we won’t even talk about franchises like Duke Nukem or Sonic, because this blog should be as PG-13 as possible, so I should avoid profanity.
Of course, let’s be clear: there are remakes and reboots that stay true to the original material.
Examples? Tomb Raider, Doom.
But these are often “safe bet” franchises—ones that get proper care simply because they’re guaranteed successes. Even with these games, though, there’s still a fence-sitting attitude. No matter how much effort someone involved in the game puts into recreating the original feel, they'll always push long-time fans to say the dreaded phrase:
“Sure, but it’s just not the same as when I played it as a kid...”
Cue the tears. Curtains close.