ITT: Frustrating aspects of retro gaming you had to endure that were external to the games themselves. Examples include:>consoles not reading cartridges properly>trying to play games online over a shitty 56K connection which could be lost at any moment due to mom wanting to call someone>MS-DOS memory management, nuff said
>look at magazines>they preview/review JP only games and hail them as the greatest thing since Jesus Christ turned water into wine>can't play them>even if you could I'd be like WTFAMIREADINGNow I can just download them and use AI translation
>>12577518Some of my NES games would constantly lose the saves.
>Was only allowed to game on weekends.>One TV in the living room, family would always watch movies or TV on Friday and Saturday nights.>End up in my room with the game gear plugged in wishing I was playing snezz.
>>12577518My first primary TV when I got my NES was black and white and only about 14 inches at best. Sometimes I would hook it up to the color TV in the living room but my parents were always watching stuff so I couldn't do that often. A lot of the other kids played in black and white too. Strange to think about now.
>>12577525>you now remember magazines ran petitions to bring smash bros 64 over to the west because it was considered too meta to bring over
>>12577528The one game I had that would constantly lose saves for some reason was Kirby Super Star, and due to the nature of that game I never minded it much, I'd just play through all the games again. Must've done so at least six times or so.>>12577535I was never rich or anything, but all my TVs have always been color at least. I didn't get a TV with at least a composite connection until like 2003, though.
>>12577518>consoles not reading cartridges properlyEvery single N64 game that I owned was always fucking like this the amount of wipes i've wasted cleaning these damn things so they work is insane.
>>12577541This was around '87-'88 when black and white TVs were still actually being sold in stores. But for the most part there were tons of older/smaller black and white sets kicking around that would get put in the kids' bedrooms and it was never a priority to our boomer parents to upgrade them. That's just how it was for most of the kids I knew.
>>12577535My first TV was a 13" black and white Zenith that emitted a constant, high pitch squeal after it had been on for over an hour, but the NES was my dad's and was hooked up in the living room to the color television. My grandmother later got me a color TV for my 10th Birthday, and my SNES for Christmas the same year.
>>12577518Trading in last years games or console to get the next ones, instead of being able to collect anything. It was like trading in a car or something. I always only ever had a few games at a time for consoles and PC gaming saved me.
We had a 286 that had a mouse that was notorious for locking up the whole system, especially in games. I was too young and stupid to figure out what was wrong back then, just assumed it was some cheap POS hardware. Looking back it was probably sharing an IRQ with another COM port or using a buggy mouse TSR.
>>12577518>>consoles not reading cartridges properlyclean the contacts>trying to play games online over a shitty 56K connection which could be lost at any moment due to mom wanting to call someoneI wasn't poor. I had my own phone line.>nuff saidCringe>>12577548Not sure what it is in your case but everyone thinks about cleaning the cart edge connector but not the connector in the console. Same problem with the NES/Famicom. Nobody cleans the connector. They collect so much dirt over time.
>>12579174Mouse? IRQ conflict or shit driver. Usually.
>>12577528>>12577541>blocks your path
>>12577518These and Xbox 360’s are some of the most fragile pieces of shit
>>12578221>My first TV was a 13" black and white Zenith that emitted a constant, high pitch squeal after it had been on for over an hourMy 90s color tv was decenr for the most part but if there was too much white used onscreen a squeel would become unbearable. Playstation loading screen was the worst, but any game with winter/snow levels were almist unplayable due to the high frequency squeal.That tv was eventually taken to a friends farm and shot up. I found out later what it was, and that it was fixable common problem with the power supply being overloaded on overly bright images.
>>12579174>>12579384I remember things like sound cards and network cards trying to use the same IRQ being a common problem back in the 90's
>>12579505>(15) blocks (of memory) your path
>>12577535We played Amiga 500 through one of those T.V. modulators, which output the signal through an Antenna cable (RF). It was probably the shittiest way you could possibly display the graphics of an Amiga, but we still thought it was the most radical thing ever. We just didn't know better back then.
>>12577518>Frustrating aspects of retro gamingBeing in a PAL region
>>12580146Yea, my buddy is building a Win98 PC and for some odd reason, gamepads and joysticks plug into the sound card. We were trying to set up the drivers for a Logitech Wingman controller, and it bricked the whole PC, he had to reinstall everything.
Spending 20 minutes loading games on tape only for it to fail
>>12580170>for some odd reason, gamepads and joysticks plug into the sound cardThat's just how it was back then in the days before USB. I was pretty disappointed in the 2000's when I built a new PC and it was USB only and I had to retire my trusty old Sidewinder controller.
