All right, Anon Babble, can you explain how gaming back then was better?
All right, Anon Babble, can you explain how gaming back then was better?
it was better because Nippon ichi chan was still part of the neptunia canon
didn't have to worry about meme shit like getting the super ultra deluxe edition with the season pass or paying for online or having the right specs or other bullshit
I just gamed
less pootube video about them
The games were better.
It was, but not as far back as Anon Babble thinks. Early 3D, AKA the N64/PS1 and GC/PS2 generations, are what killed games. Two straight generations of total garbage that dragged the overall quality of gaming way down, and we still haven't fully recovered from it today. And the worst part is that this board is filled with people who not only ate up that garbage, but celebrates it as the greatest achievements of gaming history.
there were more neptunia games
Back in the day a video game's ambition wasn't defined by its graphics or the size of the world or whatever the fuck but rather by the ideas a game could have. You could have fun things like costumes and cheat codes whereas it ended up getting turned into DLC in the modern era.
The technological rat race even felt more impressive because the leaps in technology were MASSIVE compared to today where minor touch ups stack on top of more minor touch ups for what's essentially a giant pile of nothing in the grand scheme of things. We have more indie games sure but larger budget titles can no longer hold the same blockbuster status they used to because they're fueled by companies wanting the Next Big Thing that makes infinite money. It's not even a nostalgia thing, times were objectively better before companies started getting devoured to produce slop, at least when it comes to the AAA space
don't need to
enjoy your games kiddo
Every fucking platform wasn't censoring Japanese games to own the filthy pedo chuds.
As a result, Japs could feel free to put what they wanted in their games without having to worry about whether or not it will run afoul of a Twitter tranny and consequently get the door slammed on them. At most, a loocalizer will take it upon himself to censor it, which is annoying but can be bypassed by JOPs. Now even the Japs aren't safe. Partially as a result, Japan in general makes the safest, most boring garbage nowadays that only looks good in comparison to western pozzed goyslop. Even the ones that used to be known for risque, fringe material like Compile Heart. No one has the balls to challenge Sony, Nintendo and Steam on this.
Companies made good original games instead of shitty demakes, remasters, and worthless sequels no one asked for. Basically every major company that made a halfway decent game kept pumping out more and more till they eventually shit the bed. There wasn't a base of customers with nostalgia for good games that they could remake and overcharge for, they had to make good original shit to compete with other good original shit. Now every company rests on their laurels and just puts out more of the same slop, no innovation, no creativity, just a million passionless code monkeys recreating better games as poorly as possible.
It’s downright shameful how microtransactions have been normalized.
i really miss handheld consoles. i like how the GB/DS/PsP/Vita had tons of low budget games, and there was a licensed game for damn near every anime.
Now budgets have inflated too high and theres no handheld market for smaller lower budget experimental games; and every game has to be a safe bet so they dont lose out on all the money they spent developing it for the past 5 years
Back then, videogames didnt have a standard in the creative process. That is to say, the production of videogames wasnt done in an industrial like manner, and riskier (since risk is a necessity in creativity, the risk of the concept or gimmick not landing right) forms were accepted and left to the developers, so there was less corporate mingling with it.
In comparison, nowadays the videogames industry are all the same due to, in great part, the process being completly industrialized. Cutscenes, wide appeal characters that are socially uncontroversial, easy and inclusive gameplay, and standarized and easy to make arstyles are all that is poured into this shitty soup that consists the vast majority of AAA games since hundreds of millions if not BILLIONS of dollars are in the line, which means that indepentent and creative development is simply not given to the developers, the risk that is completly necessary for quality games to be developed. Apart from that the significance of the industry is way too high now, high enough that even the government mingles with it constantly (its bigger than cinema and music after all) to be sanitized as FUCK.
So in general, stop buying modern shit. Only buy indie or download old games, gamer out.
The Japanese AA market has been dead for decades. The mid budget niche stuff has all been regulated to mobile gacha slop or low effort visual novels based off popular IPs.
Budgets have indeed got way too high. Vanillaware had to go bankrupt to make Unicorn Overlord, a game that's still probably 1/100th the budget of AAA slop but with 100th the quality. Square can't even produce their niche titles like Mana or SaGa without outsourcing to lazy chink developers that close their studios after the projects bomb.
The fact that there have been more and more remakes shows how much modern gaming sucks.
or having the right specs
wut?
I had to worry about specs way more back when I was a kid and could only game on whatever PC my mom brought home from work.
It catered to people who like games instead of trying to pull in more people who don't.
The Japanese AA market has been dead for decades
the vita still had a good chunk of lower budget games. i remember importing a lot of them since the system was region free
I had all my best bros in the same room together with me.
There were actual online communities for games because individuals could have dedicated, personalized servers as well as independent message boards for specific topics.
