cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/13809164
Ignoring the lack of updates if the game is buggy, games back then were also more focused on quality and make gamers replay the game with unlockable features based on skills, not money. I can’t count the number of times I played Metal Gear Solid games over and over to unlock new features playing the hardest difficulty and with handicap features, and also to find Easter eggs. Speaking of Easter eggs, you’d lose a number of hours exploring every nook and cranny finding them!
Many years ago, you read an instruction book without knowing it was going to be your last.
Treasure every moment.
Why make people sad when you could just not?
How in the fuck has no one yet said:
No Microtransactions.
No Gacha Games (literally 50% of current year gaming).
No Games As A Subscription Service.
No Games With Perpetual DLC (that are each as expensive as other entire games).
Overall it was better, but you also had more macrotransactions.
Wanted to play as Vega in Street Fighter 2? Buy the whole game again.
What’s that - another character pack? Buy it a third time.
Are you talking about platform exclusive content?
I didn’t play very many old school fighting games.
As best I can, Vega was a boss in SF2, but a playable character in later iterations of the series.
If your complaint is that… games in popular IP /series will do fairly regular releases with not really too much substantially different between each one…
This is a thing that went on 20 years ago, and still goes on today.
Mario Kart 8… 9? 10?
Are we at Call at Duty 24 now, I think?
Hey, are you intetested in Madden… 31?
Pokemon versions… latest silly pair of opposing concepts?
Yeah this is dumb and stupid, but its not a thing that is different between nowadays, and ye olden days.
I think they were referencing that on SNES and Genesis Street Fighter 2 had multiple releases in quick succession that made minor changes to the game and added a couple characters.
Street Fighter II: Champion Edition released in March 1992 on Genesis
Street Fighter II: The World Warrior came out on June 10, 1992 on SNES
Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting came out on July 10, 1993 on SNES
Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers came out on September 14, 1993 for SNES/Genesis
Super Street Fighter II Turbo came out on February 23, 1994
Again these were all more or less the same game, sold at full price, that had minor gameplay changes between versions and added between 0-4 new characters each time.
Except there was no online play
That was a feature, not a limitation.
Eh, it really depends on the game. Obviously no game should be dependent on the internet to be playayble, but I do actually like playing against (or with) other people. Mario Kart with NPCs gets boring after a while, and unfortunately bringing friends over to my house to play games wasn’t really an option, so online it was. Splatoon is another one that has always been a delight, and while I love story mode obviously the AI can’t fight like a human.
I don’t really play shooters and stuff though.
Updates, too. Games had to actually be in their final state before they could be sold.
Not that they were a lot of the times…
Yea, people wanna act like games of the past didn’t have game breaking glitches and, since no updates, were stuck with working around them.
Missing No. anyone? PS2 Soul Calibur 3 glitch that wiped your entire Chronicles campaign (and sometimes even the ENTIRE PLAYER FILE) because of how the memory card wrote the data?
Hey! Missing No. was a feature for me
There are pros and cons, obviously. Getting a game that was extremely well tested and nearly bug free on day 1 was great. But, not all games were that well tested, and many had gameplay-breaking bugs that you just had to live with because there was no way to update them.
Nah, then you just plugged them into the “exploit the bugs hacking device” i.e the game genie, and enjoyed making things even more fucked up.
This is the biggest lie g*mers tell themselves. Unpatched bugs and exploits were more common and were just called DLC expansion packs.
Remind me what that one DLC for Lemmings was called?
Depends on whether standalone expansions are considered DLC. “Oh No, More Lemmings!”, and “Holiday Lemmings”. The Holiday packs are 91’, 92’, 93’, and 94’. I think a strategy guide had extra levels too. Also, the assorted ports of Lemmings sometimes had unique levels.
If you love Lemmings, I recommend the fan remake, NeoLemmix. It combines all the levels from every platform into a single game, plus with QOL improvements like rewinding by a step. There are also no duplicate levels for difficulty, so every level is unique. Some of the levels have bonus objectives you can go for, if achievements are your thing.
