The Might and Magic community are a group of nostalgic diehards. Whenever something new is created, complaints immediately abound that it is not the same as before; that some past game or feature was better. With the announcement of MMX: Legacy and the intention of "going back to the roots" as it were, I started thinking about this. Why do we have this tendency to criticize all that's new instead of welcoming the changes? Yes, I include myself; I have certainly moaned enough about the graphics and design decisions of the Ubisoft era, not to mention the online systems. Why can't we just leave the past for dead, move on and focus on what we have at the moment? Why compare the current with the ancient? Why not just focus on what is here; what is good and what is not?

I recently watched an interview with Eric Idle - I think he said it best - talking about the fans who want the Pythons back together. In short, he thinks they don't. He said it was like "The Beatles". When people say how much they wish the band would get back together: that means you want to be young again, not that you want those old fossils up on a stage, playing new songs.

I think it is much the same with the M&M fans. We don't necessarily want the old games remade (albeit games like the refurbished Baldur's Gate is certainly on my "to play" list): what I think many of us want is the feeling we had when we were playing the old games. Those days, sadly, are gone. Feeling nostalgic yet? Well, it's about to get worse - keep reading. No matter how much you could wish for it, there is no returning to the days when you were sitting in your old room with your IBM Aptiva or whatever it was, your mom cooking dinner for you, or when you were in your dorm room with a whole weekend ahead of you, with no other responsibility than the occasional trip to the fridge. Does that mean you cannot remember those days with fondness? Certainly not.

It does, however, mean that there is little point in singing the old refrain that "things were better in the old days" when it comes to the new games. I think that what we should be hoping for is not the exact same game remade; what we want is a return to the feeling we had once upon a time. Sadly, no game can recreate that exact feeling. However, I think it is possible to create something similar. The feeling of being immersed in the gameplay, the puzzles, the difficulty and the eating of pizza at 3 a.m. while still in front of your screen. When you played those old games you remember so fondly today, did you sit and think that it was better in the past? No, you immersed yourself in the game. The now.

That, I think, we can still achieve.