The only thing here that is mostly BS is the “tons of unlockable content.” That really became more of a thing after DLC and always online shit. Most of the time it was ONE level and/or ONE character if it had anything at all.
This is def nostalgia goggles, so many games were broken buggy messes back then because there was no way to ship updates
No, they weren’t. Most had bugs, but they weren’t game-breaking. A lot of people took joy in finding and exploiting the bugs too. Dupes, etc.
Yeah, some shitty games were loaded with bugs.
bugs? nah, not a problem
whistles in Morrowind
Try playing the original SEGA catalog. Lemme know how many of those games work.
Did you try blowing in them?
That wasn’t actually good for the cartridge, long term. My parents provided us with q-tips, but we were a Nintendo family. I had a few friends that had the SEGA Master System, and though I don’t remember the titles, I do remember several cartridges that we never played, because there were problems with the game a level or two in.
Most of them? Care to provide some examples without the ridiculous “don’t work” hyperbole? Clearly most Sega games were functional, otherwise no one would’ve been playing them.
"Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.” ― Douglas Adams, “The Salmon of Doubt”
When a game sucked ass then you had a physical product you could sell or trade to offload it. Instead of the whole game getting the servers shut off and delisted within a year if it’s bad today. Even the bad games were better back then because of this
On one hand it’s nostalgia, on another - over-fixation on a certain type of games that are designed to be addictive and drain your wallet. But there are many other games to play that are nothing like that.
i’ve played single player games my entire life and got nothing but shit for it. i guess because they don’t have all the drama of multiplayer games and the constant updates?
Full game on a disk? You new school kids don’t know that 1/2 of the game is loading the 17, 5 1/2" floppies in order just to install your game.
and we all had our own way of stacking the floppies. so you would never install anything with anyone you didn’t trust around, because they might move your stacks.
Honestly, that’s the entire reason i lost interest in consoles after buying the PS4. If i need to:
1 Boot up the console.
2 Update the system (twice).
3 PSN account bullshit.
4 Insert disc.
5 Install the game.
6 Download 50GB update for the game.
7 Install said update.
8 Finally start the game.
9 Login and TOS bullshit.
10 Finally play game.I might just as well use my PC for gaming at that point. The games library is larger and the exclusives are just not worth it. Especially after Sony started releasing those on PC as well.
Especially after Sony started releasing those on PC as well.
They put a stop to that, and now it’s more clear why: they want absolute control over the price of their games.
i’ve never had to spend hours finding the ‘right driver’ for my PS4 to run a game. or having to mod the game to get it to just play.
which is why i gave up on PC gaming, I’m old and I just want to play games, I don’t wnat to spend 2-3 hours ‘troubleshooting’ every game on my PC and having to swap drivers because some games only run on some drivers.
On PC I don’t have to rebuy games because Sony doesn’t believe in backwards compatibility.
i’ve never had to spend hours finding the ‘right driver’ for my PS4 to run a game. or having to mod the game to get it to just play.
Funny, I’ve never had to.do.those things on my PC.
cool. I am not you. I have to do it basically every time i want to PC game, and always have.
even my nephews have to do it frequently and they just bought new gaming PCs that are a few months old.
Yeah you should probably stick with consoles then.
that makes one of us
PC gaming has more exclusives btw
The sweet spot was getting the full game on disc and getting included DLC, having the ability to mod the game, and run private servers. It was kinda the golden era of this stage in gaming. Computers were powerful enough to give a great visual experience and studios were still interested in producing engaging storylines in triple A releases instead of just banging out battle royale games.
You could just enjoy the game as-is with a really good singleplayer campaign and then with whatever online offered. To this day I still have great memories of Half Life, Crysis, or even MoH:AA, especially the Snowy Park map. Do they compare graphically with today’s games like Fortnite? Not a chance. But you remember the story and how the game was way better at pulling you into it.
