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!
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.
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…
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.
I wish I’d done that more. It was so much fun the few times I did it.
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.
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?
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”
Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy for the PS2 had a roughly 1.5’ x 2’ fold out poster that had a map of the playable world with small bits of lore. It even had a short message from your uncle telling you good luck on your journey. The other side had an image of Jak & Daxter on the A-grav zoomer. This was way back in 2001.
I remember as a kid pulling it out and reading it so many times that the corner folds started to wear out.Similarly, Ratchet & Clank also had a poster with all the weapons & gadgets you’d use with small bits of info for each item. The reverse side also had R&C, however I can’t remember if Ratchet was just holding the Devastator or if they were on a grind rail.
I miss getting those with the games. It made them so much more special and unique.I noticed 20+ guys reminiscing on games they played as kids. Nostalgia starts soon nowadays.
I should replay tunic
Never forget what they took from us.
whoopse I tripped and dropped my https://finji.itch.io/tunic link
the same developers as A Night in the Woods you say?
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.
No updates, that’s actually a plus in my mind these days, considering how many games they’ve taken down. You can’t take a disk from someone’s game collection, but you can certainly remove it when it’s been purchased digitally.
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
I replayed Space Quest II recently. I was reminded of Save Early, Save Often.
