What makes you feel old about the gaming industry?

[Prowler]

The fact there's adults nowadays who already grew up playing games on CDs instead of cartridges: Unless they grew playing PC games in the 90s, that is. I'm talking about people that had, let's say, the PS2 or the Wii as their first gaming console. Imagine when you'll eventually start meeting grown ups whose first video games were digital. Now that's gonna make you feel OLD.

The fact the Wii came out over a decade ago already: It was such a fad in its first year. It was sold out everywhere for a while. I kinda forget how much of a juggernaut it was during its peak.

The fact there's nearly 10 Mario Kart games by now: I still remember when there were only two of them... and when I used to think the N64 game was the only one of the series.

The fact that the GameCube, the original Xbox, the Dreamcast and even the PS2 are already considered to be retrogaming systems. All of these consoles encompassed a big portion of my teenage years. The PS2 in particular was a monster of a console that seemed so omnipresent everywhere for the time. Never had I seen a console that was as hot as that one before. Crazy to think it's no longer in production anymore. It seemed like an immortal console.

And at in a few years people will look back at the original DS, the PSS, the PS3, the 360 and the Wii as being retrogaming systems as well. That's gonna be nuts since those consoles came out at the latter end of my teenage years and lasted until my early 20s.

Portable systems not being just Game Boys or failed attempts at beating them: Remember when Nintendo was the undisputed king of portable gaming? It still dominate in that area, but the PSP had a considerable amount of success for a while and a lot of people have bought Vitas. They at least had better reputations than the Game Gear and what other companies did in the 90s to try and give the Game Boy a run for its money.

Also, the Switch being both a portable and a domestic console. Things sure have come a long way since the 90s.

Final Fantasy not being that hot of a franchise anymore: I remember when this franchise was THE hottest thing around. Everyone loved FF7 and FF8 and FFX was also pretty big. Not to mention the first two Kingdom of Hears games. Hard to believe all of this was over a decade ago already.

GTA still going strong after all these years: This one never seemed to lose steam.

Pokémon still going strong after all these years as well: Seriously, I thought by the time the time the 3rd generation would come around it would cool off. Not die, but just cool off. But it's still Nintendo's biggest cashcow alongside Mario. Now with 8 generations and nearly 1000 different kinds of Pokémon. Plus, the series is now over 20 years old. Holy...

Digital copies of games being a thing: Yeah, never thought this would be a thing if you had told me ages ago.

How old series like Mario and Zelda are by now: Both of them have been around for over 3 decades by now.

The Dreamcast being over 20 years old by now: This was the very last Sega console(not counting with the Genesis clones, obviously). As someone who grew up with Sega still making consoles it seems kinda surreal how long ago this was already.

How much a lot of classic video games show their age nowadays: It's understandable, and a sign that games keep on improving both graphically and gameplay wise, but it's kind of disheartening to pick up an old game you loved when you were a kid and realising they're not that fun anymore.

How mobile gaming became a big thing this decade: When I was a kid/teen, "mobile games" were things like snake on Nokia 3210 and 3310 or something like the N-Gage which was considered inferior to actual portable systems available at the time. But nowadays every major company is on the mobile gaming bandwagon and the micro-transactions involved in it. If you told me in 1998-2007 that there'd be a huge Pokémon mobile game called Pokémon Go where you can walk around your neighbourhood catching Pokémon I'd think you're nuts. That and playing classic Sega games such as Sonic 2 or Crazy Taxi on my ****ing mobile phone.

There's more, but these are the ones I can think of for now.

[Leo656]

Hi Cubed... wait, what the...?!

Huh. :tgrumble:

Anyways, I have little to add but I agree with all of this.

Well, I guess I could add, "I grew up mostly playing with a Coleco-Vision". That's pretty damning.

[Storm Eagle]

I'd say downloadable content. It used to be that when you got a new game, you already had everything. If there was more to it, you'd just need to unlock its secrets with a code. You'd just press buttons on the controller in a certain sequence at the title screen or whatever, and it'd be for extra lives or a stage select and what not.

I remember how video game magazines were big when I was a kid. I only really subscribed to Nintendo Power from when I was ten up until the end, and I was 33 living on my own.

Dedicated portable systems might be on their way out now. There's the 3DS and the 2DS, but I tend to see things stating that the line is nearing its end.

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

I remember how video game magazines were big

Everything was more surrounded with some mysticism back then. All you had were anything between 5-10 screenshots from a video game before getting access to it.

[Prowler]

I'd say downloadable content. It used to be that when you got a new game, you already had everything. If there was more to it, you'd just need to unlock its secrets with a code. You'd just press buttons on the controller in a certain sequence at the title screen or whatever, and it'd be for extra lives or a stage select and what not.

I remember how video game magazines were big when I was a kid. I only really subscribed to Nintendo Power from when I was ten up until the end, and I was 33 living on my own.

Dedicated portable systems might be on their way out now. There's the 3DS and the 2DS, but I tend to see things stating that the line is nearing its end.

How could I forget mentioning how big mags were? I loved the British magazine Computer & Video Games, in particular. Still have a bunch of their issues.

I loved the rumours and April Fools pranks magazines pulled on gamers. Like Luigi being in Mario 64, Sonic & Tails being in Melee and being able to obtain the Trifoce in Ocarina of Time :lol:

[Leo656]

EGM was my favorite, by far.

