1. I miss when games were complete at launch 2. I miss when there were no micotransaction 3. I miss when we could insert the disc/cartridge without having to install/download/update before you can actually play it!!!
Not only that, DLC was heavily underutilized in the Dreamcast era. We got a good share of unlockables and DLC on the first Xbox and seventh-generation consoles, but DLC replaced unlockables in the PS4 era for the most part. I wished DLC went back to Dreamcast levels where it's simply a novelty or nonexistent.
I Totaly agree. And I would add 4: I miss when videogames didn't have operating systems. You just pressed the power button to play, then you pressed it to turn it of. No waiting for the system to start or stop. No worrying about corrupting data or system updates.
I clicked on this video to say this. I miss when we got 100% of the game on launch and I didn't have to wait a year and spend more money just to feel like I have the entire game. I miss when easter eggs and alternate costumes were stuff you unlocked playing the game not DLC
I appreciate having the option. In singleplayer games. But there is something cool about exclusively unlockable visual upgrades in multi-player games (00's more I guess) like Halos ninja armour.
God...people nowadays won't even know what that's like. Earning new characters in a fighting game...unlocking cheat code modes...unlocking new levels (everything is a damn open world now full of filler garbage) Even movie cash ins back then did more then now. Matrix path of neo had like 600 unlockable combat moves. Games like Tony Hawk you had to do a certain number of objectives to unlock the next area to skate at. Also can't forget cosmetics which used to be so fun and actually felt valuable...oddly trying to charge for them does the opposite. Just makes you learn to go without.
I miss having fewer games to play, which might sound paradoxical. But when I could only get one new game at a time, the anticipation leading up to getting that game for my birthday or Christmas was huge. That game became all I could think about, and I would pour all of my effort over several weeks or even months into mastering it. Nowadays, as an adult, I can afford to buy games all the time, and online game shops making buying batches of games so seamless that getting a new game isn't a big deal anymore. I find that I usually play a game for an hour or two and then--unless it really hooks me like BotW or something--never play it again. Sometimes, less is more.
I was talking about this with a couple of friends few years ago. It is incredible how we buy games just to "own" them or support devs but not for playing them. Even when I have an absurd list in steam of ganes that will not gonna play, I sometimes end my day playing with my daughter older games like super Mario world, and I spent a lot of weeks with the same with her because I know she won't appreciate them as I did if I change games every day. And she ask for playing smw with me.
It wasn't just anticipation that kept me glued to a new game. It was a lack of alternatives... and the crazy, outdated idea that I wasn't supposed to have alternatives. I was *supposed* to get something and be grateful for it. Even if I didn't enjoy it at first, or if it didn't meet my expectations. These things sometimes took time. Today, I have infinite alternatives and my norms have been whittled away. So I rarely spend a lot of time on any one game, and rarely fall in love with games.
Yes dude, and because we were only able to get 1-2 games at a time you were forced to play the sh*t out of it! Like you said, as an adult I buy a games and if a game sucks I shelf it and dont ever beat it
I definitely think this (and just being an adult) has sucked some fun out of gaming, even if this is a better system overall. I find myself with just a bloat of games I'll never play or scrolling through steam just to buy some game that may catch my interest. But then I check reviews and videos and can be convinced out of a purchase. But back in the day I ended up loving games that were bad bc that's all I had to play and you put up with the jank bc you're not getting anything else. You got it based on the name, box art, a friend telling you about it, etc. I didn't even know game reviews existed. It's funny to come across videos or discussions on games that are considered "terrible" that I loved and played the hell out of as a kid bc a game was a game. But now it's the burden of choice. When you can have everything you want anytime it loses value. Though in reverse it has allowed me to experience so many great games I never would have in the old system.
I think PS2 was still the golden age for me, but my love of gaming did start far earlier. I loved the 8 bit systems like MS and NES, and I loved the Gameboy.
NES was GOLDEN, but SNES to PSX (we didn't say PS1) were pretty good times too. I still remember getting Final Fantasy III for Christmas and going upstairs to play it... Man it was hard to go down for dinner that Christmas. What an opening to a game at the time...
Same here I miss those days going from 2d to 3d and all the experimental mechanics. Everything felt fresh and next gen. The only thing fresh and next gen for the last 15 20 years has been what HD resolution ?🤦♂️ ps5? Nah its just a ps3 3.0 and the ps4 was the 2.0
Yup, I was shocked that the video didn't have any of those games that are really legends of the entire industry. No Half-Life, no Warcraft/Starcraft, no Civilization, no Fallout 1-2, no X-Wing/Tie Fighter, no Baldur's Gate or Planescape Torment, no Steel Panthers, no Commandos, no Settlers, no Descent:Freespace, no Cannon Fodder, no Mortal Kombat... this list could go on forever.
The 90's is an intriguing decade not only for gaming, but for anything, really. It's the last decade of the millenium, the last decade for a generation before the internet became a thing, which can be seen as something good or not, depending on your point of view. Music, movies, cartoons, TV series, gaming and other aspects of life were diverse and experimented in many new ways. The 90's were a sort of amalgamation from the 60's, 70's and the 80's in a way that it mixed vintage with the new, we felt linked to older times, while still enjoying what was current and fresh. Technologically, you start the decade with spartan computers and at the tail end, you have really advanced hardware acceleration and very fast CPUs, individuals were more unique and diverse and creative in ways unthinkable by today's standards, that's why we look back wondering how all that happened in a short time span. By the turn of the century/millenium, we had said goodbye to something so unique and we didn't notice that, and probably won't. Even our behavior and social interaction was so different it's amazing to compare with nowadays. I hope people realize that even tablets with touch screens, LCDs, Plasma/slim TVs already existed before the 00's, many of these featured in TV programs such as The Computer Chronicles, so there was no real innovation in that front, what we have now is but a mass market availability of the same ideas, with better technology, but nothing really new. I'm not dumping any generation or specific timeframe here, I'm only pointing out what was there.
Hate to break it to you, but we had the internet in the early 90's. I had a 486 in 1993 with a 14.4 modem. By the end of the decade we had 28.8 then 56k. Ultima Online and Everquest were huge in the late 90's. Before that we were dialing into bulletin boards in the mid 80's and sharing programs/games. The 90's weren't as primitive as you think. You think your profound, but you sound like someone who wasn't alive at that time.
No, you misunderstand the context. Yes there was internet even before the 90's and 80's. But the internet was a tiny fraction for enthusiasts, that could afford a PC and the service, while 99% of the world didn't even care about computers, "before the internet became a thing" means that today it is almost as available as air itself, is this a good thing? I don't know, I'm sure each person has their own opinions about that. Gaming online on a PC in the late 90's had a few requirements, you had to be in a certain age, live where you could afford the equipment and service and be interested in this tiny niche. One may say it was "HUUUGE", but no, it was just a niche. The rest of the world was still living like before as the computer/digital crazy never happened. I was there. I had a few high school friends glued to their PCs, chatting girls online, while older folk and other kids didn't have access or even cared for that. The 90's primitive, where does that come from, not from me. Take a 1990 IBM PC, that was totally spartan compared to what was available in 1999, primitive? No, spartan in comparison? Yes. There's almost nothing from the 90's around today, no CDs, no CRTs, no telephones, cars, analog signals, behaviors, clothing styles, music, it's all a thing that is only still cherished from who was alive back then, and like any other era, it will go away as we go. But as I said, the 90's is unique, it was so experimental and edgy, nothing like that happened since, in many areas, like my original comment states. Primitive is how you interpreted it, as our time today will totally seem primitive in many aspects in the not-so-distant future, specially our mindsets.
A lot of us "nerds" we're online gaming in the mid 90s with games like Duke Nukem 3D and Diablo using dial up. It was a pain in the ass, but you felt like a tech genius at the time..
Regards what you said about the mass marketed improved technology, but not necessarily new, makes me think about how a 60 inch Flat-screen when I was a kid was $3-6000CAD. But now I can get one for $500-$1800.
@@GojoStiglitz i remember the Ratchet & Clank ones and the Lord of The Ring games for the PS2. Full of information about the game itself and the worlds
I think you hit the nail in the head when you talked about "charm". It was a time where all companies were experimenting with different formulas to see what would work. There were a lot of hits and missed but you could appreciate the effort and the willingness to try something new. Modern gaming has become extremely formulaic and standardized.
I completely agree. That uniqueness that came from small teams of creative people working within a space that didn't really have any rules, best-practices, or guardrails; it's the main reason I loved gaming in the 90's. It's very sorely missing these days. Honestly the only part of gaming that in any way resembles that aspect of 90's games in the modern era is VR. It's starting to become standardized, but in many ways it is still a wild west of experimentation, mostly driven by small indie developers. Just like tech in the 90's the rules for how to make the "best" game in VR are still being figured out, so a lot of titles are flawed but unique and interesting. Of course it isn't free of all of the bad aspects of modern gaming (there's still an abundance of bugs and games requiring patches and updates, etc.), but if you want to get into a subset of games that aren't nearly as formulaic (yet), you might want to check VR out. I'd almost entirely lost interest videogames before I tried VR.
I miss being young enough to have a second chance at some things in life. One thing I will forever be grateful for (game-wise) is ALWAYS appreciating how far graphics have come. You guys remember when we all speculated when our games would look like the FMVs? MEMBER? Man, the water in Super Mario Sunshine STILL mesmerizes me to this day.
Yeah, and now that they do I don't feel all that much about it... I think longing for something bigger and better was half the fun. Now they can just do everything so it's kind of boring. Same for movies. Late 80s is great. The technology was getting pretty advanced but it took a ton of innovation and imagination to get results on the screen. Now they just order a monster from the 8000 cgi people and call it a day. That takes plenty of skill and effort too, but there's no sense of wonder about it.
I miss the packaging of the games as well. The different box types, different sized manuals with cool animation in some of them. And also sometimes some extras like a map poster thrown in. Ya the 90's were the best times for gaming for sure.
They had that up until recently. Rdr2 came with some stuff. It’s what I miss about music. The album cover front and back and the insides was part of the experience
The thing I miss the most about the 90s gaming: When you bought a game, chances were that you got the complete full version of the game with not as many bugs and glitches as we see today- No micro transactions, no waiting two hours for it to install plus patching update.. you bought a game, you got the game that you bought and went home and played it!
That's what gaming back then was all about! Completed games with no content locked behind a freakin' paywall, and if you had to unlock something, (a infinite weapon or an extra outfit) you just beat the game on a certain difficulty to obtain it for instance. Sadly, it's not the state of things with a lot of games that get released these days, and all I want is to play a good and completed game without the micro transaction and loot boxes BS!
You have to remember these games were much smaller scaled back then. If you were good at a game, you could beat it under 2 hours. And 80s games were an hour or less. That and the technical limitations, made it much easier to release a full product at launch. It's also why a lot of games were difficult, to give you the impression they were longer than they really were. Due to all that, I consider the early 2000s better (PS2, Gamecube), they "fixed" that problem, smoothed out 3D gameplay mechanics and were the final the years before updates, installs and DLCs. Games would normally last 6 to 10 hours instead without the repetition of constantly dying to nonsense.
