I genuinely miss the booklet inserts for physical games. I do appreciate that a lot of games (at least for Switch/PS4) have reversible cover art, basically including a neat mini-poster with the game.
As a kid, when I was only allowed to play on weekends & holidays, I used to read those booklets after I bought/ got the game in the week before in anticipation of playing it
Spider-Man, God of War, Grand Theft Auto, Arkham Knight, Dragon Ball Z Kakarot, Assassin's Creed, and Tomb Raider are some newer games that have those cool pictures of you don't pay those I suggest getting them if you can get your hands to on the disc they have great storyline and they have the cool picture pamphlet thing on the cover sheet
The lack of local multiplayer and local online multiplayer is just another way gaming is less focused on kids and more on adults, the ones with money. It is seriously sad that this feature is gone and kids have a lot less motivation to hang out at each others houses because why would you leave your house to go and watch someone else play a game or take turns, when y’all can play “together” from y’all’s own homes. 360 avatars were awesome too.
Totally, i always prefer local co-op games not only they are fun to play but are also convenient, Online multiplayer has annoyance of long load times, bad servers and all that stuff. Moreover most communities are toxic af, its more depressing than fun
Focuses on adults, yet excludes the adults that want to play local co-op games with their kids. Maybe I'm overblowing it, but I swear this can't be a tiny market. At least speaking for myself, it's a huge reason why I play most of the lego games.
@@deusrex I would like to think its a huge market too. but people dont always know what theyre missing and they want to play the latest fad, so local co op might not be a big deal to someone who isnt raised around it.
The manuals....I miss the manuals! I loved scouring through the entire thing, learning everything I could before booting up a game. Sometimes there was even lore about the world or gorgeous artwork, it was so exciting back then.
When elden ring said the purchase included a digital manual, I was so excited to feel that nostalgia again. Then I opened the manual and it was basically empty, ugh
No doubt - was astounded recently how much literature there was in PS2 Armored Core manuals - especially the latter releases - any Gran Turismo game from PS1 and PS2 era, PS2 era SOCOM games and Tribes: Aerial Assault. The page count of their strategy guides seem to match the gane manuals, too, among those I've nabbed cheap over the years.
I want asked to pay during the week, so I read those things in anticipation of playing a new game, subsumed you even revert to it whilst posting to help you, before I had internet to search for help/info
I do miss split screen. Me and my brother grew up on that. One game, one console, one screen, two controllers, some of the best memories of our lives. We blew through all the Halos, gears of war, borderlands, you name it definitely a missed feature.
The Demo discs you got from magazines were a crucial part of my gaming history. Growing up getting a new game was rare for me. Demos allowed me to try a game and make a decision on what games I actually wanted to buy when the opportunity arose.
Splitscreen is my most missed feature, especially being able to do the full campaign that way. The Army of Two games, while not incredible, were a lot of fun because of this. Edit: “No screen peaking!”
For some games and developers, there's a reason for that. For rendering purposes and system stress, because games have become bigger and more complicated. Now, thats not to say thats the reason for all games, but some have legit reasons for this
@@huntsclan001 so it IS that the systems can't do it anymore because graphic level and definition has gotten too high? It's not the case all of the time but some of the time that's the reason? I was just thinking that for all these HD 4K games they look really great, but you can't play them with a friend in couch co-op most of the time.
One of my biggest disappointments. I wouldn't do it often, at all, but I like to play racing games with my dad every now and then like we did when I was young and literally the only major modern games that do it are GT Sport (which I can't play on my PC) or Forza Motorsport - which only does it on fucking Xbox and not PC. Like how the hell does that work?! Is that because an 8 year old console that was pretty midrange in power even at launch is somehow more capable than my modern PC? No, of course not. They're just dicks. I'm 100% confident I can run a split screen race at 4k better than the Xbox One could run a single player race at 1080p but no, that's not allowed
Same. It's strange to think that playing with someone else in your own household is apparently too niche of a concept for developers to accommodate anymore.
I think the splitscreen element is a huge issue. So many days and nights I spent with my brothers and with my friends sat together playing all sorts of games, and now you can't be in the same room. I think it's genuinely a major cultural issue which is aiding the issue of less people, more concerningly children, physically interacting with each other
splitscreen was probably one of the main reasons me and my brother learned to get along if I'm being honest. It's a real shame it's being phased out. I don't think it's even a cultural issue unfortunately. I think it's just that internet access has become way more common place along with game devs putting in less features. Most people would just rather play from their own system rather than play on the same system as someone else.
Don't get me wrong it was fun, I loved the times being able to do that with my brother, but when now do you have the time to go to your brothers house to play video games, or better yet what if you or him move out of state, split screen would be useless at that point
@@whitecloud2002 I mean more so for kids now who can't sit in a room together with their mates and play video games. They're not going to have the same level of immediate social interaction if everything is just via voice chat all the time. Having my friends round wasn't just about the playing of the games. Some of the funniest and most enjoyable memories I have as a child were what happened around playing the games, if that makes sense
The thing I miss the most now a days is the physical instruction manuals! I LOOOOVED getting a new game at the store, opening the case, pulling the manual out, and reading up about the various aspects of what I was about to play
I just ordered the standard PC version of 'American McGee's Alice', and it comes with a 30-page 'Asylum Casebook', with diary entries detailing Alice's treatment at Rutledge and her interactions with the orderlies as she goes from comatose to awake and erratically violent. It's a well-written short story in its own right, and adds extra context which would have disrupted the flow of gameplay if included in-game. People who say 'it's irrelevant, you can get all that in the tutorial' or 'it saves on paper' are missing the point. Developers tooks pride in the whole package 20 years ago; some of these booklets were lovingly detailed with additional backstory and illustrations. They complimented and elevated the game, in the same way the cover art does for an album. The manual was an industry standard, and the game lacks without it. Modern games are a straight downgrade in this area at least.
One of my biggest annoyances in stealth sections is the fact that one enemy sees you, and all of a sudden everyone knows where you at. I believe communication between AI should be focused on a bit more. If a dude sees you 2 seconds before you drop him, doesn't even get a word out, the whole base should not automatically know you're there, period.
Agreed. Games like Metal gear solid, splinter cell and deus ex. Great stealth mechanics but once seen you have to just shoot everyone, thus making the stealth pointless.
Demo disks were my favourite, I remember opening an old PS1 game and noticing a hidden disk behind the plastic with a demo in it, gosh I was so excited to play some different games on it. Was the best.
I was introduced to my favorite game series by a ps2 demo disc. There wasn't an actual demo for the game, it was just a trailer along with other demos but I watched it constantly until I eventually got the game.
Falcon always unlocked memories for me with these lists. Games were SOOOOO much different when I was a kid. The instant stealth fails were annoying, but for me the GTA missions that had you tailing someone and the missions where you'd fail if there was too much damage to a vehicle nearly gave me a coronary from stress and aggravation
I think the QTEs were implemented to show off more "cinematic" sequences. Ironically, most of the time you would miss what was going on because you had to pay attention to the next button press.
I wish demos for games would make a comeback. It was always nice to be able to check out at least a small portion of games to find out whether you really would like it or not rather than having to rely on trailers and other peoples gameplay.
This is a big part of why I love gamepass so much - so many games I’d never consider buying if I couldn’t try them first, instead bundled in for the cost of a couple full price games a year, so naturally I end up playing lots I’d never have risked.
I REALLY miss the 360 era avatars. I found them super fun, customizable and great little incentives for achievements. I loved customizing my avatar and even found secret easter eggs in the customization menu (keeping the menu inactive for a few minutes would make a secret menu to have colorful hair options appear!) Self expression is really important, especially for something like online gaming where it helps you put a 'face' to online friends you make. I'd love for that to come back, with an actually fair amount of readily available options that aren't just locked behind microtransactions. The era of customizable themes/avatars/social media sites (RIP myspace lol) is one I miss a lot.
Yeah I miss those too. My avatar had The Man Of Steel T-shirt and Used the Mass Effect Omni blade. Now the avatars are creepy looking and it’s extremely buggy. You can’t even see your avatar on the main menu. You can only see them in the achievement list(when comparing your progress with your friends). They really need to bring those back
I REALLY miss physical game boxes. I’d go to CompUSA as a kid and just browse the PC gaming section to look at the really cool box art. I still remember loving how they smelled, and how the front opened up like a book.
i miss that too. the last pc game i bought on disc only half the game was actually on disc , there was nothing in the case but the disc, it just pissed me off and depressed me at the same time. i remember geting mechwarrior 2 mercenaries titanium editon , huge box , huge manuel and some clothing patches (for sewing onto jackets or shirts ect ect) that were based around the game. it was so awesome and standard game price. i remember in 2003 when they were first talking about games going all digital eventually they had a few key points that every one said. the biggest point was that with all digital games since there's no overhead developers can charge consumers less money ..... fast forward to today. Games are still 60 bucks at standard price rather digital or not, and now they got extra anal sauce editions and legend of booger monster editions ... that can cost 50%+ more than the standard 60 dollar edition. god damn how naive we were back then ... digital games NEVER saw reduced pricing (not counting steam sales).
Awesome list dude. I miss the dual wielding from the halo games. They got rid of it in reach but what’s ridiculous is that it was never brought back. Also I really do miss the thick instruction video game Manuals in the box(it had instructions and character lore. Like the Rayman games for example) and I do miss those giant video game guides. In my opinion those are a lot better than the online guides.
@@jonmoore3964 thanks dude! Now I’m not saying that online guides are bad. there are people that go out of their way to make videos and write articles on A game and I appreciate that work. However to me nothing beats having that colossal game guide on your shelf. Then when you’re done reading it you just drop it on your desk and you hear that loud “THUD”(example the fallout three and Skyrim game guide lol 😆). Those books were the size of my accounting textbook from college.
