Posted December 18, 2013
What do I miss from the retail times? Not much really, maybe mainly so that they weren't trying to push always-online DRM (sugar-coated with "social features") or micropayments to us back then, but then we did have Starforce, which was enough to make me stop buying new PC (retail) games at one point.
I still recall what a ruckus came from, was it Starcraft, which tried to "phone home" via internet to Blizzard, without asking for a permission from the user. I guess people were more alert about privacy back then, but partly it was because it was unexpected and Blizzard tried to do it secretly IIRC. A few days ago I read about a similar ruckus on some Android app which downloads user data (even though the app itself is not a social app) and sells it further. So people don't necessarily mind apps and games collecting data, as long as the app is open about it and doesn't try to do it secretly, and maybe even lets the end-user choose whether it can do it. (I think in this particular case the app might have asked for a permission to send data, but even if the user declined, it would send it anyway. So the app was actually lying to the customers.)
But finding the game you want today is certainly much easier than back when visiting lots of game stores or even trying to find the retail games online (even though that is IMHO already part of the digital age, ie. using internet to buy your games). But... I do kinda miss the excitement of going to visit some retail game stores, seeing some (usually console) games running there, spotting some rare PC game that only you knew was highly seeked by many, etc. Sometimes the store owners were surprised and interested to know why I picked and bought some old PC game from the shelf that no one else never even checked, and they were already ready to throw it to trashbin.
I don't really care for physical manuals, maps, dices, little tiny figurines etc. I never buy those Collector's Editions which come with some plastic dragon or the head of Predator, I have enough crap on my shelves already.
jamyskis: You know what the funny thing is? If you're playing DOS, C64 or NES games, these games will always look better on a CRT monitor even today. It's a shame they're not readily available. I still have a working CRT monitor, but I moved it to the storage room. Just as a backup monitor for my older desktop retro-PC, which is currently connected to a (bit older) flatscreen monitor.
But then I use even that retro-PC quite rarely, as I play basically all DOS games on DOSBox + Munt instead. Only some hard-to-run Win9x era games are run on my retro-PCs now. DOSBox (and console emulators) offers those different filters to smooth out the blocky graphics of old games.
I still recall what a ruckus came from, was it Starcraft, which tried to "phone home" via internet to Blizzard, without asking for a permission from the user. I guess people were more alert about privacy back then, but partly it was because it was unexpected and Blizzard tried to do it secretly IIRC. A few days ago I read about a similar ruckus on some Android app which downloads user data (even though the app itself is not a social app) and sells it further. So people don't necessarily mind apps and games collecting data, as long as the app is open about it and doesn't try to do it secretly, and maybe even lets the end-user choose whether it can do it. (I think in this particular case the app might have asked for a permission to send data, but even if the user declined, it would send it anyway. So the app was actually lying to the customers.)
But finding the game you want today is certainly much easier than back when visiting lots of game stores or even trying to find the retail games online (even though that is IMHO already part of the digital age, ie. using internet to buy your games). But... I do kinda miss the excitement of going to visit some retail game stores, seeing some (usually console) games running there, spotting some rare PC game that only you knew was highly seeked by many, etc. Sometimes the store owners were surprised and interested to know why I picked and bought some old PC game from the shelf that no one else never even checked, and they were already ready to throw it to trashbin.
I don't really care for physical manuals, maps, dices, little tiny figurines etc. I never buy those Collector's Editions which come with some plastic dragon or the head of Predator, I have enough crap on my shelves already.
But then I use even that retro-PC quite rarely, as I play basically all DOS games on DOSBox + Munt instead. Only some hard-to-run Win9x era games are run on my retro-PCs now. DOSBox (and console emulators) offers those different filters to smooth out the blocky graphics of old games.
Post edited December 18, 2013 by timppu
