i have recently had a deep nostalgic feeling for playing TF2 in high school. my computer struggling to load the game, heating up my room on a hot summer night with the window open, bugs chirping outside, ditching prom night in favor of getting aggressively micspammed with clips of the guy from the movie yelling "GARBAGE DAY". that loading screen art with the heavy, medic & spy that shows your class stats & time played is burned into my mind. the anticipation for the class updates back when games updating, at all, was still something of a novelty. the fervor that would erupt in a server when a hat would drop, back when that was the only way to get hats.
i don't MISS these days per se. i don't know what happened to many of the people i hung out with in TF2 in those days, and i don't want to know. i think what it is, is... other games i love, i've made a habit of replaying frequently. i don't feel "nostalgia" for katamari damacy or associate a time or a sense of place with it, because i have played it many different times under no special circumstances. TF2 was a game that took nearly a decade to stop growing and i can't really go back in time to the sniper vs. spy update and play that exact version of the game, at that time, with that community.
And honestly, good! that update was actually a lower point for the game, high school sucked, that community sucked. but it's a strong memory all the same. i can play TF2 and, its modern botting problems aside, it's still a great time - but it's not what it used to be, even if it what it used to be was worse. i don't miss it, but i sure remember it. 'tis a strange feeling to reckon with.