[FredWolfLeonardo]

Sonic & Tails being in Melee

Even though its obviously fake, its fun to try and "unlock" those characters in the games, to see if its even possible to meet the requirements.

Beating even 1 enemy in Cruel Melee is a bitch, though.

[Wesley]

I agree with everything already said in this thread.

GamesMaster and NGC were my favourite gaming magazines.

I guess the fact that console online gaming is now nearly 20 years ago makes me feel old too, though it didn’t really appeal to me. I thought it was amazing playing ChuChu Rocket against players around the world, though I only did this a few times. Dreamcast was ahead of its time.

[Prowler]

Even though its obviously fake, its fun to try and "unlock" those characters in the games, to see if its even possible to meet the requirements.

Beating even 1 enemy in Cruel Melee is a bitch, though.

I've never did that. Never believed in the rumour myself because I first heard of it while browsing Melee's official website and reading its FAQ section where one of the questions was "Are Sonic & Tails in the game?" and the answer plain being "No they're not."

I think I know a couple of cases of people who actually let their GC running for 20 hours just to get Mewtwo. I didn't unlock him using that method, though. My mother didn't let me keep the console on while everyone was sleeping because she feared a fire might break out or something.

Theres' a few challenges/missions I still haven't beaten in the game after all these years. The Ness vs. 4/5 different characters being one of them.

[Sobble]

Man this console had some great games I'd never get into gaming if it weren't for the DS

[snake]

The gen 4 pokemon games are over a decade old.

[Andrew NDB]

[B]Final Fantasy not being that hot of a franchise anymore: I remember when this franchise was THE hottest thing around. Everyone loved FF7 and FF8 and FFX was also pretty big.

FF7 was the beginning of the end. FF7 just connected with a generation somehow... and every installment since, it's just been Square-Enix increasingly frustrated with their being unable to replicate that success. So they just keep making FF games bigger and bigger, more movie-like (and despite nobody actually wanting them to do that), yet taking away or handicapping the open world experience all I-IX offered. Now for the encore, seemingly because they've given up trying to do that, they're literally just remaking FF7.

I don't even think FF7 was necessarily a great Final Fantasy game. It doesn't even have an ending. There's better ones before and after it. I think that people at large just thought Cloud and his giant sword was really, really cool and/or they wanted to have sex with Sephiroth. There was some kind of Goblin King-like fascination with him with people that I noted at the time.

[Prowler]

The gen 4 pokemon games are over a decade old.
I wasn't really into Pokémon at the time but I remember people on the internet talking about the new girl in the anime being named Hikaru in Japan and Dawn in English speaking countries. Hard to believe this was over a decade ago already.

FF7 was the beginning of the end. FF7 just connected with a generation somehow... and every installment since, it's just been Square-Enix increasingly frustrated with their being unable to replicate that success. So they just keep making FF games bigger and bigger, more movie-like (and despite nobody actually wanting them to do that), yet taking away or handicapping the open world experience all I-IX offered. Now for the encore, seemingly because they've given up trying to do that, they're literally just remaking FF7.

I don't even think FF7 was necessarily a great Final Fantasy game. It doesn't even have an ending. There's better ones before and after it. I think that people at large just thought Cloud and his giant sword was really, really cool and/or they wanted to have sex with Sephiroth. There was some kind of Goblin King-like fascination with him with people that I noted at the time.
All video game series have that one game that seems to connect with a generation or that achieves the most iconic status of the entire property. The game everyone first thinks of when they think of a series. FF7 for Final Fantasy. Street Fighter 2 and its 5 million versions for Street Fighter. Ocarina of time for Zelda. Mega Man 2 for Mega Man. Tekken 3 for Tekken. Etc.

[Andrew NDB]

All video game series have that one game that seems to connect with a generation or that achieves the most iconic status of the entire property. The game everyone first thinks of when they think of a series. FF7 for Final Fantasy.

At large, I guess.

Speaking of FF, did you realize it took SE ten years to make Final Fantasy XV? Ten years, I beat it a few months back and I barely remember anything about it. There's no reason in the world they need to be spending ten years on a Final Fantasy game.

Street Fighter 2 and its 5 million versions for Street Fighter.

Yeah. Probably because they're still dusting off the same game engine 25 years later, really.

Ocarina of time for Zelda.

You think? I think it's kind of like FF where on this line a gang of people loved FF6 and a gang of other people like FF7. In this case, OoT vs. ALttP.

Mega Man 2 for Mega Man.

Do people really have a strong favorite like that? Is that a thing? I mean, there's 1, and then 2-6 all sort of blur together.

Tekken 3 for Tekken. Etc.

Yeah, I can see that one.

[snake]

Mega Man 2 is widely considered the best of the NES MM games for being the most accessible/the one everyone played.

[Prowler]

You think? I think it's kind of like FF where on this line a gang of people loved FF6 and a gang of other people like FF7. In this case, OoT vs. ALttP.

I'm not talking about preferences per se, though. But more about which is the most iconic game in the series. I'd say Ocarina is the most iconic game of the Zelda series with ALttP coming in 2nd.

