What do you miss most about old school gaming?

I think what I miss the most about old school games is the mystery they had around them. With internet still on dialup and the lack of information on it to begin with you had to rely on rumors and sheer will. For example: How many have tried getting into that secret base on the dam in GoldanEye? How many of you had a friend who swore he had cousin who made it there? Or how many of you tried getting the Triforce in Ocarina of Time. I think that's what I miss the most about them.

What do you miss?

Cheat codes. I remember spending way too much money on game magazines that came with free cheat code books. Didn't even care about the magazine, just wanted the book full of cheat codes. Admittedly this isn't THAT old-school. We're talking PS1 era.

Prior to that, I miss the crazy DRM methods games used to prevent piracy. Code wheels, entering a word somewhere in the instruction manual, crazy stuff like that.

I spent all of my childhood years hunting that fucking triforce...

How about not every game having a progression system.

Game developers not worrying about pleasing the masses, *cough* RE6 *cough*.

Being 7 years old...

hah

In depth dialogue systems.

@Sooty said:

How about not every game having a progression system.

but not every game has a progression system now.

The thing I miss about old games is were it taught you entirely in the level design and not into hand-holding, mind-numbing tutorials that insulted your intelligence. I guess that is one of the reasons why games like Mega Man, Castlevania, and the Souls games are so great.

EDIT: I forgot to mention probably the best modern example of this. Portal.

Complexity. There's been a trend towards streamlining the user experience, to the extent that it's now seen as a failing if a game can't teach you most of its systems within the first half hour of unprepared play. That's fine, for a lot of games, but it also means that it's a true rarity to find games which trust you to find your own way through the controls and which allow you complete freedom of the game mechanics from early on. I think the Flight Club videos are evidence of how overwhelming depth and a requirement for prior reading can make for extremely satisfying gaming, but you don't really find that depth outside sims any more. Also this streamlining of the user experience has created bloated HUDs and interfaces, with designers trying to tell you a manual's worth of information via a swarm of onscreen prompts. After ICO I was hoping that more and more devs would be inspired to scale back on UI elements, to aid in immersion, but things haven't really gone that way at all.

Because there was such limited releases each year in a sense of good, or great games i knew i could get to them and play them. Today, there are so many great games released, and with some of the time commitment needed, its impossible to play them all.

Creating the voices in my mind for the characters of the Final Fantasy games. Those games where probably the most invested I have been in a game story just because I was reading every thing. One thing that I would love for Square Enix to release is a new 16 bit inspired HD FF game for XBLA\PSN\iPad, 20-30 hours, no voice acting or crazy budget blasting cutscenes, turn based snes era battles but with animation for the enemys and all for 20 bucks, I always thought the makers of bastion should give a game like this a shot.

@Bell_End said:

@Sooty said:

How about not every game having a progression system.

but not every game has a progression system now.

Almost anything with online does.

Yeah, I agree that the mystery behind games is largely dead now with every game having a walkthrough of some sort available for free online. I remember reading in some magazine that there was a way to wall jump onto the top of the castle in Super Mario 64 before collecting enough stars to open the cannon outside. I tried to get up there for hours before I decided it was BS. That's what I miss though. I would pour over games for days or months trying to figure things out before I broke down and bought a player's guide. I don't cheat my way through games much anymore, but the guides always had more than just walkthroughs that made them worth the money.

I miss how 90% of games were utter shit you could skip. Now I feel like I'm buying a lot more games than I used to and between indie titles, the big releases and weird hidden gems there's just no time to finish anything.

@Wesker411 said:

Game developers not worrying about pleasing the masses, *cough* RE6 *cough*.

Couch multiplayer.

@Bourbon_Warrior: plenty of games like that for the DS; Strange Journey, Infinite Space, Radiant Historia

Nothing.

the only thing i really miss is the time i had to play games back then as im in my 30's now i have very little 'me' time. the younger me had hours and hours.

the shitter is i have way more money to buy game these day.

i could make a longer list of thing is don't miss.

