Four Things I Miss About Older Video Game Set Ups

This is in no way a cry from me or wish that video game return to the old way.  I think the technology and innovations that we’ve seen in the gaming industry have been incredible over the last 10 years.   Games are now more realistic, have better music, and even have trailers that are better than most movie trailers.

The experience is more interactive than ever not to mention you can now play against people from all parts of the world.  It’s pretty awesome.  However there are some small things that I do in fact miss about the old days.

Things that may seem silly but to us older generations who used to play Nintendo, we’re allowed to gripe a little….

Simple Controllers


Remember Atari?  That was a little stick and a button.  That’s it!  And to be perfectly honest I wasn’t even thinking about Atari.  I was thinking about Nintendo.  Up, down, left, right, B, A, select, start.  Contra!  Seriously though remember those days?  Nice and easy.  But since games have become so detailed so to have been the mechanisms for controlling the game characters.  I miss the simple days.  Now there are sensors and twisty things.  I don’t know what  the hell is going on.  And now Kinect?  Ahhhhhh

Blowing on Cartridges


You might think this is funny and ridiculous but I kind of miss the days when playing a game was a challenge.  Remember having to blow on the Nintendo cartridges back in the day?  Sure it was a pain in the ass but it made playing the game that much better when it finally showed up on the screen.  The point is, sometimes I miss the days when setting up to play a game was an event in itself.

The Special Accessories were Cooler


In today’s gaming world the technology is so awesome that you don’t really need accessories.  Granted you’ve got things like Guitar Hero drums and guitar.  Hell there are little things that make it seem like you’re racing in a car.  But I don’t know.  I just feel like things like the Power Glove and the special controller for Street Fighter II were way cooler than the stuff you see today.   Today you flat out don’t need those things.  The technology is just too darned good.

Games Took Up So Much More Space


It may again sound silly but back in the old days it was bragging rights when you opened up a closet and boom!  You had like 95 nintendo games.  That took up a lot of real estate.  Today?  Today you can just put the CD’s into a booklet and you’re done.  Nothing to brag about.  No real amounts of space being taken up.  No more bragging rights and “trophy” rooms so to speak.

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9 Comments

  1. Remember the movie the Wizard with Fred Savage? The scene where the kid in the desert says, “I love the power glove, it’s so bad.” In the movie he meant bad, like cool bad.

    I own a power glove, I don’t love it, it’s so bad. Cool looking? Yes. But games like Mario were actually impossible to play, you couldn’t run. About the only game it ever really worked for me was 1943. (youtube the Angry Nintendo Nerd’s power glove episode)

  2. I think you might have drank the “funny” kool-aid. Nintendo controllers have come full circle, having to fight the game to simply start was rage inducing (especially your play time was restricted) and the power glove was used more to pretend I was the predator than playing video games. I might have to call bull on you this time. Cheers!

  3. im surprised you didnt mention the social time while playing video games with friends, when having a friend over to play video games actually meant you 2 played video games and just playing while the others watch

  4. Disagree about the music. YEs the music is better in games now in the sense that the music is much more grander with the whole orchestral thing, as well as being on par with movie scores (maybe even better than movie scores TBH), however, for my money, it doesn’t get better than the simple 8 and 16 bit sounds of the days of old.

    Considering that people will make 8 bit renditions of popular songs, people doing guitar covers of old video game songs (as well as many other instruments), and the endless amounts of remixes that are made, obviously there is a lot of love for this music. Hell, I saw videos on youtube where they took the music from the new Sonic 4 game and gave it renditions of how it should’ve sounded. even going as far as to make it sound like it was in Sonic 2, and another how it would sound in Sonic 3. That’s attention to detail there.

    Honestly, is anyone going to remember the music to Halo or Mass Effect 25 years from now? Guess time will have to tell on that one. Either way, Super Metroid has the best video game soundtrack ever. No game perfectly sets the mood and fits the setting better. Each level/area has music that can be both exciting and slightly creepy. The music in the item/elevator rooms used to scare me as a child.

