History Main / NostalgiaFilter

* In ''VideoGame/SamAndMaxTheDevilsPlayhouse'', Sam comes across a bucket of fish from the original Lucasarts game ''Hit The Road'' and fondly remembers how much simpler things were back then. Max quips that things were [[NintendoHard a LOT more complicated back then]].
* By the end of the {{Prequel}} ''VideoGame/RedDeadRedemption2 '', John Marston can barely stand to be around his mentor, Dutch Van Der Linde and was convinced he was EvilAllAlong but managed to hide it. However during the events of the first game that takes place twelve years later, ''VideoGame/RedDeadRedemption '', he holds fondness for him and thinks he genuinely changed post-SanitySlippage. It's unclear if this is something intentional or if it's something that came from them working backward and not having hammered out the events of his downfall before the first game that just simply works within the narrative.

* Arthur Geis of Rebel FM stated that the Platform/XboxLiveArcade game ''[[VideoGame/PerfectDark Perfect Dark HD]]'' was what gamers ''remembered'' what the original version of ''Perfect Dark'' was like.
* Similar to the above, this trope has also been discussed by some gaming commentators regarding the HD version of ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess''. When footage of the HD version was first released, some gamers complained that the new version barely looked any different from the 2006 original. Then when comparison videos were released showing that there is a pretty big difference in areas such as texture quality, lighting, shadows, anti-aliasing, and the HD version runs at a native resolution much higher than the original's 480p, people began to realize the "issue" is more that the HD version simply looks like how people ''remembered'' the 2006 original.
* IGN's [[http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/07/11/another-world-20th-anniversary-review strongly critical review]] of the 20th anniversary rerelease of ''VideoGame/AnotherWorld'' claims that, while it was a classic game in its time, the only reason why it's still a classic ''today'' is because of this trope, and that time and nostalgia have caused people to forget about the game's poor controls and frustrating gameplay.

* Crossing over with Meta above, this is why RetroGaming exists. The RetroGaming movement is the result of this trope getting tangled with TechnologyMarchesOn. Those bitten hard by the retrogaming bug will even go through great lengths to procure hardware and games they played in with their childhood, never mind if they actually developed a hatred of the game shortly after and forgot about it, due to the filter. Classicgaming.com even had a name for it: "happy sappy delusion syndrome", with the sappy part kicking in shortly after the reality incursion and the goggles self-destruct, and the hatred rediscovered.
* This is the whole reason behind the existence of ''VideoGame/ShovelKnight''. It's a {{Retraux}} game that borrows liberally from what are widely considered to be among the best games ever on the Platform/NintendoEntertainmentSystem.
* Defied in ''VideoGame/MassEffect2''. When Shepard asks Joker if he misses how things were in the first game, he's quick to point out that those only seem like "the good old days" in retrospect.

* The 61-year-old Reinhardt in ''VideoGame/{{Overwatch}}'' is not particularly fond of 2070's "techno music", and tries to get younger folks like his fellow Hero Lucio to listen to "the classics" such as [[Creator/DavidHasselhoff David Hasselhoff]].
* In ''VideoGame/GolfStory'', the [[GrumpyOldMan grumpy old golfers]] of Tidy Park have this going on. They reminisce about playing for leisure over the more modern concept of playing for a low score ("a tidy six is better than a messy four") and require members to use vintage clubs any time they're on the property.
* Invoked in ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedSyndicate''. When Shaun finds out the team are visiting London in 1868, he is ecstatic at the thought of being able to taste real London beers from the time before everything was taken over by soulless macrobreweries and brewing became a LowestCommonDenominator industry. However, he quickly comes to the realization that beer brewed before modern brewery advances (in 1868 single-strain yeast cultivation was still only doable in labs, and wouldn't become commercially viable for another decade, to start), food safety legislation, and industrial process controls is [[ATankardOfMooseUrine pretty universally terrible]]. Shaun laments that all the beers he gets to sample have "side notes of [[ItTastesLikeFeet sturgeon and the dark tears of a recently divorced ploughman]]" and wonders if the team are trolling him by reprogramming Helix to mess up his taste impressions.
* ''VideoGame/NightInTheWoods'' is set in the DyingTown of Possum Springs, which used to make most of its money off the mines, which have long since closed, leaving many of the residents broke and the old mom and pop shops to get squeezed out by huge chains. Many of the older residents reminisce about the good ol' days, when everyone had a job and things weren't so dire. However, learning more about the town's history makes it obvious that, as bad as things currently are, the good ol' days weren't all that good, either; the mines were dangerous, the workers were exploited and underpaid, and the town itself is built on hostile terrain that resulted in many deaths. [[spoiler:The Cult of the Black Goat justifies their HumanSacrifice by saying it'll restore the town to its former glory. Bea asks them, point-blank, if any of them ever actually worked in the mines. Unsurprisingly, none of them have.]]
* Pick any [[UnlicensedGame unlicensed gacha]] based on LongRunners like ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}''. Chances are it will remind the PlayerCharacter (and the audience) that some things from the franchise's past are great, like how in a ''Franchise/{{Digimon}}'' bootleg a character or the LoadingScreen will remind how fun [[Anime/DigimonAdventure summer with Digimon]] was.
* The reason why people will try to run retro gaming systems on a CRT, despite the display technology being obsolete since the mid 2000s isn't because of some Nostalgia Filter (though some may claim it's part of the experience). It's because a lot of developers designed the game's presentation around composite video artifacting and how [=CRTs=] display the image. For instance, the Sega Genesis couldn't do alpha blending like the SNES could, but by using color dithering patterns, the artist could get the efffect from composite artifacting which blends colors together. Another use was to use dithering to make the image look like it has more colors than the system was technically capable of, which can help avoid color banding. Without at least composite artifacting, you'll see how the pixels were really arranged, which may not look as pleasant.

