Buying Games Like It's 1989

I missed out on 8-bit the first time (not because I was too young, I just wasn't interested in gaming back then), but I had the benefit of living near a game rental store that had all the major hardware and software the 16-bit generation had to offer.. only omission was (Japan/import) PC-Engine CD.

I just owned a Genesis and 4 games, but I only missed out on really obscure titles in the SNES and Genesis library (like Pulseman or Hagane or etc). Anyway, I played the good and bad of the majority of 16-bit, and I didn't need a game journalist to tell me which game is a jewel in the rough, or was extremely poor quality.

If it wasn't for that rental store, there was no way I could have called myself a home console gamer in the 90s. Not at $65+ per game.

My skills were through the roof back then. I don't think you could hand me a skill-based game that I couldn't beat in one weekend.. Gaiares being the notable exception.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by A Robot Bit Me

Some are, some aren't. The reason a lot of twenty-somethings recall 80's games as being more difficult than today's offerings is simple: we weren't very good at them.

Take Contra 1 (NES) for example. Notoriously difficult at the time of its release and dubbed The Hardest Game of All Time by IGN*† as recently as March of this year, this game, my wall, and the laws of physics joined forces to claim the life of my NES Max controller, a death that went unavenged until Thanksgiving break two years ago. I was bed ridden with the flu, and even through my fever-induced vision blur, I both embarked on and completed my quest to beat Contra without losing a single life in the same weekend. It really wasn't that hard at all.

Our cognative agility and dexterity have come a long way since elementary school. I guarantee that the fourth graders playing XB360, Wii, and PS3 this morning will be complaining about the difficulty (and quality) of games fifteen years from now, warmly reminiscing about the exact same games we're ridiculing for being "dumbed down."





* : They also credit Contra with introducing cheat codes.
† : lol

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Me and the nerdy kid down the street beat the game perfect when we were 7. I think we played it non-stop for an entire weekend. Eventually that kid started to jump up and down making the Mario "OING" noise everytime he did and I stopped hanging around with him.

^ Anybody else seeing a "Tyler Durden" situation here? :lol:

I would say the earliest cheat code is in Colossal Cave Adventure (i.e. an earlier version of the Atari Adventure), but that was more something integrated throughout the game as a joke, rather than something used to bypass the intended operation of the game.

I think the earliest cheat code that fit the way we think of them today was the Konami Code in Gradius.

Since we're all gushing out video game memories,

My family was dirt poor but some how managed to score an old Atari 2600, my favorite games were Stampede and Firefighter, my first Christmas memory was getting an old copy of Missile Command. Unfortunately old 2600's had the reliability of a Chevy Citation and soon it took acts of God to get the damn shit box running. At this time my family was poor as hell so no "replacement" 2600 ever showed up. My rich ass neighbor then got an NES and Mario blew me away. So did Zelda damn those times when I got to go to his house and play it (or even watch) were like trips to Mecca especially sine my parents didn't like his parents so there wasn't a lot of hanging out time.

Later on my God send grandma got me an NES with Mario and Zelda and maybe double dribble, GOD dammit that was like finding out that your AIDs test was a mistake and you're going to live. Some of my best memories ever! Then I got Metroid and it was ALL over. A few other games came along, I borrowed a ton of games from friends and back in the day Albertsons rented games and like every 3rd weekend or whenever they had these crazy rental sales so I could actually rent stuff like CV3 and the like. Nothing will ever take away my "borrowing" Mario 3 from my cousin for like, 5 years! and beating it many times (w/o warping) in one sitting damn those were the days. I could go on but this is too damn long.

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Originally Posted by Changeling

I'd say the biggest turd I ever bought blindly was probably Storm Lord because I thought it'd be like Ghouls and Ghosts(how wrong I was)

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This nostalgic thread, plus the G&G reference, (my all time favorite game) induced me out of my perma lurking mode. :)

You weren't the only one with a Storm Lord mishap. For the very same reason, it reminded me of G&G at the time. I vaguely remember an ad or perhaps an EGM write up making a comparison with the godly G&G game.
You know the rest, it was a stinker.

Anyway, back in the very, very early Genesis days (my favorite gaming period ever) I was able to try out most new games via the Good Guys 30 day return policy. I did this for maybe 6 months or so, until they dropped this policy for video games, which was surely abused by many. So thanks for that Good Guys, by the way, are they still in business or did they disappear?

As for now, I don't get caught up in the hype simply because I don't game much anymore period. Although I did just finish FE on the GC, as strat RPG's are my favorite genre, but FE was the first game I had seriously played in maybe a year, probably since the last FE on the GBA.
Most of the massively hyped games over the past few years, I'll try at a friends or something & I'm seldom impressed.

So I didn't take too many chances buying games blind back then, as there was a rental place in Bel-Air that rented tapes, & genesis & NES games. I'd only buy big games that I was certain I'd like, like PSII (bought that the week it came out in mid 1990).
Like Yoshi, I remember plunking down $70 or so for Sword of Vermillion when it came out & having fun with that too, despite it being a mediocre RPG, but there were only a few RPG's out there in total for all systems at that time.
The music was phenomenal, & their were some impressive graphical displays at that time.

My biggest surprise was in January of 1997, when I went into Toy's R Us and bought Dragon Force mostly from a brief write up in EGM, but it was from Working Designs they were usually top notch with quality so it wasn't much of a chance.
Dragon Force remains one of my all time favorites, I played through it again about 18 months ago, and it's still great.

Anyway, what was the topic of this thread again? Oh yes, the great year of 1989 (into 1990) when I was more passionate about games than any other year in my life.

Them were the days...