I miss having my buddies over and they would bringing over their tapes/cartridges to play. Taking turns, loving if there was a two player option. Bubble Bobble, Contra, Jackal were some of our favorites for just that reason. Trying to find new tricks and reading about some cool tip or cheat in a magazine, or just discovering a move in a game. Or maybe a secret area. I always check behind waterfalls in games.

I also miss how me and my old pal used to sit and play through Metroid and Legend of Zelda together. When we'd beat it we would cheer and act like we just won the Lottery. When I finally beating Mike Tyson in Punch-Out and my little cousin who sat next to me watching got up and cheered and hugged me like she won too. She still remembers that day pretty clearly. She must have been four.

Finally I miss going to a video store or pizza shop and playing arcades after school or watching my pop play arcades. He was much more patient than I was and could make that quarter last. He was great at Rastan and Black Tiger. Even better at Pac-Man, Arkanoid and the 194x series.

Definitely cheat codes. They added so much replayability to a game

@Sooty said:

@Bell_End said:

@Sooty said:

How about not every game having a progression system.

but not every game has a progression system now.

Almost anything with online does.

what's wrong with having some kind of progression anyway.

in-game unlockables.

Cramming 4 people on 1 keyboard for some glorious hotseat PC gaming.

@Bell_End said:

@Sooty said:

@Bell_End said:

@Sooty said:

How about not every game having a progression system.

but not every game has a progression system now.

Almost anything with online does.

what's wrong with having some kind of progression anyway.

Honestly the problem is for me not that everything has a progression system, but everything uses the same progression system. Get XP for doing stuff, unlock extra options for currently existing abilities or traits and then unlock new, unique traits. Which is fine as a progression system, but not what I want to see in every single game ever. Even back in the day games had a progression system, just it usually wasn't as systematic and revealed to the player as light RPG leveling mechanics. It is especially getting tiresome with shooters. Classes. EXP. Perks. Zzzz. Again, it isn't bad, just that it is getting annoying that it is so common.

Big ass boxes. Those N64 cardboard boxes? Miss it!

Nothing. I've come to grips with the fact that your nostalgia almost always betrays you in the end. There are a few games like Super Metroid that I think still hold up really well next to current games but almost 90% of old games can suck it. Evolution is a good thing. Game design is better now days and will continue to get better as time goes on.

I don't really miss the games or the mechanics per se but I do miss how I used to look at games. I used to be so unaware and so ignorant about the nature of games and the mechanics being used. Now I can read most games like a book and see exactly what would happen if I did a, b, or c.

I miss the cartridges and the packaging, the instruction manuals with the story at the beginning and the painstakingly drawn artwork illustrating all the controls. I miss driving (with my parents or grandparents) an hour to the nearest town, anticipating the one game I could buy that month on the way, and then immediately opening the box and reading the manual for the drive home. The smell of a brand new Nintendo box, nothing like it, fresh printing and plastic.

Couch Coop or split screen in general.. Heck this gen even racing games have taken out that feature! Thats nuts!!

@Sooty said:

@Bell_End said:

@Sooty said:

How about not every game having a progression system.

but not every game has a progression system now.

Almost anything with online does.

But, its so much fun spending 60 hours unlocking weapons to use in online play... oh wait.

Nothing thankfully. I still play old consoles and games frequently.

@Hungry said:

@Bell_End said:

@Sooty said:

@Bell_End said:

@Sooty said:

How about not every game having a progression system.

but not every game has a progression system now.

Almost anything with online does.

what's wrong with having some kind of progression anyway.