* Arthur Geis of Rebel FM stated that the UsefulNotes/XboxLiveArcade game ''[[VideoGame/PerfectDark Perfect Dark HD]]'' was what gamers ''remembered'' what the original version of ''Perfect Dark'' was like.

* This is the whole reason behind the existence of ''VideoGame/ShovelKnight''. It's a {{Retraux}} game that borrows liberally from what are widely considered to be among the best games ever on the UsefulNotes/NintendoEntertainmentSystem.

** [[http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-bullshit-complaints-about-modern-rap-music "4 Bullshit Complaints About Modern Rap Music."]] Things like [[GlamRap party rap]], trend-hopping, and mediocre rappers getting airplay have always been around in rap music, even during UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfHipHop and the era of GangstaRap.

* When he [[http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/gears-of-war-review/1900-6161188/ originally reviewed]] ''VideoGame/GearsOfWar'' in 2006, Jeff Gerstmann showered it with praise and gave it a 9.6 out of 10 (on Gamespot's scale), but when he [[http://www.giantbomb.com/reviews/gears-of-war-ultimate-edition-review/1900-709/ returned to it]] for its [[UpdatedRerelease Ultimate Edition rerelease]] on UsefulNotes/XboxOne in 2015, nine years and countless [[TakeCover cover-based shooters]] later, he felt that it hadn't held up well, giving it just two stars out of five (on Website/GiantBomb's scale) and arguing that people's continued affection for it came down to this. With OnceOriginalNowCommon rendering its gameplay innovations old hat, its problems, such as [[ArtificialStupidity dumb AI]], repetitive gameplay, and a bare-bones online multiplayer mode, became more readily apparent, especially in light of its own sequels that managed to refine and improve upon its foundation.

* Creator/JamesRolfe, a.k.a. WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd, does this, too, but for video games. Because, sure, the 80s-90s generation have fond memories of playing ''Videogame/SuperMarioBros1'', ''Videogame/TheLegendOfZeldaI'' and ''Videogame/MegaMan1'' for the old UsefulNotes/{{NES}}... But the games that are fondly remembered are in no way indicative of the average production values back in those days, they were more like diamonds in a steaming heap of crap, and James made sure to remind us all of this fact by producing over 120 episodes dedicated to shitty games that suck ass.

->''"Even if the good old days never existed, the fact that we can conceive of such a world is, in fact, an affirmation of the human spirit. That the imagination of man is capable of creating the myth of a more open, more generous time is not a sign of our folly."''
-->-- '''Creator/OrsonWelles''' [[OlderThanTheyThink ca. 1969]]

See also GrowingUpSucks, NothingButHits, TheyDontMakeThemLikeTheyUsedTo, NostalgiaAintLikeItUsedToBe, VindicatedByHistory, and AppealToTradition. Another reason for this trope is that TrueArtIsAncient. Contrast CondemnedByHistory and TheyChangedItNowItSucks. DiscoDan can be what happens when someone puts the Filter on and refuses to take it off to the extent that they act like they're still living in their favourite time period. For a ''literal'' nostalgia filter, ses GreenBoyColor and DeliberatelyMonochrome.