Or a good Hard cover strategy guide. The last one ever made I believe was God of War, red dead 2, and cyberpunk 2077 (which has to be bought online only) I could read my metal gear solid 4 guide 30 times over and still learn something new.
Man, you just brought back such great memories. I had so many of those demo disks growing up and I remember the store near to me would always sell the jampack volumes. Those things were amazing
Splitscreen console with your buddies was the best. Having to memorize maps and strafe around staring at walls; so as to protect from lookers. Coming up with vehicle only/rocket only modes on Bloodgultch, with the charged alien green beacon gun to indicate "no rush just spawned" self made game modes. 👽
Best memories from the Halo days on original Xbox, 2 console's connected thru LAN and 8 friends playing via split screen. No looking worries but still in the same room. So much fun.
I really miss the goodies that used to come in physical game releases. Despite the game release going terribly the Cyberpunk physical copy had so much neat stuff and reminded me of those times. Between the postcards, stickers, and booklet there was clearly a lot of love put into that part of the game release.
Agreed. Like Falcon said, you can still get them for larger releases, but they usually run in the $100+ range. Even the Cyberpunk super-ultimate-crazy edition was near $300 if I remember correctly. It's insane. These days I'm surprised when a publisher decides to give us an instruction booklet in a standard release. You can still get them consistently, but only if you're ordering a small release indie title from someone like Strictly Limited, I Am 8 Bit or Special Reserve Games.
@@samueltheprideofafrikarobi9319 Yes I think this is the difference. Back in the days you got often something game related "for free". There was no Game 50 Bucks and game with stuff for 70 Bucks.... it was just the standard price with a little something ...
I remember as a kid I had a whole CD binder just filled with demo discs for the ps2 it amazes me how easy it was to hold my attention back then to be able to replay the same demos over and over again
I had the same thing. I had demos for the PS1, PS2 and for PC, most if not all of them from gaming magazines. I must have played the demo for Tekken 3 a million times.
To be honest I'm kinda scared of the world of gaming evolving to the point where you can only get a game via the online store, mainly because I hate having to deal with online purchases and the area I live in has shit internet.
Have you played MK 11? Nothing you do matters offline. You cannot even save your char customizations offline. It's with a heavy heart I didn't buy Diablo 2 remastered because of the online crap, now I will do the same for future mortal kombat games. Oh well, time to dust off my old trusty eyepatch.
Demos for sure, especially in the PS1 era with Square Enix. One of the first games I ever got was Brave Fencer Musashi, and it came with the Final Fantasy 8 demo, which became my entry into the Final Fantasy world that I've loved ever since. I of course also had Parasite Eve, which came with a demo disk for another demo of FF8, a demo of Brave Fencer Musashi, Xenogears, and Bushido Blade 2. And yeah, we still get demos today, but it just doesn't feel the same. Maybe it's just the fact that we are older and have income to actually buy games, and as a child the demos were just extra mini games we could play instead of playing our limited library of actual owned games.
I legit forgot about playing online with local friends. That was such a cool feature! And whenever you matched another team with Username and Username_01, you knew it was gonna be a bit harder. Because of the improved communication
Love that you talked about Couch Coop going away. By far my favorite feature and it is very disappointing that this feature has been taken away. I love to play games with my girlfriend but it sucks that there's only a handful of games that we can play together
14:58 i was actually thinking about this the other day.. My favorite loading screen back on PS2 was the Dragon Ball Z Budokai 3 game, were if you rotated the joysticks fast enough tons of Saibamen would pop out of the ground. Me and my cousin loved trying to see how many we could get. And doing that all the time built up my forearm muscles, and helped me become way better at beam struggles (another game mechanic I miss) i felt like a true saiyan as a kid getting stronger, and beating my friends in matches.
Man beam struggles were so much fun. I don't know why they got rid of them when the majority of people I've seen online and talked to irl absolutely loved them
I remember spending hours at the computer store poring over the available video games. At that point in my life, a PC game was a major purchase, so I had to choose carefully. And of course the Internet for normal people was still a few years off. So I had to intuit which games would be good from careful perusal of the game box and reviews in computer catalogues. Good times.
I’m 35 and you sent me straight to my childhood in the 90’s with those PC magazines/Demos. I always wanted one when my dad went grocery shopping. My dad was on a budget but I remember getting one with Thief, Hexen 2, and the other game on the demo I can’t remember.
I don't know if I'm remembering this correctly, but I believe for a brief time during the PSX/PS2 era there were certain games where you could flip the disc upside down to access hidden content.
@@LogicAndCompassion The first track on a PS1 disc was the data, the rest of the tracks are music. That's how the game worked, it was cool because Castlevania SotN had secret tracks if you played it in a CD player. Theres also other developer secrets with this we know about in the gaming industry :)
I would add one to the list (and only us old-timers will remember this one): physical DRM. Long before the days of modern DRM, some games would come packaged with a book or placard that could only be “decoded” with a red plastic filter. At certain points in the game, it would ask you to use the decoder to locate and input something like “the second word of the third paragraph” that you could only know if you had the card and the decoder viewing plastic. This ensured that, even if you let your friends borrow the floppy disk and install it, they could only get so far unless you gave them the decoder, or they called you every time there was this DRM checkpoint. I remember Sierra and Lucas Arts games in particular would come bundled with this “feature”.
I grew up playing split screen with my brother, father or friends in games like Midnight Club 3, NFS Underground and Colin Mcrae 04. But split screen seem to have disappeared almost completely from racing games, even local, which is a real bummer in my opinion
I miss having the little game manuals that came with each physical box. I always enjoyed reading them, seeing some of the tips and tricks, the lore, etc. Then we started getting a single code or something if that in games and tutorial types of levels just to explain basic controls that should be intuitive, quite frankly. 😩
I remember me and my 3 cousins playing Uncharted 2 multiplayer, all four of us with only 2 consoles. The tvs were in different rooms, but screaming to the other duo across the house was part of what made it great.
Back in the day, having 2 controllers was an essential part of gaming, playing with a friend. Now, what's the reason of having 2 controllers for the PS5, for example? Fortunately though, there are some companies like Hazelight...
The split screen Splinter cell franchise co op missions are some of my favourite gaming memories playing with my best mate, oh the fun we had, the strategies we made, we took that s**t so seriously and played through till sunrise 💪🎮
Yeah worked worked the coop mechanics in really well for that one. You absolutely Had to work together. My buddy and I would play that, gears of War, and take turns on Fable over and over. Such great times
I personally really miss the guide books. The information is strongly bundled into a few hundred pages with very beautiful artworks. I bought them for FF12, FF13, FF13-2, FF13-3 (LRFF13), FF15, Dragon Quest 8. I really loved that time. To date there is no website that is anywhere near as good as these guide books. FF15 might be the only exception, because of patches etc.
What I miss the most is special controllers for more immersion. I like playing fishing games once in a while and they are trying to simulate how real fishing feels like but you can not use a fishing controller anymore to give you the actual feeling that you're fishing. There are so many cool games where I thought "This game could use a controller to make it more realistic" but all you get is steering wheels and move controllers.
Best years in gaming for me was from 1990 until 2005, every game had a guide book that countained a lot of great information with pictures, I would read them all, even yesterday I was reading prince of Persia sands of time guide book and is such a gem, another thing was magazines, I can barely see any magazines around, I always prefered to see gaming news on magazines than the internet, the feeling is diferent, from 2000 until 2010( more or less) was such a rush with games, every year more than 10 games were advanced for that time, the hype was real, no microtransactions, no online shitty games, barely no remastereds, no copy and paste indie games,( some but not a lot like these days) I have played since 1990 until 2022, from Freddy hardest on spectrum zx until GT 7 on the ps5( playing on dirt courses at the moment) I never skipped any generation of consoles or pc, I saw all the evolution of the industry, my favorite moments was the change from 2d to 3d in the 90s, the jump from gen 6 to gen 7, the graphics were awsome( first time I played project Gotham racing 3 my mind was like wtf is this? The jump from crt tv to full HD, my only let down in gaming was from 2013 forward, gen 8 focused a lot in stupid remastereds with no need, microtransactions, online gaming like fortnite etc, most of the best games in previous gens only had 1 or 2 follow up on gen 8, there was lot of day 1 patches and not only, games with flaws, fake news by gaming companies, however, there was some great games on gen 8, but not groundbreaking and bought something new, it was just something that was done before but bigger and with more stuff to do, and the graphics also are sick, specially God of war, spiderman, order 1880, uncharted 4, ryse son of rome, last of us 2, but that's it, ive counted how many games truly impressed me like previous gens did, there are 18 games that are really master piece in gen 8, gen 7 there were 56, gen 6 114, gen 5 82, gen 4, 91, and I know all of them by heart, well its just my option of an old timer that been playing games for 30 years almost non stop, sorry for English, I know it sucks, it's not my native language, I love your channel, keep up the amazing work Falcon
Ugh, I remember suffering through the loading screens from Crash Bandicoot- Wrath of Cortex on my PS2. I could get up, go to the bathroom, heat up food, grab snacks, come back in no rush and still see Crash falling. (Floating?) The noise it made is burned into my memory!
Gaming magazines were amazing, especially the ones with demo discs! I still have a bunch of old magazines with articles about Half Life 2 and F.E.A.R. 2 and such and the Risen demo i once got actually gpt me in to pc gaming back in like 2009
I think one of the best implements of Loading screen mini-games was Okami. You could actually get Demon fangs, a 'premium' currency only given by defeating enemies a certain way. It wasn't difficult to get them but a way to get more was nice. I do like having physical versions of games. I've been burned a few times with digital only games but having a physical copy just makes me feel a little more secure. The fact you could share games with friends for free was a nice bonus. Had a friend want to play Kingdom Hearts 3 but didn't want to buy it. I had a copy and let him borrow it. Also wanna point out that physical copies tend to have a lower price over time than digital copies. For example I was able to buy Borderlands 3 for $6.99 used when it is $24.99 digital. I want to know why digital games don't drop price or why they are as expensive when there isn't any additional costs like making the disks.
