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What dont you miss from classic games???........
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StoneColdSpider Jul 28, 2023
We all have those rose tinted glasses for retro games....... from the NES to the PS2...... The pre DLC and Microtransaction days......

But what game design features/hardware limitations are you glad are completely gone or almost gone now???......


The biggest thing for me is......

Locked Content tied to game progression......

This seemed to be the worst in racing games........ You buy a game with a cool Ferrari or Lamborghini on the cover....... And you get home and its all locked behind a crap progression system........ No you cant have fun with the game yet....... Not until you have played it the way we want you to......

The Colin McRae Rally games and well almost the entirety of the Codemasters Racing catalogue are really REALLY bad for this...... With almost nothing to do when you first fire up the games...... Everything even remotely cool is locked away....... And it feels like you have to play for an eternity to finally race on your favourite car or track......

Codemasters even went the extra mile by having a "Unique Bonus Code" tied to your save game..... So you would have to call the Codemasters helpline and buy the cheat codes cause only certain codes worked with certain "Unique Bonus Codes" so you and your mate couldnt just swap codes as you would each have difference "Unique Bonus Codes"......... Just to unlock all the cool stuff....... Instead of you know..... Letting us use the codes for free like everyone else was letting us do........ Scumbag Codemasters.........

Ill never forgive Codemasters for that......

While some games still do lock the content...... Im looking at you Gran Turismo and Forza........ Most only have content locked for career mode...... But you are free to race any car and track combo in the single race game mode....... Which is the best way of doing it........

Well thats my rant for the day........

What are some of the things you dont miss from classic games?????
Pengling Jul 28, 2023
Passwords.

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They made sense back when it was too pricey to include means to save a game to battery-backed RAM, a hard-drive, or flash-memory. Sometimes they were used for neat extras* or could be wrangled to create unintended effects, but these things hung around well into the era of the Game Boy Advance! By then, that was the only platform that passwords tended to appear on, and it got so bad that Nintendo actually mandated that all cartridges for the GBA's successor, the Nintendo DS, had to be manufactured with a small amount of flash-memory so that being able to save your game without passwords was forced to become the norm. A few retro-style games made for vintage hardware still use them for the same reasons that old games did, and some remakes (such as Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap maintain compatibility with vintage passwords, but that was more-or-less how they died out.

*The Bomberman password up top was given out on an official trading-card and takes the player to a challenge-stage that isn't used in the normal game (the game has 50 stages, but a number of unused ones exist - some more passwords of this sort were published in an official fan-book called Bomberman Maniax, as well), and the Mega Man 7 one below it is both the game's super-password that starts the player at the final stage fully powered-up (if you simply press Start) and also leads to a hidden Versus Mode (if you hold the L and R buttons whilst pressing Start).

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Last edited by Pengling on 28 July 2023 at 5:31 pm UTC
dubigrasu Jul 29, 2023
Tank controls, and slowly climbing some stairs or waiting forever in front of a squeaking door, aka loading times.
denyasis Jul 29, 2023
Keyboard look.... Basically anything pre mouse look. I find it really hard to play anything pre mouse look (despite growing up in that era). It was one of those improvements I can't go back on!!
damarrin Jul 29, 2023
Quoting: denyasisKeyboard look.... Basically anything pre mouse look. I find it really hard to play anything pre mouse look (despite growing up in that era). It was one of those improvements I can't go back on!!

This. We put up with such convoluted and unwieldy control schemes and thought they were perfectly fine.

I remember a ZX Spectrum game (Lords of Midnight I think) having commands tied to ABCD letters instead of (now obvious) first letters of their names (T for Talk, A for Attack, etc).

System Shock had an icon with the character at the top of the screen where you'd click to look up/down and lean and crouch. There were keyboard shortcuts for at least some of these, but just think how slow controlling the character was back then.
Klaas Jul 29, 2023
Quoting: PenglingPasswords.
Entering codes without keyboard clearly sucks – initials on a pinball game are okay. Unfortunately that is still a thing as I recently had the ahem pleasure of entering several WLAN passwords on the Steam Deck's virtual keyboard.


Quoting: StoneColdSpiderLocked Content tied to game progression......
Unlocks can be fun, sometimes, if they are done right. The Lego games are mostly okay with progress unlocking more and more things unless it is something really grindy like in some of the newer open word games. I can see how they can be really bad in some racing games, though.


