Gaming 20 Years Ago...How Would You Fare?

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sXeth

Elite Member
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Nov 15, 2012
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Primarily I'd probably suffer from inability to get games. I remember we had to drive a good hour to get to the big mall that actually had an Electronics Boutique (Gamestop in Canada). I don't have a car and while the town I currently live in does have a mall, it probably wouldn't be large enough to have garnered a video game shop in those days, so I'd be stuck with whatever titles the main department store stocked (even now, Walmart down the street is somewhat limited and tends to be behind release dates) or cycled through the local video stores rental section.

Which was actually where I played a lot of my NES/SNES games from, which is a bit before the thread's timeframe. Distinctly it was unfavorable for tackling some games like RPGs, which often couldn't be completed in a single rental period, and popular titles were often queued up, so you couldn't get a longer period either.
 

Zhukov

The Laughing Arsehole
Dec 29, 2009
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I'd throw up my hands in disgust, give up gaming as a pastime and go make a fucking fortune on the stock market.
 

Level 7 Dragon

Typo Kign
Mar 29, 2011
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Okay, after investing all of my money into Google and Apple stocks and warning people about 9/11 I sit down to play some PS1. Well, after the nostalgia wears out, there are plenty of good games. What times does is helps you to filter out the gems from the fads. I grew up with a pentium PC, so I'd love to play PS1 classics. King's Field, Tomb Raider, Silent Hill, Resident Evil.

Man, I should get the emulator running.
 
Mar 30, 2010
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I'd be absolutely fine, even today the majority of my PC games are from the early to mid 90s. As far as I'm concerned that period in time was one of the best times to be a gamer, advanced enough that new technical and mechanical innovations were coming along pretty much monthly but still before the big publishers gained the stranglehold over the industry they have now. And Shareware. Shareware! None of this yearly-release-of-established-franchises crap, just tons and tons of unique games, each more off-the-wall than the last.

*drifts off into a hazy reminiscence of the 90s*
 

hermes

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Mar 2, 2009
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I would be fine in terms of games, since I was already into gaming in 1996... however, I would not have that much time and patience, so I could use my memory to be more selective about what to play.
 

Scarim Coral

Jumped the ship
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Oct 29, 2010
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You are aware some of us were 80's or 90's kids right OP?

OT- So I get to relived my favourite games of the early 90's then? Sound good to me!
 

Bobular

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Oct 7, 2009
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Only thing I think I would have a problem with would be the controls. I occasionally play some of my older games from back then and the lack of mouse support for FPSs and in ability to drag select in strategy games can really be a pain.
 

gsilver

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Apr 21, 2010
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Games in the mid-to-late 90s were amazing!
Doom, Descent, Mario 64, Magic Carpet, Wing Commander, Mario World, Ultima, Guardian Heroes, Sonic, and tons of other stuff.


If anything... what I really regret was being born in the 80s. 80s gaming was rather garbage. Especially because my folks wouldn't spring for an NES, so I was gaming into the 90s with my Dad's too-old-to-be-a-work-machine 286 and an Atari 2600 that I got in an antique store ('cause it's what I could afford on my allowance...)
 

happyninja42

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May 13, 2010
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Do I retain my knowledge of present day gaming?

Eh, I'd still probably be fine. I was gaming like crazy back in 1996, that was a year after I graduated highschool. So yeah, trip down memory lane for me.

Though I would probably not play as many video games as I did back then, because, if I have knowledge of the current time back then, I would go chat up all the women who confessed to wanting to have sex with me in highschool, and go actually have sex with them.
 

Zen Bard

Eats, Shoots and Leaves
Sep 16, 2012
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I'd probably be playing Diablo, Doom, Quake and Command and Conquer on my home built PC...just like I actually did in '96.

Generic answer, but I'd miss the technology. Graphics and sound have come a mighty long way in 20 years. Plus some of the game play mechanics (skill trees, three dimensional FPS levels and smarter AI) came into prominence a little later.

If I had the magic power to keep something in stasis, it'd be the freshness of the industry. Video games were still a relatively new and growing field back then. As such, there was a maverick excitement in both the developers and the community. It hadn't yet become a multi-billion dollar industry with shareholders and EPS commits, so people had free reign to create and experiment.

I definitely wouldn't miss franchise fatigue, micro-transactions and forced on-line co-op!
 

Lacedaemonius

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Mar 10, 2016
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I lived through it, so the answer is: I'd love it. I've loved games since my father first brought home an Atari and played Pac Man, and Pong with me.
 

Death Carr

Less Than 3D
Mar 30, 2011
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I don't imagine much would change
I'm terrible at games now
I'd be terrible at games then
it'd be weird to probably meet my parents though
 

shrekfan246

Not actually a Japanese pop star
May 26, 2011
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Realistically, it'd be pretty frustrating.

Like many other people here, I was already gaming in 1996 anyway, and there are plenty of games from that era that I do still like. However, there are a few technical aspects that bring the entire exercise down a bit.

