Things underage posters will never understand

[Anonymous No.4635959]

You will never be amazed at seeing 3D model move and animate in ways you never thought possible for the first time. The leap from tiny 16x16 sprites to giant polygonal characters and worlds can’t ever be recaptured. There’s absolutely no novelty to 3D anymore. Developers could count on you being so engrossed in exploring an environment that they would hide secrets and interesting things in all the nooks and crannies of a map and you in turn would find the majority of them. Now you get bland, empty worlds with fast travel and waypoints because despite how pretty they are these days, no one cares.

[Anonymous No.4635965]

Um, I was never amazed as Tomb Raider's graphics. I thought the game looked like shit and played like ass even at launch. I was playing much better 3D games on PC way before the PSX was a thing.

[Ian "The Jackhammer" Watkins(...) No.4635973]

>>4635965
I thought Tomb Raider was pretty impressive on PS1. The scope of the levels was pretty big for the time too. Great sound design too, I liked the atmosphere a lot and thought the guns sounded kick ass.

The Saturn version was kind of embarassing but I played through it on both.

[Anonymous No.4635974]

>>4635959
Amazing was the jump to Doom, Tomb Raider was pretty cool too, I remember seeing the Saturn non playable demo playing and I was like WHAT?

[Anonymous No.4635976]

>>4635965
>I was playing much better 3D games on PC way before the PSX was a thing
such as?

[Anonymous No.4635980]

>>4635976
Call of Duty III

[Anonymous No.4636019]

>>4635973
>I thought Tomb Raider was pretty impressive on PS1.

same, it was not so much of the levels that got me, more the size/scope of the play area, big high ceilings and cavernous drops etc, that was a pretty big deal when you'd just made the jump from a megadrive

[Anonymous No.4636031]

Not having to rewing a cassette tape everythime you wanted ot play a game and having to press Play to load the next stage and on some games (i'm lookin gat you Ocean) having to rewind and reload a tape when you'd died

[Anonymous No.4636086]

to me the line of LBA/Alone in the Dark/Ecstatica became the threshold

[Anonymous No.4636109]

Your only source of info about video games being either your friends or gaming mags you bought. Just about every kid I knew had a subscription to at least one mag. You couldn't just hop online and search up a review, or for hints. Before the PS1 era, the only demos you got were shareware games for DOS. So if you wanted to explore new console games, you had to go rent based off of what you knew and how interesting the box made the game look. More than a few kids wasted their weekly/monthly game rental with a piece of shit without realizing it until they started playing.

Only getting 2-3 new games a year. Everyone today can pirate with ease, download freeware games, and even get free games from places like GoG. Hell, download some emulators and romsets, and without spending a dime you've added a few thousand games to your library. Back then, you only got new games to play if you could save up the $60-$80 to get one, or if you got one for your birthday or X-mas. Given that was equal to nearly $120 today, you couldn't do much to change your intake of new games. You could beg relatives, but they usually walked into the store, saw the price tag, and got you one of those crappy cheap Tiger game things instead since "videogames are videogames". You did borrow-trades with your friends and prayed they were good enough friends to not fuck up your stuff. It was risky, but hey, different games to play.

Playing anything you could get your hands on. The console wars was a media thing, every single gamer I knew would gladly play a videogame on anything they possibly could. Didn't matter what you owned, you were always on the lookout for something new to play. You didn't give a shit about the best version, or how good the graphics were, playing a game was better than not playing a game. That kid who figured out you could put videogames on the TI graphing calculators became everyone's friend.

[Anonymous No.4636124]

>>4636109
>The console wars was a media thing
I'll take issue with this. Because everything else you said was true, the console wars were real on the schoolyard.
Those of us who were not likely to get two systems had to defend the one they had. It was weirdly personal. You had to defend, not just the console, but the very fact you had to choose at all.
"The Super Nintendo version of that sucks." Even if it didn't.
"The Super Nintendo version of that is the best one." Even if it wasn't

[Anonymous No.4636125]

>>4636109
did my teachers really not notice? who types on a calculator using two hands? who stares at it for hours on end in class? lmao

[Anonymous No.4636126]

>>4636109
What's wrong with gaming magazines? They were a lot more objective than most of the shit articles you find on the internet these days. Although if we're talking even more recently you have YouTube and twitch and stuff so you can actually watch real gameplay before buying.

[Anonymous No.4636147]

>>4635959
I remember playing flight simulator on ms dos on a monochrome screen. It blew my mind how simulating this on a machine that usually only renders a few letter (ms dos) was able to render such a huge 3d world. The thing is it wasn't fun at all but it didn'T matter, because it was so impressive. I felt once in my life like every retarded apple user.