Now everything is publisher-run standardized servers, and hyper-centralized social media which has spiritually stripped the human element out of people flocking around particular video games.
It used to be the norm that you would pay a one-time fee for a full game that was feature-complete and not bug-riddled and requiring a giant day-one patch. Then you would be able to enjoy that game in full for as long as you owned the game and the console because its enjoyment wasn't tied to online servers designed to bait engagement to milk you out of money until they shut them down.
Now that's such a rare exception that it gets praise and clippity-claps from "journalists" while devs and publishers whine that such a standard is just unreasonable.
the N64/PS1 and GC/PS2 generations, are what killed games
It was the beggining of the end but the industry really bite the dust during the 360/ps3 era
youtube.com
Yeah idk, games were made by nerds for nerds and some were actual passion projects. Then it slowly turned into corpo goyslop
and not bug-riddled and requiring a giant day-one patch.
This is just your memories fucking with you. A lot of games back then were buggy messes that crashed to desktop all the time with access violations. People just dealt with it.
Maybe it's just me but the connection between the developer and the player has become too close. There's an expectation that players expect their complaints to be heard and fixed quickly. Listening to complaints in itself isn't a bad thing, but it's gone too far to the point where the players expect every complaint to be heard no matter how ridiculous. It ends with the slow homogenization of games because everything has to fit into a specific curve of balance. Unintended glitches or bugs that end up improving the game are stomped out, there's this expectation that things have to be a specific way.
I was talking about console games back in the day, which weren't anything close to that even if you'll try to gaslight me into thinking that minor issues with damage or stat calculations is the same thing as PC games at the time or modern games in current year.
More experimentation
Less bugs
No day 1 patches
Arcade games and genres
Not everything was "mature"
More prevalent splitscreen
Less cinematic walking sections
Less censorship which allowed for more controversial topics to be presented in games
I'd say it extends all the way to 7th gen consoles and 8th gen handhelds.
After that, it's all shit, save for a good indie game once every year or two.
Games weren't full of microtransactions and paid online bullshit. When a game got a sequel, it actually improved upon its predecessor and introduced interesting new concepts and gameplay rather than being being a demake in terms of visuals and content.
gaming was new, we were children, every experience was fresh
Neptunia games were full of fanservice instead of the sterilized slop we get today.
Games were made by people that played games for the fun of it. They were made with passion for a the small niche of gaming hobiests.
Now they are made by DEI hire codemonkeys that are overseen by soulless corpos that just want to make money by chasing other games trends.
Smaller more diverse industry that valued more experimentation and creativity thus making games for a niche hardcore audience
All the stuff they've cycled through remaking 5 times was brand new, interesting, and still had its soul.
Whether or not you consider them art the process of making games is artistic.
The best balance of conditions for forming a team with both artistic talent and a good size for game development occurred 30+ years ago.
something something appealing to investors and leddit
didn't have to worry about meme shit like getting the super ultra deluxe edition
Street Fighter and its sequels
PC games with expansion packs
Of all things you could've complained about, you talked about things that already existed back then.
gaming wasn't
games were
Big games used to actually release every few years instead of being in development for 20 years to build hype and then disappointing everyone
Actual fucking games for starters.
Street Fighter and its sequels
those are revisions, not deluxe editions
This was nothing more that bullshit designed to get MS to pay them more for the bethesda acquisition. They weren't even in pre-production yet. Just a gay and fake title drop made by a CGI company that no one had worked on.
Companies made good original games instead of shitty demakes, remasters, and worthless sequels no one asked for
Megaman 1-6
Super Mario All-stars
Everyone was well-rounded and played a bunch of different stuff. In the course of a night hanging out with friends we'd play doom, tekken, twisted metal, madden and bushido blade. That was just one dorm room. You could go elsewhere and get virtua fighter and gran turismo mixed in or the friends with the gamecube would have goldeneye and mario kart.
Not him but that's even worse, because then you're buying the same game again. At least with a deluxe edition you but it instead of the regular one from the outset. Reselling revisions is like paying for a delayed balance patch. That's ironically one thing that's better than it used to be, which you can't say about many things in vidya.
gaming is better now than its ever been, you just need to play the right games.
which games?
back then: multiple games per year
now: multiple years per game
you just need to play (old shit from when videogames used to be good but im a zoomer shitstain who never played when they were current so everything is fresh for me)
we know
Expansion packs were often quite big, sometimes as big as the game itself, like Warcraft III
Nobody gave a fuck about what women and trannies think.
Not a single soul complained when snoy published picrel.
It's absolutely unfathomable today.