We will never experience a graphical leap like we had in the 90s. We started the 90s with 16 bit platformers and ended the decade with Dreamcast games. Compare screenshots from Sonic 1 to Sonic adventures on the Dreamcast. It's crazy how quickly things improved
In the 90's where the internet wasn't so prevalent, life itself was like a good rpg, you'd buy a sweet game like ff7 or metal gear, maybe resident evil or gta, then have weeks of rumors regarding secrets and what ifs, myths and other interesting things. A vibe that todays technology has erased
No to mention, there were no game patches. Developers actually had to make sure the product was as good as they could get it. Now they just push it out because they can always patch it later.
They literally can't comprehend it. Nostalgia is a factor, but they just can't imagine a time before the internet. They can't imagine a life that isn't completely dictated by their phones.
It's the way everything was constantly improving, and those that weren't cutting edge, were just vibing. This era gave me so much hope for the future of gaming! But then for some reason, everything got homogenized. Most games, even from different franchises, have similar menu's. Games of different genres have similar controls. Etc. That said, we're starting to fall into a similar era now. There's a lot of random quirky unique games coming out now. And I bet in the next 5 or so years we'll be in another gaming heyday.
I feel like it is unfathomable to comprehend how exciting of an era the 90s were for gaming. You had peak 2D gaming and the advent of 3D gaming. Even though a lot of those early 3D titles might not hold up today, they were the standard so you're expectations were naturally tailored to the quirks and whatnot. And with the lack of the internet and access of information, everything felt like an uncharted mysterious adventure and seeing a screenshot in a magazine had that lingering thought in your head of "you think this is exciting? Wait until you see it in action!"
I so miss the hardware differences. Made it more exicting to collect systems and their games. So glad to live through the golden days and the absolute 1st when games started to truly shine.
I hope that next generation there is some hardware differences between the 3 consoles(and that Nintendo is on par). It was cool seeing how the same game would look different on another console. Little things like how it renders certain colors or textures. Or how cuz of needing to be coded for individually, we'd sometimes get special or different content.
I miss that fact that you could buy multi disc game and you and your sibling could both play at the same time. One moving on to disc two meant the other could start on disc one. So many Psx rpgs were played this way.
You had multiple psx consoles then? Ever link them up? I don't know anyone that played a link cable playstation game. If I had more than one I guess I'd give it a shot though.
@@anonamatron I actually did... Me and my best friend at the time played with 2 linked PS1s, games like Duke Nukem 3D, Command and Conquer Red Alert, Doom, Twisted Metal (yea some of these could be played on split screen), Need for Speed, and some others I can't remember lol (being a damn old geezer is hard for the head :S ). Then we moved to PC LANs at the time Age of Empires 2 came out and never looked back... Best of times the damn 90s.
Turning on the PS1 was feeling like a ceremony every time. The Sony and Playstation intros made you feel like you were entering a portal to another dimension (that's how I felt at 9 years old anyway). Now, the home page just kinda exists.
I used CRT monitors/tvs for so long, i remember how surreal it felt when i finally had a device that fit in my hand, that could play video and games. Which also wasn't packing 50lbs of batteries. Kids now are spoiled. I swear, something is lost when you don't witness the evolution. Like we notice how fake "cgi" looks in movies now, compared to practical effects we saw less and less by the end of the 90s.
I still remember playing my brand new PS1 for the first time and being blown away by the graphics and storylines It truly felt like witnessing a revolution in technology
Me too. So fun to explore maps and levels in games when one had real cheat codes. Like exploring places in the maps of Duke Nukem 3d and Quake using god mode. I hate that Microsoft killed off the cheat codes when they started with the whole achievement thing on the xbox 360. I could not care less about achievements in games. Cheat codes however allowed the players to do some really fun things in games.
Ps1/ps2 was a magical time man. That ranged from me being 11-20. The feeling I actually kinda miss which is weird is the feeling of having limited funds and each game being a significant event. Birthdays, Christmas, saving up. You had to physically go buy the game. No digital market. You would anticipate, read reviews and previews. Getting a new game just had so much more significance.
it was such a good time, people could make their dream game before all games had to be safe due to massive budgets and whatnot, i really like the pc space during this era too, so many classic adventure games from silly kings quest to harvester style horror, it was such a interesting and creative time ( i am glad im in the future tho and have many options when it comes to getting and running all these old abandoned games)
Damn you make a good point that PC games at the time also had their unique classics. I absolutely love Kings Quest 5 & 6, Starcraft, Diablo, Prince of Persia, the point and click games in Myst style, all the MECC games. DOSbox & Scummvm are good emulators but I wish Mac emulation was better because alot of mac versions are crisper
Gamers changed? Gamers changed? It wasn't the gamers who changed, we're pretty much the same, what changed was that the bullies and troglodytes realized they could infiltrate our circles in order to take over what we love, only to smash it into the ground until all that's left is broken dreams and ashes in our mouths.
@J.M. Obyx No you seem to be alluding to some marketing talk that being a gamer is an exclusive club. I'm more on about the fact that gamers wouldn't buy these types of games any more and certainly not in any significant numbers.
I miss the wild experimentation from developers. You had absolutely no idea what they were going to try next, because everything was uncharted territory. Sometimes it was awful, sometimes is was great, but it was always exciting!
Part of me actually misses having a limited amount of games. Back in the 90s and 20s my family was quite poor, so I only got to rent games occasionally for the most part. Since I only had one or two games at a time I always finished them generally. Now there are so many games I have access too it's hard to focus on getting though one!
Well another problem is there is so much shovelware cluttering the market now that it blends in with everything else. You cant tell if you're looking at an indie or garbage. Back then everything was so simple and so under the radar in the way you had to find games. A massive hit could be in stores and you wouldn't even know until a kid showed up with it or you finally got a chance to browse the electronics section when you got stuck at a grocery store
I'm in my late 30's and bought some old 90's gamepro magz I used to own as a teenager. That nostalgic feeling still hits hard of reading them and seeing the games from back then. We saw the 90's and 2000's game eras there's nothing like that transition from 2d to 3d nowadays.
I recently went through storage and found a box of old Nintendo power magazines, PSM, game informer, electronic gaming monthly...and you're right, the nostalgia hits hard! I probably spent hours going through each one of them and it made me feel like I was back in my old bedroom again up late on a Saturday night reading the articles under a desk lamp. The nostalgia feeling is super comforting but also it can lead to severe depression if you let it.
Here's another 5 for ya: 11. Demos/demo discs! There's still a lot of games from back in the day I never actually played the full version of, but damn if I didn't enjoy their demos. 12. No day 1 patches. Publishers couldn't force developers to rush games out the door and then patch them later, so most games were nice and functional from the get go, unless they were just bad. 13. No forced politics and virtue signaling. Pretty self-explanatory! 14. Suspension of disbelief! Back then we never looked at the obviously inaccessible backgrounds and saw them for what they were; we dreamed of finding some way to go over there, who knows what adventures could await! 15. Rumors that you couldn't immediately debunk with a Google search. I loved talking about crazy secrets and mysteries that other kids had found in their game, and trying to find them myself. It was part of the fun! Remember Akuma in Resident Evil 2? Man. Those were the days.
Google is the devil, those searches today are carefully orchestrated to suit corporate interests. Actual truth on many topics today is scrubbed and impossible to find unless you know the exactly what your looking for.
Rumors yes. The "nude code", that did not exist, for the first Tomb Raider game. And I still remember one class mate tricking me i to believing that the full Doom game came on 30 or 40 something floppy disks rather than the significantly fewer disks it actually came on.
Can't believe you didn't mention the arcade. Early to mid-90s was the peak of arcade greatness. That feeling of walking in and having no idea what to expect. I achieved euphoria when I first saw the X-Men Arcade game. 6 Freakin players! Never knew it existed until they moment! And yes, magazines were awesome. Just like arcades, you had no idea what to expect until you opened the pages. Another thing I missed were all the school yard rumors that spread like wildfire. So many lies and BS stories 😂 some kid claimed that you could play as Raiden in MK3 while another one swore to God that Shen Long was playable in Street Fighter 2. Such great times.
LOL, oh yeah, the rumors were wild. I grew up more with consoles. I was a bit too young for the Street Fighter 2 arcade craze, though I've played the game a bunch. Maybe it was my area, but arcades were not common in Maine.
@@radicaldreamersteve5743 ah I see. I grew up in So Cal so we had arcades all over. The Galleria Mall in Sherman Oaks, seen in Terminator 2, had a huge arcade! I was about 7 years old when I went. Such good times.
I remember the Sheng Long rumors! Some would say that they were an unlockable character in the original SF2, and others would say that he'll be there in the next released version. Good times!
A couple things for me are 1. Genre experimentation: Combining both company and developer competition, hardware improvements, and unexplored territory made grounds for genre booms in the gaming industry. Things like first-person shooters, stealth action, pod/futuristic racing, point-n-click adventure, and so on. 2. Lighting in 3d games: This can also be said about early 2000s games but I always preferred the absence of bloom and sheen. Plus it was just something about their hardware limitations that made dark areas like space in Star Fox 64 and Tie Fighters, or night time/dark areas in Silent Hill and Legend of Zelda: OoT/MM have a more natural feel.
I wasn't even alive in the 90s and yet I still also miss the way gaming was in the 90s. The part about Konami definitely makes me sad since Metal Gear Solid is one of my favorite franchises of all time. It really sucks what Konami and many other gaming companies have become
Even going back to play some older games first time today, the energy and vibe is one i prefer compared to a lot of newer ones. Pretty much everything I've played for the first time in 2022 so far is either from the 90s or 00's and I've enjoyed every bit of it.
Games from the 90's/early 00's were just so fun. Not to say that games nowadays aren't fun at all, but back then, fun and innovation were the top priorities, and so many classics came from that era. Nowadays, it seems the only priorities are creating the biggest open world of all time, microtransactions, and releasing half-finished games. Maybe I sound old, but that's how it seems to me.
Arcades, gaming magazines, or comics in every store. When you're a kid and shopping for dinner with your mom was always a two hour trip to Wal-Mart it was nice to read something or spend a few dollars on an arcade and not feel bored while she stopped to talk to everyone she met. 😩
Wow, this video is like perfection - and I love that you included a lot of Sega Saturn stuff as well in it. The 16 to 64 bit era is truly special, where a lot of game, gameplay and technoligy concepts were tried out in the transition from 2D to 3D. What I miss from the 90s: 1.) Warioland - a very good plattformer series, which was often overlooked, because most of them were only on handheld. But the developers made the most of it and came up with ideas I haven't even seen in other big console plattformers - for example invincibility for the entire game. 2.) 90s anime style in those JRPGs - I feel very nostalgic for games like Panzer Dragoon Saga, Breath of Fire, Xenogears, FF IX, etc... those games display for me more seriousness than whatever comes up today - and I know these are just rose-tinted glasses I'm watching through, because I was simply a kid myself back then. But a Vakyrie Elysium or a Diofield Chronicles do not really do it for me, which is probably the reason why I completely fell off JRPGs and only play games like Dark Souls nowadays. 3.) Seperation - this is a bit tricky to explain, because I mean two different things, but both play into that point. First in terms of genre: a lot of games of today cover a wide range of genres - an open world RPG 3rd person shooter with loot, survival, crafting and stealth mechanics squeezed into a service game model is an ubisoftian nightmare, which leaves everyone questioning wtf someone is even playing right now. Back then it was a plattformer OR a shoot'm'up OR a fighting game OR a racing game. The games simply had focus. And thene also in terms of world building/level design: with the tendency to open worlds today you often find those unrealistic constellations to have a forrest, a desert, a snowy and a lava area not too far apart within an area smaller than every medium sized city. In old games you choosed a level, which was themed, and nowhere was claimed it must have a direct connection to the stage before or afterwards - there is simply travel distance inbetween, which we filled up with our imagination. A good example from today would be the new Hitman trilogy. Every location is distinctively different to another. 4.) Obvious one: games came to market in a finished and feature complete state.
