let’s just face it retro-gaming wasn’t
as rose-tinted as we all remember
remember kids if you’re under 18 ask
your parents before calling welcome to
watchmojo.com and today we’ll be
counting down our picks for the top 10
things that sucked about retro gaming
thank you already for one of the
roughest video games around for your
Atari game system for this list we’re
looking at those things that frankly
kind of sucked about retro gaming these
flaws include anything from the games
themselves to their marketing to their
setups as long as it was a significant
factor in gaming at the time its
eligible for critique that’s brilliant
right you and your friends are dead
game over number 10 irrelevant
commercials awesome sound awesome
pictures awesome choices in today’s age
game commercials are practically an art
form in and of themselves the production
quality is outstanding they’re exciting
and most importantly they often show
actual gameplay footage to let you know
what you’re getting into back in the day
however you’d practically be going in
blind as the commercial certainly didn’t
provide any help Sega Genesis is 16-bit
3do is 32 bits the Atari Jaguar is 64
bit which is more advanced clifford hmm
they often included overly enthusiastic
announcers corny songs and little to no
mention about what the game is actually
about or how it plays sure they were
kind of entertaining but they definitely
failed as informative game commercials
60 more levels massive enemies whose
Yoshi tricks all served up to the latest
graphic technology morph nation number
nine early 3d
there was a time when 3d was the new and
exciting addition to video games you
could fly planes around in three
dimensions or move the camera as well as
your character but simply it was
revolutionary however that doesn’t
detract from the fact that early 3d at
least on consoles was atrocious
while PC games had comfortably entered
the realm of 3d graphics thanks to
powerful video cards the consoles of the
mid-90s struggled hard to maintain a
balance between framerate graphical
fidelity and enjoyable gameplay then
again if you go back to the earliest
forms of 3d visuals on the PC and Amiga
you find the same problems the console
suffered
awful graphics moving at an awful awful
fragrant’ number 8 early copy production
the kernels bequests was one of these
which came with a unique red lens
magnifying glass that was used to search
the game map for hidden fingerprints in
order to prevent theft some early PC
video games throughout the 80s and 90s
came with very annoying forms of copy
protection not to mention you had to
decipher code by deciphering a table to
get to the deciphered game entry code
which just sucks these forms of
protection required the player to have
the original packaging that the game
came in as the answers to the game’s
protection hints or codes were usually
found in the manual or box you see these
guys didn’t want you just copying the
copy protection page they made it so
that you had a copy a ton of pages
however developers started to get more
cryptic with their copy protection
methods be it with code wheels such as
the one found on the Secret of Monkey
Island box or the lens lock a rather
unreliable lens with prisms inside that
didn’t work on certain monitors that
were either too big or too small what
you had to do was put the Lim’s lock up
to the screen and move your head and do
just the right position to see the code
deciphered through the prisms number 7
bad translations Japanese games were as
popular back in the day as they are
today however the difference between now
and then is not the quality of the games
but the quality of the writing all your
base are belong to huh Japanese
developers often didn’t have the time or
the money to perfectly translate their
games for Western audiences and as a
result we were treated to some god-awful
script how you handle the beginning is
everything good not sure the lines
didn’t make a lick of sense and the
stories often suffered as a result but
damn were they fun to spot and laugh at
number six arcade style difficulty
because home console games were often
inspired by or direct ports of arcade
games this affected the difficulty curve
often games were difficult to the point
of being unfair and this can be blamed
on two things first they were often very
short
thus the difficulty was there to
artificially extend the life of the
games
also the arcade mentality of trying to
kill the player to get more quarters out
of them still persisted at home hey man
I spent a lot of quarters to buy this
console you can chill with the
difficulty bro
number five no online guides in today’s
age of instant online access tricky
sections of videogames are as easy as
booting up Google and seeking help or a
quick tutorial search on YouTube
unfortunately for gamers back in the day
no such gratification was granted sure
there were strategy guides and various
walkthroughs in magazines but that
required purchasing the guide flipping
through it reading while you’re supposed
to do and trying it up for yourself
which was often difficult due to the
cryptic game design of the time it’s now
much easier to simply hop on YouTube and
check it out first hand back then if you
were stuck chances are you might stay
stuck forever I’m lost in the dinky
island jungle in monkey – ah look there
are only two ways out of the room you’re
in
figure it out knucklehead number four
new patches
in today’s gaming landscape patches are
extremely necessary not only does it
seem like every game that comes out
today is released broken and buggy but
patches are often used to fix certain
issues in game or help improve it in
some meaningful way while many see this
as a crutch that lazy developers and
publishers lean on this is still better
than the opposite because unfortunately
for retro games there was no such thing
if a game was shipped broken or glitchy
which did happen then the player was
stuck with that glitchy mess of a game
which they just spent their hard-earned
money on
PC games started to bring in patches in
the mid 90s but have fun downloading
each and every update in the order they
were released on your 56k modem number
three gaming was much more expensive