[Anonymous No.4636176]

Piracy before direct download links and torrents. There were a few methods, but they were all a massive pain in the ass to deal with, and some could cost money to do. You could go usenet, but then you were dependent on what was on the chain, and oftentimes your ISP would charge more for usenet access. You could go with the BBS's, but you had to know the number before you could connect to it and most of the piracy scene tried to keep those numbers private for good reasons, and you were limited to 56k dialup speeds, which was 4-5kbs down at best, and you were limited by whatever was on that one BBS. The luxury option was to be a part of the FTP scene, which was a high-speed improvement over BBSing around, but you still had to be in the know and you were still limited by the selection of that FTP, and you usually had to upload something of your own to be able to download. It existed, but not many people did it. Copying a floppy disk was the #1 method of piracy, but you were limited by what you could get your hands on from friends and family.

Arcade gaming. They still exist, but they are a shadow of their former selves, and no longer outclass home gaming. Back then, you and your friends brought your money, exchanged for quarters or tokens, and had a blast playing games that were years ahead of anything you could access at home. Every time a machine asked for more credits, you always did the quick estimation in your head. "Is this game enjoyable to put in more money, or should I try something else?" You would see a machine that requests 4 credits to get started, and ran algebra in your head. ((amount of coins left)(3/4*how fun does it look)/(amount of time remaining in arcade visit))-(other games in the arcade you really like that cost less) These days, games at home far overwhelm arcade games, so that sense of making every coin count isn't there unless 1CCing, which not many do.

[Anonymous No.4636206]

>>4635959
ehhhh dont think so faggot. Tomb Raider was trash when it came out. Compared to Quake 2? I remember it feeling rushed and ugly. There is a level with some dogs on a castle top which was nice but its not a great example to prove your point.

Mario 64 was a bit of a wow moment, but the I also remember times playing golden eye and me and my friends making fun of it because "it looks like its wrapped in carpet".

I do remember some wow moments but not Tomb Raider for sure. SNES smw was one of those moments. I cant really remember anymore (there were a lot thought). Obviously RE1 was a big display of what magic consoles were capable of.

OH, the FMVs were a big deal. TEKKEN, Soul Blade, FF7. That was the run to the kitchen and call your friends on the 1 land line phone in your house moments newfags wont ever have to go through

[Anonymous No.4636208]

>>4636124
Your friends were insecure lameasses then. Everyone I knew didn't give a shit. You bought based on what you thought was best, but you played whatever you could.

>>4636125
You played at recess, not in class. Unless you were playing Drug Wars, that you could get away with in class if you didn't have a teacher that roamed around the room.

>>4636126
Nothing wrong at all, I had a sub to Nintendo Power and Next Generation. Loved em both. Used to have a few letters from NP from the hidden stuff I would send in, probably form shit but was still neat. Still, they were limited compared to the amount of info you can get today. They were arguably more objective, but still there were biases and some shilling going on. I remember NP covering more than a few turds in favorable light. "Hey, this Tom and Jerry NES game is pretty cool!" HAHAHA, fuck you too NP. Next Gen was fucking legendary for their interviews though. And the binding was top tier.

[Anonymous No.4636219]

>>4636109
>Playing anything you could get your hands on.
this. every kid in the neighborhood trying to scrap together fucked bargain bin games they got from a tenth uncle. Memes aside there was a time when the only game i owned was mario 1, tag team pro wrestling, and taboo. You kids have no idea how much stuff you got now. You even get FREE games for no reason now. I logged into steam, I have all the bioshocks in hd for some reason (I didnt buy them, they were free gifts I guess). ORIGIN gives a free game a month, got nox, command and conquer, etc. its pretty incredible really. There used to be a time when being poor meant you had no entertainment.

[Anonymous No.4636261]

Buying a game, being unable to make it work, and not being able to get a refund. These days you can get refunds even for digital copies. You can find help online, you can get patches with ease, things can be fixed. Back then, buying a new PC game could be a gamble. If you had any non-standard hardware, it could be a nightmare. Sometimes you would meet all the requirements for a game that runs just fine on your friends PC's, only to have it not work period on your PC since your clone card isn't 100% compliant. Installing the game, you had to know your hardware very well, so you could tell the setup program your IRQs and DMAs for your sound card, and setup a video scheme your card actually supported. Then after doing all that you run the game to find it crashes with a gibberish error message. You hop on the phone with their 800 help line and hope they can resolve it, if not you just blew money on a game you can't play. You could register the game, and hope the company put out a patch disk they might send to you, but no promises.