Arcades in the 90's was amazing...I remember seeing the TMNT arcade game omg was amazed and then TMNT in time but nothing was more hype than playing MK in the arcade.
Omg getting a gaming mag was so exciting! My mind was blow so many times while getting them. I still remember a tree at my middle school being the place a buddy showed me Nintendo power and the seeing super Mario bros 2 for the 1st time during recess.. the tree still stands and everytime I drive by it I think about that day 35+ years later..
I miss being able to have discussions about the 'graphics' of a 2d game. I mean, you still can now obviously - but back then we were blown away by a 2d game that looked good. Not many people are doing that anymore.
Final Fantasy VIII came out the day Dreamcast launched 9.9.99 and man dreamcast made the best PS1 games look ancient lol. Dreamcast with 60fps and just gorgeous graphics, I think the dual thumbsticks really kept them down. FFVIII was my favorite! Didn't get the dreamcast til August 2000
1. Complete games 2. More games with full couch co op 3. No microtransactions 4. No online multiplayer copout 5. Games were still a newer concept, so different types of games and technological innovations stood out more, now games mostly feel the same 6. More truly great games...games that defined eras and consoles and publishers...games today are rarely great. 7. More appreciative gamers.... For example just look at how kids today are complaining about Pokemon Scarlet/Violet. Where as when I was a kid the best we had was Yellow 😂 and loved it
Glad to hear it, and thanks for the encouragement. I probably don't upload often enough, and I am still trying to improve. Anyway, for me, it is the interactions and creating something that brings meaning to others that makes it worth it. Cheers!
@@radicaldreamersteve5743 wow I knew it was just a matter of time before your channel would start taking off. I think when I left my first comment you weren’t at 100 subs
@@maxstone9999 thanks for the comment! Yeah, it was really just one video that absolutely exploded. I am definitely gonna be very devoted to quality over quantity in 2023, algorithms be damned!
This is probably the coldest and most basic thing in the book but more than anything I miss the era of rumours going around on the playground or the internet. As a 2003 kid I was already born into the internet era but not to the point where we had all the necessary facts to prove what other people on there said, and that made hunting around for what's real and what's not a memorable experience, and was a huge motivation for 100%ing a lot of games. And like another comment here said, it is fun not knowing entirely what your game contains. Running around for years looking for some big secret to be underneath out noses the entire time that we weren't fully aware of definitely added to the mystery, and seeing so many old secrets only being revealed in recent years validates our curiosity all the more.
Not being able to get anything instantly, made things more special, especially when you were a kid. Everything you state in the video is true and even gets boosted for those who happend to grow up in the 90s. It was a magical time for children in westernized industrial countries.
My absolute favorite was the instruction manuals! Thick books with maps, an item key, area for notes, and usually the story background. Always had great art too!
I miss renting games, and the time my local video store stopped renting SNES and Genesis in order to focus on PS1/N64 titles, so they all went on sale for a few bucks a piece.
I’m more of a 2010 era gamer but one thing I love about 90’s games is the story. Games like Pokémon RBY, FF7, Ocarina of Time, any other Square RPG, etc. have genuinely exciting and adventurous stories along with their beautifully orchestrated songs to boot. Most of them were just coming of age stories but they capture a feeling that’s hard to replicate nowadays
There's an overload of content right now. I enjoyed gaming more when we had less options to choose from. It made each new experience fresh & rewarding. The replay value was so high in the 90's. In contrast, I sometimes don't even finish a game today.
The thing I miss from this decade the most is Rareware. Banjo-Kazooie, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, (Yes I know it came out in 2001 *shhhh)* Killer Instinct, Perfect Dark, Battletoads, etc. etc., all of those franchises are dead now, and the few times they came back were butchered 90% if the time. (I say 90% because the 2013 Killer Instinct was alright) Microsoft only uses that brand for tech demos now and nothing else. I wouldn’t even be mad if they just sold off all of those properties to a different company while keeping the Rare name, I just want to see stuff like Banjo and Conker come back in proper fashion. The worst part about all of this is that Microsoft more recently bought up Bethesda with the likes of Doom and Activision with the likes of Crash and Spyro, so unless they’re extremely lucky I fear that they might get shafted in general soon as well. (I can see Doom doing fine, but Crash and Spyro? Not so much. They’re honestly lucky they even had the games that they did before the buyout at this point to be honest) Really the only thing Microsoft ever cared about was Halo and Minecraft. And let’s be real, we all know the *real* truth of why Microsoft got these companies: They foolishly thought they scored big by getting Donkey Kong with Rare, they got Bethesda Elder Scrolls, they got Activision for stuff like Call of Duty and their microtransactions. This is why putting all the eggs in one basket before sending them off to a storage place full of them is always a bad idea. And these are all examples for just *one* mega corporation like Microsoft…
Awesome list. I agree with every entry. The 90s gaming scene was filled with magic. Where's the magic these days? It is still there? I can't feel it anymore. Is it just me? Great video. Thanks.
Love this, your last point about magazines is spot on. I actually still have at least 150 or more old gaming mags boxed away but they are not all in great condition. Still the nostalgia is strong. I remember seeing the gamecube for first time in a mag and I was rediculously excited.
Yeah, 90s is a slow pace era of gaming so it is exciting to see new stuff. But now we see games being announced or release early in mostly in beta or even in alpha state and the risk is too high for today.
Back then, there weren't so many gamers complaining so much for every little thing. Some, but not as much as today. U enjoyed the game for what it is, not for it's fps & constant comparisons
I miss the rental gamble at Blockbuster - you'd rent something and have no idea if it was good or not and sometimes you got a dud but sometimes you got a gem
@@radicaldreamersteve5743 what made it so much of a gamble was that if it was crap, that was your game for the whole weekend lol unlike with Gamepass and things like that
Hello! I see the effort and know as a smaller UA-camr you are reading this. Great video, awesome effort and I also miss the 90s. Subscribed and good luck! I will keep an eye out for your next video.
Great video bro. Lately I've been regressing and going back to my ps1, dreamcast, genesis, etc. Gaming nowadays feels so bloated and saturated. Miss the days when that new game wasn't every other week
I tend to be more nostalgic for the 2000s, but I did play a good bit of games from the 90s as well. I think what I miss about both, is that there was still a sense of wonder, and experimentation during these times. Sure, the internet was becoming more common during the 2000s, but it was still in its infancy. So, not everything was quite available yet. There's also the fact that every game was complete, and wasn't bogged down with updates and dlc. Even if the game wasn't good sometimes, it was still a complete experience.
I miss when you knew absolutely nothing about the game at launch and seeing all the cool new things you had to discover! Nowadays, when a new game comes out, theres a billion videos of 100% walkthroughs, playthroughs, and everything else all over the place on the day of launch. I guess you could say I also miss the days when playing brand new games was about kicking back and having fun, not making money and being popular.
I totally agree with your take on the Final Fantasy series. I grew up with these games and absolutely loved them. Unfortunately I lost interest after 10 and absolutely hate the direction that Square has taken the series ever since. The only thing they care about is graphics rather than making a good game. Hopefully things will turn around eventually, but I doubt it.
1. I miss games being released in a proper playable state, no day 1 patches, no day 400 patches, no (paid) dlc with content that should have been in the game by default. Back in the day, getting a patch was difficult, so developers - if they were self-respecting, and if they respected their clientele - released games in almost perfect state; patches were rare. 2. I miss plug 'n' play. Nowadays you have to sit through 40 seconds of developer, publisher, and other logos (sometimes entirely unskippable), then wait another minute for the game itself to start once you hit new game or load game, then sit through ten minutes of cutscenes that bombard you with exposition. This shit's everywhere now, even in fighters and racers (looking at you Mortal Kombat and Need for Speed!) - before and after every match you have to sit through a short cutscene with the characters exchanging "pleasantries". And then there are games that have a cutscene or dialogue after every gods-damned event, and everything is scripted to kingdom come. Are we even playing the games anymore? 3. I miss when games didn't weigh 10+ GB because of overblown graphics. Sure, a game has to look appealing if the player is to be immersed and spend numerous hours playing it, but do we really need photo-realistic graphics? Look at games like Mount and Blade Warband, or Minecraft, or Project Zomboid? Primitive (by today's standards) graphics, but very popular, because the gameplay is actually fun. 4. I miss system limitations, when developers had to be creative if they wanted their game to be fun and have a lot of cool features. Nowadays, when the sky is pretty much the limit, games look so good, but are shallow as a puddle. All style, no substance, and everyone is content to have it that way, including most players. 5. I miss custom game engines. Nowadays so many games are released on Unreal and Unity, it's not even funny anymore. Sure, on the one hand it's useful for modding and stuff, but on the other hand, when all your games are interchangeable, what's the point of buying a new game? And it's ironic, because back in the day the number of people who knew tech stuff was far more limited than it is now, yet the degree of innovation in the gaming industry has dropped. 6. I miss split-screen mode. This is particularly painful in the case of consoles. Back in the day, you could get a small party around a single console, taking turns playing against each other. Nowadays consoles come with a single controller and an internet connection. Sure, why have multiple controllers when you can play online, but what if your internet is down, or what if you just wanna play with your sibling or friend and have only one console? 7. I miss when singleplayer games didn't require you to be always online. I get it, it's a way to make sure the game can't be pirated, and it's supposedly convenient for players to save their progress into a cloud, but as it's been shown time and again (especially with dedicated multiplayer games), when the server is down\ dead, there's no way to continue playing, so what the player supposed to do then? This kind of approach not only criminalizes players, but it also screws them over once the company decides to pull the plug or goes bankrupt.
Fun list! I definitely do not miss bad early 3D graphics, haha. If I had to pick my favorite thing from 90s gaming, it would be "innovation". Back then, the major genres of video games were yet to be fully established, and each major hit was often a genre-defining revelation bringing completely new ideas to the table. In the 90s, you really felt like each game you played could be an entirely new experience, and often it was. Nowadays, I feel like the most popular game genres have largely been codified. Big budget games conform to the conventions of the established genres and it's only rarely that a tiny indy developer will decide to go outside the lines. The development of the major genres feels more iterative, with small, incremental advances to graphics, UI design, or animation, rather than sweeping mechanical updates on each release. Furthermore, the industry also feels much more "incestuous" than it used to be (for lack of a better word). Many indie games, in particular, are designed as highly derivative homages to classic, genre-defining games.
