I remember reading about Elite in a (paper) magazine, and I WANTED IT. Counted my pocket money. Drove my bike to a mainly photo related retailer (only one reachable for me, they also did PC games as a side job), and there it was, box art in the window! Went in, told em I wanted that, and - big disappointment - they had to order it. THEY HAD A DISPLAY OF THE BOX ART, BUT NO COPY OF THE REAL THING! I had to pay upfront, cash, and then had to ride the bike there, again, two times, within a fornight, cos there was no notification of arrival then.
The joy, tension, reading through the manual, while it was installing... unbeatable. Spent most of my afternoons in game, doing my "homework".
It was a small shop, they only had a corner with "electronic" things, some computer stuff. They probably only odered a copy or two, not believing it would sell. But it did. Remember, this must have been the 1980ies, computers were somewhat rare and exotic back then.
I think I was one of two in my class who owned one.
TLDR: Agree on many points but also you are wrong in some things. Certain parts of AAA gaming make modern games feel like a chore or feel bad compared to how AAA games used to feel. But also the market of games is flooded and making more money than ever before.
Regarding some of your points:
All the games today are the same
I get what you're saying, but you're also wrong. There are so many games out there these days that vary widely in art, style, design, gameplay, etc. There have literally never been so many different kinds of game on the market at once. Now, I agree that AAA studios are mostly only making "safe" games they know will sell, and I too am upset that companies these days are so risk adverse that they will refuse to make a new game as experimental as something like Illbleed, but thats what happens when a hobby goes mainstream and investors that are greedy get invovled.
Why can't I just play from disk
Because load times would be astronomical. Disk read speeds are still slow, way slower than solid state drive read speeds. Your 10 second loading screens would be longer than 45 seconds, even the PS1 would probably load games faster. In this case, some data may not be loaded completely by the time the game decides to let you in, as some assets in games now are streamed from the drive as needed instead of being loaded directly into RAM at the start of a scene. Relying on a slow mechanical disk laser to stream that data in a manner that wouldn't cause crashing or missing assets would not be feasible. They could try solid storage but that comes with its own caveats and increased manufacture price.
Complaining about storage
I agree, but also games have big textures and better quality audio these days compared to the old days. Sure, not all games need that, but if storage space is a complaint then play any one of the ten trillion indie card battlers. The bigger files also increase load times, more data in general needs more time to search and load.
Complaints about MTX and such
I agree, predatory monetization sucks. The only times I am okay with inclusion of MTX/Lootbox/Gachapon etc is if the game is free. The developers have to make money somehow. I play occasional gacha games, usually developed for mobile devices but I like to play on PC. I really enjoyed Super Mecha Champions, but they will probably be ending support sometime soon as they have gone into maintenance mode. But I have been very surprised with Zenless Zone Zero. I kinda hate how much I like the game, honestly.
Point is, while I agree that MTX suck, in a free game its acceptable IMO because the developers have to make money. Gacha is really big in Asian culture, and I am not one to police someone else's culture or say what they do is bad, its just different. MTX on any paid game is just sad though.
---------BotW Rant-----------
IMO Breath of the Wild was a terrible Zelda game. Like, Zelda II Adventure of Link bad, not Wand of Gamelan bad though. It isn't a bad game in general, I would give it maybe a 5 or 6 out of 10 (unlike many people today I actually like to use all 10 numbers), it just felt average because it was. I laughed like a maniac when Tears of the Kingdom cane out and made Breath of the Wild look like a sad tech demo, and every reviewer that gave BotW a high score now suddenly looked like the biggest idiot on the planet because they were scoring TotK the same despite it being the clearly better game.
Zelda, ever since the 3rd game in its series, followed a clear formula. When people bought a Zelda game after Link to the Past, they had an idea of what to expect. Its like people going to a burger joint because they know they sell burgers. BotW though, deleted all of that in an attempt to go back and repeat what only ONE game in the entire Zelda franchise up to that point had done. A game that the franchise had largely moved on from, it had built upon that concept in its later iterations. BotW was a downgrade, because a lot of people going to that same burger joint were now suddenly getting served ground beef, without any of the other ingredients in a burger.
TotK was much better in being an actual Zelda game, but it still was missing a lot of what people expect from a Zelda game. No real, large and elaborate dungeons, just a pitiful attempt (albeit still a better attempt than BotW) at a 4 room "dungeon." No pieces of heart, no hookshot or magic instrument, no bottles to collect, etc. It felt like I was playing an Ubisoft open world game cosplaying as a Zelda game.
It's easy to forget the negatives involved here (or some you maybe never knew as a kid). Games used to be very expensive for 80's kids. Adjusting for inflation, you can get two full-priced AAA games now for what A Link to the Past cost in 1992. It's part of the reason there's so much more choice now. Also, games came with manuals because they were so strapped for storage space that they couldn't put tutorials and instructions in the games themselves. Kids that rented games or purchased them secondhand often didn't have the manuals available, so they'd get stuck (before Internet info access).
