Novelties from older games that you kinda miss?

When there was no DLC or gacha system's...
 
Gaming magazines. I know that there are still technically some around like Electronic Gaming Monthly and the Official Xbox Magazine (I think), but man I miss when I could just walk into the local grocery store and find a shelf filled to the brim with them. Nintendo Power's discontinuation still makes me a little sad eight whole years later, heck I even still have the issue detailing the Wii U when it was coming out.

It still kinda lives on in podcast form and there are fan magazines like Nintendo Force trying to fill that void, but I still sometimes look back on the distant memories.
 
With the advent of the internet, it's hard to try to not know what any of the contents of the game you're buying these days. In the grand scheme of things, knowing a game's content is more beneficial to the consumer. However, back in the days, you have things like not knowing that Ness is in Smash Bros., Mr. Game & Watch in Melee being a complete surprise, and Diddy Kong Racing having an extra pack of race tracks you haven't heard of years of playing the game aside from maybe some pages in a player's guide, Mario Kart 64 and Double Dash having a completely different title screen when you beat the game, all that sort of stuff feel like actual hidden content and makes you reevaluate how familiar you really are with a game.

You pretty much know what unlockables are in a fighter or racer these days, even if the industry tries to keep tight-lipped about a roster (though that's regarded as a terrible idea now). All character reveals are done well before a game is released and even if they aren't you'll get information about all a game within days of a leak or a release. You can elect to put that sort of stuff behind "spoilers", perhaps to try to capture the surprise as we've experienced back then, but I don't think that's a great idea to let industry control the narrative in the name of hype culture either.

There's also the hilarity of accidentally deleting your saves in a menu, which I was guilty of doing several times to Melee and Smash 64 and was terrified of even touching the options menu in Smash 64 due to fears of erasing data reasons I didn't understand except that it was in the options menu. I don't think it's as easy to delete data these days or I just grew up and now know what "Backup Clear" means in Smash 64 terms.
 
Oh, wait, I would love another Mario & Luigi game with Hand abilities and Bros. Attacks that are based on the Bros. actions. So, I love M&LSS.
 
I miss when game file sizes weren't completely bloated. Like I know that there are still tons of games and devs that manage to have small file sizes (Hi Nintendo!), but I look at games where you need 100+ GB of space and I think that's ridiculous. I mean, I get that with higher res monitors and all that jazz, you'll need more storage spec for higher res textures, but 100 GB is a) literally 1/10th of my monthly cap and b) while I have fairly decent speeds, it would still take me about an hour to DL a 100 GB, and that's with about 300 Mbps down speeds. What about all the people who can't afford or just can't get faster internet? What if they can only get 10 Mbps, 100 GB would literally take all day for them to DL. Hahaha sucks to be them?

Anyways yeah, game file sizes that weren't ludicrously large is something from older games I miss.
 
The thing is, we need a far better internet infrastructure in the US, it's notoriously slow.
 
The InterNed said:
I miss when game file sizes weren't completely bloated. Like I know that there are still tons of games and devs that manage to have small file sizes (Hi Nintendo!), but I look at games where you need 100+ GB of space and I think that's ridiculous. I mean, I get that with higher res monitors and all that jazz, you'll need more storage spec for higher res textures, but 100 GB is a) literally 1/10th of my monthly cap and b) while I have fairly decent speeds, it would still take me about an hour to DL a 100 GB, and that's with about 300 Mbps down speeds. What about all the people who can't afford or just can't get faster internet? What if they can only get 10 Mbps, 100 GB would literally take all day for them to DL. Hahaha sucks to be them?

Anyways yeah, game file sizes that weren't ludicrously large is something from older games I miss.
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I feel this comparison of games back then and games today is not really great because 1 gb back then was considered a lot when technology wasn't advanced. The entire Diddy Kong Racing ROM is 12 MB and Smash Bros. is 16 MB which is just peanuts when we have devices the size of a pinky nail (a micro SDHC card) regularly capable of storing 32GB and higher.

Second you're comparing between console and PC games. Compression for consoles, especially less powerful ones like Nintendo's consoles, is far more important because they have to fit data on a disc or a cartridge for the console to play. PC just have a far wider capacity for higher-resolution textures and more advanced rendering. At the time something like GTA V is a very massive game as well as Crysis and I can't see lower-power Nintendo consoles running them without a huge hit to performance or graphics (however PS4 runs Red Dead 2 just fine but the Switch? eh...). PCs should have a graphics setting though I guess maybe they should have options to download a smaller, more compressed game compared to downloading an entire package that has BOTH the high settings and the low settings.

However I get that there's a weird trend of shifting away from CDs and cartridges that actually stored stuff to just using game boxes as a vessel to download data on a console. Consoles are becoming like lesser PCs because of this. It irritates me to no end that the PS4 is set up this way, with having you install a physical-bought game before you play it, as if they're a digital purchase, and that game takes up space on your Playstation so your library on the console is always going to be limited. I guess it eases the need to carry game boxes and cartridges around, but it introduces its own problem of storage and since games are big, that storage space tends to be filled pretty quickly. It defeats the point of going physical. At least when I get a physical copy of Smash Bros., I don't have to worry about the 15 GB storage on my console or microsd card.

Ray Trace said:
The thing is, we need a far better internet infrastructure in the US, it's notoriously slow.
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That's true, and also I think having a monthly cap like that to begin with is pretty rubbish.
 
One such novelty from the gaming era of old is how a rebrand of a game was not grounds for condemnation, since information wasn't as widespread before the internet came in full force. On the contrary: some people came to enjoy what they are. One example in what I am talking about is Super Mario Bros. 2, which was originally Doki Doki Panic. This case is probably for the best, as Doki Doki Panic was a licensed game so its unique gameplay wouldn't have flourished otherwise. Perhaps the most prominent example is Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, because it's a rare example of a game where both the original and the rebrand are still celebrated to this very day. SEGA tried that again with Cranky Food Friends to be lambasted for it that they ended up taking it down (although a Dr. Robotnik reskin would probably be more welcomed, though still overall lambasted). The closest this happened is Flying Hamster II, which became Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom, but since it was a rebrand where the original was not released, it's not at the same level. What I am saying is that rebranding a game in this day and age will not go well with the fans compared to the past.

Thank you for reading.
 
Games being completed by the dev team upon release being the norm. That's one novelty I miss from older games. I am so tired of post-release patches being a necessity in a lot of modern titles.
 
Ray Trace said:
The thing is, we need a far better internet infrastructure in the US, it's notoriously slow.
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HAHAHAHAHAHAHA...

Ha... Haha...

Oh god... that's slow? Oh man, I wonder how our speed is called, in that case.