I miss beat em up games so dang much. It was what got me into gaming in the late 1980's & the lack of these games now a days, is what got me out of gaming also.
@@radicaldreamersteve5743 It's alright no worries because at that time in the 80's I attending Music school and drawing art. So I would say Nintendo and Sega get me back into gaming again
The other day, I was showing my kids some old Atari games and my older brother (born in 1971) was like "see this? This was cutting edge back then! It blew us away." 😂😂
Well said about video game magazines! I clicked on your vid randomly for something to be on the background, but I found myself watching it through all the way.
Things I miss about gaming in the 90s: being 7 or less years old. That's pretty much it, we're nostalgic of these things because they were around when we were kids that didn't know any better. In 20 years younger people will make videos about how the 2010s were the golden years of gaming
Oh, absolutely they will. I don't view this as a binary concept though. It isn't like 90s are so much better than now. There are just things I appreciate from all eras. Switch is one of my favorite consoles ever, so I am still loving the 2010s and 2020s.
Local multiplayer was way more fun, it was way more friendly. Even the trash-talk was usually done with a sense of good humour (usually). A far better thing than stranger attempting to guess your sexual preference and/or saying they had relations with your mom. 🙄
I miss discovering games in the 90s with my sister and figuring them out together. Thank you for making this video. I completely agree that the imagination factor was great
In my opinion in the 90's you had a lot of very talented Japanese developers who were at the top of their game. And video gaming was still more obscure back then. Now everyone and their mom has a wii and a switch so gaming is more casual rather than just for the hardcore players. But I think the difference is in the philosophy of what goes into making a game. Now companies just want to make big bucks, but back then it was a true art form.
Honestly I miss being able to read the latest issue of Nintendo Power and looking any upcoming games that might peak my interest or looking at gaming magazines all about cheats and secrets that could potentially be in a few games I own. I miss being able to purchase a game without the need for patches, DLC or Microtransactions knowing that I've already got a finished product in my hands that I can enjoy for years to come. I miss the personality each console brought with them at the time. Be it through the design of the console itself or through the menus and opening jingles/animations for each game on the console I'm playing. Granted I grew up in the 2000's rather than the 90's, but I'm pretty sure we can agree that both decades were immensely fun to grow up in compared to recent years. Just chilling watching TV or playing video games, enjoying some delicious snacks and beverages without a care in the world. Having a blast in arcades with all kinds of cool and fun games to play and seeing if you can beat the recent highscores left by someone else. Looking through gaming magazines to see if there's info related to any upcoming games or if a special contest was happening related to a specific game that you could potentially win. Every was just perfect. And then the double-edged sword that is the internet came along and slowly started to ruin things. Mostly with the quality of the games and the over-reliance of updates, DLC and microtransactions. Sure it was nice to get a few game-breaking bugs and glitches fixed that were missed during testing, but now it feels like *we're* the game testers rather than the consumers with how ofter a game gets released in an incomplete state and how many patches and fixes we need just to make the game more bearable.
Biggest thing I miss is the difficulty factor for games. ‘Losing’ in a game is so watered down now. Also, I notice newer generation players play with no objective. Growing up, I’d play to pass a game completely and the ones that I would have trouble with would stress me tf out lol
Ah there are a lot of video gaming things easy to miss... 1. The Nintendo vs. Sega rivalry / Mario vs. Sonic the Hedgehog - The most iconic video game rivalry of all times. 2. The amount of developed and published games on various platforms. 3. The idea of making video games based on non-movie franchises and took bets on candy, cereals, snacks, soda etc. mascots! 4. The speculations and dreams of gaming tech developments - How we could just near dream on hos games would look like, be like and how powerfull etc. 5. The Nintendo 64 vs. PlayStation vs. Sega Saturn rivalry 6. All the Disney, Looney Tunes, TMNT etc. games that came and was mostly so good from Capcom, Konami etc. 7. The Nintendo Game Boy dominance - How near all gaming kids had a Game Boy and all the games that was avaible, and how the prizes was not ruining high for them. 8. The Tetris battle of the early to middle 90's - How many publishers and developers did there best tries to make Puzzle games that could rival the OG Tetris! 9. Video Game magazines 10. The point & click game era
AAA gaming Space now is so boring too everything just Photo Realistic and want to be more like a interactive movie than a fun game or just grindlest multiplayer focused titles. If you was a Kid who was forced to go by Age ratings and all you had a PS5 youd only have like 3 games because thats all the cartoony or Platform games with a big Budget on the entire system so far.
I still think there are a lot o great AAA games, but open world games with tons of fetch quests have been done to death. I personally cannot wait for God of War Ragnarok though.
You actually pronounce SNES as "Snez"? NO! How dare you. If this were 1990s, you would get beat up on the playground. It's either Super Nintendo or SNES (pronounce each letter).
My first console was the Sega Master System, the one that came with Alex Kidd if you turned it on without cartridge. I only had 3 games, Shinobi, Mortal Kombat II and Streets of Rage. The thing I miss most about those days is the way I squeezed every game I had, all the time spent after beating it just learning hidden mechanics, bugs, glitches, exploits, the cheat codes... Nowadays I have libraries of uninstalled games that I never finished or barely played at all.
One thing that's impossible to get back to today is the HUGE graphical jumps. Yes new unreal engine is cool but compare the jumps from 8-16-32-64-128 bit consoles.
There's a real lack of a public interaction aspect of gaming that's gone. Aside from dedicated arcades or just cabinets or pinball tables out in public, there were quite the variety of demo consoles and games out in the wild in department stores, gaming stores and sometimes video stores. Not just Blockbuster, but your local ones that stocked both big name hits and the obscure films where you could try out a game or console and get a feel for it, and if not, you could rent hardware! This is such a missing part of the experience that just doesn't exist now; temporary trial with physical media before you had to commit to things. There were downsides of course, but when was the last time you had a company outside of massive electronic conventions demo their hardware or software in a public space?
This is a good point. I think society, in general, is seeing this trend, but I definitely agree that there is less social interaction with everything from seeing the games, buying the games, and even playing them in many cases. Last time I went to a convention was 2020, but I was abroad with no COVID scare.
I remember back in late 1998 maybe early 99, going to the grocery store with my mom for the specific purpose of looking for a PlayStation magazine that had the demo desk featuring Gran Turismo2!! I know I played the demo disc to death and even recorded footage on my old VCR, replays and what not that I could play back from my buddies when they came over.. Nothing compared to the amount of hype that I had up until the release of that game and I’m glad to say I still have both black label copy to GT 1 and GT 2 to this very day
#1 Mystery Without the internet we have today... and gaming not being mainstream like it is today... the secrets surrounding games sometimes could last years. How much schoolyard arguments were there around unlocking Knuckles in Sonic 3? Or playing as Zero in Megaman X? Playing as Reptile in Mortal Kombat? Now we pretty much know all of a game's secrets the day before release.
I miss the demo discs. Although it's not practical to release demo games on a bluray disc nowadays, it was pretty cool to see a bunch of small portions of games added on a physical media, whether they were playable snippets of what is to come or gameplay trailers. I miss the days when demo discs were either packed in with a full retail game or with a gaming magazine. PS1 demo discs were cool due to the slick main menu FMV screen and 90's trance music.
2:29 well there aren't any Triple A titles there are plenty of Indie Platformers cuphead, Spelunky, Shovel Knight, Super Meat Boy etc. All came out with at least within the last 10 years. I love them because I have a potato and I can still actually play these games
YES to all of these things lol I remember having a Gameshark but not knowing how to make it work LOL The Action replay though, definitely took advantage of that when it came out.
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
1. I miss when games were complete at launch
2. I miss when there were no micotransaction
3. I miss when we could insert the disc/cartridge without having to install/download/update before you can actually play it!!!
Good points! Microtransactions definitely suck. I should have added beautiful game manuals as well!
@@radicaldreamersteve5743 Some of the best art in those manuals.
Not only that, DLC was heavily underutilized in the Dreamcast era. We got a good share of unlockables and DLC on the first Xbox and seventh-generation consoles, but DLC replaced unlockables in the PS4 era for the most part. I wished DLC went back to Dreamcast levels where it's simply a novelty or nonexistent.
I Totaly agree. And I would add
4: I miss when videogames didn't have operating systems. You just pressed the power button to play, then you pressed it to turn it of. No waiting for the system to start or stop. No worrying about corrupting data or system updates.
I clicked on this video to say this. I miss when we got 100% of the game on launch and I didn't have to wait a year and spend more money just to feel like I have the entire game. I miss when easter eggs and alternate costumes were stuff you unlocked playing the game not DLC
I think I speak for everyone when I say that the thing most people miss from this era of gaming: UNLOCKABLE content as opposed to PURCHASABLE content.
I appreciate having the option. In singleplayer games.
But there is something cool about exclusively unlockable visual upgrades in multi-player games (00's more I guess) like Halos ninja armour.
God...people nowadays won't even know what that's like.
Earning new characters in a fighting game...unlocking cheat code modes...unlocking new levels (everything is a damn open world now full of filler garbage)
Even movie cash ins back then did more then now. Matrix path of neo had like 600 unlockable combat moves. Games like Tony Hawk you had to do a certain number of objectives to unlock the next area to skate at.
Also can't forget cosmetics which used to be so fun and actually felt valuable...oddly trying to charge for them does the opposite. Just makes you learn to go without.
I miss the blood and edginess. Twisted Metal and POed etc. Metal music in games. Spikes. Fire. Chains.
Pay to win pay to play pay to play with. Now people even charge money to play the game for you lmao some carry stuff it’s crazy these days.
WOW FACT$
I miss having fewer games to play, which might sound paradoxical. But when I could only get one new game at a time, the anticipation leading up to getting that game for my birthday or Christmas was huge. That game became all I could think about, and I would pour all of my effort over several weeks or even months into mastering it.
Nowadays, as an adult, I can afford to buy games all the time, and online game shops making buying batches of games so seamless that getting a new game isn't a big deal anymore. I find that I usually play a game for an hour or two and then--unless it really hooks me like BotW or something--never play it again. Sometimes, less is more.
100%, this is especially the case on steam
I was talking about this with a couple of friends few years ago. It is incredible how we buy games just to "own" them or support devs but not for playing them. Even when I have an absurd list in steam of ganes that will not gonna play, I sometimes end my day playing with my daughter older games like super Mario world, and I spent a lot of weeks with the same with her because I know she won't appreciate them as I did if I change games every day. And she ask for playing smw with me.
It wasn't just anticipation that kept me glued to a new game. It was a lack of alternatives... and the crazy, outdated idea that I wasn't supposed to have alternatives. I was *supposed* to get something and be grateful for it. Even if I didn't enjoy it at first, or if it didn't meet my expectations. These things sometimes took time.
Today, I have infinite alternatives and my norms have been whittled away. So I rarely spend a lot of time on any one game, and rarely fall in love with games.
Yes dude, and because we were only able to get 1-2 games at a time you were forced to play the sh*t out of it! Like you said, as an adult I buy a games and if a game sucks I shelf it and dont ever beat it
I definitely think this (and just being an adult) has sucked some fun out of gaming, even if this is a better system overall.
