this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2026
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Greentext

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This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.

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[–] MeowerMisfit817@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago

I never got the "modern games are no fun!" thing because I've always played retro games only. Growing up around my dad and his SNES Station, I ended getting influenced.

With the exception of "buy game", "disk/cartridge", and split-screen mode with minigames, this is Endless Sky.

Digital gaming can be great when corpos don't ruin everything that makes it great.

[–] Nosebear@lemmy.ml 2 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

Because of this and also the whole RAM deal, I'm wondering if some retro trend is going to happen. Like gamers just going back to exactly those games.

[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 9 hours ago

Retro games and indie games, the golden combo.

They all run in potatoes, are fun, unique, doesn't have anti-consumer practices built in. It's all golden.

[–] Iambus@lemmy.world 2 points 11 hours ago

Pretty sure it's already happening, retro console pricing has been going up from what I've seen

[–] FinishingDutch@lemmy.world 1 points 12 hours ago

I’m lucky in that I never sold any old consoles. I’ve got stuff dating back to the NES and Master System. And all of it still works too, right down to the Dreamcast.

So thankfully I’ll still be able to play games once the console market implodes. I’m definitely not buying a new console if there’s no physical medium available.

And yeah, I’m going to be more actively collecting for those older systems. They can’t steal the stuff you physically own…

[–] ssfckdt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 14 hours ago

This is why I sometimes still play Civ2 or SC2K

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 22 points 1 day ago (5 children)

This is def nostalgia goggles, so many games were broken buggy messes back then because there was no way to ship updates

[–] TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 48 points 1 day ago (7 children)

No, they weren't. Most had bugs, but they weren't game-breaking. A lot of people took joy in finding and exploiting the bugs too. Dupes, etc.

Yeah, some shitty games were loaded with bugs.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

bugs? nah, not a problem

whistles in Morrowind

[–] FoxAlive@lemmy.zip 2 points 13 hours ago

Thats not really fair. Morrowind was so buggy someone decided they needed to remake the entire game engine to play it. I wouldn't say most games where like that.

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[–] flapperfivethousand@sh.itjust.works 18 points 1 day ago (3 children)

"Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.” ― Douglas Adams, "The Salmon of Doubt"

I guess GenAI slop is making me age faster, then

[–] FoxAlive@lemmy.zip 2 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

As someone who recently started hoarding old tools I wish that was true for all things.

We just recently got a singer 500a and its still impressive the engineering that went into that thing. The machine work is beautiful, and if you told me it was made in a CNC machine today I would of believed you.

Today modern and new, just means slave labor and plastic molded parts. Besides computers a lot of things haven't really changed. And often when they have changed it's for the worst. If I get a sewing machine today it would come with some app and internet connection for no reason, and would have plastic parts that struggle to get through 3 layers of cloth. While the singer 500a was meant to run 24/7 and is essentially the same exact thing.

For the most part the world has kind of been solved sense shortly after the industrial revolution. All the general commodities we interact with where mostly at their peak form back then. Dish washers, fridges, washing machines, driers. They're all almost exactly the same as they where when they where invented. There have been minor improvements that have been added over the years but for the most part things are in general just shittier.

You can blame so many things, you can say that mass production, trickle down economics, exporting labor etc all causes this. You can say that everyones access to mass produced garbage is an indicator of wealth and poverty dropping. What I don't think you can say anymore is that things "products" are better than they where in the old days.

I agree with your statement about cultural aspects though. Other than that when I hear some new innovative product the first thing that comes to my mind is its going to be another internet of things device that constantly bugs me and asks for more data, while providing 0 utility over the old version of the product, if anything its going to add more friction to my task, or attempt to insert a paywall into my life where one never existed before.

With games its harder to objectively say things where worse/better, but this infection of syphoning money out of every possible source infects games too. The only reason I can't say new modern games are bad is because indie games exist. Some of those indie games actually have brought me back to a childhood state where games where actually fun.

[–] forestbeasts@pawb.social 2 points 14 hours ago

We're 26. The new stuff is crap, and that's not just nostalgia goggles, it is actually objectively worse.

