cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/13809164
Ignoring the lack of updates if the game is buggy, games back then were also more focused on quality and make gamers replay the game with unlockable features based on skills, not money. I can't count the number of times I played Metal Gear Solid games over and over to unlock new features playing the hardest difficulty and with handicap features, and also to find Easter eggs. Speaking of Easter eggs, you'd lose a number of hours exploring every nook and cranny finding them!
Definitely. Like I think a lot of people forget that the older generation of games, like the 8bit era especially, were arcade ports that were designed to eat quarters and not really modified much when moved to console. That was the main reason it was like, "here's your three lives to get through the next 15 levels and when you're out go fuck yourself start over loool".
I was an 80s kid and have tons of nostalgia for the time and the games even but to put it simply, there were not many games back then that you were getting more than a couple hours out of unless you were getting your shit pushed in constantly due to the artificial difficulty designed to suck up those quarters at the arcade. Even games like the original Legend of Zelda, if you know what to do ahead of time youre only talking a few hours of actual content. For platformers it was far less...Ninja Gaiden, a brutally difficult game...turn on invincibility and you can speed run that shit in like what, 20 minutes?
And not to toot my own horn but there would be games I paid $50 for that Id have done in an afternoon and then what? Nothing, play again I guess. Which sometimes was worthwhile, other times not so much.
Even later the ethos was still there, just instead of the quarter stealing mechanic, it was the "dont let them finish it in a rental period" mechanic...they wanted people to buy, not rent.
But, I do definitely miss the simplicity. No fuckin achievement chasing bullshit, no fucking unlocks, no dlc...they couldnt as easily release 40% of a game and lock the remaining 60% behind season passes and shit.
And of course having the whole game be dependent on multi-player and an active community for it to worth a shit beyond the first 60 daya. How many full price AAA games out there that lasted a few mere months befoee the server was a ghost town and nothing to do in the single player game.
Cest la vie lol
Didn't the Ultima series start in the 1980s? My friends and I spent ages on Ultima III!