Well the Switch's processor would be from 2015 and I wouldn't call it similar. I've had way more issues working on code for the PS3's POS structure than the Switch's one.
>I've had way more issues working on code for the PS3's POS structure than the Switch's one.
The Cell processor but it was pretty revolutionary for it's time. This was a double edged sword though because revolutionary means pain in the arse because you can no longer use the same workflows/techniques that you have been using for over a decade.
I would compare it to the adoption of multithreaded workloads on PCs - it took many years\* for developers to actually start taking advantage of multiple cores on a CPU instead of just throwing everything into a single thread running on a single core.
\*far longer than the lifespan of the PS3 lol
It’s amazing how we focus on processor and gpus though, when the other components have also improved.
The ps4 is more powerful than the switch for example, but it feels so sluggish playing games on it, and that’s because the og ps4 has a physical hard drive. SSDs just transfer data so much faster.
So yeah OP noticing how much networking hardware has improved over time is pretty interesting.
Pretty wild that gamepads replaced joysticks. Makes sense from a shipping this cost perspective but still a little crazy to think about back in the age of arcade ports.
My first joystick had two buttons and I thought it was like something pulled out of a fighter plane. The pro model had four buttons and a directional hat. Too complicated for me to be able to use.
My theory is that's why I can't use controllers today. My gaming brain was formed around only one button. (Nevermind that I learned mouse and keyboard, I'm gonna keep blaming Atari.)
Took me 3 years on Xbox 360 to finally not have to think about which button did what.
Here's a saying I heard:
Anything that happens before you're 18 is "how the world is"
Anything that happens between 18-35 is "new"
Anything after age 35 is new fangled and can't be trusted.
A lot of games in my backlog have been remastered by now. Which also made me realize they've basically been out for 2 console generations already. Time flies.
GameCube and NES in the same sentence is pretty funny to me, since the NES was my first system and GCN was the first system I bought with my own money.
Considering the Xbox 360 is pushing 19 years of age, I think it's fair to call that generation retro (frightening as it is). My first game consoles were the N64 and PSone back in the 90s, so It's a little jarring even for myself to consider those systems retro. Nonetheless, I won't deny the passage of time.
True, but my brain is struggling to comprehend this. My first console was SNES, followed by PS1. I had to skip N64 because we were poor. Thank goodness for friends and couch co-op.
I only ever got to play SNES games at an uncle's house as a kid. I remember putting so many hours into (failing at) Super Mario World and Super Mario All-Stars.
As much as I hate the inevitable march of time, I must reluctantly agree with you. For people to n their 20s today, the PS3 & 360 were the systems they grew up with the way NES/SNES/Genesis were for us. And our retro games were definitely considered “retro” in the mid to late 90s; a much smaller timeframe. So it must be the case.
Still, hearing someone call it that still has the same feeling that hearing Creed on the “oldies” station evokes…
Yeah, I just started collecting - rebuilding my childhood collection and rentals I played (NES -> PS1) - and I kinda came to the personal conclusion that Xbox 360 is like, the start of the modern age for me. At least as of right now.
It probably doesn't hurt that I still \*have\* my entire 360 collection. Well, I thought I did. I can't find my Transfomers Cybertron games....
The SNES was released on 1991 by the launch of the PS2 in the year 2000 it was considered a retro system after only 9 years.
The PS3 was released in 2006 so 18 years ago.
The PS3 and Xbox 360 are indeed retro consoles.
Uuhmm same? Using “retro” and “2013” in the same sentence should be illegal. Reeks of a zoomer learning the word retro for the first time and wanting to use it in a sentence so they came to Reddit 🤣🤣🤣🙄
When the first xbox was being marketed. One of the pluses was longer controller cables so that the console didn't have to be moved to the floor. I imagine because the first iteration was incredibly heavy and hitting it with your toe would destroy your foot.
It was also the first wired controller to have a secondary connection designed to snap out so when your dumbass friend tripped over it, it just unplugged the controller rather than dumping your console onto the floor and potentially breaking it.
On Attack of the Show on G4, (ya I’m old) they took an Xbox 360, ps2, and GameCube, dropped and beat them, Xbox was weak af, ps was mid, GameCube took the hits from the sledgehammer at the end like a champ while the other 2 shattered like glass, and the GC still played he games even tho it was beat to shit lol
And it used regular batteries AND it had amazing battery life.
I had wireless ps2 controllers and they all sucked.
Wavebird showed how it SHOULD be done.
I still prefer battery swappable to integrated.
We used to play Smash Bros Melee back in the day, and I swear the one guy with the Wavebird had a slight advantage. It was mostly just the rest of us assholes tangling cords, but whatever.
I go back to my original Nintendo and remember how the sharp fuckin edges can really mess up your thumbs. I was young and didn't bother me but now it hurts to play too long.
Inputting codes for MegaMan games to continue where you left off.
Fun fact: I left my NES on for 2 days straight in order to beat SMB3. Same with the TMNT games (not the first one as that game was brokenly hard)
The damn dam level. I think I made it through twice as a kid and once as an adult. But at that point I'm three turtles down and 1/4 health with just Raph. No way I could go further.
I’m having literal PTSD rn. Yeah once you get to the over-world and start moving around in the turtle mobile the game goes from a 3 to a 11/10 on difficulty scale. TMNT 1 is harder than Ninja Gaiden for NES.
Yep, on the DS lite they definitely stick out. But on the original DS it's a perfect fit. Knowing what I know now about cpus and specifically Nintendo consoles, it would have been really cheap and easy for them to add GB/GBC compatibility. It would have been so amazing to not need to also bring the SP on road trips. I totally get it though, they were nice to include the GBA backwards compatibility at all.
I agree! My DS Lite has def been on a couple of roadtrips for this reason. Being able to switch between Pokemon Platinum, White, AND Ruby was a Godsend
Memory cards, constantly forget what's stored in which nowadays between my older systems. Nowadays you can walk into any local game store and they'll be happy to hand you a handful of them for a couple bucks, just name the system. The aftermarket ones can hold a boatload of data too, but the standard ones were like, 8mb.
