Dvader said:BTW I am an NES era guy so that is what I will reference. If you are a dinosaur and go further back then do so.
Jackass! 
Difficulty. Half the library of NES games were serious challenges.
Durability. I don't recall an acronym for the NES dying on you.
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Tell me to get back to rewriting this site so it's not horrible on mobile
I can pretty much agree with everything you said. I'd like to add one thing in regards to old-school multiplayer.
Multiplayer - Back in the day. . . when 3 friends got together to play Nintendo only two were able to play at a time. Multi-player meant one of you was sitting on the couch until one of the two players died and it was game over. So if you wanted to play uninterrupted, you had to be good otherwise the kid on the couch was getting the second player controller (the first player usually wasn't getting switched out because 9 out of 10 times it was house and his rules and that meant he always played).
That's the real reason why gamers who grew up in the 8-bit era were better. We had to be good, otherwise we'd be stuck sitting on the couch reading the instruction manuel for the 140th time. Or even worse, we'd be forced to make the snack run.
And since I'm one of the dinosaurs that started with an Atari 2600 I'd like to bring up something else.
Controllers - The old Atari joystick was the most unresponsive piece of crap in the world. In fact, it's not real fair to even call it "unresponsive". Yelling at a deaf guy from across a parking lot gets you an "unresponsive" action. These joy sticks were something else. You had to lean on them will all your bodyweight to get your character/vehicle to move. And the one button on the that you had to mash down with all your strength never made shooting or jumping a pleasant task.
Even the worst calibrated Wiimotes don't hold a candle to how bad those things there.
Churn and Burn - People often call out Wii developers out for failing to utilize the full potential of the system's capabilities, and rightfully so. But with the Atari 2600, dear lord it was ridiculous even if we may not quite have realized it. Games were programmed with little thought other than "get it out and sell it." We all know the story of the abomination that was E.T. Pac-Man and Donkey Kong bared little resemblence to their arcade origins.
I realize the system had limitations, but even the 2600 could have made a better looking Donkey Kong than this.
And yet despite all this crap, we still played our games on the Atari like it was our damned lifeblood. AHhhhhh the good ole days.
robio said:Controllers - The old Atari joystick was the most unresponsive piece of crap in the world. In fact, it's not real fair to even call it "unresponsive". Yelling at a deaf guy from across a parking lot gets you an "unresponsive" action. These joy sticks were something else. You had to lean on them will all your bodyweight to get your character/vehicle to move. And the one button on the that you had to mash down with all your strength never made shooting or jumping a pleasant task.
Hmm, I disagree. Unresponsive just isn't right. I still use those CX-40 Atari 2600 contollers, and they still work great, IMO. Maybe your controller was broken? I never had to "lean on them with all [my] body weight" to get them to work; all that was needed was tiny movements. Hold the Joystick with thumb and index finger, and move the joystick about quarter of an inch in any of the eight directions. Leaning on them usually broke them because they were not designed for large movements. The button always worked perfectly for me too.
Now the 5200 joysticks on the other had, were a nightmare. *shivers*
What an incredible joke. You move left to right and leave one screen to.......a brand new screen tha looks exactly the previous one. The best 2600 games were the multiplayer games, Combat, Asteroids and Joust. Or the competitive MP games like Pac Man and Empire Strikes Back. My cousin and I played that all day beating each other's score. 
I remember raving about mode 7 and arguing with my Genesis friends how much better the SNES was. Like playing Contra III Alien Wars for the first time. I was blown away by that game, LOL!
I also remember bugging my big brother how amazing UN Squadron's graphics were being blown away by the clouds and explosions. I can't believe how far we've come.
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Now Playing: Golden Sun Dark Dawn, God of War Ghost of Sparta, and DKC Returns
robio said:I can pretty much agree with everything you said. I'd like to add one thing in regards to old-school multiplayer.
Multiplayer - Back in the day. . . when 3 friends got together to play Nintendo only two were able to play at a time. Multi-player meant one of you was sitting on the couch until one of the two players died and it was game over. So if you wanted to play uninterrupted, you had to be good otherwise the kid on the couch was getting the second player controller (the first player usually wasn't getting switched out because 9 out of 10 times it was house and his rules and that meant he always played).
That's the real reason why gamers who grew up in the 8-bit era were better. We had to be good, otherwise we'd be stuck sitting on the couch reading the instruction manuel for the 140th time. Or even worse, we'd be forced to make the snack run.
