Old adventure games with obscure puzzles in age without the internet. Fortunately some games came with a staged help system so you you could get hints to help you along without spoiling the game.

Hard drive space. It was easy to run out of space and have to uninstall or reinstall games.



also known as a dead end. At least there was a manual unlike today where you either need to trawl forums or go through a disorder wiki.
It still happens when games assume the only joypads for the PC are the xbox360 type.

1. Only being able to save at certain times.

2. Some older games had terrible controls.

3. As you mention, physical DRM.

4. As others have mentioned, "pixel hunting".

5. As others have mentioned, poor user interfaces.

6. SECURITY CODES. SSI Gold Box games, I'm glaring in your direction.

E.g. Leisure Suit Larry 2 - you don't get a game-over, but the game gets into an unwinnable situation.

That was *you*?!

Also, it's funny to think about how the software for nuclear weapon control hasn't changed since then ...

Might as well be. Our arsenal is in the hands of a twelve year old kid. :P

A comforting thought ...

Do you mean dead ends, like in old adventure games, where you could sometimes lock yourself out of winning by doing/failing to do something that you couldn't undo/do later on? Or are you talking about something to do with actual zombies?

Huh?

To me the issue isn't that, but rather long games without any way to save your progress. In fact, I consider having this flaw to be bad enough for me to consider the game unplayable (in other words, if reviewing the game, I would consider giving it a very bad rating if it has this flaw).

Another thing I would say I don't miss is permadeath, which is the one major issue I have with classic Wizardry, but unfortunately many modern games insist on including the mechanic. (I also don't miss permanent stat penalties for resurrection, as happens in some games.)

Ah yeah, level drain and such things were a pain in the ass. Youi leveled your character(s) up, encounter some monsters and realize that those fuckers drained 1 or even more levels from your char. This is so annoying!
Oh, and that you had to draw the maps for the games by yourself. Luckily, we had computer magazines which printed the maps for all those rpgs, or I would have been lost in those Bards Tale games.

In JRPGs, one thing I don't miss is inventory management, where it's necessary to decide what to keep and what not to.

(Unfortunately, this problem has persisted in WRPGs, and in fact was introduced in the Ultima series (with the 6th installment) when previous Ultima games didn't have that issue (except for trading items in 3 with its lack of shared inventory).)

The lack of shared inventory is another thing I could say I don't miss.

I also don't miss, when it comes to RPGs:
* Random stat gains at level up
* Having HP gains not be retroactive (that is, having to raise the Vitality-like stat early if I want to get high HP later)

Downside of what you're calling "free saves": It's possible to save yourself into a softlock. You load the game, and you die immediately before you can do anything. Or, the only way out is to fight a boss that you are not able to defeat.

Two games where I've encountered the first problem (Final Fantasy Adventure and Ys 3) got remakes that switched to only saving at save points, but those remakes also drastically changed the game (to the point where I consider the "remake" of Ys 3 to be a different genre).

I REALLY REALLY don't miss these!

They were so damn delicate! Look at them wrong and they broke.

Yeah, I'm remembering those things now and yes they are frustrating

One thing though: My nephews often come over and visit and they would watch me play games on my system and watching me play Fallout 3 they simply could not believe that I picked EVERYTHING up. In fact, I do this on all RPG's. Fallout 4 even...every piece of anything that's pick upable I pick it up.

The reason for this habit is this issue. lol I swore never again would get stuck because I forgot/chose not to pick something up.

I think I prefer the art and music styles of the 8-bit games to those of Megaman 8 and 11.

With that said, I would change a few things series wide:
* When you die, all the player's weapon energy would be refilled. (Otherwise, if you use up most of your special weapon energy on a failled attempt on a boss fight, you don't get to use it on a second attempt. In the final stage of Mega Man 2, this can lead to a softlock that can only be escaped by game-overing in a level where there's no fast way to die.)
* Any health and weapon energy pick-ups that are placed in the level should respawn on death. (They did in MM1; why not in later games in the series?) This way, the level doesn't get harder on a second attempt.
* In Mega Man 4-6, once you reach the second castle, you should get a password (or other save) that allows you to continue from that castle without having to replay the first one. (Having to do both castles in one playing session is something I consider unreasonable to expect of players, and is why I never beat 4 or 5 as a child.)

Some people might, but others (like me) do not. IMO, if permadeath is in the game, it should be optional and should not be the default. Furthermore, no content should be locked by it, and it should be toggleable independent of the other difficulty options. (Wizardry 8 is a good example here; permadeath (or "Iron Man" mode, as the game calls it) is separate from the other difficulty options.)

The problem with forced permadeath is that it ruins what otherwise would have been worthwhile games to play.

Oddly, one thing I *do* miss is that games, once released, would not be changed afterwords, and there wouldn't be balance adjustments or exploit removals.

Or you're at a point of no return with not enough number, yes.