/vr/ - Retro Games

Better

Lots of choices, but only one platform to choose, and only a handful of games at a time.

Nothing is different, you didn't miss out on anything. Emulate like a mad man. Honestly, all I ever wanted as a kid was to have every NES game, then every Genesis game, etc. for every system I had. Now, I do! The future is great!

So imagine reading all those old mags and lusting over everything and having nothing. Boom, the 90's.

Everybody used cheats. And those that didn't are liars.

>>6742726
games were expensive too like 60-80 dollars

>>6742726
>>6742731
Was there even a retro/collection scene back then? Or is that something recent?

desu sometimes I wish I could travel back in time to get all those cool games, and maybe an extra copy or two to sell them off today.

>>6742775
yes

>>6742775
I started "collecting" NES and SNES shit in 1999-2001 (R.I.P. in Piece Funcoland) and it was hella cheap relative to today because all of that stuff was considered outdated once gaming went 3D.

i used to be a monochromatic anime girl back in the 80's but i don't remember anything anymore

>>6742775
>Was there even a retro/collection scene back then? Or is that something recent?
No, there wasn't. I grew up with Atari 2600 so I kind of collected, which basically amounted to buying them when they were cheap at garage sales or buying them at flea markets/2nd hand shops when your parents drug you around to them. At shops, an Atari game was like 50 cents to $1, garage sales you might find a box of old Atari games with a console for $20-30. As a kid of course I couldn't but that, but maybe once a year my parents would buy me one of these bundles.

Basically old games were considered as much of trash as going to a garage sale now and buying a bag of old silverware. Once someone's console broke or they moved on to newer systems, this was just junk sitting around that no one played or cared about. Like finding an old McDonald's toy at a garage sale or something.

I remember even in about 95-98 you could still find Atari games for 25 cents and NES games for like $1-2 all the time. They were junk that no one wanted. I bought an NES toploader with all hookups, controllers and 3 games for $12. I still have this system and use it regularly.

>>6742663
Like gaming in the 80's but with less "soul"

There was no DLC
There were no microtransactions
There was no twitch streaming
There was no youtube
There were no e celebrities
There weren't any pre-order bonuses
There weren't advertisements in the games themselves
New genres and experimental games were very common
There was no gamer culture whatsoever, 99.99% of the audience was young children.

>>6743019
>There weren't advertisements in the games themselves
>There was no gamer culture whatsoever, 99.99% of the audience was young children.

lmao the both of these are objectively false

>>6742726
Despite that it seems like 90s gaming was a lot more "exciting" than it is today because of the technological progress.

>>6742775
I'm so fucking pissed, in 2001 my grandpa had literally a garbage bag filled with NES games in his closet and idk why the fuck I didn't ask for it when I first found out.

I went back to visit later on and I cant recall if they threw it in the trash or what but it was gone by then.

>>6743012
Early 90s was no different. It wasnt till around 95ish did everything start to change

>>6743105
Yeah, Everything was more exciting because we didn't have information shoved into our faces 24/7. We waited with anticipation and fervor for new things, even watching TV was better back then.

Magical.

The carts where more expensive yes, but people usually had like at least 5 games and just about everyone had some kind of console so we just borrow like crazy from each other, and all the video-rental stores had a game section (the stench of cigarettes and popcorn still elicits a dopamine hit), so you'd never be out of new games to play.

Also C64/Amiga and PC was popular in my part of the world so there was a lot of game copying and it was never a question of getting games but how to store them all and what to delete for space. By the mid 90s people started getting access to the internet and things really kicked off and there seemed to be no limits and the "web/net" was the wild west, Mp3, "DivX", porn etc and you shared all your stuff at LAN parties so there was suddenly massive amounts of content avalible.

By 1997 roms and emulators started becoming a thing and this blew my mind, 3 years earlier a SNES game would sell for $60-$80 but now you could download all those games you where dreaming of in the magazines, the whole fucking catalog, for free and play them on your PC! Felt unreal, like you'd hacked reality and won the lottery or something.

Also things where a lot more chill in general but at the same time people where trying to always "take it to the next level" (that 90s EXTREME meme thing), but people where still cool and talked to each other a lot more, and (in high school atleast) if you got tired of gaming just go to a party and get laid or hang, no (anti-)social network RSVP fuckery.

It was pretty cool.

On computers it was a fucking pain in the ass in the early 90s. Having to piss around with EMS and xms was a giant arse ache. dos and windows were clunky and slow.

Consoles, meh it was about the same, simpler mostly

>>6742997
There was a scene, you just didn't know about it. It existed in magazines, on BBS' and on Newsgroups. There were people who knew this shit was gonna be worth money. FunCoLand had a printed out newspaper price sheet, just like the comic guides, but much shorter. The only reason stuff was cheap then is because it was in the window of opportunity time... Like the whole of gaming was all so newish it wasn't antique or collectible yet, but people knew and traded it the whole time, and prepared.

Early example: I remember very distinctly knowing from FunCoLand price sheets in 1996 that Dragon Warrior 2-4 on NES were worth $$$ ($50). River City Ransom was already $25. Also, another trend at the time was theat the Tengen games, the non-sanctioned NES games, were worth like $15 to $30 because the speculation was those were gonna be worth something long term. They weren't.

Atari games are still worth $0.25 a piece. There are MILLIONS of copies of each of the popular games. You have to remember, 2012 was the first year when the games industry matched the revenues it had in 1982. The crash was that big.

>>6742663
You had to be more intelligent and persistent to beat those games.
Partially because they purposely made the game more challenging than today and partially because of bad design / limitations

>>6743164
I disagree with this. I've paid money for more than enough stinkers just because they looked good in a magazine or on a shelf.

That shit isn't magical, especially when you have limited money and only get gifts twice a year (Christmas and birthdays)

People will try and tell you games were better back then op, but they really weren't. Simpler maybe. The truth is that games were more expensive and you got less for your money. Games have to some extent consistently improved while beating inflation, which is both a good and bad thing.

Anyway, games have never been better, although the industry is probably worse for it

>>6743316
>You had to be more intelligent and persistent to beat those games.
Persistent maybe, but not intelligent. Castlevania and Ninja Gaiden, for example, are about developing muscle memory, memorizing stage design, and learning to tackle bosses. It's by no means a cerebral experience.