I agree with the others that you should look into PC gaming; aside from the occasional live service game, I've only ever updated my games when I want to. In general, indies are a good way to go to mitigate many (if not all) of the issues brought up, but so are quality PC ports. For example, I just bought Trails through Daybreak from GOG, which so far looks like something I'll never have to update, I can be in the game action within literally four seconds of launching it, and it's mine forever.
That's setting aside all the value considerations like access to mods, full control of your save storage, getting to play with the gamepad of your choice, supporting small devs/publishers, etc. Even without diving into indie gaming, there are tons of quality AA titles around, too. Compared to a console, It's trivial to offset the larger hardware costs with cheaper games.
Yes with inflation games are proportionately less, but let's also not forget that wages have stagnated while inflation has ballooned. People literally aren't earning much than they were in the 90s (well, the average person, the inflation money has gone to the dragons). The price of games relative to mean wage is fairly consistent IIRC.
But yeah everything else is pretty true. And we all look back on games as kids with rose colored glasses. I remember when majoras mask was photorealistic to me almost!
In the US, since the conversation began with an American retailer? No. The larger trend in this reference window--since the early 90's--is flat wage growth versus inflation (productivity has increased massively, but the implications of that are a whole other conversation). There was a recent, brief period of inflation outpacing wages as a result of the pandemic, but that trend has also since reversed to a small degree. New fast food hires weren't making $15 an hour in 1992. There's been wage growth, just closely in-line with inflation over the long term. It's an apples-to-apples comparison here, unusually so.
Video games are dramatically less expensive now to purchase than they were in the fourth gen. It's easy to see why, too; the marginal cost of a cartridge-based game was substantial, owing to a relatively complex manufacturing process. That marginal cost dropped substantially with disc media (with a corresponding drop in game prices at retail), and then again to near zero with digital distribution.
Most modern AAA games sucks. Mainly because majority of them have started to go with the online only bullcrap when it is not even necessary. Not to mention that trend too where games are sold half baked with the rest of the game being delivered later as separate to purchase DLC(s).
I have already embraced Indies. Fun fact: Baldurs Gate 3 is an indie game (although the quality is very much an AAA game and also some argueably saying it is not because Larian is a large private company that independently publishes their games)
I've been playing Policenauts for the SEGA Saturn lately. I have enjoyed the story so far, my only complaint is that I don't have a lightgun to play the game with, so the shooting sections are not as fun. I haven't got too far into the game, but it is such an enjoyable story. Truly unfortunate that it never released outside of Japan.
Also going back through Dino Crisis, thats such a classic that gets slept on. Hopefully with it sweeping Capcom's recent survey they will finally do something with it again.
Policenauts is on my list for sure, but didn’t know you could play without a light gun. do light guns work on modern tvs or is there a way to emulate the functionality?
Yeah, you can play with a regular controller, 3D controller, or even the Saturn mouse apparently. But obviously it is more fun with a lightgun, at least for the shooting parts. The regular visual novel parts aren't too great with a gun though.
Lightguns do not work on any TV that isn't using CRT technology due to the way they are designed. You can emulate them thankfully with IR sensors, such as in a Wii remote. You can also buy lightguns custom made, or make one yourself with online diagrams. Sinden and Gun4IR are the two most popular, but there is another one that has a strange German name I am drawing a blank on that uses Wii remotes as well.
Finally playing Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney for the first time and it's such a treat. I can see why people love this series. I'm almost finished with it I think!
Shining Force is putting me to sleep. But... that's why I wanted it, so it's good? (-ish:-D)
Before that I played Shining in the Darkness (I made a post about it to help that community get started, although it is too highly specific so I don't expect it will survive).
I wonder if I should follow up with Shining Force II, but I tend to not want to finish it. All the extra stuff you want to do to level up your characters just leads to really long battles and then you Egress and do it all again and again - it feels too gimmicky, rather than natural.
But Shining Force is so simple and easy and short and fun so that one I enjoy:-).
i have a copy of shining force on Saturn waiting for me to play it. idk why I’m getting more into RPGs when i have almost no time for them. interesting reason to play a game. though whatever promotes healthy sleep habits haha.
This one can be really short, and even if you level up your characters (which you don't really need to, especially if you limit yourself to only use the ones that you think you'll want to keep and set the others aside, only using as carriers of medical herbs and perhaps to take a bit) it still is short. Plus each battle is short, so it's a good candidate if you don't have so much time right now, very unlike the vast majority of RPGs.
I'm on the final dungeon of Twilight princess. It's been a journey getting here. I was a bit disappointed with the previous zone, but I'm hoping this last part will be a banger.
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