Games being sold as complete.
No exploitative "micro"transactions.
No gambling with legal tender.
No shoehorned multiplayer.
No buggy messes that'll maybe be fixed later.
No forced updates that completely destroy the experience of the game.

[EDIT:] Oh, and a lack of DRM obnoxious enough to fit the exact definition of malware.

Reminds me of when & where i´ve played them - fond memories...& sometimes the wish (in a certain mood ...) to be able to return to this time and stay there - forever.

So beside fun & pure joy with the game it´s like time travelling - same you can achieve with certain music, books, films or stuff / toys from your childhood.

-Basically they didn't use to have that obsession about "balance". It was something reasonabily created when multiplayer grew popular and it ws needed, but later it spread like a virus in single player games everywhere.

-And the lack of achievements, probably. Both things use to create outrage and hate if not present...:D

-And not in all cases, obviously, but the design of games with the resources optimization in mind because of the nature of the hardware and software involved in the era. A Galaxy in a floppy, color tricks to look good but use less memory..etc

-Amazing physical Manuals and goodies. Not only a boring technical forced manual. Some of them even had a bibliography.

EDIT: Oh, and one more thing and very important. The invention of new things and sometimes failing. In Mechanics or in what later was called genres. Now they are natural to us but in the past they were in uncharted waters.

Everything people said before plus a focus in Mechanics.
Take the first Devil May Cry for exemple, Ratchet & Clank, Samurai Warriors 2, Pitfall, Quake, Half Life, Syphon Filter, Metal Gear, The King of Fighters, Portal, Mirror's Edge...

Focus of old games were firstly and foremost to the mechanics they were build around and, in gaming, in my opinion, if a central mechanic is bad or not polished, there is no fun to be had. If it is repetitive without sense of progression, it gets boring fast.
Of course this is subjective, a mechanics that I like might not be the one you like, but technically, we all have bases of well made and well polished mechanics.

Graphics are not everything - Mechanics of Gameplay Loop are, imho.

Nowdays most games are just a very good amount of well made Graphical Assets with Copy & Paste old mechanics that were good. We have exceptions, yes, with new creative mechanics like some puzzle, plataform, first and third person games. But mostly, we have Ctrl c Ctrl v.
A proof of that is the "Everyone wants to be a Call of Duty, Skyrim, Gears of War, etc" mentality.

--edit Post size.

+ No junk mobile economics (Micro-transactions / lootboxes / "surprise mechanics" / pay2win / 'coins')

+ Less bloat (especially for storage space)

+ Offline DRM (eg, CD / manual checks) weren't tied to stores = could resell disc based games

+ Less telemetry / obsession with data-harvesting (both store & developer)

+ Platform neutral modding (mods weren't tied to one store's "workshop")

+ Quick / multiple save slots in AAA FPS's

+ Offline local multi-player

+ Physical goodies (eg, printed A2 size maps for Morrowind / Oblivion, glossy unit counter guide for Age of Empires, etc)

+ Less consolization (as in fully optimised for keyboard & mouse with controller as an option and not "designed for controller 'because consoles' with K&M support tacked on as an untested after-thought)

+ Less "cinematic" design (I'm not talking about the major cutscenes that we've always had, but rather "pick up an object = play a micro-cutscene", "step over a pebble = play a micro-cutscene", "climb a ladder = play a micro-cutscene", etc, stuff that constantly snatches control back & forth outside of main plot related cutscenes)

+ Generally less politics both in games and in game reviews / the "journalist" scene

+ Less mindless grind and "unlock for the sake of unlocking" style gameplay. You can include "no achievements" too many of which offer excessive goals as cheap game-time padding.

+ More original ideas by major AAA studios, fewer endless remakes / reboots cash-cows and "tickbox development" / "safe IP"

* Games were more focused on the gameplay; no cutscenes to interrupt it (though that started to change in the SNES era).
* Games were faster paced. Even turn based RPGs were faster paced back then as they are more recently. To see this clearly, compare Zelda 2 (or 1) to Ocarina of Time, or Super Metroid to Metroid Prime.
* Back in the NES games, the music would not give me headaches, simply because there was no way to imitate the sound of an electric guitar. (I actually prefer the NES Ys III soundtrack to other versions because of this.)
* Graphics tended to be more clear (if we exclude pre-NES consoles like the Atari). Less visual noise to worry about, it's clear where everything is, and you usually didn't have the awkwardness of the isometric view.
* Music, if it would glitch, would glitch in interesting ways. These days with pre-recorded music you don't get such interesting things to happen.
* Console games would load instantly. (Nowadays, you might see this with smaller PC games, but consoles lost this advantage when they moved to optical media.)
* With certain genres (notably RPGs) being in an early state of their evolution, you would see things you don't see in modern games, like the stat boost mechanics of Ultima 3 and SaGa 1, the lack of a max HP stat in Ultima 1 and 2, and Oubliette's XP-less levels (when you kill an enemy or are killed, there's a chance you qualify for a level up). Even the original Dragon Quest does not play like a typical JRPG, despite the fact that the game basically birthed that sub-genre. In single player games, there still needs to be some semblance of balance. If the game, or a part of it, is unintentionally way too hard, players will get frustrated.

