Gaming Issues of the Past

[Hobie-wan]

Were the Arcade Bannings due to the violent video game controversy? Or some other reason?

No, no, the arcade bannings were mainly during the arcade boom. Basically uptight people wouldn't have arcades in their tranquil midwest town or touristic city.

It was similar to other bannings on other places young people gathered in a sense. Some American cities still have bannings on arcades.

Swap out pool and a few things for arcades and stuff and it is the same sort of attitude.

[Dylan]

I think one of the biggest issues gaming experienced in the past was dealing with the lack of a rating system. It created issues because when games started to cover material that was potentially unsuited to children the industry had no real way to handle that.

[Stark]

Here's one I thought of on PC: patching broken games. I remember back in the day, sometimes you would go get a special demo disk from PC Gamer or another magazine, because it would contain a patch for a gamebreaking bug. Those were the days. I think patch management in general back then was a major PitA. I remember one bug that was crazy was for a Bungie game, iirc it was Myth II. If you uninstalled the game it deleted your C drive.

[Hatta]

I think one of the biggest issues gaming experienced in the past was dealing with the lack of a rating system. It created issues because when games started to cover material that was potentially unsuited to children the industry had no real way to handle that.

The industry handled it fine, and so did the millions of kids who played DOOM, had a great time, and grew into well adjusted adults. The only people who didn't handle it well were the idiotic paranoiac parents, and the politicians who exploit them. Those people should have warning labels, not games.

[BoneSnapDeez]

I think one of the biggest issues gaming experienced in the past was dealing with the lack of a rating system. It created issues because when games started to cover material that was potentially unsuited to children the industry had no real way to handle that.

The original ESRB system wasn't great either. With a lack of E10+ lots of games were either under-rated to E (or K-A) and, more often, over-rated to T.

Here's one I thought of on PC: patching broken games. I remember back in the day, sometimes you would go get a special demo disk from PC Gamer or another magazine, because it would contain a patch for a gamebreaking bug. Those were the days. I think patch management in general back then was a major PitA. I remember one bug that was crazy was for a Bungie game, iirc it was Myth II. If you uninstalled the game it deleted your C drive.

I've never heard of Myth II, but Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor did some crazy shiz like that if you tried to uninstall it. Deleted some critical system files or something.

Another problem with PC/computer gaming is that it took them forever to catch up with controls. So many great Amiga games would have been on par with SNES/Genesis stuff, but they still used a crappy one-button joystick.

[Stark]

Here's one I thought of on PC: patching broken games. I remember back in the day, sometimes you would go get a special demo disk from PC Gamer or another magazine, because it would contain a patch for a gamebreaking bug. Those were the days. I think patch management in general back then was a major PitA. I remember one bug that was crazy was for a Bungie game, iirc it was Myth II. If you uninstalled the game it deleted your C drive.

I've never heard of Myth II, but Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor did some crazy shiz like that if you tried to uninstall it. Deleted some critical system files or something.

Ok, I looked it up and remembered it wrong, Myth II, if you changed the default installation directory to C:/ it deleted everything. Still a nasty problem to have.

Pool of Radiance seems to be worse. Basically, if you installed the game anywhere other than default directory, it deleted your Windows directory as well.

Another problem with PC/computer gaming is that it took them forever to catch up with controls. So many great Amiga games would have been on par with SNES/Genesis stuff, but they still used a crappy one-button joystick.

Yeah, this for sure. I think it's funny that back in the day you would get the Microsoft Sidewinder for all sorts of games like Wing Commander, etc. and then controllers/joysticks on PC kind of went out of style ... that seems to be coming back though fortunately.

[Ivo]

Another problem with PC/computer gaming is that it took them forever to catch up with controls. So many great Amiga games would have been on par with SNES/Genesis stuff, but they still used a crappy one-button joystick.

The thing that annoys me most there is that not only could the Amiga hardware support at least 2 buttons - as seen clearly with the Amiga mouse - most joysticks I remember having actually did have more than one button (I don't know if internally in the joysticks, those buttons mapped to the same input before going to the Amiga).

There were still very good games designed with the limitation in mind, and the keyboard was available to give some "help" with this, but stuff like arcade ports could really suffer as the games were typically designed with 2 buttons in mind.

Ivo.

[fastbilly1]

Here's one I thought of on PC: patching broken games. I remember back in the day, sometimes you would go get a special demo disk from PC Gamer or another magazine, because it would contain a patch for a gamebreaking bug. Those were the days. I think patch management in general back then was a major PitA. I remember one bug that was crazy was for a Bungie game, iirc it was Myth II. If you uninstalled the game it deleted your C drive.

I've never heard of Myth II, but Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor did some crazy shiz like that if you tried to uninstall it. Deleted some critical system files or something.

Ok, I looked it up and remembered it wrong, Myth II, if you changed the default installation directory to C:/ it deleted everything. Still a nasty problem to have.

Pool of Radiance seems to be worse. Basically, if you installed the game anywhere other than default directory, it deleted your Windows directory as well.

Thats what we call an ultimate rouge like. Permadeath to the pc...

[flojocabron]

I can't believe no ones mentioned blinkies on the NES. Or the whole nes pin bending.

It was annoying back in the day wiggling, jiggling and blowing on carts (still is).

Most of us were kids back then, we weren't able to mod,and no one was even thinking about disabling the lock-out chip. you would spend a while to get the game playing right.

You better hope the game doesn't mess up or freeze.

You'd have to start all over from the beginning.

[Hobie-wan]

It was annoying back in the day wiggling, jiggling and blowing on carts (still is).

I hope you not still blowing in them. Don't make me send the goon squad.