So perfect.
I went through the same thing, even the reading the manuel.
Anyway, Mario Kart on the SNES was so fun.
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Now Playing: Golden Sun Dark Dawn, God of War Ghost of Sparta, and DKC Returns
Though it's not so bad now. Granted, some companies will refuse to release games down here (I WANT THE THIRD PHOENIX WRIGHT GAME. NOT THE FOURTH), but for some of the larger games (GTA, Metal Gear etc.), we'll get them without issue.
darthhomer said:Back in my day, Australia used to be bad with getting video games. We'd get games months or years after the original releases...and since there wasn't an internet back then, we cannot bitch about it. Hell, there were many games that were not released at all. For instance, we never recieved any Square game prior to FF7, and I'm convinced that Nintendo will never release Earthbound in Europe.
Though it's not so bad now. Granted, some companies will refuse to release games down here (I WANT THE THIRD PHOENIX WRIGHT GAME. NOT THE FOURTH), but for some of the larger games (GTA, Metal Gear etc.), we'll get them without issue.
Wow. You guys got the first two Phoenix Wright games but not the third one? I wonder why that is. That kind of sucks. The third one is the best in the series too.
You should order it through Play-Asia and play it. It's definitely my favorite one in the series and IMO, the best one in the entire Ace Attorney series.
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Now Playing: Golden Sun Dark Dawn, God of War Ghost of Sparta, and DKC Returns
Ah back in my day, when Atari 2600 was king, we had carpal tunnel nightmare controllers with one "joystick" and one big red button. I remember playing such classics as River Raid, Yar's Revenge, Pitfall, Pac-man, and of course E.T.
ASK_Story said:darthhomer said:Back in my day, Australia used to be bad with getting video games. We'd get games months or years after the original releases...and since there wasn't an internet back then, we cannot bitch about it. Hell, there were many games that were not released at all. For instance, we never recieved any Square game prior to FF7, and I'm convinced that Nintendo will never release Earthbound in Europe.
Though it's not so bad now. Granted, some companies will refuse to release games down here (I WANT THE THIRD PHOENIX WRIGHT GAME. NOT THE FOURTH), but for some of the larger games (GTA, Metal Gear etc.), we'll get them without issue.Wow. You guys got the first two Phoenix Wright games but not the third one? I wonder why that is. That kind of sucks. The third one is the best in the series too.
You should order it through Play-Asia and play it. It's definitely my favorite one in the series and IMO, the best one in the entire Ace Attorney series.
Oh, I've played the 3rd game. Don't you worry.
Never quite got around to thanking you for getting me into the series, by the way.
darthhomer said:ASK_Story said:darthhomer said:Back in my day, Australia used to be bad with getting video games. We'd get games months or years after the original releases...and since there wasn't an internet back then, we cannot bitch about it. Hell, there were many games that were not released at all. For instance, we never recieved any Square game prior to FF7, and I'm convinced that Nintendo will never release Earthbound in Europe.
Though it's not so bad now. Granted, some companies will refuse to release games down here (I WANT THE THIRD PHOENIX WRIGHT GAME. NOT THE FOURTH), but for some of the larger games (GTA, Metal Gear etc.), we'll get them without issue.Wow. You guys got the first two Phoenix Wright games but not the third one? I wonder why that is. That kind of sucks. The third one is the best in the series too.
You should order it through Play-Asia and play it. It's definitely my favorite one in the series and IMO, the best one in the entire Ace Attorney series.
Oh, I've played the 3rd game. Don't you worry.
Never quite got around to thanking you for getting me into the series, by the way.
For reals? Did I get you into the series? I must've recommended it some how. I guess I forgot I did that because I don't know how many times I recommended this series to everyone I come across who asks for good DS games to play.
It really is my favorite series of all-time, period. The only criticism I have of the series is that there's absolutely no replay value, unlike the Super Mario games.
Anyway, can't wait for Miles Edgeworth's Perfect Prosecutor!
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Now Playing: Golden Sun Dark Dawn, God of War Ghost of Sparta, and DKC Returns
travo said:Forgot about River Raid. That was an awesome game.
I have a complete version of that. It's one of my all time faves.
Things I don't miss at all about the old days:
+ Corded controllers. The cords on the NEOGEO are about a foot long.
+ VMU's and memory cards. HDD or save to cartridge only please.