Mega Man 2 is widely considered the best of the NES MM games for being the most accessible/the one everyone played.
Pretty sure it's also the highest-selling Mega Man game ever. It also has the most recognizable OST, particularly the most famous Wily castle theme.

[Sumac]

Not sure.
I missed all of SNES / PS1 / PS2 / PS3 eras, due to some circumstances, so I don't feel attachment to these stuff.

I think things that make me feel old about gaming industry is age of some franchises and death of others, like Contra, Castlevania and the likes, which were popular back in the past.

Another thing that makes me feel "old" is abundance of new pricing models (lootbox and MTX) and attempts of some retards to turn video games into their personal propaganda mouthpieces.

[Prowler]

Not sure.
I missed all of SNES / PS1 / PS2 / PS3 eras, due to some circumstances, so I don't feel attachment to these stuff.

I think things that make me feel old about gaming industry is age of some franchises and death of others, like Contra, Castlevania and the likes, which were popular back in the past.

Another thing that makes me feel "old" is abundance of new pricing models (lootbox and MTX) and attempts of some retards to turn video games into their personal propaganda mouthpieces.

I didn't get the chance to play Contra and CastleVania until 2007 or so, so I don't have nostalgia for those series.

I understand that the NES CastleVania games are a classic trilogy of games... but they didn't age so well. God, are the controls stiff and frustrating. I'd rather play Super CastleVania IV. Now that is a great game and has aged A LOT better than the NES CastleVania games. Smooth controls and Simon Belmont can whip in any direction.

Contra is hard even with the 30 life code, but I think it's a good game nowadays still. It also had a great remake on the original DS. I doubt I'd have enjoyed Contra as a kid. I'd die withing 10 seconds of the game, especially since I wouldn't have a way of knowing about the 30 life code back in the 90s unless my older brother found out about it in a gaming magazine. But he's always kept passwords and cheats a secret for me so that I would improve my skills instead of just skipping levels.

[Ninjinister]

EGM was my favorite, by far.

I preferred "VideoGames" (but hated the generic-ass name), but when they stopped publishing they sent me EGM and I stuck with them for as long as I was able to. I miss Sushi-X, and Seanbaby basically was doing at the time what YouTube randos love doing today, only with you know, actual insight and humor instead of just being loud and "random".

Gotta say my favorite though was Tips & Tricks, which was actually VG's spin-off. Sadly they went in the wrong direction; instead of doubling down on their unique columns that made them more than just "outdated GameFAQs in print", they axed them all and literally just became "outdated GameFAQS in print".

[oldmanwinters]

GamePlayers was my favorite video game magazine in the 1990s. GamePro had lots of content, but everything about the magazine felt like a low-budget version of GamePlayers.

I also appreciated the thoroughness and review system of Next Generation around 1999-2002.

Loved Nintendo Power for style even though I took all their reviews with a grain of salt, knowing that it was a Hype Piece first and foremost.

[FredWolfLeonardo]

That the Playstation 3 came out in 2006, 13 years ago.

At the time, the console ansolutely blew me away.

Having a wireless controller, being able to play blu-rays and dvds, the graphics of games like Uncharted, all just made it look like the perfect system.

And I guess that for me, it is perfect in a way because I still have mine to this day and regularly play it, not being the least bit bored.

Honestly, the sole reason why I haven't bought something like a ps4 or a switch yet, is because I am so devoted to the ps3, that the new console will be left collecting dust.

[Prowler]

That the Playstation 3 came out in 2006, 13 years ago.

At the time, the console ansolutely blew me away.

Having a wireless controller, being able to play blu-rays and dvds, the graphics of games like Uncharted, all just made it look like the perfect system.

And I guess that for me, it is perfect in a way because I still have mine to this day and regularly play it, not being the least bit bored.

Honestly, the sole reason why I haven't bought something like a ps4 or a switch yet, is because I am so devoted to the ps3, that the new console will be left collecting dust.
And so did the Wii. I believe the 360 came out a year before both?

The PS3 at launch was prohibitively expensive for a lot of people and Sony got A LOT of flack for it. And there also used to be a "PS3 has no games" meme. I guess eventually it must have gotten a price cut. I remember very few people I knew irl getting one before 2008-2009. But tbh, the PS2 was still going strong at the time, unlike the GameCube or the original Xbox which had already been discontinued. The PS2 did not get discontinued until like 2012, if I recall?

The Wii was VERY STRONG in its first couple of years. Then its sales slew down and PS3's began picking up steam.

You mention the PS3, which was indeed very powerful, but the 360 also was the first console to do online gaming right, which made it an innovating machine on that area. The 360 honestly seems like one of the best systems ever. My brother has or had one and he loved it. I feel like the original Xbox and the Xbone are ignored outside of USA, but the 360 had some international success.

You mentioned the PS4. That's a console that still seems rather new to me, but I'll be damned, it's from 2013 already which was 6 years ago already.

Tbh, 2005-2007 being over a decade ago already doesn't phase me so much. It's more how 2010-2013 being 6 to 9 years ago already blows my mind. I turned 20 in 2010, so it's not like I changed much as a person throughout this decade like I did throughout the previous one. So the passage of time in the last 6 to 9 years has been kinda mindblowing for me. It doesn't feel like nearly a decade has passed since 2010. More like 5 years. And Since 2013 I feel like only a couple of years have passed.