>>6742663
Instead of paid online servers, your game came with a server. You or one of your friends would just host the game. You could play through Quake with your friends just by setting it up that way.

>>6742663
Amazing, my brother was alive.

We’d play streets of rage and toejam and Earl most nights. Argue over who plays Adam or Alex. I was always toejam and he was earl. I’d support him with tails in sonic 3 when actually I was the better player. Dkc2-3 we’d try collect everything.

I play these games now, it’s not the same. I miss the 90s. I miss my brother.

>>6743331
He's in a better place

with shittier games

>>6743317
Look maybe your stepdad used to beat the shit out of you and your mom, but my childhood was great. Having to wait for gifts and the next episode of a TV show was more rewarding. If the game sucked you were just more psyched about other games, but if it was good, it was the greatest thing of all time.

>>6743342
>Look maybe your stepdad used to beat the shit out of you and your mom
How did you come to this conclusion exactly?

>>6743331
That's rough. I'm sorry for your loss.

The internet not being mainstream like it's now was great in many ways. Of course the world felt smaller at the time (and, dare I say, more comfy too). You weren't exposed to random people's shitty opinions all the time.
People were also not obsessed with political agendas, in fact, politicians were often mocked and not taken too seriously.
It was fun times.

>>6742663
it really depended on how old you were.
if you were a kid, 5 - 15ish, the 90s were a golden era and every year games got better. these days, things have slowed to a crawl re: graphical and storytelling advancements.
older folks n the 90s weren't interested unless they were autistic, because most of them saw all vidya games as another Pong or Asteroids, something to play for 30 minutes and then be done with forever, as they were used arcade-style shit

>>6743158
>I didn't play games int he 80's
I can tell

>>6742663
Full of wonder and childlike amazement. My adult brain can't enjoy most video games any more. :(

>>6743507
>People were also not obsessed with political agendas
Rent free, goddamn.

>>6742663
Like gaming in the 80s except better.

>>6742663
there was a feel of excitement for the future, but those ended up being fake promises in the end.

Nowadays there is nothing to look up to, which is fine, dont let those shitty companies brainwash you and tell you what you should be excited for, as this guy said: >>6742726 you have all games in the world to play now. The world is literally yours, have fun.

a lot more social, you had to play with a friend next to you if you wanted a multiplayer experience. or to play games you dont have or couldnt rent. also you went out to rent games, and it was a gamble if you could find the game or not, and a lot of times you go home with some random game that you may or may not like. it didnt matter, because games were more difficult and generally werent padded out to be 100+ hours of open world gayness for no reason. also it was meant to be pick up and play, after a few minutes you knew how to play a game, you didnt have 40 minutes of world building explaining the story and controls to you before you could get into a game.

Bro, shit was so cash! Get this, if you turned on/off your PS1 with your memorycard inserted into the console, your data would get randomly deleted! How cool is that? Videos games have only gotten worse since then.

>>6742775
I first started collecting in the early 2000s, but before then I just held on to whatever I bought, so in a way I was collecting prior to then. Granted I don't have anything crazy from when it was new, but I still have boxes and manuals for stuff like Pokemon Red, Super Mario RPG, RC Pro-AM II

>>6743312
>You have to remember, 2012 was the first year when the games industry matched the revenues it had in 1982. The crash was that big.

Oh fuck I knew the crash was big...but I didn't know it was THAT big. That just seems so absurd. Atari was big, but it was Wii + PS3 + 360 big?? Were the other players besides Atari big too??

>>6743608
also, games meant more because we had less of them. they were expensive and most of us only got to own so many a year. that means you dragged the quality out of it as much as you could. as kids we couldnt buy things off steam or download the roms for free, so if we couldnt trade it to a friend, we played it until we got bored of it entirely. we also enjoyed magazines and reviews a lot because we could see more of the games that were out there. I halfway think that seeing the games in action on the internet ruined a lot of our childhood wonder for games lol. just looking at pictures in the back of the box and in the magazines made my imagination run wild and build up my excitement for the games. the artwork helped build a sense of feeling for what the game is about. seeing how they play before you actually get to play it, kind of ruins the anticipation for new games. I supposed we know too much, and in comparison the new games are a lot more formulaic in terms of creating "a living breathing world" that they feel like old hat too. new games need to tease us and bring something fun to the table to really get my interests going high.

>>6743584
?

>>6743060
No and yes. Of course there were advertisements in games like Pizza Hut in TMNT2. But certainly not as bad as it is today.

Gaming culture was nothing like it is today, so I agree with this point. Gaming culture is cancer now.

>>6743661
yes, gaming culture now is snobbery and false bravado turned into online trolling. that kind of behavior was only reserved for the faggiest of kids and the spoiled brats who could afford a lot. but no one liked them. now a bunch of nerds grew up and have some money to splurge on games, so they act out with a lot of elitism and general faggery and its become the culture. normal people hardly exist on the internet, or everyone decides to don a cape of stupidity for attention. so any trace of a healthy gaming culture is pure fantasy, its filled with hot air and idiocy masked as "u mad?" and a desire for (you)s

>>6743682
U mad though?

>>6743689
GRRRRRR! you got me! Im FUMING, bro!

>>6743682
So you never once step foot inside an arcade during the entire decade of the 90s or what?

>>6743320
>mfw boomers unironically paid $60+ for 2 hour long games

>>6743712
people werent really snobs, we were competitive. and no one liked the snobs anyways, like that one fag with the neo geo at home, but nobody likes. and you were less likely to get into a fight with someone at the arcade than you are at getting called a nigger online today by a 10 year old. today is just more of a bitchy vibe from all gamers.

>>6743728
nobody had save states, retard. name all these games that people beat in 2 hours. the games might not have been long and padded out but they were played for a lot longer than a few hours.

>>6743307
Yeah, and what a pain in the ass putting anything new in your computer. Driver issues all around, games not working because you had a certain sound card, certain integrated graphics etc.

