What are some of the things you guys miss/don't miss from the late 90's?

[superhys]

So what do you guys/gals think?

Here are some of the things I miss;

SOCIAL GAMING

Since the emergence of online gaming ? PSN, Xbox Live and the like ? the personal camaraderie of gaming seems to have all but disappeared. Remember games like Goldeneye and Mario Kart 64? Gaming was more social back in the day; we had more fun, we talked trash, we had beers, we socialised. There was nothing like executing a perfect powerslide past your friend on the last corner of a track on Mario Kart and getting to see the devastation on their face! These days people don?t even use microphones online; the personal factor is sadly diminishing.

3D PLATFORMERS

Sure, there have been a couple of good ?uns this generation in the form of the Ratchet games and Mario Galaxy. Honestly though, think back to 10-15 years ago; We still had Mario and Ratchet, but we also had Banjo, Jak and Daxter, Crash, Spyro, Donkey Kong and it goes on? These games hold such a place in many gamer?s hearts, it?s a shame to see them going into decline.

That being said, the new indie era of game development has provided some cracking (mostly 2D) platformers: Meat Boy, Braid, Journey, ?Splosion Man, Fez, I could go on

STURDY CONSOLES

Right, I still have my SNES, Gamecube, PS1, Mega Drive, GBA, GBC and more from back in the day. Last generation, I went through: four Xbox 360 consoles, three PS3 consoles and two Wii consoles. Absolutely unacceptable; sadly, it looks like the trend has carried on into the new generation. Looks like with great power, comes great destructibility? Handhelds are still sturdy enough though.

BUYING THE GAME, THE WHOLE GAME, AND NOTHING BUT THE GAME

I?m sick of buying a game, only to have to wait for a 10 minute patch to download because they released it buggy and broken (I?m looking at you Obsidian!). Don?t even get me started on Capcom?s antics with on-disc DLC. Sure, DLC can be great when it adds to the experience- it?s just when publishers (and even developers) hold back ready content just to make a quick buck that ruins everything. We are paying quite a bit of money for these video games; I want the full package on day one, with nice extras along the line if I want them. We are now even being charged for things that used to be FREE: extra skins, characters and even cheats. It is ridiculous. Not only that, the increasingly popular?free-to-play? model is being implemented into games we paid 40 quid for. Even Rockstar are dabbling in this model, with the ability to purchase online GTA dollars with real cash. This worries me, this worries me a lot?

aaaaaand here are some of the things I certainly do NOT miss;

WIRED CONTROLLERS

This is something that didn?t cross my mind until I played Mario Party 2 with a few friends over the summer. Traversing the living room felt like recreating a laser hallway scene in a cheesy action film. If you wanted to get past for any reason, you literally had to be become an acrobat; wires were left, right and centre. As much as I could do with the work out these days, I just love the neatness of wireless controllers. I sure as hell will never take them for granted after last month?s fiasco.

MEMORY CARDS

These days we hardly have to think about our save files. 500GB Hard drives and the Cloud more than do the job of holding every save file we could dream of (even including DLC, movies and entire game downloads). One story in particular comes to mind from my Gamecube days. It came down to the decision of deleting my 100 hour plus Animal Crossing file or my beloved Wind Waker file. I couldn?t afford another memory card back then and mostly rented games. Thank god that horror will never have to be relived. All hail the Cloud.

BASTARD CARDBOARD BOXES

This mainly applies to Nintendo?s old packaging. Look over at your game collection from this generation. There are probably a few scuff marks and stains, but nothing too bad. Now, think back to your old GBA/GB/N64 collections; the boxes were probably disintegrating, rotting, squashed and stained beyond repair. Thank you DVD cases. I predict we won?t even have boxes in the next decade though. Bon voyage brick and motar, you had a good run.

GAMING AS A HERMIT'S HOBBY

Fifteen years ago people would think of a stereotypical gamer as an outsider of society: a geek, a nerd, a loser. The segregated line between gamers and everybody else has blurred, and I frickin? love it. Society has almost fully accepted gaming now. Obviously the older farts in the partisan sphere are still pretty against it, but they?ll be *ahem* gone soon. Gaming is smashing the box office as of late. GTA V has broken seven world records, including the fastest entertainment property to gross $1 billion. It?s not just third party games smashing the box office though; over the summer in my motherland (the UK), The Last of Us had allegedly grossed more than Man of Steel in its opening weeks. A first party Playstation game grossing more than THE FRICKIN? NEW SUPERMAN MOVIE; if that?s not an exemplar of the popularity and acceptance of gaming today, what is?