I find myself with just a bloat of games I'll never play or scrolling through steam just to buy some game that may catch my interest. But then I check reviews and videos and can be convinced out of a purchase.
But back in the day I ended up loving games that were bad bc that's all I had to play and you put up with the jank bc you're not getting anything else.
You got it based on the name, box art, a friend telling you about it, etc. I didn't even know game reviews existed.
It's funny to come across videos or discussions on games that are considered "terrible" that I loved and played the hell out of as a kid bc a game was a game.
But now it's the burden of choice. When you can have everything you want anytime it loses value. Though in reverse it has allowed me to experience so many great games I never would have in the old system.
The SNES and first PlayStation era are filled with my most precious gaming memories ever.. the golden age for me.
I'm from the era of Atari 2600 and can agree with you.
I would say ps1/N64
I think PS2 was still the golden age for me, but my love of gaming did start far earlier. I loved the 8 bit systems like MS and NES, and I loved the Gameboy.
NES was GOLDEN, but SNES to PSX (we didn't say PS1) were pretty good times too.
I still remember getting Final Fantasy III for Christmas and going upstairs to play it... Man it was hard to go down for dinner that Christmas. What an opening to a game at the time...
Same here I miss those days going from 2d to 3d and all the experimental mechanics. Everything felt fresh and next gen. The only thing fresh and next gen for the last 15 20 years has been what HD resolution ?🤦♂️ ps5? Nah its just a ps3 3.0 and the ps4 was the 2.0
I miss this era of gaming. So many classics from then.
Diddy Kong Racing & Mario Kart 64 ☺!
smac
Yup, I was shocked that the video didn't have any of those games that are really legends of the entire industry. No Half-Life, no Warcraft/Starcraft, no Civilization, no Fallout 1-2, no X-Wing/Tie Fighter, no Baldur's Gate or Planescape Torment, no Steel Panthers, no Commandos, no Settlers, no Descent:Freespace, no Cannon Fodder, no Mortal Kombat... this list could go on forever.
The 90's is an intriguing decade not only for gaming, but for anything, really. It's the last decade of the millenium, the last decade for a generation before the internet became a thing, which can be seen as something good or not, depending on your point of view. Music, movies, cartoons, TV series, gaming and other aspects of life were diverse and experimented in many new ways. The 90's were a sort of amalgamation from the 60's, 70's and the 80's in a way that it mixed vintage with the new, we felt linked to older times, while still enjoying what was current and fresh. Technologically, you start the decade with spartan computers and at the tail end, you have really advanced hardware acceleration and very fast CPUs, individuals were more unique and diverse and creative in ways unthinkable by today's standards, that's why we look back wondering how all that happened in a short time span.
By the turn of the century/millenium, we had said goodbye to something so unique and we didn't notice that, and probably won't. Even our behavior and social interaction was so different it's amazing to compare with nowadays.
I hope people realize that even tablets with touch screens, LCDs, Plasma/slim TVs already existed before the 00's, many of these featured in TV programs such as The Computer Chronicles, so there was no real innovation in that front, what we have now is but a mass market availability of the same ideas, with better technology, but nothing really new. I'm not dumping any generation or specific timeframe here, I'm only pointing out what was there.
Hate to break it to you, but we had the internet in the early 90's. I had a 486 in 1993 with a 14.4 modem. By the end of the decade we had 28.8 then 56k. Ultima Online and Everquest were huge in the late 90's. Before that we were dialing into bulletin boards in the mid 80's and sharing programs/games. The 90's weren't as primitive as you think. You think your profound, but you sound like someone who wasn't alive at that time.
No, you misunderstand the context. Yes there was internet even before the 90's and 80's. But the internet was a tiny fraction for enthusiasts, that could afford a PC and the service, while 99% of the world didn't even care about computers, "before the internet became a thing" means that today it is almost as available as air itself, is this a good thing? I don't know, I'm sure each person has their own opinions about that.
Gaming online on a PC in the late 90's had a few requirements, you had to be in a certain age, live where you could afford the equipment and service and be interested in this tiny niche. One may say it was "HUUUGE", but no, it was just a niche. The rest of the world was still living like before as the computer/digital crazy never happened. I was there. I had a few high school friends glued to their PCs, chatting girls online, while older folk and other kids didn't have access or even cared for that.
The 90's primitive, where does that come from, not from me. Take a 1990 IBM PC, that was totally spartan compared to what was available in 1999, primitive? No, spartan in comparison? Yes. There's almost nothing from the 90's around today, no CDs, no CRTs, no telephones, cars, analog signals, behaviors, clothing styles, music, it's all a thing that is only still cherished from who was alive back then, and like any other era, it will go away as we go.
But as I said, the 90's is unique, it was so experimental and edgy, nothing like that happened since, in many areas, like my original comment states.
Primitive is how you interpreted it, as our time today will totally seem primitive in many aspects in the not-so-distant future, specially our mindsets.
Man, the 90s were amazing. Your post made me nostalgic.
A lot of us "nerds" we're online gaming in the mid 90s with games like Duke Nukem 3D and Diablo using dial up. It was a pain in the ass, but you felt like a tech genius at the time..
Regards what you said about the mass marketed improved technology, but not necessarily new, makes me think about how a 60 inch Flat-screen when I was a kid was $3-6000CAD. But now I can get one for $500-$1800.
I miss the old game manuals with artwork and additional information about characters and the game world.
Loved manuals id always get a little hyped up just reading them on way home
I would take them to school to read between class and show off to my friends.
@@GojoStiglitz i remember the Ratchet & Clank ones and the Lord of The Ring games for the PS2.
Full of information about the game itself and the worlds
@@jpwaitforit5801The Diablo 2 and Wolfenstein 3D manuals were incredible.
That just sent me back in time, thank you.
I think you hit the nail in the head when you talked about "charm". It was a time where all companies were experimenting with different formulas to see what would work. There were a lot of hits and missed but you could appreciate the effort and the willingness to try something new. Modern gaming has become extremely formulaic and standardized.
I completely agree. That uniqueness that came from small teams of creative people working within a space that didn't really have any rules, best-practices, or guardrails; it's the main reason I loved gaming in the 90's. It's very sorely missing these days.
Honestly the only part of gaming that in any way resembles that aspect of 90's games in the modern era is VR. It's starting to become standardized, but in many ways it is still a wild west of experimentation, mostly driven by small indie developers. Just like tech in the 90's the rules for how to make the "best" game in VR are still being figured out, so a lot of titles are flawed but unique and interesting.
Of course it isn't free of all of the bad aspects of modern gaming (there's still an abundance of bugs and games requiring patches and updates, etc.), but if you want to get into a subset of games that aren't nearly as formulaic (yet), you might want to check VR out. I'd almost entirely lost interest videogames before I tried VR.
I miss being young enough to have a second chance at some things in life. One thing I will forever be grateful for (game-wise) is ALWAYS appreciating how far graphics have come.
You guys remember when we all speculated when our games would look like the FMVs? MEMBER?
Man, the water in Super Mario Sunshine STILL mesmerizes me to this day.
For me it was the translucent water in the first Tomb Raider game. That blew my mind at that time.
Yeah, and now that they do I don't feel all that much about it... I think longing for something bigger and better was half the fun. Now they can just do everything so it's kind of boring.
Same for movies. Late 80s is great. The technology was getting pretty advanced but it took a ton of innovation and imagination to get results on the screen. Now they just order a monster from the 8000 cgi people and call it a day.
That takes plenty of skill and effort too, but there's no sense of wonder about it.
Agree 100%. I can still marvel at Panzer Dragoon because I remember Night Trap being cutting edge.
I miss the packaging of the games as well. The different box types, different sized manuals with cool animation in some of them. And also sometimes some extras like a map poster thrown in. Ya the 90's were the best times for gaming for sure.
Having things besides just the game in the box was nice.
Na you get a lot more now
They had that up until recently. Rdr2 came with some stuff. It’s what I miss about music. The album cover front and back and the insides was part of the experience
The thing I miss the most about the 90s gaming:
When you bought a game, chances were that you got the complete full version of the game with not as many bugs and glitches as we see today-
No micro transactions, no waiting two hours for it to install plus patching update.. you bought a game, you got the game that you bought and went home and played it!
That's what gaming back then was all about! Completed games with no content locked behind a freakin' paywall, and if you had to unlock something, (a infinite weapon or an extra outfit) you just beat the game on a certain difficulty to obtain it for instance. Sadly, it's not the state of things with a lot of games that get released these days, and all I want is to play a good and completed game without the micro transaction and loot boxes BS!
I've never bought a game with major glitches or bugs.
You have to remember these games were much smaller scaled back then. If you were good at a game, you could beat it under 2 hours. And 80s games were an hour or less. That and the technical limitations, made it much easier to release a full product at launch.
It's also why a lot of games were difficult, to give you the impression they were longer than they really were.
Due to all that, I consider the early 2000s better (PS2, Gamecube), they "fixed" that problem, smoothed out 3D gameplay mechanics and were the final the years before updates, installs and DLCs. Games would normally last 6 to 10 hours instead without the repetition of constantly dying to nonsense.
@@Manic_Panic I’m 37 years of age and I agree with everything you said
@@Manic_Panic You have to remember larger games are not always better...
I was growing up in the 90's and there will never be such a revolution and progress in gaming like that decade ever again. What a time to be alive!
Kinda spoiled us for the shit show that came after lol
We will never experience a graphical leap like we had in the 90s. We started the 90s with 16 bit platformers and ended the decade with Dreamcast games. Compare screenshots from Sonic 1 to Sonic adventures on the Dreamcast. It's crazy how quickly things improved
In the 90's where the internet wasn't so prevalent, life itself was like a good rpg, you'd buy a sweet game like ff7 or metal gear, maybe resident evil or gta, then have weeks of rumors regarding secrets and what ifs, myths and other interesting things. A vibe that todays technology has erased
It's not just nostalgia. It was peak video gaming as a whole and simpler times.
No to mention, there were no game patches. Developers actually had to make sure the product was as good as they could get it. Now they just push it out because they can always patch it later.
You’re simpler times…
They literally can't comprehend it. Nostalgia is a factor, but they just can't imagine a time before the internet. They can't imagine a life that isn't completely dictated by their phones.
It's the way everything was constantly improving, and those that weren't cutting edge, were just vibing.
This era gave me so much hope for the future of gaming!
But then for some reason, everything got homogenized. Most games, even from different franchises, have similar menu's. Games of different genres have similar controls. Etc.
That said, we're starting to fall into a similar era now.
There's a lot of random quirky unique games coming out now.
And I bet in the next 5 or so years we'll be in another gaming heyday.
Golden era of many of today’s venerable IPs. 🔥
I feel like it is unfathomable to comprehend how exciting of an era the 90s were for gaming. You had peak 2D gaming and the advent of 3D gaming. Even though a lot of those early 3D titles might not hold up today, they were the standard so you're expectations were naturally tailored to the quirks and whatnot. And with the lack of the internet and access of information, everything felt like an uncharted mysterious adventure and seeing a screenshot in a magazine had that lingering thought in your head of "you think this is exciting? Wait until you see it in action!"
