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[Holammer]

Read actual computer/video game magazines, I used to buy EDGE, C+VG/CVG, EGM and Die Hard Gamefan (also the occasional Gamepro and other mags). Not having access to instant news must be a mind-bending concept for some.
Also visit and play arcades. At least kids of today can get a taste of it by visiting arcade & pinball halls run by enthusiasts like the Time Rift Arcade. With lovingly restored machines and actual CRT monitors.



Man, I played that game in a big ass arcade in Spain back in the late 80's.

 

[poppabk]

Instead of denuvo this was your DRM.

And then you lost it.

 

[MasterDerico]

Seeing kids playing fortnite makes me sad.

 

[Jigsaah]

Kids these days will never experience the sheer joy of a weekend trip to the best arcade in town. For me, it was a place called Enchanted Castle. This place was like Chucky Cheese on steroids. They had all the arcade games from Super Mario Bros and Tetris...All the way to games like Mortal Kombat and Timecop. They had some of the best pizza, bumper cars, mini golf, mini bowling. My Dad would take me and my brother, give us both 20 bucks and we would go to town in that joint.

Edit: Holy Shit this place is still OPEN!? https://enchanted.com/

Ok maybe I was wrong...there's still a chance. I'm gonna go visit one day next time I'm back home.

 

[Harkonnen]

They'll never know what it was like to walk, take several subway with a friend, to all videogame stores Paris had in 1997.
And finally, after several hours, going for the last store, we saw someone exiting it, with a little bag. And a smile from ear to ear.
5 minutes later, 750 francs less in my wallet (115 euros now), i have that smile, my friend too. And FF7 us version, a few days before the official us release date, but in Paris.

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

Go to Funcoland and use it as a free arcade/babysitting place while your mom shops at Venture

 

[Heimdall_Xtreme]

Game magazines. You could tell the articles, reviews and guides were made by people who actually played and enjoyed videogames, it was a nice read.

Demo discs, both on consoles and PC. Nothing like spending an afternoon popping one of those in and trying them all out.

In Mexico I met an editor of a famous magazine that was Club Nintendo.

And I can assure you that there was a lot of fanaticism for the Nintendo brand... Very little was said about other consoles.

 

[Jigsaah]

Go to Funcoland and use it as a free arcade/babysitting place while your mom shops at Venture

Brooooooo. Venture. I literally busted out laughing.

 

[Heimdall_Xtreme]

The magic of finding an Easter egg or Bug and making it known was lost. Now everything is almost immediate through social networks.

Or the magic of the mature plot... And the surprises without spoilers.

 

[Jigsaah]

Kids will never know the Japanese martial art of blowing into NES cartridges with the correct amount of spittle to make the game work on the first try.

 

[RoadHazard]

how are those manuals treating you?

Astro had one, kinda.

 

[HL3.exe]

Kids these days don't care about boomer sentimentality of yore. They'll never miss what they don't know.

They'll probably be nostalgic about Roblox someday.

 

[TintoConCasera]

In Mexico I met an editor of a famous magazine that was Club Nintendo.

And I can assure you that there was a lot of fanaticism for the Nintendo brand... Very little was said about other consoles.

Well, if the magazine is called Club Nintendo I would expect it to focus on Nintendo stuff and not much else.

Here in Spain we had Nintendo Acción, which was more or less the same, but also others like Hobby Consolas that were more about everything or Micromania which was mostly about PC stuff.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

Use a cable to trade Pokémon.

 

[Imtjnotu]

I read this EGM magazine too many times to count when the PS2 was coming out. I miss those days.

And the GBA was my life for awhile

 

[Fess]

I don’t even remember that and I’m in my 40s

It’s the downside of growing up with Commodore 64. The upside was amazing loading music, some of the 80s best gaming music could be found during loading sequences on C64 games, imo.
There were turbo tape games too which loaded in less than a minute, but we don’t talk about that here…
Then there were 5¼-inch floppy diskette games. Much better!

I never had a console back then so I remember being mighty impressed when later on powering up a SNES for the first time. Instant gaming!

