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!
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No game updates meant they sold a finished goddamn product, and if you found a glitch you could explore it. No online play meant there was no constant data collection for bug finding or license checks (for some games, in which the only way to opt out is not to play), and you weren’t locked out of the single player or split screen co-op story if you disconnected the internet. Nowadays they’re the fucking game police – you must only play the exact way the devs intended, and your fun is heavily conditional.
This brings me back. I grew up with older brothers, watching them play through games that I didn’t have the skill to complete. I remember my oldest brother playing Donkey Kong Country and slapping nearly every spot on the ground to find hidden bananas/balloons, and exploring to find the hidden games and levels. I learned a lot by sitting back and watching until it was finally my turn to play.
I, myself, never made it to the Special world on Super Mario World, but my brothers did. I can’t be sure if that’s the first place I saw the words “gnarly” and “tubular,” but only because Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were equally as popular in our early 90s household and they definitely used that “surfer” language too. I just remember thinking those words sounded weird and funny, and have a strong mental connection between them and this game.
I don’t really have a point to this comment, just reminiscing…
I liked your anecdote, i was the older brother, takes me back ❤️
I remember home computer and PC games coming in big boxes full of goodies. Especially RPGs often had a poster sized map, a story book, a monster guide and a manual. Also the copy protection often was a physical device like this rotating pirate head thing in Monkey Island, the manual itself or a card that was difficult to copy and could only be read with the included filter glasses.
because shareholders were not involved
“Not based on money” As if quarter eaters and movie tie-in games haven’t always been a thing. ET being a notable example.
Also have you played Deltarune?
You are just wrong with both things in the title. Game mechanics weren’t better, that’s just objectively false. And replayability is very much dependent on the game, no matter when it’s from.
My guess is that it’s one of or both of these things that make you say that:
• You only play AAA games, the most surface level boring shit that never does anything interesting.
• You’re under the spell of nostalgia, only remembering the very best from back when and not taking your memories into account for comparison.There are so many great and interesting games being released, more than ever, with mechanics that couldn’t even be imagined before. And as said, replayability is completely depending on what game, both old and new. There are tons of new games with infinite replayability, both with and without mods. There are so many games now that have so much, both in depth and wideness, that replaying them can feel like completely different games, that just couldn’t exist before.
It’s sad that so many of you seem to think this post is true, you’re missing out by either not evem trying to find the good newer good stuff or being so deep into your nostalgia holes that nothing will ever be good. I feel sad for everyone who is stuck in both or either holes.
I’ve never sold any of my old games. I still have them all. I also still buy new ones. They’re all good and I play them all. Sometimes older games are better, sometimes newer ones.
No microtransactions. Games were games. It’s by no means inherent to games back then, and we could absolutely have that again. But, that would require gamers everywhere to suddenly not be whores to mini little dopamine hits like gambling and dark pattern addictions in order to push the industry’s overton window back towards responsibility, respect, and integrity.
Playing on the TV or a shared computer required social interaction to negotiate time, had other people see / watch you play, played together, etc. Playing games was a social activity. Contrast that with getting isolated into your own screen, all that happens is between you and Activision, Activision holding the leverage.
TUNIC
UFO 50
Came here for exactly this.
If you’re the dad in this comic and you’ve never played Tunic, this is your wake-up call. One if the core mechanics of the game is collecting the pages for the instruction manual in game so you can figure out how to play.
Infocom’s were the best.
You got sunglasses, a microscopic space fleet, a don’t panic pin, postcards, and something to read.
a microscopic space fleet
can you expand on that, what exactly was that?
In that case, it was an empty bag. There’s a gag in the game/book about a microscopic space fleet appearing and then getting eaten by a dog. The peril-sensitive sunglasses (which were supposed to turn black when there were dangerous situations) were made of black cardboard, etc. Low budget but hysterical.
Thanks, i started to suspect something like that after the first few replies :-D It’s been ages since i read those books, might be a good time to do it again since i seem to have forgotten quite a bit
It is of course well known that careless talk costs lives, but the full scale of the problem is not always appreciated.
For instance, at the very moment that Arthur said, ‘I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle,’ a freak wormhole opened up in the fabric of the space-time continuum and carried his words far far back in time across almost infinite reaches of space to a distant galaxy where strange and warlike beings were poised on the brink of a frightful interstellar battle.
The two opposing leaders were meeting for the last time.
A dreadful silence fell across the conference table as the commander of the Vl’hurgs, resplendent in his black jewelled battle shorts, gazed levelly at the G’Gugvuntt leader squatting opposite him in a cloud of green sweet-smelling steam, and, with a million sleek and horribly beweaponed star cruisers poised to unleash electric death at his single word of command, challenged the vile creature to take back what it had said about his mother.
The creature stirred in his sickly broiling vapour, and at that very moment the words, ‘I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle’ drifted across the conference table.
Unfortunately, in the Vl’hurg tongue this was the most dreadful insult imaginable, and there was nothing for it but to wage terrible war for centuries.
Eventually, of course, after their galaxy had been decimated over a few thousand years, it was realised that the whole thing had been a ghastly mistake, and so the two opposing battle fleets settled their few remaining differences in order to launch a joint attack on our own galaxy—now positively identified as the source of the offending remark.
For thousands more years the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they came across—which happened to be Earth—where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog.
Those who study the complex interplay of cause and effect in the history of the universe say that this sort of thing is going on all the time, but that we are powerless to prevent it.
‘It’s just life,’ they say.
Douglas Adams, The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Chapter 31.
It was a space fleet so small it was undetectable by currently available equipment.
Utterly priceless.
Something a small dog swallows, thus unwittingly averting interstellar war.
Use your imagination!
I remember spending ages reading the original Homeworld manual/ lore book.
