So here's two things been on my mind that I'm not sure fit this thread but here you go.
First of all... I've kinda gotten to hate modern terminology, especially in video games.
Here's an example of what I mean:
How it would've been described in the 1990s - "So this video game, it's kind of an exploration game--think Super Metroid--but during it, you have to sometimes pick up these items which can be combined with other items to form weapons, but also you have a hunger meter you have to keep full by taking risks and eating dead aliens, who may or may not be poisonous..." [I'm not describing a real game here, this hypothetical is just to give you an idea of how we used to talk]
How it would be described today - "It's a Metroidvania with Crafting and Survival Sim elements."
I dunno how best to put it, except to say, the older way sounds to me more "alive" and interesting, and can make a concept feel more alive (there's a word I'm going to overuse into irrelevancy) and interesting, while the modern way has a strange way of making everything have this dead, done-before, boring feel to it.
But it also sucks on another level: the more wordy descriptions actually
tell me something about the game. The latter just use a bunch of buzzwords.
Actually, screw hypotheticals, I just came up with a real example of something like this... I was watching both Gggmanlives' and LGR's reviews of Serious Sam. Gggmanlives described it as being an "arena-style shooter." Whatever the hell that means. LGR instead described it as "like Smash TV but in first person." Okay, THAT clicked with me and gave me a more solid idea of what the game was (granted, these were videos so I got the idea from the visuals, but I still feel like LGR did a better job here).
....
On a related note, I recently made a blog post about
times I've interacted with people who were INCREDIBLY stupid. There's three stories there, but here's a fourth:
So in one online discussion, I used a hypothetical just like I did above... only to immediately have someone accuse me of using a strawman. I tried (gently) to explain to them that hypotheticals aren't strawmen, and if the hypothetical is illustrating a thing most people can agree actually happens (which you can go to websites like TV Tropes or even GOG and see several examples right up front) then its valid... they proceeded to start splitting hairs, and also claimed that
they had never seen it so it must not be all that widespread... at which point I suspected the person was either a moron or was intentionally trying to start a fight (and to be fair this was a person known for that).
I do hate how the internet seems to have come with a corresponding drop in human intelligence.
....
But actually, Subject #2 I wanted to talk about was... I kinda brought this up in the Sonic thread but I'm iffy on the whole "retro" thing and things that seemingly exist to inspire nostalgia.
On a personal level, my problem is two things--one, repeating something I said before, for me the past never really went away, so such things inherently have less appeal to me.
But on another level, one that continues to grow... well, a lot of retro-throwbacks tend to represent things I myself somehow missed.
Like take Thor Ragnarok... its marketing was apparently meant to play up an "eighties aesthetic." But it didn't resemble any eighties
I knew. Granted, that's probably because I missed a lot of live-action movies (I didn't even see Star Wars until the VHS releases, the ones from immediately
before the special editions, when they were claiming this would be the original theatrical trilogy's last-ever home video release). I can detect stuff like having old-fashioned game-style cutscenes like what you would see in Ninja Gaiden, but other than stuff that is a specific reference, most of it feels very...
.... The I can think of is the feeling some retro attempts leave me is similar to that episode of Futurama (a show I don't watch so I only know this ep via clips which used it to illustrate a similar point) where Fry goes to the moon with his friends and while they're enjoying the fantasy, he can't help but be put off by all the inaccuracies ("he wasn't making an optimistic speech, he was threatening to beat his wife!").
I've heard of a similar phenomenon involving Silver Age comic books, where a lot of writers try to do "Silver Age style" but because they've played it down to a "type," they end up exaggerating certain elements while downplaying other, more interesting stuff, and as such what you end up with is almost more a parody than anything.
Well, now I got away from talking about video games. Ironically, 80s media (especially cartoons) were what they were largely because they were trying to stand out and be individual more than anything. Its no wonder the decade is constantly mined for inspiration.
... That said, I feel like the 1990s gets a bum rap. I mean, I used to hate the 1990s when they were in, but then I remember that was the decade where gaming really got interesting and when I discovered anime (and I'll always consider the pre-Pokemon era something of a golden age, for reasons best left to another post) and I mean the 90s had plenty of its own great movies and cartoons too... many of which tend to not be remembered fondly or even at all, for reasons I can't fathom. I mean, I hear more people talk about some obscure eighties action flicks than about, say, The Mask (the Jim Carrey movie), and The Mask is awesome what's wrong with you.
Well, that's my ramble.