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!
Except there WAS online play. Since like the 90s. RTS games especially had online tournaments. Also, LAN parties used to be epic.
Games DID receive updates when needed. Internet speeds were slow, so it was expected that when you bought a game you got the game after installation, and not a day one patch that barely fixes anything.
As for the other kinds of updates; games got expansion packs. As the name would suggest, they expanded the game. Sometimes quite drastically.
Saves still corrupt to this day in brand new AAA releases.
You’re thinking of a different time.
I don’t think so. The kid is playing a Nintendo Switch and called the other guy “dad”.
So “dad” must be around my age. So he was a kid during the 90s, and so would stand to reason he’d game on N64, PSX, Windows 98, and onward.
My kid plays switch and I grew up in the 80s. I think he’s talking more dos/windows 3.1 times, Super Nintendo, maybe Sega genesis/mega drive times, where many games did not have saves. I remember playing sonic and when you ran out of lives, that was that. When I bought X-Wing, it came with a massive manual.
But whatever, it’s a comic about nostalgia. People will always be nostalgic about their own childhood.
I dunno, man. That kid is looking pretty tiny. I don’t know about you, but most people get a kid before they turn 50.
Also, the dad in the comic is clearly holding a PSX controller.
Yes, you’re right on the internet, of course. The artist has no idea what they’re talking about, should delete their comic and hang their head in shame. Good job. You win 1 internet point.
PSX games had saves on memory cards, the generation of consoles before that often didn’t.
I have a bunch of consoles around from that era. My oldest systems are 8bit Master System. If saving was an option, it was you writing down a code in between levels.
Pretty sure the SNES/Super Famicom had a bunch of games come out with saving onto the cartridge, which predates the N64 and PSX.
Yeah, so, not sure how accurate this list is, but it looks like all the big named RPGs had saves, and all the first party Nintendo titles also had saves.
I mean, the kids playing a switch. Consoles didn’t really get updates until the 360/ps3 era and even then it wasn’t a guarantee a game would get updates.
That’s why there is such a big deal about release versions from back then. If a game was big enough it could get a updated physical release with some slight tweaks.
I guess if I were to specifically keep it consoles, sure. But PC gaming had Internet and games with patches. But usually games just needed… Like… One patch to balance something or fix a problem.
The N64 was pretty experimental with some limited online features. And some time later, if I remember correctly, the PS2 had an ethernet socket.
The Dreamcast was probably the biggest exploration into the internet before modern consoles. Heck even the megadrive had a gamepass like service (Sega Channel) that would have a rotating line up of games, some even being exclusive to the service
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
DLC expansion packs
You might not believe this, but there was a time before DLC expansion packs. Super Mario World, I love you.
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?
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.
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!
Oh man, @Beep@lemmus.org is gonna be so pissed you kept Field Explores’ name in the comic.
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’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 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.
Everything that is now a DLC or microtransaction was instead some cool secret you could find or unlock, the games were smaller but that discovery meant they FELT so much bigger.
Often secret codes hidden in the manual
JUSTIN BAILEY ------ ------
In the megaman II manual, the section where it explains how to enter save codes (its like a matrix where you fill in the bubbles), it had an example code, which gave you all the boss items.
Or the “DRM” of the time, copy protection where the game would either stop and ask you for the Xth word of the Yth paragraph on page Z of the manual. Or the code wheels.
“No online play” sounds like a console peasant. But yeah, the manuals were the best part.
I remember playing Sim City, Rollercoaster tycoon, Dark forces, Yoda stories, and countless others on the PC with no online play.
Quit being a fucking edge lord.
With that logic there is no online play today either.
Like people were playing online on 56k.
I did try it as a small under informed child. Do not recommend.
MUDs worked great on 56k.
Technically correct, the best kind of correct.
Or like PC before internet connections at home were widely available.
Do you remember a bunch of geeks bringing their computers, heavy, to a single location to play LAN games? I do…
I wish I’d done that more. It was so much fun the few times I did it.
Of course I do. And even that was rare and special because it was so much effort to carry everyone‘s gear into one place.
We had a rule that everyone had to carry their own monitor themselves. Punished the rich kids with their 19 inch CRTs.
l am pretty sure he talks about pre-online times (which were also largely pre-home-console times).
The instruction manual of my first bought game, a flight simulator on the Atari ST, was basically a printed pilot crash course.
I also had some thick copied instruction folders from the more… unconventional acquired games, often because the copy protection was like: “Enter the 5th word of the 13th line on page 54!”.
I remember pouring over my grandpas falcon3.0 manual.
Also a DOS manual he had. On one hand it was cool but on the other, things are so complex that they wouldn’t fit into a manual. And they go out of date as soon as they are printed due to changes.
Mine was the first Falcon game!
Also, my first Linux distro in 1997 came on CD and had a nice Linux introduction book l still used as a quick reference years after l had moved on to newer releases.
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.
My friend used to bring Game Gear instruction manuals in to school. We’d sit and read them in the playground.
I never owned a Game Gear but somehow have nostalgia for those games - the instructions created these perfect versions in my imagination that never got shattered by having to actually play them.
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.
No updates or mtx is a big upside tbh
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”