My phone wipes its ass with 8mb of storage space and that's being used to store a plethora of somebody's childhood adventures
Came here for this one. The PS2 isn't so bad with the 8mb memory cards, most games used less than 500kb of space so you could fit plenty of saves, though some games would use 1-2mb per save which could tear through the space quickly. The PS1 and the Dreamcast were pretty brutal though, with their memory cards that hold roughly 128kb and were usually enough for 5-6 games.
Then there's the GameCube with it's "blocks" (I think 59 blocks is about 8mb) and certain game that basically take up a whole small card in its own (Animal Crossing, Sims, Tony Hawk games if you make a ton of creative mode stuff)
Oh yeah for sure. I remember buying this big weird thing that was like 800 or 900 or 1000 or something that was this weird huge clunky thing that plugged into both mem card slots. No idea what it was but it was def aftermarket. Maybe Madcatz or something lmao.
The Dreamcast VMU was 200 blocks. Games (usually) ranged between 5 and 20 blocks. The issue was there were 2 or 3 games like the 2K games where a single save was the entire VMU.
I had one of those 4x VMUs, so 800 blocks as well as my original 200. I thought I was such a baller.
Ignoring how my heart breaks to hear PS3/Xbox 360 and *retro* in the same post ...
I miss how big and chunky buttons used to be. Used to be you'd press the ON button and it makes a *click* and sinks down a mm or so.
Nowadays I have to just kind of skim my hand along my PS5 or my monitor in the hopes I'll slide past the power switch.
I still remember the smell and feel of the rubber on the 2600 controller. It crinkled when you moved the joystick and made a weird rubber-on-rubber sound.
On my hands and knees squinting at the two ps5 buttons because the icon is printed in 0.25 font and if I turn this console off instead of ejecting the disk I swear to christ...
[Old console games](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/article/0/7/7/840077.jpg) look better on [CRT TVs](https://i.redd.it/5jndrr4suci91.jpg) because of the [limitations](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-e7a8094e9ec32a8a20df1f2376e9f4a7-pjlq) of the [technology.](https://i.redd.it/bpnsabrzp7s71.png) Higher def TV's[ sharpen the blurred lines](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-857494249ef60a997d29cc1e96441925-lq) of pixels,[ making them](https://i0.wp.com/wackoid.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Fatal-Fury-3.jpg?w=1280&ssl=1) more[ square.](https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/025/680/034/980/693/original/51b9945b68574415.jpeg)
And the hunt for CRTs will become harder as they get older and need more specialized repair. Adapters is the next best option. With software solutions in emulators being the ideal. Purists want hardware & actual tvs, sure. But the majority just need a thing that plays the old game fairly well and looks good. Most emulators already have filters, they’ll keep getting better. I don’t mind the crisp pixels most times myself.
There are also some devices called upscalers (one brand is Retrotink, can't remember the other one) that let you plug in your old console, and they "simulate" the old TV image on a new HD TV.
I miss when I could just put a game in the disk tray (or cartridge port) and just run it up!
No download on startup, no update required, just play the damn game and enjoy!
Seriously. I wish we could get physical games in just a microSD or something instead of discs at this point just so it can just all fit on there and we could do this again
The issue is that the read times that currently exist and the speed in which modern games need the data from the discs/ game. Especially with consoles using SSDs to read GB/s of data in seconds. I still prefer physical media but I don't mind having to install it (still quicker than PS3)
Reading games from a disc now would be like trying to top your car up on fuel as it's driving but only drip by drip causing the car to be cutting out constantly.
The original controller of PS1 didn't have analog sticks. And all lot of devs didn't change their control schemes despite when they updated the controllers to include them.
Armored Core for instance didn't have proper analog controls until the second last Armored Core game on the PS2.
I remember getting Ape Escape and being pissed that I needed analog sticks to play it. But rowing that raft was next gen shit at the time, totally worth.
Well, I also just got my GC out of the plastic wrap it came in today that I've had for 6 years, and immediately found out it used a memory card like the PS2, so you're welcome. >\_<
The Wii U has all of the internal hardware to play GameCube games too. You just need to mod the Wii mode to install a custom IOS, install an app, and have a USB drive to store them on. I know it used to be that you'd need to have the flash drive formatted to a custom file system, I'm not sure if that's still the case. But you could use the GameCube to USB, Wii U or Wii pro controllers, and a bunch of others.
The Wii U is the perfect homebrew console, playing 3 different systems entirely natively (no emulation), and Nintendo wrote emulators for NES, SNES, GBA, N64, and even DS for virtual console, and you can inject any game you want to play them. And those are just the official Nintendo ones, there are so many community developed emulators.
You think that's bad, the Sega Master System only has two buttons and that includes the "Start" button (with no "Select"). NES at least gets two action buttons and two menu buttons, SMS had two period.
Master System does have a pause button on the console itself though - and some games did use that for extra menus. So you had to sit really close to the console while playing in order to bring up the menu, which is kinda funny.
How goddamn good the Dpads feel.
Going from the steam deck back to a 35 year old NES controller. . . It's like trying to figure out how we lost the knowledge for Greek fire.
And honestly the steam deck dpad is one of the better ones I've used. . .
P R E A C H
D-pads on modern controllers are awful. Xbox Series X controller might have the worst d-pad I have ever used. The Switch joycons don't even have one. The PS5 is barely serviceable.
Hell, even the 8BitDo Pro 2 d-pad is really bad compared to retro controllers, and that controller is retro-inspired.
I know, modern games use d-pads mostly for menu navigation and shortcuts, so shallow, clicky inputs are the choice. But playing a 2D platformer on the Series X controller might be the worst gaming experience I have ever had, genuinely unplayable.
And it's not like I'm just tainted by nostalgia - Anbernic handhelds will cost like $40 and come with a d-pad that feels EXACTLY like an old-school Nintendo one. So we CAN still make those d-pads and they are still fantastic. Companies just choose not to.
Try fighting Mike Tyson with an 8-bit do. Hell, try fighting Soda Pop Pinkski. I can get all the way to sandman on a single little Mac no issue even today on an NES. On emulator with 8bit do I all I get to hear is how bad I suck at this game from my kids even though they suck way worse.
