E3 2015: Gaming Industry Finally Gets Nostalgia Appeal Right

This is the best E3 to someone who was born in the twilight of the 80s and has jogged in place on barely responsive mat-controllers in an attempt to compete in virtual track and field.

Anyone who has ever cried in frustration when losing a blue, red, or yellow Yoshi, having to settle for the mundane green one, thrown a controller against the wall when playing every water temple, and conquered a world with 151 pocket-sized creatures can rejoice.

Since I was a toddler, there has been a gaming console in my house. I have been around gaming for a while, and this is not the first E3 I've followed.

The biggest thing that stands out in E3 2015 is that the gaming industry is starting to get nostalgia appeal right; this was apparent when Square Enix revealed that they would be remaking Final Fantasy VII for the Play Station 4.

This is, mind you, not an HD Remaster. It's hard to imagine that selling well, moreover; the orbs that were Cloud's hands might be better pixelated, but they were still orbs.

This is also something that has been demanded by fans for years. There was a Final Fantasy VII renaissance in the mid-to-late 2000s, but a true remake of the original game never came out of it.

Instead, we got a game for the PSP, a movie that got mixed reviews, and a mediocre shooter starring Vincent Valentine--otherwise one of the coolest characters in the Final Fantasy VII universe.

When the PlayStation 3 tech demo was shown, it was teasing what the opening sequence to Final Fantasy VII would have looked like on the console's hardware. It sparked rumors, but nothing came of it.

This is an example of a recent trend in gaming. Companies are hearing fans, and they are making games that have been demanded for over a decade.

You know, like Shenmue III--that game that everybody said would never be created. I remember when Shenmue II came out. It was a time when my friends were raving about the openness of Grand Theft Auto III. You could do anything and go anywhere.

My parents, however, prohibited me from having that game--given I was 13 upon its release. So, I had to settle for Shenmue as a free-roaming alternative.

It had more loading screens than Grand Theft Auto III, which I played years later. That said, I wish my friends gave Shenmue II more time.

It had a grounded element to it, and that was something you didn't see in games at the time. To get clues about a person of interest's whereabouts, you asked random civilians.

You had to explore every crevice of a city in order to track down masters, and it had the same expansive feeling as Grand Theft Auto III--albeit with an eastern martial arts twist that made it more appealing to me.

Now, an installment of the game is coming to the eighth generation consoles, pending a successful Kickstarter. This is, however, something I'm not worried about. Look at Mighty No. 9; when fans want something, they'll put money--lots of it--toward its creation.

Finally, there is the announcement of backwards compatibility on the Xbox One. Microsoft needed this. The Xbox One was failing in the shadow of the PlayStation 4. All it had left was timed exclusives.

Now, however, it's doing something better than the PlayStation 4. On PlayStation Now, you can only stream games, and it costs money.

With all Xbox 360 games available for play on the One, Microsoft's flagship console becomes the PlayStation 2 of this decade.

Any game you want from across two generations is playable, and there are a lot of good Xbox 360 games that I have yet to play.

Well done, gaming industry. After years of HD Remakes that nobody asked for, nor wanted, and reissuing games that had been released a year prior, you hit two massive home runs out of the pre-existing brand park. I will likely be $120 poorer as a result of these two releases.

Who knows, I might even sell my Xbox 360 and get an Xbox One. Recore does, after all, look intriguing.