So when I was a kid in the 80s, I would always get SUPER excited for getting a new game.
We’d get in the car, drive to Toys R Us, and in the video game section was basically an homage to Nintendo. So much so that the descriptors at the end of the isles didn’t say “video games”, it said “Nintendo”. Sure, they sold Sega and Atari too…but it was the Nintendo isle.
So you’d pick your game, and on the drive home you would flip through your new game manual. Remember game manuals??? You’d learn all about this new world. Who was this “Zelda” if the main character was a boy??? What kind of world was this??? It looks HUGE!!! DO YOU SEE ALL THESE DIFFERENT ENEMIES???
Finally (after like 10 minutes), you’d get home. You’d race to the door, only for you to realize that you need dad to unlock the door. Now, dad was probably walking at a normal pace, but to a hyper 6 year old excited to play with his new toy, he may as well have been a dried out turtle. Or a sloth.
FINALLY he opens the front door, and you go rushing to the TV. You put the cartridge in, and you’re ready to play. You turn the power on, and you’re already at the name screen. After you put in the name “Dork”, because you’re an edgy 80s kid, you’re already in front of a cave. Oh god…what’s in there??? How do I fight monsters??? THE BUTTONS DO NOTHING!!! Oh god, oh god, here we go, we’re going in the cave…
And you all know how it plays out from there.
These days, it’s a bit different. These days a game gets announced and you wait for release day. Then you turn on your console, and you buy the game. Now you gotta wait for an hour for it to download. Thats assuming your console doesn’t need an update. So now you’re waiting…and waiting…and waiting…
Eventually it’s all done, and you boot the game up, but theres a day 1 update. So more waiting. FINALLY after an hour and a half it’s done.
So you boot it up, and you don’t get that same sense of wonderment. It’s because todays games have been done to death. Every game is a post appocolytic shooter where the emphisis is on online play. So now you already know what you’re getting, and you gotta wait again for online lobbies to start.
And when Nintendo released the Super Nintendo it was a radical jump in performance in every sense on a platform that was revolutionary to start with. It was must have technology.
Now, 50% of PS4 users haven’t upgraded to a newer system. And why? Because the PS5 looks like a slight visual upgrade in apperance, and zero upgrade in performance. Games look and feel mostly the same as they would on PS4. And the games are all the same. Microtransactions, unimaginative plots, forgetable characters, sequals reboots prequals. We’re seeing the same franchises, with the same characters doing the same things for 30 years. Mario is still saving the princess for Bowser. At this point, Peach is just LETTING herself get kidnapped. Zelda is going to save Link now in the new game…which would be a new concept, playing as Zelda, except Shiek was Zelda the whole time. Oops, spoilers on a 26 year old game.
Breath of the Wild had that samr sense of childhood wonder. But only if you actively avoided online discussions, youtube videos, social media. It was a barrage of avoiding spoilers, but I did it, and March 3rd 2017 was GLORIOUS. It’s also the last time I felt that need to get a new console.
I regretted buying a PS4, but for some stupid reason I bought a PS5 this year. I regret it. I see no system seller.
And thats another thing. Why can’t the games give you the option to play from disc, rather than install everything? Most games are like 50-100gb. It eats up storage REAL quick. Now you gotta decide "ok, which games do I want to delete, and which am I going to use soon?
Theres NO reason for me to justify 45gb on my hard drive for the PS4 version of Madden 19, when all I do is play exhibition. But I also don’t want to delete it, and reinstall it every few months on the off chance I want yo play 20 minutes of 1 game.
Sure, maybe Madden diehards get use out of that 45gb. I do not. I don’t play season. I do give a shit about those madden cards. I only play exhibition, 1 game, maybe once every 4 months. Same with NHL. Same with MLB.
Why must I take up like 200gb for games I play casually and sparingly, and almost ALWAYS have to sit through an update before I throw the ball? I don’t even care about roster updates. Unless they’re on Cleveland’s team, I don’t know any of these players. I don’t give a shit that Joe Whatshisname used to play for Chicago, but now he plays in New York.
I just want to pop in the disc, and play. No bullshit.
I wish Madden 95 worked on the SNES classic. It’s the last SNES version that Cleveland had a team.
But instead now, every single game comes with forced bullshit
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People are writing a lot of things that I agree with, but I want to chime in with two points.
The first, which one or two other commenters have touched on, is that in 2024 we have approximately 50 years of content already in existence. There’s no need to limit ourselves to what’s been released in the last 12 months. Classic books, music, plays, and movies stay popular for decades or centuries. Why feel shamed out of playing old games by 12-year-olds and the megacorps?
The second thing is, yes, try indie games, and IMO the best place to find them is for PCs on itch.io. Forget 95% of what’s marketed as “indie” on consoles.