 

[Lucyfer86]

Eurodance, yeah that's right i said it, i loved (still do) that genre.

 

[superhys]

Eurodance, yeah that's right i said it, i loved (still do) that genre.

I never really got into that franchise (probably as I was a VERY awkward teenager). I'm already starting to miss the more recent rhythm games though. I'm looking at you, Harmonix.

EDIT: How embarrassing, I thought Eurodance was Dance Dance Revolution. I did post this in "gaming discussion" though.

 

[shrekfan246]

I miss world maps. Specifically the JRPG variety, though I'll admit I haven't played a great number of JRPGs released in the last ten years or so and as such don't know if there have been ones that still do that.

I can still remember playing Final Fantasy VII for the first time, spending hours playing around in Midgar, and then shit hits the fan and you have to leave and you come to that big ass world map and it's just jaw-dropping.

I don't get to feel that sense of wonder very much anymore.

EDIT: It's not the say the more interconnected nature of the worlds in Final Fantasy XII or Xenoblade Chronicles aren't also awesome, but there's just a certain nostalgic charm in those old world maps that you don't really see anymore when they're all directly connected areas.

 

[FinalDream]

I miss:

REAL CONSOLE WARS.

None of this, oh I own all of them nonsense, your parents bought you one and that was it. You stuck with it. I remember some real hatred for the enemy (this been the clearly inferior SEGA losers ) and I remember on one occasion a kid poured cola into a Mega Drive at a birthday party to do his part in the war. Many Playstation memory cards where also wiped...

REAL PC GAMING.

We all had PC's bought for 'educational purposes' like MS Encarta which was swiftly ignored. And maybe it's my nostalgia but the games where better, more innovative and actually good honest fun (remember that?) and you didn't have to worry about half the stuff you do these days. No XP unlocks (for the most part), no shoddy ports, no invasive multiplayer into single player, malware acting like a download service.

FIRST PERSON SHOOTERS WHERE A CREDIBLE CHOICE FOR A GAMER TO STATE THEY LIKED.

Since I got hold of Doom, I loved FPS', we had some great games that you could talk about for hours without fear of been labelled a sheep, or a fanboy.

WHEN FINAL FANTASY WAS GOOD, LIKE REAL GOOD.

Since FF9, it seems the franchise has managed to loose fans along the way. I can still remember when it was loved without condition amongst my friends.

MAGAZINES AND DEMO DISKS

The internet is just not as fun . I loved reading the mags and playing the demo disks to death (ah Metal Gear Solid, good times)







I don't miss:

BEEN AT SCHOOL SO TRADE IN WAS MY LIFEBLOOD.

I must have traded in more games than most, I seemed to be out every weekend trading things in (and for a reasonable price too!) to get the latest games. I know for a fact I wouldn't have played 3/4 of the games I did without trade in.

MEMORY CARDS

So many saves lost to failed cards or accidental wipes. Remember those cards that could only work with a disk inserted when you first turned the PS1 on? What was up with that...

HACKERS AND ONLINE CHEATERS

I remember the online games (PC) been full of hackers and cheats, some even killed interest in whole games for me. Of course we have semi-robust services now to detect these folks but it was a bit of a minefield back then.

CRT TV's

To this day I don't know how I managed to play the entire era of the PS1 and PS2 on a small, dodgy 14" CRT TV. I had to use it recently when my HDTV died and I tried to play MGS2 and could hardly see a thing!

CHEATS

I know some people will miss this, but I think I used them too much at times to avoid perseverance and effort. I'm glad that we can't so easily resort to cheats on console to progress.

 

[TehCookie]

Things I miss:

Exploration in games.
You want that infinity +1 sword? You have to go out a look for it and do some huge long challenging sidequest to get it. Devs didn't care if you didn't get the "full experience" or worry that you may get lost for 10 mins and chained you down to a hallway.

Things I don't miss:

Loading times.
I swear I could make a sandwich in the time it took for some games to load. As much as some people complain, games today are so much faster than the old ones.