Yeah, games weren't fighting so hard for your time and attention, so there wasn't as much tedious fluff to hook your lizard brain like rpg mechanics and crafting systems as is commonplace now.
older games
some indies
no big budget AAA games unless it's made in China or Japan
adult
clothes on
Safe horny.
Not being spammed with guides and optimal ways to play, to get walkthroughs you had to go to CHEAT websites, that indicated the mindset back then was totally different. I don't think games back then were better, but the way the average person played them was much better.
The funny thing is that gamers now are so accustomed to being strung along for decades now that they actually support endless delays and never ending Star Citizen tier early access.
You'd have to have been there to understand.
Better optimisation.
see i hate it when users on Anon Babble just assume things about people, like that im a zoomer. and why does the game need to be fresh? you assume that too. im perfectly satistified with an old game ive been playing since forever if i still find it more fun than the new games these days.
b-b-but these examples that prove you wrong!
B-B-But fuck off.
But they had to listen to Christcucks, which is why they censored religious imagery.
Why should we put up with filthy japs misusing the imagery of our country's religion?
games weren't fighting so hard for your time and attention
They were, they just didn't have the means to do it as efficiently as they do now.
For me, it was the late 2000s and early 2010s
retro prices at an all-time low
indie games viably distributed online but not yet flooded by RPGMaker hipsters making Earthbound-inspired "experiences" about mental health
the really shitty titles are obvious and very easy to avoid
DLC/passes monetization not yet set in
no culture war cancer destroying all discussion and discourses on gaming
larger forums and communication between forums led to better distribution and translation of local scenes
You got to hide your sex late into the game. Journalists and twitter addicts don't play more than the first 2 hours of a game.
Everyone looked at Gal Guardians Demon Purge as a cute castlevania clone but late into the game you collect underwear of high school girls including the two main characters. If it was known you collect little girl panties from the start, Steam and Nintendo would have banned the game.
the really shitty titles are obvious and very easy to avoid
This has never not been the case
Should also add
no longer reliant on "moooom can you buy me a new gaaaaame" , not yet asked by every game to buy new "content" every four months
Psychologists existed in the 80s and 90s but game companies weren't using them like now to hook people. They wanted people to buy their games, devs now are using shrinks in design to hook niggas.
I remember Gamestop having rows of Gamecube games like Metroid Prime and Wind Waker going for 5 bucks then magically in 2016 all that shit shot up to $50 a used copy and only went up from there.
Games made prior to 2012 tended to be or have
more focused in scope and delivered on one fleshed out idea or set of game mechanics
less visual fidelity and graphic al abstraction made for a more artistic approach to the look of a game out of necessity
a balance between team size and budget that meant games could have production value and were less of a risk if it was a different or interesting idea
People working in the industry did so to make games rather than people working in the industry as a place for nepobabies and failed hollywood script writers
far less people working in the industry that were ashamed that they make video games and trying to get people to take it seriously as a medium by making it more like cinema and less like video games
The most successful shitty games (gachas) don't need psychos, they just plaster sexy women and le deep stories everywhere and the money rolls in.
Runescape 2 golden age
no i cannot, you had to be there.
Yes it was, it didn't take a genius to see when MoH and CoD were on the decline, and what box art clearly meant you were dealing with shovelware.
Helps a lot that your typical game at the time was not trying to be an ambitious open-world experience with several dozens of hours of playtime. If you grabbed something at randome and knew at least how to spot deceptive back covers, you could get at least something okay and once you have exhausted the game you had the option to get some of your money back by selling it. Mostly on console, PC had fewer safeguards for QC and so more room for broken games.
Doesn't mean shit games didn't exist, but it didn't take a genius to spot them.
I remember buying a Street Fighter II cartridge for 5 bucks, a boxed copy of Majora's Mask for 20, Banjo Kazooie for 15 and Tales of Symphonia for an unreasonable 50.
Pretty sure you could add a zero to all of these prices now.
retro prices at an all-time low
The saddest thing to me is the complete destruction of the used market and the general low cost of entry for gaming. Prior to speculation taking off, you could buy a shit load of older titles and consoles for really cheap because there was no real retro market like we know it today, if you are just now getting into gaming, the cheapest thing available to you is to buy a Series S and pay for gamepass.
Nice reading comprehension, you're agreeing with me you retard.
It was better because I wasn't a miserable adult yet who doomscrolled social media all day
The biggest retro market was for exotics and only attracted collectors and specialists who were already in too deep. Neo Geo, imports and whatnot.
But for a bit, grabbing a slightly yellowed SNES or a Megadrive with a bunch of games would set you back the cost of two new games.
I remember buying Twin Snakes on Gamecube a few years after it dropped for $25 at a Gamestop thinking I got kinda ripped off. Simpler times.
We are watching One person play.
You think I'm a retard with no reading comprehension, the truth is far worse.
