What do you miss most about gaming as a kid?

[alexiuspine]

The gaming world before DLC, when developers had to ensure they had made the best game possible as there was no such thing as downloads for consoles.


What about you?

[Kurt Zisa]

I miss not knowing too much about games or going into them not knowing anything and not caring about it. I remember playing Pokemon Blue for the first time and being so excited whenever I entered a new route or town and having two Raticates on the same team and not being bothered by it in the slightest.

I also miss big chunky game manuals that go into loads of detail about the game, but they still made those up until a few years ago. The one for Dragon Age Origins is huge from memory. I think I still have the manuals from Pokemon Ruby and Tactics Advance still kicking around somewhere. I used to love reading through the manuals that came with Ratchet and Clank games along with ones like Gran Turismo 4 and FFXII.

[octoberpumpkin]

I miss the game manuals too! I also miss that I was just discovering some of my favourite games and it was all new and fresh. I still love them but it's a different feeling, you know? Like the difference between being happy to see your partner of a few years everyday and the excitement of when you first start dating and you learn new things about them all the time.

Not having to wait for installation before playing a game

[Pete]

I miss the pure excitement that getting any new game would bring. I remember getting a good report card on the last day of third grade, showing my dad and him taking my brother and me to Caldor to pick out the games of our choice. It was one of the most exciting moments of my childhood; having that choice and anticipation of hoping that the back of the box didn't just sell a lie. Plus. My family didn't have a lot of extra income for games, so it was a big deal to get a new one.

Now, you have too much technology and knowledge at hand, where you can literally watch someone play the game live before it's even available in your country. You have full reviews out before release dates and then release date dlc, and various in game dlc bonuses for how much extra you're willing to spend.

I miss the days of having a game in your hands and just knowing that it was going to make your month, if not longer. There are games now that I would spend full price on and then let them collect dust after I decided I didn't like them. I hate that feeling

[Alpha]

Game manuals. As a child, my brothers weren't into the same games as me. My eldest brother was a little bit, but he really liked racing games, like Gran Turismo. My next elder brother liked war games, like Medal of Honor. We had to share the limited time we were allowed to play games (Friday, Saturday and Sunday during the day; not at night if we had school the next day). So often if it wasn't my turn on the PlayStation, I used to read and re-read the manuals of the games I was playing. I must have read the Final Fantasy IX manual 100 times cover to cover. I remember it had tips and secrets about the game on the bottom of the page, like about defeating the Zagnahol (sp?) during the Lindblum Hunt. It used to make me really excited to play it again.

[SuperSabin]

There are many things I miss about gaming in my childhood but here is once that I miss the most - the times I go over to my friend's house or if I'm around my brother and sisters and we play multiplayer games like mario party (it was mostly mario party for us), although before mario party, I used to watch them play romance of three kingdom on the nes, and pirates. I also miss the times my friends and I would play wario ware and tony hawk.

[loaf]

The only thing that has changed is how gaming has changed and thus the feel changes as you get older. With the internet and more and more ways to find information on the game it becomes less and less exciting to obtain and even play when it comes out. This is what has changed and it has nothing to do with me as I barely look up information on games to keep it fresh when it does come out.

[Incognitus]

What I miss most is a double-edged sword: I miss the difficulty.

To me, games feel way too easy today. Maybe it's because I am a fairly smart guy, well seasoned in most of the genres? I don't know, but it is a more complex answer than simply saying "because Internet." It's a combination of factors.

Difficult games were fun. That's not to say I want the infuriating difficulty of games like Ghosts 'N Goblins to return any time soon, but owning a game that challenging never made me feel like I wasted my money. It was always there, presenting itself as a formidable, seemingly impossible challenge. A game like that was a cartridge that saw a lot of play. I didn't bury it in my box of games after I completed it in less than 10 hours. When a game took me less than a Saturday to complete, I felt like I had wasted my money.

It was more than the raw difficulty of a game that made it great. Having a game challenge the way you think about tackling a puzzle or change how you approach a tough boss fight was fun. And as a kid, it was the first time I felt like my critical thinking skills grew at an exponential rate. Nowadays, I feel like that learning curve is incremental, and there's not as much satisfaction to figuring stuff out. I miss that feeling the most.

[Coff9]

For me, I think I'm just getting older. As in, old. I don't have the same levels of energy I once had when I was younger. I think that's the premier reason I can't get into games as much as I used to.

Sure, gaming isn't as mysterious as it once was; I remember being enthralled with gaming, completely consumed by it. Games felt real, like they were something more than just a game. I felt like I was really saving the world, or (in games like Harvest Moon) making the world a better place. Games felt like they still "went on" independent of me. They felt alive.

These days, I am too aware of commercialism. I feel like it's harder and harder to get away from people either sacrificing their art for profits or being unable to present things as they want to, due to constraints of any given kind. I am all too focused on "what could have been" instead of what is there on the screen. Games that put their "art" first are harder and harder to find; a person looking for "that feeling" that almost all games once gave them in youth must now dive into the heart of any given genre just to find something that speaks to them. I feel like it used to be that the best or most cutting-edge games would be the ones to turn a profit, so there's was a steady marriage of art and money. Now, it seems that you must pick one or the other: use the new tech or use the old tech in a better way.

But, like I said, my growing distaste with gaming comes from my lack of energy to enjoy what's there, not a lack of things being there to enjoy. If you look hard enough and frequent "indie" game websites, you can and most likely will find a game that takes you back to "that special place". For instance, if you are a fan of the horror genre, there's quite a few RPG Maker games that will make you feel like a kid again. Yume Nikki and .flow are both very good. Of course, don't look anything up for them beforehand; just get them and play them.

This whole thing reminds me of the "line at the watering hole" story. The quality of the water is the same; you just have to wait longer to get it.

[Sean]

Aside from the wonder that everyone feels about practically everything as a child, I'd have to say nothing, really.

I *would* say gaming w/ my best friend, spending countless hours replaying Turtles in Time on the SNES over and over, but we still do that, and with the abundance of coop games over xbox live, we play together quite a bit.

Now that I think of it, I miss playing games with my dad, who died two years ago. Certain types of games (the old tomb raiders, for instance) I hated playing, so I'd watch him play. We'd play the old RPGs together. I remember watching him play FF4 on the SNES and I just sat there reading along.