[Papenbrook]

The expansion of motion-control mechanics never ceases to amaze me.

To think that such a possibility was out of reach ...

Soon, we will be fully capable of motion gaming, VR gaming, and even holographic gaming.

[Andrew NDB]

The expansion of motion-control mechanics never ceases to amaze me.

To think that such a possibility was out of reach ...

Soon, we will be fully capable of motion gaming, VR gaming, and even holographic gaming.

No, we're going backwards in that regard. It's nice to see stuff like PSVR and Oculus out there, though, but I'm not seeing any big strides in it. It all seems to have plateaued.

Something like Walking Dead Saints and Sinners on PSVR is pretty cool, though. The way how it tracks you loading and cocking a shotgun, then aiming feels really real.

[Sumac]

Amount of games with predatory mechanics, like microtransactions and crazy priced DLC and hilariously large number of retards willing to pay for this crap. And "conveyor belt games", like Call of Duties and Battlefields and FIFAs and NBAs.

As for the motion gaming and VR, I don't see them as "new". Both have been around since the 80s and even though modern technology allowed for some progress in that regard, we are still far away from widespread adoption of both, much less a moment, when VR and motion gaming will completely phase out traditional games.

[Andrew NDB]

when VR and motion gaming will completely phase out traditional games.

Yeah, this is stuff people would say in 1995, or 2005. "Wow! In 5 years everything will be VR!" But it's all the same. Just better graphics.

[Sumac]

Yeah, this is stuff people would say in 1995, or 2005. "Wow! In 5 years everything will be VR!" But it's all the same. Just better graphics.
Yep.

There is yet to be a cheap solution for VR / motion gaming and a supermega killer app, which make people go: "YES, I MUST PLAY IT!!".

VR Chat and Half Life: Alyx seemed like good candidates for being said killer apps, but both quickly fizzled out.

[sdp]

Things that make me feel old about gaming:

-not having the time to play games that are 50+ hours, I don't have time for that because I'm old, when I was a kid I had all the time in the world and would've loved those games.

-Online gaming - To me the newness of online gaming wore off in the early 2010s and I just prefer single player experiences, nothing against online gaming, it's great but I don't have the hours to be able to git gud so I hate when games are only online and have no single player. Granted there's tons of exceptions to this complain as online gaming is awesome, not trying to knock it.

-skins/microtransactions: I feel old when I don't see the point of spending money for skins you can only use in one game. feels like such a waste of money and it is. I don't understand how kids today spend their allowance to get a specific skin on a game. I do like the new formfactor of NFTs and being able to take digital things to ANY game but that's still in its early stage.

In general I tend to be progressive towards the game industry, I love retro gaming but come on I can't wait for consoles to die out they don't make sense anymore, for streaming to be the main way to play things and of course VR. All of these are still unpopular opinions with "hardcore gamers" but there's no changing that trend.

No, we're going backwards in that regard. It's nice to see stuff like PSVR and Oculus out there, though, but I'm not seeing any big strides in it. It all seems to have plateaued.

Yeah, this is stuff people would say in 1995, or 2005. "Wow! In 5 years everything will be VR!" But it's all the same. Just better graphics.
No big strides? It depends how you want to measure things, the VR craze from 2016 fizzled out when people realized they couldn't do much with a cellphone on a plastic cover and that any other type of VR was too expensive.

Thanks to the Quest we've seen tons of people adopt VR, more people are using VR now than they did during that fad in 2016 or so. Developers are actually making money so we've seen more and more content and we're seeing more cool stuff released. Sure the hardware of the Quest has meant that we don't get super powerful VR games but that's ok the immersion makes up for it and we'll get there soon enough.

I actually feel we're moving away from tech demo games to more fully fleshed out ones and the more adoption there is and the better the profits the more we'll see. Mainstream VR is still 10 years away until the end of the late 2020s I'd guess but that doesn't seem we'll see huge leaps of popularity in the coming years. I'd say VR now is like smart phones before the iphone, not everyone had a blackberry but those who did loved it.

Yep.

There is yet to be a cheap solution for VR / motion gaming and a supermega killer app, which make people go: "YES, I MUST PLAY IT!!".

VR Chat and Half Life: Alyx seemed like good candidates for being said killer apps, but both quickly fizzled out.

There is a cheap solution for VR and it's also the most popular one. Oculus Quest 2 is one of the best VR headsets out there and yet also the cheapest, doesn't need to be hooked up to a computer to play games (though it can if you want PC VR games) and it is only $300, you don't need anything extra.

There killer app everyone mentions is Beat Saber but read up on some amazing new games AAA ones like Aasgard's Wrath and great sports games like Eleven Table Tennis.

There's plenty for everyone no matter the taste. VR gaming is no longer expensive to get into, it's as expensive of an experience as any other current gen console and has enough games/experiences to be worth the price. This definitely wasn't the case just 3 years ago or so before the Oculus Quest 1 changed things (https://miscrave.com/articles/oculus-quest/).

[IndigoErth]

What makes you feel old about the gaming industry?

