Gameplay mechanics were also a lot better with more replayability.

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!

ArmokGoB,

Yes, there was no online play or updates, so they couldn’t steal back the game you paid for because they decided to stop supporting it one day.

Prethoryn,
@Prethoryn@lemmy.world avatar

I think there is something to respect about both types of games these days.

iAvicenna,
@iAvicenna@lemmy.world avatar

oh fuck, those beautiful manuals just came rushing back into the surface from the depths they were buried under.

Floshie,

There’s an analogy with the music industry too. Music recording before was for the “elite” who were sure that their music would hit. Nowadays, the music recording broadens to the public, ergo more less quality focused music is released.

The same goes with video games

ImADifferentBird,
@ImADifferentBird@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Game updates bring bad with the good, because devs often rely on them to deliver a full, playable game.

When you bought a game back in the day, you got a full, playable game on the media. It wasn’t always bug-free, because… you know… it’s software, but they had to at least quash all the showstoppers without the benefit of a Day 1 patch.

And don’t get me started about DRM…

CileTheSane,
@CileTheSane@lemmy.ca avatar

When you bought a game back in the day, you got a full, playable game on the media

ET would like a word…

ImADifferentBird,
@ImADifferentBird@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Fair, but ET was such an awful debacle that it killed Atari as a company and paved the way for Japanese companies to take over the entire market for the next couple of decades.

Now it’s just business as usual.

Chailles,
@Chailles@lemmy.world avatar

They were also much simpler and smaller back then with often extremely limited specification variations. And DRM existed back then too, with some fairly egregious and infamous physical DRM checks.

Comfortably_Wet,
@Comfortably_Wet@lemmy.world avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    Got_Bent,

    Some games really needed manuals to play. That’s what text files were for.

    seriousconsideration,

    I love my old school games and will never stop playing SNES, 64, PS1, and PS2, but there were plenty of crap games on those systems too. Just like how indies and Minecraft and Soulsbornes right now are dope as hell, but everyone complains about Ubisoft and EA so much you’d think that they were the only publishers in the 2020s. There’s been solid titles and shovelwware every single generation ever since the Atari 2600. Also, the games that a lot of us grew up playing that have gone down as “the best games of all time” like FF7 and Goldeneye would be considered borderline unplayable by kids today.

    BRING BACK MANUALS.

    darkpanda,

    Give Tunic a try. The in-game manual is a central piece of its overall puzzle.

    TwilightVulpine,

    Tunic is great! The dev said he wanted to replicate the experience of playing a game in a different language that you don’t quite understand at first, and he made it perfectly. English is my second language, and it reminded me of the times trying to play games before I understood it, struggling with manuals and dictionaries.

    The special edition comes with a physical manual, but ironically the player shouldn’t open it until they 100% the game. It’s like a spoiler.

    uis,

    If you want to read some manual you know where you can.

    PersnickityPenguin,

    Manuals?

    Don’t you like logging into the same game 6 months later and the entire game mechanic and progression system have been changed???

    Xanis,

    Most people don’t know about, or don’t remember, the old bins filled to the brim with garbageware games. Back when shit was still the wild west and people were releasing crap left and right.

    rimjob_rainer,

    They had soul

    CosmicCleric, (edited )
    @CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

    A couple of points.

    We didn’t need online access back then, we had LAN parties.

    Most of the time you didn’t need updates, because back then they were much more diligent about making sure a game released without bugs. Yes a few existed, but much less than what you see in today’s games. A showstopper bug was death for sales, since it couldn’t be fixed inexpensively.

    And those instruction books, especially if you are into the artistry that they put into them, is sorely missed, truly.

    ricdeh,
    @ricdeh@lemmy.world avatar

    Hmmm, I don’t think that I can agree with the point about older games having fewer bugs. In my experience, 2000s 3D games are riddled with bugs to the point of becoming unplayable in many instances.

    CosmicCleric,
    @CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

    Yeah I always get pushed back on that, but honestly, I’ll “die on that hill”. Also, speaking of games not just in the 2000s, but even earlier.

    Back then corporations had to sell cartridges and ship them, and if they shipped with any bugs, that was the death of the game.

    At the end of the day, usually when I’m debating this topic with someone, they can only point to a few examples of bugs in cartridge games or in PC games back then, which was a very small ratio to all the ones that shipped correctly.

    My point is basically the ratio of good games to buggy games was a lot better back in the day than it is today, because developers are time-pressed and semi-lazy, and they just figured they could fix bugs in post-production.

    And funny enough, the pushback I usually get seems to be from astroturfers trying to hide that fact, of not doing as much due diligence before shipping, because it could just be fixed after the fact, regardless if the customer gets a worse product at first or not (not saying that of you, just generally).

    Mikelius,

    And you had to scour forums with dubious links to find official or unofficial patches.

    TwilightVulpine,

    There were some pretty bad bargain bin releases, and a lot of games had glitches but I can’t remember any game from a big company that released with a critical bug. I do think today companies are much more blasé about releasing games with serious issues and patching it later.

    TwilightVulpine,

    Couch multiplayer and LAN parties had a sort of friendly atmosphere that is sorely lacking from most online multiplayer today. Folks are all business, no fun. Even in casual modes people get mad if you fool around.