I fondly remember receiving a piece of the Berlin Wall with my hard copy of World in Conflict. It also included a DVD that contained a documentary on the Cold War. ... I miss physical game copies and boxes.
that’s not entirely true. games get removed from digital marketplaces like Steam all the time, but they remain in the libraries of current owners. You just lose the ability to purchase them. I do agree physical is ideal, though.
@@WeirdTroll666 ALL copies of games are digital. The disc/cartridge contains a *_digital_* copy of a game. And you can keep a copy of the game files onto a disc, multiple games even The only benefit physical has is that you can sell it later. And you can still own a game that isn't online dependent. Digital is not your enemy. Game _streaming_ /cloud gaming/games as a service absolutely is
I used to love physical games but now I research before purchase. 4 out of 5 games just have a small amount of data on the disc and the rest needs to be downloaded anyway. Basically the disc is just a license key for most games these days sadly. I still buy the occasional collector's edition if it is worth it.
sonic games in the 90s were BRUTAL with the lives system, not only did you have to start again, you had to start from the very beginning of the game, regardless of how far you were in, also no saves, you had to play to the end in 1 session..
I used to love demo discs, and I bought several games I probably never would have considered because I played the demo. I also used to love LAN parties with my friends in high school before online gaming became a thing. We'd all haul our desktops over someone's house, order food, and play games together all night. I wish split screen multiplayer was more prevalent these days. I've tried a few recent games that still support it but I wish more did.
One of my favorite lists that Gameranx has made. Falcon really gets the nostalgia of early 90’s up to todays gaming. This was a great walk down memory lane.
Man, I really miss the glory days of couch co-op. It bugs how so many fun-looking multiplayer games keep coming out, but there's no way to play them when you're actually hanging out with the people you want to play with.
I got so nostalgic when you was talking about the good ol days of couch co-op. My friends and I would literally order a couple big azz pizzas, some desserts, and a sh*t ton of Mt Dew! I miss those days lol
I miss the instruction booklet that came inside the game box. They had a lot of information and it was great having that collection. I also remember buying the PC magazine for the Demos, it was a great feeling.
Split screen co-op. God I miss that… I have no idea how many weeks worth of time my buddy and I played Terrorist Hunt (usually drunk) in Rainbow Six Vegas 2
I don't . DLC is badass. It lets developers add in new content they came up with but might not have had time to add it in development or maybe as a tool to bring players back in after the games first wave of energy has died out. No way I'd want to go back. Now I DO miss the time's before developers took advantage of DLC to cut content from a game that was already there or just make low effort content for for cheap money
DLC is bitter sweet nowadays. It's pretty annoying when pub/ devs announce DLC months before the game is even released. It's a blatant announcement that they purposely section part of the game just to sell it at a later date. On the other hand, DLC can extend the life of a game you love so that you can spend more time in the world you love.
Valve makes the SDK for the Source engine available, including the Hammer level editor, for free. Likewise for the developers of the Unity and Godot engines. Hell, Godot is open-source. I think my favourite level editor, however, was the BUILD editor, used with Duke Nukem 3D and Shadow Warrior. There's just something about it that's really intuitive that you don't get with Hammer. Okay, maybe you're referring to editors built into the game itself? Portal 2 has such an editor, as do many Zachtronics games. Though to be fair, in the case of the latter there generally isn't that much to actually build, as the nature of the games tends towards level-editing being a matter of defining inputs and outputs and limiting the tools the player can use.
There used to be automated cheat lines, created by the publisher or developer of a game (like Sierra Online), where you'd pay by the minute for game hints. Think it was late 1980s to early 1990s. Games like the King's Quest series or the Space Quest series. You could also order hint books that were printed in invisible ink. You'd use a highlighter to make the ink visible. 3:22 - Where do you think the password system came from? Old NES game systems without battery-backed cartridges REQUIRED passwords to preserve your progress. Metroid is a prime example (pun not intended), but far from the only one. 5:13 - They already have reinstated the lives system, in a way. It's now called HARDCORE difficulty in some games. Except you only get one life.
We should never forget the elevator loading screens in Mass Effect, where you could talk to your NPC friends and continue questlines in peace Those were legendary
What I miss is the music creation games like MTV Music Generator or Magix Music Maker. I don't think anyone has ever done any (good) content about these types of games. Pity, they were hours and hours of fun.
Totally I had bought it again when I found it was on ps4 after having downloading it on my switch. Makes me miss the pre ps3 lil booklets that came with ps2 and GameCube games.
PlayStation magazine with the demo discs was a massive part of my childhood. I would play demos of certain games for hours, replaying the same single mission over and over. I remember being devastated when an issue arrived saying the magazine was over and this was the last one. It’s been about 15 years since then and I still think about it from time to time
6:47 Quick Time events. Because of my lack of reaction timing, I actually enjoy these. A very good example in Telltale's Batman where you see on the screen what you are supposed to press, Up, Down, Left, Right, "Q", "W" SHIFT, and at most just LEFT and RIGHT simultaneously. While early in the game it doesn't matter too much, later, yeah, you'll get killed if you don't. Yet the game is very forgiving and usually only puts you back 1-2 minutes of real gameplaying time.
Also is less common for a game to have split-screen: can you imagine Skyrim, fallout, Elden ring, dying light, watchdogs legion, etc with split-screen, that could be awesome especially if you have sibilings or close friends.
It's not even game's like that I care that don't have Splitscreen, in my opinion it's racers, shooters, fun indie games, many that Naturally would have had multiplayer 15 years ago, just don't anymore.
I definitely miss the big PC boxes myself. Odd shaped boxes from companies like Eidos, huge manuals to read wherever you want, cloth maps to look at and, for the super old among us, even weird fake crystals and things that were shipped in some Infocom titles for the Atari (anyone else remember the hidden clues books that came with Zork?)
There was one loading screen mini game I remember well. Okami. There were only two versions of the mini game, the first was pressing the button fast enough to try and cover the screen with as many paw prints as possible and the second was paw prints would appear and if you timed it right with pressing a button the prints would get bigger. The cool thing is if you did it right you actually got a demon fang, a rare item that you used to buy special items from a certain merchant and these items were useful, and in one case, necessary to advance in the game. You normally got these fangs by defeating enemies in special ways so farming them was sometimes tedious. The mini game offered a small helping hand.
Man, I miss midnight releases and "prestige" editions of games. Buying the premium packages of games and getting the feelies, rushing home to open it, figuring out how I wanted to display all the things.... *sigh* the good times hanging out with mt buddies in the parking lot of GameStop waiting for them to start handing out the games,
Don't know why anyone would think a physical copy is a Hassel. My buddy and I talked about how old games came with stuff and even little books inside that talked about the game and it's characters. And as far as co op, there definitely needs to be more couch co op games. My wife and I love playing, but have a hard time finding good games.
I actually liked the button mashing QTEs made you feel like you were actually doing something especially in Asura's Wrath, other than the "press now" and live ones
I've noticed a resurgence of demos lately, although they're downloads now and not an add on to other games or a multi demo pack with a magazine. And now you can carry over progress to the main game too, which is nice.
Loved my avatars on the Xbox 360, made multiple profiles just so I could mess with them. Forgot they were even a thing, it’s sad to see them go now that you mention it though.
We're hoping to bring back some of this stuff in the future. We're setting up Unreal Engine 5, and moving into higher-end games soon, things like in the video we'd love to do with our future Unreal games.
Just looked at some of what you guys have made, they look interesting. I'll try a couple when my backlog gets under control, for now I'm putting them on my wishlist.
@@alexwalker2582 @Alex Walker Thanks Alex! I appreciate that. I would recommend Dracula if you like 90s RPGs, it's also a free game. After the current retro games are finished up soon we'll be moving into modern graphics (will be a few months).
A game with content during loading screens that I really enjoyed was Darkness (II?), Having Jackie narrate elements of the story to provide context ahead of the level you were about to play or the story thus far was another way to get closer to him as a character.
I got the Legend of Heroes Trails of Cold Steel 4 collectors edition that came with a book that has art and stuff in it, A sick as hell box with the man character in his ogre/normal form, these little mini poster things that have all the awakeners on them, a soundtrack disc with really good music on it, a steel box for the disc and a cloth poster thing that's still hanging in my room. Barely paid 100 bucks for it. All that stuff. Now all that costs 200 if you're lucky. Feels like some developers put nonsense in their collectors editions now that aren't even close to what they should cost
Physical discs with the PS5 are definitely the way to go. There's not a huge difference in price if you're getting newer games (sometimes no difference at all), but if older, used games can be dirt cheap. I just recently bought Resident Evil 7, RE8 and Uncharted 4 for $50 including shipping. To get the same from the PS stores, it would have cost me a little over twice that much.
8:25 Now this could be used effectively. While I did love seeing all those playable and non-playable demos on those free discs you could buy or subscribe to, I have seen some games where you did good in a particular area, let's say Pinball, and you "earn" money that can be used to get you new mini-games that run in the main game.
I remember playing Fallout 3/NV in a pitch black room and sneaking so slowly through dungeons high as hell. Good times. Also can we get a new Metro game please?
@@fried_3gg0s. Could you imagine a METRO in NYC or if it was a continuation of Sam's storyline, San Francisco..........call it METRO: The Subway. I'd be down for that. After all, STALKER 2 is gonna stay in Russia. At least METRO has a connection to the West. Shit I'm down for that. Plus add in UE5......let's go.
I miss QTE still, its one of the moments where you suddenly go from casually fucking around to suddenly very serious trying to time everything right or die.
