The Wii Virtual Games continue to roll out, Donkey Kong Country and blah blah blah a few other no-namer games. Now we hear Double Dragon for XBLA to be released, videos to show its awesome performance and of course a flashback to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) just in time for the movie debut. Even the PlayStation Network got into the act with the classic fun hopper Q*Bert and the psychedelic flOw!
Why do we consistently to fall victim to games from the early 80’s to mid-90’s? Our console systems continue to grow more powerful and we forge ahead and buy cheap games, electronically downloaded, for our high-end systems.
For many of us, these are games we played as a child (most of us anyway) and paid for already!
It’s a powerful thing, nostalgia, and these companies are praying off of us each week with games we’ve already purchased on cartridges and CD-ROMs. Why do we keep falling for these recycled games?
Because we love them. At least for awhile.
I am sure when Double Dragon arrives on XBLA it will be the most downloaded game of the year for Xbox Live Arcade. Why? Because many of us reminisce the days of Double Dragon, we talk with friends about how awesome it was and we continue to recall the “good old days of popping coins.”
We think so hard and so long about those “good days” and when it arrives on Xbox Live Arcade we will put down a reasonable amount of cash (considering the purchase) for a product to flash back to being a kid again.
You purchase Double Dragon and you realize “wow, this game is short.” You’ll probably have it defeated in a single hour or two. The main reasons:
- It’s like riding a bike, you’re beating baddies again in no-time!
- The game was designed to be a coin-pusher and thus shorter than a home entertainment game.
- The title has very little substance, because you can play a few lives before your pizza was ready.
- You’ve gotten a lot of practice playing video games since then - you’re older, you’re wiser, and you simply pwn n00bs.
What now? Donkey Kong Country this week and Zelda: The Ocarina of Time for the Wii Virtual Console next week! These are games many of us have played, enjoyed for hours and moved onto the next greatest thing. Yet, many of us will not think twice between the “click” of the button and the charge of our credit cards.
Are we fools? No! We’re just buying into our childhood memory only to find there is no going back to that time, place and that mentality. We’re buying these time pieces as a collectors item to put on our virtual shelf; occasionally we’ll take out this electronic artifact and play a few minutes simply to fire off those great memories.
As long as we’re into the past, Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony will learn to make money off of it. Regardless to the money spent, you should not feel bad for purchasing Mario Kart, Super Mario World, Contra, TMNT and Double Dragon.
It is only natural to want that feeling of being a kid again.