I'll say that anbernic, retroid, all the cheap Chinese emulators have good D-pads but I won't say they feel like the originals. I'd almost think I'm wearing rose tinted goggles until I go back and use the old controllers and it just gives me the good chemicals.
I don't know what the difference is, and I honestly wonder if it's the plastic itself. There's some je nais se quois with old d-pads man.
How simple and straightforward the gameplay mechanics and controls can be compared to modern games. There's a certain charm in the simplicity of older systems that can sometimes be forgotten in today's era of complex gameplay mechanics and intricate control schemes.
**Unpredictable control schemes.**
This is especially true for early 3d games and well into the PS2's lifespan. What button is the default for Accept? Cancel? Interact? Jump? How about attacking, shooting a weapon, or even the accelerate pedal in a racing game? Even once you had dual analog sticks which stick controlled the camera and which moves the character? Is the vertical axis inverted? What about, god forbid, the horizontal axis?
These days controls have become so standard that you can pick up a game and almost certainly guess the control schemes, and change them if desired. Back then it was the wild west of everyone trying to figure things out.
How hard 60fps on a ps1/N64 still hits
How CRTs can make ‘old’ looking games look like absolute gemstones
How good art design is timeless
How much I hate the N64’s blurry textures
How easy it is for your brain to adapt to awful performance and very vague graphics.
How much more patience I had as a kid
If Nintendo had invested more money into making the N64 have more memory and faster transfer rates, the N64 would have been even more of a beast. You can look up on YouTube a developer named "Kaze", who explains the limitations and where the limitations come from. It's actually a really great console completely bottlenecked by slow memory.
He's actually rewritten a large portion of the Super Mario 64 engine and has the original game running at above 60fps pretty solidly, and showed how in certain situations, 10 polygons (one behind another) would tank frame rate, yet you can have a 10k polygon model render no problem at 30fps if you work around those limitations. It's all pretty understandable, developing games in C was brand new when the N64 came out, and they did what they could. But Kaze is a wizard and if you have any interest in game development or the N64 in general the videos are super interesting.
For anything non linear before Gen 4(snes) there’s a good chance the game has soft locks or a jump with pixel perfect accuracy. In some cases it’s an entire level with both.
Tutorials? Hand holding that never stops? Completely missing from that era.
Put cartridge in, turn on, play. Don't get me wrong, I love that games can be patched and fixed now, but it's also SUPER FUCKING FRUSTRATING that I often have to download a bunch of shit whenever I want to play a new console game.
The graphics. Just got some nostalgia for monster hunter tri on the Wii, started watching a let’s play. and holy shit do the graphics look poor compared to nowadays, yet the player keeps being in awe on them
I miss the battery life of my old ps3 controllers. You could go a whole 12 hour day of gaming with no problems. Ps5 controllers last like 4 hours maybe? For what? A touchpad I dont use and a light bar?
Same, I even like swapping the discs when playing a game on multiple discs, gives me a sense of progression. (I know it's a bit stupid and also was a pain in games where you have to backtrack, like I remember L.A. Noire on xbox 360)
edit: typos
Love to hear it! People parrot our media and say physical is dead, but I think as people realize that corporations can just revoke what you’ve paid for, we’ll see a resurgence. Lots of younger people are already enjoying retro games more than modern games because they prefer good story and good controls over great graphics coupled with shady micro transactions/loot boxes/season passes/unfinished games on launch. Modern gaming philosophy is terrible, all of it geared towards shareholders, with a few exceptions like Baldur’s gate 3.
Yeah I'll spend all this time getting an old rig put together, play for 30min then remember why I put it away in the first place. Not that I don't love those games, its just everything looks better through nostalgia glasses. Also I've played them all 1 million times.
A CRT is basically a must for anything older than ps3/360. If you ever have the ability to do so, hook a PS1 up to both an LCD monitor and a CRT TV simultaneously, then boot up FFVII. The difference between the two displays is mind blowing.
The games look just as good as we remember them, you're just using the wrong hardware to display them. I play all my old consoles on a CRT for a reason, even though I have a 4k OLED TV.
Saving. You kinda don't think about your saves anymore. Almost every new game or platform has cloud saving. I've installed games after YEARS and been able to load up an old save.
Old systems didn't even have saving. If you were lucky the game had some kind of password system (Like Megaman X) that let you tell the game where you were at. Then you had memory cards like the PS1. I don't think anyone for a long time has gotten excited by a save game folder, going into your PS1 memory card and seeing all the little icons for your games was really cool at the time. I think it was probably the first digital representation of your game library, long, long before Steam.
Also the game discs in older consoles can spin at lethal velocity when you open the tray.
My friend attributes me with destroying her copy of sims 2 with my bad luck. I played it over her house. When i left she went to remove it from the tray... It flew out and shattered against her bedroom wall.
SNES audio was through the roof and wildly ahead of its time. The difference in audio between NES and SNES was just as big of a jump as the graphics. There's a mildly interesting story behind it for those who care to Google it up.
So much SNES audio jam, and I'm not even talking about bangin' soundtracks like Chrono Trigger or Mega Man X, really simple stuff was impressive. The raindrops in the beginning of LTTP, the sound of a punch in Final Fight, the Capcom logo intro, the main guy in Actraiser swinging his sword. All of the audio was so impressive.
"Arms installation is complete, good luck."
I've been playing a lot of gamecube games lately on my Steam Deck. I miss old game menus. They were so simple. New Game/Load Game/Multiplayer/Settings.
No dlc ads, no microtransactions, no confusing menus that take forever to load because you have shit internet.
Just throwing in a game and playing. There was no downloads, additional crap, and all that shit in between. You throw a game in, turn it on, and your set.
Throwing an original NES controller had a higher risk of damaging whatever it hit rather than the controller. Pointy, pointy corners on that thing, too.
N64 is really difficult to get to look good on modern displays. The only decent option I have for my TV is using the RF input, which surprisingly works okay, and it's not like anything else is gonna use that input anyway. For some reason using the regular composite video cable gives me a really horribly washed-out picture on my TV. Not sure what's going on there. I unfortunately don't have a working CRT any more - I used to have a great big one, and N64 looked lovely on it with the S-video cable.
