Gaming related experiences that are gone and never coming back?

[Uncle at Nintendo]

What are some gaming experiences that are never coming back, even if they remake the game in question?

I'm talking about things like Pokemania in the late 90s. Even if they remake Red and Blue for the FOURTH time, they can never bring back the hype and how that game was the fucking shit.

Another thing is Modern Warfare 2 lobbies, they remade that one but no one really uses voice chat anymore with randos. It was a terrible time but so much crazy shit went down in those lobbies, I kinda miss it, maybe I've lost it.

 

[mrbogus]

Mortal Monday.

 

[Polioliolio]

Playing Demon's Souls for the first time. Life altering.
Still have a strong love for souls games, but Elden Ring needs to be a shake up if it's going to possess me. The souls formula is too rote for me now. I know it too well.

 

[SamAlbro]

Cartridges had a real satisfying tactile feel. Pulling them out, slamming them into the slot, letting them scatter around you as you swap games out in a gaming session with friends.

 

[Mingoguaya]

The plastic instruments in Guitar Hero and Rock Band. I fired Guitar Hero during the weekend and my kid is hooked on Guitar Hero 2.

 

[Deleted member 68874]

Buying games solely based off the boxart lmao.

I had a lot of shitty games growing up.

 

[0451]

24/7 community servers. Loved having a place to shoot the shit with the same 11-31 other players every night with custom rules, mic spam and events. Now we're all forced into a big player pool of randoms with little to no control over anything.

 

[Admiral Woofington]

we'll never experience Knack the first time again

 

[DrEvil]

1 vs 100 on Xbox live.

was honestly my favourite innovation on that system.

 

[Tohsaka]

Lots of old MMORPGs.

 

[Gold Arsene]

Contest games like Sword Quest or Treasure Master are pretty much impossible to do now I imagine.

 

[kikuchiyo]

For a lot of us, couch co-op.

 

[Bigkrev]

I'm talking about things like Pokemania in the late 90s. Even if they remake Red and Blue for the FOURTH time, they can never bring back the hype and how that game was the fucking shit.

Click to shrink...

Did you miss when Pokemon Go came out and took over the world for a month

 

[mangrilla]

Playing Quake 2 multi with friends on dialup and all the wild mods. Fragging people as Homer Simpson, Action Quake, some superhero death match mod that was so rad.

obviously mods still exist but it just felt so much more like the Wild West in terms of so much going on, and my friends and I having so much free time to play through it all.

 

[Eblo]

Being able to drop by a friend's house unannounced to play Melee

 

[Giga Man]

Going to a Toys 'R' Us, grabbing a game voucher, going to the register so the employee can go in the back and bring you your game, ride home in the car with it reading the back of the box, maybe even open it to read the manual, go home, pop the game in, switch the console on, grab the controller, and enjoy your new toy.

 

[T.Rex In F-14]

Having to take my Xbox and an actual TV to my friend's basement so we could hook them up to play Halo as a group.

 

[Deleted member 79451]

Going into an electronics boutique and seeing walls not only covered by so many different consoles, but also half the store devoted to computer games (mostly IBM PC combat).

Playing numerous multiplayer classics for the first time, when the community was fresh and positive and having fun.

 

[Chettlar]

Sitting in the car, ripping off the plastic and reading the manual from cover to cover. It was the perfect appetizer in a way that nothing can be really in a digital age.

Same with PC gaming. Being filled with imagination at whatever files would speed by during installation. Maybe there would be some cool screenshots. Maybe even music on rare occasions. Seeing the icon pop up on the desktop for the first time and hearing the CD drive whirr up.

 

[SinglePlayerFan]

For a lot of us, couch co-op.

Click to shrink...

Oof. This hits home a little too hard. Now I'm sad.

 

[Gabriel Hall]

Arcades. I will always miss the co-op experience of popping quarters into The Simpsons or X-Men and having complete strangers join you as you play further and further.

For a lot of us, couch co-op.

Click to shrink...

And by extension, this. I feel grateful to still know one friend who is just as interested in single-screen beat-em-ups like King of Dragons and Gauntlet as I am.

 

[Hayama Akito]

Playing videogames without absolutely any information about it, just rent a game because "the boxart looks cool" and you're set.

 

[greekwolf]

The wild west era of late 90's /early 2000 MMORPGs. Gaming experiences like the original Everquest are trapped in time and can't ever be fully replicated.

 

[daegan]

Reading the manual on the way home from the store, having a bunch of friends where we'd get together at different houses and play different stuff all the time

 

[Tagyhag]

Old school Runescape and World of Warcraft.

And I mean, OLD SCHOOL, back when you just played casually while shooting the shit with your Internet friends, not really caring about levels or gear that much.

Both those games have classic modes now, and they are well done, but they are not the same experience at all.

 

[ostrichKing]

4 player split screen death matches...so many memories of sleepovers growing up with goldeneye...

 

[Bradford]

I have one that isn't really so much from a specific game, but a way of consuming games.

When I was younger, I used to love renting games from the video store. I would go to sleepover a friend's house for a weekend and we would do a 3 day rental for a game usually. Most of the time, we would rent whatever weird game piqued our interest, and play it "co op" by passing the controller back and forth.