will you be the one to experience the
Nintendo Entertainment System comes with
Rob zapper control deck two controllers
gyromite and duck hunt while it seems
like video gaming today is an expensive
hobby it’s nothing compared to the cost
of the older generations at the time it
comes with 27 games but that’s just for
starters
for example the Atari 2600 which was
released in 1977 had a launch price of
$199 which when adjusted for inflation
would be around 780 dollars in 2016 no
George mine the original NES launched in
1985 and it’s cheapest launch bundle
also went for $199 about 440 today
indicating a downward yet still pretty
pricey trajectory the one to play with
Rob the extraordinary video robot
batteries not included some more
examples for you speak better to turbo
on SNES retailed for 75 bucks plus tax
strider on the genesis retailed for 80
while fantasy star for on the genesis
was a hundred bucks and don’t even get
me started on the Neo Geo yo win number
two no saving think about this if you
wanted to say beat Super Mario Brothers
3 without using warps you had to do it
all in one city
while it’s true that some video games in
the 80s employed what was called
password saving that was extremely
flawed not only where the passwords
often long in complex but they had to be
written down meaning they could easily
be lost smudged or written incorrectly
is it really necessary to have both
capital and lowercase letters as well as
numbers question marks and exclamation
marks to eventually game started to
include battery backup saving first seen
in the Legend of Zelda on NES allowing
players to save their progress until the
battery died this also fed into the
problem we discussed earlier apropos to
difficulty and the short length of the
game’s fun stuff before we look at our
most annoying pic here a few honorable
mentions if your systems ever not
working you probably know by this point
that’s the first thing to check push it
the channel 3 to make it simple on
yourself number 1 no online resources to
warn us of bad games anyone who follows
gaming these days knows that there are
very few surprises after you bought
something today you can simply hop on
Metacritic and see the numerical value
to get a quick assumption of the game’s
quality or read the 50-plus aggregated
reviews if you thought I was serious
about this game absolutely right because
I was just kidding I was just kidding
back in the day though there was no such
thing there were reviews and magazines
but again that required actually buying
the magazine and listening to one
critics opinion if you missed the issue
where they discussed that game – yes so
it was either that or word-of-mouth
which was rather limited you mainly just
had to buy your fifty dollar game and
hope for the best
usually this involved judging a game by
its cover not exactly a surefire
strategy
do you agree with our list I love it
it’s just great what annoyed you about
retro gaming for more critical top 10s
published every day be sure to subscribe
to watchmojo.com you have any idea how
many calls I get a day about that don’t
ask me about it again
as rose-tinted as we all remember
remember kids if you’re under 18 ask
your parents before calling welcome to
watchmojo.com and today we’ll be
counting down our picks for the top 10
things that sucked about retro gaming
thank you already for one of the
roughest video games around for your
Atari game system for this list we’re
looking at those things that frankly
kind of sucked about retro gaming these
flaws include anything from the games
themselves to their marketing to their
setups as long as it was a significant
factor in gaming at the time its
eligible for critique that’s brilliant
right you and your friends are dead
game over number 10 irrelevant
commercials awesome sound awesome
pictures awesome choices in today’s age
game commercials are practically an art
form in and of themselves the production
quality is outstanding they’re exciting
and most importantly they often show
actual gameplay footage to let you know
what you’re getting into back in the day
however you’d practically be going in
blind as the commercial certainly didn’t
provide any help Sega Genesis is 16-bit
3do is 32 bits the Atari Jaguar is 64
bit which is more advanced clifford hmm
they often included overly enthusiastic
announcers corny songs and little to no
mention about what the game is actually
about or how it plays sure they were
kind of entertaining but they definitely
failed as informative game commercials
60 more levels massive enemies whose
Yoshi tricks all served up to the latest
graphic technology morph nation number
nine early 3d
there was a time when 3d was the new and
exciting addition to video games you
could fly planes around in three
dimensions or move the camera as well as
your character but simply it was
revolutionary however that doesn’t
detract from the fact that early 3d at
least on consoles was atrocious
while PC games had comfortably entered
the realm of 3d graphics thanks to
powerful video cards the consoles of the
mid-90s struggled hard to maintain a
balance between framerate graphical
fidelity and enjoyable gameplay then
again if you go back to the earliest
forms of 3d visuals on the PC and Amiga
you find the same problems the console
suffered
awful graphics moving at an awful awful
fragrant’ number 8 early copy production
the kernels bequests was one of these
which came with a unique red lens
magnifying glass that was used to search
the game map for hidden fingerprints in
order to prevent theft some early PC
video games throughout the 80s and 90s
came with very annoying forms of copy
protection not to mention you had to
decipher code by deciphering a table to
get to the deciphered game entry code
which just sucks these forms of
protection required the player to have
the original packaging that the game
came in as the answers to the game’s
protection hints or codes were usually
found in the manual or box you see these
guys didn’t want you just copying the
copy protection page they made it so
that you had a copy a ton of pages
however developers started to get more
cryptic with their copy protection
methods be it with code wheels such as
the one found on the Secret of Monkey