Quoting: dubigrasuTank controls
and I want to throw in slow walking in adventure games. Telltale games pre TWD are prone to this. I've re-played Tales of Monkey island last year. It's unbearable how horribly slow Guybrush is. Combined with the annoying controls clearly intended for consoles – the mouse is treated as a virtual gamepad – unfortunately they are bad with a real gamepad as well.

Quoting: denyasisKeyboard look
Oh yes, I hate those. Nothing redeeming about free look on a keyboard.


Quoting: StoneColdSpiderThe only issue with the graphics is the really bad draw distance…….. (Taken from the WPC thread)
That's certainly something I don't miss.

Last edited by Klaas on 29 July 2023 at 6:38 am UTC
williamjcm Jul 29, 2023
Quoting: dubigrasuTank controls, and slowly climbing some stairs or waiting forever in front of a squeaking door, aka loading times.

I recently played through REmake4 recently, and I actually think the original game played much better despite having tank controls (though it's also because remake!Leon is as clunky to control as he was in REmake2, a game which had a much slower pace than REmake4 does).

I also played the PS2 versions of Silent Hill 2 and 3, both on the original hardware and emulated through PCSX2, and tank controls feel better when playing on a keyboard (with a controller, the camera-relative "2D" controls are better indeed).

I also experienced the same thing when I played a RE throwback game called Them and Us recently. When playing in fixed camera mode (the game also offers over-the-shoulder and FPS cameras), camera-relative controls (which the game calls "alternate controls") feel better on controller, tank controls feel better on keyboard.

As for the loading times which were masked by the various door/stair animations in classic RE games (though I think RE3 and REmake1 removed load screens on most, if not all, stairs), I like them because they provide some much-needed downtime (and because enemies, with very few exceptions like Nemesis in RE3 or that one ambush in RE2), can't cross load screens either).
BlooAlien Jul 29, 2023
Long un-skippable intros and cutscenes! Oh, wait... We still have those.
PublicNuisance Jul 29, 2023
I would love to say auto save systems instead of manual save systems and a fixed resolution list but there are recent games that also have these issues.
slembcke Jul 29, 2023
Uff. I suppose there are a few I can think of:

  • Extreme difficulty + limited continues: Quite a few 80's/90's games I couldn't beat until save states.

  • Terrible puzzles: So many baffling adventure games in the 90's where you had to read the designer's mind.

  • Terrible performance: There was a time when 15 fps was considered "real-time" for 3D, and it was amazing! >_<

  • Anti-copy schemes: DRM is annoying yes, but what if you had to use a decoder ring or type in stuff from the manual to start a game? Way worse. -_-

  • Loading games from cassette tapes: Oh my gosh this took so long. Fortunately, I mostly missed that generation.

  • Terrible graphics: Low res with simple palettes is a great aesthetic! Unless your palette is black/white/cyan/magenta. Blegh!

mr-victory Jul 29, 2023
Low poly count, low resolution, no autosave.
Grogan Jul 29, 2023
Putting quarters in the machine :-)
Pengling Jul 29, 2023
Quoting: KlaasUnlocks can be fun, sometimes, if they are done right.
I can agree there - I find the cosmetics in the modern Bomberman games a lot of fun to unlock and use, personally.

I also agree with Spider on how bad they can be if they're not done well, too, though.

Quoting: slembckeTerrible puzzles: So many baffling adventure games in the 90's where you had to read the designer's mind.
But it's totally logical to combine a piece of dental-floss with a coathanger to get a super-strong all-purpose grappling-hook!

Quoting: slembckeAnti-copy schemes: DRM is annoying yes, but what if you had to use a decoder ring or type in stuff from the manual to start a game? Way worse. -_-
Anyone remember LensLok? Luckily I never owned any games that used it, but it was a legendarily famous nuisance that punished legitimate customers whilst doing nothing to stop piracy.

Quoting: slembckeLoading games from cassette tapes: Oh my gosh this took so long. Fortunately, I mostly missed that generation.
That was where I got my start! I can't really complain about modern loading-times, given this.

Quoting: slembckeTerrible graphics: Low res with simple palettes is a great aesthetic! Unless your palette is black/white/cyan/magenta. Blegh!
I watched an interesting video about this recently - it turns out that the CGA colour-scheme is more interesting than it looks when paired with NTSC TV-out!
redman Jul 29, 2023
The thing I don't miss at all it's was first the multiple floppy disk (we had the monkey island locked with key) and the multiple CD!