Some of the mods from this era turned out to be just as popular, if not moreso, than the original base game. Some of them live on to this day.
Sure, some Steam games offer mods and the like, but it certainly isn’t the same thing as what we had 15 or so years ago.
If you haven’t grabbed it, Black Mesa is like $3 right now during the summer sale
Never played it. I’ll have a look. Thanks.
It’s a modern day Half Life 1. Fan remake, with greatly expanded Xen levels. Obviously they got Valve’s permission, given the whole companion cube steam machine fiasco.
when can i stop living in this universe and switch back to the one we originally were on? man i miss it so much. That and original pizzahut
and those planters cheeseballs. the new ones don’t have as much msg
you never did and you never will.
games cost about 4x what they do today back then. you were paying 40-80 dollars per game, and they never got discounted really unless they became a huge hit and got a best seller release and maybe they went down to 20-30, in 2026 dollars, that’s between 40-160 dollars per game. which is the reason why most folks only bought like 2-4 games a year if they were lucky. now you are buying dozens of games per year for like $100-200.
In Germany you could buy most games for 12.95DM in the 90s/10€ in the 2000s, if you were willing to wait a year after the initial release. And unless you had enough money to buy the newest PC, you often had to resort to last year’s games anyway. As a comparison, I got 20DM for mowing my neighbours lawn.
These re-releases came with just a jewel case and no box, the manual was a PDF on the disk but on the other hand they often had some bugs fixed since the first release.
i buy two games per year for $100 tops but more like $50 after shipping and taxes. my personal and local public library give me plenty to do.
Convince another weasel to dine on the particle collider in Switzerland.
Why do people want physical media? It’s shit. Sorry, I have to leave my house and go take the bus to transfer some data? IPoAC is a meme, not a serious distribution system. Yet it would still be better than games on physical media!
If you don’t like the DRM that some digital copies come with I totally get that but GOG has existed for a very long time at this point. Also physical copies frequently come with more DRM than a digital copy from GOG does.
They can’t make my physical copy just not be in my physical library anymore. They sure can any digital they wish. At anytime they wish. Digital is crap because you don’t actually own it.
It would still be in your library, sure. But that doesn’t mean they can’t make it not work anymore. It needs to be on physical media and not be required to connect to a server.
I keep seeing this attitude toward physical media like everyone forgot about what happend with The Crew.
And, legally speaking, you don’t own the software on the disk, either. You just own the disk.
They sure can any digital they wish
Did you not read my message? I said I totally get not liking DRM. Which btw can turn physical copies into paperweights too if its Orwellian enough. If a digital copy has no DRM it is even more resilient than physical because most physical copies do have DRM that prevents making backup copies.
Hard disagree. Did you read my message? I said they can’t just make my physical copy disappear from my library. My physical library. Never in my life have i had a physical copy not play flawless when i put it in. Had to give the old carts a blowy every now and then but never did they not work. Never.
Also drm has nothing to do with a company pulling digital access. Nothing.
This isn’t actually true with GoG though. They can delist the game from their store, but if you already have it downloaded then you have it for as long as you maintain your digital files
Would that not be considered a physical copy then? It’s physically on your drive and not a digital license.
I wouldn’t, it’s not technically “physically” on your drive.
Like, the real benefit of physical media is that it is separate from the medium you use to view it on. If your blu-ray player breaks, you still have your disks. If your computer breaks, you might not be able to recover those files and then they would be lost forever. Maybe if you have an external backup that can be disconnected from your system? That I’d be closer to considering physical media, since it can be disconnected from the medium.
If you really wanna fall down a rabbit hole though, what’s the difference between an installation server being taken down, and a disc you own getting smudged and becoming unreadable? In both cases, your access to the media you “own” was lost due to factors outside your control.