Farcry 4 had one really rough mandatory stealthy section where you got into an area by the back of a truck and had to take photos of certain things (I don't remember what else), I remember getting spotted and failing at least 20 times
I love challenging sneak levels like the Farcry games had. Some games don’t do stealth well, but farcry 3-5 (haven’t played 6) did it amazingly and in my opinion, the best,
@@keysterglenjamin8461 I loved the stealth in farcry 3 purely because the map had a lot of water and sneaking on watery levels is always fun, farcry 4 is my personal favorite game in the series so I'll always sing its praises and farcry 5 just has extremely smooth gameplay as a whole
The autofail does suck, but at least "modern" fc games have decent to good stealth mechanics as opposed to a lot of other games that had no stealth mechanics whatsoever and still ask you to do an autofail sneak section.
Cool story... I saved almost all my favorite game boxes from the 90s. All the classics... I am a lifelong gamer. I unfolded them down flat, and stored them in plastic in cold storage. They look basically new if I fold them back into boxes. They are one of a handful of things from that era I saved away because I knew they would be artifacts from a bygone era. I'm 42... I can only imagine how cool these will be when I am 82.
I remember the time when you bought a game and you had an entire user manual inside the game's box. When I was a kid I didn't understand why my Diddy Kong Racing game couldn't have the same graphics details as the arts in the user manual, LoL.
The last bit there: I'm not sure if the newer few still do, but assassin's creed had always allowed you to walk around a void while you wait, and the elder scrolls/fallout both allow you to spin items in a load, albeit i cant say they're exactly "modern" franchises, more improved and rehashed older games lately. I love even just that little bit of loading screen manipulation like that because then you can tell if something is wrong with the game. I use a very...personable...360 that sometimes acts up, so to have a visual cue the game stopped loading was always a great bonus for me. I imagine they stopped because these days everyone wants a game *now*, or at the least the company higher-ups do, and coding in some load screen interactivety would take time which they could use to debug. It's sad because the little things they put in from being able to (relatively) walk the development were always my favourite. GTA 4 was king for small details, for example. New ones are still being found.
I miss when games had to be good and complete because they couldn’t update it later. They game they made is the game you played and that’s it. The ease of updating games has given us so many half assed, barely running games that only get good a year in or save good content for seasons
My regular retail copy of the Witcher 3 came with a Witcher Universe Compendium, a world map, the soundtrack on a separate CD, a Geralt poster and a set of Wolf head stickers. Oh also a little “Thank you so much for spending your money on this” note from the devs. It’s why Cyberpunk broke my heart.
Games like Morrowind or Oblivion that had a paper map of the world in the box. Memories of me and my little brother getting the map out in front of us whilst we explored Vvardenfell with zero help from the game journal 😅
I miss the cool game boxes. I loved the PC ones especially. They always had cool artwork designs on the boxes... I especially liked the Collector's Edition of Final Fantasy 12 on PS2 that came with a cool metal case and a DVD that went through the history of Final Fantasy.
I remember on RPGs I've been button smashing every corner just to find an item. I wish they bring this back as I don't seem to see this anymore on games.
PC Gamer magazine back in the 1990s included a CD with demos and free programs. I started gaming on an Apple //e in 1984. I now play games in xbox, PlayStation, PC and an iPad Pro. One thing that has gone away is an instruction manual. Today some games have a tutorial to help you get started, but many do not. If you need help, they will sell you a manual that not only has the basic instructions on your interface (keyboard or game pad), weapons, spells, magic item, cars, etc. plus a walkthrough. On the other hand, I haven’t purchased a physical game or program (now called apps) in many years. All of the games I play these days are purchased online and downloaded. We also used to play multiplayer games by putting all of our computers in one location and connected with serial ports (no internet back then). We didn’t need headphones because we just yelled at each other across the room. The original CounterStrike was very popular using this method. Back in the late 1990s, the first NASCAR game came out on the PC. As there was no internet yet, they had an option where you could dial a long distance number with your 2400 bps modem and race against other real people. Long distance was what the telephone company charge for making a “telephone” call outside of your area code. I was running $600 a month long distance bills racing NASCAR.
Thank you for pointing out Rayman's soundtrack. I decided to lol it up after the video and it's pretty cool. I missed out on a lot of console generations as a kid so I never really got to see some of those transitional games that made those improvements. It's a neat little history gem and I appreciate you sharing little stuff like that
It was all thanx to the fact that early CD-ROM game titles included support for what was known as "Red Book Audio".... Back in its earliest phase, compact disc was primarily a digital audio format. However, this also made it ideal as a large-scale data storage medium for use w/ computer systems -- the PC encyclopedia craze (Encarta, etc.) was essentially made possible entirely due to the rise of the CD-ROM format. Game developers quickly realized the enormous potential of a new disc format that offered in excess of 500 megabytes of data capacity per disc (unlike the pitiful 1.4 MB or less per floppy disk, the mainstay of software distribution for the 1980s). With the "MPC" (Mulitmedia Personal Computer) standard, there was a bonus: a multimedia PC had to have both a CD-ROM drive *and* support for analog CD audio playback (via a sound cable connecting the Analog Out from the CD drive to the Analog In jack on a sound card) which opened up the ability to play CD-quality music &/or background audio tracks during gameplay. Many CD-ROM games (such as Rayman, Tomb Raider etc.) implemented exactly this by reserving Track 1 for game data while using Track 2, Track 3 etc. for different audio tracks; when you first installed or loaded up the game disc, the system would automatically "find" the data it needed in Track 1, then during gameplay the game software would select & play the on-disc audio tracks as needed. This further fed the explosion of popularity for CD game titles, as the difference in sound quality was often times phenomenal compared to older games that were restricted to the capabilities of whatever sound card (if any) was installed in the PC. Because those audio tracks followed the "Red Book Audio" standard, they would also play back in any normal CD player ... except Track 1. CD-ROM games ended up having to include a warning along the lines of "Do NOT play Track 1 in your CD player!" printed in the owner's manual or on the box, because playing Track 1 could (theoretically) blow out someone's speaker system! (Eventually, the manufacturers of CD music players would include a feature to check for & skip over data-only tracks.)
I genuinely miss the booklet inserts for physical games. I do appreciate that a lot of games (at least for Switch/PS4) have reversible cover art, basically including a neat mini-poster with the game.
As a kid, when I was only allowed to play on weekends & holidays, I used to read those booklets after I bought/ got the game in the week before in anticipation of playing it
Spider-Man, God of War, Grand Theft Auto, Arkham Knight, Dragon Ball Z Kakarot, Assassin's Creed, and Tomb Raider are some newer games that have those cool pictures of you don't pay those I suggest getting them if you can get your hands to on the disc they have great storyline and they have the cool picture pamphlet thing on the cover sheet
RDR2 and GTA V at least had maps included. But I miss having booklets.
Remember back when we got those giant folded posters,it was like a poster on the one side and a map on the other man I miss those
The lack of local multiplayer and local online multiplayer is just another way gaming is less focused on kids and more on adults, the ones with money. It is seriously sad that this feature is gone and kids have a lot less motivation to hang out at each others houses because why would you leave your house to go and watch someone else play a game or take turns, when y’all can play “together” from y’all’s own homes.
360 avatars were awesome too.
I agree
Totally, i always prefer local co-op games not only they are fun to play but are also convenient, Online multiplayer has annoyance of long load times, bad servers and all that stuff. Moreover most communities are toxic af, its more depressing than fun
Y’all?
Focuses on adults, yet excludes the adults that want to play local co-op games with their kids. Maybe I'm overblowing it, but I swear this can't be a tiny market. At least speaking for myself, it's a huge reason why I play most of the lego games.
@@deusrex I would like to think its a huge market too. but people dont always know what theyre missing and they want to play the latest fad, so local co op might not be a big deal to someone who isnt raised around it.
The manuals....I miss the manuals! I loved scouring through the entire thing, learning everything I could before booting up a game.
Sometimes there was even lore about the world or gorgeous artwork, it was so exciting back then.
When elden ring said the purchase included a digital manual, I was so excited to feel that nostalgia again. Then I opened the manual and it was basically empty, ugh
No doubt - was astounded recently how much literature there was in PS2 Armored Core manuals - especially the latter releases - any Gran Turismo game from PS1 and PS2 era, PS2 era SOCOM games and Tribes: Aerial Assault. The page count of their strategy guides seem to match the gane manuals, too, among those I've nabbed cheap over the years.
Even better. You could read them while slacking off at work ;)
i love reading through the manuals of my old games
I want asked to pay during the week, so I read those things in anticipation of playing a new game, subsumed you even revert to it whilst posting to help you, before I had internet to search for help/info
I do miss split screen. Me and my brother grew up on that. One game, one console, one screen, two controllers, some of the best memories of our lives. We blew through all the Halos, gears of war, borderlands, you name it definitely a missed feature.
And the constant accusations and denials of screen looking🤣
The Demo discs you got from magazines were a crucial part of my gaming history. Growing up getting a new game was rare for me. Demos allowed me to try a game and make a decision on what games I actually wanted to buy when the opportunity arose.
Splitscreen is my most missed feature, especially being able to do the full campaign that way. The Army of Two games, while not incredible, were a lot of fun because of this.
Edit: “No screen peaking!”
Yeah splitscreen playing army of two or mw2 or mw3 and bo1 good times
Gears of War games were awesome too
Lego games still have it. They are gems, they really are.
Halo and Borderlands too. Really fun split screen with a friend back in the day
You're speaking my truth here. My wife and I literally can only play borderlands together. Otherwise she is basically narrating my gaming 😅
It’s so sad that companies aren’t including split screen multiplayer anymore. That’s honestly my favorite way to play games.
Outward is a good game that has split screen multiplayer... Really hard game though
For some games and developers, there's a reason for that. For rendering purposes and system stress, because games have become bigger and more complicated. Now, thats not to say thats the reason for all games, but some have legit reasons for this
@@huntsclan001 so it IS that the systems can't do it anymore because graphic level and definition has gotten too high? It's not the case all of the time but some of the time that's the reason? I was just thinking that for all these HD 4K games they look really great, but you can't play them with a friend in couch co-op most of the time.