>>6743737
Ok, here's a few
https://youtu.be/d4EUEsEM328
>1:51:41
https://youtu.be/xK-h4M4Aetg
>1:51:32
https://youtu.be/wd2NqblSmIY
>1:34:00

They ripped you off HARD, old man. And let's not forget about arcades, what do they call them? Coin eaters?
Thank God for emulation.

>>6742663
Comfy and way more social. People truly liked or not instead of following trends and caring about other people opinions. The games were made with love because there wasn't much corporativism shitting everything.

>>6743783
You could beat in such little time after struggling a lot to learn and get better. There wasn't youtube videos teaching people all the tricks and tips. Still it way more cheap and without DLCs to complete what was missing.

>>6743849
Everything in this post is wrong.

>>6743728
>mfw zoomers unironically pay $60 for 2 hour long streams of some thot yet still will remain virgins til the day they die

>>6742663
Like this: https://youtu.be/HpEBUV_g9vU

Why do younger people want to cope about not having experienced the pre-9/11 world?

>>6743879
it looks much better and cheerful than the hell we're living today for starters

>>6743909
How does this PS2 game look better than the current crop of Xbox Series X games?

>>6742921
>>6742775
back when they were no reseller scum/hipsters/e-celeb neckbeards/s.0_yb.oys and only the truly rare was expensive and they were not infiultrators fucking up with the definitions of rarity.

>>6743312
Atari was the king of the castle, but the market was made up of a lot of startups and we-also-makes. Imagine the startup gold rush of 2000, but it's shitty Atari style videogames. Everyone already had a console even before Atari: Pong variants. The market had been boiling since the early 70's, basically, and growing from zero to millions over night, so that got wall street interested and that turned the investment into billions and POP.

It was so different. You would go to a store with your parents, look at all the shiny boxes and just go by what the box cover looked like, whatever looked cool and had the best blurb on the back. Later game magazines came around and they helped let you know what was good and what wasn't, but even then most of the titles you had never heard of. Best was to rent a bunch of games, invite some friends and try them all out and make fun of the shitty ones together.

After you bought a game (from a real store, KB Toys, EB Games etc.), you'd sit in the back of your parents car after a long night, peel off the plastic and try to read the manual in small intervals by the light of the streetlights outside, familiarizing yourself with the characters, story, some mechanics maybe. When you got home, you'd run as fast as you could to the console. It was less convenient, and you had less games, but somehow I think people were happier then.

>>6743631
Arcades were big, computer games were starting, it was like 3 or 4 new markets opening up from zero, and it grew through herds of speculators too, investing in shovelware, etc.

>>6744017
>you'd sit in the back of your parents car after a long night, peel off the plastic and try to read the manual in small intervals by the light of the streetlights outside
wish i could do it again

Instead of owning a lot of games, you usually rented them at the local video rental store. Sometimes you had to wait a week or two to play the newest games, but it usually didn't bother you that much because there was always something you wanted to play. It's better than Redbox these days, you usually payed like $5 to rent it for a week or so and they actually had a fucking selection unlike the like 10ish games that constantly get cycled.
Game magazines were king, your best source at finding out what was about to come out and what was actually worth playing. Back when games journalists were actually passionate about games and could actually play them. You were usually hyped out of your mind for next month's issue and looked forward to the free poster that came with each copy or sometimes a demo disc.
Games were discussed solely at the school lunch table or the rental store if you ran into someone who was looking for recommendations or was trying to save you $5 on renting something shitty.
When the net started to appear in more people's houses, places like CheatCC were visited everytime you got a new game. Cheats aren't seen the same way as today, and was something you usually shared with friends as soon as you learned them. You didn't use them only after you beat a game, you would usually check them out right in the middle of your playthrough.
Better days.

>>6742663
Every game you got your hands on was precious and you squeezed every last drop of fun you could get out of it. Even if it was some licensed shovelware for SNES.

>>6744219
Fucking this. Games that were a serious time sink were seen as playable gold. Owning a new title was usually far and few between so games that could last for long play sessions, like Harvest Moon, felt like you hit the jackpot.

>>6744210
This was not at all my experience. We had a small local shop to rent games, they had maybe 20 total across NES, SNES and Genesis. Anything good was already rented, so get used to playing Marvel Land and Barney's Hide and Seek

>>6744245
That fucking sucks, anon. We had multiple rental stores where I lived, some ma and pa places and some big named stores where a whole wall length was dedicated to games. My parents were even cool enough to even try rental places just out of town if I wanted to play it badly enough.

>>6744245

Fuck, I honestly forget that horrible feeling of going to rent the new hot game and having every single copy rented out. This happened to me multiple times with Metal Gear Solid, and Megaman X.

>>6742935
Funcoland was amazing. You could get anything from the one closest to me, it was like magic. If it wasn't on the shelf they had it in a pile behind the counter and most everything was cheap.

>>6743105
Exactly. We went from Final Fantasy 1 to Final Fantasy VII in 10 years. The amount of rapid evolution, the sheer speed at which something new was on the horizon is unmatched by any time before or after. It was dizzying in a good way. I think that's why so many millennial gamers are jaded now. We grew up during such an exciting era that today seems quaint by comparison. "Oh a new Assassin's Creed that looks marginally better than the last? Whatever, seems fine."

We were kind of spoiled.

>>6744278
Yeah, you'd pick from their newspaper list and they'd tell you if they had it or not. Took time. You'd chat and meet people.

>>6742935
I remember going with my dad to pawn shops to grab somewhat new N64 and PS1 games for like $15-20. Seriously better times.

>>6744294
Yes, but we did get a lot of shitty games, unfair mechanics, and shovelware as penalty for our great leaps in tech. Original VR was junk, early CD ROM games all imitated Myst (which, from a design standpoint is a DOGSHIT guessing game).

The two big leaps I remember impressing me were FFVII and Mario64. Mario 64 in particular was unreal to me at the time.

- no torrents
- everything was 800x600, or 1024x768 near the end
- you couldn't google how to get past level 4
- finding demo games on a CD-rom from some pc magazine was like finding gold
- low res texture maps everywhere lol

wow those were the days

>>6744304
Its true that in the 90s we were treated like marks. There was always some gimmicky crap being sold to us. You kind of had to develop a keen eye or you'd keep getting burned. Today there's much less obvious trash.