    Duamerthrax,

    I miss open server browsers. I had a few servers I would frequent for UT2k4. It was nice just bouncing in for a few rounds. People were there to win, but between teams being shuffled between games and no real ranking system, no one was really a tryhard.

    BigBananaDealer,
    @BigBananaDealer@lemm.ee avatar

    i remember when games were artificially hard so you had to keep renting it longer to beat it. and if you die you go all the way back to the start of the game. so much fun

    TwilightVulpine,

    I’m an oldschool gamer but unlike many of those of today, I don’t miss that part one bit. Infinite lives? Checkpoints? Autosaves? Yes please.

    wolfshadowheart,

    I have a feeling their comment was tongue in cheek. I absolutely agree too, for while I do think there is some merit in artificial difficulty and creativity within set restrictions, I also enjoy games much more when I emulate them and have save states.

    I think a great example that bridges the gap between more modern-style hardware and daily living, and old difficult repeatable gameplay is the era of the Gameboy Color. So many of the games for these style of consoles were meant to be played in bursts (arcades, anyone?) due to the on-the-go nature, and since that fit so in line with the already existing mechanisms gaming had – artificial difficulties by design – there is a very streamlined progression from 1980’s games and early 2000’s games.

    So, what changed? Well let me tell you, it wasn’t the Blackberry.

    Honestly, the iPhone. As mobile game consoles like the Nintendo DS got better, games got more fully fledged like the home console games were. Developers were recreating game experiences like Spyro, putting in huge games in tiny mobile consoles (Toon Link, anyone?). Yes, the Nintendo DS still had its shovelware but the iPhone was the new bridge that gapped the old arcade style pay-to-play. Games with artificial difficulty now had micro-transactions allowing you to bypass the designed limitations. As mobile consoles got better games, mobile gaming got far, far worse, leading us to “”““random””“” RNG -gacha and lootboxes and all the great gambling starters.

    That’s only further developed for offshoots of software. Just look at all the junk between the: FOSS stores, Apple Store, Play Store, Samsung Store, Meta-Quest Store, going even further some devices have their own separate store entirely. And now these stores ship updates, so you don’t even have to finish your game before selling it!

    Ironically, Nintendo paved the way for a really great opportunity, then capitalists saw the opportunity to exploit the free market and now there is literal garbage everywhere.

    TwilightVulpine,

    Mobile gaming truly embraced the worst side of arcades. I remember way back when there were gamers protested so that the media and governments wouldn’t lump video games with gambling, and now the studios themselves put slot machines inside them.

    SpruceBringsteen,

    Fucking Lion King game

    RatBin,

    Of course I still have the manual of these old games. The characters were always hand drawn and properly described. For rpg they also used a nice medieval fantasy style. A lot of these descriptions were not even necessary but they were cool to have.

    We don’t miss these games because they were inherently better, but because they were fun in their own way, and enhanced creativity due to their own limitations. Also these were console games, so you had a specific time and hardware to play them. It’s not like a moder multiplayer pc game, that somehow follows you beyond the gaming time, and that are played on the same machine you use to work.

    Sometimes I feel like these games are exhausting when they take so much energy. Than you have updates, tierlists and a new meta every week. I used to sit down and play without thinking at anything else on old consoles. Still do. They don’t send me unwanted notifications. Than you have all the lootboxes gacha stuff.

    Games were technically limited but built a simple and fun experience.

    ricdeh,
    @ricdeh@lemmy.world avatar

    True. I feel that particularly with ranked shooters like Valorant and their competitive modes, playing becomes less enjoyable and more of a chore. In RPGs and strategy games on the other hand, I can lose myself for hours in wonder and awe at the gameplay, story, atmosphere, setting, etc. That’s why I’d much rather play something many people would consider less exciting like Crusader Kings 3 than Valorant, Overwatch, Counterstrike, League of Legends, etc.

    blazeknave,

    Taking my kid home with a new (used via GameStop) Nintendo game sucks. I excitedly hand him the case and theres like nothing for him to read.

    Jtskywalker,

    I loved reading through the manual for Morrowind with the copy we got on the original XBox. I read all the class descriptions, details about the schools of magic, and had a whole character planned out before starting the game. I didn’t get into tabletop gaming until much later, but looking back, that manual really captured the same feeling of reading through the D&D players handbook and picking out a race, class, background, etc.

    I think that feeling is why it’s still my favorite PC game.

    DharkStare,

    This was my exact experience. I read the book and looked through the map it came with. Morrowind was the game that caused me to change from FPS and Sports games to RPGs.

    Jtskywalker,

    Ahh, the maps were so good. I remember using the extremely detailed hand drawn map to help me locate the Cavern of the Incarnate, and other cool locations. I am sad that I didn’t keep them.

    Blackmist,

    I do miss manuals though.

    SinkingLotus,
    @SinkingLotus@lemmy.world avatar

    The appetizer before the main course.

    ricdeh,
    @ricdeh@lemmy.world avatar

    I think you can probably still get them for some modern games that were crafted with passion, through special editions and box sets. I think that the standard store edition of Total War: Warhammer actually came with a manual as well as a novella, and this was coincidentally the last physical copy of a game I bought.

    Matriks404,

    Dunno. I like both old and new games.

    DragonTypeWyvern,

    How dare you

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