Okay, so the first one isn't quite a game in the typical sense, but the early days of trying to teach a bit of coding in school, but in a classroom drawing game-like format, so just go with it.

https://venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/logo-1.jpg?strip=all

For those too young, that green triangle was named the "turtle," btw. It existed on computers that looked like these. You might, however, be familiar with their name and logo.

https://venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/apple2-computer.jpg?strip=all

https://i.imgur.com/QzPTGyO.jpg?1

Moving on...

If you're my age, you may have died of this a lot in school.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/93/54/54/935454ec9c86a821732f9630e79b4d2d.jpg

We didn't use it much, but my parents still had a functioning Atari.

https://i.imgur.com/YYnvLYK.jpg?1

And gotta love that Texas Instruments "computer." I think there were some boring grown up cartridges, but most of the ones we had were little games.

https://i.imgur.com/bp1lsgU.jpg?1

A favorite was Face Maker.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/XgTr_auUlWQ/hqdefault.jpg

Later I owned the original Nintendo and those accessories. (Was the orange gun more common? Had to dig to find someone's set with the gray gun.)

https://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/MTUzNlgxNjAw/z/KWkAAOSwzc5g4x27/$_12.JPG?set_id=880000500F

Sister had the original Sega, but otherwise most games for me have been computer based beyond that so I haven't owned another system, minus the replacement version they made of the first Nintendo.

But going from limited pixels on the screen to 3D worlds played with a friend some weekend evenings... (And lets be honest, WoW itself is no longer at the top graphically anymore either. But my Blood Elf is still a good looking fella.)

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRj0ivcMCfAIMI0E0VNfS1tAuZS3hrxW 6hf2g&usqp=CAU TO https://i.imgur.com/T3N7dN4.jpg?1

...plus having just tried some VR thing for the first time recently, I'd say that easily makes a person feel old.

Even more-so realizing now that Space Invaders is only a year older than I am, though I don't recall it as a kid. But I'm glad I'm still young enough to see where it goes from here.

[Leo656]

The gray NES Zapper was much more common. The red gun was a later reissue that mostly came with the "deluxe" sets (which I had).

The most common NES kits came with the console, controllers, Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt cartridge, and the gray Zapper. The "deluxe" kits (it had another name but I can't remember it) had a different cartridge - a 3-in-1 feature Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt, and World Class Track Meet - along with the Power Pad floor mat accessory and a red Zapper.

I'm not sure if the red Zapper became a standard pack-in later on, but at least initially it was only released with that specific set while the gray Zapper was the standard and therefore much more prevalent.

[IndigoErth]

Gottcha, so I was definitely given the regular package. Was a gift and no idea that there was any deluxe version or whatnot.

[Sumac]

There is a cheap solution for VR and it's also the most popular one. Oculus Quest 2 is one of the best VR headsets out there and yet also the cheapest, doesn't need to be hooked up to a computer to play games (though it can if you want PC VR games) and it is only $300, you don't need anything extra.

There killer app everyone mentions is Beat Saber but read up on some amazing new games AAA ones like Aasgard's Wrath and great sports games like Eleven Table Tennis.

There's plenty for everyone no matter the taste. VR gaming is no longer expensive to get into, it's as expensive of an experience as any other current gen console and has enough games/experiences to be worth the price. This definitely wasn't the case just 3 years ago or so before the Oculus Quest 1 changed things (https://miscrave.com/articles/oculus-quest/).
Once again it is not massively adopted and does not replace regular gaming, so might as well consider it a niche.

It is bigger than few years ago, but it is still a niche nonetheless.

My first console, technically was Atari 2600, but I haven't played it a lot compared to NES, which parents got me just a year or so later. And jump in quality between Atari and NES was so big, that I barely considered playing Atari ever again.

I had blue and white Zapper, but my console was a bootleg NES-clone called Dendy Junior, so I am not sure, if this color pattern was used for real NES zappers or not.

[sdp]

Once again it is not massively adopted and does not replace regular gaming, so might as well consider it a niche.

It is bigger than few years ago, but it is still a niche nonetheless.


Of course it's a niche that wasn't the argument. the Quest has opened VR from a small niche to an exponential growing niche, there's literally millions of VR users now. Wait for other competitors to come out with their sexier devices and boom. VR/AR/XR is here to stay, by 2030 it'll be like smartphones are now.

[Leo656]

At least in America, the Zappers only came in the gray and red/gray models.

I've always been fascinated by all the knockoff consoles all over the world. Crazy stuff. There's tons of 'em. Like you hear so much about big corporations going to great lengths to protect their IP, but I guess it's incredibly conditional. Like if it's a place they have a lot of market share, they'll go after people. If it's in, like, Buttfukkistan, they don't care. :lol: Fascinating stuff.

When I was young I had a Coleco-Vision with the Atari 2600 module. When I got an NES, I figured I'd never want to play the old stuff again, so I gave it to my older brother. But I pretty much regretted that immediately, so after a year or so I got it back along with all my games. I still played it often until someone stole it. My wife got me one for Christmas a few years ago but I haven't hooked it up yet. But I'm still glad I have it again.

[Andrew NDB]

Definitely a lot of Oregon Trail. "Computer Lab" was a class in 4th grade (and I think it was like a brand new class at the time) that largely consisted of being taught how to type and... I think one day a week of "OK, you can play Oregon Trail all day today."