You could buy PC games at the local mart and they came in FUCKING HUGE BOXES that made my kiddie console brain implode with envy

>>6744321
> Myst is a dogshit guessing game
... not if you thinkg about what you're seeing and apply the smallest bit of logic.

makes sense given that the entire game is based around logic puzzles.

>>6742663
>serial experiment tranny

>>6744334
It's not the puzzles I have an issue with, it's the fact that the game gives you nothing. You flip a switch and now you have to wander around the island until you notice what the switch did. Stuff like that. The puzzles were the best part. The total lack of any type of direction or observable feedback for a lot of your action is completely against everything they teach you in design school now. Notice how The Witness has little wires linking things to guide you a bit. I love games that are like "Where the fuck do I go," but I don't like flipping a switch and walking to the other side of the god damn island to notice a light came on somewhere 25 screens away.

>PC gaming
Main screen is black with green/white text, needed to know little about using DOS since things weren't auto back then. Many games available with varying difficulties and genres. Many small game companies.

>Console gaming
Mostly drooling over games you can't afford.
Others might know better.

>>6744341
Don't be gay, Let's All Love Lain

>>6744348
LET'S ALL LOVE LAIN! LET'S ALL LOVE LAIN! LET'S ALL LOVE LAIN! LET'S ALL LOVE LAIN! LET'S ALL LOVE LAIN! LET'S ALL LOVE LAIN! LET'S ALL LOVE LAIN! LET'S ALL LOVE LAIN! LET'S ALL LOVE LAIN! LET'S ALL LOVE LAIN! LET'S ALL LOVE LAIN! LET'S ALL LOVE LAIN!

>>6743783
pictured: gameplay of someone who knows everything about the game already
not pictured: hours of failing hard, dying to the same enemies, exploring to find both secrets and needed items, and not having the fucking internet (or, if you did, struggling to find anything)
>>6744348
>>6744349
fuck off back to your containment site
sincerely, an SEL fan who hates SELtrannyposters

>>6743924
for starters it doesnt try to impress you with a billion lame filters.

>>6744358
That's not very lain loving of you, remember, she's watching

>>6744295
I hadn't thought about that place for years.
All I have now is a shitty game x change that has had the same 'rare' games in their display cases at the same ebay scalper prices for the last four years i've lived here.

>>6744316
how is that backlog going anon.
Im sure you are enjoying finnishing a different game everyday and forgetting about it next day.

>>6744364

>>6743783
you can beat contra in less than 30 minutes. but nobody did that, not without weeks/months of gameplay and gittin gud. also because they were short, it was fun to put back in the system and have a go with your friends or to beat your score. good games have nothing to do with the length it takes to speed run it or beat it after watching a video on how to do it.

>>6743783
Fuck, I knew I shouldn't have paid $5 for that deck of cards. I can finish a game of crazy 8s in MINUTES! literally fucking minutes! I've been ripped off!

>>6742731

>tfw paid 80 bucks for WCW vs NWO World Tour new
>felt like I was smart as fuck because I knew I'd be renting the fucker every weekend anyways.

>>6744017
Id also like to include the pizza dinner for the friday/saturday/sunday night parties. youd eat something greasy and drink lots of soda with the family and maybe some friends who came over. you'd forget about the stress of the week by playing games and listening to music together. watch a movie on cable or a rental cartoon at one point. but the video game marathons with everyone felt like a great way to unwind and get absorbed into something interesting. games might have been played all night and most of the weekend, but at some point we'd go out on bikes, walk to the store, visit the arcade to see the games we could never own, and play fight in the back yard after arguing over backyard hijinks. but games were a fantastic way to facilitate a good time with your friends. I feel like kids today are a lot more insulated and live online, which is unhealthy because a lot of people perpetuate a fake appearance. after a while its unhealthy. irl if you said a fraction of the stuff people say on here youd get fucked up. even reality is tested every time some numbnuts says "O RLY? how about no. all that is false" because they can't find a way to communicate with people normally.

>>6744454
>All those nights going over to a friend's and staying up most of the night playing games and then when you both attempted to sleep, you really didn't and actually had some of the deepest soul enriching chats with your buddies instead of sleeping
Take me fucking back. Please.

>>6744482
Or when that one friend does finally fall asleep so as a joke you put your dick in his ass.

Good times.

>>6744294
I saw a documentary (cringe) by that Scottish guy from Gamespot and he discussed the problem with the last few generations of games, and that was "The Law of Diminishing Returns." it happened in gaming and you can see it in how the last two - and even the upcoming gen, is going to all have GTA 5 as a big game for them. The same game, across three platforms. this is not a troll, it's real. the assissins creed games are all the same with a reskinning, but you could play a lot of them on the 360 if they wanted to. and it wouldnt be a dramatic shift at all. games haven't evolved like they used to. The jump from Atari to PS2 is jarring. even Atari to SNES was awesome. but today, they can't compare. we stopped advancing in great leaps, and now we have the same game series, the same formats, and the same engines being used for generations without barely any change. Muh 4k and all that shit. games havent evolved, and the market wants us to play the same shit over and over because its the safest bet for them to invest in. as kiddie and silly nintendo can be, at least they give us an array of choices in their system as well as games that take chances. consoles are now so redundant and unnecessary its not even funny.

>>6744485
>Not being perfectly in sync with your bro and falling asleep at the same time
At least be gay in a fulfilling way

>>6744489
True, and Danny O'Dwyer is awesome.

>>6744489
This will only get worse as well as cost of development rises, which is must with the level of visual and audio fidelity of each new gen.

Nobodies going to take any chances when games require years of time, hundreds of people, and millions of dollars to make.

>>6744497
The only heart left in games will be left to Indies, but so many of them just want to copy their favorite games and slap on a new paint coat. Either that or are just hoping to get rich quick.

