What is the problem with "nostalgia goggles"?

I don't know, isn't "nostalgia goggles" just a turn of phrase used to belittling someone else's opinion? Seems like it. Sure everyone has nostalgia for something, but it is rather dickish to assume that is the only/primary reason a person enjoys something.

Personally, the only game that nostalgia really factors in to my enjoyment is Fallout 3. For a few reason, it was my first experience with an "RPG", although I did really enjoy at the time, my tastes have evolved/changed as I've played more and more games, and have really developed my personally preferences and what I consider "good". A lot of aspects of Fallout 3 I now find pretty lacking and would otherwise be detrimental to my enjoyment if not for aforementioned nostalgia. 

The term has legitimacy when describing someone whose opinions of a given subject are governed by the emotions they feel about it rather than its own qualities. That’s fine to enjoy something like that, but it can make comparisons suffer.

Pretty much. As long as you stay realistic about the game you're being nostalgic about, there's nothing wrong with preferring it to newer games. However, when you start treating it as if it's God's gift to mankind and has absolutely no flaws whatsoever, that's when it becomes a problem.

I don't know there are probably some genuine examples of "nostalgia goggles" though, "nostalgia goggles" being the term used to describe viewing something through the lens of the idealistic and favorable representation of how something was from your memory rather than viewing it as it actually is.

A good example for me would be Secret of Mana, I had very fond memories of playing this game as a kid however on revisiting this game as an adult I don't know why I ever considered this a good game, of course it is still a good reference for sprite art in the 16bit era and the music still puts a smile on my face but the gameplay is soooo grindy, simple and boring and the story and characters are so laughably simple and shallow it might as well have been written by a child, I find it funny that people were actually surprised the remake was such a disaster because if you take a way the charm of the 16bit art style all you are left is the dull gameplay and shallow story.

Of course that is not to say that there aren't games that do stand the test of time and there are a lot of people who are too quick to label anyone with fond opinions of older games as having "nostalgia goggles", however I do think there are some genuine instances where nostalgia does skew our perception of certain things.

It's an interesting discussion. There is nothing wrong with nostalgia in general. I myself have dusted off my Sega Megadrive (you murricans know it as 'Genesis'; and yes I'm biased towards Sega's 16-bitter, since I didn't have any friends with a Super Nintendo oddly enough so I lack the experience with the 'most succesful console of all time') recently to try out play some classic games on it. A lot of them are pretty great to play even after all these years, but some others are a bit meh, or just aged terribly.

Though for some reason all those 2D platformers and SHMUPs seem to have aged a lot more gracefully than early 3D-stuff from the N64/PSX-generation in my opinion...

I think "nostalgia goggles" as a term is often used akin to the "rose-tainted glasses" for remembering something to being better than it actually was.

My example would be the "Shadow of the Beast"-games, especially the ludicrously hard and unfair second installment. They're often remembered for their great visuals (for the time) and awesome soundtrack, at least on the Amiga, even though they're severely flawed gameplay-wise. The third chapter is pretty decent though, but remained Amiga-exclusive...

Also in the eighties and early nineties most games were quite hard in general and maintained a overdose of 'trial-and-error' to artificially lengthen the game, forcing you to memorise every pixel to try and beat the game, which could be completed in under twenty minutes usually, if you were good enough that is...

There isn't much trial-and-error nowadays, and games are relatively easier and beatable than before. Probably because devs actually want you to see as much of the game as possible.

Not really, I'm fine. I remember buying AAA games "back-in-the-day" that were neither complete nor bugfree.

I have one for you though. 

True dat, Oblivion fans are silly cuz the best game in the series is actually Morrowind!

That said among Skyrim and Oblivion not sure I can really place one as weaker than the other, both games are fairly weak but I suppose in Oblivion at least you still have stuff like spell crafting and can play around with OP spell combinations and leap across the map and shit, Skyrim just strips it all away and replaces it with.......... well nothing really

Wonder about this question too. I regularly play the ME trilogy and anyway you slice and dice it ME 1 is outdated gameplay wise. So, with a remake would you address that or not? The game has so many "visual" mods to enhance that to my personal preference if EA would do a remake that particular point needs to be addressed for me to be even interested in buying. For others, it is a holy grail not to be touched.

As a 60+ person and if I watch series once fond of in my youth, well sorry times have really changed and they suck on so many levels. I learned that feeling is best left to nostalgia and simply cherish that memory since that moment in time is more than that series was alone.

...but the new seasons of The X Files ARE an utter embarrassment! I was a HUGE fan as a teenager. Like crazy obsessed. Granted, I haven't rewatched the show in maybe 10 years and I admit I'm a bit afraid it will ruin my memory of it. I have a feeling it hasn't aged well at all. But regardless, the new episodes have NONE of the charm of the old series. The actors have lost their spark too. They look old and tired. And from a technical side it also LOOKS so bad like high school kids filmed it and also wrote these messy scripts. My Struggle III has to be one of the worst hours in TV history. And that's not even getting into all the retcon shit on top of retcon shit they pulled to revive the cold dead body of this show. It's a disgusting nostalgia money grab and it's telling that Anderson refuses to do more seasons.