>>12580170Sound cards always had a joystick port since roughly the event of local bus video in 1994. Prior to that the ports were on an ISA card sometimes a dedicated joystick card, other times as part of a multi-function I/O card.
>>12579365How is "nuff said" cringe?
>>12580186The earliest instance of a sound card including a joystick port that I can think of is the Fuller box for the ZX Spectrum.
>>12580170controllers connecting to sound cards makes more sense if you consider a major reason to get a soundcard was for games
>>12580159>NTSC: aspect ratio makes circle look like an oval>PAL: aspect ratio of circle is correctWhat did sega mean by this?
>>12580186The original Sound Blaster from 1989 already had a game port.
>>12577518If you wanted to have both your console plugged in and cable TV, you had to deal with awful adapters.
>TV with no composite input>console with only composite output
>>12577528I've had multiple gameboy games just decide to delete a save while the battery still works
>>12580120At least the later xbox 360 models are pretty solid pieces of hardware. every ps3 model has some major hardware malfunction
Mom and dad don't understand why you need another 25 dollar purchase for your christmas present
>>12580367They had really cheap off-brand memory cards, that's what our family got. It did eventually malfunction, but by then we had moved on to PC gaming anyway, and the PS1 was more or less retired.I still find memory cards to be really soulful, I used to love those little icons that would display next to the saves.
>>12580353When did this actually become an issue? Didn't pretty much every console prior to the 5th-gen come with an RF adapter in the box?
>>12580417At least here in Europe it was all about Scart.
>>12580367>>12580412I don't know a single person who had an official ps1 memory card
>>12580430>At least here in Europe it was all about Scart.I remember when the Saturn launched with a Scart cable but plenty of people were still using old TVs that didn't have Scart inputs. Later revisions of the console shipped with RF cables instead.
>>12577529You lick Snezz
>>12577535That was such an early 90's thing. The main TV was good, but kids had second-hand B&W or if they were lucky small color TVs in their room. I had this thing that was a TV with antenna cables and a cassette/radio player. The screen was like 5 inches. RF only. Got it for $5 at a garage sale.
>>12580639I was one of those lucky ones who had a color TV growing up, but yeah, it was small (no bigger than 14") and it was one of those that had knobs to turn the channel. An 80's set for sure. Meanwhile, my parents had a much nicer 20" Sony set which I somehow managed to drop on top of myself while doing stupid shit in their room when I was about 6, breaking it in the process.
>>12580730that's an 18kg (give or take) TV, you're lucky it didn't break you instead
>>12580730>>12580738Didn't one of the Scream (OG movie) villains die by getting beheaded by a CRT?? LOL, shit changed quick,
>>12580730i had one of these shitty 5" travel nuggets on the desk in my room that you couldn't really hook up anything to from around 96-98, but it was nice to be able to watch evening simpsons / king of the hill / seinfeld reruns on channel 5 while doing homework, comfy times
>>12580738lol yeah, the TV on top of a small stand and I was watching cartoons right at the foot of it, and for some unfathomable reason I thought to pull the stand, and that dropped the fucker on top of me. I managed to put my arm in between, though, and got off with just a scratch, so I guess it didn't fall clean on top, so I did get lucky, and I didn't get in trouble. In fact, later same night my dad arrived from a trip and happened to have brought home a Game Boy with two games for me, so all was well. The TV was later repaired, so it wasn't major damage, either.
>>12580639>>12580746This was like mine in 639, but mine was horizontal. I remember now.. it didn't have a cassette player. Just TV and radio tuner.
>>12580362They’re not good enough. My slim last year red ringed, and then a slim I got off eBay last month had its laser wear out within a week
>>12579505I had some third-party PS1 memory cards that would randomly delete saves whenever saving the game. Somehow I managed to finish FF7 with one of them but I had to save in 3 different slots every time I saved. Sometimes one or two of the saves would be corrupt but luckily it was never all three. Stressful though.
>>12580439i did. didn't feel right buying a new console only to cheap out on a memory card
>>12577518for me it was being a dumb kid and having to deal with shitty controllers with faulty buttons or a shitty stick on an N64 controller and having no clue how to fix it, or where to get it fixed. obviously it's really easy today to just order a set of tools to open stuff and do maintenance yourself, but back then I really had to just deal with what I had.
>>12577518>playing n64>little cousin bumps table/wind outside blows hard/hummingbird flaps its wings in china>game frozen
>>12577518>consoles not reading cartridges properlyI only ever had that problem with NES and I owned • Sega • Sega Genesis • Turbo Express • Game Gear • Lynx • SNES and • some grey-scale handheld made of ChinesiumAll the others worked fine 100% of the time. Only NES fucked up like that
