All of my favorite games this year are old

theverge.com:

By Andrew Webster, an entertainment editor covering streaming, virtual worlds, and every single Pokémon video game. Andrew joined The Verge in 2012, writing over 4,000 stories.

As I installed the original Final Fantasy, a game that first came out when I was three years old, on Sony’s most advanced console to date, I came to a realization: almost everything I’ve played this year has been old. Between the remakes, rereleases, and retro collections, it’s been a deluge of nostalgia. And I, for one, have welcomed it.

These kinds of releases are nothing new, of course. What’s been different through the early months is the sheer quantity of classic releases. Two of the biggest blockbusters so far this year — Dead Space and Resident Evil 4 — are remakes of titles from well over a decade ago. They’re both slick and gorgeous updates that don’t look out of place amongst modern big-budget releases, but part of what makes them so appealing is how straightforward they are. No open worlds full of endless quests or live service elements to keep you coming back. And most of those design decisions come down to their age, as these games were made in a very different time with very different expectations. In my review of the Resident Evil 4 remake, I called it “such a video game,” and I meant that as a compliment.

This trend has really forced itself on me over the last week or so. First, Capcom released a collection of the Mega Man Battle Network games, a series I always meant to play and never got around to. And this week, Nintendo launched its remake of the first two Advance Wars games, a series I dearly missed, while Square Enix brought its “pixel remaster” collection of the first sixFinal Fantasy games to the Switch and PlayStation. Add