I played so many games this way. So many niche, weird PS2 games that I never would have played otherwise. Games I might have stopped playing had I never had someone else to lean on, or had I needed to buy them at retail. Tons of older games too -- N64, PS1, even Genesis stuff at the time was still at the video store.

It is a real shame that this is not something that exists anymore. Redbox is around, but it only carries the newest releases on a rotating cycle.

The joy of discovery and comraderie just isn't there anymore. And what with being an adult, there are few people or ways I could even do a pass-the-controller like experience with.

 

[onpoint]

Arcades man. Going to the arcade and just playing cool shit home systems couldn't do.

 

[Deleted member 29691]

Fuckin 4 og xboxes, 4 TVs, 16 sweaty teens and DAYS of halo 2 and pizza. Empty 2 liters and Costco sized tubs of cheese balls everywhere. And then when it was real late and we needed a break we'd all watch one kid play Silent Hill with surround sound and get creeped the fuck out.

God bless my friend's parents that allowed that depravity in their basement for entire holiday weekends.

 

[MRYEAH]

Rock Band Keyboards I loved it and learned keys due to it after
Miss being the keys player online on my old 360

 

[CannonBallBob]

 

[ninnanuam]

The one I miss the most is arcade games being ubiquitous. Every deli, corner store and fish and chip shop had at least a few machines.

Making a point to go out of your way to play a more obscure game in a different part of town or making a run around all the "good places" for the new games every few months.

 

[JayCB64]

Being able to just pick a game off the shelf and play it without being worried about how much time it will take to install or possibly update.

 

[retroman]

Proper light guns

 

[Poimandres]

Any lasting sense of mystery. Almost every game gets turned inside out, data mined, and totally solved within a matter of days now and information spreads worldwide.

I remember when Mortal Kombat 2 hit arcades, there were all sorts of rumours and stories floating around and things like fatalities were gained in bits and pieces from magazines. There's no real mystery in gaming anymore.

Which brings me directly to another thing I sorely miss... A thriving arcade scene where dozens of people would hang out playing fighting games all day. It's just not the same playing online, and in most places arcades are basically dead.

 

[Mass One]

I really had a fondness for XBLA and indie games. Tried so many games. ZP2k9 was dope.

Also 360 multi-player demos. While reason I even bought gold was for the Shadowrun demo. I remember that splinter cell demo being popular back in the day too.

 

[SNRUB]

Back in the 2000s, Sony would have trucks with kiosks parked in mall lots and they would let you play what was new and coming out at the time and you would get some cool PlayStation swag along with it (I had a PS branded ballcap that's unfortunately lost to time).

I remember going to a few as a youngin'. Fun times.

 

[Stopdoor]

Twitch Plays Pokemon was a once in a lifetime experience really, anyone else trying the same thing is just a copycat and the idea could only really be pulled off once

 

[clay_ghost]

Twitch Plays Pokemon was a once in a lifetime experience really, anyone else trying the same thing is just a copycat and the idea could only really be pulled off once

Click to shrink...

We are due for another pokemon "fad" that take over the world for a few months after TPP and Pokemon Go.

 

[Pyccko]

home console time crisis

 

[Cbrun44]

Flipping through game boxes at the video store looking for a way to spend your weekend.

 

[Star-Lord]

Going to my friend house to play og xbox and 360 because i had a ps2 /ps3. It was fun times but now being older it ain't the same.

 

[fixurheartordie]

The feeling of the first time you hooked up a new console after months (potentially over a year) of pining over postage stamp sized screenshots in magazines or even grainy, tiny early internet video. It always felt like the future was right there in front of you. Neither jumps in graphical fidelity nor the dispersal of pre-release information happen like that anymore, and it's probably for the better. But goddamn it was magical.

 

[Brinbe]

gaming magazines, at least to the degree it once was

gameshark and everything about that, at least on consoles. i know you can easily do all that on pc/hacked consoles but something different about entering in all those lines of code hahaha

 

[Shark]

All the smaller, varied multiplayer experiences in the 7th gen. Those just don't exist anymore in meaningful ways. There was a lot of great, unique experiences that got critiqued for being 'tacked on' and are now extinct. I really dislike how MP is now and going forward with a few exceptions that pop up sporadically.

 

[Ramirez]

The initial console online push of the Dreamcast was absolutely magical for me. PSO and the 2K games online were just indescribable coming from the N64/PSX.

 

[Hackworth]

24/7 community servers. Loved having a place to shoot the shit with the same 11-31 other players every night with custom rules, mic spam and events. Now we're all forced into a big player pool of randoms with little to no control over anything.

Click to shrink...

I used to play so much TF2 because of like three specific servers.

 

[Ximonz]

first time entering Elwynn Forest, check in at Goldshire...

 

[Rosebud]

Neopets. Even my parents used to play :/

 

[Stuggernaut]

The arcade experiences of the early 90's, with SF2, MK1 etc in their arcade hay day.

Also, truly engrossing MMOs that are not fresh and new gaming experiences like they were to begin with. Gonna be hard to impossible to recreate that feel.