>>6744494
thanks, thats his name. I am subscribed to his channel long ago but the youtube algorithm thinks I never have to see it in my feed.
>>6744497
its sad. but Im bored of games, and not because Im a (meme) boomer, but because theyre literally the same shit I played 10-20 years ago. the FPS single player games are mostly the same. the RPGs are pretty much the same, or worse because a lot of them are claiming to bring the magic back of le fallout classic or system shock. the platformers, the same and they have no shame about it. the open world games, all the same. ubisoft made sure that its all more streamlined and more theatrical instead of open and challenging. there has been no real leaps in technology or gameplay. you realize the MMOs are trying to juice your dollars from you and stretch out gameplay hours by making you grind over the same old missions just to buy gear. games havent been self contained experiences with "SOUL" in a while. when was the last good mascot, by the way? its like theyre not even trying. mario is from my time lol, where are all the zoomer mascots?

>>6744494
thanks, thats his name. I was subscribed to his channel long ago, but the youtube algorithm thinks I never have to see it in my feed. hes better than sterling, although he has his head in the right place a lot of times. when hes not being a weirdo.
>>6744497
its sad. but Im bored of games, and not because Im a (meme) boomer, but because theyre literally the same shit I played 10-20 years ago. the FPS single player games are mostly the same. the RPGs are pretty much the same, or worse because a lot of them are claiming to bring the magic back of le fallout classic or system shock. and thats only bad because thats them at their best, but a lot of times they fall short. its been decades, please step the format up. the platformers, the same and they have no shame about it. the open world games, all the same. ubisoft made sure that its all more streamlined and more theatrical instead of open and challenging. there has been no real leaps in technology or gameplay. you realize the MMOs are trying to juice your dollars from you and stretch out gameplay hours by making you grind over the same old missions just to buy gear. games havent been self contained experiences with "SOUL" in a while. when was the last good mascot, by the way? its like theyre not even trying. mario is from my time lol, where are all the zoomer mascots?

>>6742663
This music explains it all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_5dFQG5ePw

>>6744524
>where are all the zoomer mascots?
That would be Minecraft guy and Fortnite guy

>>6744524
This right here. Growing up I was always looking forward to what games were going to be like in the future. I always thought they'd get more in depth. I thought RPGs would develop deeper simulation elements and really model a world instead of just having static assets stand around 24/7.

Instead we just got the same games with a new coat of paint.

>>6744536
theyre almost forgotten about today. I dont think either will be as memorable, or as lasting as mario or sonic, but who knows. all I know is that people would rather play mario odyssey in the future instead of play fortnite. however just a hunch, though.

>>6744548
Well, when the servers inevitably go down, no one will be able to play Fortnite anymore. Which is another shitty thing about games today, too online-only based. They will be remembered though. These games have had a huge impact no matter how much we dislike them. In 30 years time, some zoomie is going to get all misty eyes over these games.

>>6744564
We still have Phantasy Star Online servers running, pretty sure the fans will pick it up once Epic can't line their pockets with gold from it anymore.

>>6744572
Oh yeah, thank god for the madlads that run private servers. I've been meaning to check out Ephinea.

>>6744564
I wont crack too hard on multiplayer games, because a lot of the joy is taken off of the programmers and depend on the people you played with. but like you said, those will fade away. you cant get another session in those games when its antiquated. when its moment passes, that game cant be experienced like it was originally meant to. I remember after unreal 2 I think, and also in Halo for the PC, they didnt put bots in for multiplayer. (I could be wrong, but somewhere around then bots got pushed out of FPS games) everybody started removing them. I guess because they wanted you to buy their yearly updates instead (ie. the sequels that will play similarly). it makes sense, but that is another trade off in the consumers vs corporate battle. another way that "soul" was lost in modern times was in how we, the consumers, justify us getting fucked because we know the corporations have to scam the last penny from us whenever they can. so we just accept it like "okay" and the whales go and buy up some loot boxes

>>6744548
>I dont think either will be as memorable, or as lasting as mario or sonic
They will be. 6 year olds back in our day were playing Mario and Sonic. 6 year olds now are playing Minecraft.

And that's totally fine. Let kids have their own experiences.

>>6742663
(PC) gaming was expensive and less accessible to normies and brain dead kiddies. That's a good thing.

>>6746048

*Euro tracker music intensifies*

If you didn't live in central/northern Europe perhaps, here computer gaming was popular af since the early 80s, C64, Amiga and later PC with huge events and LAN parties.

>>6744454

dude. I was the anon you replied to. I wholeheartedly agree. We also played outside, rode bikes, even used to try to talk to girls who were older than us. At one point, one my friends got a camcorder and we used to make our own movies, one time we even tried to make a Mario movie. I wish I could go back, so bad.

>>6746067
Germany actually.

Still, it was a good filter. Also terminal/text-prompt OSes helped a lot to keep idiots and mouse pushers away.

>>6744454
>Id also like to include the pizza dinner for the friday/saturday/sunday night parties. youd eat something greasy and drink lots of soda with the family and maybe some friends who came over.
Why do millenials always say this like kids don't do this now?

I'm not using the term millenial as a derogatory term, by the way, as I'm only 31.

>>6742663
It was a lot less cancerous. If you were PC gaming you were part of the pirate master race if you had a Usenet connection/computer modem. (C64, Apples were thought of as "home computers"). Cheap ass games at Funcoland if you were console gaming. There were people collecting full box games for Atari, Coleco. Mail order was used for games you couldn't find anywhere else. The import scene was very high IQ.
Oh, and do you have a minute to talk about our lord and savior the NEO GEO? Seems that every 7 Eleven had one.

>>6746103
Part of it is thst gaming isnt included in this scenario anymore because of the near extinction of local multiplayer. They do the pizza parties but then watch a streamer.

>>6746103
We all desperately want our turn to act like those boomers that go "kids today just don't get it." Which is why Zoombers are even a thing

>>6744489
Yeah I think being a gamer in the 90s was a modern equivalent of being a theater goer during the early days of cinema and watching the evolution from silent film to talkies to the Wizard of Oz. There was a pioneering spirit that's missing now. Early 3D sucks in retrospect but in 1993 and 1994 it was wild.

>>6746131
I think kids still play smash with one another.

>>6746139
I always hated elitist ass adults when I was a kid. I cant help when my parents decided to fuck. Instead of wishing for someone else's childhood or shitting on another's childhood, I just accept what I had.