I so miss the hardware differences. Made it more exicting to collect systems and their games. So glad to live through the golden days and the absolute 1st when games started to truly shine.
*their games
I hope that next generation there is some hardware differences between the 3 consoles(and that Nintendo is on par).
It was cool seeing how the same game would look different on another console.
Little things like how it renders certain colors or textures. Or how cuz of needing to be coded for individually, we'd sometimes get special or different content.
I miss that fact that you could buy multi disc game and you and your sibling could both play at the same time. One moving on to disc two meant the other could start on disc one. So many Psx rpgs were played this way.
You had multiple psx consoles then?
Ever link them up? I don't know anyone that played a link cable playstation game. If I had more than one I guess I'd give it a shot though.
@@anonamatron I actually did... Me and my best friend at the time played with 2 linked PS1s, games like Duke Nukem 3D, Command and Conquer Red Alert, Doom, Twisted Metal (yea some of these could be played on split screen), Need for Speed, and some others I can't remember lol (being a damn old geezer is hard for the head :S ). Then we moved to PC LANs at the time Age of Empires 2 came out and never looked back... Best of times the damn 90s.
Turning on the PS1 was feeling like a ceremony every time. The Sony and Playstation intros made you feel like you were entering a portal to another dimension (that's how I felt at 9 years old anyway). Now, the home page just kinda exists.
I was so excited hearing the PlayStation boot up. I don't get that from modern consoles...I get nervous if I'm hearing strange noises from them...
I used CRT monitors/tvs for so long, i remember how surreal it felt when i finally had a device that fit in my hand, that could play video and games. Which also wasn't packing 50lbs of batteries. Kids now are spoiled. I swear, something is lost when you don't witness the evolution. Like we notice how fake "cgi" looks in movies now, compared to practical effects we saw less and less by the end of the 90s.
@@derealized797 those CGI that look so fake and bad now back then looked realistic
I still remember playing my brand new PS1 for the first time and being blown away by the graphics and storylines
It truly felt like witnessing a revolution in technology
For me the thing i most miss about the golden age are cheat codes, unlockables that could be earned by just playing the game and finished games.
Me too. So fun to explore maps and levels in games when one had real cheat codes. Like exploring places in the maps of Duke Nukem 3d and Quake using god mode. I hate that Microsoft killed off the cheat codes when they started with the whole achievement thing on the xbox 360. I could not care less about achievements in games. Cheat codes however allowed the players to do some really fun things in games.
Ps1/ps2 was a magical time man. That ranged from me being 11-20. The feeling I actually kinda miss which is weird is the feeling of having limited funds and each game being a significant event. Birthdays, Christmas, saving up. You had to physically go buy the game. No digital market. You would anticipate, read reviews and previews. Getting a new game just had so much more significance.
it was such a good time, people could make their dream game before all games had to be safe due to massive budgets and whatnot, i really like the pc space during this era too, so many classic adventure games from silly kings quest to harvester style horror, it was such a interesting and creative time ( i am glad im in the future tho and have many options when it comes to getting and running all these old abandoned games)
Damn you make a good point that PC games at the time also had their unique classics. I absolutely love Kings Quest 5 & 6, Starcraft, Diablo, Prince of Persia, the point and click games in Myst style, all the MECC games. DOSbox & Scummvm are good emulators but I wish Mac emulation was better because alot of mac versions are crisper
Yeah definitely much more of a wild west of devs being able to just have fun.
Gaming from the 90's to about 2013 is the golden era for me.
It's crazy that gamers changed so much that we can't have cool games any more.
Gamers changed? Gamers changed?
It wasn't the gamers who changed, we're pretty much the same, what changed was that the bullies and troglodytes realized they could infiltrate our circles in order to take over what we love, only to smash it into the ground until all that's left is broken dreams and ashes in our mouths.
@J.M. Obyx No you seem to be alluding to some marketing talk that being a gamer is an exclusive club. I'm more on about the fact that gamers wouldn't buy these types of games any more and certainly not in any significant numbers.
@@RoleyVideos try saying that gaming "journalists" aren't pure cancer or anti-gamer with a straight face.
@J.M. Obyx No such thing as gaming journalists, just political activists in the wrong job.
@@RoleyVideos political activists deserve to go extinct.
What I miss the most is the vibes games had back then, it's kinda hard to explain, just look at at games now and then y'know
Exact.
What's wrong can't have too much power or you won't imaginationate to snappy and on the nose for your brain?
Even modern remakes have a different vibe than games of the 90s
Right? Like, I can't explain to a younger person how strong the vibes were. Truly a case of "you had to be there".
@@TheHumanPurpleTape Pue facts. They cannot get it.
I miss the wild experimentation from developers. You had absolutely no idea what they were going to try next, because everything was uncharted territory. Sometimes it was awful, sometimes is was great, but it was always exciting!
The great thing about 90s gaming is you can experience almost all of it still, almost none of it was online or required patching.
Part of me actually misses having a limited amount of games. Back in the 90s and 20s my family was quite poor, so I only got to rent games occasionally for the most part. Since I only had one or two games at a time I always finished them generally.
Now there are so many games I have access too it's hard to focus on getting though one!
Yah, the limitation can bring a lot of appreciation. I definitely agree with the overload on modern hardware.
Well another problem is there is so much shovelware cluttering the market now that it blends in with everything else. You cant tell if you're looking at an indie or garbage.
Back then everything was so simple and so under the radar in the way you had to find games. A massive hit could be in stores and you wouldn't even know until a kid showed up with it or you finally got a chance to browse the electronics section when you got stuck at a grocery store
I'm in my late 30's and bought some old 90's gamepro magz I used to own as a teenager. That nostalgic feeling still hits hard of reading them and seeing the games from back then. We saw the 90's and 2000's game eras there's nothing like that transition from 2d to 3d nowadays.
I recently went through storage and found a box of old Nintendo power magazines, PSM, game informer, electronic gaming monthly...and you're right, the nostalgia hits hard! I probably spent hours going through each one of them and it made me feel like I was back in my old bedroom again up late on a Saturday night reading the articles under a desk lamp.
The nostalgia feeling is super comforting but also it can lead to severe depression if you let it.
Here's another 5 for ya:
11. Demos/demo discs! There's still a lot of games from back in the day I never actually played the full version of, but damn if I didn't enjoy their demos.
12. No day 1 patches. Publishers couldn't force developers to rush games out the door and then patch them later, so most games were nice and functional from the get go, unless they were just bad.
13. No forced politics and virtue signaling. Pretty self-explanatory!
14. Suspension of disbelief! Back then we never looked at the obviously inaccessible backgrounds and saw them for what they were; we dreamed of finding some way to go over there, who knows what adventures could await!
15. Rumors that you couldn't immediately debunk with a Google search. I loved talking about crazy secrets and mysteries that other kids had found in their game, and trying to find them myself. It was part of the fun! Remember Akuma in Resident Evil 2? Man. Those were the days.
Google is the devil, those searches today are carefully orchestrated to suit corporate interests. Actual truth on many topics today is scrubbed and impossible to find unless you know the exactly what your looking for.
Rumors yes. The "nude code", that did not exist, for the first Tomb Raider game. And I still remember one class mate tricking me i to believing that the full Doom game came on 30 or 40 something floppy disks rather than the significantly fewer disks it actually came on.
@@malelonewolf80 30 or 40 floppies? That's hilarious! I can see how you would believe that though. The shareware era was full of mystery!
Can't believe you didn't mention the arcade. Early to mid-90s was the peak of arcade greatness. That feeling of walking in and having no idea what to expect. I achieved euphoria when I first saw the X-Men Arcade game. 6 Freakin players! Never knew it existed until they moment!
And yes, magazines were awesome. Just like arcades, you had no idea what to expect until you opened the pages.
Another thing I missed were all the school yard rumors that spread like wildfire. So many lies and BS stories 😂 some kid claimed that you could play as Raiden in MK3 while another one swore to God that Shen Long was playable in Street Fighter 2. Such great times.
LOL, oh yeah, the rumors were wild. I grew up more with consoles. I was a bit too young for the Street Fighter 2 arcade craze, though I've played the game a bunch. Maybe it was my area, but arcades were not common in Maine.
@@radicaldreamersteve5743 ah I see. I grew up in So Cal so we had arcades all over. The Galleria Mall in Sherman Oaks, seen in Terminator 2, had a huge arcade! I was about 7 years old when I went. Such good times.
Arcade was my jam I was really good at them too
@@haunterdragon4580 I used to think I was good but when I got older I realized I wasn't 😂
I remember the Sheng Long rumors! Some would say that they were an unlockable character in the original SF2, and others would say that he'll be there in the next released version. Good times!
Man you're so right! It's sad to admit that I'm constantly nostalgic thinking about the 90's
A couple things for me are
1. Genre experimentation: Combining both company and developer competition, hardware improvements, and unexplored territory made grounds for genre booms in the gaming industry. Things like first-person shooters, stealth action, pod/futuristic racing, point-n-click adventure, and so on.
2. Lighting in 3d games: This can also be said about early 2000s games but I always preferred the absence of bloom and sheen. Plus it was just something about their hardware limitations that made dark areas like space in Star Fox 64 and Tie Fighters, or night time/dark areas in Silent Hill and Legend of Zelda: OoT/MM have a more natural feel.
I wasn't even alive in the 90s and yet I still also miss the way gaming was in the 90s. The part about Konami definitely makes me sad since Metal Gear Solid is one of my favorite franchises of all time. It really sucks what Konami and many other gaming companies have become
As someone who lives in Las Vegas and grew up in the 90s, seeing the Konami trucks hurt my soul. They're here to service the slot machines
im 38 and i miss those old days,the world was just simple and people was just more together idk
Even going back to play some older games first time today, the energy and vibe is one i prefer compared to a lot of newer ones. Pretty much everything I've played for the first time in 2022 so far is either from the 90s or 00's and I've enjoyed every bit of it.
Feels like the older games respect your intelligence more. They’re not afraid that the player will get lost or punished for playing bad.
I miss the most important thing: having fun! Most of the games nowadays aren't worth playing.
I miss buying a full game at launch. No updates and no dlc. It truly was a golden era 😞
Games from the 90's/early 00's were just so fun. Not to say that games nowadays aren't fun at all, but back then, fun and innovation were the top priorities, and so many classics came from that era. Nowadays, it seems the only priorities are creating the biggest open world of all time, microtransactions, and releasing half-finished games. Maybe I sound old, but that's how it seems to me.
The simplicity and immediacy of control in 2D games is what I really enjoyed.
Great video!
Shoot for 60 fps with your game captures.
Arcades, gaming magazines, or comics in every store. When you're a kid and shopping for dinner with your mom was always a two hour trip to Wal-Mart it was nice to read something or spend a few dollars on an arcade and not feel bored while she stopped to talk to everyone she met. 😩
Wow, this video is like perfection - and I love that you included a lot of Sega Saturn stuff as well in it. The 16 to 64 bit era is truly special, where a lot of game, gameplay and technoligy concepts were tried out in the transition from 2D to 3D.
