Pikmin 4 is all about collecting treasure. Of that treasure, it turns out the thing I treasure most is my Cobalt Blue Game Boy Advance SP.
Early on into the new Nintendo Switch sequel, you can find a virtual representation of the exact model of handheld on which I spent hundreds of hours playing games like Pokemon Sapphire and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. Nintendo’s graphics have always lagged behind Sony’s and Microsoft’s, but the game renders the little backlit handheld perfectly. Seeing and collecting the world’s tiniest laptop in Pikmin 4 was a real nostalgic treat in a game that has a whole lot going for it besides nostalgia. Pikmin 4 didn’t need to include my GBA SP, but I’m glad it did.
It’s always fun to see stuff like this in video games. PS5 launch title Astro’s Playroom came free on the console and served as a primer for Sony’s future. It demonstrated all the cool things that developers could do with the DualSense controller and featured musical odes like I’m Your GPU and SSD Speedway to explain the role of some of the key bits in the PS5’s innards. But it was also a monument to the company’s past, an interactive museum to all things PlayStation. As you explored, the game was full of collectibles memorializing the many consoles and peripherals that players have used across the history of Sony gaming.
There were the major milestones, like the PlayStation One and the DualShock 2. But there were also the weird one-offs that only dedicated longtime fans will remember, like the PS Eye Toy Camera. That was nostalgic for me in a tangential way — I remember seeing the Eye Toy advertised on Nickelodeon when I was a kid — but the most fun is seeing the perfect renders of the consoles you actually owned. Astro’s original PS3 collectible looks exactly like the one I’ve owned since 2007, the one that was my all-purpose media machine for years, sitting next to my mini fridge all through college, and which now only gets busted out on rare occasions if I want to play a Metal Gear Solid game.
Others, like the original PS4 model, are a reminder of how weird the consoles you didn’t own actually looked. First run consoles are always a little clunky. The original PS3 was huge, heavy, and weirdly sharp, but it has a special place in my heart. My original DS, which was gray and much chunkier than later models, is so clearly a product of its time, but in an endearing way. Other old products, the ones I didn’t own, just look weird, like the original Xbox or the hand-destroying Duke controller that came with it. Or the Virtual Boy, with its bizarre ergonomics and headache-inducing deep red tint. From the outside, these objects just seem strange, even unpleasant.
But, as Pikmin 4 and Astro’s Playroom have brought home for me, the main difference between something being pleasantly clunky or just plain ugly is often whether you have good memories with it. Playing games on the Game Boy Advance SP felt so much worse than playing games on the Switch. It was too tiny, and hurt my hands, which were too big for it even at ten years old. But, what can I say? I love it anyway. It may be trash for someone else, but for me and my Pikmin, it’s treasure.