Things we DON'T miss from old games

[thejackyl]

Unfair difficulty: Arcade ports most, but there are quite a few games that were designed around being quarter munchers, but instead made it to the NES or something else.

Passwords bigger than 10 or so characters: I have a few games that have really bad password systems. I think one has a 32 letter and the other has a 64 letter password. And if you mess up a single letter, it's wiped so you have to type it out again.

CD-Keys: Digital distribution is a great thing for pc games. I remember having to type in Sooooooooooooooo many CD keys when I would get a new computer.

Unskippable Cutscenes: I loved the combat in games like Golden Sun, but I can't be asked to replay them, mainly because some fights have like 5 to 10 minutes of unskippable crap beforehand.

Horrid or Obtuse UI's: There are a few games that I couldn't play back in the day because I didn't understand the UI and lacked a manual. I couldn't play X-COM back in the 90's because I didn't understand the UI or anything, but after I watched an LP, I understood enough to play.

Bad/Unmappable Controls: Enough said, When you're used to B being to jump, and some game uses X, and you can't change it, it makes you accidentally attack when you mean to jump or something. Not a big deal nowadays with tutorials, but can still be annoying.

"Please Insert Disc 2": I forget what game I had that did this, but the game was split among 4 discs, but unlike a smart game where the world map content would be on all 4 discs, it was evened out on all 4, and if you had to backtrack (which was required a LOT between discs 1 and 2) you had to swap discs EVERY time you went between the sections of the world.

No Waypoints: Maybe I'm a spoiled casual scum, but I recently bought Morrowind and I cannot stand it. Yes, I know the game gives you directions in your quest log, but I really wish I could have a marker on my map or something. Maybe not an arrow pointing me everywhere but just a marker where you need to go on your map.

Probably a ton of other things, but I think I hit the big ones.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I dislike hand-holding today but I don't miss games not telling you what the Hell to do. Games that just plonk you down and wait to see what you do with no prior direction drive me up the wall.

I am really grateful for checkpoints in modern games, especially mid-boss checkpoints. Older games (when checkpoints were still new) had a bad habit of either using too few checkpoints or, placing checkpoints right before a triathlon of difficult gameplay, so that you could make it to the end, screw up and get sent right back to the beginning of the challenge tower of the day.

I miss Power Stone, Primal Rage and, other quirky fighting games. I don't miss bass-ackward means by which to attack, pull off special moves or, do combos.

 

[Bruenin]

Loading Screens. Do you remember when almost every game had these long stupid loading screens every other minute?

*looks at Fable 3*

I guess you can't miss what isn't gone...

 

[deathzero021]

-insta-kill.
-limited lives (most of the time)
-no saving
-brutal levels designed to take quarters
-super cryptic objective/direction
-repetitive nature (obscene amounts of grinding)

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Lacking the ability to save. Saving was God's gift to gamers. Lo and behold that he came from on high to deliver to the busy and the frustrated, the gift of loading thine game. And there was much rejoicing amongst gamers as they danced poorly in the streets and drank of soda and Doritos in their merriment.

........... Though I could be remembering the occasion wrong...

 

[IrenIvy]

Boring Backtracking. Sometimes backtracking is clever, fits the story and even fun, but a lot of the times it was (and still is) just padding, like a cutscene you can't skip. From my experience I'm getting less of boring backtracking now even in open-world like games thanks to fast travel.

Fake difficulty where computer just cheats.
Unskippable cutscenes.

 

[EightGaugeHippo]

2D control scheme in a 3D environment.
I'm looking at you Silent Hill 1.

 

[Tayh]

I would bring up no manual saves and checkpoints, except we still haven't gotten rid of them to this day.
Retro graphics: If I can actually count the pixels, then the graphics are too old for me. Call me vain, but I prefer my games to look good.

 

[aozgolo]

Character limits (as in number of letters/numbers you can enter, not game characters). I remember one NES game where you could name yourself but were only allowed 4 characters... really? I had to go by Shau.

 

[shootthebandit]

I don't miss those crappy save systems that relied on passwords you had to input in order to skip to the part of the game you last got to. They were fucking annoying.

I dont miss writing shit down. I remember as a kid i mustve had a notepad worth of cheat codes, level codes, secret frequencies in MGS and the list goes on. I suppose its more to do with internet access and wikis nowadays but im still glad i dont have to write anything anymore

 

[Pink Gregory]

Character limits (as in number of letters/numbers you can enter, not game characters). I remember one NES game where you could name yourself but were only allowed 4 characters... really? I had to go by Shau.