I'm not above being tongue in cheek about it, though. I was talking to some 23 year olds that didn't know what Daria was and I mad a joke about "what are they teaching you kids in school these days?" but it never went beyond that.

>>6742663
Hermitlike.

Computer OSes, and game consoles (which had no OS, except for the truly shit ones like Atari Jaguar), did not nag you with popup notifications or "friend requests" or any BS. You turned on your device to do A THING, games included. So it was easier to get engrossed and lost in a single game for many hours on end. I can't focus on games anymore without wanting to alt-tab out and see what faggots are arguing about on Twitter, or get some popup message from Steam friends who want something from me.

>>6746139
I think this gets overextended. Yes sometimes its just nostalgia faggotry but every so often there really is a difference. Like I have no idea what it was like in the days before people had televisions. "Kids today dont understand" does sometimes have truth to it.

>>6743956
>s.0_yb.oys

y-._0.u a__r.e f____a.g.g__.0.__t

>>6746162
To give an example, I'm noticing that kids today are much less likely to go back to games or jump around between them. Like I still regularly played NES after getting an SNES and rented new games or borrowed games from friends. The kids I see today appear permanently transfixed by one game until they eventually move on to their next fixture that will occupy them for six months.

>>6746158
Did they even know about Samurai Pizza Cats? What do we even waste our tax dollars on at this point?

>>6742663
Great time, but Macfags were always cingeworthy.

>>6746179
The idea of "beating the game" and then moving on isnt much a thing to younger kids.

>>6746179
That's literally just the industry successfully mind warping everyone into CONSOOMing

>>6744294
To get a better idea, imagine you're in 1997 playing resident evil or Quake. Ten years ago, you would be playing Super Mario Brothers or Punch out. Now compare the games that came out this year to the ones you were playing in 2010. They don't really play or even look all that different.

>>6746261
Yup, gaming is kind of on autopilot now.

>>6746094
I think it perhaps was a bit different here in Scandinavia then, we had Dos computers (a lot of green/brown/EGA screens admittedly) that we learnt to operate in elementary school, and at least in our school, was available to mess around with between classes. So the barrier of entry was really low for most kids, and everybody had some kind of computer system at home.

As far as the culture around computer gaming goes, it wasn't about excluding certain people but rather including as many as possible since that meant the pooling of content would also grow in kind and there was always someone with new stuff.

Also I can't remember that the concept of being a "nerd" really was a thing, sure you could be unpopular and get bullied for things, but computers/consoles wasn't one of them since most kids/teens had some interest or involvement with them.That American "Nerd/D&D/virgin/computer geek" brand of stigma seemed foreign and funny when I first became aware of it, might have been the "Law of Jante" in play over here preventing this concept or something.

In fact it was so popular/common that we had MASSIVE LAN parties here like The Gathering and DreamHack (still do) all the way back in the early 90s, hosted in massive sport complexes built to host Olympic events etc.

Here's a look at the 1400 person 2nd "TG" (The Gathering) hosted way back in '93:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj4lDSGX0w8

And then the 2500 person 5th one in '96:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7C1knFpBbTU

So hopefully this will give you an idea of "gaming in the 90s", in my part of the world anyway.

>>6746427

I wish I was Scandinavian, burger here. Sounds awesome. Just wondering, was sega or nintendo more popular during the day? Also what country are you from in Scandinavia?

>>6742663
You had to actually buy games...

>>6742663
You needed obscure hardware and a team of talented men who knew that hardware intimately to product a game, meaning you had a concrete incentive for the game to be actually good so you don't lose money.

Nowadays, everyone has ready-made middleware engines they build everything on. Unity, Unreal, Godot, whatever. So a purple haired art major with zero computer science knowledge can whip up a game and put it on Steam. In fact, 5,000 purple haired art majors can whip up shitty games and saturate Steam with them. And that's where we are at now.

>>6746712
Zoomers majoring in game design and programming will never be as based as the Carmack.

>>6746712
Enginedev or Homebrewdev is the closest you can get to being like your old heroes. If you're not willing to make something from scratch, you're probably just pumping out the next pointless shovelware of the hour that's just a reskin of Mario/MegaMan/Sonic.

>>6746427
Wasn't that different in Germany t b h, you just had to be part of the middle or upper class i.e. have wealthy parents...or care enough to waste enough of your income each month.
Of course we had enough people with cheap(er) systems early on. I think no country did love the C64 and(later) the A500 as we did.

>>6746712
That boogeyman is living rent free with you.

>>6746712
Yeah pretty much. The entry barrier is too low now. Also too much shit around. So many shitty games. I think we need a new video game crash.

>>6746460
NES and SNES was definitively king up here, and this might have been driven by the fact that video-rental stores almost always only rented out Nintendo games and systems, so it made a lot of sense to get a Nintendo since your birthday and Christmas was only once a year so you'd typically be relying on renting games a lot. The great thing about this though was that everybody around you also had the same system so the collective game pool was massive and varied so borrowing/swapping/secondhand was great.

The C64 and Amiga was (not surprisingly) king of the "gaming computers" in the mid 80s to the early 90s, the Dos PC had the business, school and "family computer" home market starting late 80s and gaining popularity as a gaming system with adventure games and sims etc, then Doom dropped and basically killed further sales of the Amiga, it was all about the PC now.

It was also common to have both a console and a computer, so typically the pairing by generations would be:

3rd - C64/Amiga & NES
4th - Amiga/PC & SNES
5th - PC & PS1

TRIGGER WARNING: The following statement is not meant to be a dig at Nintendo. Scandinavia was obviously massive Nintendofags up until this point and is just a perspective as it pertain to this region at that time.

The N64 really didn't catch on here though (saw someone in another thread say it had a 16% market-share in PAL territories), but unlike the mysterious Saturn of myth, rental stores did rent them out at first but there was a lot of issues with the analog sticks constantly breaking and pissed people returning them wanting their money back, so rental stores kinda phased them out and all that you saw was pretty much PS1 inventory, and the N64 was only really seen as the "GoldenEye machine" anyway so few people really ended up buying the system. It was really all Sony land from there on and still seems to be the case to this day here in Europe.

Not saying it's "better," but being stuck with a limited number of games forced you to play them. I can play anything now and pretty much only stick to what I already know.

