To some degree I think my tastes are a response to a trend that I hated during my formative years. When the sixth generation of video game consoles came out when I was in high school (Dreamcast, PS2, GameCube, XBox), there was this sudden near-universal trend to make everything darker and edgier. Grand Theft Auto was making senators faint with concern, Sega gave Shadow the Hedgehog a gun and the ability to say "damn", Naughty Dog took Jak and Daxter from "Banjo-Kazooie on PS2" to "GTA-lite for edgy preteens", etc. etc. Everyone but Nintendo, who were cheerfully putting out Super Mario Sunshine, was doing it.

At the time, I was just starting to think of video games as an art form in addition to a source of entertainment, and the blatant fad-chasing I was seeing across nearly the entire industry turned my stomach. Of course the same thing had happened many times before and has happened many times since, but I wasn't in my formative years for any of those.