Gone are the days where the only way to satisfy your hunger for nostalgia was to look through old photo albums or smelling Play-doh. These days, technology is here to hold our hand and guide us through the door to yesteryear. It really is remarkable how much nostalgia we have available now thanks to recent technologies. Let’s take a look at some of them.

Websites
It goes without saying that the internet in general, through the interface of the web browser, has probably had the biggest effect on our nostalgia. Whenever you think of any warm fuzzy memory, if you want to see a photo, or learn more info about it, you can just do a quick search in a browser and boom… your childhood in front of your eyes. The web browser is just a gateway to so many things. From movies to games, photos to video, information about anything, you can get it all. Whether you want to watch an old episode of the A-Team or stream the latest Netflix drama, play old retro arcade games such as Defender or play some online casinos Europe such as CasinoTop3, web browsers offer unique access to up to date content as well as classic old content.

Retro gaming emulators
Speaking of gaming… To many of us, nothing quite brings back our childhood than the sounds and graphics of a video game from our youth. Whether it’s a machine in an arcade such as Star Wars, a home micro computer such as the Commodore 64, or a home console like the Super Nintendo, many of hours were spent trying to beat these games. It really is amazing then that we can play any game we want, on almost any device we want, due to modern day emulation. There are emulators for almost every retro machine, and most of them can be run on any device, including your phone, a tablet, a PSP, a Nintendo DS, a Switch or a bespoke modern retro device such as an Anbernic. Normally the biggest challenge is trying to pick which game to play out of the thousands available.

MiSTer FPGA
If you’re interested in the aforementioned retro emulators, you should also look into the MiSTer. It’s not an emulator. It’s often called a ‘simulator’. Rather than emulating the computer or console in software, it is based on FPGA technology which simulates the actual original hardware. The FPGA chip reconfigures its gates to accurately represent and in essence ‘become’ identical to the original hardware’s chips, and then moments later can recreate the configuration of another chip. So you can authentically simulate multiple pieces of hardware with one FPGA board. It is the most authentic retro gaming experience you can have other than playing the original device. So if some of your old machines are dying of old age, this is the technology to turn to.

Digitised comics
One thing that obviously revolutionised the world of reading is the tablet. On your iPad you can now have thousands of books and magazines all on one tablet in your hand. And one genre of reading that is perfect for the iPad is the comic. Not only are digital comics a great way to read new comics but apps like Marvel Unlimited have pretty much got the entire back catalogue of the 60 year history of Marvel comics. All available at the touch of a button. Pretty mind blowing when you think about it.

Playing Fighting Fantasy on tablets
Another more specific example of how technology is not just letting us easily access things from the past but actually evolving them in some way, is the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks. These books were revolutionary when they came out. Similar to Choose Your Own Adventure books but they let you roll dice and fight monsters and develop a character. All great fun, and this made the natural leap to digital in recent years by allowing you to do all that on the tablet itself without any need for a pen, dice or holding your fingers in the pages to keep your place!

YouTube and Streaming services
I remember the days of hunting through car boot sales to find some old VHS of Terrahawks or The Man from U.N.C.L.E. It used to be hard to track things down. Some episodes of certain shows had fallen into myth, with many of us not sure exactly what was true and what was fiction. Then came YouTube and latterly streaming services. The entire back catalogue of most of our childhood shows are available at the press of a button. Whether it is Netflix, Disney+ or Amazon Prime, most shows you will want are available to stream.

Another good example of unlimited streaming history at your fingertips is the WWE Network. Rather than coveting an old Royal Rumble VHS we can now watch all the old pay-per-views and specials whenever we want.

eBay
And arguably the biggest one of them all. We have an app at our fingertips that lets us hunt for really rare and obscure retro items from all around the world, without us even having to leave the house.

Summary
The big question about all the above is, if we have all these retro memories available so easily, and being able look at our childhood stuff so regularly, does it water down some of the nostalgia which is normally heightened when we are relying on warm fuzzy memories from the past?

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