I mean, you can, but it has to be DRM free like GOG, and has to be able to run independent of the launcher.
then again, even if you do own it, doesn’t mean you can install/run it without code updates. part of the genius of GoG is they include the update/emulation code to make old games run on modern hardware and OS w/o having to hack it yourself or download some mod from some repository that might be malware.
because it’s a physical tangible object you own.
You own your SSD, you can stick it on an SD card if you like.
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Okay guys 'n gals. What’s your first game you thought of while reading this greentext?
Mine is TimeSplitters 2 on PS2.
Oh definitely Gauntlet Legends on the N64, I ruined the game cartridge I played it so often. Good times
While not my absolute favourite 2 player game, my friend and I sunk hours and hours into Champions of Norrath 1 and 2. We must have played new game+ like, 5 or 6 times. Loved it!
(Most love probably goes to Street Fighter 2 on the Megadrive)
DK64. I see so much hate for it now, with people saying there are way too many collectibles, but those people fail to realize that back then most kids only had a few games that they just had to play over and over again if they wanted to play video games at all. To have a game that always had a new thing to collect even when you went to the same level for the 1000th time was a godsend.
GoldenEye N64
Soldier of Fortune
Ratchet and Clank - Up your Arsenal
I thought of an era, not a specific game.
Yeah, while my mind did go to GoldenEye, this really applied to NES, SNES, N64, GameCube, and ps2, out of the systems I have/had.
My wii u games are still playable, though they might try to connect to a server that no longer exists to look for updates. Similar with ps3 (though I think my system needs an overhaul because it’s running pretty slow these days, like many dropped frames in rock band 2 or even some in GH3).
For the ps5, I’m not sure what will happen when Sony no longer wants to support it. I mostly have physical games, maybe I should try disconnecting the internet and see what happens if I try to fire up random games, both ones I’ve already played and ones that haven’t left their case yet.
Anyways, I mostly thought of the era of the first paragraph, since the others have updates.
Tell me more! :D
It was a time of both plug and play simplicity, and head banging frustration. Consoles were dumb easy, and had to have a catalog that competed with the others. PC games were the wild west. Everything from it just works to eight disc setups, but not a single mainstream way to extract more money after the game had been sold. You could pop your ass on the couch and play the same game for 8 hours and still not do everything in it despite the lack of online capabilities. It was an era of mystery, is this article/friend/kid taking me for one? Or is Yoshi really there at the top of Peaches castle in Mario 64? If you’d never know if you or a friend didnt do it in front of you. Subscription was a thing but they seem modest by today’s standards. Zezima, Athena, and LeeroyJenkins were the names of our Gods.
Oh man. Amen! Thank you for this awesome text. I’m just 26 years old, but I think this is the golden times. Not like, those are the best games or stuff, it’s just… I kinda feel like those were the good times. Even tho even then there was many shitty games. Probably even most of the games. It’s hard to describe this feeling. :/
The games are still there. Nintendo may cost an arm and a leg now but it kinda did then too and Zelda still never asks where your season pass is. Some games are the classic games in disguise like Flock Around is just Pokemon Snap without rails. Theres this game called Star Garden thats Kirby Air Ride with a Chao Garden thrown in. Cassette Beasts is Steam Pokemon. I host my own Phantasy Star Online Episode 1 & 2 server. Its all still there and still being made. The golden era never ended, its just the giants aren’t peddling it anymore and the river is so wide it can be a chore to wade. But, have you slain Olga Flow in the depths of the world? Or repelled the second coming of Orochi with a stroke of your celestial brush? Or discovered the mystery behind what happened to Darth Revan? Theres thousands of hours of games to get through before the modern era. Vimm’s lair has 1/4th of it. Kindle your soul and keep the age of fire burning a little longer.
Spyro the Dragon. Man I need to find the time to play through that entire stack of games again…
The remake of the trilogy is pretty good, if you haven’t tried it.
I have, and i loved every minute of it. 😁 But it has been to long since i played the PS2 and PS3 games…
At least with those games you had a collectible figure once the game was finished.
