Good point, and it may have to do with 20 year old me .vs. 60 year old me. In the early 80s I worked 6 months on, six months off (oil rigs) and had insane amounts of free time. Along with my friends, we mapped out the actual caves and levels using butcher paper and pencil. We spent months on this and it was a large part of my social environment at the time. This probably adds to the nostalgia, and is a missing element when I try it by myself at home now.
The original Battlestar Galactica is disappointing now for the same likely reasons. In the 70s, viewing was a regular occasion with freinds, beer, pizza, etc. Now it seems hollow and hokey, but maybe for the same aging/time reasons as Zork.
I’m actually currently rewatching Transformers, sort of. For the past several years I’ve been going over to my parents’ house once a week and watching ~1:40 (four half-hour episodes) of TV with them, from TV shows I’ve collected over the years. Having just finished showing them the entire Diniverse, I decided that our next franchise would be Transformers - specifically the shows I consider the best (Beast Wars, Animated, and Prime). However it feels wrong to ignore the foundational history of the show, given how ludicrously homage and reference filled the franchise is. So I’m showing them G1 Transformers - sort of. I’ve selected 32 of the 98 episodes which I feel introduce important characters or concepts, or which have particularly decent or interesting stories, and am just showing them those (along with the movie, when we get that far).
Honestly even with the smaller curated episode list I feel kind of guilty for putting them through it - the animation quality is so bad. Not five minutes goes by without something being off-model or wrongly colored or with the wrong voice coming out of somebody’s mouth. It makes my soul hurt, how poorly executed it is.
I’ve been pretty upfront about the whole process being basically homework to prepare them for the better serieses to come. Three weeks down, six to go!
I re-read Stranger in a Strange Land, or tried to, about a year ago. Couldn’t finish it. The cringey-dirty-old-man-who-thinks-he’s-the-smartest-guy-in-the-room and the Mary Sue character insert from Heinlein were just too grating to make up for the good parts.
However, when I was a kid, I could spend hours on cutaway or choose-your-own-adventure books. I tried that recently and I still liked the cutaways but didn’t feel grabbed as much.
I think this is part that there have been a lot of better video games made since then, and you’re comparing these to newer more capable games, and part that kids just have a lot more time to focus on things that aren’t that interesting to those with more experience.
I remember playing the original Legend of Zelda (one of the first games I played) and attempting to burn down every tree in the entire game to find secret passages. And I found some! But even if I were gifted a fully-immersive magic holodeck video game right now I wouldn’t bother to do something like that. There are so many more readily available dopamine hits. Legend of Zelda holds up pretty well (it’s reasonably challenging and interesting for an old game), but I don’t know that I’d have the patience for it without all the childhood conditioning.
Probably, yeah.
I also remember really liking the kind of chocolate ice cream you could buy 2 liters of for 2CAD in the early '90s. I’m pretty sure I’d get sick of it pretty quickly now.
I’m somewhat sorry I wasn’t born later as playing some of today’s games as a kid would be mind-blowing.
Part of the problem with comedy sketch shows like Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Saturday Night Live is binge-watching entire seasons of either show really expose how much they were filled with unfunny segments and filler material.
When people wax nostalgically about them it is always about particular sketches—not entire shows.
I know the shows hosted by Steve Martin are well regarded to the point most people don’t realize he wasn’t actually cast member just the guest host. (He hosted 15 shows–the only person to host more is Alec Baldwin at 17.)
Binge-watching 80’s cartoons can be tough too - any repetitive elements they have get thrown into stark relief, and the majority of them mostly or entirely lack plot or character progression across episodes which combines very poorly with how incredibly long some of these shows are. Those 5-day-a-week shows built up a massive episode list despite only running for a few years, and while individual episodes can be good, binge watching can begin to drag pretty fast.
This is less a problem with the shows themselves, but rather with the change in how we watch them, so I’m not sure calling it anti-nostolgia is quite fair.
