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Anyone remember when you could start a game and it would just work?
- Thread starter ussjtrunks
- Start date
Back in the old days you mailed your cartridge back to the published so they could swap it for a less buggy one.
I couldn't get into it honestly. The "abilities" or whatever they call them feel tacked on so they can say the game has heroes like Overwatch. The game could have easily worked if the abilities were pickups and the character models were just skins. It feels like Bethesda doesn't know what they want QC to be yet.
And for the Battlefield series, it went from a team-based shooter to a pick-up-and-play shooter. A lot of people prefer that so it is what it is but it's not my type. Speaking of, where the fuck is an Enemy Territories remake? Everything else under the sun is getting remade but not that? Ain't right, man.
Yeah, and if the game happened to have bugs, glitches, performance issues or any sort of thing that could ruin your gameplay, well, tough shit. Lots of games had to go through revisions and reprints back in the day because of stuff like that, and I don't miss it.
Most games nowadays keep being improved between going gold and retail release, and many developers are constantly listening to players in order to keep making their games better overall.
Most games nowadays keep being improved between going gold and retail release, and many developers are constantly listening to players in order to keep making their games better overall.
And yet games generally shipped with fewer bugs back then. A launch week game these days sometimes feels like it's barely out of alpha.
Pokemon Red/Blue Focus Energy cut your Critical Rate instead of raising it...
I actually thought this is how Switch was going to be like, but they went and fd it up with some carts not even containing the full game having to download the rest of it, rendering the whole cart worthless.
:/
Running home with San Andreas in hand then putting it in the PS2 and playing for hours. Those were the days.
I miss running home in 2004 with burnout 3 takedown in hand after playing the OPM demo for two months straight.
Did the same for budokai 3 a few months later.
Great times.
Can't believe that's been 14 years ago already :(
Did the same for budokai 3 a few months later.
Great times.
Can't believe that's been 14 years ago already :(
No I remember having to insert and re-insert the cartridges some of them eventually having to blow on them to pray they would work.
Bugs are much easier to ID and fix when your game is a few thousand lines of code as opposed to a few million.
I do believe the increase in "bugs" is also due to an increase in complexity that most people can enjoy, be it the graphics of a game, its systems or its environments. I mean, it's not feasible to expect a game like, say GTA1, to be as complex as GTAV (and tbh I don't remember GTAV needing too many patches, even if it gets them to this day).
Anyone remember when you could start a game and wait 20 minutes for it to load? Those were the days!
Nintendo with their archaic online infrastructure meant we got to enjoy some of this glorious time a little more in the Wii/DS era, it was extremely rare for it to happen. It's literally the only good thing that came with having crappy online, sadly with Wii U/3DS that's no longer the case and isn't with Switch.
And because of this most games didn't have huge game breaking bugs, sure some slipped by but they weren't the norm. Nowadays what game doesn't require a patch in the launch window? Developers have gotten lazy with the ability to fix things later.
There is that. Also helps when you write the traps for CPU faults instead of the OS killing your process.
I remember when I could start a game and it would just UUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
Trying to use mods with Fallout 4 on Xbox gave me flashbacks
Trying to use mods with Fallout 4 on Xbox gave me flashbacks
It can be very expensive to ship a game with game-breaking bugs, and even then you really can't get away with this. When you submit a game to Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft you are essentially paying money to rent their QA teams to test the game and make sure it doesn't fail their checklists. This can be a huge cost (like $20,000 per submission) for a larger title.
And just so you know, there were bugs that shipped before internet patches were a reality, but they were often fixed in subsequent printings of the games. Just not publicized like patch notes.
No amount of internet connectivity or software patches would have fixed that. The blue discs were CDROMs instead of DVDs, and needed a faster RPM to read. People whose machines had trouble reading them had dying drive motors.
Remember when I bought Final Fantasy 6 and around 2/3rds of the way through the game I used Relm's special ability in a battle & it destroyed my save file? Or when I played Lufia 2 and one of the dungeons was just a garbled glitchy mess of random tiles? Or having to create boot disks in order to get old MS-Dos games to run? Or spending 20 minutes rummaging through my stuff trying to find that copy-protection code sheet in order to start a game? Good times.
On the flip side, I distinctly recall me and my friend back in the SNES/PlayStation days imagining how cool it would be if games could somehow be updated after they were released, just as our favourite PC games were.
I'd rather have day one patches than no patches. The frustration lies not in the updates themselves, but how updates are distributed. An immense improvement would be to allow downloading updates before acquiring the game.
Because of the way PC works with digital titles, this is kinda an every day thing. Download > Start > Play.
I suppose physical games aren't so lucky though, but for those clutching on to that medium 'til the end it's probably worth it for whatever reasons they can conjure.
Probably the only thing I miss from the "old days" was when games had built in cheats or you could use GameShark/Codebreaker. But hey, PC fixes that too.
I suppose physical games aren't so lucky though, but for those clutching on to that medium 'til the end it's probably worth it for whatever reasons they can conjure.
Probably the only thing I miss from the "old days" was when games had built in cheats or you could use GameShark/Codebreaker. But hey, PC fixes that too.
The worst ones are always the big updates files that I have to download overnight or something won't have time to play it the same day I got the game because I have to wait for the update to finish first..
This is what got me back into retro gaming three years ago. Not classic minis, but actual NES and SNES carts.
I had a stretch of Saturday mornings for a year where I'd take my coffee to my old TV set, push in a cartridge, and experience instant gaming goodness.
I had a stretch of Saturday mornings for a year where I'd take my coffee to my old TV set, push in a cartridge, and experience instant gaming goodness.
I remember the C64 days of waiting 10 minutes for a tape to load, only to find it failed... and then having to start all over again.
Or Street Fighter II on the Amiga and having to swap discs for each different stage and then waiting for it to load. And don't get me started on Monkey Island 2.
It could be worse.
Or Street Fighter II on the Amiga and having to swap discs for each different stage and then waiting for it to load. And don't get me started on Monkey Island 2.
It could be worse.
NES games just worked, after performing a ten minute long ritual of blowing your lungs out, pushing the cartridge in, pressing the reset button a few times, pulling the cartridge out, and repeating.
Oh fucking please, games are infinitely more complicated now and patching gives the developer opportunity to improve their game. Fuck off with this rose tinted glasses bullshit.
The world, and gaming industry especially, would be better off without nostalgia.
The world, and gaming industry especially, would be better off without nostalgia.
OP
OP
If we could preload day 1 patches for disk games we didn't own it would make things a lot easier, unfortunately I don't think there could really be a way to do that
You seem angry about different people liking and valuing different things than you.
I feel you my point is that the times have changed for better and for worse.
IDK if much has really changed on the "dying drive motor can ruin your day" front tbh
Also remember the ridiculous copy-protection in old games like those "code wheels" or having to type in "the fifth word of the second paragraph of page 53 of the manual"?
and if you lost that stuff then you could never install the game again.
but hey, just turn on the game and play, right guys?
and if you lost that stuff then you could never install the game again.
but hey, just turn on the game and play, right guys?
What games REQUIRE day 1 patches?
Just disconnect your internet.
There.
No day 1 patches. No updates. You are now playing the game.
I don't miss those days at all. When I wanna play a game I never played I know ahead of time and I install it before I want to use it. And if I wanna use it day one I just wait like an adult.. Game are so much more complicated it cannot be a one and done affair these days. Not with AAA release.