Pokémon Leaf Green
Twisted Metal on PS1
Super Mario World on SNES
Super Mario World
That game is like 50% secrets and still Nintendos best work IMO.Goldeneye
I gotta play it. Sadly as I grew older, those old FPS with low FoV give me motion sickness in like minutes. Can’t even enjoy Build Engine games anymore, which were my favorite old school games back then. :c
Mario kart 64
That and Quake II are the only console games I’ve ever sunk an enormous amount of time into.
Jet Force Gemini
Perfect Dark
You mean Goldeneye 2?
Halo ce
Bubble Bobble, but it was on my boyfriend’s C64. I wasn’t allowed a computer (and was thus obsessed by them, lol)
Divinity and then Dark Souls
Super Monkey Ball 2 on GC. My brother and I spent more time playing the mini games than the game itself.
Gotta agree here. That game was so much fun. Just remember the monkey assistant mode (don’t know what it was called in english, the german localization called it “Affiger Assistent” which translates to “monkey-like assistant” or “silly assistant”) in multiplayer!
As a fellow German, I feel ya. The monkey was also my favorite char when playing pvp. lol
Goof Troop… Surprisingly hard to beat that game in co-op 😂
Golden Sun 😊
Fuzion Frenzy even though it doesn’t really apply because it wasn’t really single player at all, it was only local co-op mini games like a Mario Party kinda (with no board.)
Even though it doesn’t really match what the greentext is describing, the vibe of just, like, enjoying video games in your living room with no DLC nor microtransactions made me think of it. It’s a game that was, like, moderately successful but not enough that I ever run into people on the internet that know about it, so it almost feels like a kind of secret I share with my sister, and the game had strong art direction that was really early 2000s that hits me with nostalgia too.
Okay that looks REALLY interesting. Thank you for sharing! Gotta share one thing: Bishi Bashi! PSX game that’s also a minigames collection. Pretty fun, quite high quality as far as I can tell. Haven’t found someone to play it atm. :c Still, looks fun af!
Back in 1997 I bought the game KKnD (Krush, Kill n’ Destroy) in a local store for what would now be 110 dollars only to discover that it was broken and wouldn’t run on my machine and there was no way to get a patch for it.
But I guess you could get your money back?
Nope :) I mean, I was 13, so maybe I could have if I’d pressed it but I was a kid and figured it was just bad luck.
Like, we weren’t online - you couldn’t look up consumer protection rules and shit back then, you had to rely on some adult who wasn’t a complete moron knowing what to do.
I randomly got KKnD Crossfires for PS1 and we played countless hours in split screen :D
Well, that’s just rubbing it in, isn’t it? :P
-Actually belongs to you -Developers can’t delete it
It’s usually publishers who are the villains here, not devs.
You’re completely right, whoops
Why would anyone build a whole ass in split screen mode?
A Wario game?
I didn’t know I needed this gif until now.
Right?!
I genuinely do not regret jumping off the video game train back in 2015.
Everything I have heard about the evolution of the gaming industry since has surpassed my pessimistic predictions back then, which could be summarized as: video games are becoming predatory and I feel like they eat my time and money for dismissed returns.
It was especially the consol market and the whole online aspect that made me wrinkle my nose. Feels like nowadays you actually can’t buy and play a game offline.
But what do I know. I only tune in when my friend is playing on twitch and we talk about life over Signal. We have gone back to retro games recently too. Jake and Daxter 🎉
Man, you have been missing out on the golden age of indie games. Sorry to hear that.
How? Factorio, Kenshi and Rimworld are games from before 2015
i think a lot of people are (me included) because its just force of habit to gravitate towards the AAA games and even tho there are some famous indie games out there like hollow knight those might not be for everyone and we lack maybe the will to search for them? I am probably switching to pc and i wil be searching for more indie games for sure. Maybe some good might come out of this!
