I feel. I just can't wring the same amount of enjoyment out of anything. My attention span is absolutely fried, which is (I think) why I don't think I can enjoy those games anymore. Crono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI were my absolute favorites, and I can barely sit down and play them for an hour.
While it will never be the same as playing it for the first time again, you can find a new sort of joy in it as an adult. Themes we couldn’t appreciate as kids, details we wouldn’t have understood, etc. Sure, those feelings will never come back, but we can make all new ones now
Sometimes there’s a spark though, rewatching home alone still hits me, just on a different level now. So much more appreciate his relationship with his mother and the old snow shoveling man
Maybe part of the joy was that it was new to you.
There is a ton of games out there that are just as beautiful, that might give you comparable excitement.
Hm maybe you just can’t enjoy it right now. But maybe in some Years ? :) I totally thought/felt the same way, but slowly I’m playing my old bangers and enjoying it a lot!
Life feels shorter the older we get. If you really want to get that same feeling back you'll have to be a kid again. The next best thing is to remove yourself from distractions. Silent your phone, use headphones, just do the game. Don't stop to look something up if you get stuck. Just be in the game
I told my 7-year old nephew to give it a try. I even installed it on his iPad. He got to the main square and started placing bets on the runners. Fast forward one hour, he still is. Then he claims “this game is dumb” and moves back to YouTube. And that’s why we can’t have nice things.
This touches on something more profound. A lot of the things we look back on with rose tinted glasses weren’t really as great as we remember, and living in the past by and large a self-destructive way to go through life, imho
I do enjoy playing through it now and then, but my gaming is few and far between, given work and kids. I outgrew it, like I outgrew drinking. Maybe I’ll get into some tactics ogre while the kids are napping, though…
I'm sad to hear that's the case, but for me and my favorite game, it's the opposite. When I play FF9, I honestly find things to admire about it that I wasn't able to as a kid.
Ocarina of Time gave me that same feeling, and although I'll never experience that specific feeling again, it solidified my love for videogames as an artistic medium, and in turn I found equally satisfying experiences in MANY games, across MANY platforms, across MANY generations 🤘❤️🤘
I think I would feel this way about the Fable series. I really enjoyed them as a kid, but I feel like I wouldn’t enjoy them as much if I went back to them - I think I really liked grinding gold for character customization and buying property as a kid. Lol.
I played Chrono Trigger for the first time as an adult. I found it to be a truly enchanting and timeless masterpiece. I could tell it inspired most RPGs that came after it.
You can't capture the magic of playing a game for the first time, but you can always learn something new, or appreciate it from a different angle. Every time you reexamine a piece of art, there will be details you never appreciated the first time.
Sea of Stars was a wonderful 2022 game that gave me the same feeling. And they just released a quality of life update this week. And a free dlc in the spring! Highly recommend.
I actually feel bad for you. For some reason some SNES games are timeless for me I can always replay chrono trigger, ff6, super metroid...and dont get me started on super mario world. Whats the most recent game that bought you the joy you felt when you first played Chrono Trigger?
I never played it as a kid, but got into it a few years ago and found it ok. My game was about 3/4ths of the way through, but then I couldn’t beat some optional content (some arena thing?) and I just lost motivation to play it. I should probably go back and just finish the main storyline.
I don't have the patience or body tolerance to sit for the 8-hour sessions I did when I played it so long ago. But I love watching other folks play it now when I catch a streamer trying it out.
When you are a kid everything is magic and new to you, everything is full of excitement and joy. Growing up you make more experiences and with it everything becomes the norm. You remember the feelings games, cartoons, movies, etc made you feel... but now your perception of the world is different.
That's why we don't feel the same when we replay our old games, and that is also why it is so hard to make new movies for an old series without making them feel dull, and "wrong". The feelings we had as children are very hard to replicate in the adult world. I'm afraid we can't easily have them back
the original magic is gone from many of the old 90's RPG's
i can't play chrono much these days but the platformers from the snes still hold up very well
I've noticed that. I can pretty much play, watch, buy, or listen to anything that gives me nostalgia, but no matter how many times I try to revisit the past, it just doesn't hit the same.
I burned every bush in the original Zelda looking for secrets. With gleeful anticipation of what could be... Now, if I don't have a map and an arrow pointing me to the next objective I just walk away. I can't get it back.
I used to love Haunted House on the Atari, had good memories of it as a child, but played it a while ago on the Atari collection for the Xbox, and it sort of spoiled the memories, obviously it’s not as good as you remember, good memories of the past are better left in the past sometimes.
I have never replayed it, not since 1996. That was my exact fear, that it was a unique moment in time and the memory of it won’t survive the re-experience. On the other hand, I wonder how my adult broken mind would perceive it.
Memories of Chrono Trigger make me wish I could travel back then and feel that same level of enjoyment. Such a wild ride for my formative years.
Although I find this true with Chrono Trigger, I have found that I can revisit Final Fantasy Tactics endlessly at any age.
Got my kid an emulator for his tablet and he LOVED Chrono Trigger. It holds up. A modern remake that would deliver that joy wouldn't necessarily be a AAA 3d remake, it'd just need to rethink and modernize the UI/experience a bit. Mobile games had a chance to do this, but most are enshittified by ads
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There is a ton of games out there that are just as beautiful, that might give you comparable excitement.
https://youtu.be/EcuM__iw8mA?si=Y4_dZFpcCvhdOTvC
As much as I loved Phantasy Star II and the original Zelda games, those kind of top down dungeon crawlers just don’t hold up now.
Luckily there are games like Mass Effect and others that still do.
That’s why I’m excited to share these foundational gaming experiences with my future children someday. Relive the wonder through their eyes, y’know?
You can’t go back but you can appreciate what it meant to you at the time
It's just that we know the story already, so the same surprise cannot be experienced.
However, if you share Chrono Trigger with someone else, you can get them to enjoy it for the first time, which is also beautiful.
It was the first game Jeremy Soule composed (later worked on Icewind Dale, Guild Wars, Harry Potter and Elder Scrolls series, among others).
Game definitely has its flaws and a myriad of glitches, but they really tried to work with some neat ideas and concepts.
Biggest complaint I have is the serious pacing issue the minute you get boots-on-ground in the medieval world, and it’s weird the rest of the game
The mazes in the first 2 worlds I felt were fine because Prehistoria and Antoqua didn’t use them as a crutch.
The mideival world was 90% maze and Omnitopia was all corridors.
How do you feel about the weapon/alchemy power scaling?
Cool systems though!
It ain't the same my guys.
But the heart of the game was in gameplay and I thought it was phenomenal.
Anyone who’s played it lately - how does it hold up please?
The last time I played it was on the DS.
Nostalgia needs to be protected sometimes by simply never going near the media again!
i can't play chrono much these days but the platformers from the snes still hold up very well
But I don't dare replaying them.
(Sea of Stars kinda brought some of that vibe back to me in a nice fresh way. Wouldn't miss it if you didn't play it yet.)
I’d love to replay it eventually!
As an adult I replayed it with son some years ago and we both enjoy it wonderfully.
Maybe you just lost your spark.
Other games not so much
Although I find this true with Chrono Trigger, I have found that I can revisit Final Fantasy Tactics endlessly at any age.
I'm sure that Link's Awakening remake is totally fine but it could just never live up to what I experienced when I was ten.
Because I was ten. In the 90s.
There's no benefit to trying to relive that moment. It lives on greater in my heart.
ff7 is a classic but there's no denying it's like 2/3 aimless filler by volume