I'm a phoneposter and I didn't see the "not"
There were some retro games hard to find but still priced accordingly.
I was looking for a copy of Chrono Trigger in 1999 and had my dad drive me 30 miles to a EB games that had it for $65.
Some games had high used prices even in the early 2000s from word of mouth alone. Suikoden II was notorious for a extremely low print run and was going for $80-$90 when almost every other playstation 1 game was under 20.
I do remember seeing catalogues and things you would have to ask specifically for if you wanted to import like Japanese Saturn games or what have you but I have memories of going to flea markets and seeing people selling a beat up NES and a bag full of games and accessories for about $20. You could even find an N64, two controllers and Goldeneye or something for about $50 and that was just the norm. Hindsight is 20/20 but I really wish I hoarded everything while I can back then. Not because I want to be able to retire off of old games but just so I always have something on original hardware.
Us phoneposters are going to have to stick together if we're going to make it through a pointless thread like this.
rap music in vidya now
UUUUUUHH YADDA DADA YADDA DA BLAH BLAH CUHHH UUUUUUUUH
rap music in vidya then
There was still censorship back then. International audiences apparently couldn't handle a beauty winking. That kind of censorship feels tame compared to what we have now, though.
For me, it's Ruthless
Yeah forget the winking, we aren't allowed to have beauties.
I remember when flash games used to be pretty popular, and I went to websites like Newgrounds.
notice how every mainstream game made these days is a reboot, remake, or the 10th sequel of an actual good game made 2-3 decades ago
DLC/passes monetization not yet set in
They essentially did DLC through revised/deluxe editions. In a way, it’s even worse since you have to go through most of the same game just for some new content.
That’s what happens when games become more and more like glorified movies with audience interaction.
Difference is though, if you buy the game later, you can start with the full edition instead of always having to buy the game in several parts.
I find it a bit easier to accept than games released now telling you before launch that you'll have extra stuff to buy later.
Yeah, it sure sucked to have to buy expansions for AoE2 but you can understand that at the time they needed to know how much units were moved to see if it was worth expanding on the base game.
I 'unno I just really hate season passes and DLCs announced on launch, simple as.
On the one hand you're lucky if you're a late adopter, on the other hand if you already played the game the company does this knowing a lot of people will double dip which is why they do this instead of DLC. Absolutely scummy practice.
I remember grinding my Woodcutting skill just because I liked the idea of getting the Skilling cape.
Being as broad as possible: there was more variety and major games were released more frequently.
lmao
The funny part about that pic is that it's already out of date because they delayed GTA 6 to next year
boot up cs1.6
look at the server browser
favorites tab
low ping high population
de_dust2 24/4
wc3 mod
surf maps
kz maps
all regular players
names you recognize
all different skill levels
every game ends with a collective GG
Gaming is at its peak right now simply for the fact that you can play every retro game easily and the modding community for many games has never been this good. But if we had to judge gaming for how the game industry handles things and the quality of the products then the current industry is much, much worse than the game industry in the 90s, especially late 90s when games got cheaper and it was much easier to try new games thanks to demo discs, the quality of titles was especially much higher in that era, both on average or just analyzing the peaks.
retro
zoomers might think of great games as "retro", but dont realize that the games produced in the mid 2000s are HIGH TECH. literally much more high tech than games these days, and its hard for people to tell that games of that era are better because the graphics were worse back then, literally the only thing thats "improved" is the graphics, everything else for AAA titles has declined.
Little to no woke shit
No micro transactions dlcs
Games and ads made for straight men
Consoles and games were cheaper
Used games and other stuff were cheaper
People actually communicated in online games like MMOs etc
Game launches were huge events people were excited for
Retro just means "three generations behind".
Contemporary devs being hacks doesn't make older games any less old, it just makes these guys even worse in comparison.
Retro for me will always be anything before the 7th gen, right before the game industry died, if i had to be even more specific only the Dreamcast felt quite retro in the 6th gen, the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube feel somewhat disconnected from the consoles that came out before the generation, them having basically no 2D games and pretty much moving away from arcade game mentality is why i think that.
Less money at stake means more creative shit got the green light, the cult classic is all but exclusive to indie releases nowadays. Standards weren't cemented in place so games were much more varied and distinct (though this also meant plenty of games were flawed or straight up shit by ignoring positive trends and good ideas), nowadays most mainstream games feel very samey and cut from the same cloth. Games had one shot at release and limited lifespans so more effort went into creating a complete product. Nowadays it's launch with a cash shop and fix the bugs/poor balance/etc later if they feel like it.
that would put games like half life 2 as "retro", but what we see , with the release of titles like half life 2 rtx, it'a considered a brand new and fresh title, when really the only thing thats changed is literally just the graphics.