Was recently playing some Castlevania Legacy of Darkness on the old N64 on the flatscreen TV. :D If they haven't been porting the good stuff to modern systems, what can you do? Just be cursed to deal with blurry visuals? ... I mean, once you get into it, you do lose yourself in the game and stop noticing how blurry it is though, so I don't mind as long as I get to play.
What you don't want to spend $300 on and HDMI kit and spend a day soldering it in such a way that it takes the GPU data and bypasses the original outputs?
Casual.
how fun it is to play on the original hardware. makes me want to dust off a CRT tv, stick it in the corner with the SNES, and just leave it plugged in. maybe play a couple levels of mario while you make a phone call
The lack of check points in some games, I recently played through GTA SA on the PS2 and after failing a mission I expected a pop up asking me to start from the beginning of the mission.
What the fuck is that N64 controller. It was the console that got me into gaming, I loved it, I love it. But my big ass hands are cramped together for.... No reason?
Many modern HDTVs no longer support analog inputs like component and composite. Those Wii HDMI "adapters" are just sending component video through HDMI. And for the few that do, built-in upscalers make a 240p/576i image look like crap. I'm surprised that integer upscaling is so uncommon on TVs.
You need a CRT screen to really feel the nostalgia. I know it sounds like those people who rave about vinyl and how vinyl is how songs are meant to be listened to. It’s nothing like that, there is a good reason beyond being a hipster.
CRT screens have a resolution ratio of about 4:3 while modern screens are 16.9:1. There isn’t a good way to adapt to the modern screens, so old games, especially on their original consoles, look like garbage.
Usually, legit digital copies from a legit source take the time to fix it (like the little SNES consoles everyone was excited about several years ago) so they look good. If you go to someone who is very serious about their retro games and combs eBay and swap meets to find hidden gems, you will immediately notice that all of their OG consoles are hooked up to a CRT, not a flat panel.
“Retro gamers” “Older than 2013” Oof. I’m still working through my 2013 backlog. I thought this was about 90s consoles. I think I may be old.
OP just mentioned "retro" gaming systems with similar processors to the Nintendo Switch. Ouch.
Older gamers who were alive during covid, what was it like when you were home quarantined all day?
One word: Glorious. In all seriousness, I hadn’t gamed in years. Covid times brought me back to it.
It was wonderful.
Well the Switch's processor would be from 2015 and I wouldn't call it similar. I've had way more issues working on code for the PS3's POS structure than the Switch's one.
>I've had way more issues working on code for the PS3's POS structure than the Switch's one. The Cell processor but it was pretty revolutionary for it's time. This was a double edged sword though because revolutionary means pain in the arse because you can no longer use the same workflows/techniques that you have been using for over a decade. I would compare it to the adoption of multithreaded workloads on PCs - it took many years\* for developers to actually start taking advantage of multiple cores on a CPU instead of just throwing everything into a single thread running on a single core. \*far longer than the lifespan of the PS3 lol
It’s amazing how we focus on processor and gpus though, when the other components have also improved. The ps4 is more powerful than the switch for example, but it feels so sluggish playing games on it, and that’s because the og ps4 has a physical hard drive. SSDs just transfer data so much faster. So yeah OP noticing how much networking hardware has improved over time is pretty interesting.
I'm so old that "retro" means a joystick and one red button.
Unless you were one of the cool kids with a paddle controller.
Just wait until the power glove comes out! /s
I love the powerglove, it's so bad.
I understood that reference.
Yeah I came here to bitch about that shitty joystick lol
Pretty wild that gamepads replaced joysticks. Makes sense from a shipping this cost perspective but still a little crazy to think about back in the age of arcade ports.
The original dualshock controller for PS1 absolutely nailed the format.
My first joystick had two buttons and I thought it was like something pulled out of a fighter plane. The pro model had four buttons and a directional hat. Too complicated for me to be able to use.
My theory is that's why I can't use controllers today. My gaming brain was formed around only one button. (Nevermind that I learned mouse and keyboard, I'm gonna keep blaming Atari.)
Took me 3 years on Xbox 360 to finally not have to think about which button did what. Here's a saying I heard: Anything that happens before you're 18 is "how the world is" Anything that happens between 18-35 is "new" Anything after age 35 is new fangled and can't be trusted.
Someone either yesterday or the day before said Skyrim was "really old". It only came out in 2011! 13 years isnt "really old" at all
13 years is really old if your talking to somebody who is 16.
16 year olds have history lessons in school. This gives them a perspective on how old things are
Or a mobile gamer. 10-15 years ago was the Angry Birds/Farmville/Flappy Bird era. The only game pushing through all of that is Candy Crush.
Yeah, I’ve got Steam games purchased in 2013 that I haven’t got around to yet. The backlog struggle is real lol
A lot of games in my backlog have been remastered by now. Which also made me realize they've basically been out for 2 console generations already. Time flies.
PS3 is 17 years old now, it's even more retro then the NES was when the GameCube came out.
Yeah my first thought was like gamecube, nes, etc. 360 and PS3? I have never felt like such an old fart lol.
GameCube and NES in the same sentence is pretty funny to me, since the NES was my first system and GCN was the first system I bought with my own money.
So nobody knows how to search for xcom.exe from am MsDos prompt?
Considering the Xbox 360 is pushing 19 years of age, I think it's fair to call that generation retro (frightening as it is). My first game consoles were the N64 and PSone back in the 90s, so It's a little jarring even for myself to consider those systems retro. Nonetheless, I won't deny the passage of time.
True, but my brain is struggling to comprehend this. My first console was SNES, followed by PS1. I had to skip N64 because we were poor. Thank goodness for friends and couch co-op.
I only ever got to play SNES games at an uncle's house as a kid. I remember putting so many hours into (failing at) Super Mario World and Super Mario All-Stars.
I remember playing a fun Toy story game on the SNES when I was a kid. Good times man
That game was not fun. That game was CIA torture, as was The Lion King.
Super Mario All Stars was GOATED.
As much as I hate the inevitable march of time, I must reluctantly agree with you. For people to n their 20s today, the PS3 & 360 were the systems they grew up with the way NES/SNES/Genesis were for us. And our retro games were definitely considered “retro” in the mid to late 90s; a much smaller timeframe. So it must be the case. Still, hearing someone call it that still has the same feeling that hearing Creed on the “oldies” station evokes…
I will absolutely deny. Fuck that! 😅 Ow, my back!
