Classic gaming is a terrific hobby, but it does have its headaches.
What is the deal with the controllers with the curled-up, telephone kind of cords. I'm mainly talking about the Colecovision and Intellivision controllers. Those things get tangled up in everything. Ugh.
I don't even like how they feel, as if you're constantly being "pulled" toward the console.
Thoughts?
Old School Annoyances
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Re: Old School Annoyances
I have a problem with the chords of all my wired controllers getting tangled, whenever old or new (Sega MegaDrive, Saturn, Switch Pro-controller)... after more than 40 years of gaming I still don't know an efficient solution for this...
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Re: Old School Annoyances
I've noticed a few posters on this thread mentioning the cables of their controllers getting tangled up in everything being a nuisance to deal with. And yes, that is definitely a hassle and a half for sure trying to untangle them. Such a pain in the butt. But one thing about old school gaming that really used to bug me was having to write down passwords. Especially if they were really long with both upper and lower case letters, numbers and other characters. After awhile, all that stuff just looks the same, and it's really easy to write down the wrong character by mistake, which would pretty much negate any progress you might have made in whatever game you were playing. I can't tell you the amount of times I've gotten far in a game, wrote down the password so I can pick up where I left off later on, only to find out the password wouldn't work because i wrote down a 5 instead of an uppercase S somewhere. So I'd either had to start over from scratch or hope I could find an older password from the same game so I wouldn't have to start over. So infuriating, and it makes me thank my lucky stars for emulators and save states because I don't have to do any of that anymore...
The games that were the absolute worst when it came to their password system:
1) The Guardian Legend. Upper and lower case letters, numbers and punctuation characters.
2) Little Ninja Brothers. Letters, numbers and shapes.
3) Kid Icarus. See example #1.
Now, all these games weren't terrible by any means. In fact, I would go so far to say that the first two are what one would call hidden gems for the NES. Which makes me ask why they decided to use a password system that was such an irritant to enter correctly??? There's other games that had super long and annoying passwords to enter, but these are the three that instantly came to mind....
The games that were the absolute worst when it came to their password system:
1) The Guardian Legend. Upper and lower case letters, numbers and punctuation characters.
2) Little Ninja Brothers. Letters, numbers and shapes.
3) Kid Icarus. See example #1.
Now, all these games weren't terrible by any means. In fact, I would go so far to say that the first two are what one would call hidden gems for the NES. Which makes me ask why they decided to use a password system that was such an irritant to enter correctly??? There's other games that had super long and annoying passwords to enter, but these are the three that instantly came to mind....
- Retro STrife
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- Joined: August 3rd, 2015, 7:40 pm
Re: Old School Annoyances
lynchie137 wrote:But one thing about old school gaming that really used to bug me was having to write down passwords. Especially if they were really long with both upper and lower case letters, numbers and other characters.
Good point. I forgot about that, because these days I usually just take a quick photo with my phone. Imagine taking a photo in the 80s and having to get your film developed to make any progress..
- Gentlegamer
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- Joined: April 7th, 2015, 1:01 am
Re: Old School Annoyances
I definitely had problems with NES passwords back in the day. Fortunately, the issue usually was confusion between zero and O, so easily remedied.
I keep a little notebook with passwords these days and for any that might be questionable I take pic on my phone for reference.
I keep a little notebook with passwords these days and for any that might be questionable I take pic on my phone for reference.
- Stalvern
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Re: Old School Annoyances
Dreamcast games getting ruined by a single scratch. The GD-ROM is possibly the most unreliable storage medium since punch cards.
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Re: Old School Annoyances
Buying the same console multiple times due to manufacturing errors.
Heavy CRTs with primitive RF adaptors that would suffer from CB interference.
Original PC speakers attempting to simulate music.
"Check out all these great Japanese imports that you can't play!"
Studios buying as many licenses as humanly possible, and then giving overworked developers an unreasonable deadline to create something vaguely playable.
Cassette loading times.
Fragile CD cases.
Trying to figure out a game's quality by screenshots and cover art alone.
Getting any dust/dirt inside a UMD, despite your best paranoia, and praying it won't get scratched up.
Heavy CRTs with primitive RF adaptors that would suffer from CB interference.
Original PC speakers attempting to simulate music.
"Check out all these great Japanese imports that you can't play!"
Studios buying as many licenses as humanly possible, and then giving overworked developers an unreasonable deadline to create something vaguely playable.
Cassette loading times.
Fragile CD cases.
Trying to figure out a game's quality by screenshots and cover art alone.
Getting any dust/dirt inside a UMD, despite your best paranoia, and praying it won't get scratched up.
- VideoGameCritic
- Site Admin
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- Joined: April 1st, 2015, 7:23 pm
Re: Old School Annoyances
Oh yeah - someone reminded me about a BIG one - these big honking CRT TVs! They weigh a ton, take up a lot of space, and you need a special piece of furniture just to hold them! They get hot too.
Oh well, it's all worthwhile when you plug in a classic console and feast your eye on those super-low resolution graphics! LOL
Oh well, it's all worthwhile when you plug in a classic console and feast your eye on those super-low resolution graphics! LOL
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- Joined: July 18th, 2020, 9:29 am
Re: Old School Annoyances
Great topic. Although the pleasures of retro gaming/collecting far outweigh the headaches...I agree with many of the annoyances posted so far. Dying Sony WEGA CRTs, dead Sony WEGA CRTs, Saturn/Sega CD cases with busted hinges (especially now that you can no longer find cheap sports game to poach for intact cases), used games without manuals (what do people do with them anyway?), used games with THAT smell (a combination of cat urine, mildew and cigarette smoke), used game stores that put adhesive stickers inside the case on the actual covers of games/over the artwork on carts, used games with rental store security stickers plastered over the disc faces, and used game stores that can't locate the disc/cart for the one game I was able to find that I actually wanted.
- GeoX
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Re: Old School Annoyances
What always cracked me up was how in the early days game designers would blatantly rip off and crank out games which were basically identical copies from other games without getting a license and then turn around and try to copy protect there work! Pac-man absolutely has to be the game copied the most for example.
It’s like I can steal from them but don’t you steal what I stole!
It was just laughably hypocritical.
It’s like I can steal from them but don’t you steal what I stole!
It was just laughably hypocritical.