Comic Strips

Except there was no online play

That was a feature, not a limitation.

The books were often filled with cool art not found in the game, sometimes there were hints hidden in the margins, or some had a mini-walkthru of the first level or something in the back, along with lore, they added a lot to the game imo. It felt like a well put together package, not unlike album artwork, liner notes and whole albums which people are also now (re)discovering are pretty cool.

Many years ago, you read an instruction book without knowing it was going to be your last.

Treasure every moment.

When I was little I had my parents read to me from the Mario 3 instruction manual before going to bed.

Manuals were necessary because the games back then couldn't fit a tutorial and, especially in the Atari days, the art didn't always get across what was going on.

I too had my nose in the manual on the ride home. My parents had a rule that we couldn't bring portable game systems (Game Gear in my case) on "short" car rides, so I'd sometimes bring a manual to look at.

I recommend Tunic if you're nostalgic for game manuals

Regarding the text of the OP, that sense of discovery is gone now. The internet has ruined it. All the secrets get posted online within the first week, and there's a wiki up in short order spoiling it for future players.

Game design is better today than it's ever been. For most of us I think it's just nostalgia for our childhoods and for living in simpler times that makes us think otherwise.

I mean have you ever gone back and played a classic game that you didn't grow up with? It's rough. I've plumbed the depths of the NES virtual console and found that all the best games just happen to be the ones I've already played. That's probably not a coincidence.

Even when the game is genuinely great, there's still a mountain of bullshit and bad game design to get through, which is just unnecessary today.

With that said, everyone in this comment section needs to check out UFO 50. It's a collection of 50 "retro" games by a group of indie games designers, and it's absolutely brilliant.

It's a loving recreation of playing games how they used to be played, except it's cleverly laced with subtle, modern design features that make the retro goodness so much better. It's like combing through old ROMs trying to find a diamond in the rough, except there's more diamond than rough.

Speaking of Easter eggs, UFO 50 also has a hidden meta-narrative buried deep in the collection, detailing the dark history of the fictional company that made them.

Oh man, @Beep@lemmus.org is gonna be so pissed you kept Field Explores' name in the comic.

Developers didn't really know what would work and what wouldn't, so they fucked around until they found something. No endless clones of the same idea. Extremely weird gameplay, often utter bullshit, sometimes a gem. It was great.

Reading the manual on the way home to get the back story and basic idea of how to play so when you actually started, you didn't have to sit through a 20 minute cutscene and another 30 min tutorial showing you how to jump. Just straight into the action.

Except there WAS online play. Since like the 90s. RTS games especially had online tournaments. Also, LAN parties used to be epic.

Games DID receive updates when needed. Internet speeds were slow, so it was expected that when you bought a game you got the game after installation, and not a day one patch that barely fixes anything.

As for the other kinds of updates; games got expansion packs. As the name would suggest, they expanded the game. Sometimes quite drastically.

Saves still corrupt to this day in brand new AAA releases.

I miss that games were completely finished and polished, put on a disk, and never touched again.

The thing about updates is that they weren't needed that much. Games didn't release half broken at 3FPS because "we'll just fix it later, maybe"

How in the fuck has no one yet said:

No Microtransactions.

No Gacha Games (literally 50% of current year gaming).

No Games As A Subscription Service.

No Games With Perpetual DLC (that are each as expensive as other entire games).

Eh. As someone who plays MANY games, I can't say that I agree with the notion of old games being inherently better. The interface, bugginess, or lack of QOL often hamstrings the experience.

IMO, it would be best if old games are remade. Arcanum is a pain in the rear, because the text and images can be small on my monitor, plus crashing if I click too quickly. Technical issues are my #1 killer of games, because it takes the wind out of my sails if I try to get into something.

Look, I have been replaying Prince of Persia Sands of Time these last few days and it's just fucking incredible how streamlined it is.

the pause menu is just resume/options/quit? no inventory management, skill tree, quest tracker, or other bullshit? Remember this is the IP that spawned Assassin's Creed

also.. it still looks great, with relatively detailed interiors and architecture, great animations and soundtrack, characters quipping about and it all manages to run on 256Mb of ram??

"No online play" sounds like a console peasant. But yeah, the manuals were the best part.

No updates or mtx is a big upside tbh

No updates, that's actually a plus in my mind these days, considering how many games they've taken down. You can't take a disk from someone's game collection, but you can certainly remove it when it's been purchased digitally.

I really miss the old days — now we even need to pay to progress in games. Mobile game devs are just craving money

This reminds me so much of that time I got Red Alert from my parents. I was so happy, until I figured out it was the expansion Red Alert: The Aftermath. I had to wait so long before I got the base game I probably read the instruction manual and cover 10 times over. But that was enough to keep me happy till I got the original.

Gog tries to give you as much of this as possible

Ahhhh the little sleeves in the crystal cases that you would read excitedly on the way home.

Often secret codes hidden in the manual

no updates How many old games actually made it to the store still needing updates? I have heard of at least one, maybe two, games which had real game-breaking bugs and could have used an update to fix them.

If you really like the nostalgia of old instruction booklets, or buying a game outside your spoken language, try Tunic. Fantastic game

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned one of the most amazing things of pre-internet games: No wikis or video tutorials.

Sure there were some magazines if you were lucky and they might offer some hints or maps that could help but that's nothing compared to the full playthroughs you can find hours after a new game releases today. You might think that made the games harder and more frustrating and you'ld be right. You could struggle for weeks to get past a single level.

But that also meant that every victory you had was your own. That was a feeling that is very hard to obtain today without a lot of self discipline.

Older games were a lot simpler too. No loot boxes, multiple forms of currency - some of which could only be bought with real money, invasive DRM, season passes, content pulled back by selling it to you as DLC, extremely long game times artificially extended by things like mapping gimmicks, giant and almost barren worlds, unoptomized graphics requiring top of the line graphics cards that would still turn your room to a furnace, and massive amounts of bugs and glitches that may or may not be patched out at a later time.

I should replay tunic

Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy for the PS2 had a roughly 1.5' x 2' fold out poster that had a map of the playable world with small bits of lore. It even had a short message from your uncle telling you good luck on your journey. The other side had an image of Jak & Daxter on the A-grav zoomer. This was way back in 2001.
I remember as a kid pulling it out and reading it so many times that the corner folds started to wear out.

Similarly, Ratchet & Clank also had a poster with all the weapons & gadgets you'd use with small bits of info for each item. The reverse side also had R&C, however I can't remember if Ratchet was just holding the Devastator or if they were on a grind rail.
I miss getting those with the games. It made them so much more special and unique.