Having to manage your 640k of conventional memory, along with the two important system configuration files, config.sys and autoexec.bat. Needing to be proficient with a command-line based OS, since both Win3.x and even Dosshell ate up too much memory for some games, even with QEMM active. Putting in a 4X CD-ROM drive and actually seeing your PC read data off of a CD 4 times faster than before. Installing a game off of 7+ floppy disks.

Keeping a folder full of copyright protection cheatsheets near the PC, either the feelies themselves(SimCity) or an Xerox of the needed pages from the manual. These days everyone just uses Dosbox or GoG. Most of the time they are using a cracked version with copyright protection removed or neutralized. They don't know what it was like having to jump through hoops every time you wanted to play. I remember having to click on exactly the right pixel of the map to play the Island of Dr. Brain.

[Anonymous No.4636286]

>>4636261
>Buying a game, being unable to make it work, and not being able to get a refund.

In the UK I just sent mine away in the post, to the publisher in a jiffy-bag, and they sent a copy back in the post, did if for the Monty Python game on the Amstrad, seems really antiquated now

Also the first game I ever pre-orded was North V South by Infrogrammes on the Amiga, had to send a fucking postal order to the publisher themselves, I got the game like a month later via the post when it came out, it was a great game.

lol

[Anonymous No.4636316]

>>4635959
Buying games at chemists, corner shops, and newsagents

[Anonymous No.4636317]

>>4636316
>newsagents

Kek when they'd have like a rack of Speccy, Amstrad and C64 games in the newsagents, mad that, thinking back

[Anonymous No.4636332]

>>4635959

The first time i saw 3D was at the arcade in the form of virtua fighter. I was amused how gimicky it was. Turned out the gimmick has totally taken over and they lied to us: saying 2D and 3D can CO-exist. Fucking bastards.

[Anonymous No.4636336]

>>4636176
Agree with arcade gaming today being nothing like back then.
New games are all crane games or some shooting or driving game that doesn't add much and goes unnoticed unless you follow arcade news pages. Nothing like the 3D age of the 90s with a lot of arcade games being actually revolutionary, impossible to convert to home consoles. Seeing for the first time Virtua Racing, Virtua Fighter of Daytona USA in those big screens was an unforgettable experience.

Also, the problem with vintage arcades today is that, how many times can you still keep playing Shinobi or R-Type?
Theres not new games like that anymore unless you count some indie games on Steam. Back then, you walked on your regular arcade and to your surprise, there could be the latest hit by Capcom or Konami. And let's not forget if a game got removed, you could never play it again unless another arcade had it by chance. Rare games like Edward Randy or Haunted Castle I only got to play them on MAME almost 10 years after I saw those in an arcade.

[Anonymous No.4636379]

>>4636336
Yeah, I remember that shit. My dad got hooked on playing San Francisco Rush with me, and we would spend half our money on that machine alone every arcade trip. Then one day we go in and the machine is busted. We started traveling an hour away to another arcade that had 4 machines tied together. We did that for about two years. One day we went in to find they had all been replaced with Crusin' USA machines. Both our faces were pic related. Since then, every time we pass an arcade, we always check to see if they have two or more Rush machines hooked up. It's not the same though, since we don't have all the little secrets memorized anymore, and only remember a few shortcuts, and we're always out of practice now since we can't play regularly anymore.

[Anonymous No.4636494]

RPG's being a challenge since you couldn't get help easily. These days you can hop on gamefaqs or a wiki for the game and get all the info you could ever want to min/max your people, get all the best stuff, and have a full walkthrough for the game including maps. Back then, unless there was a hintbook you could buy and you had the money to spare, you took every RPG blind. You didn't have automap in many early RPGs to depend on, or a minimap, you had to draw your own. You had to explore every corner to make sure you didn't miss some good gear or an ever important hint or quest thingie. You didn't know anything beyond what the manual told you, and had to experiment around and learn what worked best. Difficulty was relentless too, the RPGs back then had zero problems with throwing random encounters at you in the beginning of the game that you had no hope of beating, characters could be permanently wiped out of your party, and necessary items could be stolen, destroyed, or otherwise permanently lost. And I'm not talking about roguelike's either.