I always thought Lemmings would have been cool if they had released a good level editor and let people design their own. Might have turned into something like crossword puzzles where it just became a continuing thing with endless variety.
Alas, the IP is owned by a AAA company. Doomed to languish in the footnotes of history, all because it can’t make all the money. Given TLC, I think Lemmings could have been similar to Worms in longevity.
Lemmings is barely a $1.99 mobile game by today’s standards. It sold at release for 29.99 USD, which is 72 USD in today’s dollars.
Maybe pick one that makes a decent case for you.
DLC expansion packs
You might not believe this, but there was a time before DLC expansion packs. Super Mario World, I love you.
Games were far better when they didnt update every fucking day. I hate it so much.
Oh, and I actually OWNED the disc or cart I bought (before online activation shit)
Thats why i play a lot more ps2 Dreamcast and Xbox now. Fuck (most) modern games.
Reading the manual on the way home to get the back story and basic idea of how to play so when you actually started, you didn’t have to sit through a 20 minute cutscene and another 30 min tutorial showing you how to jump. Just straight into the action.
Older games were a lot simpler too. No loot boxes, multiple forms of currency - some of which could only be bought with real money, invasive DRM, season passes, content pulled back by selling it to you as DLC, extremely long game times artificially extended by things like mapping gimmicks, giant and almost barren worlds, unoptomized graphics requiring top of the line graphics cards that would still turn your room to a furnace, and massive amounts of bugs and glitches that may or may not be patched out at a later time.
Oh man, @Beep@lemmus.org is gonna be so pissed you kept Field Explores’ name in the comic.
I’m pretty sure this guys kink is being hated by everyone, don’t summon the troll, they’re jerking it to your hate.
They’re fun to mock, so that means everyone is happy!
I have zero issue if anyone wants to jerk off to me ;)
I require context.
Beep thinks that comic’s author’s name is an ad, and is against it, so they are in a crusade against crediting the authoe and always crops that part.
Christ, what an asshole.
Who summoned me—Beep, the undeclared king of the webcomics world?
Damn advertisements!
I pulled out my Ultima III cloth map from storage and made a frame for it to hang on the wall.
Cloth maps are the thing I miss the most.
When I was little I had my parents read to me from the Mario 3 instruction manual before going to bed.
Manuals were necessary because the games back then couldn’t fit a tutorial and, especially in the Atari days, the art didn’t always get across what was going on.
I too had my nose in the manual on the ride home. My parents had a rule that we couldn’t bring portable game systems (Game Gear in my case) on “short” car rides, so I’d sometimes bring a manual to look at.
I recommend Tunic if you’re nostalgic for game manuals
Regarding the text of the OP, that sense of discovery is gone now. The internet has ruined it. All the secrets get posted online within the first week, and there’s a wiki up in short order spoiling it for future players.
Regarding the last paragraph, developers have adapted, and now include more complex/obscure secrets meant to be shared by people and solved together. Though of course if players just look things up before even trying then you can’t stop them, but that’s their own fault.
The modern scourge are dataminers, who will immediately jump to digging through game files and spoil puzzles in the communities trying to solve them. Not all of them will do that, but it only takes one to ruin the fun.
Also Tunic is an absolute banger of a game, would recommend, just don’t spoil yourself!
This reminds me so much of that time I got Red Alert from my parents. I was so happy, until I figured out it was the expansion Red Alert: The Aftermath. I had to wait so long before I got the base game I probably read the instruction manual and cover 10 times over. But that was enough to keep me happy till I got the original.
Reminds of asking for Final Fantasy Tactics for Christmas. I didn’t realize the game was almost impossible to find until the Greatest Hits reprint.
My parents misunderstood and got me the strategy guide for Final Fantasy VIII. I think I was disappointed at the time, but I still got their money’s worth out of that book.
Shady computer stores used to do this shit on purpose knowing that the clueless parent they sold the expansion to would probably come back to get the base game.
That took me right back to picking up an A5 box of Goblins 2 at a radio rally and reading the booklet all the way home.
Vivid af
There’s no doubt that most new games are much better than most old games.