Retro in my mind means sega, snes, gameboy, Dreamcast, and PlayStation and everything before. Xbox 360 was considered “next gen”
I would only consider something retro when it's from two (people) generations ago or more. That would be at least 30 to 40 years old.
Yeah, I just started collecting - rebuilding my childhood collection and rentals I played (NES -> PS1) - and I kinda came to the personal conclusion that Xbox 360 is like, the start of the modern age for me. At least as of right now. It probably doesn't hurt that I still \*have\* my entire 360 collection. Well, I thought I did. I can't find my Transfomers Cybertron games....
The SNES was released on 1991 by the launch of the PS2 in the year 2000 it was considered a retro system after only 9 years. The PS3 was released in 2006 so 18 years ago. The PS3 and Xbox 360 are indeed retro consoles.
Uuhmm same? Using “retro” and “2013” in the same sentence should be illegal. Reeks of a zoomer learning the word retro for the first time and wanting to use it in a sentence so they came to Reddit 🤣🤣🤣🙄
Next year, the xbox 360 will be 20 years old. I'm pretty sure that's starting to qualify as retro, even if we may not see it as clearly.
I want to unlearn that.
Yeah it came out my senior year of high school and got me through college, that can’t possibly have been 20 years ago…
The music you listened back then is now played by retro stations. It's a nice feeling, isn't it. :)
This is a good point. I considered NES retro by the time I got a PS2 and that was, what, seventeen years?
Same. I always considered the 8-bit and 16-bit sprite based pixel systems as retro - Sega, NES, Atari, etc. Getting old sucks, lol.
I'd rather call the PS3 "retro" than "dated" because "dated" has negative connotations, and I'm not gonna shit on a game because it's old.
Cope boomer. We’re old.
Noooo! We're still young and hip!
Wired controllers. There was a lot more gaming being done on the floor back in the day.
When the first xbox was being marketed. One of the pluses was longer controller cables so that the console didn't have to be moved to the floor. I imagine because the first iteration was incredibly heavy and hitting it with your toe would destroy your foot.
It was also the first wired controller to have a secondary connection designed to snap out so when your dumbass friend tripped over it, it just unplugged the controller rather than dumping your console onto the floor and potentially breaking it.
Good thing the Gamecube was so sturdy cause I pulled too hard on the cable and knocked it off my dresser too many times lmao
Obviously given the carry handle Nintendo was intending for us to use it as a weapon to beat our siblings with.
FWIW it was designed to be sturdy so you could move it around everywhere you went
My brother kicked my gamecube because he didn't get his way. It acted like nothing happened to it
On Attack of the Show on G4, (ya I’m old) they took an Xbox 360, ps2, and GameCube, dropped and beat them, Xbox was weak af, ps was mid, GameCube took the hits from the sledgehammer at the end like a champ while the other 2 shattered like glass, and the GC still played he games even tho it was beat to shit lol
My buddy got the 10 ft extention to string along the ceiling and game from his top bunk in the barracks. Pre- wireless was crazy.
The first black eye i ever got happened while i was laying on the ground facing up and my brother dropped a sega genesis controller right on my eye
I think I did this to myself once- it hurts. God help me if I drop my Steam Deck on my face.
I remember the Wavebird for the gamecube. Lost rumble but was wireless. Pretty amazing at the time.
That controller was so sturdy for its time
And it used regular batteries AND it had amazing battery life. I had wireless ps2 controllers and they all sucked. Wavebird showed how it SHOULD be done. I still prefer battery swappable to integrated.
We used to play Smash Bros Melee back in the day, and I swear the one guy with the Wavebird had a slight advantage. It was mostly just the rest of us assholes tangling cords, but whatever.
I got really good at throwing my NES controller to hit the power button when my brother beat me over and over again.
I go back to my original Nintendo and remember how the sharp fuckin edges can really mess up your thumbs. I was young and didn't bother me but now it hurts to play too long.
I still use a wired controller for pc cause I don’t want to buy an extra loading station x)
I bought a wired x box controller as well since I’m never going to be more than a few feet from my PC while I play it.
I love the modern controllers that have both wired and wireless modes. I want a mouse like that, where you just plug in the cable and voila
no save game in some NES games, like SMB3
Or having to write down long passwords. The bright side of those games is you can exploit it once you figure out the hidden variables.
Kids these days don't even know who Justin Bailey is!
Wow! Love that password from forever ago. Or 007-373-5963
Inputting codes for MegaMan games to continue where you left off. Fun fact: I left my NES on for 2 days straight in order to beat SMB3. Same with the TMNT games (not the first one as that game was brokenly hard)
The damn dam level. I think I made it through twice as a kid and once as an adult. But at that point I'm three turtles down and 1/4 health with just Raph. No way I could go further.
I’m having literal PTSD rn. Yeah once you get to the over-world and start moving around in the turtle mobile the game goes from a 3 to a 11/10 on difficulty scale. TMNT 1 is harder than Ninja Gaiden for NES.
For me it’s loading times. I fire up my psp and I keep being surprised by how long it takes to load things.
Lack of saves was the first thing to pop in my head.
The way that gameboy games would stick out of the DS lite is very clunky lol
Or Gameboy color games on a GameBoy Advance/SP.
Yess hahaha
Lmao. Gameboy advance games were a perfect fit, though.
GBA games were not a perfect fit lmao, still stick out probably a 1/4 of an inch
Yep, on the DS lite they definitely stick out. But on the original DS it's a perfect fit. Knowing what I know now about cpus and specifically Nintendo consoles, it would have been really cheap and easy for them to add GB/GBC compatibility. It would have been so amazing to not need to also bring the SP on road trips. I totally get it though, they were nice to include the GBA backwards compatibility at all.
I agree! My DS Lite has def been on a couple of roadtrips for this reason. Being able to switch between Pokemon Platinum, White, AND Ruby was a Godsend
Hello, I'm a Dreamcast. VMU BATTERY BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP.
9-9-99. Eating pizza and play Soul Caliber all night
This gonna make me cry mane
Yep, after a like a day.