(No, I'm not triggered. OK, maybe a little.)

As for nostalgia in general. It's how we get through life, really. Only remembering the good stuff and always hoping for the best in the future, and then that future no matter how disappointing will eventually become the good old times anyway. Quite remarkable our brains.

One important aspect of evaluating older games is context. It's not just nostalgia that made us love games and TV shows that today look pretty stupid. AT THE TIME they WERE good. Not just to us but to a lot of people. You cannot go back to these things and feel the same way about them now or even make somebody younger understand them the way you once did because everything is different now. (I admit it makes me mad sometimes how everybody shits on ME1 these days because the gameplay is dated.) What people like changes, how things are done changes. These prochedural shows of the 90s were the standard back then and watching 90% of filler around badly implemented overarching narrative was normal. Today when I watch one of these old shows with a million episodes it's TEDIOUS. I hate that format now. Few shows like Farscape were amazing anyway (only watched it last year, one of the best shows ever made even from today's perspective) because they actually did have a very well constructed plot. Some modern shows like Elementary still use that 20+ episodes per season format and it bores the crap out of me. I like the characters, the acting and what actual continuous narrative there is about their personal lives. But these cases are so bland I don't even pay attention anymore. I watch that show in the background while doing other things, only perking up when there's a nice moment between Holmes and Watson.

Today most shows have 10-16 episodes of much condensed plot and THANK GOD for that. I don't have time anymore to waste on all that forgettable filler. I want my shows to have a continuous engaging plot. So yeah, I probably wouldn't enjoy The X Files as much anymore but at the time it was considered an amazing show and its legacy lives on in countless shows to this day. Scully was an icon to girls of my generation. Stuff like Babylon 5 is kinda cheesy nowadays but was extremely influential. I'm currently watching the 2004 remake of BSG which is great because it has a modern structure. I watched a few clips of the 70s series and omg does it look silly! Can't take it seriously anymore.

With games the difference is even more extreme because of technological advancement that goes beyond special effects and narrative structure of films/shows.
Ocarina of Time blew me away as a 12 year old. The idea that I could run around freely in a 3D world was mind-blowing and it even had a day/night cycle!! I can still recall that Christmas Eve I first started the game like it was yesterday. I don't even have to fire it up again to know that compared to open world games today it was pretty empty and the world super small.

Every medium evolves. Not always for the better. But gamers today have become MUCH more demanding. The current standards people are used to are pretty crazy if you compare it to what I was content with as a kid. Also, the first time you experience something it's always special. It doesn't matter how good it actually was. You had no frame of reference so it was an amazing experience. My first Final Fantasy was 8 too. So for me that one will always be one of the best. Those who started with, say, 7 will WILDLY disagree. Those who played the Nintendo titles often say the Playstation games were ALL garbage. The last FF game I played was 13 and that's when I realized I'm now too old for this childish stuff. (Personal disconnect, it's ok for other adults to still love this franchise.) I had a passing interest in 15 because of nostaglia for a while but when I saw actual gameplay I realized by taste had changed too much and I wouldn't enjoy it anymore. So I didn't buy it. I'm not even saying 15 is bad and the old games were much better because I know how cheesy they ALL were. Tidus and Yuna in the lagoon anyone? Goshhh, I would probably hate it as much as that godawful Snow/Serah romance that I found near unbearable. I LOVED FF10 at the time. It was the first game in the series that had voice acting. And that alone was another mind-blowing, life changing experience for me in terms of what I want and expect in videogames in the future. Compared to today's quality voice acting FF10 had pretty BAD voice acting. But at the time it was incredible.

Context is everything. And unless we played games and watched films when they were first released we will never fully understand what was so amazing about them at the time. We're missing that context, the technological accomplishment, the social and political climate of the time and all the other things that get mirrored in art and entertainment. We can read up on it, of course. And in terms of storytelling some things are timeless. But it's never the same thing as having been there. And because of this imo such nostalgia revivals like the new X Files episodes are bound to fail. You cannot recapture that magic. Its time has long passed.

I have nothing against nostalgia, I just make it a point to remember the parts that annoyed me.

I've seen people in the DA forums talk about needing to go back to the way classes and skills were in DAO and all I can think back to is how my favourite class, Rogue, got shafted compared to how it is in the following games.

It CLEARLY showed that he had no idea where he was going with all of this but until S6 it all made more or less sense to me. The movie put it all nicely into focus. It was about the alien invasion in 2012 and the syndicate working with the aliens in order to buy time and save their own families. That was good enough for me. It was STILL that plot at the very end of the show when CSM blew up. The details probably had a million plotholes that I can't recall anymore because it's all a bit hazy. But I thought the overall story was fine. I started watching when I was 12, so today I might find the writing a lot worse. ;P

Oh, and I've finally watched the S11 finale.

What a shit show. I feel Carter is leaving us with these cliff-hangers just so fans put pressure on the FOX network to create new seasons. I give up. As an X-Phile, I've resigned myself to being used and abused.

*runs to read fanfiction*