Does Nintendo Weaponize Nostalgia?
It may be all in your definition
There’s an argument that’s made the rounds in recent weeks that Nintendo is weaponizing nostalgia. There may be some truth to the idea. But just as one person’s asylum seeker or refugee is another’s terrorist or illegal alien, “weaponizing nostalgia” is only one framing of what Nintendo is doing.
For Nintendo to be able to tap into our nostalgia means that it’s provided its users with happy experiences to begin with. It means that it’s provided so much joy that remastering or reimagining its old titles is enough to generate excitement. And as the company builds an ever-expanding history to draw from, there are more and more people longing to revisit those games that defined their childhoods.
The controversy reminds me of a moment from my 10-year high school reunion in which a former classmate was asked to deliver a toast as another came up beside us and passed around shots of liquor. “… We’re here because something happened in our formative years that was good enough for us to want to be here now, and we just might be here in another ten years,” he announced with a mildly drunken levity before our glasses clinked together.
Just as high school was hardly perfect for anyone, Nintendo is a business at the end of the day. And just as our high school years came coupled with fads and rumors and standardized tests, the gaming giant has given a fair share of reasons for consumers to criticize the company in recent years. But when I stop to think about how many happy childhood memories stem from these colorful worlds, the question of whether to keep buying and playing Nintendo games is a lot like the one of whether or not my high school reunion was worth the measly price of admission. Were connections made during our youth that are worth holding onto, even if our times in those halls were sometimes conflicting?
Nintendo is responsible for enough positive memories that it leaves me willing to forgive them for “exploiting my vulnerabilities.” That the gaming titan has left so many soft spots inside of me is something to be thankful for, not to criticize. It’s all in perspective.
Oftentimes I feel that Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo alike can do no right in the eyes of video game enthusiasts. There’s always something we find to lambast. The world of book and movie reviews each have their share of tough critics, but I’d argue that no legion of entertainment fans are as jaded, cynical, and impossible to impress as gamers. If Nintendo stopped “weaponizing nostalgia” people would only criticize them for not remastering their personal roster of favorite games.
When Nintendo gives fans what they’re asking for and revitalizes a catalogue of titles dating back to the ‘80s, that’s when disgruntled gamers pull out terms like “weaponized nostalgia” to begin with. And when Nintendo innovates and does something new, they’re called out for not fulfilling the demands of 20 disparate factions of video game aficionados.
I’m always shocked by just how much vitriol runs rampant in these gaming communities. Few and far between are the fans who just sit back and appreciate how much these digital worlds have grown in the past few decades.
Cinema has come far since the ‘70s, it’s true. But looking at where the world of video games was then and now, it always astonishes me that such large swaths of us still find reasons to complain.
It’s from that vantage point that I always try to analyze games, and moreover, empathize with the artists and innovators behind them. The leap between the 2D planes of Pong and these fully realized 3D worlds equipped with maps, side quests, and flourishing online communities is too colossal to overstate.
That isn’t to say that every game should be judged by standards of another era, only that it takes a lot of time and effort to craft realms so sprawling that people can funnel entire years into them, and we should be far quicker to forgive their occasional flaws.
Much of the recent criticism leveled against Nintendo owes simply to the increased price they’re charging for games and consoles. But with inflation taken into account, it’s a fact as plain as day that nothing is unprecedented about these costs. With the tariff fiasco on top of everything else, there was every chance that the Nintendo Switch 2 would hit store shelves at a significantly higher price tag than the $450 being charged. By contrast, the PlayStation 3 launched in 2006 for $599 (nearly $1,000 in 2025). In the 1980s, games that contained only kilobytes of information retailed for as high as $150, adjusted for inflation.
Now, Nintendo is taking flak from fans for charging $80 for games that will almost invariably be over 10,000 times larger in their scope and file size. In a digital world where everything only seems to get worse and worse as the years go on, Nintendo gets painted unjustly as the villain too often. It’s remained the same in more ways than it’s given credit for. Its executives can occasionally be obstinate, and the company still makes many of the strange and stingy decisions that they did four decades ago, but it’s never stopped innovating. It never stopped finding ways to draw from, expand on, and pay homage to the legacy of games that its countless creators and collaborators have built.
The Nintendo Switch (2017) is the best selling home console the company has released to date, and it earned that title not through manipulation, but through an unparalleled library of games that can be found nowhere else. From The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, to Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Pikmin 4, Super Mario Odyssey, Super Mario Wonder, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, so many of the titles Nintendo has released within the past decade were lauded as the best and most comprehensive games in their respective series to date.
Nintendo is possessive of its intellectual property, it can’t be denied. They may even go to problematic lengths to protect it. But if that’s the biggest drawback of this rare force in the digital world that prioritizes fun above all else, the minds behind the company have no place being glommed in with the evil CEOs of the world. They’re not nefarious billionaires poisoning the planet and profiting off of our collective sickness.
When I scroll social media and see the absolute cesspool of AI and misinformation that tech titans have opened the door to, and the addiction they’ve unleashed on all of us, I’m thankful that companies like Nintendo still exist. The worlds it’s created are stimulating escapes from the toxic maelstrom of enshittification that’s swept every platform from Facebook and Twitter to Google and Ticketmaster, and they deserve far more praise than they’re given for sharing their games with the world.
I actually ordered that adapter from the link you sent me. Ready to play my Super Nintendo!!
Honored to hear that!! Hope it’s a blast!