Retrogaming, giocare con la nostalgia = Retrogaming, playing with nostalgia

Abstract

The cultural practices related to video games - a relatively young communication medium - gained substantial relevance in the media system. They are characterized by a mix of regret and sadness because of the impossibility to go back to places, people and, in this case, interactions, which - although they belong to the sphere of the immaterial - are vividly laid out in memories. Nostalgia emphasizes a strong collective dimension in addition to his individual nature. Starting from the aesthetics of the ruin of Poe and the Romantics (Brancato, 2000), the nostalgia of pop culture fueled, especially in the last decade, an idealization of childhood and adolescent culture of the eighties and nineties of the twentieth century. This article aims to analyze the rise of this phenomenon, trying to understand the social dynamics that - in a market tending to hyperrealism and immersive virtual reality - push the players to remain romantically involved to the originals video games, in paradoxical contrast to the inherent fluidity of the medium.