What do you miss?

[Bleeders]

This thread will either sink or swim...

In anycase, inspired by a small piece in the recent edition of EDGE Magazine I think it was; what do you miss from gaming of yore that you simply don't see these days?

For me.

Pokes.

Remember those? Before Action Replay was (probably) ever conceived, we'd have the ability to "hack" the game using snippets of code, which more often than not came loaded onto a cassette on the front of Crash Magazine or Your Sinclair.

I remember sitting there for ages slowly inputting line after line to merely create some sort of bizarre or useful effect in-game. For me though, there would usually be an error in the poke somewhere.

[cavalcade]

I miss truly bad games. These days, yes you have your Alter Echos, and Charlie's Angels but usually the terrible titles are just horribly misguided rather than totally, and utterly, dreadful. Probably because the major console manufacturers vet these things fairly well, before they go on release.

Back in the era of 1.99 games on cassette, you could be assured of a genuine stinker once in a while. I mean breathtakingly bad. Some are games erased by history, that no longer even appear on "Worst Games of All Time" lists. I doubt I could even name them without getting my CPC464 collection out of the loft. But they left scars. Scars so deep. When 1.99 was a fifth of my weekly paper round pay, these things could hurt.

[AllYourBase]

I miss waiting 10 minutes for a game to load then promptly crash!

[peeveen]

Pokes.

Hehe, yeah. "RANDOMIZE USR 32768". Always wanted to know how people came up with these. I guess that curiosity partly led me to be a programmer.

Here's what I miss from the 8-bit days ...

Because a game was usually the brainchild of one programmer, you would get a lot of personality (and often eccentricity) in a game ... resulting in some seriously bizarre, diverse and imaginative stuff. OK, so quite often the idea was ahead of the technology, but dammit it was interesting! Jet Set Willy, Tau Ceti, Mercenary, I Of The Mask ... good games, but also little journeys inside someone's head.

[eastyy]

To be honest i never really used pokes it was just to much effort

i got a multiface 3 instead

[Salsa Party Animal]

I miss Amiga British gaming development era.

[Geoff D]

It's a huge rose tint on my part, but I miss the anticipation I used to feel in pre-internet days; I'm thankful for the wealth of information that's at our fingertips these days of course, but man I used to love waiting impatiently for my copy of Mean Machines to turn up at the newsies, then pouring over the screenshots of new & exotic sounding games.

I don't usually yap on about golden days of gaming & other snooze-inducing cliches, & I'm sure it's all related to me being young enough not to have any other 'real' time-consuming issues back then, but **** me it was exciting. At least that's how I remember it...

[eastyy]

I miss Amiga British gaming development era.

teams like sensible software/bitmap brothers/team 17/bullfrog etc ?

[EDDIE M0NS00N]

Xmas games & Xmas gaming.

I miss the feeling I used to get at Xmas, knowing that I had some top games to play & time to play them over the festive season.

The build up to Xmas, the excitement, the spending most of my time gaming (& eating!!). It is something that I fail to 'feel' anymore.

[charlesr]

One console / games machine being enough.

Now I have to have 5 plugged in, which will no doubt rise to 8 over the next couple of years.

[Escape-To-88]

What do you miss?

My sense of self-worth

Oh and probably..

One console / games machine being enough.

And finally...Didn't games used to be fun?

[the_dude]

I miss the ?3 games at my local WH Smiths, i miss Graphic Adventures like Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, Full Throttle, Beneth a Steel Sky, i miss 2D retro style games and the only place where you can play such titles now are the GBA/DS, hopefully the Wii will sort this out. I also miss Super Play Magazine, now that was a ****in mag. Not like the ****e you get these days.

[Dogg Thang]

I miss the beepy renditions of classical music pieces that seemed to be so popular back in the day. Probably only used because they were out of copyright but they really worked.

[Concept]

Days of the Dreamcast's highlights circa 2000 when it seemed the videogaming world was filled with optimism and you were expecting a killer title to be released every month. The sense of community at that time was superb.

Another would be the awe I felt upon Super Mario 64's release, when it truly did feel like a revolution (more so than the Wii in my opinion) and it felt as though anything was going to be possible in the future.

Ultimately... 1996, 1997 (if only for FFVII), 1998 and 2000 were amazing years.

[charlesr]

Super Play Magazine, now that was a ****in mag. Not like the ****e you get these days.

Is this true? I never read it. I mean, yes lots of people rate it, but how much better was it than current mags, or is it partially rose tinted specs. Or was it a case of the opposition being sooo bad, it seemed really good and nowadays would rank along side the better magazines now. Just interested is all.