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!
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.
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”
I noticed 20+ guys reminiscing on games they played as kids. Nostalgia starts soon nowadays.
The books were often filled with cool art not found in the game, sometimes there were hints hidden in the margins, or some had a mini-walkthru of the first level or something in the back, along with lore, they added a lot to the game imo. It felt like a well put together package, not unlike album artwork, liner notes and whole albums which people are also now (re)discovering are pretty cool.
God on the PC end of things youd get like a literal book with some games. Keyboard overlays for controls, posters, all sorts of fun shit.
Love the maps, I have an old photo of myself playing on the family 386sx with a Might and Magic Clouds of Xeen map in the background. I remember the Ultima games always came with a bunch of cool stuff too.
Some reissue of ‘Gran Turismo’ 1 or 2 for the PS1 had a hundred-page manual detailing how to drive a proper race line and how to set up the car for different behaviors.
I loved the maps.
I’ve grown up in the land of pirate cartridges with no booklets, so never knew any lore about Mario games besides “the princess got kidnapped”. Didn’t discover that the enemies had names until I was an adult.
Oh boy, you didn’t even get the bad b&w photocopy manual? Those came with rentals a lot of times. There was a lot of pointless info too though, like grand descriptions of the starting equipment you ditch after the first half hour lol.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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
I really miss the old days — now we even need to pay to progress in games. Mobile game devs are just craving money
I have been gaming for decades, I haven’t paid to progress since Street Fighter II in arcade! what the fuck are you playing?
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 miss that games were completely finished and polished, put on a disk, and never touched again.
“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
I miss that you used to truly own them. They really were entirely yours.
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.