>I was 12, so it was objectively better for everyone.

>>6742663
I can only speak for California. For starters we called it playing video games instead of gaming, which was a term we associated more as a euphemism for casino gambling.

The best brief summary beyond that has already been said, like the '80s except better. The proliferation of video game magazines and nonstop developments in technology were huge parts of it. The end of the 16-bit era actually made me sad as I watched the rise of jaggy polygonal games, and it was only screenshots of the Japanese version of Suikoden that kept my hopes alive that video games weren't going to change forever for thee worse. Yes really.

>>6742726
>Lots of choices, but only one platform to choose
imagine believing this? zoom zoom.
>>6742731
>games were expensive too like 60-80 dollars
nothing has changed, you thick cunt.
>>6742775
>Was there even a retro/collection scene back then? Or is that something recent?
after 2000. people were just trashing their old stuff or selling it for fuck all. retro is a zoomer faggot term that got popularized a little later. nobody i know of used the term retro back in the 90s to describe stuff made 10 years earlier. lmao.
>>6743019
>There was no gamer culture whatsoever, 99.99% of the audience was young children
that's false.

>>6746894
>The C64 and Amiga was (not surprisingly) king of the "gaming computers"
all these decades later, they still make the atari, apple and pc fanboi morons start screeching like autists at the very mention of their names. It's absolutely beautiful.

>>6743287
>By 1997 roms and emulators started becoming a thing and this blew my mind, 3 years earlier a SNES game would sell for $60-$80 but now you could download all those games you where dreaming of in the magazines, the whole fucking catalog, for free and play them on your PC! Felt unreal, like you'd hacked reality and won the lottery or something.

I was saving up for a Playstation when a friend of mine told me he literally had this miracle program that let him play all snes and nested gameboy games on his pc.

he also told me he had access to unreleased games like final fantasy 5 in English and enhanced features like being able to save absolutely anytime, speed up or slow down the game, apply graphical filters, etc. Whats more, an individual snes game would only take a few minutes to download. this in an era where you had to shell out serious money for ONE game.

I called him a filthy liar, which in hindsight was still the right reaction to have after hearing such outlandish claims. I remember how shocked I was looking at his pc screen seeing him load up any random game I could think of

the summer of 97 was a magical time

>>6748794
my first experience with emulators was watching my uncle play Donkey Kong on his Windows 98 pc; blew my mind at the time

>>6748342
60 dollars in the mid 90s was more like 100 today

>>6748794
I remember Nesticle ran smoothly on a 50mhz 486. That's impressive for any emulator.

>>6744489
Wouldn't you say that VR technology has made giant leaps in recent years though? Ten years ago I would've thought you insane if you told me we'd have the VR we have today!

>>6742663
worse because since it didn't have anything on demand it competed with the cartoons I wanted to watch

>>6749856
I remember my testicles felt smoothly.

>>6742731
>games were expensive too like 60-80 dollars

>>6750198
Don't worry anon. You'll grow pubes some day.

>>6742775
Targets and Walmarts actually still carried NES games pretty late into the 90s. I remember getting Metroid 1 a little while after beating Super Metroid for the first time.

>>6748794
By the time I reached middle school kids were sneaking those things into class computers when the teacher wasn't looking

>>6742726
I was emulating snes and genesis back in the early 2000’s when I was still a kid. The “future” happened 20 years ago.

>>6750191
I thought we'd get that in the 90s or early 2000s. didn't Atari have a controller that used YOUR MIND? (eyebrow movements)

>>6742663
>>6742663
Watch/play/read Scott Pilgrim, that's what your average week in high school was like in the late 90s.

Gaming was more of a social activity. Likewise, sports games were far more popular. Also, people didn't beat/complete games nearly as often as today.

>>6751413
The tech simply wasn't there yet back then. No way would we ever have had competent VR pre-2010. Mind you, it still isn't even near perfect but to say that there have been no huge leaps in that field is equal to being in denial

>>6752653
You're not wrong, there's been a lot of progress.
But the only time I've ever worn a VR headset was almost 25 years ago, and this fact is absolutely baffling to me.

>>6752706
You should try wearing a new VR set if you get the chance to see for yourself how different it is. The first and only time I wore one was like five years back for a game demo. Seemed cool but obviously still just a gimmick. At least there are a couple of actual games you can play on VR right now but not nearly enough to justify purchase for me

>>6744210
I remember being so excited to get the next issues of Gamepro and Nintendo Power every month. I had stacks of them back in the day and I read them front to back all the time.

>>6743287
we need to go back

I'd say what I miss about gaming in the 90s was that games were popular enough that basically everyone had a console or a PC.
Thing is that internet was not too common, especially not for games, so people hung out together while playing.
Today you play with others online, but you don't necessarily go to each other's house.
And PC LAN-parties were cool because you had to manage and drag your station to someone's house and take up the whole living room. So, the parents usually said "ok, near unlimited pizza in the fridge, don't go out at night, lock the doors, see you Sunday" and we're free to be up all night. It was a fucking event of the ages!

But I'm 28 now, so I'm probably romanticizing those days. Kids today probably have just as much fun

>>6743530
Gaming got reasonably mainstream with adults in the early 80s but they dropped out pretty quickly. The few older people who continued to game really didn't like the platformers and fighting games from the 90s in my experience. They prefered turned based, point and click and sometimes racing games.

>>6742663
If a game was 2 years old it was considered really outdated and it was pretty hard to be able to buy older games if they weren't popular. There was a period for pc gaming where they would bundle 5 to 20 games for the price of one but a lot of the time if you missed out on a game that was it. 80s and 90s were like the early black and white films or car industry, at the start technology progresses really fast where every 5 years is completely different but after a while a lot of stuff has been standardized now such as controls and camera angles.

>>6753584
>If a game was 2 years old it was considered really outdated and it was pretty hard to be able to buy older games if they weren't popular.

I remember 2-3 years old games being included for free in PC magazines like Computer Gaming World (that's how I got Fallout for free in 99 or so), also prices dropping drastically in just a few months. In the second half of the 90's everything went extremely fast, you could almost guess in what exact year a game was made just looking at the graphics.