Another thing I remembered: I enjoy *not* having minigames, at least not mandatory ones. (Minigames that are completely separate from the main game, like Bloodstained's Boss Revenge and Classic modes, are not an issue.) Also, I enjoy *not* having things like insta-fail stealth sequences.

By the way, I could note that Squaresoft had a period where they didn't seem to care about balance at all. You start to see it with Final Fantasy 6 (Ultima is overpowered in that game, especially if combined with a few things to make it more gamebreaking), but it comes up a lot in the early PSX era; FF7 has Knights of the Round, which is gamebreaking on its own, Final Fantasy Tactics has Orlandu, who casually offers to join after a mandatory mission and is really powerful (not to mention Math Skill, but at east that's fun and its own challenge to use correctly), SaGa Frontier has attacks like PluralSlash, not to mention the occasional enemy that can wipe out your party, and I'm pretty sure nobody familiar with Final Fantasy 8 would consider that game balanced.

They don't try to be movies or an interactive novel. If I want story, books and movies are a superior medium with much better writing and acting.

They don't cater for the lowest common denominator.

They let you explore and find out things for yourself, without hand holding and quest compasses.

It's a very cheap hobby, so I have lots left to spend of booze and floozies





















....if I wanted.

The opposite for me! Minimal cinematic experience and maximal gameplay = Tetris (just an example... and I'm not even saying that Tetris is a bad game).
We're probably just different people. When I started playing games at the end of the 80s, p&c adventures ignited my passion... I loved the immersive/cinematic experiences. Hopping around and munching mushrooms was fun too... for 10 minutes.
2D adventures being replaced by shooters at some point was the worst change in PC gaming history for me. Things are fine now - while p&c adventures turned into a niche and/or indie genre, the spirit of the genre (or how I conceive it) can be found in many games now (the last decade or so) - even if they're not classic point & clicks.

I actually find your post a bit pejorative. It sounds a lot a lot like pre-computer era geezer saying that real-life outdoors gameplay is vastly superior to wasting your time in front of a screen. Why be like them? Different things for different people are a good thing!

Also, no pre-order or retailer exclusive nonsense.

Games had longer SP campaigns
(these days the SP seems more a tacked on afterthought to sell more copies)

Shareware campaigns and full featured demos
(now both are near non-existent)

More games could seemingly run on a wider gamut of hardware
(now you seem to need to have the latest HW to run a number of AAA titles on even low settings)

Manual saves
(now games seem to be more focused on checkpoints during levels and saves after finishing levels)

Games were able to push the envelope more re: unPC and/or mature content
(game devs now 'have' to censor/modify content lest they get net/IRL complaints, and most seem to willingly do so minus a few exceptions)

-

Of course there are likely more i'm forgetting, and also some positives to games made in modern times as well....but i'll leave it there.

=-=-= These too......now all people often get for many games is a few paged technical pamphlet(usually also saying to find the manual, if any, on the disc or online).

=-=-= This as well. Full SP games used to take a few GB at most, and now they sometimes take 20-100 GB(or more).

I mean I get some want the super best graphics, but there should be lower spec graphics/etc packs for people who have limited space and/or don't mind the quality reduction.

Was there ever a time that you could run the latest AAA (even on low settings) on a very low specification / old laptop?
I'm going to leave this topic now... too much irrational nostalgia.

There's a bit of a contradiction here.

It was more towers at the time, but yeah.

I forget all the titles atm, but I do remember there were some games(one being NOLF, iirc) which one could run(on release day or a bit after) on the lowest quality settings on moderately spec'd machines.


=-=-=

I corrected the wording a bit to better reflect what I meant....maybe that fixed it.

If you think there is still a contradiction, please feel free to point it out(by stating what it is, if you could)

Is the computer that you currently play games on relatively comparable to those "moderately spec'd machines" in that past context?
Do you remember the time when 3D accelerator cards where pretty expensive and far from mainstream - all while new games being released were making use of them and looking a lot better (if they even had a "software mode").