I enjoyed watching some playthroughs of a couple of games over the years, but then I sorta lost interest. Used to follow John Wolfe a lot and watch his playthroughs. He was good at finding never heard of indie games in the horror genre, so I witnessed a few gems through him.
Plenty of good stuff still happening in games.
Indies are bigger and better than ever. Yeah, the shitty stuff is front and center, but its not hard to find games made with genuine passion either.
Looked at different, we are a in a new golden age of games. Not for giant AAA titles or hardware.
But for the fact that game engines and tutorials on how to use them are readily available, and lots of normal people with neat ideas are making them into real games.
one of the things I like about my thirties is that a bunch of people who grew up interested in and liking the same things I did now have the skills and ability to create things I like
Indies are bigger and better than ever.
Are they? Most I play are from the 2010s, even if they are still being updated in some cases. What are some good recently released ones.
Some I have put a lot of hours into: KSP, Factorio, Rimworld, Kenshi, Vintage Story. They might be better games than they were back then but it’s still those games. X4 is fun, not sure if that counts as indie, should play it again, apparently it has diplomacy now rather than just shooting people you don’t like.
Windrose is a giant indie success that shat all over Ubisofts attempts at satisfying people wanting a pirate game.
More. Not all meet the technical definition of indie (the studio being 100% self-pulished)
But all of these games are quality projects that have good traction without massive budgets.
- Haste
- Sektori
- Kletka
- Peak
- Species: Unknown
- Routine
- Buckshot Roulette
- Crow Country
- Deep Snow Delivery
- NEBULOUS: Fleet Command
- Jump Space
- Motorslice
- Hades 2
- Sifu
I could literally keep going if I went into games that are older or that I haven’t gotten to yet.
My wishlist is getting longer, not shorter. I am finding games I want so much faster than I can play them.
Hmm, skimmed over a few and some of those seem kinda interesting. Not sure if they are the sort of thing to put many 100s or 1000s of hours in though.
Good start.
Fortunately whether you in particular are impressed by a fraction of what one random person happens to like, has no bearing on whether we are in fact getting more good games than ever, nor is the amount of hours you get out of game a metric for quality.
That you like the types of games you can immerse yourself in for those amounts of time is a matter of taste. A game can have a runtime of 15 minutes and still be worth both making and playing.
Let me keep going.
- Crying Suns
- Lumencraft
- Death’s Door
- Frostpunk 1/2
- Moonlighter 1/2
- The Long Dark
- Iron Nest
- Dead Cells
- Slay the Spire 1/2
- Project Zomboid (theoretically still not 1.0)
- Outer Wilds
- Hollow Knight: Silksong (ABSOLUTELY MASSIVE TITLE, and it’s indie)
- Ultrakill
- Signalis (One of my favorite horror titles of all time, maybe “the” favorite)
- Return of the Obra Dinn
- Nuclear Option (speaking of games you can sink hundreds of hours into)
- CAIRN
- Risk of Rain 2
- Judas (upcoming)
- Hardspace: Shipbreaker
- Schedule 1 (another massive title, while I’m personally uninterested)
The point, is that things are going fantastic. Whether one or none of the new games succeeding today are up your alley. That you already found your evergreen timesinks, is great. But it is a fact that more indie titles are getting traction than ever before, and more people are opting out of AAA titles with expiry dates.
That’s the thing. You can keep playing your 2013 titles forever. And more games that work like that are being released, and succeeding, than ever before.
That’s a good thing no matter how you look at it.
There is genuinely so much to play I can’t keep up. I regularly discover stuff from the last several years I had no idea existed, but which is exactly the type of thing I like.
Go look. Tons of these games have absolutely no ad campaigns, and I find a lot of them through word-of-mouth via friends, or the communities of other games I play.
That’ll be $75 (for N64 cartridges).
Hope you like 20fps with drops.
I knew Nintendo was done when playstation started selling games for twenty dollars