See also GrowingUpSucks, NothingButHits, TheyDontMakeThemLikeTheyUsedTo, NostalgiaAintLikeItUsedToBe, VindicatedByHistory, and AppealToTradition. Another reason for this trope is that TrueArtIsAncient. Contrast CondemnedByHistory and TheyChangedItNowItSucks. DiscoDan can be what happens when someone puts the Filter on and refuses to take it off to the extent that they act like they're still living in their favourite time period.

* ''WebVideo/TheHappyVideoGameNerd'': Averted and/or subverted; HVGN proves that there really is some stuff in the past that is really good, some of it just got passed over. Played straight in his reviews of ''VideoGame/MegaMan9'' and ''[[VideoGame/MegaMan10 10]]''. He acknowledges that he rated ''9'' -- which helped kick off the recent {{Retraux}} trend -- as highly as he did partly for this specific reason. Now that "all that's old is new again" is getting...well, old again, he was able to take off his nostalgia-tinted lenses for ''10''. He does stand by his original review for ''9'', though, and cites other reasons why ''10'' is a weaker game.

* WebVideo/TheNostalgiaChick does this too, just with girly movies and the occasional male-geek-adored CultClassic like ''Film/Dune1984'' and the ''Film/{{Transformers}}'' film. She also did [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9dCWUuJZLw a video]] on how Creator/{{Disney}} built its brand around cuddly, feel-good nostalgia and historical revisionism, and how the film ''Film/SavingMrBanks'' explored this.

* Discussed in [[http://kotaku.com/5983704/two-major-features-every-retro-game-service-needs this article]] on Kotaku about how to improve "retro" gaming services like the UsefulNotes/PlayStation3's [[UsefulNotes/PlayStation PSOne Classics]].

* When he [[http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/gears-of-war-review/1900-6161188/ originally reviewed]] ''VideoGame/GearsOfWar'' in 2006, Jeff Gerstmann showered it with praise and gave it a 9.6 out of 10 (on Gamespot's scale), but when he [[http://www.giantbomb.com/reviews/gears-of-war-ultimate-edition-review/1900-709/ returned to it]] for its [[UpdatedRerelease Ultimate Edition rerelease]] on UsefulNotes/XboxOne in 2015, nine years and countless [[TakeCover cover-based shooters]] later, he felt that it hadn't held up well, giving it just two stars out of five (on Website/GiantBomb's scale) and arguing that people's continued affection for it came down to this. With SeinfeldIsUnfunny syndrome rendering its gameplay innovations old hat, its problems, such as [[ArtificialStupidity dumb AI]], repetitive gameplay, and a bare-bones online multiplayer mode, became more readily apparent, especially in light of its own sequels that managed to refine and improve upon its foundation.

* Music/GarthBrooks: Several of his songs recall past times, sometimes with wistful rememberance, sometimes bittersweet. Probably the best example of this trope was "Unanswered Prayers," his fourth No. 1 hit from early 1991. Here, a young man and his wife are at a high school football game when he encounters his high school sweetheart. As the young man introduces his former girlfriend to his wife, he remembers the time he was dating her (implied to be the most beautiful, most desirable girl in his class) and that, by constantly praying to God, one day he would marry her and they'd be together forever. As the two catch up with each other, they begin talking about old times and he soon realizes that "she wasn't quite the angel that I'd remembered in my dream," and "I can tell that time had changed me, in her eyes too, it seemed." After a short conversation the two depart and, while happy he has seen the former girlfrield again, the young man is thankful for the "unanswered prayers": He is now happily married to his wife and their life is content.

-->'''Todd:''' Yeah, remember that whenever your parents talk about how much better music was when they were kids, alright?

* WebVideo/ToddInTheShadows, in his ''Trainwreckords'' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPCJQ-6zlxQ&t=681s episode]] on Music/RingoStarr's 1977 album ''Ringo the 4th'', argued that this trope was a large part of the reason for the {{disco}} genre's reevaluation in the 2010s and the decline of the DiscoSucks trope. He acknowledges that there was a lot of reactionary culture war politics and outright bigotry involved in the anti-disco backlash of the late '70s and early '80s, which younger generations are right to point out when they focus on disco's roots in marginalized communities... but at the same time, disco really had gotten [[WolverinePublicity extremely overexposed]] by 1979, and most of the bad disco songs from back then, particularly the ones churned out by trend-chasing white rock musicians (like Ringo) and a record industry that saw the genre as their {{cash cow|Franchise}}, have been forgotten in favor of a winnowed playlist of a few dozen stone-cold classic disco songs.