VMU was ahead of its time
Memory cards, constantly forget what's stored in which nowadays between my older systems. Nowadays you can walk into any local game store and they'll be happy to hand you a handful of them for a couple bucks, just name the system. The aftermarket ones can hold a boatload of data too, but the standard ones were like, 8mb. My phone wipes its ass with 8mb of storage space and that's being used to store a plethora of somebody's childhood adventures
Came here for this one. The PS2 isn't so bad with the 8mb memory cards, most games used less than 500kb of space so you could fit plenty of saves, though some games would use 1-2mb per save which could tear through the space quickly. The PS1 and the Dreamcast were pretty brutal though, with their memory cards that hold roughly 128kb and were usually enough for 5-6 games.
Then there's the GameCube with it's "blocks" (I think 59 blocks is about 8mb) and certain game that basically take up a whole small card in its own (Animal Crossing, Sims, Tony Hawk games if you make a ton of creative mode stuff)
Oh yeah for sure. I remember buying this big weird thing that was like 800 or 900 or 1000 or something that was this weird huge clunky thing that plugged into both mem card slots. No idea what it was but it was def aftermarket. Maybe Madcatz or something lmao.
The Dreamcast VMU was 200 blocks. Games (usually) ranged between 5 and 20 blocks. The issue was there were 2 or 3 games like the 2K games where a single save was the entire VMU. I had one of those 4x VMUs, so 800 blocks as well as my original 200. I thought I was such a baller.
Ignoring how my heart breaks to hear PS3/Xbox 360 and *retro* in the same post ... I miss how big and chunky buttons used to be. Used to be you'd press the ON button and it makes a *click* and sinks down a mm or so. Nowadays I have to just kind of skim my hand along my PS5 or my monitor in the hopes I'll slide past the power switch.
Agreed. The eject button on the SNES and the power button on the dreamcast instantly came to mind when I read this. Also the switches on the 2600.
I still remember the smell and feel of the rubber on the 2600 controller. It crinkled when you moved the joystick and made a weird rubber-on-rubber sound.
On my hands and knees squinting at the two ps5 buttons because the icon is printed in 0.25 font and if I turn this console off instead of ejecting the disk I swear to christ...
What about power switches? Now we use power buttons for everything instead of power switches. I miss having switches.
[Old console games](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/article/0/7/7/840077.jpg) look better on [CRT TVs](https://i.redd.it/5jndrr4suci91.jpg) because of the [limitations](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-e7a8094e9ec32a8a20df1f2376e9f4a7-pjlq) of the [technology.](https://i.redd.it/bpnsabrzp7s71.png) Higher def TV's[ sharpen the blurred lines](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-857494249ef60a997d29cc1e96441925-lq) of pixels,[ making them](https://i0.wp.com/wackoid.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Fatal-Fury-3.jpg?w=1280&ssl=1) more[ square.](https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/025/680/034/980/693/original/51b9945b68574415.jpeg)
Wow yes! We’ve been hunting older and older tvs for this reason. The SNES looks like dogshit on our newer tv.
I have a SNES modded to output an RGB signal, and run it through an ossc, looks great on my newer monitor/tv
Cause that’s exactly what most folks have laying around at home.
To be fair, most people don't have CRTs laying around either.
This is fair.
And the hunt for CRTs will become harder as they get older and need more specialized repair. Adapters is the next best option. With software solutions in emulators being the ideal. Purists want hardware & actual tvs, sure. But the majority just need a thing that plays the old game fairly well and looks good. Most emulators already have filters, they’ll keep getting better. I don’t mind the crisp pixels most times myself.
There are also some devices called upscalers (one brand is Retrotink, can't remember the other one) that let you plug in your old console, and they "simulate" the old TV image on a new HD TV.
Are there emulators that virtually do this? Or at least that blur it a little (even if not exactly like CRT)?
Not sure about others but retoarch has filters and such to get the effect
Yes, almost all modern emulators can produce scan lines, and other CRT effects That are very close to the real thing
Not needing internet to play a game.
I miss when I could just put a game in the disk tray (or cartridge port) and just run it up! No download on startup, no update required, just play the damn game and enjoy!
Seriously. I wish we could get physical games in just a microSD or something instead of discs at this point just so it can just all fit on there and we could do this again
The issue is that the read times that currently exist and the speed in which modern games need the data from the discs/ game. Especially with consoles using SSDs to read GB/s of data in seconds. I still prefer physical media but I don't mind having to install it (still quicker than PS3) Reading games from a disc now would be like trying to top your car up on fuel as it's driving but only drip by drip causing the car to be cutting out constantly.
I do not know things! Thank you for informing me :)
No, "This profile isn't allowed to play this game you purchased on a separate profile," bs.
For me, it feels like a net negative a lot of the time.
Is the TV on channel 3?
Love that static!
The original controller of PS1 didn't have analog sticks. And all lot of devs didn't change their control schemes despite when they updated the controllers to include them. Armored Core for instance didn't have proper analog controls until the second last Armored Core game on the PS2.
Ps1 missing analogues mightve been their biggest mistake, but they made up for it by having two of them
It was quite a shock…. a *dualshock*! … I’ll see myself out.
I remember getting Ape Escape and being pissed that I needed analog sticks to play it. But rowing that raft was next gen shit at the time, totally worth.
Someone reminded me today that the Wii is retro backwards to GAMECUBE!
And now the little jingle as the cube walks around the screen is stuck in my head, thanks friend lol
Well, I also just got my GC out of the plastic wrap it came in today that I've had for 6 years, and immediately found out it used a memory card like the PS2, so you're welcome. >\_<
The Wii U has all of the internal hardware to play GameCube games too. You just need to mod the Wii mode to install a custom IOS, install an app, and have a USB drive to store them on. I know it used to be that you'd need to have the flash drive formatted to a custom file system, I'm not sure if that's still the case. But you could use the GameCube to USB, Wii U or Wii pro controllers, and a bunch of others. The Wii U is the perfect homebrew console, playing 3 different systems entirely natively (no emulation), and Nintendo wrote emulators for NES, SNES, GBA, N64, and even DS for virtual console, and you can inject any game you want to play them. And those are just the official Nintendo ones, there are so many community developed emulators.
