Hypnospace Outlaw Is Exposing Gen Z Kids to the Gaming Generation They Missed

Have you ever had a family member that loves their childhood and just won’t shut up about it? Like the uncle that peaked in high school that could go on for days about his old football career, or your mom who just keeps telling stories of what a rebel she was way back when but no matter what it is they talk about you start to hate it? Well sadly the passage of time affects us all and eventually, our generation becomes those people and it seems like the current shtick is 90’s video games. Don’t get me wrong, I totally appreciate that generation for giving us some amazing storytelling and paving the way for so many amazing games, the Monkey Island games, the Doom series, this was the generation where console gaming hit its stride so I will forever be eternally grateful. What you have to admit though is that some of these games tend to be kinda……………. hard to digest as gaming advances more and more. As such it’s hard to expose the newer generations to the storytelling that make modern gaming so great, enter Hypnospace Outlaw.

If there was ever a game that could sum up the 1990’s while still keeping things feeling fresh it’s HO, there has probably never been a game more befitting to the ’90s than this one. What is most startling about this game is that it nails exactly what it is trying to be, the perfect mix of something old and new, keeping the aesthetic on point but still bring the content without feeling worn out or stale. The weird, crazy, pixelated world that Hypnospace Outlaw throws you into feels like the entire 1990s were distilled into a single magnificent if small game, that makes you miss Star Trek: The Next Generation and Surge (which is coming back by the way), but what is really weird is that this isn’t a new concept. In the same vein, Ready Player One and other TV shows and media in general have attempted to boil down entire generations into consumable little bits of culture that you can binge in a weekend.

Whether or not this becomes more of a trend or not really has no influence here but what I can say is that nothing sets the standard for 90s gaming culture like Hypnospace Outlaw so the rest of pop culture can find other things to distill. It has already been perfected here.