Your strongest experiences of nostalgia

[bartholen_v1legacy]

(After a few years, it feels like all threads I make are "Your most X thing" type threads. Just a bit of self-consciousness kicking in)

I feel the title doesn't warrant much explanation. Share your strongest experiences of sweet nostalgia, be it a comic, song, movie, book, place, person or getting kicked in the nuts.

For a mean-spirited asshole like myself these experiences have been fairly rare. Most of the things I watched/played as a kid I've either watched multiple times and therefore immune to nostalgia, have recognized being crap in the first place, or just lost to history. But one experience still stands as the best rush of nostalgia I've ever felt.

That being the opening to Vision of Escaflowne


I watched the series again after having not seen it in 8 years during my military service. The instant I heard that piano opening I was hurled back in time to the fifth grade, and felt the wonder of discovering it again. Escaflowne was my first experience with animated series, western or otherwise, that wasn't kids' stuff or family friendly. It had dragons, swords, blood, war, giant robots and epic battles, and it blew my 11-year old mind. But after I watched it to the end with my friend it kind of disappeared from my mind, until the aforementioned rewatch. And not only was the series a total trip down memory lane, turns out it's a genuinely damn good series, and my favorite anime to this day. As I write this, I'm listening to the theme song, and it still sends sweet tingles up my spine.

Similar experiences?

 

[Casual Shinji]

Mainly just a bunch of intros I watch on occasion, whenever I feel like escaping the present.

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This was the good stuff. Quality cartoons that weren't trying to sell you shit.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Video game title screens. They get me every time.

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[Johnny Novgorod]

I like those old VHS intros, usually followed by an anti-piracy disclaimer.

 

[Battenberg]

The PS1 startup sequence:


Also most the sound effects/ soundtrack from CTR, I wasted an insane amount of time on that game.

 

[FalloutJack]

A number of things, but at the moment...I wanna watch Voltron, seriously.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

WWE Network has RAWs and Smackdowns! from 1999. Particularly the block I was interested in was september 1999 into 2002. That was like the start of me watching wrestling, and you know they were all first run shows. They didn't air reruns. You saw it that week or you never did.

So being able to go back now, seeing The Rock and Sock connection has been great. I'm just about entering the best part now, December 1999 with the McMahon Helmsley Era.

 

[FPLOON]

Re-watching the original OVA of Tenchi Muyo... and realizing how much was actually shown on Toonami at the time... Although, the most consistent, in terms of nostalgia, is definitely the Lone remix of Bibio's All The Flowers...

Spoiler: Srewolf eht lla eciton t'ndid I Sruoh uoy koot ti hguoht neve dna

 

[Zhukov]

I was visiting my mum a while back and I happened to wander past my old primary school.

Did a quick walk around the grounds. (It was a weekend.)

That made me feel pretty nostalgic.

Also, all the playground equipment was way smaller than I remembered. Which makes sense, but still came as a surprise.

 

[the December King]

The Beach (2000) starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Makes me long for a YA period of my life... that never looked anything like the movie.

And Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998). That gentle rumination after Dr.Gonzo tries to get Raoul to kill him in the tub... I a) HAVE to have a drink in my hand for this movie and b) I will ALWAYS shed a tear during this moment. It cannot escape me, this feeling that I missed out on something just before my time, that was so magical that my parents still seem to be caught in the afterglow of it's majesty and wonder when they talk about it.

 

[Scarim Coral]

I suppose the last time I had that was watching 80's parody like Kung Fury, Moonbean City, the recent The Simspons intro (LA-Z Rider) and the recent Wander Over Yonder episode The Cartoon.

There were alot of moment that make me go "oh shit! I remember that/ I get that reference/ homage!"

 

[happyninja42]

Playing Life is Strange hit me with a huge bit of teenage nostalgia honestly. Despite the generational disconnect of terms and pop culture, it hit a lot of core elements of what it is to be young, that resonated pretty strongly with me. Not to mention that Chloe was a disturbingly accurate recreation of 2 girls I grew up with, fused into a hybrid teenager.

Listening to certain songs and albums, such as:

Spoiler

This song actually reminds me of the girls that Chloe reminds me of.

