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General discussionAnti-nostalgia ... what do you *not* miss about old games?(290 posts)(290 posts)
(290 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted November 05, 2018
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Telika: The "favorite gimmick" thread reminded me of this. It's a feature that is present in almost all RPGs yet, so I dislike its lack in older games :

When I change the equipment on my char, I like it to be reflected on its image. When old games have one pre-defined image of your character, with one costume and weapon, that contradicts your inventory or equipment screen, I get a bit annoyed. Sometimes the image changes to some generic representation of the type of item you equipped (shirt vs armour, etc), but it's seldom enough.

So, nope, I don't miss discrepancy between on-screen character looks and equipment list.
Fun fact: Dragon Warrior (on the NES) actually changes the main character's sprite when you get a weapon or a shield. (The game doesn't distinguish betweeen types of weapons, however, so the Hand Axe still looks like a sword.)

With that said, I am used to playing older games where this feature is nearly unheard of (and I would dispute your use of "almost all" because of this, actually, particularly since I could probably name dozens of such RPGs), and I don't mind the omission of this feature.
Posted December 05, 2018
Really, I'm happy that we have real wide colour palettes nowadays.

I don't know how I survived all these years of Sierra-On-Line colour dithering. I just can't get re-used to that.
Posted December 05, 2018
Passwords as a save system. Fuck it right in the neck.

As a general rule, inventory management is much smoother today as well. UI "back then" was often terrible and hard to go back to.

Lack of mouse scroll in games also sucked. Especially when scrolling through menus and text.
Post edited December 05, 2018 by user deleted
Posted December 05, 2018
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DadJoke007: As a general rule, inventory management is much smoother today as well. UI "back then" was often terrible and hard to go back to.
Notable exception: The Ultima series regressed in that respect. In Ultima 4 and 5, you didn't have to worry about inventory management (shared inventory with no limit except 99 of each items), but in Ultima 6 you do (separate inventories with weight limits), and Ultima 7 made the problem worse. (Incidentally, for every Ultima game except the first, I can think of one respect in which the game was worse than its predecessor.)

Other things I would say I don't miss about old games (some I may have mentioned in this thread before, and some are unfortunately present even in some modern games):
* Game auto-saving on death
* Random stat gains at level up (and, similarly, non-retroactive HP gains)
* Permanent level drain, enemies stealing your items, and similar mechanics
* Having to play for an extended period without any option to save (Mega Man 4-6 and Final Fantasy 3 (not 6) are offenders here; at least FF3's remakes have at least a quit save)
* Having the Return spell only take you to the last place you saved (Dragon Warrior 2 here, thankfully DW3 improved on this)
* Having to switch disks mid-game and wait for load times (I remember this from the floppy days, but unfortunately the PlayStation revived ths and even modern games still have unskippable load times; if you are going to put load times into a game, make sure they're skippable)
* Having the game occasionally not work because the contacts are dirty
* Having save files on the cartridge, not being able to back them up, and losing the saves if the battery runs out (although this did mean not having to get a separate storage device to store your saves)
Posted December 05, 2018
terrible controls.
Posted December 05, 2018
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swsoboleski89: terrible controls.
Yeah because new games NEVER suffer from that.



*cough*
Posted December 05, 2018
Another one (I don't remember if I mentioned this earlier in the topic):
* In many old RPGs, healing up after a fight or expedition is slow. Examples of games with this problem include Wizardry 1-7 (except 4, where pentagrams heal you fully), Ultima 3 (unless you go into a dungeon to use a fountain, which is rather counter-intuitive), Wasteland 1, and Pool of Radiance (the fastest (real-time) way to heal is to sleep for literally weeks of in-games times). Fortunately, the situation improved in later games; Wizardry 8 heals you much faster when resting (not to mention healing magic being stronger) and later Gold Box games added the "FIX" command to auto-cast healing spells while resting (something like that; my impression is that it isn't an accurate simulation of casting spells and then resting).
Posted December 06, 2018
Hello all,

I do not miss :

-Unforgiving difficulty
-No saves
-Having to start from the beginning on death (level or whole game)
-Bad licenced games.
-Lack (of obviously actual) QoL.
-Forced translation due to region.
-Region lock (well, that still exists, but with multiplatform and PC, it's fading away)

What I could deal with but still annoys me today :

-No standardized controls
-Obscure controls that you needed a manual to understand the manual
-Knockback without invincibility frames in 2D plateformers

I've read in a 1999's Dreamcast magazine I had an article defining the difference between a "gamer" and a "hardcore gamer". Guess since, I identify myself as a "gamer", which should be translated in today standards as "casual". I really hated playing videogames up untill the N64 came around, and even then, I really enjoyed videogames only with PSX/DC. I still have nightmares of Mr.Nuts on SNES or Battletoads on NES. Brrrrr....

It's ironic my favorite genre is now a mix of Roguelike and Dungeon RPG. Well, that's for what came immediately to mind.
Post edited December 06, 2018 by Deadmarye
Posted December 06, 2018
This thread is huge so pardon any repeats.

I don't miss battery backup saving. Having to have a watch battery in your game and sometimes the system itself is a pain in the neck because as soon as that battery dies your saves die with it.

Seconding physical DRM being terrible. God help you if you lose your code wheel!

Something still there that I wish would go away: save points, especially if auto-save points. Sure, they try to hide them these days with cute little "saving" animations in the corner of the screen, but really it's just a way to get locked into a position you didn't want just because you decided to try something out. Manual saves or bust!

Well, at least it beats the era of NO saves at all... anyone else remember leaving games on pause and praying nothing happened to it while you were out/sleeping/whatever?

I actually miss save codes sometimes... mostly on games that are old and have batteries. Ugh, batteries....
Post edited December 06, 2018 by kitsuneae
Posted December 06, 2018
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kitsuneae: cute little "saving" animations in the corner of the screen
I remember a super meaboy speed runner getting busted for a fraud because meatboys girlfriend saving animation was a some frames off.
Posted December 06, 2018
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kitsuneae: Well, at least it beats the era of NO saves at all... anyone else remember leaving games on pause and praying nothing happened to it while you were out/sleeping/whatever?
Well, I'm sure it traumatized a lot of people, including me.
Posted December 06, 2018
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kitsuneae: I actually miss save codes sometimes... mostly on games that are old and have batteries. Ugh, batteries....
JUSTIN BAILEY
Posted December 06, 2018
Pixel hunts and other such asinine puzzles.

Aside from the aforementioned configuration conga, I don't miss the time when games were made for specialized 3D accelerators. Want to play Mechwarrior 2? Did you buy the right version? It still doesn't work because you patched your video card. Too bad!
Posted December 06, 2018
Hmmm, looking back to Albion, i'd have to say non-standardized mouse controls, and poor UI.
Posted December 06, 2018
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kitsuneae: I actually miss save codes sometimes... mostly on games that are old and have batteries. Ugh, batteries....
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tinyE: JUSTIN BAILEY
That password actually isn't special at all; it is a normal password that just happens to be recognized as valid by the game. In fact, I believe any combination of the first 22 characters is the first 22 characters of a valid password.

The only special password is
NARPAS SWORD0
0000
(Remaining spaces don't matter; any spot that is left empty (but not those that you wrote a space over) counts as a 0)/

By the way, the 2017 remake of Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap (available on GOG!) actually supports passwords from the Sega Master System version, and even supports generating new passwords that can then be used in the original version, allowing two-way transfer of saves between the original and the remake.
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionAnti-nostalgia ... what do you *not* miss about old games?(290 posts)(290 posts)
(290 posts)