Back in My Day!

[Bubba]

Gamers these days have it so much easier with the way games are designed. There are lots of us on here that grew up with unforgiving, old school games.

Share some of your favourite "back in my day" gaming gripes here

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[Pike]

Putting a disk into the Commodore 64, telling it to load the game, and then going outside to play for twenty minutes while it loaded

[Freya]

Back in my day, we didn't have any preloading on our computers at home before a release. We had to wait for the store to open like barbarians.

[Bubba]

Putting a disk into the Commodore 64, telling it to load the game, and then going outside to play for twenty minutes while it loaded

I remember Spectrum games taking about 20 minutes to load. I wasn't as clever as you though, Pike. I used to sit there and listen to the God-awful loading noise. On my favourite games though I'd know the loading noises so well I used 'sing' along to them.

"Duuuuuur dit Duuuuuur dililililililillilil. Duuuuuur dit Duuuuuur didlidlidlidlidlidlidlidlidlidlidldlidlidli"

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[sharkythesharkdogg]

Putting a disk into the Commodore 64, telling it to load the game, and then going outside to play for twenty minutes while it loaded

I remember Spectrum games taking about 20 minutes to load. I wasn't as clever as you though, Pike. I used to sit there and listen to the God-awful loading noise. On my favourite games though I'd know the loading noises so well I used 'sing' along to them.

"Duuuuuur dit Duuuuuur dililililililillilil. Duuuuuur dit Duuuuuur didlidlidlidlidlidlidlidlidlidlidldlidlidli"

65865

That is really sad.

I'll tell them how some of the games I played needed multiple floppy discs which meant extra load time because the game was sooooo big! And I mean the old ones. I had a few that were the 8 inch floppies and the rest were mostly 5 1/4 inch. I remember when the 3 1/4 inch floppies arrived. It's like the future was in my hands!!!!11!!1

I'll also tell them about the legend of text based adventures! It's like a book, but on a monochrome white or green screen!! It was a really cool thing when some of them started adding pictures!!!

EDIT: I just remembered getting excited when one of the computers we had got upgraded with the Game Blaster sound car from Sound Blaster. It almost had music!

[Bubba]

That is really sad.

I was quite a sad child :(

Also, I love booting up my SNES and not being greeted with a message saying "Please connect to the internet to perform a system update"

[Shauna]

back in my day you got demo discs for a bunch of crappy games and one REALLY COOL ONE and I miss it

[Rez09]

IRQs and my eternal quest for sound.






. . . this wasn't for good memories, was it?

[Ayen]

Son, back in my day there was a game known as Superman 64. It official title was 'Superman' but everybody called it Superman 64 because of the N64's gimmick at the time.

The goal of the game was to fly through rings. Yes, rings. Because that was Luthor's idea of a maze. Just put a bunch of rings in the sky and laugh manically as Superman does something that should take him 10 seconds. The hit detection was so horrid, that a blind deaf man with no arms would have an easier time fighting the enemies in real life than you would in the game itself.

Superman was slower than a hunchback with down syndrome. Allowing your enemies several chances to hit you before you can even get close enough to punch them in the face. Oh, and bullets can hurt Superman. I don't care if they explain it with Kryptonite fog (though they never say as much in the game, and it happens when he's inside away from it too), but it's bulltrout. Complete and utter bulltrout.

And boxes explode. Yes. Boxes made out of cardboard can explode if you so much as pick them up.

Back then we didn't have patches. We didn't have online reviewers. And apparently we didn't have game testers either because people actually looked at this piece of trout, put it in, said it was okay, and then gave it a release date! The smurfing preview of the game has the guy missing the rings and hitting a wall! EVEN THE GAME DOESN'T GIVE ENOUGH OF A TROUT TO PLAY IT PROPERLY!

Son, the reason I'm telling you this is because... if I ever hear you complaining about having to wait for a patch to download again, I will grab the frying pan in the kitchen and hit you repeatedly in the face. Because if living in America has taught me anything, it's the fact that conflicting ideals can be settled not by sitting down and talking about it. But by beating the living crap out of the other guy until he can no longer stand.

Now go on, son. Play that game. Play it like you've never played a game before, for you are the FUTURE!

[Pike]

I'll also tell them about the legend of text based adventures! It's like a book, but on a monochrome white or green screen!! It was a really cool thing when some of them started adding pictures!!!

Oh man some of those games are still great. Like Zork. Played it a couple months back and it's still fantastic.


IT IS DARK. YOU ARE LIKELY TO BE EATEN BY A GRUE.

[theundeadhero]

In my day you had three lives and no saves to beat the entire game. They're designed to be intentionally hard to add playtime and "replayability." Good luck.

[Bubba]

Back in my day, you had to play the whole game through in one go. Then, right at the end, it would send you back to the start and you'd have to do it all again.

Screw you, Ghosts 'N' Goblins, screw you.

[maybee]

Putting a disk into the Commodore 64, telling it to load the game, and then going outside to play for twenty minutes while it loaded

Yikes !

I guess passwords for my answer ? And having to have a small book to put all the passwords in ? *stares angrily at Crash 1 and Rayman *

[Bubba]

I guess passwords for my answer ? And having to have a small book to put all the passwords in ? *stares angrily at Crash 1 and Rayman *

You don't know passwords until you've played Super Tennis on the SNES. To make it easier, you have to input all this with a SNES pad.

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You don't know the pain of writing one letter down wrong when given the password. You then had to go through each character and try different combinations until it worked... or until you lost the will to live.

[Ayen]

Don't get this guy started on passwords.

http://i.imgur.com/eVUetqh.jpg

[Vyk]

I had the SEGA Channel..

[Pumpkin]

I'm still pretty young so, I guess all I can say is that back in my day, this was handsome:

http://i.imgur.com/nYLfMHN.jpg

[maybee]

Don't get this guy started on passwords.

http://i.imgur.com/eVUetqh.jpg

To be fair, he's at angry at everything imao.