Honestly the problem is for me not that everything has a progression system, but everything uses the same progression system. Get XP for doing stuff, unlock extra options for currently existing abilities or traits and then unlock new, unique traits. Which is fine as a progression system, but not what I want to see in every single game ever. Even back in the day games had a progression system, just it usually wasn't as systematic and revealed to the player as light RPG leveling mechanics. It is especially getting tiresome with shooters. Classes. EXP. Perks. Zzzz. Again, it isn't bad, just that it is getting annoying that it is so common.

so how was it done differently back in the day. refresh my memory

3D platformers and split screen

Well, if you'd consider the past two gens "old school".

@pornstorestiffi said:

@Sooty said:

@Bell_End said:

@Sooty said:

How about not every game having a progression system.

but not every game has a progression system now.

Almost anything with online does.

But, its so much fun spending 60 hours unlocking weapons to use in online play... oh wait.

if you didn't enjoy the game what the fuck you doing playing it for 60 hours.

It's official...this thread has made me want to go and play through some of my old SNES catalogue this weekend. Thank you.

@MikkaQ said:

I miss how 90% of games were utter shit you could skip. Now I feel like I'm buying a lot more games than I used to and between indie titles, the big releases and weird hidden gems there's just no time to finish anything.

I have this problem big time! Bought 10 games this week and I have only played 4 of them for a short time.

@isomeri said:

Couch multiplayer.

Good times.

I miss how you could just put he game in and play. It sounds stupid but i kinda miss having to blow into my nes carts to get them working.

I miss being able to just enjoy a game for what it is and not analyze every aspect of it. After going to school and learning how to make games I find myself always analyzing every aspect of it and I can't play a game without thinking about it in terms of how every aspect of it gets made. The saddest/most prominent example of this is whenever I see a game with a beautiful vista or cut scene I can no longer just enjoy it. In the past I would have thought about how awesome that character was or that thing that they just did was in relation to the story and the world, but now watching the same scene all I can see and think about is a bunch of artists sitting in a room working their asses off for a few weeks to make that. It's a very rare game for me these days where I don't think of them in those terms.

Plus, I miss discovering games. I can't remember the last time I was able to just find a game that I had never heard of and discover it's contents. I miss not knowing every dam game coming out and the in's and outs of what it will be. I have tried in recent years to force myself to avoid a lot of news about a game beyond seeing what I need to know if it's something I want to play or not.

I also miss having the free time. I hate that it used to be that I had all the time in the world to pay games but no way to get them, and now as an adult I got the money to get them but no time to enjoy them all.

less people whining constantly about missing old school gaming.

My innocence.

I miss the cartridges and the sound they make when you stuck them into the console. That's about it, though.

Music, gameplay, creativity. Having a weapon that's not a gun. Super Mario World

Edit: Oh right, people not complaining about framerate like their eyes were divine measuring sticks and could see every milliseconds worth of individual frames.

A cousin was over recently and I decided to try the new Double Dragon Neon. Nothing like the old one but we liked playing a game together like that. I also tried out the Pac-Man DX game and that was a good time as well. Since I'm considering getting Playstation Plus I was glad to see both games on there as well as Infamous 2. But yeah, couch multiplayer is still fun.

The not-knowing. You actually had to dig for game info and screens back in the day. Nowadays, I know so much about a game before it comes out that I might as well work marketing or PR for the game myself. Granted I bring it upon myself sometimes.

Feelies.

Whoopin' ass at Soul Calibur in the Arcade. RIP Einsteins.

@Franstone said:

Being 7 years old...

hah

@rebgav said:

@MikkaQ said:

I miss how 90% of games were utter shit you could skip.

That's still true.

I feel like there are a lot of games right now that I'd like to play but I don't have enough time or money. Yeah, crap is probably in this arbitrary "90" percentile range but it just seems like there are more games now of better quality.

According to the database there are somewhere around 1400 Xbox 360 games. If I were just to be playing the ones I consider interesting that came out this year I which may just be about 10 or so games that is still an insane amount of time I'd be sinking into them. Whereas many old games you could finish in 2 to 3 hours.

@Bell_End said:

@Sooty said:

How about not every game having a progression system.

but not every game has a progression system now.

And most that do are better for it.