How was it like to play video games in the pre-internet/smartphone/social media era?
>>744237676You ever play a game without looking up anything while leaving notifications off?Yeah that was basically it.
>>744237676better, but it also had it's own set of problems that people forget
The industry got away with a lot less censorship because not being online meant there weren't people uploading shit to Reddit constantly or foids seething at what men are consuming.Scary moments in kids games. Blood or thematically unsettling content. Lots of teen vidya girls with pervert moments, also sometimes in kids games, even western ones. Unafraid to make commentary that would make any woketard start a crusade today.but then we really just used to be less sensitive. It's concerning to me that people are collectively becoming more and more afraid to be human over time, to the point where oppression returns because of petty vengeances and a genuine phobia against behavior you can't recognize from your own narrow world-view. The more socialist the world becomes the more extreme and intolerant.
Lots of bullshitting among friends. Had the positive effect of spending an evening with your friends after a "show me" though
>>744237676For me it was mostly just renting games from blockbuster. I had a nintendo magazine subscription which helped a little bit to filter out the really shit ones, but it was always a gamble choosing something you hadn't already played. Computer gaming was pretty good too, DOS games etc, because a lot of them were shareware so you'd get a bunch of content for free. Some games like Doom gave you a 1/3 of the game for free with shareware, which is pretty generous compared to these days with GTA6 not even showing people 1 second of gameplay before buying it.
I had dial up so no idea
>>744237676fun
>>744237676Buying/borrowing a shit ton of strategy guides for games that were intentionally obtuse because they wanted to sell said strategy guides.
lots of sexual violence
>>744237676You were totally immersed
>>744237676you invite school friends to game at your place
>>744238439>hey cheaduw stawp wooking at my scweeen!
>>744238039>>744238296On computer I think they got away with a bunch of adult themes in games. But Nintendo was even more safe than they are today. Like Mortal Kombat on SNES having no blood, and Wolfenstein removing nazi imagery and blood and replacing dogs you shoot with rats and so on. Sega allowed violence a little more.
It was more genuine than it is now, I think people were a lot less dishonest and faggoty before mass internet access became the norm. Game devs included.
>>744237676It was better in the sense that people gave games an honest chance because they weren’t bombarded with culture war and game bad narratives.
>>744237676>unreliable floppy disks sometimes got damaged and I couldn't proceed until I got a pirated copy of the replacement.>offered physical puzzles as a copyright protection.>no map function existed so I had to draw maps on a sketch book.>got gaming tips from monthly gaming magazines.>some publishers operated helper telephone lines you can dial.
>>744238784I can agree with that. I used to rent a game purely on the cover art, but now if I know a game has some tranny political message even buried in the fucking code I won't touch it. I've probably missed a few fun games that way.
NObody in this thread so far was alive to give you an actual answer.They are all Larping.It was exactly the fucking same but instead of having the net to look up a part you were stuck on with a game you had to pay extra to buy a strategy guide to get the most out of the game.Almost every single game was designed to sell strategy guides, too, so bullshit like FF7's KoTR Summon were made to be as unclear as possible on how to get for the sake of selling a guide.
>>744237676I don't know, I just played bomberman 64 multiplayer with bots all day after school. But only after watching Gundam Wing and DBZ.
>>744239681>KoTR Summonoptional
>>744237676In some ways it was better, there wasn't a constant temptation to just look up a guide or walkthrough, it was just you and the game and you either beat it or you didn't. It was more immersive, it was a solitary experience and you would just get lost in the world for hours, more like reading a book. It was also a more social experience, where you would compare and contrast games in real life with real people, with your very own opinions (you couldn't just look up what the general consensus was on youtube) and you had to actually learn to get along with people because you couldn't just go full nuclear and disown people for liking link over mario.In some ways it was worse. Finding and researching games was a lot harder. All you had to go on was word on the street, tv commercials and magazines that were mostly thinly veiled advertisements rather than informative. There were some shitty situations back then, like games that were designed to be intentionally obscure so that you couldn't beat it without buying a physical guide. There was always that one little shit that had his parents buy the game guide and acted like hot shit, or that kid that swore his older brother worked at Nintendo and you could totally find yoshi on the roof of peaches castle.
>>744237676I didn't get internet until 2000 but before that it was all just like playing a handheld when the power gets turnoff during a thunderstorm, it's just you and the game, sometimes you look through mags or guides or call one of your friends or older relative for help but otherwise it's just you. Splitscreen was mandatory for some games if you had siblings or friends from the neighborhood who'd come over because that was the multiplayer pre-Internet unless you had PC.
>>744237676You get stuck a lot, especially as a kid
>>744237676The same but slower. You could read magazines for info and write to them to shitpost.
>>744237676before Jewish subversion
>>744237676It was genuine. Genuine games made by genuine devs for genuine players.
>>744237765Thread ended here already
Strategy Guides. You had to buy these books that told you how to beat the game, as well as all the secrets inside it.
>>744237676There was a lot less retarded seething but make no mistake, there very much was still some retarded seething hanging around.
>get stuck>have no idea what to do next>restart the game from the beginning
Lots of arguing with your friends about what game is good to get recs. Lots of getting stuck on something obvious for hours then wondering how you ever got stuck there when it was so obvious in hindsight.
There were some good highlights, but mostly disappointment. It's ok that wow PvP is still king, baby.
>>744240286oh and cheatcode books literally lost to time after the 7thgen
>>744240497Nintendo power had Ask Dan and you could shitpost to him and he'd take it all serious
>>744241361reading through these books and seeing little snippets of videogames you've never heard of was so comfyLike I never played legend of zelda as a kid but I knew that if you stole from the shop the game would change your name to thief because of one of these cheat books
>>744237765Not even close there’s a massive difference between knowing the information is out there and not using it and not having any access to it at all
>>744237676A lot more rumors were spread. No Tyler, Kirbyciding Metal Mario in Smash 64 single-player doesn't unlock him, you bitch.
>>744237765so absolutely nothing changed?
>>744237676It was soulful but also boring, if you were not rich you had a very limited selection of games, even top tier games like Zelda MM got boring once you 100% them. games with good multiplayer like Perfect Dark and Smash Bros were worth far more.
>>744239681>you had to pay extra to buy a strategy guide to get the most out of the game.No you didn't, you talked with friends who talked with friends who knew someone with a strategy guide
>have video game magazine>see codes listed>what>how do i enter theseturns out they were gameshark codes
>>744237676hmmm
>>744237676>N64>pre-internetMost people who weren't poor got internet access during the second half of the 90s
>>744248576untrue mostly people in tech industry had internet access by 1998, 06 was around when everyone and their grandma had a pc that could connect to internet.
>>744249045I was born in 1991 and our middle class family got internet access with our Windows 95 Packard Bell computer
>>744249104back in 90s people still talked about Amigas bro. internet wasn't as huge of a thing as you may remember.
>>744237676My mom only let me play on the 64 for an hour a day so it was pretty shit.
>>744237676Looks like a slop image.
>>744249154>AmigasOh, you should have said you're a Europoor
>>744249392>the kurdish swede trying to larp as an American.we know who you are cocksucker.
