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[Gamer79]

When I could put my game in and play it right away (no need for long day 1 patches and downloads)

When a simple cheat code got me extras instead of nickle and Dime dlc.

When a game release finished and not broken waiting months for patches to fix them

When games felt unique and not formulated like most big name publishers push the safe route

When I dd not worry about my game being connected to the internet to work

When I didn't have to worry about a game developer shutting down servers making the game useless

 

[Danjin44]

 

[Mr Branding]

 

[MMaRsu]

 

[64bitmodels]

corniest thread on the site hands down

 

[killatopak]

Fondest memory I have is significantly less spoilers due to the internet. Discovering secrets by discussing with friends and at school. And believing my friend's uncle who works at Nintendo.

 

[bender]

 

[Meicyn]

I always roll my eyes at nostalgia bait like this thread.

I remember having to have different boot disks with different autoexec.bat and config.sys files because one game used an expanded memory manager, but another wanted to use an extended memory manager. One game wanted to use IRQ 5 while another wanted to use IRQ 7 for the Soundblaster card. Nothing was standardized. Yay DOS!

Sonic the Hedgehog cost $59.99 in 1991, which is the equivalent of $136 in today’s cash. Phantasy Star 4 debuted in 1994 for $100 at Babbage’s, which is the equivalent of about $226 in today’s cash.

Wing Commander 2 cost $89.99 when it released in 1991. The voice pack was separate and cost $20. Special Operations 1 and 2 expansions were also $20 a piece. Essentially, the complete Wing Commander 2 experience cost $150 in 1992, or $339 in today’s cash.

Ultima 9 Ascension launched and I couldn’t even install the game. The installer wouldn’t work on most PCs. Origin pushed out numerous patches, but most folks including myself couldn’t feasibly download them due to being on dial-up. Eventually they reached a final patch state and shipped that version to folks who had reached out to them at one point for support.

 

[Danjin44]

I always roll my eyes at nostalgia bait like this thread.

I remember having to have different boot disks with different autoexec.bat and config.sys files because one game used an expanded memory manager, but another wanted to use an extended memory manager. One game wanted to use IRQ 5 while another wanted to use IRQ 7 for the Soundblaster card. Nothing was standardized. Yay DOS!

Sonic the Hedgehog cost $59.99 in 1991, which is the equivalent of $136 in today’s cash. Phantasy Star 4 debuted in 1994 for $100 at Babbage’s, which is the equivalent of about $226 in today’s cash.

Wing Commander 2 cost $89.99 when it released in 1991. The voice pack was separate and cost $20. Special Operations 1 and 2 expansions were also $20 a piece. Essentially, the complete Wing Commander 2 experience cost $150 in 1992, or $339 in today’s cash.

Ultima 9 Ascension launched and I couldn’t even install the game. The installer wouldn’t work on most PCs. Origin pushed out numerous patches, but most folks including myself couldn’t feasibly download them due to being on dial-up. Eventually they reached a final patch state and shipped that version to folks who had reached out to them at one point for support.

People love to remember good parts but leave the bad parts out, the only difference is we currently living in age of internet so people can go online and whine about it.

 

[64bitmodels]

Easy way to trigger a NeoGAF user: Say new games are better than old ones!

EG: Mario Wonder is better than Mario World

 

[Crayon]

What you need is Mount & Blade. Or Armored Core. Or Guilty Gear, where the patching is worth it because the game can keep you rock hard for weeks months and years. Play the good ones.

 

[SlimySnake]

lol great thread backfire.

You know what i remember?

Disc Read Errors. Constantly cleaning discs and putting them back in hoping against hope they worked.

Blowing into cartridges. Once again hoping they work. It would take 5-10 tries sometimes.

Playing mgs, sotc, gta san andreas many other games at sub 20 fps. The flamethrower boss Mgs3 boss fight was mostly 15 fps. Nowadays every game is on PC but people throw a fit if a game ships without 60 fps.

