Unpacking the power of nostalgia, block by block
Sometimes – when you’ve just seen the third stor y within a week about a bunch of talented, hard-working game developers being laid off for no fault of their own, for example, or maybe you’ve accidentally broken a ver y important rule and allowed yourself to notice the honking opinions of some dickhead on the Internet – it’s a good idea to sit down and load up one of your old favourite videogames. Even if it’s something ostensibly as challenging as Dark Souls, spending some time with a game that has given you so much pleasure in the past can be just the balm required when ever ything else is feeling just a bit too much. The comfort found in familiarity is, after all, why we say that there is no place like home. It’s why proper relaxation involves a beloved album we’ve heard a thousand times rather than what Spotify’s algorithms think we might like, and why Netflix paid $100m for one-year rights to show its subscribers re-runs of Friends. And it’s why collections of pixels such as those on this issue’s cover have a special kind of resonance with people of a certain vintage.