Shit you did as a kid in video games you wouldn't do now as an adult?

[Serpens007]

Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3.

European Extreme speedruns. Getting every dog tag in every difficulty setting. Doing all of it again. Getting all Kerotans. Yada Yada

 

[koutoru]

Buying cheat code books that they sold at scholastic book fairs. Printing out sheets of game shark codes.

 

[RowdyReverb]

Looking up cheat codes in books/magazines/internet. Can't even remember the last time I googled "[game title] cheats"

Use a Game Genie.

Do those even exist anymore?

Click to shrink...

The combination of unforgiving difficulty and my young age made Game Genie an absolute necessity for me in the 90's. I just didn't have the skill to see all the levels otherwise in games like Super Star Wars

 

[KsG]

Trade in my consoles. So much I regret now.

 

[Manu]

My PS1 was faulty and it wouldn't read memory cards, so every time I played a game I had to start from scratch and dying meant game over.

Nowadays I just turn off the game if I lose more than 30 minutes of progress.

 

[Jonathan Lanza]

Play them for more than 3 hours at a time

Stop playing them forever after I beat it once

 

[Shadow]

NOT finishing RPGs like FF/DQ etc. I always got lost and gave up. Nowadays I know how they're designed and usually know where to go. I do still get lost on parts of the games, but not to the point of quitting. Like if I don't find where to go after awhile I just look it up on the internet.

 

[rdaneel72]

Pirate them.

Maybe easier now, or harder. I don't know.

But in my day all you needed was a box of 5.25" floppies, a hole-punch, and Locksmith 5.0

 

[cecilpaladin32]

-Not look at guides if stuck/for missing collectibles
-Replaying games ad nauseum
-Strictly playing one game at a time until completion (special shoutout to Game Pass for this one!)

 

[Ernest]

Fall down every pit in 2-D platform games on purpose, in case there was a secret or a warp in there.

 

[KrillinLikeAVillan]

Stand a chance in fighting games.,

 

[Midnight_Chomper]

Didn't give RPGs a chance because the action wasn't "cool" enough or fast enough.
Finished whole seasons in sports games.
Played 8 hours a day over summertime.

 

[Nessus]

Throw my controller.

 

[Hokey]

Out of game: I probably used to buy more games in one month than I do in a whole year now.

In game: I spend more time searching for secrets because the games I do buy I don't plan on replaying so just wanna "one&done".

 

[Stath]

In Ocarina of Time I would primarily roll around to go quicker, which was the conventional wisdom at the time. It is indeed faster than walking, but for longer stretches of distance, backwalking is faster. Gone are the days when I would desperately roll across the field to get to the castle/market before sundown.

 

[Mupod]

play as a male character (when given the option)

 

[shaneo632]

Play for long stretches of time like over 5 hours in one go. Now I just find it mentally draining and need to go do some exercise, read a book, watch a movie etc to break it up.

As a kid I'd regularly play Unreal Tournament for 12 hrs straight lmao.

 

[Sparks]

Play with friends.

Finish them

Click to shrink...

You mothe.......

It's true. ):

Run through them without appreciating the environments etc.

Click to shrink...

You are the winner of the internet and a beautiful person.

 

[dyreschlock]

I used to play a much bigger variety of games when I was younger.

 

[Lengualo]

100%'ing them, I just don't have the time or will to do so anymore.

Talk to many of the NPC's wandering around town... most of the time. There are some games where I will.

Replay longer games, unless there is a very good NG+ feature or additional NG+ content.

Online multiplayer. I only do this with my kids and partner these days (as a group). My kids like public multiplayer, but I find other players are oftentimes just idiots.

I also kinda agree with the running through the world without appreciating them. But, I've always appreciated environments a certain amount. I'm an artist / CG artist so I guess I would.

 

[MontlyCure]

Cheat in multiplayer games.

I've been permanently banned from Halo 2 multiplayer since 2006 😎

 

[phant0m]

Use cheat codes. As a kid anytime I got something new one of my first stops would be cheatcc.com

I don't know when but at some point a) I stopped looking for cheat codes and b) it seems like developers also stopped including them?

Spoiler

power overwhelming

black sheep wall

show me the money

also had a GameShark for N64

 

[Ouroboros]

Finish games. Thanks gamepass

 

[Rosa Lilium]

Being a console fanatic. Nowadays, I consider it a virtue to be critical of your own choice of platform, OS, or phone.

 

[nogoodnamesleft]

Stretch 4:3 to 16:9 UGH SO BAD

Use those awful supersal filters on emulators UGH SO BAD

 

[The Crystal Exarch]

Play games in languages I don't understand. I've finished Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth probably 3 times in JP when I was younger.

 

[Arta]

Not complain about having too many games to play.

 

[PKrockin]

Stretch 4:3 to 16:9 UGH SO BAD

Use those awful supersal filters on emulators UGH SO BAD

Click to shrink...

 

[SilverArrow20XX]

Used to use cheat codes a lot.
God mode and noclip in Doom.
Game Genie to give me invincibility in Mega Man games.
Was so afraid of losing and getting a game over, I guess.