Dealing with cheaters in socom. 90% of the lobby was cheaters who used gameshark iirc.

Ylod and rrod turning $400 and $600 consoles into bricks. At least ms had the decency to replace them. Sony was asking me $150 to fix mine.

I think PC gaming is in a really bad state but consoles have been fine for me this Gen. I download 100 gb games in minutes thanks to fast internet. Spider-Man updated itself in less than 5 seconds just tonight after installing the patch when it was in rest mode. Games load in seconds. Gow, Zelda, ff16 and Spider-Man 2 have had almost no patches to fix major bugs like the weekly or biweekly patches on PC. No stuttering on consoles either.

Games are longer than ever with more content than ever. So i dont mind dlc or microtransactions either.

Sorry op.

 

[Northeastmonk]

I remember being excited for The Bouncer. Then I read the reviews. It was super short and the plot was serviceable. I ended up renting it and finishing it the weekend it launched. Square was much better back then. You also had Working Designs and Konami was a lot more dependable.

 

[M.W.]

 

[ijntakao]

You will never hear Bombing Mission again for the first time in September 1997

 

[64bitmodels]

I feel like it says something when the GIF he uses to close out the thread is from all in the family, singing about "those were the days"..... a show that took place in the fucking 70s.

This fucking nostalgia bias shit has been going on longer than since our grandparents were alive.

 

[Crayon]

I feel like it says something when the GIF he uses to close out the thread is from all in the family, singing about "those were the days"..... a show that took place in the fucking 70s.

This fucking nostalgia bias shit has been going on longer than since our grandparents were alive.

70's? Drinking a beer on the highway and throwing the can out the window, pretending you're Bruce Lee in the mirror, big puffy bushes. Those were the days.

 

[Meicyn]

yeah the 70s were very cool the walls tasted so much sweeter back then

 

[64bitmodels]

70's? Drinking a beer on the highway and throwing the can out the window, pretending you're Bruce Lee in the mirror, big puffy bushes. Those were the days.

yeah now take that and realize those guys were likely singing about the 30s-50s.

 

[three_muffins]

Not considering a few great games of the past. Im so glad those past gaming days are over. Gaming is so much better now. Just stay clear of MTX and all that stuff you dont like. The quality of games today is staggering and there are way more good games than 30 years ago.

Just my perception.

 

[Crayon]

yeah now take that and realize those guys were likely singing about the 30s-50s.

Like this guy.

He looks like he can at least still find a good game to play, though.

 

[rhodesianshepard]

Growing up In the mid 90's it's wild how radically games changed as i grew up. Every generation of gaming was a massive leap forward. From 2d to 3d, online, HD ect. It was a period of pure experimentation. I feel bad for kids growing up nowadays. The leaps are so miniscule comparably. Not that games today are worse, just the technology has plateaued

 

[geary]

Those were the days with 15’ tvs with no remote and black and white images…

Time passes, new tech comes around for better or for worse.

 

[acm2000]

Games were also a lot more basic and smaller scope back then, I will take today's games thanks.

 

[amigastar]

Gaming would be fine but i despise MTX nowadays.

 

[Crayon]

Growing up In the mid 90's it's wild how radically games changed as i grew up. Every generation of gaming was a massive leap forward. From 2d to 3d, online, HD ect. It was a period of pure experimentation. I feel bad for kids growing up nowadays. The leaps are so miniscule comparably. Not that games today are worse, just the technology has plateaued

They won't know what they're missing. Like smoke breaks out front an arcade on a school night.

 

[HerjansEagleFeeder]

Toxic progressivism claims everything from the past is automatically worse than their counterparts from today or tomorrow, just because it's older. But age doesn't carry any normative qualities with it, even technological progress doesn't necessarily represent progress in a strict psychological or social dimension, having the conditio humana in mind. It's a somewhat pathological need for constant revolution, which of course is the enemy of man in the disguise of "progress" and betterment. We have always been able to learn tons from past generations and the things they did, more importantly in this context: specifically how they did it. Every new technology brings it's own risks and drawbacks. The latter are rarely ever discussed until many years have passed and there's the next new thing to rave about.