 

[superhys]

Things I miss:

Exploration in games.
You want that infinity +1 sword? You have to go out a look for it and do some huge long challenging sidequest to get it. Devs didn't care if you didn't get the "full experience" or worry that you may get lost for 10 mins and chained you down to a hallway.

Things I don't miss:

Loading times.
I swear I could make a sandwich in the time it took for some games to load. As much as some people complain, games today are so much faster than the old ones.

I miss exploration so much man. Skyrim and Fallout 3/NV satisfy my exploration cravings, but they just don't have the openness of Morrowind.

 

[Naeras]

I miss:

Strategy games
Yeah, sure, there are a couple of them released every now and then today, but nowhere near as often as back then. Sure, a lot of them blew, but there were a lot of good, big-profile ones.

Fighting games
See strategy games.

Things I definitely don't miss:

90s pop music
Fuck 90s pop music.
Seriously.

 

[King of Asgaard]

BUYING THE GAME, THE WHOLE GAME, AND NOTHING BUT THE GAME

I?m sick of buying a game, only to have to wait for a 10 minute patch to download because they released it buggy and broken (I?m looking at you Obsidian!). Don?t even get me started on Capcom?s antics with on-disc DLC. Sure, DLC can be great when it adds to the experience- it?s just when publishers (and even developers) hold back ready content just to make a quick buck that ruins everything. We are paying quite a bit of money for these video games; I want the full package on day one, with nice extras along the line if I want them. We are now even being charged for things that used to be FREE: extra skins, characters and even cheats. It is ridiculous. Not only that, the increasingly popular?free-to-play? model is being implemented into games we paid 40 quid for. Even Rockstar are dabbling in this model, with the ability to purchase online GTA dollars with real cash. This worries me, this worries me a lot?

I'll second this; I may be young, but I still remember the days of the PS1/2 when buying a game meant you had a whole experience. It could have been 6 hours or 60 hours - it didn't matter. It was complete though, exactly what the dev wanted to produce, and not bogged down with DLC and season passes. Granted, it meant minor increments to gameplay/content had to come in full priced sequels, but it's a small price to pay instead of the constant nickel and diming that prevails nowadays.

MEMORY CARDS

These days we hardly have to think about our save files. 500GB Hard drives and the Cloud more than do the job of holding every save file we could dream of (even including DLC, movies and entire game downloads). One story in particular comes to mind from my Gamecube days. It came down to the decision of deleting my 100 hour plus Animal Crossing file or my beloved Wind Waker file. I couldn?t afford another memory card back then and mostly rented games. Thank god that horror will never have to be relived. All hail the Cloud.

This, however, I'll dispute. As great as having hundreds of gigabytes of internal storage for a console is, let's face it: memory cards were a lot more secure. If a memory card breaks down, you curse whatever god will tolerate the insult and buy a new one. Shame about the lost data, but it's over and done. If a 500Gb+ hard drive breaks down, however, it's a ***** to recover, and an even bigger ***** to recoup the loss. Not only that, but the Cloud is finicky and I personally don't trust some global server not to fuck up and lose large amounts of my data.

Something else I don't miss is dial-up internet. Thank Odin for Wifi, and the ability to use the internet when your mum's having a pedantic, prosaic conversation with your nan for hours.

 

[Zeraki]

I miss the days before DLC became a thing. We didn't have to buy a game and then I have to spend extra money to get an extra level that was chopped out, or locked on the disc just so it could be sold separately.

Cheat Codes!
It makes me really, really sad how stuff like cheat codes are so rare now. And if games do have cheat codes, you have to pay for them as DLC(get the hell out of here!). I remember one of my favorite things about games like Golden Eye, Jet Force Gemini and other games was unlocking the cheat codes and having fun with it. It adds a whole new level of replayability after you've beaten the game.

 

[Exhuminator]

Primarily I miss Looking Glass [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_Glass_Studios].

And I miss PC games being exclusive to PC and designed inherently thereof. In the 90's PC gaming felt totally different than it does today. And console gaming felt different too. Perhaps that's because PC gaming was mostly being developed by western devs, and console gaming by Japanese devs. There was a big dichotomy like that in the 90's but I enjoyed both sides of the equation. Somewhere around 2003, console games started getting ported constantly to PC, and everything just became homogenized ever since.