* Troy Steele of ''Blog/BloggerBeware'' cited this trope in [[http://www.bloggerbeware.com/2011/04/series-2000-24-earth-geeks-must-go.html his review]] of ''Earth Geeks Must Go!'', the penultimate book in the ''Goosebumps 2000'' collection, as the reason why his reviews of the original-series ''Literature/{{Goosebumps}}'' books weren't as mean as he could've made them. In that particular review, Troy outright states that he felt "nostalgic glee" in reviewing the classic books, and that, while he does hate a few of them, he loved them as a child and used that love to prevent his reviews from being too cruel. In fact, he even explains that part of the reason the ''2000'' reviews got progressively meaner is because he didn't read them as a kid and didn't develop the same appreciation for them.

** "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E117TheIncredibleWorldOfHoraceFord The Incredible World of Horace Ford]]" has a toy designer who keeps lapsing into daydreams of his idyllic childhood while ignoring his slowly collapsing present. [[spoiler:In the end, it turns out he was repressing the memory of the day the other kids beat him up because they weren't invited to his birthday party, and he's forced to come to grips with the brutal truth that his childhood wasn't nearly the fairyland he wanted to believe it was.]]
** The Season 1 episode, "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E5WalkingDistance Walking Distance]]", had an advertising executive in Manhattan go back to the small town of his youth to relive parts of his childhood. While his childhood is shown as having been a happy time, his father tells him that it doesn't have to be the best time of his life and he can be equally happy with his current life in New York.
** In the comical episode "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E78OnceUponATime Once Upon A Time]]" Creator/BusterKeaton plays a janitor to a scientist in 1890 who uses a time-machine helmet to travel to a more peaceful, less hectic time - and ends up in the much worse (1960) present. He encounters a scientist who wishes to go back to the good old days of 1890, where they both end up back in. The janitor is glad to be back, but within a week the scientist laments the lack of all the amenities he knew.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E116OfLateIThinkOfCliffordville Of Late I Think Of Cliffordville]]", a CorruptCorporateExecutive makes a DealWithTheDevil to go back in time and re-live the fun of making his fortune. The lovely Cliffordville from his memories is not nearly as nice in reality, however, and the girl he always reminisced over is much less attractive and charming also. The Devil he made the deal with mocks him for indulging in this trope after he accuses her of altering the past, telling him that the past is exactly how it was -- it's his own fault for not remembering it right.

* Invoked in the "Reagan's Brain" strips in ''{{ComicStrip/Doonesbury}}'', where Reagan is said to [[https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/1980/10/31 suffer]] from "a severe perceptual disorder within the (visual) cortex," so that "instead of looking forward through clear eyes, Reagan is only able to see backwards through a rose-colored mist."

* The ''ComicBook/{{Archie|Comics}}'' comic [[http://www.misterkitty.org/extras/stupidcovers/stupidcomics210.html "Nostalgia Gets Ya!"]] plays this trope obnoxiously straight, talking about how much better life was back in TheGayNineties when policemen were always treated with respect, women were put on pedestals, and nobody worried about pollution.

Administrivia/InUniverseExamplesOnly. Pretty much any genre or form is subjected to this in RealLife, [[Administrivia/NoRealLifeExamplesPlease so such examples aren't really necessary.]] Plus, they're [[FlameBait very prone to age stereotyping]], [[NoRealLife/TooControversial which we don't want on this page.]] [[noreallife]]

* Toyed with in the ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'' episode "Legends," where the team meets a [[CaptainErsatz pastiche]] of the [[ComicBook/JusticeSocietyOfAmerica JSA]]. It's all about the fondly-remembered "Golden Age" but also includes casual sexism and racism, as Hawkgirl and Comicbook/GreenLantern encounter.
** It also hinted at the fear and panic felt in regards to nuclear annihilation. Furthermore, it turns out the heroes are all actually psychic manifestations of the original team, who died protecting the people from a nuclear attack. A boy who got mutated with psychic powers was forcing everyone to live like how it was before the attack, given a painful explanation. However, the [[{{Reconstruction}} team still proceed to go and save people to give them a future, at the cost of their own lives, just like the original.]] John himself lampshades it why he feels mourning for it, with Hawkwoman commenting that it was because they were heroes.

* "Baggy Trousers" (from ''Music/{{Absolutely}}'') and "Our House" (from ''Music/TheRiseAndFall'') are both nostalgic songs by Music/{{Madness|Band}} about their school boy days and living with their family at home. Despite being sentimental, they are also comical since they depict the children as having all kinds of hijinks and misbehaving.