 

[64bitmodels]

Toxic progressivism claims everything from the past is automatically worse than their counterparts from today or tomorrow, just because it's older.

Except nobody progressive has ever made any statement like that.

A progressive person would more likely criticize something for having problematic or bigoted elements by modern standards, but no one out there is shitting on older media because.. it's older. And as a matter of fact, no one here in this thread is saying so, either.

People are just geting tired of this glorification of the past when we've just had some of the best games to come out in the past 10, arguably 20 years. 2023 has the highest slate of 90+ rated games in 20 years. That's gotta count for something.

 

[BootsLoader]

Wow, you brought back so many memories. I remember it was Christmas of 1998, my friend came to the village for vacations and bought Zelda Ocarina of time, I entered his grandmas house, it was full of sweets etc. Then I saw him playing Zelda and was astonished by the graphics. It was a little thing but made me so happy.

Then we had a friend who owned a PS1 and we were fighting over which console is best.
Of course someone had an uncle in America who worked for Nintendo.

Then the PS2 era started, one of the best gaming eras ever. I was blown away by FFX! We established the ”hardcore gaming nights” (we thought of that name), were we spent all night gaming together until sunrise.

I can speak for many many hours about those days. Such a bliss.
Technology is advancing like fine shit,

 

[vodka-bull]

Yep, consoles lost all advantages to PC and Pc lost all disadvantages to consoles. You listed a few reasons why I‘ll be switching to PC and why Switch/XSX/PS5 are definitely the last generation of consoles I‘ll own.

 

[Spyxos]

Yes, i remember the days, but i also remember that there were huge breaks with no games at all. Now something awesome is coming out all the time. So I would say yes there is a lot of buggy stuff coming out with dlc but the selection is much higher. We just like to remember the great times and forget that not everything was perfect back then either.

 

[BootsLoader]

Playing mgs, sotc, gta san andreas many other games at sub 20 fps. The flamethrower boss Mgs3 boss fight was mostly 15 fps. Nowadays every game is on PC but people throw a fit if a game ships without 60 fps.

Yes yes I know, now you buy MGS Vol 1 and ytou play 15fps on PS5/Series/PC. Wow technology have advanced so far.

 

[SmokedMeat]

I love the games of today and the technology we have to play them.

But I’d gladly trade away the social media drama, the nickel and diming microtransactions, and socially awkward weirdos for the simpler times of cheat codes, no social media, and no clown show.

And hell…remember when Dreamcast hit? $199. Fucking $199! Now that buys you a “premium” controller that breaks before the generation ends.

 

[KungFucius]

When I could put my game in and play it right away (no need for long day 1 patches and downloads)

When a simple cheat code got me extras instead of nickle and Dime dlc.

When a game release finished and not broken waiting months for patches to fix them

When games felt unique and not formulated like most big name publishers push the safe route

When I dd not worry about my game being connected to the internet to work

When I didn't have to worry about a game developer shutting down servers making the game useless

And people complain about Nintendo being stuck in the past.

 

[Drizzlehell]

lol great thread backfire.

You know what i remember?

Disc Read Errors. Constantly cleaning discs and putting them back in hoping against hope they worked.

Blowing into cartridges. Once again hoping they work. It would take 5-10 tries sometimes.

Playing mgs, sotc, gta san andreas many other games at sub 20 fps. The flamethrower boss Mgs3 boss fight was mostly 15 fps. Nowadays every game is on PC but people throw a fit if a game ships without 60 fps.

Dealing with cheaters in socom. 90% of the lobby was cheaters who used gameshark iirc.

Ylod and rrod turning $400 and $600 consoles into bricks. At least ms had the decency to replace them. Sony was asking me $150 to fix mine.

