Small features in games you miss - Reason #13532 why modern games are shit

[LifeAlert]

Where do I start?

-Games that were coded from scratch by developers who knew the hardware, knew the software, and sought to create fun and not pretentious faggotry

-Weaker hardware being pushed to the limits by talented developers

-Consoles that were unique inside and out so they each offered a unique experience, which results in the games having a unique look and feel. Now everything is a wannabe PC and feels exactly the same (except the Switch which is just a wannabe Android tablet)

-The DS and Wii, fun gimmick hardware with a lot of great games that took advantage of the features

-Games that weren't Unreal/Unity Asset Flip #69699905

-GOOD remakes of games that utilized updated versions of the technology that created the original game (Resident Evil 1, Ridge Racer Type 4's bonus disc, Tony Hawk 2X, Hitman: Contracts, etc). Now everything is soulless UE slop that all look and play exactly like the last one

-Fun little things like changing costumes and custom models WITHOUT paying extra for them, and were either available from the start, unlocked by playing the game (different from wagie-level repetitive grinding that today's slop would have you do), or both

-Local multiplayer options and games that actually benefitted from them (Fifth and sixth generation games were the best, virtually everything had some kind of multiplayer mode, ffs even GTA San Andreas had a co-op mini-game!)

-Hidden content without it being plastered everywhere all the time. There used to be a time where if you were curious you could look up a game's secrets without already knowing them

-Special events for games like Pokemon where you had to show up IRL to get special shit for your game. Imagine that!

-Cheat devices to get the special shit you missed or that the developers never allowed you to get, especially if you aren't a nip (Pokemon, Animal Crossing)

-No updates or patches that dramatically change character stats because the developers listened to compfaggots and decided to homogenize every character's stats so they all play exactly the same

-Playing online on console for free (thanks, microshit!)

-Backing up, copying, and moving save data without needing the internet or a subscription

-No bullshit, just pop in the disc or cartridge and play

-Being able to actually afford the games, including old shit

 

[Two Dollars]

Finite lives and hard fail states. Games like Super Mario Brothers or Contra gave you a fixed number of lives, ways to earn more by playing well (or cheating), and then when you ran out YOU WERE DONE. If you died too much, you went back to the beginning. No level restart and grinding.

It's such a simple and effective way to create a "journey" for your players. Level 4 isn't just a copy-paste of level 3 that you just chose to play; it's a harder place to reach, it's rarer ground because sometimes you ran out of lives before you go there. Going to a new level meant something because you don't always get to see it. A single death is a minor setback; you just replay part of your current level. You learn that death is just part of the journey, failure is recoverable, but repeated failures are heavily penalized. You earn your frustration by your failure to learn and improve.

I've save scummed my way through my fair share of games, and enjoyed the modern versions of checkpoints and level exploration. But beating those never meant the same thing as gambling your run on your skill, measured in lives.

I'm actually okay with that one when it's done right. Games are no longer short enough to justify restarting from the beginning when you get a game over, and even then, that experience is still around in the form of roguelikes. I don't buy the idea that having infinite lives automatically makes a game easy because then games like Super Meat Boy and I Wanna Be The Guy would be considered easy.

Instead, some modern games give you a more tangible punishment when dying. Super Mario Odyssey and Kirby and the Forgotten Land take away some coins every time you die; not a significant amount, but still enough to dissuade you, and still punishing compared to stocking up 50 extra lives and never worrying about them again. Sonic Forces gives you a score penalty every time you die so little Timmy can still have fun but people who care about getting the best rank need to not die.

 

[Calandrino]

Games are no longer short enough to justify restarting from the beginning when you get a game over

Yeah, that's another problem. Add that to my list.

 

[Local Wordmason]

-Being able to actually afford the games, including old shit

I will never forgive manchild Youtubers for making shelves full of retro vidya a popular interior decorating choice for other manchildren. It pleases me that I've started seeing YouTube videos like "SHOULD YOU BE SELLING NOW? Retro Game Collection Tips 2024". I can't wait for the bubble to pop so I can lowball the fuck out of these idiots.
"Earthbound? I'll give you twenty bucks, but only if you throw in Chrono Trigger and Mega Man 7."

