Nostalgia and Dark Cloud 2

What is your first memory? Try to think back as far as you possibly can. For some it may be some innocuous family event, maybe a birthday or a holiday. Others may remember something more traumatic or in my case you remember the time you dressed up as squirtle for Halloween, at least you think it was Squirtle. Now think back to the earliest thing you remember about video games. Its a lot easier no? Possibly for no simpler reason than video games entering your life at a later point. You may remember playing an arcade board for the first time, burgertime or galaga. I remember many nights staying up watching my brother play our old childhood consoles. From PSI to Gamecube to PS2. An assortment of games and memories, Simpson's Hit and Run. Worms 3D. Possibly the one I remember most is Dark Cloud 2. And I really want to talk about why.

DARK CHRONICLES?

As the name would imply, DarkCloud 2 is the second in a far too short series of games called Dark Cloud. The second game being called Dark Chronicle outside of the US. The games have similar themes of traveling a world rebuilding towns and villages along the way and making decisions that alter the future of the world. Something that is usually implied and less literal in games, “The Future”, is a game mechanic in itself in Dark Cloud 2. At some point in the game you will be given the power to travel into the future of the very place you’re working to rebuild and see the direct effect of your actions in the present. I don’t want to spoil to much about the nature of how or why because I truly think everyone should play this game and see for themselves the wonder of it all. And thats just the crux of it, wonder, I'm left to this day with a feeling of wonder whenever I think of Dark Cloud 2. Yet lingering there, at the back of my brain well I reminisce on the amazing and so perfectly crafted soundtrack, is another feeling, not quite sadness but longing. I think of the games I play today and how they lack the mechanical substance and pure love for the arts that a game from the 2000s captured so perfectly. Was it truly the game I thought was great or just the time I played it? I yearned to examine the differences in my life now and my childhood then and bridge a gap where the only really conceivable similarity is me and Dark Cloud 2.

Max and Monica

DARK TINTED GLASSES

To say things have changed since I last played Dark Cloud 2 would be an understatement. For one I am almost 20 years older now then I was when I first even saw my brother playing Dark Cloud 2. We would sit there for hours, him playing and me watching hoping to one day have the controller passed to me. I imagined some right of passage or great pilgrimage in my head, to prove my worth. In reality I moved across the country well he stayed in our hometown to finish his schooling, thats when I realized I had fallen into the responsibility I longed for. In a way not much has changed between us. I moved back across the country when I graduated high school and live near him now and frequently enjoy his company, absent of Dark Cloud 2, but never bereft of beers or laughter. Love you J

When I booted up Dark Cloud 2 for the first time since those long gone days. I was awash with nostalgia. The music, the title screen, even the sound it made when you moved the selector between new game and continue. It all felt like… home. I was there on the white carpet of our upstairs living room, the snow outside piled up past our downstairs door, no school. For all intents and purposes trapped, but there was nowhere else Id rather be. Art has a special power to transport us, to places we've been before, places we yearn to be or places our imagination can barely envision. It takes a masterwork though to place you where the artist intends, to look at or read or play any piece of art and feel, truly and deeply feel what the creator felt as it all came together.

THE TROUBLES

Life for me didn’t just change in location, but mindset. I find myself more open minded and so to say politically active, even in the smallest sense (it seems we as Americans try to make it as hard as possible to participate in the political process) than I had ever been before. Thus just as one plus one equals two. I also seem to find some things terribly hopeless or bleak. Bombarded by an everlasting barrage of hate filled media from every direction. Every single screen, website, app vying for my attention. It is mentally exhausting to exist in todays world. I have had to set parameters with myself for media consumption especially on the social media side. Or else that hopelessness I feel, because of climate change or elections or what have you, would cease to end. Thats great Ben, you get sad sometimes don't we all? And whats this got to do with Video Games or Nostalgia? Let me tell you.

What do we all, as humans, seek out when we find ourselves faced with or afraid of the unknown? Comfort. Nostalgia is maybe one of the most comforting feelings in the world. We remember what moms Macaroni and Cheese smelt like when it was still in the oven. Grandmas biscuits will always be the best in the world and they will ALWAYS taste the same. And The opening cut scene for Dark Cloud 2 with its immaculate score. Thats nostalgia. Its comforting to remember such moments because we were comforted by them then. Just as we are now. Nostalgia is a powerful tool in the fight for our own well being and sanity. So powerful its quite typically used as a reason for liking a piece of media that the greater conscious may deem “bad”. Yet thats not always the case. Especially with video games. If you asked any millennial gamer their most nostalgic game the answers are going to be so wide and varying from all different consoles and decades. Call of Duty 2 or even 4, Jak and Daxter, Super Mario (in any of its varying forms), Simpson's Hit and Run and some, particularly two brothers would say Dark Cloud 2.

That's not to say that the nostalgic video game has run its course and there wont be games now that will make people nostalgic in the future. Of course there will be, it will just change and the things we are nostalgic for in games will change with it. Some will decry loot boxes and micro transactions and swear they will bring about the end of the industry as a whole and take that nostalgia factor with it. Its just simple naivety. To say that games today are all cash grabs that have forgot themselves as an art form is insane and untrue. Some of the greatest games ever made have been within the last 10 years and more will surely come. We as critics and enjoyers of games should not let ourselves fall prey to absolutism that casts aside the many amazing works of people with true love and dedication to creating amazing

experiences.

The Greatest Minigame

In the end, the fact of the matter is that gaming has changed and we have changed along with it. We have grown older and more experienced we have all tried everything we could and found the things we like and look for in a game. Some of us have even gone so far as analyzing and perfecting the way we do play a game. All that being said, I find it useful to slow down sometimes and really enjoy the experience of playing a game. No matter if we are clouded by that nostalgic lens or not. Don’t let the rat race of the next hot thing get in the way of what you truly enjoy. Thanks for reading

- Ben