One of my biggest disappointments. I wouldn't do it often, at all, but I like to play racing games with my dad every now and then like we did when I was young and literally the only major modern games that do it are GT Sport (which I can't play on my PC) or Forza Motorsport - which only does it on fucking Xbox and not PC. Like how the hell does that work?! Is that because an 8 year old console that was pretty midrange in power even at launch is somehow more capable than my modern PC? No, of course not. They're just dicks.
I'm 100% confident I can run a split screen race at 4k better than the Xbox One could run a single player race at 1080p but no, that's not allowed
It takes two and a way out are great split screen games
I miss offline multiplayer
Same
Yeah u do.
Coach coop
Couch co-op
Same. It's strange to think that playing with someone else in your own household is apparently too niche of a concept for developers to accommodate anymore.
I think the splitscreen element is a huge issue. So many days and nights I spent with my brothers and with my friends sat together playing all sorts of games, and now you can't be in the same room. I think it's genuinely a major cultural issue which is aiding the issue of less people, more concerningly children, physically interacting with each other
splitscreen was probably one of the main reasons me and my brother learned to get along if I'm being honest. It's a real shame it's being phased out. I don't think it's even a cultural issue unfortunately. I think it's just that internet access has become way more common place along with game devs putting in less features. Most people would just rather play from their own system rather than play on the same system as someone else.
Don't get me wrong it was fun, I loved the times being able to do that with my brother, but when now do you have the time to go to your brothers house to play video games, or better yet what if you or him move out of state, split screen would be useless at that point
@@whitecloud2002 I mean more so for kids now who can't sit in a room together with their mates and play video games. They're not going to have the same level of immediate social interaction if everything is just via voice chat all the time. Having my friends round wasn't just about the playing of the games. Some of the funniest and most enjoyable memories I have as a child were what happened around playing the games, if that makes sense
The thing I miss the most now a days is the physical instruction manuals! I LOOOOVED getting a new game at the store, opening the case, pulling the manual out, and reading up about the various aspects of what I was about to play
Yes!!👍👍👍👍👍
I just ordered the standard PC version of 'American McGee's Alice', and it comes with a 30-page 'Asylum Casebook', with diary entries detailing Alice's treatment at Rutledge and her interactions with the orderlies as she goes from comatose to awake and erratically violent. It's a well-written short story in its own right, and adds extra context which would have disrupted the flow of gameplay if included in-game.
People who say 'it's irrelevant, you can get all that in the tutorial' or 'it saves on paper' are missing the point. Developers tooks pride in the whole package 20 years ago; some of these booklets were lovingly detailed with additional backstory and illustrations. They complimented and elevated the game, in the same way the cover art does for an album. The manual was an industry standard, and the game lacks without it. Modern games are a straight downgrade in this area at least.
And some posters 👍
@@64onehotmama 😅
@@BlackSailPass_GuitarCovers ...I'm sure some games still do that. It's not necessary for every kind of game
One of my biggest annoyances in stealth sections is the fact that one enemy sees you, and all of a sudden everyone knows where you at. I believe communication between AI should be focused on a bit more. If a dude sees you 2 seconds before you drop him, doesn't even get a word out, the whole base should not automatically know you're there, period.
Agreed. Games like Metal gear solid, splinter cell and deus ex. Great stealth mechanics but once seen you have to just shoot everyone, thus making the stealth pointless.
I really appreciate it on the few games that realistically do this.
Wish games did this, would love it if the ai could be more realistically reactive and not roboticlly reactive?
Far Cry 6 fixed that issue
Spider man games lol
Demo disks were my favourite, I remember opening an old PS1 game and noticing a hidden disk behind the plastic with a demo in it, gosh I was so excited to play some different games on it. Was the best.
👍🏼
It's how you'd discover awesome gems like Coolboarders and 3-Xtreme (this game was fun).
@@BodamEscapePlan Wipeout was the one for me and then that super weird game Descent. Amongst many many others.
LOL AOL disks made GREAT coasters !!!
I was introduced to my favorite game series by a ps2 demo disc. There wasn't an actual demo for the game, it was just a trailer along with other demos but I watched it constantly until I eventually got the game.
Falcon always unlocked memories for me with these lists. Games were SOOOOO much different when I was a kid. The instant stealth fails were annoying, but for me the GTA missions that had you tailing someone and the missions where you'd fail if there was too much damage to a vehicle nearly gave me a coronary from stress and aggravation
I remember a James bond mission where you had to chase/tail a car, was near impossible. Idk what game exactly because it was a friend, was on ps1
Catch the damn train CJ by far the worst mission in San Andreas. I played that mission so many times but never cleared it
I think the QTEs were implemented to show off more "cinematic" sequences. Ironically, most of the time you would miss what was going on because you had to pay attention to the next button press.
I wish demos for games would make a comeback. It was always nice to be able to check out at least a small portion of games to find out whether you really would like it or not rather than having to rely on trailers and other peoples gameplay.
This is a big part of why I love gamepass so much - so many games I’d never consider buying if I couldn’t try them first, instead bundled in for the cost of a couple full price games a year, so naturally I end up playing lots I’d never have risked.
I REALLY miss the 360 era avatars. I found them super fun, customizable and great little incentives for achievements. I loved customizing my avatar and even found secret easter eggs in the customization menu (keeping the menu inactive for a few minutes would make a secret menu to have colorful hair options appear!) Self expression is really important, especially for something like online gaming where it helps you put a 'face' to online friends you make.
I'd love for that to come back, with an actually fair amount of readily available options that aren't just locked behind microtransactions. The era of customizable themes/avatars/social media sites (RIP myspace lol) is one I miss a lot.
Yeah I miss those too. My avatar had The Man Of Steel T-shirt and Used the Mass Effect Omni blade. Now the avatars are creepy looking and it’s extremely buggy. You can’t even see your avatar on the main menu. You can only see them in the achievement list(when comparing your progress with your friends). They really need to bring those back
There was a minecraft knockoff on the 360, Castle Miner, where you'd actually play as your Xbox avatar.
@@garrettrizzo9869 hahah oh yeah! and avatar survival games I think. Doritos crash course too which was a weirdly underrated fun game.
Remember 1vs100 you played with your avatar
Same! It was the reason I started to trophy hunt. It should be revived
I REALLY miss physical game boxes. I’d go to CompUSA as a kid and just browse the PC gaming section to look at the really cool box art. I still remember loving how they smelled, and how the front opened up like a book.
Well you can still go to Wal mart and buy them. They're not going away anytime soon
i miss that too. the last pc game i bought on disc only half the game was actually on disc , there was nothing in the case but the disc, it just pissed me off and depressed me at the same time. i remember geting mechwarrior 2 mercenaries titanium editon , huge box , huge manuel and some clothing patches (for sewing onto jackets or shirts ect ect) that were based around the game. it was so awesome and standard game price.
i remember in 2003 when they were first talking about games going all digital eventually they had a few key points that every one said. the biggest point was that with all digital games since there's no overhead developers can charge consumers less money ..... fast forward to today. Games are still 60 bucks at standard price rather digital or not, and now they got extra anal sauce editions and legend of booger monster editions ... that can cost 50%+ more than the standard 60 dollar edition. god damn how naive we were back then ... digital games NEVER saw reduced pricing (not counting steam sales).
Whenever you opened up a new game box, almost the same as new car smell
I remember as a kid and being amazed by the RAGE box art
I miss the manuals that came with the box. Whenever I got a new game as a kid, I'd always pull the manual out and look through it on the way home.
Awesome list dude. I miss the dual wielding from the halo games. They got rid of it in reach but what’s ridiculous is that it was never brought back. Also I really do miss the thick instruction video game Manuals in the box(it had instructions and character lore. Like the Rayman games for example) and I do miss those giant video game guides. In my opinion those are a lot better than the online guides.
Thanks.
@@gameranxTV you’re welcome sir 👍🏼
Can not agree with this more! Spot on man.
@@jonmoore3964 thanks dude! Now I’m not saying that online guides are bad. there are people that go out of their way to make videos and write articles on A game and I appreciate that work. However to me nothing beats having that colossal game guide on your shelf. Then when you’re done reading it you just drop it on your desk and you hear that loud “THUD”(example the fallout three and Skyrim game guide lol 😆). Those books were the size of my accounting textbook from college.
Or a good Hard cover strategy guide. The last one ever made I believe was God of War, red dead 2, and cyberpunk 2077 (which has to be bought online only) I could read my metal gear solid 4 guide 30 times over and still learn something new.
I miss printed manuals for games (that came in those physical boxes). I look back at my Marathon collection with wistful nostalgia....
Man, you just brought back such great memories. I had so many of those demo disks growing up and I remember the store near to me would always sell the jampack volumes. Those things were amazing
Jampacks were the fucking shit I loved those
Splitscreen console with your buddies was the best. Having to memorize maps and strafe around staring at walls; so as to protect from lookers. Coming up with vehicle only/rocket only modes on Bloodgultch, with the charged alien green beacon gun to indicate "no rush just spawned" self made game modes. 👽
Or 4-player "Slappers Only, You Only Live Once" settings on Goldeneye 007 for N64. Great times.
Best memories from the Halo days on original Xbox, 2 console's connected thru LAN and 8 friends playing via split screen. No looking worries but still in the same room. So much fun.
I really miss the goodies that used to come in physical game releases. Despite the game release going terribly the Cyberpunk physical copy had so much neat stuff and reminded me of those times. Between the postcards, stickers, and booklet there was clearly a lot of love put into that part of the game release.