>>6753612
LOL and even those free pc mags games are still being sold by ebaybytchez which cannot see the not for resale sticker

>>6753579
Multiplayer gaming then: social
Multiplayer gaming now: parasocial

>>6742663
Better.

>>6750342
>i was born in 2004 and my dad let me play with his phone once
911 call logs will confirm this

>>6746048
The machines themselves were expensive. Piracy was always a thing.

>>6742663
Extremely soulful, before games became big business and all had to be the same as other franchises for shareholders to be satisfied

It was shit and no one can prove me wrong
>Games expensive as fuck
>If your console broke, fixing it was also expensive
>mandatory region lock
>no ebay or anything, so your only choice to buy games or accesories was to look in your local stores
>gaming magazines were exactly as current gaming press: full of lies, promoting games for companies because they paid for it, questionable rating system, lack of information
>no trailers, if you were lucky you could get a demo, but most companies didnt do this
>if your game was bugged you were fucked since you couldnt patch in any way
People who disagree are the just the nostalgia fags.

>>6755809
No one is even going to waste their time on that 00's baby

>>6743019
>There weren't advertisements in the games themselves
Took this pic literally last week.

>>6755809
>no ebay
it was around in the mid 90s

>>6757578
>i wasn't around in the mid 90s
It shows, zoomie.

>>6757643
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/misc.forsale.computers.pc-specific.misc/tRyP7OWh90U/U0UP6iT34awJ

>>6757702
WTF kind of name is Omidyar?
>Nonwhites are browsing and posting on 4chan
ewwww

>>6742663
Two words: experimentation and soul. Nothing was focus grouped and corporatized to death.

>>6757702
>i desperately googled therefore ir oldfag
That's not the way it works zoomie

>>6749856
It was glitchy as shit compared to a modern emulator but we did not give a single fuck thanks to the opportunity it presented.

>>6759708
seething maybe next time dont say something stupid if you dont want to get proven wrong

>>6759739
Top kek kid

>>6755809
I would say the games were really good but the way to play them not too much.
Today you can play everything easier, cheaper and with a lot better quality, but you will still be playing the old games.
Still, there's some particular shit that we suffer today and not before, like DLC's, gigantic patches even in console games, lack of physical editions, specially PC when they were the best ones. Personally I wouldn't mind to return to mid-late 90's with lots of money to play PC games.

>>6744304
>Yes, but we did get a lot of shitty games, unfair mechanics, and shovelware
a different time indeed. I can't even imagine

>>6742775
>Was there even a retro/collection scene back then? Or is that something recent?

Its recent. When the SNES came out nobody would even admit to still owning an NES much less playing it.

>>6759561
you must pay extra to play games online even though you pay for internet, and even though the console itself could host. WTF

>>6760823
the NES model with the top loader looked so ugly and I would have chuckled at someone buying it

>>6746128
>FhErN6z1NQ

>>6742663
glorious

It was more meaningful. Each game, if done well, was a spectacle. We're all so jaded these days because we have access to them all and nothing is special or impactful anymore.

>>6753360
Post the IP here too, I saw your post in that guy's amateur imageboard thread on /g/, people here need to know.
Also have you considered hosting a telnet BBS?

>>6742663
>game cardridges from russian at bazar.
>fake NES with controller simulating Dualshock look.
>Trying to finish Mario 1 with friends for weeks
>Older brother sometimes showing you this dark, mysterious game called DOOM on family computer when parents are out.

>>6749856
by that time SNK emulators, the DOS ones were running fine too.

I just played hours of quake on shitty internet while hanging out in a room with a beanbag and I'm pretty sure Soundgarden was playing.
Everything tech you owned was made out of clear plastic and if you were lucky you didn't have to share the computer with family.

At the end of the 90s dad brought home a Dreamcast couple months after launch. We didn't have alot of money and not sure how he did it
My sister (I was like 10 and she was a teen) invited her boyfriend and his goons over
They called in a pizza and played NFL 2k and Tony hawk pro skater all day

I think back to these memories when I realize it's not going back to those days. Childhood innocence is lost. Everything has become washed out and boring. No more surfing random websites filled with flashy designs and downloading shareware off slow internet and listening to the radio all day is gone. It was replaced by boring phone designs and the same is pretty similiar to games.
No one is taking risks and nothing. Is exciting

2005 was the end of the fun period the 90s brought
The 90s fucking sucked
But it was good for games and tech

>>6764057
Dif guy but I tried hosting a telnetbbs with mystic but it was kinda confusing adding shit in. Was able to get art and shit but was to lazy to finish anything

Should I retry with another software?

>>6742948
Underated post

>>6764121
I dunno, it's a lot of work for something unlikely to be used very often.
There should be a tli for Pleroma tho

...fun?

Can we get Some Quake 2 + Mission packs Monster HD retex using QC Strogg and peeker's Lore skin as a model?
I remember that someone was doing that years ago by adding more shading to the upscaled skin textures and it looked fine.

game reviewers actually liked video games
fighting games were popular with everyone
gaming magazines were very stylish, I miss them
in my country people sold pirated PS1 games for 10 bucks, but N64 couldn't be pirated so only rich kids had it. We were still amazed by the N64 games we saw in magazines
it was very magical, but the above is what I miss the most

>>6744017
reading this makes me want to cry. all i want to do is go back to this time. I hate the modern world so fucking much it hurts

Any older britfags in here remember getting hype for pic related?

>>6746158
On 4chan it's just another extension of banter. I don't actually hate zoomers even though their world view can be a bit foreign to me and even piss me off sometimes. It's just a part of getting initiated into 4chan. Nobody says lurk moar anymore and rarely does anybody even get called a newfag now but there are other ways to express the same sentiment. If you are younger you are new here and your opinions will reflect that making you stick out especially on a board filled with older anons reminiscing over things that make them feel nostalgic. If anything I'd like to see them get the fuck off the internet for awhile and spend more time with their friends IRL. As a teenager I finally had my own computer and access to high speed internet 24 hours a day. I came here to 4chan as an underage b& and spent time with the freaks here instead of having social experiences IRL. Big mistake.

>>6742674
Fpbp.
You will never know.

>>6742674
This