Monster Magnet's album Dopes to Infinity also does that to me. Pretty much the whole damn thing yanks me back to 1995.

And this song. Holy shit this song. It's rooted in the base of my brain. It's hard to describe what it does to my headspace, but it's definitely got some nostalgia to it.

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[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Nothing quite brings the near-tears of nostalgia memories to my eyes quite so strongly as this.


That game was one of the few bright spots in my life during high school. My friends (who went to a different school) and I dropped hundreds of hours on this game. HUNDREDS. And not one was wasted. So many good memories, from finding our first Special Weapon, to finally reaching Dark Falz, to tackling the harder modes, to our first shocking experience on Ultimate Mode, to that final time we played it, well into College, where we Finally beat the last boss on the hardest mode.

I have a nostalgia passion for this game that remains unabated to the present day, warts and all. And as awesome as PSO2 is, and as much as it RADICALLY improves everything (My friends and I are running a fan-translated patch), it's just not the same, although I suppose that's mostly because we don't have as much free time as we used to, so we rarely ever have a chance to play together.

A close second on the nostalgia-o-meter is Golden Sun. Another game that got me through High School. I know it's a standard JRPG and it's nothing really THAT special, and that it's really easy. But it's a fantastic example of that old school charm brought into slightly modern day. (Which is why Dark Dawn really made me sad when it was just outright lame).

...Actually, on a slightly more personal note about Golden Sun,

Spoiler: Gets a bit personal here

at one point in high school things got so outright bad that I once seriously contemplated suicide for a moment, only to aggressively reject it. A month later I realized "holy crap...A month ago I thought about ending it all. And look what I would have missed if I had. Some fun days with friends, some good time with family, and the official announcement in Nintendo Power of Golden Sun Part 2. ...I'm never seriously considering death ever again. There's just too much I'd miss out on!" I kid you not, sad as it sounds. XD

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Smell of freshly cut grass, x-files and certain musics. Not games so much. Maybe some N64 titles, gaming was not an early childhood entertainment availability.t

 

[Poetic Nova]

Spoiler: Donkey Kong Land

First ever non-Mario game I've played. its still one of my favorite games and hearing the soundtrack alone is already pretty nostalgic for me. One of the few things I can actually recall from before my 18th birthday, but that's a long, complicated story.

 

[Dizchu]

Doom is a game that has been with me since I was very young, and I play it pretty often. I don't really feel "nostalgic" by playing it anymore...

However, my first experience was playing it on the Playstation, and recently there was a mod that was able to replicate the Playstation port of Doom on PC, complete with the bonus levels. When I played this I had not played the version of Doom I had when I was a child for around 16 years, and doing so sent me into nostalgia overload. It's crazy, actually. It's still technically the same game I've always been familiar with but it was like returning to the past.

I believe the project is hosted on Doomworld, search for "PSX total conversion" or something along those lines.

 

[CeeBod]

I'm supposed to be packing for a big house move, but mostly I find I'm picking through all my old stuff and going "OMG the Paranoia rulebook ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_%28role-playing_game%29 ), I can remember playing that at secondary school 30 years ago! I must flick through it for a nice shot of nostalgia"; "All of the old Narnia books, shit I can't even remember the last time I read any of them, why do I still keep them? I'm gonna flick through them and see if I can remember any of it"; and so on for about 8 hours after which I realise I've only packed 14 books and 2 boardgames so far!

Nostalgia is such a pain! I'm sure it used to be so much better! p

 

[Poetic Nova]

Doom is a game that has been with me since I was very young, and I play it pretty often. I don't really feel "nostalgic" by playing it anymore...

However, my first experience was playing it on the Playstation, and recently there was a mod that was able to replicate the Playstation port of Doom on PC, complete with the bonus levels. When I played this I had not played the version of Doom I had when I was a child for around 16 years, and doing so sent me into nostalgia overload. It's crazy, actually. It's still technically the same game I've always been familiar with but it was like returning to the past.

I believe the project is hosted on Doomworld, search for "PSX total conversion" or something along those lines.

Now this tickles me fancy. I like Doom, but prefered the PS1 version for its sound, even if it didn't allow for saving onto the memorycard..