So, question should be pretty straightforward, and I'll kick it off with a couple of examples myself:

I miss going to the store and looking at\touching all the awesome games. I miss stumbling upon games I'd never heard of and buying them without any knowledge about them other than what was on the back of their cases (or even before that, cardboard boxes), and then realizing, after a few minutes of gaming, that I was going to love the game.

I also miss the extreme joy of going into a store to find a rare copy of a game that you had wanted for months, but never seen in any stores. The joy of finding and buying that game and coming home to play it - it just doesn't happen these days.

Last, I miss magazines. I know there are still some gaming magazines out there, but a digitalized world has caused the contents of those magazines to be more or less obsolete before they even hit the shelves. I also miss the demo CD's that came with the magazines - I discovered plenty of games that way.


Don't get me wrong, I think digital is awesome - I travel a lot and love having all of my games on a hard disk or on Steam. I love that old, obscure, difficult-to-find games are now easily available. I love that the competition is pushing prices down to near-nothing. But that feeling of pure joy you experienced when popping your newest purchase into your computer, that realization that that game, that you hadn't even heard about an hour earlier, was going to become one of your all-time favorites - there's just nothing today that comes close to that.

So, what do you miss from the pre-digital age?

I was buying less stuff I didn't need. I think that's the only thing I'd miss if I thought about it. Everything else seems better.

NO FUCKING CELL PHONES!

You nailed the things I miss - the magazines with demo CDs. That was the main opportunity to find out about new or upcoming games.

Also, printed manuals. Some game manuals were like novels. They had that fresh smell, and sometimes it was more exciting to read the manual than to actually install the game! :p

I guess that's the danger of having everything easily available to you right in your living room! :p

And I agree - most everything is objectively better, but nostalgia can make even the steamiest shit seem like a pile of gold. :) Ah, I forgot that one! Sometimes I'd pick up games while on vacations with my parents, and I'd read the manual over and over and over again because I was super eager to play but a week away from getting home to my computer. :p

I'm not sure I miss anything at all...

by the way, I still read a lot of physical magazines, I still prefer them even thought they are not as up to date, but I do not see it as something that has changed. It is more of a case that I get news from online, but information is just as much from magazines.

I won't lie, I still like going through my boxes of games I bought in retail from time to time. But it's only sentimental thing. The same with books. I was all "paper is the only real deal!" for ages, but now, when we got Kindle... I never thought of buying a real book anymore.

This! The slower flow of life.

Ivo Caprino's story about Reve-enka.
What a fox! http://gfx.dagbladet.no/labrador/294/294866/29486695/jpg/active/978x.jpg

I agree.

Sure, and I'm not trying to say that physical magazines are in any way inferior to digital magazines. But I personally find that I don't really read physical gaming magazines anymore, simply because I usually tend to go looking for reviews of games, and I find the comments on online articles to be just as helpful (not all, obviously) as the article itself.

I do, however, still read physical magazines like National Geographic and the New York Times magazine, in addition to magazines that are related to my professional work. Oh, I still read actual books, and I will continue to do so for as long as I can. But I do recognize that I am choosing the more impractical option, since books tend to be more expensive and do of course take up more room.

Not sure I miss anything. I would have said demos, but then again, some games still have them and not all games had them back then, and nowadays with the internet it's easier to find them, if there are any. I can also relate to the fun of browsing stores, but when I think about it, browsing e.g. GOG isn't that different. They have the same low prices as the games I bought in stores and they also have the occasional game that I've never heard about before. Plus, a huge benefit is that they don't take up space in my RL shelves anymore, I can easily take my whole collection with me when traveling, I don't need to pop in any dvds and I can buy (almost) all games in their original language and don't need to play inferior German versions.

If anything, I'd probably agree with keeveek. Back then, I didn't buy more games than I can actually play, in fact I only rarely found one, and that might have made playing the games more special, as I would dedicate more time and attention to a given title. But maybe that's just the rose-tinted glasses; if a game's really good, I still enjoy it, and now that I have much more choice, I'm probably also more likely to find the games that click with me.

A nice, thick game manual to pore over from start to finish

Developers and you having to use imagination to defeat the limitations of technology,