[Leo656]

In 4th grade, we had "Computers" class, which was super new and was 100% typing. Rather, memorizing the keyboard. I didn't do great, because I couldn't/wouldn't do that. Then and Now, I type really fast, but I have to look at the keys. The teacher hated that. "When you're a grown-up you're not gonna be allowed to look at your fingers when you're typing!" Like, what? Just like "you're not gonna have a calculator in your pocket all the time," right? :roll: So yeah, think I got a C. For not memorizing the keyboard. Dumb.

That school didn't have a ton of money so they didn't have games and stuff. That mostly started in 5th grade at the next school we'd go to, across town. One year they got a grant or something and converted half the library into a computer lab, and THEN like once a week we'd get to play Oregon Trail or whatever other games they had. Like I know they had the original Mario Bros. and some Carmen Sandiego games. I was in the Talented and Gifted program and we spent a LOT of time with Carmen Sandiego, that was always a blast.

I remember a couple years after that, the school got a computer with a CD drive and that was a Big Huge Deal. :lol: Like you had to get special permission to even go near it.

[Sumac]

I've always been fascinated by all the knockoff consoles all over the world. Crazy stuff. There's tons of 'em. Like you hear so much about big corporations going to great lengths to protect their IP, but I guess it's incredibly conditional. Like if it's a place they have a lot of market share, they'll go after people. If it's in, like, Buttfukkistan, they don't care. :lol: Fascinating stuff.
In the 90s Nintendo didn't care about Russia until 2000s, so it was Wild West and Gold Mine for bootleggers.

It has started back in Soviet times, when Soviet institutes somehow acquired schematics of Nintendo's Game & Watch and made bunch of illegal clones of it, sometimes replacing characters with ones from Soviet cartoons.

In the beginning of the 90s people from Moscow State University organized company, which sold NES bootlegs from Taiwan in Russia. And even after their closure, Russia was flooded with Chinese NES bootlegs of NES and Sega Genesis up until 00s.

When I was young I had a Coleco-Vision with the Atari 2600 module. When I got an NES, I figured I'd never want to play the old stuff again, so I gave it to my older brother. But I pretty much regretted that immediately, so after a year or so I got it back along with all my games. I still played it often until someone stole it. My wife got me one for Christmas a few years ago but I haven't hooked it up yet. But I'm still glad I have it again.
I've traded my Atari for a few NES carts.
I kind regret that, but purely out of nostalgia, not, because, I want to play those games, LOL.

[Leo656]

Yeah, I've heard similar about other countries. Nintendo purposely had huge blind spots in several parts of the world. And then in America and other places they were SUPER heavy-handed. I mean forget about bootleg consoles, they were actively trying to put rental shops out of business over here.

It's just weird how they were like that in some places, and in others they were completely hands-off. I guess they just didn't have the endurance or the resources to be such hawks EVERYWHERE and simply settled for being hands-on in the places where they were the most established, namely America and Japan. Like they never had any foothold in huge chunks of South America, but by most accounts they didn't even really bother to. It's like they actively decided there were some places they could do without. Sounds weird on paper, but I mean, it all worked out, so I'unno. It's just fascinating to me. I mean it's interesting how they managed to still, for a time, become the "global leader" in video games at the same time they were ignoring huge chunks of that same globe.

Guys like Prowler and Zarius could speak to how in their neck of the woods, Nintendo was a total non-factor for the most part. Crazy stuff! Over here, we never knew. Y'know, no internet. We just figured all the kids everywhere were jamming on Mario and Duck Hunt. You didn't have a Commodore 64 or a Sega Master System over here unless you were a huge dork. Elsewhere, it was the opposite. And we never knew.
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I still get the itch to play those old Atari games from time to time. Thankfully, most of the best have been re-released on so many consoles and plug-and-play systems, so there's not as much reason to actually hook up the old Atari anymore except for the licensed stuff like the original Superman game.

The games are so simple, but also, still addicting in their way. I got one of those Atari Flashback plug-and-plays a few years back as a Christmas gift, and I'm like "Let me just hook this up for a little bit and goof around," and then I lost the whole weekend to it. :lol: Like individually, few of them can still hold attention for huge stretches of time, but collectively there's still a lot of fun to be had with that library.

The biggest problem I have with games of that era, is simply that the limitations of the one-button control scheme made many games completely unplayable without an instruction manual unless they were something very simple like Dodge 'Em or Frogger. I mean, there's the internet now, and that helps, but as a kid there were a lot of games I didn't have manuals for and thus just couldn't figure the games out. I had the "Raiders of the Lost Ark" game for YEARS and thought it was broken until a friend of mine told me you had to plug into the second controller port to play it. :lol: I'm like "Wow, that's f*cking intuitive, that's totally something you'd know to do without being told." Or like, E.T. has a terrible reputation (I never played it), but more recently lots of people say that a lot of that comes from people over the decades trying to play it without instructions; like supposedly it's not GREAT, but if you know what the hell you're supposed to do it's actually playable at least. Lots of those games from back then are like that, unfortunately.

I never had an Atari 5200 or 7800, since Nintendo was dominant by then so both of those Atari consoles became a complete non-factor. But I still always wanted them, and I do plan to get them someday. Lots of those games are still pretty cheap, too, or at least affordable.