1) Money. I have none. Likely I still wouldn't have any after being sent back, and I wouldn't be able to bum off of my parents from twenty years ago because honestly who the fuck am I and why are there no records of my existence (though I do look strikingly similar to my dad and uncles so it'd be a fun conversation). And getting hardware wasn't really much cheaper back then, even consoles.

2) I like the conveniences of today. One thing I remember particularly about PC games from back in the day is that, on my PCs at least, they ran like trash. PC gaming had far less uniform parts than it does now, compatibility issues were a potentially major problem, and at that point in time it would've been far harder to peruse the combined experience of the internet for answers to any issues you might come across.

3) I like the convenience of the actual games today. I wouldn't be surprised if developers back then didn't even understand what a UI was supposed to be, and don't even get me started on the abstract art that constituted control schemes.
 

WindKnight

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Maybe get around to finishing games I never quite got through back in the day. Shop smarter when buying gaming pc's as I kinda bought my original JUST before 3D cards became a thing, so it was under-powered for gaming AND super expensive.
 

God'sFist

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May 8, 2012
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Going back in time to the year I was born now that is an interesting prospect. Since I have a playstaion it's not like I'm unfamiliar with a few titles final fantasy for one I don't think I'd fair all that well due to the fact all my favorite games are on the ps2 or 360 respectively. Although being the accident that landed 12 years after the third child I think I would be more interested in hanging out with my siblings.
 

Rack

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Jan 18, 2008
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On the one hand it would suck. I sucked the life out of all the games I liked back then so there'd be precious little for me to revisit. That and I've already gotten used to the massively improved design nowadays, plus the overwhelming quantity of games nowadays. The benefits of less commercialisation in games would be completely overshadowed by the lack of Internet. On top of that TV is right back in 1996 and so are board games.

BUT!

I have all the knowledge I do now, which means I can make a fortune playing the markets, buying Black Lotus's and so on. Even if it's only gaming knowledge I retain I could make Minecraft, Ticket to Ride, Pandemic and Carcassone.
 

Neverhoodian

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Apr 2, 2008
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Those were the golden years of my youth. Castlevania: SotN wasn't even out yet, was about to get an N64 to play Mario and later a slew of others. Doom, Hexen, Heretic, Crusader: No Remorse, etc. on PC. MK3 and Killer Instinct in the arcades.

Seems like a lifetime ago.
 

EternallyBored

Terminally Apathetic
Jun 17, 2013
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With my memories of everything I've played since then, and the knowledge that I would have to wait 20 years to experience anything new? That would fucking suck. I am assuming we are ignoring the obvious answer of exploiting future knowledge to get rich, where the answer then becomes, I don't have time to play many video games as I cruise around the world on my giant yacht, preventing future tragedies and becoming the richest man on the planet.

Still, all those games I loved in the 90's still exist, and baring a very small number of exceptions (xenogears) are both cheap and easy to obtain and play today in a number of different formats. Why would I want to go back in time when I can already play all those games now, if I could return to my previous age and memories to relive all those great games for the first time again, that would be one thing, but knowing I would have to wait over a decade to play the Souls games, or the Witcher series, and then waiting over 20 years just to play a game that's genuinely new, would be a nightmare.

The only novel experience would be online games, arcades were already almost dead in the 90's. Online games that have since died and are unplayable. On the flip side of that though, maybe people don't remember the absolute shitshow that was dealing with dialup, spending days configuring primitive firewalls or calling your ISP just so you could play a game, constant disconnects at the drop of a hat, and nonexistent matchmaking that meant you would either need a bunch of friends or post on outside websites to find people to play with depending on the game. Entering IP ports and sitting in lobbies, also no broadband at all, so I get to wait minutes to load tiny GIFs on shitty 90's Angelfire or Geocities websites.

The N64's assbackwards controller, the early PS1 eras blocky graphics that seemed good at the time but now just look awful, the shit control schemes of early 3d games as developers try to figure out how to make movement in 3d work, the awful broken games that nobody remembers anymore, all just to play a bunch of games I already own and can play right now, so being essentially stuck with online games on a dialup that means I can't surf the web or stream video while playing a game. Yeah, no thanks, I liked a lot of 90's games, but I'm not giving up modern conveniences just so I can play Super Mario RPG for the fifth time on a shitty 90's tube tv. I played all those old games, I can still play them today, being able to play Ultima Online again isn't enough of a tradeoff to being retirement age by the time I reach 2016 again and can actually play new games instead of stuff I played and beat years ago.
 

infohippie

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Oct 1, 2009
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Since I already lived and gamed through that period I know exactly how I would handle it. Playing some pretty damn good games on my Amiga (which OP has neglected to mention), saving for my first PC so I could play Mechwarrior 2, and much more tabletop RPG gaming than I have time for today. Time to break out those dice!

Casual Shinji said:
Also no fucking internet - Christ, it would suck!
Nonsense, I was online back in 1993. Sure there was no WWW then, but Archie, Gopher, NNTP, and other standards of the times were still quite usable.