We Aren't Hiding, We Just Don't Want to Grow Up: The Real Reason for 90s Nostalgia
- AverageTrav
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
Updated: 20 hours ago
By Averagetrav, Co-Host of Cartridge and Quest
For most of the past year, my co-host Foodie Mike C and I have been doing the Cartridge and Quest podcast. We set out to talk about the games—and don't get me wrong, the SNES and N64 were a huge part of growing up in that era. But as we've looked at what actually resonates the most with our community, it’s surprisingly not always the games.
It’s the shared experiences.
It’s the weirdly specific things, like the freckle on the forearm that we all miraculously have. It’s the remembrance of LimeWire, and the absolute Russian Roulette we all played downloading viruses just to hear a Linkin Park song.
These are the topics that blow up the comments section. It got me thinking: Why are we so obsessed with this specific era?
The easy answer is that we’re sad about the state of the world and want to hide in the past. But I don't think that’s it. I don't think we’re hiding.
I think we’re just a generation of big kids who refuse to stop having fun. And honestly? We shouldn’t have to.
The Basement Sanctuary
If I close my eyes, I can still picture the perfect Saturday. You’re in the basement. Your buddies are there on the couch next to you. You’re hammering out levels in GoldenEye or Mario Kart.
The parents weren't really around. We were left to our own devices, and honestly, that was the point.
The safety of that environment didn't come from Mom and Dad being upstairs; it came from the friendships in that room. It was a bunker. It was us against the world. We didn't need supervision because we had the squad. That basement was a sanctuary where there were no bills, no 24/7 news cycle on a smartphone in your pocket, and the biggest stress in your life was whether you had enough controllers for everyone.
The "Monday Morning" Effect
Back then, we lived in a Monoculture. If Stone Cold Steve Austin drove a Zamboni to the ring on Raw, or if Seinfeld did something crazy, you knew for a fact that 100% of the kids on the school bus would be talking about it Monday morning.
We had a shared language.
Today, everyone is in their own little algorithmic bubble. You might be watching a show on Netflix that none of your friends have even heard of. We don't miss the lack of options; we miss the unity. We miss knowing that we were all experiencing the same "awesomeness" at the exact same time.
Boring Black Slabs vs. Atomic Purple
Look at your phone right now. It’s probably a black glass slab. It’s sleek, it’s powerful, and it is incredibly boring.
In the 90s, tech companies took risks. We had Atomic Purple GameBoys. We had see-through Macs. We had "radical" neon colors and grunge fonts. Companies weren't afraid to be loud.
I think a huge part of the nostalgia today is a reaction to how safe and minimalist modern design has become. We miss the personality. We miss the fact that things used to look like toys, in the best possible way.
Ownership vs. Leasing
Here is the scary part about the modern era: We don’t own anything.
We lease our music from Spotify. We lease our movies from Netflix. If the internet goes down, your library vanishes. But in the 90s? We owned it.
We had the physical cartridges. We had the CDs with the liner notes you could read. We had the VHS tapes. There was a ritual to it—driving to the rental store, hoping the copy was there, blowing into the cartridge to make it work. That tactile connection grounded those memories in the real world. We miss the feeling of holding our trophies on a shelf, rather than just having a login and password.
The Flavor of Memory
It’s not just about what we saw; it’s about what we tasted. Our eyes are dull these days because we stare at screens 12 hours a day. But our sense of smell and taste? That cuts right through the noise.
That’s why I’m working on Cocina Quest segments—because the second you taste Chicken in a Biskit with Cheese Whiz, or drink a Surge, you are instantly transported back to that basement. It’s a sensory time machine that 4K video just can’t replicate.
The Golden Era
People ask me if I hate all the Remakes coming out today—Resident Evil 4, Super Mario RPG, No way. I love them!
The fact that companies are spending millions of dollars to recreate games from 1998 proves one thing: We were right. That era wasn't just "nostalgic" because we were young; it was genuinely an era of quality, innovation, and risk-taking.
We aren't looking back because we’re scared of the future. We’re looking back because the 90s were awesome, and we’re smart enough to bring that energy forward with us.
If you’re tired of apologizing for living in the past and you're ready to embrace the Golden Era, come join the crew. We’re keeping the dream alive every single week.
Head over to Cartridge.Quest. Let’s get radical.
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