I suppose I was one of the earliest "retro gamers" before it had a name. :lol: I was like the only kid at my school who had an NES but still played the Atari all the time too. Like every single kid had an NES, but few of them ever looked backwards. Believe it or not, though, I had quite a few friends who'd never even seen Atari games before they came over to my house but were still pretty captivated by them, I guess because they were "quaint" or whatever. So that was pretty cool. I mean most kids immediately dismiss anything that's "old"; not sure why I was wired differently right from the jump, but obviously I wasn't the only one. It was definitely a bit unusual at the time, though.

[Sumac]

Yeah, I've heard similar about other countries. Nintendo purposely had huge blind spots in several parts of the world. And then in America and other places they were SUPER heavy-handed. I mean forget about bootleg consoles, they were actively trying to put rental shops out of business over here.

It's just weird how they were like that in some places, and in others they were completely hands-off. I guess they just didn't have the endurance or the resources to be such hawks EVERYWHERE and simply settled for being hands-on in the places where they were the most established, namely America and Japan. Like they never had any foothold in huge chunks of South America, but by most accounts they didn't even really bother to. It's like they actively decided there were some places they could do without. Sounds weird on paper, but I mean, it all worked out, so I'unno. It's just fascinating to me. I mean it's interesting how they managed to still, for a time, become the "global leader" in video games at the same time they were ignoring huge chunks of that same globe.

Guys like Prowler and Zarius could speak to how in their neck of the woods, Nintendo was a total non-factor for the most part. Crazy stuff! Over here, we never knew. Y'know, no internet. We just figured all the kids everywhere were jamming on Mario and Duck Hunt. You didn't have a Commodore 64 or a Sega Master System over here unless you were a huge dork. Elsewhere, it was the opposite. And we never knew.
The reason for this was that young Russian market was a horrible mess, mostly controlled by gangsters and corrupted bureaucrats - no-one sane (or without huge amount of money for bribes) wanted to deal with that stinky pile of crap.

Nevertheless, around 1994, I think, Nintendo entered Russian market in a particular fashion - they made a deal with the biggest company in the country, which sold bootleg NES-clones (aforementioned Dendy), essentially legalizing company, which pirated their consoles and games!! :lol: This was done in exchange for said company to stop marketing Sega consoles and games in Russia.

My Atari 2600 (probably a bootleg) had "pre-installed" games - about 12 of them, I think. You could switch between them with the reset button and none of the games had title screens or credits, so I don't know some of their names even now. Gladly all of them were extremely simple, from racing games to shmups, so I didn't need manuals for them.

The real problem were ever-breaking joysticks. They had metal plates inside, which were constantly breaking from usage. Father asked his friend to make bunch of spare plates and I still have some in his tool box.

Thanks to the general technological lag and Iron Curtain, Russia was lagging behind when it came to many things, including video games. People with PCs could enjoy some of the newest game, due to the rampant piracy, but those who wanted new consoles were out of luck - pirates were quick on uptake, but not quick enough, so when the whole world was playing Sega Genesis and SNES, Russians just started playing NES. Lag was more or less gone by the end of the 90s, thanks to the pirates, who produced bootleg Sony PlayStations and disks for it like crazy.

However, it also meant that less pirated consoles and official stuff never existed in the country, outside of rare imports. So some consoles were virtually unknown: most people didn't had SNES or never heard about Saturn or N64.

[neatoman]

Bioshock, a game I don't think of as being that old, already seems like relic even in it's remastered form. At the time it was released, Rapture really felt like this large city but now the levels feel really small and few, it comes across more like a small village than a city. The pre-rendered cutscenes are a method that just isn't used anymore because in-game visuals usually look more than good enough, nowdays a pre-rendered cutscene just looks like compressed mess. Hearing the same exact voices coming out of the mouths of the same few character models is grating. Even though Atlas, Tenenbaum, Langford and Steinman are plot important character, they still aren't given unique models.

[Leo656]

Sumac: That's all very interesting. Nintendo "deputizing" Dendy sounds rather similar to what Sega did with the Master System in Brazil with TecToy (I think that's the name). "Yeah, we're kinda done over here with this thing, you guys have fun with it." I think TecToy was still selling Master System variants and clones until like, just a few years ago. Which is nuts.

I actually was never a huge joystick guy. My favorite way to play Atari games was with the ColecoVision "number pad" controller, since that's what I learned on. The little knob/pad thing was a lot more sturdy than any of the joysticks I had. I had several kinds of Atari joysticks - including some really sexy big black ones with a red button and a trigger on the handle that looked like some kinda airplane control stick or something, way cooler than the puny little 2600 sticks - but most of them broke while the ColecoVision controllers never did. I guess because the knob was so "stubby" there was less stress on it when you moved it around. Like it extended barely an inch off the controller itself; it was odd-looking but the durability of the design speaks for itself. Many of those ColecoVision pads still work to this day. People are drowning in busted Atari sticks but you don't really hear about broken ColecoVision pads very much.

I didn't have any games at all that actually made use of the number pad itself, so I always thought that controller was kinda weird . :lol: But every time I had a busted joystick, I was super grateful to have them anyway.
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Which reminds me of a console I didn't have, but had a similar controller, the Intellivision. Never had one. But I did pick up the Intellivision Lives! compilation, and... yeah, without the number pad controller, the overlays for said controller, AND the instruction manual, most of those games are simply not even playable. And that's a real shame. They simply don't work well at all on an Xbox controller or whatever. Without the overlays telling you what button does what those games are damn near impossible to figure out. That's a real bummer, because I'm a sucker for retro compilations and I never played any of those games... and most of them, I still haven't.