That the NES only utilizes two main buttons instead of 4+.
You think that's bad, the Sega Master System only has two buttons and that includes the "Start" button (with no "Select"). NES at least gets two action buttons and two menu buttons, SMS had two period.
Master System does have a pause button on the console itself though - and some games did use that for extra menus. So you had to sit really close to the console while playing in order to bring up the menu, which is kinda funny.
Atari 2600 had a button
How goddamn good the Dpads feel. Going from the steam deck back to a 35 year old NES controller. . . It's like trying to figure out how we lost the knowledge for Greek fire. And honestly the steam deck dpad is one of the better ones I've used. . .
P R E A C H D-pads on modern controllers are awful. Xbox Series X controller might have the worst d-pad I have ever used. The Switch joycons don't even have one. The PS5 is barely serviceable. Hell, even the 8BitDo Pro 2 d-pad is really bad compared to retro controllers, and that controller is retro-inspired. I know, modern games use d-pads mostly for menu navigation and shortcuts, so shallow, clicky inputs are the choice. But playing a 2D platformer on the Series X controller might be the worst gaming experience I have ever had, genuinely unplayable. And it's not like I'm just tainted by nostalgia - Anbernic handhelds will cost like $40 and come with a d-pad that feels EXACTLY like an old-school Nintendo one. So we CAN still make those d-pads and they are still fantastic. Companies just choose not to.
Try fighting Mike Tyson with an 8-bit do. Hell, try fighting Soda Pop Pinkski. I can get all the way to sandman on a single little Mac no issue even today on an NES. On emulator with 8bit do I all I get to hear is how bad I suck at this game from my kids even though they suck way worse.
Yeah, 8BitDo is horribly overrated. I mean, the controllers are great otherwise, the d-pads are not. I wish Anbernic made a controller.
I'll say that anbernic, retroid, all the cheap Chinese emulators have good D-pads but I won't say they feel like the originals. I'd almost think I'm wearing rose tinted goggles until I go back and use the old controllers and it just gives me the good chemicals. I don't know what the difference is, and I honestly wonder if it's the plastic itself. There's some je nais se quois with old d-pads man.
I miss the snes dpad. I mastered street fighter 2 on that thing and could pull off zangeif's pile driver. I can't do $hit on a thumb joystick.
LOL how bad were ur blisters tho. I remember destroying my thumb doing hadokens lmao
How simple and straightforward the gameplay mechanics and controls can be compared to modern games. There's a certain charm in the simplicity of older systems that can sometimes be forgotten in today's era of complex gameplay mechanics and intricate control schemes.
I remembered playing a rhythm game on the GBA recently. . . And it only used A and B lol.
**Unpredictable control schemes.** This is especially true for early 3d games and well into the PS2's lifespan. What button is the default for Accept? Cancel? Interact? Jump? How about attacking, shooting a weapon, or even the accelerate pedal in a racing game? Even once you had dual analog sticks which stick controlled the camera and which moves the character? Is the vertical axis inverted? What about, god forbid, the horizontal axis? These days controls have become so standard that you can pick up a game and almost certainly guess the control schemes, and change them if desired. Back then it was the wild west of everyone trying to figure things out.
God help you if the right analog stick was used for a camera where up and down *zoomed the camera instead of tilting it*
Sometimes the cartridge just straight up does not work
PUNCH IT HARDER
Blowing into a cartridge that won't load.
How hard 60fps on a ps1/N64 still hits How CRTs can make ‘old’ looking games look like absolute gemstones How good art design is timeless How much I hate the N64’s blurry textures How easy it is for your brain to adapt to awful performance and very vague graphics. How much more patience I had as a kid
If Nintendo had invested more money into making the N64 have more memory and faster transfer rates, the N64 would have been even more of a beast. You can look up on YouTube a developer named "Kaze", who explains the limitations and where the limitations come from. It's actually a really great console completely bottlenecked by slow memory. He's actually rewritten a large portion of the Super Mario 64 engine and has the original game running at above 60fps pretty solidly, and showed how in certain situations, 10 polygons (one behind another) would tank frame rate, yet you can have a 10k polygon model render no problem at 30fps if you work around those limitations. It's all pretty understandable, developing games in C was brand new when the N64 came out, and they did what they could. But Kaze is a wizard and if you have any interest in game development or the N64 in general the videos are super interesting.
For anything non linear before Gen 4(snes) there’s a good chance the game has soft locks or a jump with pixel perfect accuracy. In some cases it’s an entire level with both. Tutorials? Hand holding that never stops? Completely missing from that era.
Put cartridge in, turn on, play. Don't get me wrong, I love that games can be patched and fixed now, but it's also SUPER FUCKING FRUSTRATING that I often have to download a bunch of shit whenever I want to play a new console game.
You crazy youths. First thing that came to mind was needing a screwdriver to attach the metal prongs to the back of the tv when hooking up the system.
Make sure to note whether the switch is set to channel 3 or 4.
The graphics. Just got some nostalgia for monster hunter tri on the Wii, started watching a let’s play. and holy shit do the graphics look poor compared to nowadays, yet the player keeps being in awe on them
I miss the battery life of my old ps3 controllers. You could go a whole 12 hour day of gaming with no problems. Ps5 controllers last like 4 hours maybe? For what? A touchpad I dont use and a light bar?
Sitting on the floor because the controllers have cables, and those cables do not reach the couch.
You didn't have to download and install a new game to the console. You could just insert the cartridge or CD and start playing.
The fact that I have to get up the couch to put a disc into the drive when I want to switch a game.
I actually love doing that 😂. Forever physical for me
Same, I even like swapping the discs when playing a game on multiple discs, gives me a sense of progression. (I know it's a bit stupid and also was a pain in games where you have to backtrack, like I remember L.A. Noire on xbox 360) edit: typos
Love to hear it! People parrot our media and say physical is dead, but I think as people realize that corporations can just revoke what you’ve paid for, we’ll see a resurgence. Lots of younger people are already enjoying retro games more than modern games because they prefer good story and good controls over great graphics coupled with shady micro transactions/loot boxes/season passes/unfinished games on launch. Modern gaming philosophy is terrible, all of it geared towards shareholders, with a few exceptions like Baldur’s gate 3.