    Top 10 videogame soundtracks (by franchise, can’t choose just one game):

    10. Ninja Gaiden 1 or 2 (Nintendo)
    09. Any of the Shinobi games (Sega Genesis)
    08. Double Dragon 2 or 3
    07. Mega Man 2 or 3
    06. Mega Man X trilogy (i honestly don’t care for the later ones)
    05. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
    04. Sonic 1-3 & Knuckles
    03. Resident Evil 1
    02. Need For Speed 1-5 (love me some hard rock and techno driving music, not any of this hip hop crap that belongs in 3 3ast 3 3urious)
    01. Super Metroid.

  5. 1) Controllers are more complicated so that games are more versatile and characters can do more things. This is like saying the Apple mouse is superior to a Logitech mouse because it’s easier to learn how to use. Lets dumb down games and make them simpler because it’s too hard to figure out the controllers

    2) Blowing on the games ruined them. Your spit from your breath actually rusted the contacts on the cartridge. If you cleaned them properly you wouldn’t have had to do that at all. “Yeah I miss the old days when I would ruin my games, so I could play them”

    3) You must have never owned a power glove. Those things were better snow shoveling gloves than they were controllers. I bought one and went back to the old controllers after 2 days. Those things sucked.

    4) Between the increased size of the systems/controllers and the DVD cases games come in now, this one makes no sense at all. Games now take up much more space if you want them too. Stop putting them in a booklet.

    I love my old systems and played through Mega Man 2, Super Metroid and Secret of Mana just last month. There is something to be said of nostalgia for the old systems, but not any of the 4 reasons you have.

  6. Personally, I love the innovations that newer games have. They definitely look better than older games. The production values of the games have increased exponentially since their first appearance in our lives.

    I started on a PC myself when I started playing video games and that meant I started with a keyboard for my controller. Essentially this means that for me, there is no controller too complex for me to use, as I’ve always used a fair number of keys to get my characters to do what I want them to. In fact, I was a little disappointed by the lack of buttons on the Wii-mote but it actually works quite well for what Nintendo comes out with.

    Unfortunately I still feel that some older games really are superior to a lot of the newer stuff I’ve seen today. For instance, I’d much rather play Ocarina of Time or Majora’s Mask over Twilight Princess. I mean I really liked Twilight Princess, don’t get me wrong, but it was just so easy. When I fought a boss in Twilight Princess, it consisted of me repeatedly using whatever I’d found in the dungeon to annihilate the boss of the temple. There was no challenge, especially when you take into account that nothing can hit you for more than two of your hearts.

    I’ve always been a fan of Final Fantasy but recently they’ve been taking their games in a direction I don’t care for. Final Fantasy XIII was a disappointment in my eyes because, essentially, the game consisted of walking in a straight line for some forty odd hours looking at, talking to, or killing various pretty things. What happened to the open world, the characters I cared about? What happened to my airship? This is why I think games have really come downhill. All they care about are the graphics, the physics engines, the things that really just add polish to a good game, the things that turn a good game into a great game. But what makes a good game, the actual gameplay, the story, has taken a backseat.

    I miss games that really drew you in, had characters that you really cared about, had worlds you felt compelled to explore to the fullest. And that is why, despite how far we’ve come in some areas, I feel that we’ve actually taken a step backward overall.

  7. I miss knowing that if my game didn’t work right it was a simple fix…. now a days you have to pay to have the stupid things buffed (the at home ones just wreck them!). 🙁 I LOVED the old school Nintendo paddle – not because it was “easy” but because each button had it’s designated function – PERIOD. Now a days each button is capable of doing 20 different things and it’s a pain to remember which game is intends you to use which button in which way. lol Besides, you could FIGURE OUT HOW TO WIN EACH GAME!! Now you practically have to get a dang walkthough to tell you about the 5,001 different objectives each game has – my b/f is GREAT at games but when he “defeats” each game it will say he had 30% complete or something stupid like that. It’s frustrating.

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