I think PC gaming is in a really bad state but consoles have been fine for me this Gen. I download 100 gb games in minutes thanks to fast internet. Spider-Man updated itself in less than 5 seconds just tonight after installing the patch when it was in rest mode. Games load in seconds. Gow, Zelda, ff16 and Spider-Man 2 have had almost no patches to fix major bugs like the weekly or biweekly patches on PC. No stuttering on consoles either.

Games are longer than ever with more content than ever. So i dont mind dlc or microtransactions either.

Sorry op.

To be fair, who would want to reminisce about the bad things? That's not how human brain works, lol.

 

[Danjin44]

To be fair, who would want to reminisce about the bad things? That's not how human brain works, lol.

True, but if you recognize that but there some who are so blinded by their nostalgia that they think back then was all flowers and rainbows with no issues and faults.

Several decade later people once again blinded by their nostalgia, look at this era and only remember flowers and rainbows and pretend It didn’t have any faults.…..and this keeps going.

 

[nkarafo]

Most of these problems are due to the Internet giving control to developers/publishers that allows them to access our local files. That's the "digital future" for you. They have more control over our stuff than ever before. And you haven't seen the worst of it yet. Wait until streaming replaces local files and they have 100% of control. They will stop giving you any files/assets and you will have to access them online, through their servers, as long as they let you or they are available (which is completely out of your control). And people will accept this because "convenience".

Then you will add more things in your list like:


- Remember when we could also own our games instead of just renting them?

- Remember when we could play a game we bought, many years after it's release, without worrying if a third party will still give us access to it?

- Remember when PC games used to have mods?


So enjoy whatever you have left now because it's going to be very bad and it's going to be sooner than you think.

 

[Quasicat]

I hear you. This is the version I prefer:

 

[nkarafo]

Games were also a lot more basic and smaller scope back then, I will take today's games thanks.

Smaller in scope? If you mean graphically, sure. You can now show a big open world in a much more realistic and detailed manner. Otherwise games like Daggerfall or the old space simulators like Elite, aren't really smaller in scope than any modern equivalent.

More basic? Lol, no. It's a known fact that the vast majority of modern games are dumbed down significantly since they are more mainstream now. It's all about being "more accessible to modern audiences" so the average joe can play, remember? Not all games were simple arcade/action affairs like Space Invaders or Super Mario Bros back then. You still had the home computers/PC games market where even the most popular devs/publishers were willing to experiment and make complex games with a lot of depth "for nerds".

Also, nowadays you don't even see many popular devs making games with PCs in mind. Consoles are now the target platforms and PCs only get the ports. So no more complex stuff that requires a plethora of keyboard keys or anythign like that.

 

[Roni]

Playing mgs, sotc, gta san andreas many other games at sub 20 fps. The flamethrower boss Mgs3 boss fight was mostly 15 fps.

I heard that hasn't changed in the Master Collection

 

[Mibu no ookami]

When I could put my game in and play it right away (no need for long day 1 patches and downloads)

Get better internet? This has never been a problem for me

When a simple cheat code got me extras instead of nickle and Dime dlc.

Cheating is for losers, just don't buy the DLC

When a game release finished and not broken waiting months for patches to fix them

Games were always broken, they just didn't get fixed. I agree it's getting worse, but just don't buy broken games.

When games felt unique and not formulated like most big name publishers push the safe route

This just isn't at all true... There are unique games all around just as there have always been clones and ripoffs.

When I dd not worry about my game being connected to the internet to work

Again, get better internet.

When I didn't have to worry about a game developer shutting down servers making the game useless

Online games? Which offline single player game had its server shut down that made the game useless that you actually care about?

 

[AJUMP23]

Let’s go back to carts.

 

[nkarafo]

Disc Read Errors. Constantly cleaning discs and putting them back in hoping against hope they worked.

True. Old CD based consoles sucked. Optical discs are only good as installation discs.