Quite the contrary. I have a lot of downloads from Youtube of cartoons (and commercials and other TV shows) from my childhood (stuff that was broadcast in the 1980s and early 1990s). Watching this gives me a warm fuzzy feeling.
That said, I do tend to think critically today of some of the animation. A lot of the cartoons I watched (notably the Sunbow / DIC-produced ones, like Transformers, G.I. Joe, or Jem) were animated in Japan, where the quality of animation in the 80s was often sketchy and introduced Anime elements (and I don’t care for Anime) in Western cartoons. But it’s not something on which I lose a lot of sleep.
Fast forward 20 years to where most of the rest of us are and I predict you’ll have a less happily nostalgic perspective. More a matter of “What were they (I) thinking??!?”
Which is also 100% normal.
It’s a process and each of us is embarked upon it.
It’s been more than a decade since I last played an Atari game, but there are a few that are still fun to play for a little while. You wouldn’t want to play them all day (probably) but if you were waiting for a doctor’s appointment or something they’re not a terrible way to pass the time.
I loved Robert Asprin’s Myth series as a teen. There is no way that I am going to go back and read them now, as I am pretty sure that I would find them annoying.
I was also a big fan of the Dukes of Hazard and knight rider shudder.
On the other hand, I re-watched the Max Headroom series. and its still holds up. Alas it was too far ahead of its time and was canceled after only 14 episodes.
I’ve been working my way through The Invaders, a TV show I loved when I was 10 years old. Spoiler alert: it does not hold up well. It’s kind of cool to see actors like Ed Asner and Gene Hackman playing aliens, but most of the episodes are pretty tedious. The invaders don’t seem to have any coherent plan for taking over Earth; in every episode they have some new half-assed scheme which David Vincent has no trouble disrupting. Oh, and they pass up roughly a gazillion chances to knock off that pesky Vincent, although they handwave this away with “killing him would draw attention to us.”
One thing I never noticed when watching the show as a kid: it has a strong 1960s domestic drama vibe. Practically every episode features a quarreling married couple or a parent with an estranged adult child. Sure, aliens are secretly taking over the planet, but the important thing is that folks patch up their differences before the end credits roll.
Good lord, I used to watch CHIPS, Knight Rider, Airwolf and The A-Team religiously. I occasionally catch a glimpse of reruns and you couldn’t pay me to sit through a whole episode, now.
I am curious if MacGyver held up, haven’t glimpsed that one. Somehow, I doubt it.
I still retain my nostalgia for Supermarionation shows, though.
I appreciate the graphics and game-play of modern games, but only as an observer. I have no desire to play them…because I can’t. Too many buttons. I lost track counting joystick buttons at 835. There should be no more buttons than fingers on your hands (and maybe toes if you’re a quadradextrous player). I got tired of being beat up consistently and thoroughly by my kids and nephews. They show no mercy, and I’m cutting them out of my will because of it.
But, I could still be a playa with Tanks or Pong (the original mechanical version, not the fancy-pants, bleeding-edge video version).
The pinnacle of my gaming days was playing Centipede (the arcade version). Not to brag (OK, that’s a lie), but I ruled that game. I was the Walter White of Centipede (no, I didn’t play hopped up on meth). I drew crowds and put on a show—playing backward, upside-down, spinning around, blindfolded, handcuffed…you name it!
These days a game of Bingo and a nice cup of tea is my speed.
For me it was Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. When it first aired I was a young teenager and it was the best half hour of the whole week. Then Cartoon Network announced they were going to start showing it on Adult Swim. I was so excited that I was actually counting down until the first night they were going to show it. I stayed up until midnight or 12:30 or whenever it started. Then the assholes cut out the theme song, which was the best part, and about 5 minutes in I was so disappointed I wanted to cry. It was so loud and stupid and the acting was so crappy. I was bummed out for days.
And no it had nothing to do with Paul Reubens’ legal problems. Those happened after the show aired so in my mind it wasn’t tainted by all that.