This month I've been thinking a lot about nostalgia. I have also been feeling nostalgic — I spent a week in England seeing old friends and family, and soaking in the vibes of London's Soho area and Camden Town. They were my old playgrounds before I moved to Japan some 18 years ago. But that's not what I mean. Instead, I have been thinking about the role nostalgia plays in pop culture — not least in the worlds of videogames, movies, and music.
While I was in London, 1990s Britpop heroes Oasis announced a reunion concert. Due to take place in the summer of 2025, this will be Liam and Noel Gallagher's first show together in 16 years, and the endless drama around the two brothers has been so great that their reunion is a can't-miss event. Tickets sold out as soon as they went on sale, of course, and I can't help thinking that the timing of their reunion is perfectly calculated to hit those nostalgia buttons.
Videogame Remakes
Indeed, nostalgia has become a powerful driver in the entertainment business. In videogames, we see remakes and remasters of older games, sometimes to the point of ludicrousness — what, another version of The Last of Us??
Yes, there is a cynical side to the rehashing of existing products. Remasters and remakes often require a lighter investment than creating something brand new and original. That makes them a relatively quick cash cow. But it can also be really nice to see an old classic come back in a modern form — especially when it comes to console games, which are generally locked to the platform they were released on and unplayable for modern audiences without a rerelease.
In August, our teams at IGN got their first opportunity to go hands-on with two remakes from Konami: Metal Gear Solid 3 and Silent Hill 2. Each of these two sequels is the most popular entry in their respective series, decades old. Konami has rebuilt them from the ground up for modern audiences. And the response to both was generally positive.
The Silent Hill 2 remake is currently being developed by the Polish horror game studio Bloober Team. It is overseen by original team members including creature designer Masahiro Ito and composer Akira Yamaoka. IGN Japan's reporter Koji Fukuyama wrote of the game, "It's impressive how the developers have managed to establish a fresh play feel by introducing new ideas, while respecting the spirit of the original."
Staying True to the Formula
The newly renamed Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater is a more complex beast. The series is tightly connected with its creator, Hideo Kojima. He is one of gaming's most celebrated auteur developers, who left Konami in acrimony in 2015. Kojima's loyal fans are highly sensitive about the treatment of the Metal Gear series in his absence, and Konami has not risked continuing Kojima's epic Metal Gear story without him.
But remakes are safer ground, and Konami appears to be treading carefully. IGN recently played a demo of the remake, which is being made in conjunction with developer Virtuos, and noted that the game doesn't mess with the formula, for better or for worse.
"This new, Kojima-less Metal Gear Solid Delta seems more like a very shiny HD remaster than the elegant remake it could have been," wrote IGN's Matt Purslow. "It's an admittedly beautiful nostalgia trip, but almost faithful to a fault."
Revamped for Modern Gamers
Sometimes old games come back for reasons other than nostalgia. During gamescom, a super-sized videogame expo held in Cologne, Germany in August, I got to play a demo of the newly remastered Shadows of the Damned. The 2011 game is from Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami and No More Heroes creator Goichi Suda, published back then by Electronic Arts.
I played the original version of this OTT action-heavy splatterfest back in the day, and I loved it. But over the years we learned that the vision of its two creators had been tempered by the commercial desires of its publisher. While fondly remembered by fans, the game was far from a hit. Under normal circumstances, it might not be making a comeback today.
But Suda and his studio Grasshopper Manufacture, which was acquired in 2021 by Chinese gaming giant NetEase, now find themselves with the resources to cut a deal with EA and rerelease it themselves. As a result, Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered is a labor of love, carefully reworked to meet the expectations of modern gamers.
So invested are Mikami and Suda in this new version that they even attended gamescom in person, holding fan meet'n'greets on the show floor. For legendary developer Mikami in particular, this was an extremely rare occurrence. While the quality of the demo I played at gamescom was fantastic, it felt even better to see these two developers energized by the return of a game they made together all those years ago.
How about the Younger Generation?
I also saw a demo of Dying Light: The Beast, a new game in the Dying Light series that brings back the series' original protagonist Kyle Crane, along with Roger Craig Smith, the voice actor who brought him to life in the first game. While this is a brand-new game in a new location and with new takes on the series' zombie-bashing parkour action, bringing back Kyle is a welcome piece of fan service that will give the game the edge in terms of both story and sales.
Still, there is always a risk around selling a game or a movie on nostalgia alone. Most notably: Will the younger generation care?
A case in point is Indiana Jones. In 2023 we got a new entry in this storied movie series, The Dial of Destiny. Harrison Ford reprised his role some 15 since the previous film and 42 since he first brandished his iconic fedora hat and whip.
So confident in the strength of the Indy IP was Lucasfilm that it spent some $295 million USD making the movie, but it failed to connect with modern audiences. For anyone not already familiar with Indy — the original tomb raider, explorer of the uncharted — it was not a compelling film. (I enjoyed it, but I'm old.)
Classic Icons with a Modern Twist
In December, Bethesda will release a new Indiana Jones game, The Great Circle. Developed by MachineGames, the studio behind the classic Nazi-blasting Wolfenstein series, the game looks fantastic. New gameplay shown during gamescom's Opening Night Live showcased promising action and spectacle in buckets and witty humor in spades. But will the Indy title and its offer to play as a photorealistic Harrison Ford serve as a help or a hindrance, especially among the younger generation of gamers? We'll find out in December.
August also brought us a new film in the Alien franchise, Alien: Romulus. Directed by Fede Álvarez, the first new director to helm an Alien movie since Jean-Pierre Jeunet in 1997, Romulus fulfils a similar role as The Force Awakens did for the Star Wars series. Álvarez expertly weaves elements from the first two Alien movies with concepts from Ridley Scott's Prometheus prequels, while also adding his own flair for creating tense horror sequences. The result is an enjoyable film that tips perhaps slightly too far into fan service, recycling one too many ideas from previous films in the series.
Still, while Romulus does undoubtedly offer plenty of nostalgia for older fans like myself, I appreciate that it introduces a whole new cast of young actors. The film focuses on a group of early twenty-somethings who seek to escape the misery of life on a mining colony planet that never sees daylight. They venture off into space — only to find themselves face to face with HR Geiger's vicious xenomorph.
The young cast has strong chemistry, and helped this retread of a classic story to feel more modern and fun.
The Business of Nostalgia
While I was in London, I found a book by Brian Box Brown titled The He-Man Effect: How American Toymakers Sold You Your Childhood. It explains how Generation X kids like myself were expertly primed by the marketers of the 1980s to worship cartoon heroes like He-Man, The Real Ghostbusters, Transformers, GI Joe, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles . These shows were accompanied by toys that allowed us to play out the adventures we saw on TV in our own homes. Indeed, this format was pioneered by George Lucas and Star Wars, and I will happily admit to being a willing victim.
Seeing Brown's book on the shelf at a London bookstore was a reminder of how the nostalgia business is only growing stronger as the years go by. Finding ways to appeal to both the older and younger generations will be a challenge that makers of games and movies — and even venerated Mancunian rock-star siblings — increasingly face in the years to come.
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Author: Daniel Robson
Daniel Robson is the chief editor of videogame news site IGN Japan. Read his series Gamer's World on JAPAN Forward, and find him on X (formerly Twitter).