Funny thing is that noclip made Doom harder more often than not, cause I'd get completely lost and not have any sense of level progression.

 

[gforguava]

Spending hours trying to replicate running through a wall(that causes a crash) two screens from the start of the first level in the Genesis version of Flashback.

Also spending hours upon hours trying to beat Flashback in general. I could never make it anywhere in the last level and I refused any and all help on the matter and just kept at it. To this day I've never beaten the game.

 

[AIan]

I used to think that attacking a wall millions of times "chipped away" at pixels, and if you did it enough it would go away eventually. Spent over an hour hacking away at a wall in Rayman Arena once.

 

[Shoichi]

Play games without trying to beat them but just exploring around randomly. Like in Sonic Adventure 2, I would do things like just running around the pyramid after jumping off the rails on the Pyramid Cave stage.

Don't have as much time to just explore without trying to finish something anymore

 

[m4st4]

noclip
allyourbasearebelongtous

 

[GamerJM]

Not finish most of them. I had the opposite problem as most kids where I had a lot of games because my family was fairly well off and also very limited time because my parents put me in a bunch of after school programs and didn't let me play for more than a few hours per day on non-school days. Plus I sucked at most games, and mostly just wanted to play Smash and Pokemon. Also had the issue where I'd get lost in RPGs like another poster said. If that happened I basically saw it as the game telling me I needed to spend money on a strategy guide if I wanted to play more of it.

It's also so silly that I used composite cables when I could have at least been using S-Video. Hell, I used composite on my 360 for a while for some reason.

 

[Dolce]

i mean i actually play racing games now instead of going backwards and watching my car fly in the air in NASCAR 98


i'm wayyyyyy better at games now than when i was a kid

 

[General Zod]

All-nighters. I miss them... so much! Damn these responsibilities!

 

[Polyh3dron]

Finish them

Click to shrink...

sad but mostly true

 

[captainpat]

Not paying attention to the plot. Beat so many teen and mature rated games as a kid where the story just completely flew over my head. Doesn't happen anymore I'm more engaged with the stories these days.

 

[NesFe00]

Play sports games mainly Football.

I've spent hundreds of hours maybe even thousands of my childhood playing Winning Eleven (Pro evo) and Fifa with friends, not career mode or whatever, just straight up hanging out with 2-3 people and playing dozens of 10 minute matches vs each other or 2v2.

Since then, I haven't bought or played a sports game for like 20 something years now.

 

[Incommensurability]

Going in the wrong direction in race games and trying to crash into the race leaders.

 

[TaySan]

Gaming all-nighters. My body just can't handle that anymore

 

[Zaki2407]

Blow a game cartridge.

 

[Funkybee]

Beat street fighter 2 on arcade with all characters using only jab and medium punch, because the cabinet had only 2 buttons.
I don't see it possible beating the game with Dhalsim now using only 2 buttons.

 

[Cort]

Cheat codes.

 

[MrNewVegas]

Costume contests in City of Heroes. Not a chance I'd do that now.

 

[Ssyem]

Replay them. I remember finishing ME2 at launch and being unsatisfied with the most insignificant outcome, so I immediately started a new to do a perfect playthrough.

Now anything I play, read or watch is shelved indeterminately after I'm done with it.

 

[Mad Gamer 64]

Speedrun/glitchhunt. I used to poke and prod at games to find stuff to save time/exploit them a lot. I was a pretty frequent poster on GameFAQs and SpeedDemosArchive in the mid 2000s as an 11-12 year old. Pre-Youtube I used to use my dad's digital camera to take short videos of some stuff that got a bit of traction online back then, but they seem to be lost to time now unfortunately.

I remember being the first to discover some of the more prominent glitches in Super Mario 64 DS at the time and when Mario Kart DS first came out I figured out snaking on my own and cleaned up the day 1 leaderboards (everyone caught up quick and left me in the dust soon after). When Mario Galaxy came out there was a ton of potential for exploiting the gravity mechanics. I must've spent dozens of hours just looking for miniscule timesaves back then.

I mostly gave it up by high school, probably due to starting to have actual money from odd jobs to buy more games. The last game I gave an honest attempt at speedrunning was Super Mario Land in college 6 or 7 years ago. It was a short enough run that I would carve out some time to practice daily for a bit. I managed to get pretty consistent at it but just found myself unable to dedicate time long-term so I dropped it before getting a recorded run to submit to a leaderboard.

Nowadays I'm still a bit of a completionist but I never really find myself dedicating time to actively breaking games or optimizing routes or anything. In an alternate life I think I'd make a good QA tester because if I set my mind to it I can usually find abusable stuff even in modern games but I just don't have the time for it unless I'd be getting paid.

 

[red731]

Some sado masochistic shit in Postal 2 I guess.

 

[TheeFanatic]

Print out fatality moves and combo list
Play DDR at an arcade anymore

 

[kirby_fox]

Play the same game over and over again without actually finishing it.