Seeing new videogame genre's being created. I remember seeing Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat making fighting games popular, Double Dragon pushing the beat-em-up genre into the spotlight, Wolfenstein 3D establishing the FPS genre, Duke Nukem 3D showing us what a 3D FPS was, PaRappa the Rapper making rhythm games a thing, Metroid creating a platformer with a world you could explore freely and come back to and continue another day where you left off, Dune 2 giving us the first RTS even if we could only select one unit at a time, and Meridian 59 and Ultima Online getting the MMORPG genre started. It wasn't just improvements to graphics and sound back then, each year seemed to bring entirely new types of videogames to play.

[Anonymous No.4636545]

>>4635959
>secrets in every nook and cranny
>graphics over gameplay
>bland world's full of fast travel points
There's this game called the witcher 3 you might wanna check out

[Anonymous No.4636579]

>>4636494
True about the dinamic creation of new genres. Also the birth of 3D Survival horror with Alone in the Dark and Resident Evil, the first 3D fighting game with Virtua Fighter or the birth of 3D platfformers with Super Mario 64 (I believe).
Also, the pass to 3D of classic 2D games: Goemon, Mario, Sonic, R-Type, Out Run, Metal Gear, After Burner, etc (sometimes it was great, sometimes, not so much)

Some other old man things: the release of commercial VHS videos in magazines about new consoles or coming games. As there was not youtube, you couldn't watch trailers, and this videos were the only way to see those games in motion. You always got surprises: I remember watching Ecco the Dolphin and World of Illusion for Genesis for the first time in a magazine VHS without having seen photos previously and the surprise felt great.

[Anonymous No.4637796]

>>4635959
>Things underage posters will never understand
>LARPing as an overage never fooled anyone

[Anonymous No.4638424]

>>4636124
God damn this cringey roleplaying has to stop.

[Anonymous No.4639416]

>>4638424
What did the /v/ poster mean by this?

[Anonymous No.4639425]

>>4639416
It means your ghey

[Anonymous No.4639439]

>>4635959
Its almost like 3d graphics are a total gimmick and you got taken in. Those old 3d games are just as devoid of detail.

[Anonymous No.4639460]

>>4639439
You are painfully underage.

[Anonymous No.4639505]

>>4635965
The water leaking from her as she comes out of the water blew my mind as a kid.

[Anonymous No.4639669]

>>4639460
There is no point in time in which Tomb Raider was not a hideous mess. I'm sorry I insulted your first video game, but it looks like trash.

[Anonymous No.4639826]

>>4635959

Nah. Dragons's lair was when a game first blew me away with its visual possibilities. Early 3D games were a step down from that.

The only other thing that would awe me now would be Star Trek-like holographic technology.

[Anonymous No.4640318]

>>4636126
It depends on the magazine. Different ones had different standards. I was just flicking through some some older ones I had, and what got me was how based they were, even with perfect 20/20 retrospect vision. Then I got to a certain UK one and they were shilling for all sorts of garbage.

[Anonymous No.4640324]

[Anonymous No.4640326]

>>4640324

[Anonymous No.4640336]

>>4640326

[Anonymous No.4640396]

>>4640318
>Then I got to a certain UK one and they were shilling for all sorts of garbage.
Not a Brit, but that's how most magazines were like here too. Behold, the best platformer since Sonic and a solid Megadrive top 3 https://youtu.be/Y_rHwutHLHY

[Anonymous No.4640419]

>>4640336
>>4640326
>>4640324
fantastic ass, not retro

[Anonymous No.4640428]

>>4640396
Those graphics are fantastic and the the music choice is tight. But yeah, that game play is fucking balls. It's a 4/10 at most.

[Anonymous No.4640652]

>>4640318
Classic brit magazines like Mean Machines or C&VG were great and comfy. You could feel that they were made by a bunch of crazy passionate teenagers which were doing whatever they wanted. I loved the big screenshots, the cartoons, the sense of humor and how treated the reader as a pal without being fake as a youtuber.

Another thing I miss it's screenshots from TVs. That's a problem of modern retro gaming magazines: they use screenshots of emulators. I know it's much more practical, but it really loses a lot of the spirit and impact of the old camera screenshots.

[Anonymous No.4640658]

There's really no emulator pics that can recreate this. Sometimes they made games look like movie cartoons.

[Anonymous No.4642006]

Crysis blew me away

[Anonymous No.4642013]

>>4635959
>seeing this boss on a Genesis running in a store around Christmas time when I was eight years old and having my mind blown

[Anonymous No.4642017]

>>4642013
pic related got lost

[Anonymous No.4642027]

>>4642017
this game was trippy af