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General discussion (archive)What do you miss from the pre-digital age?(168 posts)(168 posts)
(168 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted December 18, 2013
I think i still have my Gravis Analog -joystick hidden somewhere, its like 20 years old but i think it should work just fine if i could somehow plug it into my computer that is -_-
Posted December 18, 2013
I had more time to play games and they were all exciting.
Posted December 18, 2013
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Reveenka: So, question should be pretty straightforward, and I'll kick it off with a couple of examples myself:

I miss going to the store and looking at\touching all the awesome games. I miss stumbling upon games I'd never heard of and buying them without any knowledge about them other than what was on the back of their cases (or even before that, cardboard boxes), and then realizing, after a few minutes of gaming, that I was going to love the game.

I also miss the extreme joy of going into a store to find a rare copy of a game that you had wanted for months, but never seen in any stores. The joy of finding and buying that game and coming home to play it - it just doesn't happen these days.

Last, I miss magazines. I know there are still some gaming magazines out there, but a digitalized world has caused the contents of those magazines to be more or less obsolete before they even hit the shelves. I also miss the demo CD's that came with the magazines - I discovered plenty of games that way.

Don't get me wrong, I think digital is awesome - I travel a lot and love having all of my games on a hard disk or on Steam. I love that old, obscure, difficult-to-find games are now easily available. I love that the competition is pushing prices down to near-nothing. But that feeling of pure joy you experienced when popping your newest purchase into your computer, that realization that that game, that you hadn't even heard about an hour earlier, was going to become one of your all-time favorites - there's just nothing today that comes close to that.

So, what do you miss from the pre-digital age?
I also miss quality instruction manuals (in print).
Posted December 18, 2013
I still buy physical media predominantly, so there's not a great deal I miss except for decent manuals.

Also, there's a lot to be said for being able to go to a store and simply browse through the store's game collection and pick something up you might not have discovered before going for a coffee, admiring the box art and manual and looking forward to playing it when you get home.

I guess I can be thankful that much of what made gaming great has been preserved here in Germany. We still have magazines with full games on them, most stores do huge numbers of physical PC releases (even if I don't really bother with PC like that anymore), and there's still a healthy respect for legacy platforms like the NES and PS1.

My sole digital purchases nowadays are cheap indie games unlikely to see a physical release and out-of-print classics where a secondhand purchase is just ridiculously expensive.

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jjsimp: Shopping at home in my underwear is great.
So's the occasional bout of fresh air.

Astonishes me how lazy people have become about leaving the house. Ten years ago people wouldn't have thought twice about going up the shop to buy a game. Now people are so fucking lazy that it's too much effort for them to change a disc.
Post edited December 18, 2013 by jamyskis
Posted December 18, 2013
Load "*", 8,1

The C64 was a great way to learn typing as a kid ^_^

Disk Swapping not so much. The boxes were awesome tho. I love the ultima games that came with cloth maps and coin. The Bard's Tale with all the graph paper mapping I had to do. The SSI Pool of Radiance Gold Box with its cartographer wheel and thick instruction book of lore and character stats and all.

Then Fallout came with its iconic and most awesome box artwork I've ever seen in my life with its nice big box and notebook instructions. Luckily I kept alot of good big boxes of Diablo, Diablo 2 Col, Warcraft, Warcraft 2, Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate 2 Col. I really need set up a shelf and put a PC gaming shrine there to them. ^_^

They physical media and goods of yesteryear were awesome ^_^
Posted December 18, 2013
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Reveenka: Last, I miss magazines. I know there are still some gaming magazines out there, but a digitalized world has caused the contents of those magazines to be more or less obsolete before they even hit the shelves. I also miss the demo CD's that came with the magazines - I discovered plenty of games that way.
^This. We didn't had stores but we had some great magazines which sometimes gave out also full games on occasion (not just demos). This is how I got to know and play Fallout and Rage of Mages.
Posted December 18, 2013
My youth.
Posted December 18, 2013
Floppy Disks
Renting Games & Consoles
The beige boxes and Windows 95
Dial-Up Internet (& how you couldn't use the Internet AND make a call)
VHS
Casette tapes
CRT Monitors
Posted December 18, 2013
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iippo: goes a bit deeper into the past, but:

**

@ECHO OFF
LH /L:2 C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MSCDEX /D:MSCD000 /M:15 /E /S /L:D /V
LH /L:0;2 /S C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\SMARTDRV 2048 16 /V
C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MODE CON RATE=32 DELAY=2
C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MODE CON CP PREP=((865) C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\EGA.CPI)
C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MODE CON CP SEL=865
LH /L:2 C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\KEYB DK,865,C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\KEYBOARD.SYS
LH /L:2 C:\MOUSE\MOUSE
LH /L:2 C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\DOSKEY /INSERT
PROMPT $p$g
PATH C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND;C:\CTSND
SET DIRCMD=/P /A
SET TEMP=C:\WINDOWS\TEMP
SET TMP=C:\WINDOWS\TEMP
SET SOUND=C:\CTSND
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6
SET MIDI=SYNTH:1 MAP:G
C:\CTSND\DIAGNOSE /S
C:\CTSND\SB16SET /P

**

..and lets not even start with the rest of the files.
10-20 boot disks with all those lines including the infamous himem.sys ones just to start up a game:
DEVICE=C:\Windows\himem.sys
Posted December 18, 2013
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FantasyNightmare: Renting Games & Consoles
Oh yes. I forgot about this. Apparently, at our local video store, you still can rent consoles and games (PS3, 360 and Wii), although I don't think people do it all that much nowadays.

I remember once when my father rented out a Sega Mega Drive for me with Mickey Mouse: Castle of Illusion and Wonder Boy 3: Monster Lair. Playing those games for a day stuck with me for life, and Castle of Illusion (the original, not the remake) is now one of my favourite games of all time.

On that topic, I miss games actually making a lasting impression, although I think that's a phenomenon limited to childhood. Being impressed and letting your imagination run wild is easier when you're eight years old and don't perceive things like pixels, hardware sprites, three-channel synth audio and parallax scrolling.
Posted December 18, 2013
Probably posted everywhere in this topic, but I don't feel like reading ~100 posts so;

-Sexy-ass boxes
-Decent physical manuals
-Jewel Cases


In other words, the whole experience of going to the store, meditating on your purchase, the smell of the boxes, going home, removing the skintight plastic from the box, installing said game, putting box on your shelf.

I'm pretty sure you all know exactly what I'm talking about here :D
Posted December 18, 2013
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FantasyNightmare: CRT Monitors
You know what the funny thing is? If you're playing DOS, C64 or NES games, these games will always look better on a CRT monitor even today. It's a shame they're not readily available.
Posted December 18, 2013
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Reveenka: ...So, what do you miss from the pre-digital age?
I miss real letters with hand writing and other stuff in them. Although you can still send them nobody does it anymore.

And I miss going into shops and lingering around seeing things I was never looking for in the first place. Of course you can still do that but because I'm buying much things online I go less often to physical stores.

However I'm sure if I would go backwards to pre-digital age I would miss much more.
Posted December 18, 2013
What I mostly miss about the pre-digital age (I assume you mean before being able to buy digital content) is being young(er) and single. It made playing games a lot easier. (Not that I'm not happy to have my wife and wonderful kids, but I do miss being able to play games for hours on end). Also a lot fewer distractions (GOG forum, etc., same qualifiers -- I enjoy these distractions).
Posted December 18, 2013
After seeing four or five commercials for this one brand, I really miss the days before I saw freaking Duck Dynasty everywhere. Does that count?
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussion (archive)What do you miss from the pre-digital age?(168 posts)(168 posts)
(168 posts)