Gaming Issues of the Past

[Snowman Death Droid]

As research for a potential future blogpost, I would like to learn more about the big issues that faced the gaming industry before the 360 generation started. We all know the issues of today with Online DRM, Online passes, On-disc DLC, etc. But what about the older days? Instead of just browsing around the internet, I figured it'd be more productive to have everyone here contribute.

So, what were the big issues everyone was talking about before the Seventh Console Generation? This can also be for PC's too.

[BoneSnapDeez]

PCs games have always had system requirement and compatibility issues.

Lack of save points was an issue with some older games. Remember Dragon Warrior - it has one save point. Games without save features tended to have those huge awkward passwords too.

[Snowman Death Droid]

PCs games have always had system requirement and compatibility issues.

Oh, yeah PC's I don't think will ever escape becoming obsolete as games grow more advanced.

Lack of save points was an issue with some older games. Remember Dragon Warrior - it has one save point. Games without save features tended to have those huge awkward passwords too.

Ever played Swords and Serpent on NES? It gives you like 5 passwords! One for each character in your party and then one for the game itself. You could fill half a 120 page notebook with the amount of passwords required to beat the game.

[Ack]

Well, there's always the choice between cartridges and compact discs, the transition to 3D graphics, perceived age and maturity level of contents, the transition from local to online multiplayer, content filler on CD-based games, the favoring of one console over another by a major developer such as Squaresoft, the evolution of controller design, the move from on-the-cart saving to memory cards...all of these could be considered major issues in their own way.

[Hobie-wan]

Back in the day of the Commodore 64, copy protection on disc based games would actually knock the drive out of alignment and damage it. It's one thing to have broken ass DRM that keeps you from playing your game, it's another to have it actually damage your hardware.

[Snowman Death Droid]

Back in the day of the Commodore 64, copy protection on disc based games would actually knock the drive out of alignment and damage it. It's one thing to have broken ass DRM that keeps you from playing your game, it's another to have it actually damage your hardware.

Really? Wow! I'd never heard of that one before. How exactly would a disc accomplish that?

[RyaNtheSlayA]

Back in the day of the Commodore 64, copy protection on disc based games would actually knock the drive out of alignment and damage it. It's one thing to have broken ass DRM that keeps you from playing your game, it's another to have it actually damage your hardware.

Really? Wow! I'd never heard of that one before. How exactly would a disc accomplish that?

The C64 floppy drive had it's own CPU and developers could write instructions specifically to it to have the read head move and IIRC it was possible to have it move fast and abrubtly enough to knock itself out of alignment.

[Hobie-wan]

The 1541 disk drive for the C64 was a bit programmable. So you could do funny things to mess with the way discs were read. This is how fast loaders were possible that made things load faster than the original drive speed. Due to other factors on how the drive worked and was exploited for copy protection, the head slam to reset it at track 0 would knock the read/write head out of alignment.

http://c64preservation.com/dp.php?pg=protection

[Snowman Death Droid]

The C64 floppy drive had it's own CPU and developers could write instructions specifically to it to have the read head move and IIRC it was possible to have it move fast and abrubtly enough to knock itself out of alignment.

Holy crap! Glad that practice died out. It's hard to imagine a developer sabotaging someone's hardware in today's market.

[Hobie-wan]

Holy crap! Glad that practice died out. It's hard to imagine a developer sabotaging someone's hardware in today's market.

I never knew anyone it happened to, but there were always anecdotes about StarForce breaking CD drives in PCs floating around in more recent years.