What I miss from the 90s:
1.) Warioland - a very good plattformer series, which was often overlooked, because most of them were only on handheld. But the developers made the most of it and came up with ideas I haven't even seen in other big console plattformers - for example invincibility for the entire game.
2.) 90s anime style in those JRPGs - I feel very nostalgic for games like Panzer Dragoon Saga, Breath of Fire, Xenogears, FF IX, etc... those games display for me more seriousness than whatever comes up today - and I know these are just rose-tinted glasses I'm watching through, because I was simply a kid myself back then. But a Vakyrie Elysium or a Diofield Chronicles do not really do it for me, which is probably the reason why I completely fell off JRPGs and only play games like Dark Souls nowadays.
3.) Seperation - this is a bit tricky to explain, because I mean two different things, but both play into that point.
First in terms of genre: a lot of games of today cover a wide range of genres - an open world RPG 3rd person shooter with loot, survival, crafting and stealth mechanics squeezed into a service game model is an ubisoftian nightmare, which leaves everyone questioning wtf someone is even playing right now. Back then it was a plattformer OR a shoot'm'up OR a fighting game OR a racing game. The games simply had focus.
And thene also in terms of world building/level design: with the tendency to open worlds today you often find those unrealistic constellations to have a forrest, a desert, a snowy and a lava area not too far apart within an area smaller than every medium sized city. In old games you choosed a level, which was themed, and nowhere was claimed it must have a direct connection to the stage before or afterwards - there is simply travel distance inbetween, which we filled up with our imagination. A good example from today would be the new Hitman trilogy. Every location is distinctively different to another.
4.) Obvious one: games came to market in a finished and feature complete state.
Ff9.came in 2000
Arcades in the 90's was amazing...I remember seeing the TMNT arcade game omg was amazed and then TMNT in time but nothing was more hype than playing MK in the arcade.
Omg getting a gaming mag was so exciting! My mind was blow so many times while getting them. I still remember a tree at my middle school being the place a buddy showed me Nintendo power and the seeing super Mario bros 2 for the 1st time during recess.. the tree still stands and everytime I drive by it I think about that day 35+ years later..
I miss being able to have discussions about the 'graphics' of a 2d game.
I mean, you still can now obviously - but back then we were blown away by a 2d game that looked good. Not many people are doing that anymore.
Final Fantasy VIII came out the day Dreamcast launched 9.9.99 and man dreamcast made the best PS1 games look ancient lol. Dreamcast with 60fps and just gorgeous graphics, I think the dual thumbsticks really kept them down. FFVIII was my favorite! Didn't get the dreamcast til August 2000
Top, top video. Grew up gaming in 80s and 90s. The gaming culture was so cool back then.
Definitely the 90s were the last of the purist consoles with the Dreamcast as the final beautiful swan song delivering a farewell to a now bygone era.
1. Complete games
2. More games with full couch co op
3. No microtransactions
4. No online multiplayer copout
5. Games were still a newer concept, so different types of games and technological innovations stood out more, now games mostly feel the same
6. More truly great games...games that defined eras and consoles and publishers...games today are rarely great.
7. More appreciative gamers.... For example just look at how kids today are complaining about Pokemon Scarlet/Violet. Where as when I was a kid the best we had was Yellow 😂 and loved it
Man your channel and videos are great. Great audio, great visuals, great intro animation. You should be over 1000 subs for sure. I enjoyed this video.
Glad to hear it, and thanks for the encouragement. I probably don't upload often enough, and I am still trying to improve. Anyway, for me, it is the interactions and creating something that brings meaning to others that makes it worth it. Cheers!
@@radicaldreamersteve5743 wow I knew it was just a matter of time before your channel would start taking off. I think when I left my first comment you weren’t at 100 subs
@@maxstone9999 thanks for the comment! Yeah, it was really just one video that absolutely exploded. I am definitely gonna be very devoted to quality over quantity in 2023, algorithms be damned!
Back then, even installing C&C95, Red Alert 1 & 2 have their own specialized immersive installers. Those are beautiful to watch.
This is probably the coldest and most basic thing in the book but more than anything I miss the era of rumours going around on the playground or the internet. As a 2003 kid I was already born into the internet era but not to the point where we had all the necessary facts to prove what other people on there said, and that made hunting around for what's real and what's not a memorable experience, and was a huge motivation for 100%ing a lot of games.
And like another comment here said, it is fun not knowing entirely what your game contains. Running around for years looking for some big secret to be underneath out noses the entire time that we weren't fully aware of definitely added to the mystery, and seeing so many old secrets only being revealed in recent years validates our curiosity all the more.
Spyro the Dragon, Castlevania Symphony of the Night, Luigi's Mansion all three of my favorite games from my two favorite eras of gaming.
Not being able to get anything instantly, made things more special, especially when you were a kid. Everything you state in the video is true and even gets boosted for those who happend to grow up in the 90s. It was a magical time for children in westernized industrial countries.
My absolute favorite was the instruction manuals! Thick books with maps, an item key, area for notes, and usually the story background. Always had great art too!
I miss renting games, and the time my local video store stopped renting SNES and Genesis in order to focus on PS1/N64 titles, so they all went on sale for a few bucks a piece.
I’m more of a 2010 era gamer but one thing I love about 90’s games is the story. Games like Pokémon RBY, FF7, Ocarina of Time, any other Square RPG, etc. have genuinely exciting and adventurous stories along with their beautifully orchestrated songs to boot. Most of them were just coming of age stories but they capture a feeling that’s hard to replicate nowadays
There's an overload of content right now. I enjoyed gaming more when we had less options to choose from. It made each new experience fresh & rewarding. The replay value was so high in the 90's. In contrast, I sometimes don't even finish a game today.
The thing I miss from this decade the most is Rareware. Banjo-Kazooie, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, (Yes I know it came out in 2001 *shhhh)* Killer Instinct, Perfect Dark, Battletoads, etc. etc., all of those franchises are dead now, and the few times they came back were butchered 90% if the time. (I say 90% because the 2013 Killer Instinct was alright) Microsoft only uses that brand for tech demos now and nothing else. I wouldn’t even be mad if they just sold off all of those properties to a different company while keeping the Rare name, I just want to see stuff like Banjo and Conker come back in proper fashion. The worst part about all of this is that Microsoft more recently bought up Bethesda with the likes of Doom and Activision with the likes of Crash and Spyro, so unless they’re extremely lucky I fear that they might get shafted in general soon as well. (I can see Doom doing fine, but Crash and Spyro? Not so much. They’re honestly lucky they even had the games that they did before the buyout at this point to be honest) Really the only thing Microsoft ever cared about was Halo and Minecraft. And let’s be real, we all know the *real* truth of why Microsoft got these companies: They foolishly thought they scored big by getting Donkey Kong with Rare, they got Bethesda Elder Scrolls, they got Activision for stuff like Call of Duty and their microtransactions. This is why putting all the eggs in one basket before sending them off to a storage place full of them is always a bad idea. And these are all examples for just *one* mega corporation like Microsoft…
We went from having an energetic and fun video game consoles to a lifeless and robotic mini-computers that stream video games
Awesome list. I agree with every entry. The 90s gaming scene was filled with magic. Where's the magic these days? It is still there? I can't feel it anymore. Is it just me? Great video. Thanks.
Ye
Love this, your last point about magazines is spot on. I actually still have at least 150 or more old gaming mags boxed away but they are not all in great condition. Still the nostalgia is strong. I remember seeing the gamecube for first time in a mag and I was rediculously excited.
Yeah, 90s is a slow pace era of gaming so it is exciting to see new stuff. But now we see games being announced or release early in mostly in beta or even in alpha state and the risk is too high for today.
You hit the nail on the head, excellent video!!!
Back then, there weren't so many gamers complaining so much for every little thing. Some, but not as much as today.
U enjoyed the game for what it is, not for it's fps & constant comparisons
I miss the rental gamble at Blockbuster - you'd rent something and have no idea if it was good or not and sometimes you got a dud but sometimes you got a gem
Haha yeah, much less risky than dropping the cash on a new game
@@radicaldreamersteve5743 what made it so much of a gamble was that if it was crap, that was your game for the whole weekend lol unlike with Gamepass and things like that
Hello! I see the effort and know as a smaller UA-camr you are reading this. Great video, awesome effort and I also miss the 90s. Subscribed and good luck! I will keep an eye out for your next video.
Thanks for the kind words! Let me check out your channel, and here is to a possible future collab!
@@radicaldreamersteve5743 Haha I am all about CO OP and Retro ;) Had some live 4 way Head to Head battles even
I miss how simple , aproachable and straightforward games were
Great video bro. Lately I've been regressing and going back to my ps1, dreamcast, genesis, etc. Gaming nowadays feels so bloated and saturated. Miss the days when that new game wasn't every other week
I tend to be more nostalgic for the 2000s, but I did play a good bit of games from the 90s as well. I think what I miss about both, is that there was still a sense of wonder, and experimentation during these times. Sure, the internet was becoming more common during the 2000s, but it was still in its infancy. So, not everything was quite available yet.
There's also the fact that every game was complete, and wasn't bogged down with updates and dlc. Even if the game wasn't good sometimes, it was still a complete experience.
I miss when you knew absolutely nothing about the game at launch and seeing all the cool new things you had to discover! Nowadays, when a new game comes out, theres a billion videos of 100% walkthroughs, playthroughs, and everything else all over the place on the day of launch. I guess you could say I also miss the days when playing brand new games was about kicking back and having fun, not making money and being popular.
It can be both
Dude, the Saturn was the BOMB!!! Great for importing fighters.
I totally agree with your take on the Final Fantasy series. I grew up with these games and absolutely loved them. Unfortunately I lost interest after 10 and absolutely hate the direction that Square has taken the series ever since. The only thing they care about is graphics rather than making a good game. Hopefully things will turn around eventually, but I doubt it.
No they wanna rip off dmc
If you have nothing against MMOs, try 14
I know a kid with final fanatasy 5 through 10, I barrowed 10 because I had the right things for it.
1. I miss games being released in a proper playable state, no day 1 patches, no day 400 patches, no (paid) dlc with content that should have been in the game by default. Back in the day, getting a patch was difficult, so developers - if they were self-respecting, and if they respected their clientele - released games in almost perfect state; patches were rare.
2. I miss plug 'n' play. Nowadays you have to sit through 40 seconds of developer, publisher, and other logos (sometimes entirely unskippable), then wait another minute for the game itself to start once you hit new game or load game, then sit through ten minutes of cutscenes that bombard you with exposition. This shit's everywhere now, even in fighters and racers (looking at you Mortal Kombat and Need for Speed!) - before and after every match you have to sit through a short cutscene with the characters exchanging "pleasantries". And then there are games that have a cutscene or dialogue after every gods-damned event, and everything is scripted to kingdom come. Are we even playing the games anymore?
3. I miss when games didn't weigh 10+ GB because of overblown graphics. Sure, a game has to look appealing if the player is to be immersed and spend numerous hours playing it, but do we really need photo-realistic graphics? Look at games like Mount and Blade Warband, or Minecraft, or Project Zomboid? Primitive (by today's standards) graphics, but very popular, because the gameplay is actually fun.