 

[StueyDuck]

Kids today will never know how awesome midnight launches were. Halo 3, Modern Warfare 2, and Skyrim were some of the most fun gaming related nights of my life.

Halo 3 specifically, got my copy at a GameStop in a mall, there were so many people we had to wait in the food court and it was packed. Probably 100s of people.

The HL2 midnight launch for me was one of the best.

Only to get home and have to download this gosh darn thing called steam just to play.

 

[StueyDuck]

Being a small child and blowing into a nes cartridge then taking three steps right, one forward, one left (or whatever routine) and inserting it with the hope this series of events would get the fucker to load...

Don't forget the perfect insert. Basically needed a spirit level just to make sure the cart was 100% in correctly

 

[Calverz]

Kids these days will never know the omegle Chat Roulette bullshit that was Uno on Xbox 360 with the camera.

Uno on the 360 was great.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

Kids these days don't care about boomer sentimentality of yore. They'll never miss what they don't know.

They'll probably be nostalgic about Roblox someday.

They’ll hopefully grow out of Roblox someday

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

Brooooooo. Venture. I literally busted out laughing.

Yeahhhh I swear my mom could spend an entire fucking weekend shopping the sales at Venture and Kohl’s. Luckily the Funcoland was right next door. “Take all the time you need, mom!”

 

[Doggyred]

tfw no matter how great in shape you get, and no matter how much money you make you will never be as happy as you were as a chubby 12 year old playing your PS2 on a Saturday morning.

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

1 in 3 US households had a NES. Pretty much any house with kids in grade school had one.

If you got dragged along to your parents’ friend’s/coworker’s place and they had kids, bring a controller and a couple games. You will receive a hero’s welcome and make some new friends.

 

[Rivdoric]

The OP just reminded me the day i purchased both Alan Wake & Red Dead Redemption the same day back in 2010.

I remember getting them at my local video game stores between class and was literally absorbed by the manual for the rest of the day. Couldn't think about anything else but the moment i'd be home to play.

I do remember this day particularly because both of these games ended up being among the best games i played.

Strong memories indeed.

 

[ChoosableOne]

...be able to copy game shortcuts to a floppy disk, take them to a friend's house, and then be surprised when they don't work.

 

[ReBurn]

tfw no matter how great in shape you get, and no matter how much money you make you will never be as happy as you were as a chubby 12 year old playing your PS2 on a Saturday morning.

When I was a 12 year old the PS2 was nearly two decades away from release.

 

[ShadyAcshuns]

Kids these days will never know the joy of couch co-op and local multiplayer. imo that was the best gaming experience one could have.

 

[nick776]

Manuals aren't what they used to be though

I use to love NES and SNES game manuals as a kid. They were one of the best parts of the game's overall experience. Some of my favorite manuals were the original Legend of Zelda and Metroid.

 

[Bernardougf]

They will not remember what an Xbox was

 

[StueyDuck]

...be able to copy game shortcuts to a floppy disk, take them to a friend's house, and then be surprised when they don't work.

Even better, taking the disc out after you've loaded and thinking you can just play the whole game for free now and not realizing it's just what's loaded into memory

 

[Bombolone]

Honestly? Playing a game truly completely blind, knowing absolutely nothing of what to expect or how deep the game goes.

I still do this and yes it is amazing for the senses/soul.

 

[Garibaldi]

Kids these days will never feel the wonder of installing the 5th floppy disk of doom 2, wet with anticipation of finally getting the chance to slay more demons. Chomping at the bit to configure your sound card's IRQ and DMAs.

Only for the installer to report it can't read the disc....

 

[ShadyAcshuns]

Kids these days don't care about boomer sentimentality of yore. They'll never miss what they don't know.

They'll probably be nostalgic about Roblox someday.

Boomers? Did they even have table top rpg's when they were kids?

 

[Edgelord79]

C:\sierra.exe

 

[ShadyAcshuns]

Kids these days will never know the joy of the glorious Konami code.

 

[acidagfc]

Will never experience the jumps from 8bit to 16bit to 32bit etc.