I have a tinfoil hat theory that Youtubers colluded with large secondhand game retailers like Pink Gorilla by giving them a heads up on what games they were going to talk about ahead of time so they could capitalize on it. They started getting big as soon as Youtubers had the power to raise the price of a game by simply talking about it. Conveniently at the same time that good retro games were also becoming harder to come by, and prices started going up. I have absolutely zero evidence to back this up btw. No I won't elaborate.

 

[LifeAlert]

I have a tinfoil hat theory that Youtubers colluded with large secondhand game retailers like Pink Gorilla by giving them a heads up on what games they were going to talk about ahead of time so they could capitalize on it.

I can believe it. MetalJesusSucks(Dick) is good friends with the thot that runs Pink Gorilla so it's certainly possible

 

[Road Work Ahead]

Game studios not have a thousand fucking employees. There is a nice middle ground between solo devs and massive companies that seems to have been mostly lost. No game with 1000 people working on it can be good, simply way too many cooks in the kitchen.

 

[Judge Dredd]

It genuinely sucks how even good developers have their plans ruined, even when they nicely ask. Same goes for the whole debacle around the Binding of Issac ARG, if you want a similar more complex rabbithole.

If you're autistic enough you can virtualize and/or obfuscate your game (preferably both), but this is tranny-tier and assumes you're not using something like GameMaker or Unity; kids who have never touched a computer before can dump both of these.

Payday 2 managed to hide it's true ending from data miners by having it where, once you met the condition for the true ending, you got a secret unlisted DLC added to your account. It was clever, but it's a shame they had to go to such lengths. It was also their own in house engine too I think? Not 100% on that.

Even so, people can decompile a lot of games. Look at how there are rom hacks of basically anything now.

-Special events for games like Pokemon where you had to show up IRL to get special shit for your game. Imagine that!

My uncle had the official mew from a pokemon event. Lost now due to hardware failure. I wonder if that was dumped anywhere. It would make a great gift for him.

I miss amazing U/Is or "main menus", even cool death screens. The Prime Trilogy has amazing examples of all of these, pleasing U/I designs and creative art etc. When Prime 4 finally releases, I'll be able to tell at a glance if Retro Studios still "has it" or not by how they do the main menu.

I would say installers also fall under this, but on reflection it was basically just Red Alert.

Edit:

I can't wait for the bubble to pop so I can lowball the fuck out of these idiots.

On the reverse side, I've posted in a few threads already about how it both angers me and amuses me that YouTubers had a grift going where they'd fly to Japan, buy lots of cheap retro stuff, and flip it in the states for lots of money. They had to brag on YouTube about it and then cried when they destroyed the Japanese retro market because the Japanese started price gouging them.

 

[Local Wordmason]

Game studios not have a thousand fucking employees. There is a nice middle ground between solo devs and massive companies that seems to have been mostly lost. No game with 1000 people working on it can be good, simply way too many cooks in the kitchen.

It's about the scope of your game tbh. A single person can carve a statue from marble with immaculate detail, and thousands of people can build a pyramid. A thousand people wouldn't be able to create a project with the size of a pyramid, and the detail a single person could achieve. Manpower only works when the project is large and simple. A prime example being the Call of Duty games. Relative to other projects, half of the work is basically already done.

I think it's funny that back in the days of early home computers and the Atari 2600, a lot of the best games were created by a single developer. Almost 50 years later, we've come right back around to solo devs creating the most notable games of the year.

Payday 2 managed to hide it's true ending from data miners by having it where, once you met the condition for the true ending, you got a secret unlisted DLC added to your account. It was clever, but it's a shame they had to go to such lengths.

I've heard of devs using the "invisible dlc" method but in reverse to catch pirates. In Rabbi Ribbi (anime game never played it). There was a DLC that was invisible and unbuyable but was still in the game's code. The reason was, they checked if you had that DLC and if you did, it meant you were a pirate because there was no other way you could have the DLC, unless you had a copy that was cracked with an automated program that included cracking the unobtainable bait DLC as well. The funniest part is the thing they do when they detect it. They open a new browser window with the game's store page. Every frame the game is open.

My uncle had the official mew from a pokemon event. Lost now due to hardware failure. I wonder if that was dumped anywhere. It would make a great gift for him.

There are fanmade ROMs that recreate Mew itself and the distribution cart, so if you have a flash cart or something you could easily trade one to him.

 

[Jesus Swept]

Level scaling. If my dumb ass wanders into a high level skeleton cave at level 1 and I get shredded, I want to come back when I'm stronger and get my revenge. Or maybe I can find some way to triumph over a much stronger enemy and get rewarded for it. Level scaling turns combat into a boring treadmill where nothing changes besides health and damage numbers getting bigger.

