Things we miss from old games.

[babinro]

Simpler,catchier music.

I actually drew a blank on this threads question until I read this. I've been a big fan of PC/Console gaming since Commodore 64/NES and yet I couldn't think of anything. I'm among the minority who believes gaming has evolved for the better in just about every conceivable way.

However, the music is the only area where I'd disagree. I easily have 200+ instrumental tracks from gaming on my computer and about 90% of them come from SNES or earlier. Even when I check my setlist for more current gaming tracks a lot of them are from indie oldschool inspired titles like Binding of Isaac and Bastion.

Old school music often commanded your attention. Current age gaming music often tries to create immersion without distraction. I can appreciate it's purpose but it given the choice I'd go with the classics any day.

 

[Lightknight]

There was a time where the game shipped and worked when you put it in the system. No patches needed. If it didn't work, it didn't ship.

That being said, I think we've only improved our ability to tell stories in the media. Things that have gone away have generally done so out of necessity. The first person games have really improved worlds for me.

I'd say I do miss discovery. But that's more the internet's fault moreso than anything else. I remember accidentally figuring out the blood code for Mortal Combat on my gamegear. I shit you not, I figured that out on accident and the code was holding down buttons and rotating the d-pad clockwise during the credits. My brother and friends thought I'd performed some kind of dark magic. Today, you just type in the game name and cheats.

While I miss that, I can't say I'd prefer it go back. There are so many good games to play nowadays that I don't prefer to spend too much time in a game unless it's unbelievably good.

 

[BodomBeachChild]

The variety of art style. In my option, the days between Genesis and Dreamcast has the best art styles. Every game looked so interesting. Boogerman, Sonic, Star Fox, Chrono Trigger, Earthworm Jim, Jet Force Gemini, etc. Everything looked so... fun.

I'm glad health bars and packs have made a return. But the only thing I really, really miss are manuals. I hate in-game 3hr tutorial missions (I'm looking at you AC3), constant pop-ups and reminders on what I should be doing and how to do it (Yes, I know to press O to do that thing I've done 90000000 times), contextual clues. Fuck it, give me a booklet with everything written down and I'm fine.

 

[TehCookie]

And to be honest, I never got to Ar Tonelico Qoga - I just remembered the PS2 original Ar Tonelico, saw it was still the same art style and combat (though with the third dimension added to it) and decided against it. And I still don't understand how series like Shadow Hearts, Valkyrie Profile, Legaia (though Dual Saga was a bit crap) and Dark Cloud / Chronicle / Rogue Galaxy bit the dust after the 6th generation, yet we still have Ar Tonelico and the Atelier series. And seriously, why are they all using that same crappy art style?! Where's Yoshitaka Hirota? Kazuma Kaneko? Anyone?

And yeah, sure... All JRPGs released on the gamecube were pure gold, all... three of them.

Ar Tonelico's combat is hardly similar, every game in the series changes it. How can you confuse turn based combat with real time action? The game is the worst in the series for a bunch of other reasons, but it sounds like you didn't even look into it.

As for why those games are popular: Moeshit. The only ones who still buy JRPGs are the otakus and they love cute girls doing cute things. That and JRPGs don't have big budgets, so they use crappy graphics and cell-shading hides ages graphics better than realistic ones. The budget is another reason why JRPGs are going to handhelds. There's been a new SMT game released for the 3DS. There's also a ton that haven't been brought over so if you are a JRPG fan you better start learning Japanese because they're dieing in the west.

OT: Cheat Codes
Exploration/freedom
Colors
Manuals
Imagination. I found a box of my dad's old games and going through them the thing I missed the most is when the game tries to pull you into the world. You open up the manual for a shooter and it's written like a military document. Myst's manual was literally a journal and it made me want to read through it and install the game. It drew me into the world before I even started playing. I feel like modern games lost that.

 

[J.McMillen]

Being able to create my own multi character party instead of being forced to take the same characters that everyone else does (i.e. most JRPG's). That way the major encounters play out differently because each players party isn't the same.

Also, grid movement and no auto-map. I don't know how much graph paper I went through over the years mapping out all those dungeons.

No internet faq's or walkthroughs. When I was a kid you either had to figure it out on your own, or work with your friends to solve things. There were magazines with hints, but nobody I knew subscribed to them, and good luck having the one you needed.

 

[Callate]

I'm starting to miss unambiguous "hey, you did a good thing!" happy endings. Maybe it's just the games I'm playing lately, but it's starting to seem like if you don't get a "of course, there's another looming evil presence in the wings..." to leave room open for a sequel, there's something like "congratulations, you got to the end- of course, everything you ever knew or loved is in ashes..." or "you've compromised everything you ever stood for, but now here you are at the end, don't you feel special" or "yay, wonderful things happened, and I'm sure our hero got a warm feeling knowing they would go that way in the seconds before their self-sacrifice ended their life." I mean, never mind the truly grim games like Hotline Miami or Spec Ops: The Line; the generally fun and upbeat Saints Row IV still includes

Spoiler

the Earth blowing up, 7 and a half billion people or so dying, and uncertainty as to whether humanity recovering is even a real possibility any longer. Not to mention open questions as to whether the main character's casual indifference might be to blame.