Agreed. Like Falcon said, you can still get them for larger releases, but they usually run in the $100+ range. Even the Cyberpunk super-ultimate-crazy edition was near $300 if I remember correctly. It's insane. These days I'm surprised when a publisher decides to give us an instruction booklet in a standard release. You can still get them consistently, but only if you're ordering a small release indie title from someone like Strictly Limited, I Am 8 Bit or Special Reserve Games.
@@samueltheprideofafrikarobi9319 Yes I think this is the difference. Back in the days you got often something game related "for free". There was no Game 50 Bucks and game with stuff for 70 Bucks.... it was just the standard price with a little something ...
I remember as a kid I had a whole CD binder just filled with demo discs for the ps2 it amazes me how easy it was to hold my attention back then to be able to replay the same demos over and over again
I had the same thing. I had demos for the PS1, PS2 and for PC, most if not all of them from gaming magazines. I must have played the demo for Tekken 3 a million times.
To be honest I'm kinda scared of the world of gaming evolving to the point where you can only get a game via the online store, mainly because I hate having to deal with online purchases and the area I live in has shit internet.
Until recently I couldn't even get Day 1 patches, let alone download an entire game. And there are millions of people in that situation.
Have you played MK 11? Nothing you do matters offline. You cannot even save your char customizations offline. It's with a heavy heart I didn't buy Diablo 2 remastered because of the online crap, now I will do the same for future mortal kombat games. Oh well, time to dust off my old trusty eyepatch.
Demos for sure, especially in the PS1 era with Square Enix.
One of the first games I ever got was Brave Fencer Musashi, and it came with the Final Fantasy 8 demo, which became my entry into the Final Fantasy world that I've loved ever since.
I of course also had Parasite Eve, which came with a demo disk for another demo of FF8, a demo of Brave Fencer Musashi, Xenogears, and Bushido Blade 2.
And yeah, we still get demos today, but it just doesn't feel the same. Maybe it's just the fact that we are older and have income to actually buy games, and as a child the demos were just extra mini games we could play instead of playing our limited library of actual owned games.
I legit forgot about playing online with local friends. That was such a cool feature! And whenever you matched another team with Username and Username_01, you knew it was gonna be a bit harder. Because of the improved communication
Love that you talked about Couch Coop going away. By far my favorite feature and it is very disappointing that this feature has been taken away. I love to play games with my girlfriend but it sucks that there's only a handful of games that we can play together
It's just so hard to monetize
@@gandalf_thegreyidk I feel like it's easier for big companies to do it they're just lazy and want to just do the least amount of work possible
You can any co-op or multiplayer game together.
14:58 i was actually thinking about this the other day.. My favorite loading screen back on PS2 was the Dragon Ball Z Budokai 3 game, were if you rotated the joysticks fast enough tons of Saibamen would pop out of the ground. Me and my cousin loved trying to see how many we could get. And doing that all the time built up my forearm muscles, and helped me become way better at beam struggles (another game mechanic I miss) i felt like a true saiyan as a kid getting stronger, and beating my friends in matches.
Man beam struggles were so much fun. I don't know why they got rid of them when the majority of people I've seen online and talked to irl absolutely loved them
@@darknesswave100 I know right??!! And that would've been perfect for the Xenoverse games
@@deadman6919 Beam struggles are only a ghost of its former self. Now its garbage
sweet nostalgia
@@darknesswave100 we need the budokai 3 remake desperately
I remember spending hours at the computer store poring over the available video games. At that point in my life, a PC game was a major purchase, so I had to choose carefully. And of course the Internet for normal people was still a few years off. So I had to intuit which games would be good from careful perusal of the game box and reviews in computer catalogues. Good times.
I’m 35 and you sent me straight to my childhood in the 90’s with those PC magazines/Demos. I always wanted one when my dad went grocery shopping. My dad was on a budget but I remember getting one with Thief, Hexen 2, and the other game on the demo I can’t remember.
I don't know if I'm remembering this correctly, but I believe for a brief time during the PSX/PS2 era there were certain games where you could flip the disc upside down to access hidden content.
PS1 era aswell. They often hit soundtracks and sometimes easter eggs.
@@LogicAndCompassion The first track on a PS1 disc was the data, the rest of the tracks are music.
That's how the game worked, it was cool because Castlevania SotN had secret tracks if you played it in a CD player.
Theres also other developer secrets with this we know about in the gaming industry :)
You have to put it in the microwave first tho
Im kinda glad thats over cause that could cause unnecessary damage to it lol
Demos were absolutely awesome. I remember playing SSX demo many many times with friends. Good times.
The original Skate demo was so good I never bought the real game lol
I would add one to the list (and only us old-timers will remember this one): physical DRM. Long before the days of modern DRM, some games would come packaged with a book or placard that could only be “decoded” with a red plastic filter. At certain points in the game, it would ask you to use the decoder to locate and input something like “the second word of the third paragraph” that you could only know if you had the card and the decoder viewing plastic. This ensured that, even if you let your friends borrow the floppy disk and install it, they could only get so far unless you gave them the decoder, or they called you every time there was this DRM checkpoint. I remember Sierra and Lucas Arts games in particular would come bundled with this “feature”.
I remember those, what a headache they were. I'm so glad this one died off LoL.
I remember those, what a headache they were. I'm so glad this one died off LoL.
Thanks LGR
It was on the way out when I was a kid but I remember being very annoyed by it.
Remember CD keys? I remember CD keys. I once bought a old game off ebay and had to message the seller for the keys!
I grew up playing split screen with my brother, father or friends in games like Midnight Club 3, NFS Underground and Colin Mcrae 04. But split screen seem to have disappeared almost completely from racing games, even local, which is a real bummer in my opinion
I miss having the little game manuals that came with each physical box. I always enjoyed reading them, seeing some of the tips and tricks, the lore, etc.
Then we started getting a single code or something if that in games and tutorial types of levels just to explain basic controls that should be intuitive, quite frankly. 😩
I remember me and my 3 cousins playing Uncharted 2 multiplayer, all four of us with only 2 consoles. The tvs were in different rooms, but screaming to the other duo across the house was part of what made it great.
Split-screen and non-internet multi-player is a part of gaming that I miss the most.
Back in the day, having 2 controllers was an essential part of gaming, playing with a friend. Now, what's the reason of having 2 controllers for the PS5, for example?
Fortunately though, there are some companies like Hazelight...
The split screen Splinter cell franchise co op missions are some of my favourite gaming memories playing with my best mate, oh the fun we had, the strategies we made, we took that s**t so seriously and played through till sunrise 💪🎮
Yeah worked worked the coop mechanics in really well for that one. You absolutely Had to work together. My buddy and I would play that, gears of War, and take turns on Fable over and over. Such great times
I personally really miss the guide books. The information is strongly bundled into a few hundred pages with very beautiful artworks. I bought them for FF12, FF13, FF13-2, FF13-3 (LRFF13), FF15, Dragon Quest 8. I really loved that time. To date there is no website that is anywhere near as good as these guide books. FF15 might be the only exception, because of patches etc.
What I miss the most is special controllers for more immersion. I like playing fishing games once in a while and they are trying to simulate how real fishing feels like but you can not use a fishing controller anymore to give you the actual feeling that you're fishing.
There are so many cool games where I thought "This game could use a controller to make it more realistic" but all you get is steering wheels and move controllers.
Game boxes are amazing and the art and detail that is included is amazing
Just ask LGR, he's got a whole library of 'em.
Collectibles
Best years in gaming for me was from 1990 until 2005, every game had a guide book that countained a lot of great information with pictures, I would read them all, even yesterday I was reading prince of Persia sands of time guide book and is such a gem, another thing was magazines, I can barely see any magazines around, I always prefered to see gaming news on magazines than the internet, the feeling is diferent, from 2000 until 2010( more or less) was such a rush with games, every year more than 10 games were advanced for that time, the hype was real, no microtransactions, no online shitty games, barely no remastereds, no copy and paste indie games,( some but not a lot like these days) I have played since 1990 until 2022, from Freddy hardest on spectrum zx until GT 7 on the ps5( playing on dirt courses at the moment) I never skipped any generation of consoles or pc, I saw all the evolution of the industry, my favorite moments was the change from 2d to 3d in the 90s, the jump from gen 6 to gen 7, the graphics were awsome( first time I played project Gotham racing 3 my mind was like wtf is this? The jump from crt tv to full HD, my only let down in gaming was from 2013 forward, gen 8 focused a lot in stupid remastereds with no need, microtransactions, online gaming like fortnite etc, most of the best games in previous gens only had 1 or 2 follow up on gen 8, there was lot of day 1 patches and not only, games with flaws, fake news by gaming companies, however, there was some great games on gen 8, but not groundbreaking and bought something new, it was just something that was done before but bigger and with more stuff to do, and the graphics also are sick, specially God of war, spiderman, order 1880, uncharted 4, ryse son of rome, last of us 2, but that's it, ive counted how many games truly impressed me like previous gens did, there are 18 games that are really master piece in gen 8, gen 7 there were 56, gen 6 114, gen 5 82, gen 4, 91, and I know all of them by heart, well its just my option of an old timer that been playing games for 30 years almost non stop, sorry for English, I know it sucks, it's not my native language, I love your channel, keep up the amazing work Falcon
Sifu has taken the whole "lives" system and worked it into the gameplay excellently. I'd like to see more of this kind of innovation in games.
Hell blade did a great job with it too
@@jasonmackintosh1253 Yeah they did a terrific job. Great game
That mechanic in Sifu was great indeed. Sadly the whole roguelike structure of gameplay turned me off so I didn't enjoy it as much.
Doom Eternal's lives system is really cool too, as well as Minecraft's totems of undying
Ugh, I remember suffering through the loading screens from Crash Bandicoot- Wrath of Cortex on my PS2. I could get up, go to the bathroom, heat up food, grab snacks, come back in no rush and still see Crash falling. (Floating?) The noise it made is burned into my memory!
