Times change, and we understand that; but does that mean you cannot yearn for the old days? We cannot be the only one who misses some things about the good old days of video games, a time when things were simpler. As the technology behind gaming has improved over the years, game developers have been able to do more and more with the games they create but this necessarily doesn’t make them more enjoyable to play than old school games.

In the old days, games were hard. Sure, the games may have only been 2 hours long, but when you have to try it 1,000 times to beat it, it becomes a lot longer and a million times more satisfying than most of the games out there today. Video games today are all about telling a great story. They are filled with cinematic scenes, dialog and characters acting like real human beings. This is fine, but it is such a rarity to see a game where the whole point is just to survive. Back then, games could not rely on simply allowing you to live out a story, they had to create their fun with a feeling of accomplishment by doing something incredibly difficult, and it is something that is sorely missed with modern video games.

Back in the day, all those “good old games” looked like crap. It was never a competition between games to see who could push the hardware to its limits and make the prettiest looking game. Back then, it was all about who could make the most fun video game. No one cared if your sprites had a little extra pop on their graphics; all we cared about was whether the game had good mechanics. It was a glorious time where video game studios did not have to invest millions of dollars in high-end motion capture devices and 3D rendering. Instead, they spent all of their time thinking about how to take the hardware they had, and put out a game that was challenging and fun.

Modern games are amazing. We just wish that developers would take some cues from the good old games that came before and bring them into new games. The next generation of gamers is missing much of the thrill and challenge that we got to experience as we were coming up and learning the ropes of being a gamer. What do you miss about old school video games?