Blowing into cartridges. Once again hoping they work. It would take 5-10 tries sometimes.

But carts had other benefits. Like instant access to to the ROM. Not even modern SSDs can give you the same kind of access.

Playing mgs, sotc, gta san andreas many other games at sub 20 fps. The flamethrower boss Mgs3 boss fight was mostly 15 fps.

But there were more 60fps arcade racing games. I miss those. And you had a bigger ratio of 60fps console games on PS2/GC/XBOX. The 30 fps standard was more of an issue during the 5th and 7th/8th generation mostly. 8/16 bit console games were 60fps 95% of the time.

Ylod and rrod turning $400 and $600 consoles into bricks. At least ms had the decency to replace them. Sony was asking me $150 to fix mine.

That's a recent problem. Old cart based consoles didn't have those issues. All my retro, cart based consoles from the past still work. I wouldn't trust the PS5 to still work in 20 years.

Games are longer than ever with more content than ever.

Not really.

 

[cireza]

Those are still the days.

Master System, MegaDrive, Mega-CD, Saturn... all plugged and ready to play. CRT still in perfect working order as well, ready to display a glorious 240p picture in RGB.

Put a game, boot the console, enjoy. All my cartridges and discs work perfectly fine.

Consoles and CRT had some maintenance, but honestly, nothing complicated.

Yes, this is how it worked... and still work to this day.

 

[nkarafo]

get better internet.

Fuck that.

Why would i even need internet to play a single player game? Why add an additional dependency that doesn't add anything other than inconvenience?

 

[Mibu no ookami]

Fuck that.

Why would i even need internet to play a single player game? Why add an additional dependency that doesn't add anything other than inconvenience?

Being able to buy games digitally isn't a convenience? Or being able to migrate that library to another console? Or not taking up physical space?

 

[MMaRsu]

Most of these problems are due to the Internet giving control to developers/publishers that allows them to access our local files. That's the "digital future" for you. They have more control over our stuff than ever before. And you haven't seen the worst of it yet. Wait until streaming replaces local files and they have 100% of control. They will stop giving you any files/assets and you will have to access them online, through their servers, as long as they let you or they are available (which is completely out of your control). And people will accept this because "convenience".

Then you will add more things in your list like:


- Remember when we could also own our games instead of just renting them?

- Remember when we could play a game we bought, many years after it's release, without worrying if a third party will still give us access to it?

- Remember when PC games used to have mods?


So enjoy whatever you have left now because it's going to be very bad and it's going to be sooner than you think.

I used to love renting games, never had a problem with that at all.

I can play every game I ever bought on Steam, zero issues.

Pc games still have mods, go look at nexusmods lmao.

 

[Wildebeest]

I remember installing computer games from 10+ floppy disks and searching for patches or hacks on obscure websites because sometimes games didn't work at all in shipped state, so digital isn't so painful. One of the worst things is developers killing modding and private servers for no other reason than greed and extracting every last cent from customers.

 

[nkarafo]

Being able to buy games digitally isn't a convenience? Or being able to migrate that library to another console? Or not taking up physical space?

What does any of that have to do with being able to play a single player game?

Download the game? Sure. Update the game? Sure. But after that i should be able to stop paying for internet and i should be able to play my single player game i bought, offline.

It's a better delivery system for a product, yes. But it doesn't need to also be a dependency for that product to work at all. It's more convenient to buy a fridge online but imagine having that thing to be online in order it to work. There's no need for this.

 

[ozz ex machina]

What does any of that have to do with being able to play a single player game?

Download the game? Sure. Update the game? Sure. But after that i should be able to stop paying for internet and i should be able to play my single player game i bought, offline.

It's a better delivery system for a product, yes. But it doesn't need to also be a dependency for that product to work at all. It's more convenient to buy a fridge online but imagine having that thing to be online in order it to work. There's no need for this.

There is no need but also who doesn't have internet? Get over it.