When you start with Fortnight on your phone, how can anything even wow you anymore?

EDIT: Oh also modern kids will never know the sweet tension of downloading erotic pics at 33kbods, one line every few seconds, from top to bottom.

 

[Crayon]

Choose a game to buy based purely on its box art.

My god, worms said it was a combination of the best games ever made or something ridiculous on the back of the case and I bought it with one of my first few paychecks.

 

[makaveli60]

They will never know that every big release used to be a smaller or larger leap in one or more ways

 

[nashman]

1) Huge graphical leaps between generations. Going from 8 bit to 16 bit, 2D to 3D or SD to HD. These were huge insane leaps in tech now a new gen is basically the same as the last.


2) E3 hype. Ninty, Sega, Sony, EA MS would all bring out the big guns. Huge new games either announced or demo. Imagine not having the drip feed of info we have now but ONE info drop for 90% of the news from the year in games all in 3 days under one roof.

3) Renting a game from the video store. What a gamble. A new game would show up on the shelf, if you were lucky you may have read a bit an about it a magazine. Even if you had would it be shit shovelware or the next masterpiece?

4) Getting stuck in a game. No internet to look up the solution. You either solved it yourself or stoped playing. Now maybe just maybe if it was a big game it would have a guide book you could buy that would help but that was only a handful of the biggest games. Finally gamefaqs came around and changed everything.

 

[JohnnyPhats]

Boot up a game of Uno and be greeted by two small cocks.

 

[Crayon]

If I get into a tear here about growing up with arcades I would not get out of the house today.

Really a shame they are missing out on that. A destination, socializing, minor personal conflicts, glory, etc. And just a touch of gambling. Just the right amount for a developing mind.

 

[Three]

Kids these days will never know the agony of getting stuck in a game, with no youtube walkthrough to help.

Kids these days will never know the Nintendo Hotline number that existed for such cases.

 

[winjer]

Kids these days will never know the Nintendo Hotline number that existed for such cases.

Or magazines with full levels printout. And cheat codes.

 

[rabbity-thing]

tfw no matter how great in shape you get, and no matter how much money you make you will never be as happy as you were as a chubby 12 year old playing your PS2 on a Saturday morning.

Bruh... Saturday mornings were for cartoons.

 

[Beechos]

Choose a game to buy based purely on its box art.

I remember buying a bunch of shit nes games back in the days based on the box art.

 

[Gp1]

The smoked filled air of the 80's / 90's underground arcade.

Model 3 games in Arcade when your Ps1 couldn't barely render a 3D's image at 320x240. It looked like Sega was an alien force invading us with black magic.

Here we had something called "corujão do CS" (roughly translated to Counter strike Big night owl) when people stay up all night playing CS in lanhouse/lan party.

 

[acidagfc]

4) Getting stuck in a game. No internet to look up the solution. You either solved it yourself or stoped playing. Now maybe just maybe if it was a big game it would have a guide book you could buy that would help but that was only a handful of the biggest games. Finally gamefaqs came around and changed everything.

Getting stuck on a quest in Daggerfall and having no clue if you missed the objective, or missed the deadline, or maybe the game just simply bugged out. And there is no way of figuring this out. Fun times.

 

[Duchess]

Going to sound weird, but ..

The joy is waiting on the next issue of your preferred gaming mag, in the hopes they'll have more info / screenshots about that game you're hyped about.

Honestly, I think that's something that's sorely lacking in today's world - with TV shows dropping all episodes at once onto a streaming series, you lose out on talking to people about "last night's episode", and eagerly looking forward to the next.

I think the last time that was happening was when Game of Thrones was on TV.

 

[JimmyRustler]

Kids these days will never know the agony of getting stuck in a game, with no youtube walkthrough to help.

Took me years to finish the OG Resident Evil because I had no idea you could turn the books to open them and get the medallions. The very last part of the game still feels „fresher“ than the rest of the game whenever I replay it.

 

[bbw_lover87]

Kids wont know what a cheat code is imao we got old heads that still remember cheats code for game lik 20-30yeaes ago, my best friend remember all his code for san andreas