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Configuring sound in ms-dos games - sometimes maddening :)
What I totally don't miss is the time when there was no free saving in games. Only some checkpoints (or passcodes) for certain positions in the game.

...What do you say? There are still games being produced that don't have free saving? Didn't the devs learn anything over the past 30 years?
Under MS DOS: the need to setup boot disks, juggling memory, setting up sound cards.

Also: user interfaces and steering setups that were second nature back in the day, but are hard to getting used again nowadays.
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Lifthrasil: ...What do you say? There are still games being produced that don't have free saving? Didn't the devs learn anything over the past 30 years?
Yes, plenty of them still have only 1 auto-save. Not to mention games saving in Windows registry! :/
I forgot something:
joystick calibrations...
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viperfdl: I forgot something:
joystick calibrations...
There for something WAY easier nowadays.
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viperfdl: I forgot something:
joystick calibrations...
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Themken: There for something WAY easier nowadays.
Well, at least one has to do it only once nowadays. Back then every game had it's own routine with sometimes different results. It was just frustrating when a fighter didn't react in the way it was supposed to.
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Lifthrasil: What I totally don't miss is the time when there was no free saving in games. Only some checkpoints (or passcodes) for certain positions in the game.
Depends on what kind of games you play. I have more modern(ish) games without free saving than old ones - but all in all not that many.
Low screen resolutions.

All the other stuff (limited number of save slots with checkpoint saves, painfully long loading times, etc.) has made a comeback.

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hudfreegamer: For example, the HD remake of Serious Sam lets you chose to show blood or to have confetti and candy pop out of enemies when shot, like pinatas. I like to play with that mode on because it makes it easier to tell when I've hit them.
In the original Serious Sam you could choose between red blood, green blood or flowers.
-Game speed being tied to processor cycles
-Not being able to easily patch games
-physical distribution media
-easy modes that punish you for playing them
-walking dead scenarios with no warning
-win & end the game
-games being monetized on hints or walkthroughs
Code sheets and having to look things up in the manual as disguised copy protection.

CDs. A fragile and irritating format that while larger, was often wasted potential. Having to keep the CD running often lead to early wear.

Mascot/Mascot killer games, the insane claim that something would be the next Mario or Mario Killer. The only infamy they gleaned was their absolute failure; they're otherwise so forgettable that I can't glean any specific examples.
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viperfdl: Well, at least one has to do it only once nowadays. Back then every game had it's own routine with sometimes different results. It was just frustrating when a fighter didn't react in the way it was supposed to.
Don't forget about the competing 'standards'! Did you have a Kempston? Sinclair? Atari? Well too bad, none of them are compatible between each other even though they had the same lead and pin out.

Edit: Ah, right: Mazes without automaps/autoexplore. Thank goodness for GameFAQs or GameAtlas. Especially in games of the 8 bit era where the tilesets were often just the same shade of blue.
Post edited October 14, 2018 by Darvond
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ofthenexus: -Game speed being tied to processor cycles
That is why I bought GOG games.
I do not have to adjust the DOSBox config myself.
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adaliabooks: Physical DRM - totally agree there. Digital all the way for me (except with consoles as digital Nintendo games seem to be inexplicably more expensive then their physical counterparts)

Manuals - for me a game that doesn't adequately explain it's systems such that you need to spend 20 minutes poking around in a manual to know how to play is a bad thing. I like complicated games, but I also like them to be learnable through playing.
If the game had to have any DRM I would prefer physical one (like words from manual or some lenslock). Digital/online one is the worst one because:
a) I am not always online
b) developers / servers can go off
c) it can cause some slowdowns / troubles

Manuals. MANUALS. I just LOVE manuals. I still remember when I got my boxed edition of Microprose's Magic the Gathering and it had a few hundreds pages manual included. It was so fun reading it and learn how to play the game! Now I miss manuals so much. :(
What I not miss?

- Infinite loading times, like on the C-64/C-128. It could take easily 20 - 30 minutes to load a game from Diskette.

- Permadeath because of no save function! Oh, wait: some idiots brought this crap back into computer games.

- Only one difficulty, which was often too difficult. Nowadays most games give you more possibillities to choose exactly the difficulty you want.

But there are still things I love about old games, like the thing that a game ran on your computer, and you were not forced to install patches or find some super complicated workarounds to make your game work on your computer.

Oh, and one thing I hated in the DOS era: Some games I couldn`t bring to work, no mater what I changed in the Autoexec.bat and Config.sys. I remember one game (but not the title of it) which I was never able to play, because it wasn`t possible to free enuff base system memory for it (the first 640 KB of your computer).
Post edited October 14, 2018 by Maxvorstadt
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Maxvorstadt: But there are still things I love about old games, like the thing that a game ran on your computer, ... or find some super complicated workarounds to make your game work on your computer.
Sounds like you've never played Dune 2 in MS-DOS. :-P

edit: I just saw your edit... never mind!!
Post edited October 14, 2018 by teceem