There's plenty of new stuff that isn't crap, like say indie games. But the platforms, the consoles, etc.? Those are intentionally disrespectful these days in a way even, say, the Wii/PS3 era of consoles wasn't (and they certainly weren't perfect either, it just started getting way worse way faster after that).

[–] TORFdot0@lemmy.world 17 points 1 day ago

When a game sucked ass then you had a physical product you could sell or trade to offload it. Instead of the whole game getting the servers shut off and delisted within a year if it’s bad today. Even the bad games were better back then because of this

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[–] ArcaneGadget@nord.pub 36 points 1 day ago (10 children)

Honestly, that's the entire reason i lost interest in consoles after buying the PS4. If i need to:
1 Boot up the console.
2 Update the system (twice).
3 PSN account bullshit.
4 Insert disc.
5 Install the game.
6 Download 50GB update for the game.
7 Install said update.
8 Finally start the game.
9 Login and TOS bullshit.
10 Finally play game.

I might just as well use my PC for gaming at that point. The games library is larger and the exclusives are just not worth it. Especially after Sony started releasing those on PC as well.

[–] OhVenus_Baby@lemmy.ml 1 points 17 hours ago
[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 day ago

Especially after Sony started releasing those on PC as well.

They put a stop to that, and now it's more clear why: they want absolute control over the price of their games.

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[–] Ariselas@piefed.ca 24 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Full game on a disk? You new school kids don't know that 1/2 of the game is loading the 17, 5 1/2" floppies in order just to install your game.

[–] lordziv@lemmy.nz 2 points 15 hours ago

Final Fantasy VII was so big it came on 7 discs

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[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

The sweet spot was getting the full game on disc and getting included DLC, having the ability to mod the game, and run private servers. It was kinda the golden era of this stage in gaming. Computers were powerful enough to give a great visual experience and studios were still interested in producing engaging storylines in triple A releases instead of just banging out battle royale games.

You could just enjoy the game as-is with a really good singleplayer campaign and then with whatever online offered. To this day I still have great memories of Half Life, Crysis, or even MoH:AA, especially the Snowy Park map. Do they compare graphically with today’s games like Fortnite? Not a chance. But you remember the story and how the game was way better at pulling you into it.

Some of the mods from this era turned out to be just as popular, if not moreso, than the original base game. Some of them live on to this day.

Sure, some Steam games offer mods and the like, but it certainly isn’t the same thing as what we had 15 or so years ago.

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[–] Chezus9247@lemmy.world 52 points 1 day ago (37 children)

Okay guys 'n gals. What's your first game you thought of while reading this greentext?

Mine is TimeSplitters 2 on PS2.

[–] Nelots@piefed.zip 2 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Mortal Kombat: Deception. Honestly, fighting games are one of my least favorite genres nowadays. But as a very young kid (way too young to be playing MK lol), it was a lot of fun.

I always got my ass kicked by my older siblings, so I preferred taking turns in the story mode over playing against other people. Probably one of the reasons I strongly prefer co-op and PvE games even today, now that I think about it.

[–] Chezus9247@lemmy.world 2 points 12 hours ago

You should try Tekken Tag Tournament. It's one of my favorite games because you can play the Story Mode in CoOp and it's soo much fun!

[–] karpintero@lemmy.world 34 points 1 day ago

GoldenEye N64

[–] Sanctus@anarchist.nexus 28 points 1 day ago (5 children)

I thought of an era, not a specific game.

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[–] rachelzsnow@lemmy.pt 14 points 1 day ago (6 children)

when can i stop living in this universe and switch back to the one we originally were on? man i miss it so much. That and original pizzahut

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[–] solidsmoke@lemmy.world 32 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

-Actually belongs to you -Developers can't delete it

[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's usually publishers who are the villains here, not devs.

[–] solidsmoke@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

You're completely right, whoops

[–] slaacaa@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago
[–] CarstenBoll@feddit.dk 17 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Back in 1997 I bought the game KKnD (Krush, Kill n' Destroy) in a local store for what would now be 110 dollars only to discover that it was broken and wouldn't run on my machine and there was no way to get a patch for it.

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