4. I miss system limitations, when developers had to be creative if they wanted their game to be fun and have a lot of cool features. Nowadays, when the sky is pretty much the limit, games look so good, but are shallow as a puddle. All style, no substance, and everyone is content to have it that way, including most players.
5. I miss custom game engines. Nowadays so many games are released on Unreal and Unity, it's not even funny anymore. Sure, on the one hand it's useful for modding and stuff, but on the other hand, when all your games are interchangeable, what's the point of buying a new game? And it's ironic, because back in the day the number of people who knew tech stuff was far more limited than it is now, yet the degree of innovation in the gaming industry has dropped.
6. I miss split-screen mode. This is particularly painful in the case of consoles. Back in the day, you could get a small party around a single console, taking turns playing against each other. Nowadays consoles come with a single controller and an internet connection. Sure, why have multiple controllers when you can play online, but what if your internet is down, or what if you just wanna play with your sibling or friend and have only one console?
7. I miss when singleplayer games didn't require you to be always online. I get it, it's a way to make sure the game can't be pirated, and it's supposedly convenient for players to save their progress into a cloud, but as it's been shown time and again (especially with dedicated multiplayer games), when the server is down\ dead, there's no way to continue playing, so what the player supposed to do then? This kind of approach not only criminalizes players, but it also screws them over once the company decides to pull the plug or goes bankrupt.
Fun list! I definitely do not miss bad early 3D graphics, haha. If I had to pick my favorite thing from 90s gaming, it would be "innovation". Back then, the major genres of video games were yet to be fully established, and each major hit was often a genre-defining revelation bringing completely new ideas to the table. In the 90s, you really felt like each game you played could be an entirely new experience, and often it was. Nowadays, I feel like the most popular game genres have largely been codified. Big budget games conform to the conventions of the established genres and it's only rarely that a tiny indy developer will decide to go outside the lines. The development of the major genres feels more iterative, with small, incremental advances to graphics, UI design, or animation, rather than sweeping mechanical updates on each release. Furthermore, the industry also feels much more "incestuous" than it used to be (for lack of a better word). Many indie games, in particular, are designed as highly derivative homages to classic, genre-defining games.
They hadn’t “figured things out” so they had to try new things. Now it’s too safe.
Indie games are a breed if established genres
I miss beat em up games so dang much. It was what got me into gaming in the late 1980's & the lack of these games now a days, is what got me out of gaming also.
Yeah, that is a lost genre; however a few good new ones.
1. Streets of Rage 4
2.TMNT Shredder's Revenge
3. Legend of Tianding.
The 90's was my high school years but I think gaming has gotten a lot better then the Atari 2600 years
I may be a bit biased, but I would say so haha.
@@radicaldreamersteve5743 It's alright no worries because at that time in the 80's I attending Music school and drawing art. So I would say Nintendo and Sega get me back into gaming again
The other day, I was showing my kids some old Atari games and my older brother (born in 1971) was like "see this? This was cutting edge back then! It blew us away." 😂😂
@@whosaidthat84 I know that's right 😂
Well said about video game magazines!
I clicked on your vid randomly for something to be on the background, but I found myself watching it through all the way.
Cheers, glad you enjoyed it! I hope to make new content soon, has just been an uber busy summer.
Things I miss about gaming in the 90s: being 7 or less years old. That's pretty much it, we're nostalgic of these things because they were around when we were kids that didn't know any better. In 20 years younger people will make videos about how the 2010s were the golden years of gaming
You really thought you had something huh
@@REDEEMERWOLF Hes right
Oh, absolutely they will. I don't view this as a binary concept though. It isn't like 90s are so much better than now. There are just things I appreciate from all eras. Switch is one of my favorite consoles ever, so I am still loving the 2010s and 2020s.
Watching the video you created is like watching a large part of my childhood and teen years. Thanks for this vid. 😁
Local multiplayer was way more fun, it was way more friendly. Even the trash-talk was usually done with a sense of good humour (usually). A far better thing than stranger attempting to guess your sexual preference and/or saying they had relations with your mom. 🙄
LOLZ
I miss discovering games in the 90s with my sister and figuring them out together. Thank you for making this video. I completely agree that the imagination factor was great
In my opinion in the 90's you had a lot of very talented Japanese developers who were at the top of their game. And video gaming was still more obscure back then. Now everyone and their mom has a wii and a switch so gaming is more casual rather than just for the hardcore players.
But I think the difference is in the philosophy of what goes into making a game. Now companies just want to make big bucks, but back then it was a true art form.
Having the actual TIME to play games in the 90s. I lost count how many times I beat Chrono Trigger with the New Game+ feature.
Ff is not the same since 10. Yup after ten I just kind lost being a ff fan.
Honestly I miss being able to read the latest issue of Nintendo Power and looking any upcoming games that might peak my interest or looking at gaming magazines all about cheats and secrets that could potentially be in a few games I own.
I miss being able to purchase a game without the need for patches, DLC or Microtransactions knowing that I've already got a finished product in my hands that I can enjoy for years to come.
I miss the personality each console brought with them at the time. Be it through the design of the console itself or through the menus and opening jingles/animations for each game on the console I'm playing.
Granted I grew up in the 2000's rather than the 90's, but I'm pretty sure we can agree that both decades were immensely fun to grow up in compared to recent years.
Just chilling watching TV or playing video games, enjoying some delicious snacks and beverages without a care in the world. Having a blast in arcades with all kinds of cool and fun games to play and seeing if you can beat the recent highscores left by someone else. Looking through gaming magazines to see if there's info related to any upcoming games or if a special contest was happening related to a specific game that you could potentially win.
Every was just perfect. And then the double-edged sword that is the internet came along and slowly started to ruin things.
Mostly with the quality of the games and the over-reliance of updates, DLC and microtransactions. Sure it was nice to get a few game-breaking bugs and glitches fixed that were missed during testing, but now it feels like *we're* the game testers rather than the consumers with how ofter a game gets released in an incomplete state and how many patches and fixes we need just to make the game more bearable.
Biggest thing I miss is the difficulty factor for games. ‘Losing’ in a game is so watered down now. Also, I notice newer generation players play with no objective. Growing up, I’d play to pass a game completely and the ones that I would have trouble with would stress me tf out lol
Ah there are a lot of video gaming things easy to miss...
1. The Nintendo vs. Sega rivalry / Mario vs. Sonic the Hedgehog - The most iconic video game rivalry of all times.
2. The amount of developed and published games on various platforms.
3. The idea of making video games based on non-movie franchises and took bets on candy, cereals, snacks, soda etc. mascots!
4. The speculations and dreams of gaming tech developments - How we could just near dream on hos games would look like, be like and how powerfull etc.
5. The Nintendo 64 vs. PlayStation vs. Sega Saturn rivalry
6. All the Disney, Looney Tunes, TMNT etc. games that came and was mostly so good from Capcom, Konami etc.
7. The Nintendo Game Boy dominance - How near all gaming kids had a Game Boy and all the games that was avaible, and how the prizes was not ruining high for them.
8. The Tetris battle of the early to middle 90's - How many publishers and developers did there best tries to make Puzzle games that could rival the OG Tetris!
9. Video Game magazines
10. The point & click game era
AAA gaming Space now is so boring too everything just Photo Realistic and want to be more like a interactive movie than a fun game or just grindlest multiplayer focused titles. If you was a Kid who was forced to go by Age ratings and all you had a PS5 youd only have like 3 games because thats all the cartoony or Platform games with a big Budget on the entire system so far.
How many Call of Duty titles do they have now?
I still think there are a lot o great AAA games, but open world games with tons of fetch quests have been done to death. I personally cannot wait for God of War Ragnarok though.
You actually pronounce SNES as "Snez"? NO! How dare you. If this were 1990s, you would get beat up on the playground. It's either Super Nintendo or SNES (pronounce each letter).
My first console was the Sega Master System, the one that came with Alex Kidd if you turned it on without cartridge. I only had 3 games, Shinobi, Mortal Kombat II and Streets of Rage.
The thing I miss most about those days is the way I squeezed every game I had, all the time spent after beating it just learning hidden mechanics, bugs, glitches, exploits, the cheat codes... Nowadays I have libraries of uninstalled games that I never finished or barely played at all.
One thing that's impossible to get back to today is the HUGE graphical jumps. Yes new unreal engine is cool but compare the jumps from 8-16-32-64-128 bit consoles.
There's a real lack of a public interaction aspect of gaming that's gone. Aside from dedicated arcades or just cabinets or pinball tables out in public, there were quite the variety of demo consoles and games out in the wild in department stores, gaming stores and sometimes video stores. Not just Blockbuster, but your local ones that stocked both big name hits and the obscure films where you could try out a game or console and get a feel for it, and if not, you could rent hardware! This is such a missing part of the experience that just doesn't exist now; temporary trial with physical media before you had to commit to things. There were downsides of course, but when was the last time you had a company outside of massive electronic conventions demo their hardware or software in a public space?
This is a good point. I think society, in general, is seeing this trend, but I definitely agree that there is less social interaction with everything from seeing the games, buying the games, and even playing them in many cases. Last time I went to a convention was 2020, but I was abroad with no COVID scare.
I remember back in late 1998 maybe early 99, going to the grocery store with my mom for the specific purpose of looking for a PlayStation magazine that had the demo desk featuring Gran Turismo2!!
I know I played the demo disc to death and even recorded footage on my old VCR, replays and what not that I could play back from my buddies when they came over..
Nothing compared to the amount of hype that I had up until the release of that game and I’m glad to say I still have both black label copy to GT 1 and GT 2 to this very day
#1 Mystery
Without the internet we have today... and gaming not being mainstream like it is today... the secrets surrounding games sometimes could last years.
How much schoolyard arguments were there around unlocking Knuckles in Sonic 3? Or playing as Zero in Megaman X? Playing as Reptile in Mortal Kombat?
Now we pretty much know all of a game's secrets the day before release.
Awesome vid man, feeling crazy nostalgic after this
1. Demo Discs
2. The instruction manuals that came with a new game
3. Not having to install the game to be able to play it
I love that you included FF9 in this as its my favorite FF. But that was 2000 (although i personally also count it as a “90s” game) 😂
I miss the demo discs. Although it's not practical to release demo games on a bluray disc nowadays, it was pretty cool to see a bunch of small portions of games added on a physical media, whether they were playable snippets of what is to come or gameplay trailers. I miss the days when demo discs were either packed in with a full retail game or with a gaming magazine. PS1 demo discs were cool due to the slick main menu FMV screen and 90's trance music.
2:29 well there aren't any Triple A titles there are plenty of Indie Platformers cuphead, Spelunky, Shovel Knight, Super Meat Boy etc.
All came out with at least within the last 10 years.
I love them because I have a potato and I can still actually play these games
GameShark, Action Replay, Code Breaker, EGM, GamePro, Nintendo Power, PSM, PlayStation Magazine, demo discs, game manuals
YES to all of these things lol I remember having a Gameshark but not knowing how to make it work LOL The Action replay though, definitely took advantage of that when it came out.