Gaming magazines were amazing, especially the ones with demo discs! I still have a bunch of old magazines with articles about Half Life 2 and F.E.A.R. 2 and such and the Risen demo i once got actually gpt me in to pc gaming back in like 2009
I think one of the best implements of Loading screen mini-games was Okami. You could actually get Demon fangs, a 'premium' currency only given by defeating enemies a certain way. It wasn't difficult to get them but a way to get more was nice. I do like having physical versions of games. I've been burned a few times with digital only games but having a physical copy just makes me feel a little more secure. The fact you could share games with friends for free was a nice bonus. Had a friend want to play Kingdom Hearts 3 but didn't want to buy it. I had a copy and let him borrow it. Also wanna point out that physical copies tend to have a lower price over time than digital copies. For example I was able to buy Borderlands 3 for $6.99 used when it is $24.99 digital. I want to know why digital games don't drop price or why they are as expensive when there isn't any additional costs like making the disks.
I agree. It makes zero sense to me how digital games can be more expensive than the disk version of the same game, at the same time.
I fondly remember receiving a piece of the Berlin Wall with my hard copy of World in Conflict. It also included a DVD that contained a documentary on the Cold War.
... I miss physical game copies and boxes.
I love the physical copy. It's literally collectable. If a company shut down you wouldn't own them anymore if it was digital.
yeah, how do people like "owning" something digital
That's not even true. You can definitely still buy games from companies that don't exist anymore lol
that’s not entirely true. games get removed from digital marketplaces like Steam all the time, but they remain in the libraries of current owners. You just lose the ability to purchase them.
I do agree physical is ideal, though.
@@WeirdTroll666 ALL copies of games are digital. The disc/cartridge contains a *_digital_* copy of a game. And you can keep a copy of the game files onto a disc, multiple games even The only benefit physical has is that you can sell it later.
And you can still own a game that isn't online dependent. Digital is not your enemy. Game _streaming_ /cloud gaming/games as a service absolutely is
I used to love physical games but now I research before purchase. 4 out of 5 games just have a small amount of data on the disc and the rest needs to be downloaded anyway. Basically the disc is just a license key for most games these days sadly. I still buy the occasional collector's edition if it is worth it.
sonic games in the 90s were BRUTAL with the lives system, not only did you have to start again, you had to start from the very beginning of the game, regardless of how far you were in, also no saves, you had to play to the end in 1 session..
I used to love demo discs, and I bought several games I probably never would have considered because I played the demo. I also used to love LAN parties with my friends in high school before online gaming became a thing. We'd all haul our desktops over someone's house, order food, and play games together all night.
I wish split screen multiplayer was more prevalent these days. I've tried a few recent games that still support it but I wish more did.
One of my favorite lists that Gameranx has made. Falcon really gets the nostalgia of early 90’s up to todays gaming. This was a great walk down memory lane.
Man literally brought a tear to my eye. I’m gonna go play Army of Two with my son 😭😭😭❤️
Man, I really miss the glory days of couch co-op. It bugs how so many fun-looking multiplayer games keep coming out, but there's no way to play them when you're actually hanging out with the people you want to play with.
I like these nostalgic lists, really makes you think how far gaming has come.
I got so nostalgic when you was talking about the good ol days of couch co-op. My friends and I would literally order a couple big azz pizzas, some desserts, and a sh*t ton of Mt Dew!
I miss those days lol
I miss the instruction booklet that came inside the game box. They had a lot of information and it was great having that collection. I also remember buying the PC magazine for the Demos, it was a great feeling.
Split screen co-op. God I miss that…
I have no idea how many weeks worth of time my buddy and I played Terrorist Hunt (usually drunk) in Rainbow Six Vegas 2
I miss DLC being on disks and feeling like more than the dlc is now. I miss a time before DLC period.
I don't . DLC is badass. It lets developers add in new content they came up with but might not have had time to add it in development or maybe as a tool to bring players back in after the games first wave of energy has died out. No way I'd want to go back. Now I DO miss the time's before developers took advantage of DLC to cut content from a game that was already there or just make low effort content for for cheap money
DLC is bitter sweet nowadays. It's pretty annoying when pub/ devs announce DLC months before the game is even released. It's a blatant announcement that they purposely section part of the game just to sell it at a later date. On the other hand, DLC can extend the life of a game you love so that you can spend more time in the world you love.
But games nowadays are way larger!
I really miss map editors in games. I remember being excited about new FarCry games exclusively because it had a map editor. Those days are gone. ☹️
Nintendo literally made 2 Mario games that are nothing BUT map editors...
Valve makes the SDK for the Source engine available, including the Hammer level editor, for free. Likewise for the developers of the Unity and Godot engines. Hell, Godot is open-source. I think my favourite level editor, however, was the BUILD editor, used with Duke Nukem 3D and Shadow Warrior. There's just something about it that's really intuitive that you don't get with Hammer.
Okay, maybe you're referring to editors built into the game itself? Portal 2 has such an editor, as do many Zachtronics games. Though to be fair, in the case of the latter there generally isn't that much to actually build, as the nature of the games tends towards level-editing being a matter of defining inputs and outputs and limiting the tools the player can use.
@@Roxor128 yea I miss like legit level editors built into the game. I’m a console peasant so my options are limited 😅
There used to be automated cheat lines, created by the publisher or developer of a game (like Sierra Online), where you'd pay by the minute for game hints. Think it was late 1980s to early 1990s. Games like the King's Quest series or the Space Quest series. You could also order hint books that were printed in invisible ink. You'd use a highlighter to make the ink visible.
3:22 - Where do you think the password system came from? Old NES game systems without battery-backed cartridges REQUIRED passwords to preserve your progress. Metroid is a prime example (pun not intended), but far from the only one.
5:13 - They already have reinstated the lives system, in a way. It's now called HARDCORE difficulty in some games. Except you only get one life.
I bought the crew to play with my brother and I was genuinely so shocked that a racing game didn't have split screen
We should never forget the elevator loading screens in Mass Effect, where you could talk to your NPC friends and continue questlines in peace
Those were legendary
I hate that I never played any of the mass affects
@@dark12ain You should buy Mass Effect Legendary Edition. All three games remastered on one disc for new consoles, they are great games.
What I miss is the music creation games like MTV Music Generator or Magix Music Maker. I don't think anyone has ever done any (good) content about these types of games. Pity, they were hours and hours of fun.
It wasn't huge but the physical copy of hades came with a beautiful art book. Actually turned into a tattoo for me.
Totally I had bought it again when I found it was on ps4 after having downloading it on my switch. Makes me miss the pre ps3 lil booklets that came with ps2 and GameCube games.
Yep. But Hades is so good that if it came with a note that said "ha ha you bought it physical sucker" I would have been ok lol
To be fair, the game guide books were almost all published before the internet got dood enough to have these guides on-line.
PlayStation magazine with the demo discs was a massive part of my childhood. I would play demos of certain games for hours, replaying the same single mission over and over. I remember being devastated when an issue arrived saying the magazine was over and this was the last one. It’s been about 15 years since then and I still think about it from time to time
YES!!! Man 😢
6:47 Quick Time events. Because of my lack of reaction timing, I actually enjoy these. A very good example in Telltale's Batman where you see on the screen what you are supposed to press, Up, Down, Left, Right, "Q", "W" SHIFT, and at most just LEFT and RIGHT simultaneously.
While early in the game it doesn't matter too much, later, yeah, you'll get killed if you don't. Yet the game is very forgiving and usually only puts you back 1-2 minutes of real gameplaying time.
I have really bad reaction timing yoo and I usually mess up square and circle cause of my bad eyesight but I still am gonna miss the difficult qte’s
Also is less common for a game to have split-screen: can you imagine Skyrim, fallout, Elden ring, dying light, watchdogs legion, etc with split-screen, that could be awesome especially if you have sibilings or close friends.
It's not even game's like that I care that don't have Splitscreen, in my opinion it's racers, shooters, fun indie games, many that Naturally would have had multiplayer 15 years ago, just don't anymore.
And a 80” tv
I definitely miss the big PC boxes myself. Odd shaped boxes from companies like Eidos, huge manuals to read wherever you want, cloth maps to look at and, for the super old among us, even weird fake crystals and things that were shipped in some Infocom titles for the Atari (anyone else remember the hidden clues books that came with Zork?)
There was one loading screen mini game I remember well. Okami. There were only two versions of the mini game, the first was pressing the button fast enough to try and cover the screen with as many paw prints as possible and the second was paw prints would appear and if you timed it right with pressing a button the prints would get bigger. The cool thing is if you did it right you actually got a demon fang, a rare item that you used to buy special items from a certain merchant and these items were useful, and in one case, necessary to advance in the game. You normally got these fangs by defeating enemies in special ways so farming them was sometimes tedious. The mini game offered a small helping hand.
Man, I miss midnight releases and "prestige" editions of games. Buying the premium packages of games and getting the feelies, rushing home to open it, figuring out how I wanted to display all the things.... *sigh* the good times hanging out with mt buddies in the parking lot of GameStop waiting for them to start handing out the games,
Those were the days. Not to mention, just talking to strangers about the game you were there for.
I'm always impressed with the quality of content and the frequency of the videos releasing in gameranx!
Glad you like them!
Yeah they are consistent af thats one step to success 👏
Don't know why anyone would think a physical copy is a Hassel. My buddy and I talked about how old games came with stuff and even little books inside that talked about the game and it's characters. And as far as co op, there definitely needs to be more couch co op games. My wife and I love playing, but have a hard time finding good games.
I actually liked the button mashing QTEs made you feel like you were actually doing something especially in Asura's Wrath, other than the "press now" and live ones
I've noticed a resurgence of demos lately, although they're downloads now and not an add on to other games or a multi demo pack with a magazine. And now you can carry over progress to the main game too, which is nice.