Remember when successive games in the genre used to have little nods and callouts to each other? SimCopter being able to load SimCity maps, importing the Sims 2 toons into SimCity 4? R&C giving a little bonus when you got a prior save game file in your memory card?

You don't get much of those these days.

The one that I'll always remember is Psycho Mantis reading my Gamecube's memory card and calling me a faggot for playing super smash bros.

There are fanmade ROMs that recreate Mew itself and the distribution cart, so if you have a flash cart or something you could easily trade one to him.

You don't even have to go that far. There's a notable glitch in the original Pokemon games that lets you catch any Pokemon in the wild, including Mew.

 

[Local Wordmason]

You don't even have to go that far. There's a notable glitch in the original Pokemon games that lets you catch any Pokemon in the wild, including Mew.

I figured they want the event Mew that would be identical in every way down to the stats and Original Trainer, not just any Mew, they wouldn't need to trade it otherwise. What would be better than being able to literally recreate the trade that gave him that exact Mew he lost.

 

[LifeAlert]

My uncle had the official mew from a pokemon event. Lost now due to hardware failure. I wonder if that was dumped anywhere. It would make a great gift for him.

Try this?

https://projectpokemon.org/home/files/file/2531-yoshira-mew-red-distribution-cart-savefile/

 

[David Brown]

Big head mode

 

[#lurker]

Game studios not have a thousand fucking employees. There is a nice middle ground between solo devs and massive companies that seems to have been mostly lost. No game with 1000 people working on it can be good, simply way too many cooks in the kitchen.

Most blatant example of this is the credits of a modern Ubisoft title where the entire scroll is the same length as a movie.

 

[LazyLizard]

CDs, being able to just put in a cd and instantly be able to play the game, no need to download anything, no need to search for updates, no need for logins just quick and easy gaming

 

[Mordecai "3 Finger" Brown]

Youtubers colluded with large secondhand game retailers like Pink Gorilla

MetalJesusSucks(Dick) is good friends with the thot that runs Pink Gorilla so it's certainly possible

I never thought of Pink Gorilla in Seattle owned by that Kelsey hapa and MetalJesusRocks orbiter, as a mover-and-a-shaker in the retro games scene. But then again, I'm not really in the know.

I haven't thought about her or MJR in a VERY long time.

I haven't seen either of them since the days back when I thought both James Rolfe and Pat the NES Punk were entertaining.

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

>Download game
>Download patch
>Sign-up to game installer
>Give phone number for 2fa
>Wait in server queue
>Game sucks anyway.

All of this can die in a fire.

 

[Lone MacReady II]

I have a tinfoil hat theory that Youtubers colluded with large secondhand game retailers like Pink Gorilla by giving them a heads up on what games they were going to talk about ahead of time so they could capitalize on it. They started getting big as soon as Youtubers had the power to raise the price of a game by simply talking about it. Conveniently at the same time that good retro games were also becoming harder to come by, and prices started going up. I have absolutely zero evidence to back this up btw. No I won't elaborate.

I'll never forget that in 2015, when Konami released a Kojima-admitted "half finished" game in MGSV - IGN gave it a Perfect 10/10 Masterpiece Rating. At the release of this 10/10 "perfect masterpiece" unfinished game review, IGN had banner-to-banner advertisements for MGSV lining their site. These types of niggers have been incestuously playing mercantile games for decades, nothing is off the table when there are shekels to be made.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Cheat codes that you could type in to get infinite lives or whatever. Most of the time this would disable certain features (like high score) but it was fun to be invincible or skip ahead several levels.

Consoles had some sort of combinations (famously the Konami Code) but computer games you could type in some phrase or word into the title screen and it just works. No need to screw around with shady "trainer" apps.

 

[Pumpkin Girl IRL]

Specific to the XBox One area, games integrating themselves with "Smart Glass" and the consoles voice recognition. It was never used particularly well, often just a second inventory screen or way to give commands to NPCs, but was endearingly goofy.

Dead Island 2 had voice recognition, and as pointless as it was getting the attention of a zombie by shouting "oi, cunt!" will not be hilarious.

 

[Calandrino]

Not as clumsy or random as a dualshock. Elegant controllers, for a more civilized age.