Great idea to do a retro comp for that system, but they definitely needed to put more work into adapting the controls to modern game pads. Or at LEAST put more than the absolute bare-bones into the instruction manual. The whole manual is just what games are in there, with almost no instructions on how any of them work. A ton of the games don't even work unless you have a second controller plugged in, and you don't know that until you try and start the game and it won't start.

Good idea, needed more thought put into it though. Easily the "worst" retro compilation I own, through no specific fault of the games themselves. It's just the only retro comp I own where you need a NASA blueprint just to PLAY the damn games on it. And they definitely could've done something about that, they just didn't think to.

Bioshock, a game I don't think of as being that old, already seems like relic even in it's remastered form. At the time it was released, Rapture really felt like this large city but now the levels feel really small and few, it comes across more like a small village than a city. The pre-rendered cutscenes are a method that just isn't used anymore because in-game visuals usually look more than good enough, nowdays a pre-rendered cutscene just looks like compressed mess. Hearing the same exact voices coming out of the mouths of the same few character models is grating. Even though Atlas, Tenenbaum, Langford and Steinman are plot important character, they still aren't given unique models.

Y'know, I still gotta play the first one. I forget How or Why but I jumped in with BioShock: Infinite in like 2017 and I loved the hell out of that game. So I bought one of the collections but never got around to the earlier games. I will, though.

I mean... gotta see Elizabeth again, and everything. :lol: That girl is a stone cold fox.

Y'wanna talk about things being dated like a limited number of voice actors. Gotta love Knights of the Old Republic where there's only like a handful of "alien" voices and the same clips get recycled for dozens of different quotes because "Hey, it's all gibberish!" :lol: But still, you notice how much of that "gibberish" gets re-used. Often.

Can't lie, none of that bothers me at all, not even a little bit. I guess I'm just "retro" through and through. I mean I DO obviously notice and comment on how far we've come, when I play older games and then think about newer games. But more often than not, I look at an older game's shortcomings and just think, "That's so quaint." But I can't say it ever puts me off very much at all, with anything.

I do often gain an even greater appreciation for "quality of life" improvements, though, when I play an older game and compare it to a newer game, especially in the same series. Grand Theft Auto, lookin' at you buddy. :trazz: Took 'em like 15 years to figure out that Mission Checkpoints weren't "pussy sh*t". God bless 'em, they finally figured it out. :lol:

[Sumac]

Playing on NES-pad after Atari joysticks was like a revelation. So much better and comfortable and fun.

I've tried to play BioShock series, even bought the whole trilogy in Steam, but couldn't get through the beginning of the first game - gameplay was just boring and gungame felt like crap, compared to Half Life 2 and Wolfensteins. Tried to BioShock Infinite and it felt the same, so I abandoned the series.

[Leo656]

Infinite was the exact opposite for me. First first-person shooter I ever got more than five minutes into. I've just never really been into those games, and some of the older ones legit gave me motion sickness. But I took to that game like a duck to water, somehow.

Back in the day I gave one'a them Duke Nukems a shot, and I just couldn't. And I tried one'a them Star Wars ones - Jedi Academy, I think? - and it immediately made me sick.

I never had anything against the genre or anything, I'm just not good at certain things. And again, the nausea didn't help. But I had zero problems with that game at all and it ended up being one of the most fun times I ever had with a game. Which I certainly did not expect.

Stuff like that is why I'm never, ever gonna be into that whole VR stuff. If most FPS games give me a migraine I know for a fact that any kinda VR stuff would be even worse. That's like the number one thing that's always held that genre back, the overwhelming amount of people who physically can't play anything in VR without getting violently ill. That's what killed Sega's VR project back in the 90s right before it was set to launch. It's a real problem that simply can't be resolved on a widespread level and probably never will be.

[neatoman]

I wasn't too happy about the changes Infinite made to the gameplay from the previous two games. While I did call Bioshock 1 dated, this is mostly for technical reasons, not so much the design. In the first two games you get Plasmids (alternative attacks to the normal weapons in the form of superpowers) and Gene Tonics (kinda like perks in Fallout or Skyrim) by spending ADAM (EXP) you get from the Little Sisters after defeating the Big Daddies. You get eight total weapons and you keep all of them with you, to spice it up you can upgrade them and use alternative types of ammo. This gives you a lot of variety to play around with on new playthroughs.

In Infinite you find the Vigors (that game's version of Plasmids) in a fixed order with no penalty involved and you can only carry two weapons out of... Let's check the Wiki... 14. While you can upgrade the weapons and Vigors, the fact that you can't pick Vigors in any order means you are stuck with the same ones until you just come across another one and in case you spend money on a weapons upgrade it will be useless until you find another one of that particular weapon. I honestly wish there was a mod that would fix this and make the gameplay more similar to the first two games.

Burial at Sea episode 1 does fix the weapons system and episode 2 does make for a decent homage to Thief the Dark Project, too bad both are too short.

[Papenbrook]

To think that Angry Birds was released over a decade ago ...

Time flies.