+ No saving at all.
How about original handheld gaming?
It was all LCD crap from Tiger electronics or even cheaper knock-offs. One game per handheld and it all consisted of moving the character left and right or up and down. Handheld gaming essentially involved nothing but dodging and catching up until the Gameboy was released.
And we all had to stop at the same time. . . when it got dark. These screens had no back light, no front light, so side light. Hell even in good lighting it wasn't real easy to see, and that even applies to the Gameboy and GBA too. Sure there were accessories to shine light over the screens but did you ever bother to try one? They rarely worked and when they did they still didn't always illuminate all of the screen.
This was my first handheld.
Lets face it, we are old farts now. We started gaming when it was at it's infancy, we have grown upalong side itand seen all the changes first hand. If you take a kid that started gaming in the PS2 era and tell them the stuff we had to go through back in our day to play games what do you think they would say. What are the biggest changes from the old school days to today's modern monster machines.
BTW I am an NES era guy so that is what I will reference. If you are a dinosaur and go further back then do so.
There were only face two buttons and a d-pad - No analog stick, omg. No sholder buttons? How did we play?Back then all we needed to do was run and jump. Two buttons and it was enough to give us some of the best games of all time. When I played Zelda I could only carry one item at a time. Games needed to use the select button as a action button at times. But thank god we moved on, I am not one of these "gaming is too complicated" guys. I think the PS model is the limit for buttons, they got it right, that should be the standard.
Cartridges - CDs bah, we had big fat hard plastic covered carts as our games. I have to say it was a lot more fun to hold them. You can throw them across the roomwhen the game pissed you off. Just stack them out of their box without worry. The boxes for the games were almost useless cause the carts themselves were like covers. I had my carts handing out, some on their small black sleeves. Oh and there is a whole other situation that went along with the carts, specifically NES ones...
We had to blow our games - That didn't come out right.
Back in the day when you put a game into the NES it did not mean it was going to work. Oh no, trying to get a game to start was a game all of its own. I don't know how everyone came up with the same method (remember kids no internet back then) but somehow we all did. Grab the cart and blow into it, back and forth, really hard. You also had toblow into the console cart slot. When you try to put the cart in sometimes leave a small piece out so that when you slam it in it smacks against the plastic. If that doesn't work keep pressing it up and down over and over. For serious emergencies we took out the q-tips. One time my brother came up with the idea to put the game in the freezer,I have no clue why. Power on, power off, power on, power off, as many times as it took until your damn game started. Sometimes it would start but it would be all screwed up, green lines and stuff all over the screen, man that sucked. Or the very worst, the title screen comes up, you think you finally got the game to work and then it freezes. NOOOOO. Starting our games was an adventure, an adventure I will NOT miss. 
No online - Friend lists, online multiplayer, communication of any kind with the outside world was no possible. Why, well for one there was no internet yet or at least it wasn't available to us. When we played 2 player games that other person always had to be sitting next to us on the same console. You couldn't act like a moron cause the other person could reach over and punch you. In some ways this system was better.
All 2D - Yep there were no 3D games, no movement in free space. You had some top down games that allowed you to walk around a world but it was still limited. The majority of games were side scrollers, move from left to right. I love the switch but some games never translated well into the 3D realm. Some games should always stay in 2D and I am glad developers are started a 2D renaissance lately.
No such thing as First Person Shooters - This one would probably give some kids heart attacks. Yeah thats right, no FPSs. No Halos, no CoDs, no counterstrikes, not even Doom. It was a happier time when shooting was not needed in every game, bouncing on creatures heads was usually enough violence.
Now for the worst one, the one I feel that no kid could ever live without.
There was no saving -The biggie, no saving. When you started a game you were expected to play through the whole thing. You had lives, lose the lives and it was game over, START OVER. There was no going back to the point you left off, you had to fight your way through the game over and over and over and if you couldn't do it, too bad. Everytime you put a game in it was a challenge to see how far you can get. Some games found ways around this by offering passwords. Thank Zelda for being the first console game to save your game onto the cart, even though the tech was available early the majority of games didn't include saving. Obviously this aspect had to change, for one games couldn't be long without saving. Plus asking someone to play over and over just totry to see the ending would drive most people insane. Could you imagine that if you died three times in Halo the game would start you over from the beginning. Saving allowed games to evolve into the massive 10+ hour games we have now.