However, it does at least accommodate 'Poo', 'Ass', 'Dump', 'Butt', 'Dick' and many other favourites on one simple cartridge.

From Time Life.

 

[Tyelcapilu]

Not being able to see the screen of my gameboy.
Holy shit was that unbearable.

 

[scorptatious]

I don't miss those crappy save systems that relied on passwords you had to input in order to skip to the part of the game you last got to. They were fucking annoying.

I dont miss writing shit down. I remember as a kid i mustve had a notepad worth of cheat codes, level codes, secret frequencies in MGS and the list goes on. I suppose its more to do with internet access and wikis nowadays but im still glad i dont have to write anything anymore

Heh, I just remembered back when I was a kid playing Banjo Kazooie. I found myself writing down all of the stuff Brentilda told me about Grunty to help me with the game show thing towards the end. Unfortunately, it didn't really help much because I sucked at organization and the questions and answers were all over the place. XD

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

I don't miss those crappy save systems that relied on passwords you had to input in order to skip to the part of the game you last got to. They were fucking annoying.

Did you ever play James Pond 3 on the Mega Drive? Not only were the passwords really long, but they were all objects instead of a sequence of words. And not only were they objects, but they could come in several different colours! So you'd have to write down a sequence of, like, 13 characters all of which were like:

Green book
Red fish
Blue star
Orange etc

It was horrible.

I also don't miss controlling third person cameras with the shoulder buttons, but that's seems like such a petty comlaint now...

 

[Grach]

Horrendous old 3D graphics like in Mario 64 and Half-life. Frankly, I don't know how anyone could defend that kind of 3D against 2D sprites of the same time.
Clunky controls and bullshit difficulty are also things that are not that common nowadays.

 

[Saelune]

Save points. Auto Save is an amazing feature and I cherish it greatly. The exception is games that make their save style a point of the game, like Dead Rising 1.

Also cause sometimes I just want to stop playing. Got FF7 on Steam, and while Im actually enjoying it ok so far, I had to push myself through a large dialogue part cause I needed to get to a save point cause I wanted to just stop for a bit.

 

[Autumnflame]

Very poor translations on older jrpgs.

I remember when i was young trying to play lufia. and when you have items in your inventory that have no description of what they do.

for example a tea or juice item. and the fact that if you used it and didnt need it it was still consumed.

oh second thing.

when you were attacking an enemy with 4 players and he died from the first attack. the otheres would all attack empty air for a miss instead of swapping to a new enemy to hit

 

[white_wolf]

Having to find a save point that could be anywhere on the map

Having to track down which memory card I stored that data on

Restarting entire levels after death and respawn

My games not working because dust got in them

Controllers that worked liked cell phones and had tons of buttons you had to memories what each one did or what ones out of the 12 didn't do anything for your game.

Poor blocky graphics and bad sound quality

tracking down the paper like card to slid into my remote to play the game

The retro version of 2 player which consisted of player 1 goes first until they die then player 2 can control their character while player 1 sits and watches until they die

 

[MammothBlade]

Awkward interfaces. I won't miss having to equip everyone on a 30 person team manually, or having to micromanage every simple task.

Screwed up 2D camera angles for 3D games.

 

[CleverCover]

I don't miss not being able to save or the having to put in a long password to get to the last checkpoint. It frustrated me to the point of not even attempting to finish the game because I would always lose everything around the same place and have to START ALL OVER AGAIN. Screw you Sonic. You can save your own village on your own. The second was just annoying and I was too lazy to want to bother with writing it down

I don't miss not having an end goal, like in those retro space games. There was no point in playing besides I GOT THE HIGH SCORE WOOOO!

I don't miss controlling everything with the d-pad. How did we do it back then? It's so less....focused.

I don't miss not having an autosave. Thank fuck someone was checking my progress, because sometimes I just forget.

I don't miss craptastic graphics. I couldn't play Morrowind after Oblivion for this reason alone. God, everything was UGLY.

I don't miss no-voice acted RPGs. Current Bioware have spoiled me against non-voice acted RPG's. One day, when I can play those magical RPGs on a working computer, hopefully that won't be a deal-breaker.



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