I know some people cheer the addition of moral grey to the palette, and I'm certainly not suggesting every game needs to be some sort of festival of can-do spirit and love for humanity. But I was reading a comment somewhere questioning if the medium has really matured so much as gone from "Whoa, boobs!" adolescence to "This sucks, everything sucks, I hate you" adolescence, and at times I have to agree.

 

[McMarbles]

I miss games that weren't ashamed to be games.

 

[veloper]

Simpler,catchier music.

I actually drew a blank on this threads question until I read this. I've been a big fan of PC/Console gaming since Commodore 64/NES and yet I couldn't think of anything. I'm among the minority who believes gaming has evolved for the better in just about every conceivable way.

However, the music is the only area where I'd disagree. I easily have 200+ instrumental tracks from gaming on my computer and about 90% of them come from SNES or earlier. Even when I check my setlist for more current gaming tracks a lot of them are from indie oldschool inspired titles like Binding of Isaac and Bastion.

Old school music often commanded your attention. Current age gaming music often tries to create immersion without distraction. I can appreciate it's purpose but it given the choice I'd go with the classics any day.

Seconding this one. Space Manbow for the MSX2 also has the catchy chiptunes.

 

[deathzero021]

snip

I recommend you try Demon's Souls, its Dark Souls predecessor and it's quite a bit more difficult. Several of the more convenient aspects in Dark Souls aren't present in Demon's Souls. Also your health is cut in half if you die and aren't in human form, I believe.

Way ahead of ya. I just beat Demon's Souls 2 weeks ago. I wouldn't say it was harder, but it does FEEL harder. I actually died less times and the enemies aren't as challenging in terms of technique, but they do a lot more damage and the level design is a lot less forgiving. (pitfalls galore)

 

[Arcanite Ripper]

Replay value.

THAT ISN'T MULTIPLAYER.

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

little to no hand holding. and come on, do we really need a tutorial on 90% of the games we play.

Yes, we do. Tutorials aren't handholding. Batman: Arkham Asylum would show you button prompts for the most basic of actions, and those prompts would show up the entire way through the game. That is handholding.

You and I have been playing games for a while. But, say, my mom? Far as I know only thing she's played is Wii Fit.

There's no singular "first game" for everyone. That's why they all have tutorials. It's basically an evolution of the instruction manual. Though it'd be nice if all tutorials were skippable.

i coped, neither of my parents game and Atari 2600's only came with instruction manuels no tutorials

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

I miss the fun i had on Creatures 2 on the C64. My most beloved game ever. I wish that game was on XB live.

A lot of games dont have that sense of fun. Maybe thats just nostalgia. Just my age at the time.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Also, any game that doesnt need a day one patch. Biggest problem with online consoles/PC is that bullshit "release though its broken" mentality. An the fact gamers now see it as acceptable. Even PC accept a crap game because modders will fix it later, thats unacceptable to me - it should work straight out the box.

 

[Torque2100]

I miss games being longer than 8-10 hours. I miss being able to play the same game for a week or more and still not finish the main story. This problem is especially pronounced in first person shooters. I remember playing Syn for the first time and being blown away at the sheer length of the main story.

Also in First Person games I miss "Mantling." Do you know how monumentally useful it is to be able to climb up onto objects that are just slightly higher than you can jump. How hard would it be really to code this in and adjust level design to accommodate it?

 

[Mikkel421427]

Easy. Manuals. Not the pisstake, little, weedy pamphlet, no. That big, nice and thick one where all (And I mean ALL) the controls were in, the combos and perhaps, most importantly, an explanation of the different characters and/or units in the game. Made for some nice reading while waiting for the install

 

[WeepingAngels]

Loading bars.

Nowadays we usually have a stupid little spinning logo or something, like a little buffering sign in the corner. They're just so ambiguous... They don't tell you anything about how long you have left to wait.

To be fair, loading bars never really told you how long you had to wait either, and you'd always get those times where the loading bar would stop for too long and you'd start wondering if the game had frozen. At least with the stupid spinning logos you know the game is still loading and hasn't secretly crashed.

Microsoft has it worked out with windows, the loading bar itself is animated. I remember Windows 95 having a loading bar and above it there was a page being moved from one file to the other or an animated drum.

If game developers can't figure out a way to represent both in 2013, that's sad.

 

[Quadocky]

Another thing I miss is over-the-top nonsense. We have all this graphic power yet older games were doing so much more cooler things with it than I've ever seen newer games even try. (the Summons in Final Fantasy 7 and 8 for example)