Loved my avatars on the Xbox 360, made multiple profiles just so I could mess with them. Forgot they were even a thing, it’s sad to see them go now that you mention it though.
We're hoping to bring back some of this stuff in the future.
We're setting up Unreal Engine 5, and moving into higher-end games soon, things like in the video we'd love to do with our future Unreal games.
Just looked at some of what you guys have made, they look interesting. I'll try a couple when my backlog gets under control, for now I'm putting them on my wishlist.
@@alexwalker2582 @Alex Walker Thanks Alex! I appreciate that.
I would recommend Dracula if you like 90s RPGs, it's also a free game.
After the current retro games are finished up soon we'll be moving into modern graphics (will be a few months).
A game with content during loading screens that I really enjoyed was Darkness (II?), Having Jackie narrate elements of the story to provide context ahead of the level you were about to play or the story thus far was another way to get closer to him as a character.
I've always wished developers would do that more like I wouldn't even mind loading screen if they had lil mini games on em
I got the Legend of Heroes Trails of Cold Steel 4 collectors edition that came with a book that has art and stuff in it, A sick as hell box with the man character in his ogre/normal form, these little mini poster things that have all the awakeners on them, a soundtrack disc with really good music on it, a steel box for the disc and a cloth poster thing that's still hanging in my room. Barely paid 100 bucks for it. All that stuff. Now all that costs 200 if you're lucky. Feels like some developers put nonsense in their collectors editions now that aren't even close to what they should cost
Man, online multiplayer just with friends and bots. So hard to find that nowadays in full scale FPS.
Physical discs with the PS5 are definitely the way to go. There's not a huge difference in price if you're getting newer games (sometimes no difference at all), but if older, used games can be dirt cheap. I just recently bought Resident Evil 7, RE8 and Uncharted 4 for $50 including shipping. To get the same from the PS stores, it would have cost me a little over twice that much.
Earthbound was sold for a premium price though. I think the retail price was $99.99, which even in the cartridge days was A LOT.
But it had scratchNsniff™ technology included. They were looking to the future.
8:25 Now this could be used effectively. While I did love seeing all those playable and non-playable demos on those free discs you could buy or subscribe to, I have seen some games where you did good in a particular area, let's say Pinball, and you "earn" money that can be used to get you new mini-games that run in the main game.
I remember playing Fallout 3/NV in a pitch black room and sneaking so slowly through dungeons high as hell. Good times.
Also can we get a new Metro game please?
But where would it be, the first 3 we're based off the book, would it be like a continuation of sam's story?
@@fried_3gg0s. Could you imagine a METRO in NYC or if it was a continuation of Sam's storyline, San Francisco..........call it METRO: The Subway. I'd be down for that. After all, STALKER 2 is gonna stay in Russia. At least METRO has a connection to the West. Shit I'm down for that. Plus add in UE5......let's go.
@@OIFIIIOIF-VET but at the same time metro is known for being a Russian fallout
I miss QTE still, its one of the moments where you suddenly go from casually fucking around to suddenly very serious trying to time everything right or die.
Old PC games had the disc soundtrack. Most Star Wars games had this feature. The Dark Forces/Jedi Knight series is the first to come to mind.
I genuinely miss cheat codes
Reading through the comments I was beginning to think I was the only one.
Farcry 4 had one really rough mandatory stealthy section where you got into an area by the back of a truck and had to take photos of certain things (I don't remember what else), I remember getting spotted and failing at least 20 times
I love challenging sneak levels like the Farcry games had. Some games don’t do stealth well, but farcry 3-5 (haven’t played 6) did it amazingly and in my opinion, the best,
@@keysterglenjamin8461 I loved the stealth in farcry 3 purely because the map had a lot of water and sneaking on watery levels is always fun, farcry 4 is my personal favorite game in the series so I'll always sing its praises and farcry 5 just has extremely smooth gameplay as a whole
The autofail does suck, but at least "modern" fc games have decent to good stealth mechanics as opposed to a lot of other games that had no stealth mechanics whatsoever and still ask you to do an autofail sneak section.
@@MinorZero absolutely, and first person stealth is challenging... but also very immersive so I love it
Man far cry was hard but good you felt like you had to stock up and you had to fight for your life
Cool story... I saved almost all my favorite game boxes from the 90s. All the classics... I am a lifelong gamer. I unfolded them down flat, and stored them in plastic in cold storage. They look basically new if I fold them back into boxes. They are one of a handful of things from that era I saved away because I knew they would be artifacts from a bygone era. I'm 42... I can only imagine how cool these will be when I am 82.
I loved playing games with secret demos from other games. Like ratchet and clank 3 you can play a sly 2 demo by inputting a certain button order.
I remember the time when you bought a game and you had an entire user manual inside the game's box. When I was a kid I didn't understand why my Diddy Kong Racing game couldn't have the same graphics details as the arts in the user manual, LoL.
The last bit there: I'm not sure if the newer few still do, but assassin's creed had always allowed you to walk around a void while you wait, and the elder scrolls/fallout both allow you to spin items in a load, albeit i cant say they're exactly "modern" franchises, more improved and rehashed older games lately.
I love even just that little bit of loading screen manipulation like that because then you can tell if something is wrong with the game. I use a very...personable...360 that sometimes acts up, so to have a visual cue the game stopped loading was always a great bonus for me.
I imagine they stopped because these days everyone wants a game *now*, or at the least the company higher-ups do, and coding in some load screen interactivety would take time which they could use to debug. It's sad because the little things they put in from being able to (relatively) walk the development were always my favourite. GTA 4 was king for small details, for example. New ones are still being found.
I miss when games had to be good and complete because they couldn’t update it later. They game they made is the game you played and that’s it. The ease of updating games has given us so many half assed, barely running games that only get good a year in or save good content for seasons
No.
My regular retail copy of the Witcher 3 came with a Witcher Universe Compendium, a world map, the soundtrack on a separate CD, a Geralt poster and a set of Wolf head stickers. Oh also a little “Thank you so much for spending your money on this” note from the devs. It’s why Cyberpunk broke my heart.
I still have the map witcher 3 came with hanging in my room 😔
My wolf head stickers are still on my ps4 now. Been on there ever since I got the game
Games like Morrowind or Oblivion that had a paper map of the world in the box. Memories of me and my little brother getting the map out in front of us whilst we explored Vvardenfell with zero help from the game journal 😅
I miss the cool game boxes. I loved the PC ones especially. They always had cool artwork designs on the boxes...
I especially liked the Collector's Edition of Final Fantasy 12 on PS2 that came with a cool metal case and a DVD that went through the history of Final Fantasy.
The feature I miss more is buying items in the game without using real money I really miss that feature
I remember on RPGs I've been button smashing every corner just to find an item. I wish they bring this back as I don't seem to see this anymore on games.
I really didn’t mind QTEs-what I DID mind was failing one and having to deal with an egregious load time!!!
PC Gamer magazine back in the 1990s included a CD with demos and free programs.
I started gaming on an Apple //e in 1984. I now play games in xbox, PlayStation, PC and an iPad Pro. One thing that has gone away is an instruction manual. Today some games have a tutorial to help you get started, but many do not. If you need help, they will sell you a manual that not only has the basic instructions on your interface (keyboard or game pad), weapons, spells, magic item, cars, etc. plus a walkthrough. On the other hand, I haven’t purchased a physical game or program (now called apps) in many years. All of the games I play these days are purchased online and downloaded.
We also used to play multiplayer games by putting all of our computers in one location and connected with serial ports (no internet back then). We didn’t need headphones because we just yelled at each other across the room. The original CounterStrike was very popular using this method.
Back in the late 1990s, the first NASCAR game came out on the PC. As there was no internet yet, they had an option where you could dial a long distance number with your 2400 bps modem and race against other real people. Long distance was what the telephone company charge for making a “telephone” call outside of your area code. I was running $600 a month long distance bills racing NASCAR.
Thank you for pointing out Rayman's soundtrack. I decided to lol it up after the video and it's pretty cool. I missed out on a lot of console generations as a kid so I never really got to see some of those transitional games that made those improvements. It's a neat little history gem and I appreciate you sharing little stuff like that
It was all thanx to the fact that early CD-ROM game titles included support for what was known as "Red Book Audio"....
Back in its earliest phase, compact disc was primarily a digital audio format. However, this also made it ideal as a large-scale data storage medium for use w/ computer systems -- the PC encyclopedia craze (Encarta, etc.) was essentially made possible entirely due to the rise of the CD-ROM format. Game developers quickly realized the enormous potential of a new disc format that offered in excess of 500 megabytes of data capacity per disc (unlike the pitiful 1.4 MB or less per floppy disk, the mainstay of software distribution for the 1980s).
With the "MPC" (Mulitmedia Personal Computer) standard, there was a bonus: a multimedia PC had to have both a CD-ROM drive *and* support for analog CD audio playback (via a sound cable connecting the Analog Out from the CD drive to the Analog In jack on a sound card) which opened up the ability to play CD-quality music &/or background audio tracks during gameplay.
Many CD-ROM games (such as Rayman, Tomb Raider etc.) implemented exactly this by reserving Track 1 for game data while using Track 2, Track 3 etc. for different audio tracks; when you first installed or loaded up the game disc, the system would automatically "find" the data it needed in Track 1, then during gameplay the game software would select & play the on-disc audio tracks as needed. This further fed the explosion of popularity for CD game titles, as the difference in sound quality was often times phenomenal compared to older games that were restricted to the capabilities of whatever sound card (if any) was installed in the PC.
Because those audio tracks followed the "Red Book Audio" standard, they would also play back in any normal CD player ... except Track 1. CD-ROM games ended up having to include a warning along the lines of "Do NOT play Track 1 in your CD player!" printed in the owner's manual or on the box, because playing Track 1 could (theoretically) blow out someone's speaker system! (Eventually, the manufacturers of CD music players would include a feature to check for & skip over data-only tracks.)