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!
no updates How many old games actually made it to the store still needing updates? I have heard of at least one, maybe two, games which had real game-breaking bugs and could have used an update to fix them.
It’s interesting how games from the 80s and 90s, in general, required less time to complete than the crop that came with the PS2 era. DVDs allowed for much, much longer games, sometimes to a fault, other times the extra time to complete was in the form of challenges or unlockable characters.
Let’s not forget that half of the replayability of NES/SNES/PSX era titles came from “my entire collection is 25 games”
The thing about updates is that they weren’t needed that much. Games didn’t release half broken at 3FPS because “we’ll just fix it later, maybe”
Same as they don’t often do today.
Most games are in early access in the state you mention. But that’s the thing, it’s most often clearly labeled and you are free to wait until actual release.
That’s just plain better imo.
Not talking about EA games, I mean games released in a terrible state like Cities Skylines 2 or Cyberpunk
I really miss the old days — now we even need to pay to progress in games. Mobile game devs are just craving money
There is no such things as a mobile game. Only addictions apps
There are still decent pay-upfront mobile games. Unfortunately, they are drowned out by F2P slop with colossal marketing budgets.
I have been gaming for decades, I haven’t paid to progress since Street Fighter II in arcade! what the fuck are you playing?
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?
Gog tries to give you as much of this as possible
Including as close as you can get to TRUE OWNERSHIP.
Once it’s in your hard drive, and you’ve backed it up, it will NEVER brick itself on purpose. It never phones home. It never revokes your “license”. You can install it on any computer at anytime anywhere, even MULTIPLE computers, and it doesn’t ask you shit.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I miss that games were completely finished and polished, put on a disk, and never touched again.
I miss that you used to truly own them. They really were entirely yours.
“Completely finished and polished”, except in the cases they weren’t, like the mountains of shovelware in every gen 🙃
Never touched again was only true up to PS2 era and only for consoles, PC had update patches since the 90s
Except there was no online play
That was a feature, not a limitation.
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.
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.
DLC expansion packs
You might not believe this, but there was a time before DLC expansion packs. Super Mario World, I love you.
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.
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.
Look, I have been replaying Prince of Persia Sands of Time these last few days and it’s just fucking incredible how streamlined it is.
the pause menu is just resume/options/quit? no inventory management, skill tree, quest tracker, or other bullshit? Remember this is the IP that spawned Assassin’s Creed
also… it still looks great, with relatively detailed interiors and architecture, great animations and soundtrack, characters quipping about and it all manages to run on 256Mb of ram??
Sands of Time is straight-up one of the best games of all time, and that’s even including the not-great combat which makes up a lot of it, and a few puzzles which just grind the whole thing to a complete stop. Its quality is not completely representative of its era.
What is representative of its era, is that it’s a complete bastard to run nowadays. Requires a GPU with hardware transform and lighting, but also a single-core CPU, which means you need a very specific age of computer to run it. Even patched up, there’s some things that just don’t look right - I’ve never managed to get it running with the portals to secret areas looking the way they should.
I am quite envious of you being able to replay it, tho. Think I gave up the last time I tried.
maybe Bottles on Linux is doing some magic behind the scenes, but I didn’t have trouble running it on a intel N100 mini pc
I haven’t done a ton of research, but it seems like it runs fine?
32MB of RAM.
That shit was on the PS2.
I just reported the number on the cd cover, I guess they optimized even further on consoles, absolutely incredible… nowadays android apps will recommend 4gb ram for smooth performance jfc
Freelancer was a space shooter that ran on a pentium 3 laptop with an ATI RAGE 8MB video card.
It was dope.
Staring at my phone, wishing I had something to read on the ride home
If you really like the nostalgia of old instruction booklets, or buying a game outside your spoken language, try Tunic. Fantastic game
Oh man, @Beep@lemmus.org is gonna be so pissed you kept Field Explores’ name in the comic.
Damn advertisements!
Who summoned me—Beep, the undeclared king of the webcomics world?
I’m pretty sure this guys kink is being hated by everyone, don’t summon the troll, they’re jerking it to your hate.
I have zero issue if anyone wants to jerk off to me ;)
They’re fun to mock, so that means everyone is happy!
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.
