[richforrester]

It's the coolest trick our minds played on us.

Think back to the Nes and SNes era (apologies, I'm a Nintendo fanboy) and the booklets you always got with them. You might recall those booklets had character art in them.

I'm fairly convinced that because of that type of artwork, in combination with a lively fantasy, we recall our childhood heroes as real beings, rather than polygons or even pixels on a screen.

This, in combination with the power of empathy, has resulted in lively memories of heroes and villains duking it out in epic battles... that when revisited can take a while to get back into :)

[brandnewlow]

I wholeheartedly agree. The art in the original Zelda manual let my brain paint over the graphics with something much more evocative. The anticipation I felt the first time I leafed through it is a vivid childhood memory. My sense of adventure was stoked!

http://www.infendo.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/1277784470...