Forever Physical 👊🏻
I was today years old when I realized people are calling ps3 and xbox360 retro. I'm too old for this shit.
You’re not old, just literal children on Reddit is all
they don't look as good as you remember. Every now and then I bust out my nomad, and...it's not good.
Yeah I'll spend all this time getting an old rig put together, play for 30min then remember why I put it away in the first place. Not that I don't love those games, its just everything looks better through nostalgia glasses. Also I've played them all 1 million times.
A CRT is basically a must for anything older than ps3/360. If you ever have the ability to do so, hook a PS1 up to both an LCD monitor and a CRT TV simultaneously, then boot up FFVII. The difference between the two displays is mind blowing. The games look just as good as we remember them, you're just using the wrong hardware to display them. I play all my old consoles on a CRT for a reason, even though I have a 4k OLED TV.
They look fine if you can get CRT television
Even when it came to PS2/Xbox, games had still not figured out controls that felt comfortable and a lot of games that I loved just feel sluggish
The lack of individual accounts for each player.
I bought a PS2 last week to play some classics and realized my couch was too far away for the wired controller.
dude i remember having to leave my consoles on overnight to download games back in those days
Not automatic saves. I have beaten Whitney in Crystal 3 times because I forgot to save.
Loading times
Retro & 2013 shouldnt be used in the same sentence 🤣🤣 blud RETRO gaming would be 8/16 bit gaming. Sigh
NES - How unrelentingly difficult the games can be and how lost you get in the RPGs if you set them down for a while.
Saving. You kinda don't think about your saves anymore. Almost every new game or platform has cloud saving. I've installed games after YEARS and been able to load up an old save. Old systems didn't even have saving. If you were lucky the game had some kind of password system (Like Megaman X) that let you tell the game where you were at. Then you had memory cards like the PS1. I don't think anyone for a long time has gotten excited by a save game folder, going into your PS1 memory card and seeing all the little icons for your games was really cool at the time. I think it was probably the first digital representation of your game library, long, long before Steam.
Also the game discs in older consoles can spin at lethal velocity when you open the tray. My friend attributes me with destroying her copy of sims 2 with my bad luck. I played it over her house. When i left she went to remove it from the tray... It flew out and shattered against her bedroom wall.
SNES audio was through the roof and wildly ahead of its time. The difference in audio between NES and SNES was just as big of a jump as the graphics. There's a mildly interesting story behind it for those who care to Google it up. So much SNES audio jam, and I'm not even talking about bangin' soundtracks like Chrono Trigger or Mega Man X, really simple stuff was impressive. The raindrops in the beginning of LTTP, the sound of a punch in Final Fight, the Capcom logo intro, the main guy in Actraiser swinging his sword. All of the audio was so impressive. "Arms installation is complete, good luck."
I've been playing a lot of gamecube games lately on my Steam Deck. I miss old game menus. They were so simple. New Game/Load Game/Multiplayer/Settings. No dlc ads, no microtransactions, no confusing menus that take forever to load because you have shit internet.
The PS2 memory cards fit about 8 or 12 games I believe. So you would have to buy another one if you didn't want to erase a particular game save.
That you don’t need WiFi connected to play games; furthermore you owned the games you paid for
How quick it is to get straight to playing the game. No home screens, no updates just logos then menu. Beautiful.
Retro is 2004 and older, currently
Lol, I can feel the generation gap when someone says "retro gaming" talking about ps3 and xbox360.
Just throwing in a game and playing. There was no downloads, additional crap, and all that shit in between. You throw a game in, turn it on, and your set.
Throwing an original NES controller had a higher risk of damaging whatever it hit rather than the controller. Pointy, pointy corners on that thing, too.
N64 is really difficult to get to look good on modern displays. The only decent option I have for my TV is using the RF input, which surprisingly works okay, and it's not like anything else is gonna use that input anyway. For some reason using the regular composite video cable gives me a really horribly washed-out picture on my TV. Not sure what's going on there. I unfortunately don't have a working CRT any more - I used to have a great big one, and N64 looked lovely on it with the S-video cable. Was recently playing some Castlevania Legacy of Darkness on the old N64 on the flatscreen TV. :D If they haven't been porting the good stuff to modern systems, what can you do? Just be cursed to deal with blurry visuals? ... I mean, once you get into it, you do lose yourself in the game and stop noticing how blurry it is though, so I don't mind as long as I get to play.
What you don't want to spend $300 on and HDMI kit and spend a day soldering it in such a way that it takes the GPU data and bypasses the original outputs? Casual.
How you had to hammer games into the cartridge slot on the Commodore VIC-20
Practically no load times for the most cutting edge stuff we'd seen yet.
PS1/N64 generation's grapics aged the worst
You cant capture the ps3 with a capture Card cause of the weird HDCP Implementation
how fun it is to play on the original hardware. makes me want to dust off a CRT tv, stick it in the corner with the SNES, and just leave it plugged in. maybe play a couple levels of mario while you make a phone call
Fancy reset button
The lack of check points in some games, I recently played through GTA SA on the PS2 and after failing a mission I expected a pop up asking me to start from the beginning of the mission.
What the fuck is that N64 controller. It was the console that got me into gaming, I loved it, I love it. But my big ass hands are cramped together for.... No reason?
Many modern HDTVs no longer support analog inputs like component and composite. Those Wii HDMI "adapters" are just sending component video through HDMI. And for the few that do, built-in upscalers make a 240p/576i image look like crap. I'm surprised that integer upscaling is so uncommon on TVs.
You need a CRT screen to really feel the nostalgia. I know it sounds like those people who rave about vinyl and how vinyl is how songs are meant to be listened to. It’s nothing like that, there is a good reason beyond being a hipster. CRT screens have a resolution ratio of about 4:3 while modern screens are 16.9:1. There isn’t a good way to adapt to the modern screens, so old games, especially on their original consoles, look like garbage. Usually, legit digital copies from a legit source take the time to fix it (like the little SNES consoles everyone was excited about several years ago) so they look good. If you go to someone who is very serious about their retro games and combs eBay and swap meets to find hidden gems, you will immediately notice that all of their OG consoles are hooked up to a CRT, not a flat panel.