I and everyone else has the possibility to play the old games whenever they want. Most run on your phone.
Why don’t we do it? Marketing of course, but also, has anyone ever actually tried one of the old games that they haven’t played before? For example, I tried to play Ocarina of Time, and the controls as well as the graphics are terrible. So much shit is just plain annoying and clunky. Everyone decries it as “one of the best games”, but I can’t see how it is better than almost any modern action RPG.
The main reason why everyone likes it and other old games is nostalgia, almost nothing else.
Want full games without online play that are hard, you die, you try again? Play something like hollow knight/silksong. There’s so many easter eggs in so many games. You got more diversity in style of games now than ever.
No doubt there are also much more shitty games now. If you have a problem with games today, you’re just bad at picking the right one for you.
That depends on the definition of “better.” Don’t mistake me, I LOVE modern games but there was something magical about needing months to beat one game. And while old games didn’t have online components they were definitely a community effort. Siblings, neighbors, friends from school, all coming over and collaborated with to beat each game. Together we discovered every secret place and learned every trick. If someone figured something out it became local game lore and everyone would try to replicate it. We used to all pile in a room to play Mario bros and work together to knock out every level in an afternoon (if you you know), then run it again with the worp whistle trick because we could. There were games we never beat. Simon’s Quest haunted us (I looked it up as an adult and beat it on nesticle - screw you garlic merchant). But that was part of it too, we didn’t have the safety net of a search engine to bail us out when we got stuck. Frustrating? Yes. But it forced us to slow down and think about the challenges in front of us. It wasn’t better or worse, just different then now. (Also please try to keep in mind part of the reason your controls might feel clunky is the game was designed for a different controller then you are using).
That being said I will never miss that hinky as fuck Nintendo cartridge nonsense that required a ritual involving alcohol, prayer, and the breath of life to get it read a game cartridge. Fuck the NES - again if you know, you know.
These older games also pioneered a lot of things that are taken for granted in modern games. People decide to try these games and since a lot of mechanics and types of storytelling are the norm know, they don’t get the appeal.
Exactly. For their time, all these games were incredible, just not always compared to today.
OoT hasn’t aged the best, but it’s still a solid experience for a game that pioneered mainstream 3D graphics. The Ps1/N64 generation was all about innovation and experimentation, so it’s a bit unfair to judge those games so harshly. Now the Ps2/Gamecube gen was when things became refined. In the same franchise, Wind Waker is a retro game and still one of the absolute best in the series.
It’s a case by case basis. I’ve heard the Dynasty Warriors Origins is really good but I can’t speak for that since I haven’t played it. Other than that, compare the Ps2 musuo games to more modern ones like DW8/9, or the Pirate Warriors series. The classics are way more fun and engaging.
Or just look at Square Enix. Some of what they do now days is good, but most of their stuff is gacha-laden garbage now. Even their Pixel Remaster collection traded in a legacy of their own source code for a toy built in Unity, for a pseudo-classic experience that doesn’t even have the additional content of previous remasters.
Or, in the fps genre, I dare you to find a modern fps that’s as packed full of amazing content and features as Time Splitters 3: Future Perfect.
Pizza boy and melonds
No online play means gramps was playing video games before 1978. Or didn’t know about MUDs, MUSHes, and other online, multiplayer, text-based games.
Technically, even the SNES and Sega Genesis has quasi-“online” multiplayer and streaming back in the 90s. Tho, the SNES one was Japan only, and basically nobody had the Genesis service. 🤷♂️
As a kid in the early 90’s I had no concept of online games. They may have existed, but the home PC was not connected to the internet and played Carmen San Diego on floppy discs.
Ultima 3’s books were one of the first things I read in English: https://c64sets.com/details_db.html?id=4196
So awesome. And they got only better in 4-6.
And check this out: https://c64sets.com/details_db.html?id=4200 – “Sex: Male, Female or Other” – in a CRPG made in 1983. But those were different times: all RPGs were from Satan himself back then.
Sensible soccer is better than any modern football game. Fight me!