I don't miss low grade SGI rendered sprites [http://problemgamer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/398-shining_the_holy_ark_u-1.jpg] and grainy FMV [http://listverse.com/2011/12/24/10-notorious-full-motion-video-titles/].

 

[Aesir23]

I would say I miss sturdy consoles as well. My previous 360 lasted about five years before I got the Red Ring of Death which is a decent run for a 360 considering I've heard of people going through three 360s in a similar time period.

However, our original PS2 (the fat model) has lasted a little over 10 years now and is still going strong. The only reason I ever bought another one is because my sister kept complaining about me being in her room to play but would never allow the PS2 to be moved.

Also... Cheat Codes. Oh, how I miss Cheat Codes. I used to have a big book of cheat codes just for my PS1 games but now they are so incredibly rare in games outside of the PC. On top of that, some of the games that do allow cheat codes in single player won't allow you to save after you implement them. I can understand not allowing them in multiplayer and disabling achievements for obvious reasons but disallowing the ability to save your single player game seems a little nonsensical to me.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

WIRED CONTROLLERS

This is something that didn?t cross my mind until I played Mario Party 2 with a few friends over the summer. Traversing the living room felt like recreating a laser hallway scene in a cheesy action film. If you wanted to get past for any reason, you literally had to be become an acrobat; wires were left, right and centre. As much as I could do with the work out these days, I just love the neatness of wireless controllers. I sure as hell will never take them for granted after last month?s fiasco.is?

I agree with you on most of what you said... but this is one place where I just can't. This is where I have to draw the line. I'd take wired peripherals over wireless ones any day. With wireless stuff it seems like the battery is inevitably going to die right at that critical moment and cost you the game. Also, with the X-Box 360 wireless controllers that used AA-batteries, I constantly had the threat of one of my asshole college roommates stealing the batteries and replacing them with the dead ones from his GameBoy... and another one of my asshole roommates stealing them and replacing them with packages of Smarties candies just for the sake of being an asshole.

 

[FPLOON]

Things I miss (even though I started gaming in the 00s):

SQUARESOFT

Globdamn did they make a lot of good JRPGs... and I don't just mean Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger... *wink*

STURDY CONSOLES/CONTROLLERS

Nintendo wasn't the only one on fire in that department... I think...

CHEAT CODES

How else are you going to make a game you like 20% more fun?


Things I don't miss (kinda):

WIRED CONTROLLERS

I now know where that other "cable" went to...

THE ATARI JAGUAR

This used to be a thing? ...And it came out when? (That explains a lot...)

CHEAT CODES

...Actually, the ones that would harm your game rather than enhancing the overall experience...

 

[Kurai Angelo]

I'm gonna be the dick and say it... what is stopping you from still playing these games? (I know this is not the entire point of your post, but still...) If you have more fun and get more enjoyment out of the games of yesteryear, there is nothing stopping you playing the games you hold so close to your heart or find more enjoyable than current iterations.

Just because modern games don't cater to your preferences for social gaming or anything else it doesn't mean you have to forego these experiences. Just play the games you love with the people that mean something to you.

I play a lot of current games, but that doesn't mean I don't also enjoy having a few friends round for some beers, goldeneye and mario kart. Your gaming experience is what you make of it. The games you love are there whether they're current or not.

 

[kilenem]

When you could pick up a game and know nothing about it and its good. Know all the good games blow their load in trailers and if you don't hear anything about a game it sucks. Except for games in digital stores because they might not have enough advertisement or something like NES remix which was announced and released with in a day.

I don't miss artificial difficulty because the hardware doesn't allow for anytime saves. Save points suck and codes suck.

I can't wait for Devs to add check points after cut scenes.

 

[Voulan]

I miss cheat codes a lot, but mostly I just miss unlockables that have now become DLC. Back then when you bought a game, you actually bought the game, not a down payment for more of the game later at a price.

 

[BreakfastMan]

I really miss alternative metal. And no, I don't mean alt metal of the Korn or Limp Bizkit variety. I mean the alt metal from Tool, Primus, Helmet, Faith No More, and System of a Down. We don't really get metal that is much like that anymore, that is unafraid to be completely fucking bonkers and willing to go all over the place in terms of tone and subject matter, while still creating great music.

Also, cartoons in the 90's where great. Cartoons nowadays are great as well, but the 90's were special, in that most of the great stuff could be watched by the whole family. Not really the case, nowadays...