I’m lucky enough to live next to a retro game store. I can still walk over see a random ps1 game, glance through the manual and play it at as soon as I get home. Still lots of great stuff out there and that’s just one system. The game I just made a post about only cost me about $10.
I hate the install/download times for new stuff too. I’m hoping for some sci-fi/tech miracle that solves the whole thing.
I mean… My FiOS 300/300 is $39.99/month (what’s a landline/cable?)
I do have fancy NVME 4.0 Drives…they don’t really cost more than comparable SATA III SSDs now…
It is totes insane we have 1TB+ MicroSD cards now 🤯
Like consoles are a trap, subsidized hardware/sold at cost to trap you into their software/DRM. And also really just crappy specced PCs.
I live near game stores too… But I also Live near MicroCenter 🥹
I mean, you’re 40 now (or close to it). A lot of your nostalgia is also wrapped up in being 5. I too was an 80s kid but if the market hadn’t changed your reaction would. You probably aren’t sitting under a blanket learning the names in Dave the Diver. You have an income now so you probably wouldn’t just wait till your parents bought you Hades 2. You’re probably not running around with your friends right now pretending to be Helldivers. Games have changed but so have you. The Indie market is carrying the torch of these bygone days. A lot of the stuff you want wouldn’t have the same impact on you today. I am however watching my own children glom into game characters. My daughter loves Mario and Mega Man without going to Blockbuster to rent the cartridges.
(Btw madden 95 does work on the SNES classic, they’re pretty easy to jail break and fill with your own ROMs)
“Every game is a post appocolytic shooter where the emphasis is on online play”
Buys the same game 15 times
Complains that it’s the same game again
Have you tried not doing that
Oh, I haven’t bought ANY of them. I dislike the whole genre as a whole. Never played a Halo a day in my life. Last the only 2 shooters I ever played were Goldeneye and Perfect Dark. Both on N64. Neither of which is anything I described.
I generally stay away from things like online play. I don’t have PS+ or Nintendo Online, and I’ve never owned an XBox of any kind.
That doesn’t mean however that I don’t see that this is the direction the industry headed 20 years ago, and hasn’t looked back. They keep making call of duty, and all these other shooters because that’s what people buy. OTHER people make it popular, not me.
There’s a lot of games that do very well that don’t fall into your stereotypes.
Sure, CoD sells the best. That doesn’t mean Disco Elysium sucks though, or Citizen Sleeper, or Stardew Valley, or Sekiro, or Psychonauts 2, or Hollow Knight, or any number of great games. Games that were impossible when manufacture was monopolized by Nintendo’s cartel, or when cartridges were required and made games cost $60 in 1995.
Gaming is not immune from dialectics. It too exists in a tension between contradictions. It is both terrible, and wonderful, as it was during the golden age you are highlighting from the past, when games cost far more money and were available to far fewer people. When there was no way for one person (Stardew) or two (Hollow Knight) to be able to make and distribute an entire game without submitting themselves to subservience under a publisher.
Have you tried indie games? There’s more games and variety than ever, and you’re lumping everything into these neat little easy-to-criticize packages.
Gaming doesn’t suck. Your expectations do.
You need to realize the reality: we live in a cyberpunk world now.
First, you are way older now. You cannot compare any experience in your life to that when you were a kid
My friend, I think you need to join us indie gamers, especially on PC. DRM free, minimal updates, small installs, high novelty and weirdness factors. I barely play anything “AAA” anymore and definitely nothing that does Games as a Service.
You’re getting so many responses that are just “have you tried indie games?” or trying to dispel the rose-colored glasses. I suspect it’s because of the headline saying modern gaming sucks, which I think can be pretty objectively disproven.
That said, I can tell you about my experiment. I’ve instituted a program with my 12 year old stepson where he can earn marbles through chores and other tasks, and he can trade those marbles in for retro games I find in local stores and flea markets. One of the things he can also buy for a very low price is a downloaded retro magazine from retromags.com - he can ask for an issue with a particular topic in it and I’ll find one and send it to him. He isn’t really very internet savvy yet, so he’s not likely to hit up IGN for info or anything.
The result of this so far (only a few weeks in) has been serious excitement and engagement. He has access to Xbox Series and PS5 consoles, but getting to own physical games and accessories (we play them on a Retron 3 HD console) has motivated him more than I’ve seen almost anything else do. He keeps asking me if Street Fighter 2 will come to the “store” anytime soon because of my stories of how badly I wanted that game as a kid his age. Little does he know that for Christmas he’ll be getting an excellent condition, complete in box copy of Street Fighter 2: Special Championship Edition for the Genesis. He’s gonna flip.
The upshot of all this is that I really do think there was a certain magic to the experience back then. I’m doing my damnedest to recreate that magic for him, and so far it’s at least kinda working!