* "Baggy Trousers" (from ''Music/{{Absolutely}}'') and "Our House" (from ''Music/TheRiseAndFall'') are both nostalgic songs by Music/{{Madness}} about their school boy days and living with their family at home. Despite being sentimental, they are also comical since they depict the children as having all kinds of hijinks and misbehaving.

People's tastes are influenced by the media they grew up with. This is most notable when ValuesDissonance comes into play: Modern day art may positively depict contemporary societal norms that would have been frowned on years before. Conversely, tastes often change as someone ages: what may have seemed brilliant to a child or teen would seem crude or laughable to most adults, but the memories of how great something from one's youth was seem to linger. And if a person's preference is for something that is out of fashion right now, they may have little choice besides "hang onto the older version" or "give up on it completely" if the genre is considered "dead."

Of course, this isn't to imply that newer is automatically better, or that the Nostalgia Filter applies in every single case. Sometimes the older work ''is'' better, or at least has its own appeal that the present things don't -- even beyond "Charm", which is often thrown around to describe stuff mostly to just mean, "It's nostalgic."

Of course, this doesn't imply that newer is automatically better or that the Nostalgia Filter applies to every single case. Sometimes the older work ''is'' better, or at least has its own appeal that the present things don't -- even beyond "Charm", which is often thrown around to describe stuff mostly to just mean, "It's nostalgic."

It may also be SturgeonsLaw combined with the passage of time: as new media is released, the vast majority will be mediocre or worse, but over time, a powerful selection pressure causes all but the best material (and in some infamous cases, the [[SoBadItsGood worst]]) to be rapidly forgotten, leaving an increasingly inaccurate impression of the overall quality.

People's tastes are influenced by the media they grew up with. This is most notable when ValuesDissonance comes into play: Modern day art may positively depict contemporary societal norms that would have been frowned on years before. Conversely, tastes often change as someone ages: what may have seemed brilliant to a child or teen would seem crude or laughable to most adults, but the memories of how great something from one's youth was seem to linger. And if a person's preference is for something that is out of fashion right now, they may have little choice besides 'hang onto the older version' or 'give up on it completely' if the genre is considered "dead."

Of course, this doesn't imply that newer is automatically better or that the Nostalgia Filter applies to every single case. Sometimes the older work ''is'' better, or at least has its own appeal that the present things don't -- even beyond "Charm", which is often thrown around to describe stuff mostly to just mean, "It's nostalgic".

The nostalgia filter is the tendency to view media created in your younger years as better than anything created after. In the words of Sam Viviano, art director of ''Magazine/{{MAD}}'': "''MAD'' was at its best whenever you first started reading it." A corollary to that is that, if you didn't like ''MAD'', it was at its best shortly ''before'' you started reading it.

The most impressionable time is during pre-adolescent, adolescent, and teenage years. These are the years where one is young and undistracted, or less distracted, by the full responsibilities of adulthood and the burdens of getting older. Additionally, for boys, it might be the years where although they had discovered girls, "getting laid" (or even getting girls to give them the time of day) was not a realistic aspect for many of them, thus they had a form of escapism.[[note]]This especially applies to nerds. And although no boys or girls should be sexually active at those ages, they could still at least "make out".[[/note]] Apart from schoolwork, they simply can afford time to absorb the pop culture or cult genre of the era.

[[caption-width-right:350:The nostalgia goggles you get today are crap; they were ''so'' much better back in ''my'' day.]]

** [[http://www.cracked.com/article_18983_5-complaints-about-modern-life-that-are-statistically-b.s..html "5 Complaints About Modern Life (That Are Statistically B.S.),"]] in which it's noted that complaints about the rising cost of living don't account for rising wages (though this one has become potentially discredited since while they both rise, it says nothing at the same rate,) that there was just as much LowestCommonDenominator pablum in pop culture then as there is now (the writer explicitly compares Film/TheThreeStooges to the cast of ''Series/{{Jackass}}''), that the '50s had ''way'' more processed food than we do now, that crime rates have plunged since the '80s, and that our memory of the '60s and '70s as a GoldenAge for pop music obscures all the now-forgotten crap that ''actually'' topped the charts back then (and that a lot of acts that are now classic [[VindicatedByHistory were dismissed at the time]]).

* Toyed with in the ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'' episode "Legends," where the team meets a [[CaptainErsatz pastiche]] of the [[ComicBook/JusticeSocietyOfAmerica JSA]]. It's all about the fondly-remembered "GoldenAge" but also includes casual sexism and racism, as Hawkgirl and Comicbook/GreenLantern encounter.