Now is so easy to install and play games, no more changing on the middle of the game.

Edit: typo

Last edited by redman on 31 July 2023 at 2:26 pm UTC
StoneColdSpider Jul 30, 2023
Quoting: GroganPutting quarters in the machine :-)
Yep....... Love emulating arcade machines....... I have an infinite supply on quarters now......

Quoting: slembckeExtreme difficulty + limited continues: Quite a few 80's/90's games I couldn't beat until save states.
Yeah thats another one....... The bullshit difficulty of some of those games was just ridicules......

Quoting: slembckeLoading games from cassette tapes: Oh my gosh this took so long. Fortunately, I mostly missed that generation.
They were also sentient...... No matter matter how long it was...... They always just loaded the game when mum yelled that dinner was ready...... I swear they knew......

Quoting: PenglingI can agree there - I find the cosmetics in the modern Bomberman games a lot of fun to unlock and use, personally.

I also agree with Spider on how bad they can be if they're not done well, too, though.
Yeah not all unlocks are bad...... But it seemed to be more were bad than good back in the day...... Specifically with racing games......
wvstolzing Jul 30, 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goovFvN1hns

(Do checkout the rest of this channel, by the way; it's top-notch stuff by a jaw-droppingly talented comedian.)
Sputnik_tr_02 Jul 30, 2023
Quick Time Events, or whatever the hell they were called. They took all the fun from so many games for me.
eldaking Jul 31, 2023
It is a bit hard to find some that are exclusive to old games and not just bad practices still done to this day. Like, I want to say "limited save slots" - having to replay the entire game to get a different ending, or not being able to go back far enough to undo a mistake, or not being able to start a new game without losing everything you did, etc. But somehow that is still a thing on many games... same for "hotkeys you can't remap", "cutscenes you can't skip"...

One that I think is very specific to old games is: lack of mouseover tooltips - or tooltips that showed on a fixed textbox somewhere in the screen (usually a sidebar), instead of under the mouse. Maybe for people that play console-friendly games this is not a big deal, but for strategy and management games tooltips are a crucial UI element. Many games are moving to nested tooltips as a much needed improvement, and it is great. Even for RPGs, tooltips can greatly improve the interface when you just hover the cursor over an ability to see what it does. So when old games required you to search the in-game encyclopedia, or "single click to select and see description, then another button to use", or showed tooltips in the "wrong" place, it was a major pain.
Lib-Inst Aug 2, 2023
I actually loved locked content to game progression. It added replay value, it still exists btw in some games.
Pengling Aug 18, 2023
Quoting: natohWhile challenging games still exist, modern games often provide a range of difficulty settings and more generous save systems.
This reminds me of something else that I don't miss from the old days: Difficulty options being named (or renamed but only in some countries) to be condescending in a perpetually-failed attempt to sound "cool". Things like naming a lowered difficulty-level "Children" or "Wimps" and/or including a subtitle openly bashing the player for lacking skill, as well as sometimes ending the game after only a few stages and not allowing you to see the ending unless you play on the highest difficulty (which inevitably mistakes punishing difficulty misdesign timewasting for challenge; Tough-but-fair exists, but these particular games never seem to know that). And I know there are some games that still do this today, and it still comes across as edgelordy and arrogant as it always did.

It's not necessarily a lack of skill that prompts that choice - everyone is new once, and not everyone has immense amounts of time to sink into mastering every bit of minutiae about a game, but also sometimes you just want to play through a single-player experience to relax!

Last edited by Pengling on 19 August 2023 at 11:08 am UTC
Linux_Rocks Aug 25, 2023
Sound card setup in DOS games. I never had a problem as I was rocking a Sound Blaster 16 SCSI back in the day, but I've heard many others who had issues. Hearing Lara Croft in the Tomb Raider setup menu say "Right! Let's go adventuring!" was always a happy thing. lol

It's a double edged sword though. As annoying as it was sometimes. Having as much control as you did with the hardware (without any APIs in the way) was a good learning experience.

I still have that Sound Blaster 16 SCSI. Such a great card. It was also the CD-ROM controller in its original PC, but in the current one I put it in it's used with a hard drive. Adaptec had 32-bit disk access with their SCSI controller in DOS!
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