Island box or the lens lock a rather
unreliable lens with prisms inside that
didn’t work on certain monitors that
were either too big or too small what
you had to do was put the Lim’s lock up
to the screen and move your head and do
just the right position to see the code
deciphered through the prisms number 7
bad translations Japanese games were as
popular back in the day as they are
today however the difference between now
and then is not the quality of the games
but the quality of the writing all your
base are belong to huh Japanese
developers often didn’t have the time or
the money to perfectly translate their
games for Western audiences and as a
result we were treated to some god-awful
script how you handle the beginning is
everything good not sure the lines
didn’t make a lick of sense and the
stories often suffered as a result but
damn were they fun to spot and laugh at
number six arcade style difficulty
because home console games were often
inspired by or direct ports of arcade
games this affected the difficulty curve
often games were difficult to the point
of being unfair and this can be blamed
on two things first they were often very
short
thus the difficulty was there to
artificially extend the life of the
games
also the arcade mentality of trying to
kill the player to get more quarters out
of them still persisted at home hey man
I spent a lot of quarters to buy this
console you can chill with the
difficulty bro
number five no online guides in today’s
age of instant online access tricky
sections of videogames are as easy as
booting up Google and seeking help or a
quick tutorial search on YouTube
unfortunately for gamers back in the day
no such gratification was granted sure
there were strategy guides and various
walkthroughs in magazines but that
required purchasing the guide flipping
through it reading while you’re supposed
to do and trying it up for yourself
which was often difficult due to the
cryptic game design of the time it’s now
much easier to simply hop on YouTube and
check it out first hand back then if you
were stuck chances are you might stay
stuck forever I’m lost in the dinky
island jungle in monkey – ah look there
are only two ways out of the room you’re
in
figure it out knucklehead number four
new patches
in today’s gaming landscape patches are
extremely necessary not only does it
seem like every game that comes out
today is released broken and buggy but
patches are often used to fix certain
issues in game or help improve it in
some meaningful way while many see this
as a crutch that lazy developers and
publishers lean on this is still better
than the opposite because unfortunately
for retro games there was no such thing
if a game was shipped broken or glitchy
which did happen then the player was
stuck with that glitchy mess of a game
which they just spent their hard-earned
money on
PC games started to bring in patches in
the mid 90s but have fun downloading
each and every update in the order they
were released on your 56k modem number
three gaming was much more expensive
will you be the one to experience the
Nintendo Entertainment System comes with
Rob zapper control deck two controllers
gyromite and duck hunt while it seems
like video gaming today is an expensive
hobby it’s nothing compared to the cost
of the older generations at the time it
comes with 27 games but that’s just for
starters
for example the Atari 2600 which was
released in 1977 had a launch price of
$199 which when adjusted for inflation
would be around 780 dollars in 2016 no
George mine the original NES launched in
1985 and it’s cheapest launch bundle
also went for $199 about 440 today
indicating a downward yet still pretty
pricey trajectory the one to play with
Rob the extraordinary video robot
batteries not included some more
examples for you speak better to turbo
on SNES retailed for 75 bucks plus tax
strider on the genesis retailed for 80
while fantasy star for on the genesis
was a hundred bucks and don’t even get
me started on the Neo Geo yo win number
two no saving think about this if you
wanted to say beat Super Mario Brothers
3 without using warps you had to do it
all in one city
while it’s true that some video games in
the 80s employed what was called
password saving that was extremely
flawed not only where the passwords
often long in complex but they had to be
written down meaning they could easily
be lost smudged or written incorrectly
is it really necessary to have both
capital and lowercase letters as well as
numbers question marks and exclamation
marks to eventually game started to
include battery backup saving first seen
in the Legend of Zelda on NES allowing
players to save their progress until the
battery died this also fed into the
problem we discussed earlier apropos to
difficulty and the short length of the
game’s fun stuff before we look at our
most annoying pic here a few honorable
mentions if your systems ever not
working you probably know by this point
that’s the first thing to check push it
the channel 3 to make it simple on
yourself number 1 no online resources to
warn us of bad games anyone who follows
gaming these days knows that there are
very few surprises after you bought
something today you can simply hop on
Metacritic and see the numerical value
to get a quick assumption of the game’s
quality or read the 50-plus aggregated
reviews if you thought I was serious
about this game absolutely right because
I was just kidding I was just kidding
back in the day though there was no such
thing there were reviews and magazines
but again that required actually buying
the magazine and listening to one
critics opinion if you missed the issue
where they discussed that game – yes so
it was either that or word-of-mouth
which was rather limited you mainly just
had to buy your fifty dollar game and
hope for the best
usually this involved judging a game by
its cover not exactly a surefire
strategy
do you agree with our list I love it
it’s just great what annoyed you about
retro gaming for more critical top 10s
published every day be sure to subscribe
to watchmojo.com you have any idea how
many calls I get a day about that don’t
ask me about it again
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