10 Things About Gaming in the 90s Kids Don't Get Today
Try Before You Buy
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Admittedly, demos are still a thing today. Steam often promotes upcoming games that have demos available. PlayStation, on the other hand, locks them behind their subscription service. Classy. But back in the 90’s, we had the pleasure of obtaining “demo discs”, discs that contained small slices of upcoming games. This practice would carry on for another two generations after this, but there was something special about PS1 demo discs. From the intro videos to behind the scenes looks at game development and convention floors to even secret trailers, you always got a good taste of what was coming to the console through Interactive Samplers, Jampack, and PlayStation Underground. Simply downloading a demo just isn’t the same as these compilations were.
Fun in Our Pocket
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Handheld gaming has sort of been phased out of the gaming space. Yes, we do have the Switch, the Steam Deck, the ROG Ally, and PlayStation Portal. However, this isn’t real handheld gaming. Back in the 90’s, we had Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and…well, that was about it. (Not too many kids with NeoGeo Pockets.) And the technology was limited at the time. Many games that were coming out lasted about thirty to sixty minutes on average. But damn, did they have a crazy long battery life! A Game Boy Color could run up to ten hours, almost five times the battery life of a PS5 controller! Yes, we’re aware the system was doing less than what DualSense is doing. Still, you got way more game time without being tethered to a cable back then.
Time For a Shopping Spree!
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Today, it’s almost hard to find a good video game store. GameStop only ever sells new games and sidelines older titles to their online store, and many retro game stores have had to close due to the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. And most folks now buy games from online stores or third-party sellers on sites like eBay. Back in the day, there were five key stores everyone went to for their games: Circuit City, Best Buy, GameStop, EB Games, or the motherload, Toys R Us. Toys R Us was a huge deal in the gaming space as some companies would have the retail chain distribute promo videos for upcoming games. And if you weren’t buying games, you were most likely heading to Blockbuster or Hollywood Video to rent games. Even though it was a somewhat niche market at the time, it at least felt like nerds were getting some assortment of options to go buy our games at.
Playing With [Limited] Power
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At one point, it was kind of tough to learn every secret, glitch, exploit, strategy, and what have you in a single game. Sure, you could always resort to the manual, but to get help, you had to almost actively seek it. Nintendo once had help lines where you could call a phone number and ask for assistance if you ever got stuck on a game. These agents would have full charts of maps and secrets to point you towards, almost a total X-ray at the ready for players who might be stuck. You could also go out and buy strategy guides or subscribe to gaming magazines that might have cheat codes for various games hidden inside. And if you couldn’t afford any of the aforementioned options, you just had to trust whatever word of mouth came your way. Nowadays, every secret is spilled the second a game drops.
When Games Attack!
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Now, this is one aspect of 90’s gaming that we do not miss whatsoever! We have it so good today with controllers that have the right amount of pressure to execute inputs and fit comfortably within our hands. What was so bad about controllers in the 90’s? Well, have you held an N64 controller? The analog stick on that thing was able to cut up people’s palms in “Mario Party”! As for the PS1 controller, the D-Pads were so rigid and hard that it could cause blisters!! Gaming hurt back in the day, man! We’re glad kids will never have to choose whether to finish “Crash Bandicoot” or wimp out because of potential hand trauma.
Saving Lives, Gouging Prices
Saving required more effort on the player’s part than games require today. We’re so lucky to have auto-saves in almost every game today, and many games even give the option to manually save if we really want to. But in the 90’s, most games did not have such luxuries. The ability to save your game was often delegated to specific checkpoints. So if Mom and Dad were getting ready to drag you to the mall or some family cookout, you had two options: rush all the way back to the last checkpoint you remember, or suffer, power off your game, and prepare to redo whatever progress you lost before the last checkpoint. Needless to say, this could be super annoying at times.
Being the Weird Kids
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It’s kind of weird to us how video games have become such a widely accepted hobby these days. Sure, there are still some stragglers who think games are toys, games cause violence, or games are for basement dwellers. However, that kind of thinking was much more common back in the 90’s. Parents and educators often looked down upon playing video games, often calling it “a waste of time”. Politicians were at the ready to get games banned and argued about how it incites criminal behavior without any concrete evidence outside of specific anecdotes. And if any kid found out you played video games, you were sometimes treated worse than how D&D nerds were treated in the 80’s. Nowadays, you get picked on for playing certain types of games or simply owning a particular console. Different reasons for mockery, all trivial to a ridiculous degree.
“I’d Like to Buy This Game, Please”
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We know we already talked about game stores a little bit ago. However, we want to focus on something more pressing in the modern world: availability. The 1990’s didn’t have the options for buying games. Every game was only ever released physically, forever preserved unless the cartridge was battered and broken. You want the game? Go to the store and buy it off the shelf. These days, physical games are coming in fewer and fewer batches as digital sales grow evermore. Physical copies are now becoming a rarity, and it has been having an effect on game preservation. A game can easily get delisted and become lost to time if something as simple as a copyrighted song pulls its license from the developers.
Back to Basics
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An obvious difference in 90’s gaming is in the technology. Online gaming didn’t have as much prominence back then. Even on PC, it was a bit of a hassle to set up. As for VR gaming, that was a pipe dream that could only be experienced at a place like Disney Quest, a video game amusement park that featured a VR Aladdin game you and your friends could compete in. Speaking of pipe dreams, motion controls and touchscreens weren’t brought to fruition yet. But you want to know what’s really depressing? There are kids today who don’t even recognize a game controller because they’ve been playing games that utilize touchscreen controls.
Room for Experimentation
Perhaps we’re looking through rose-tinted glasses, but the era of Nintendo 64 and original PlayStation was a time of creativity. Not every game was a surefire hit, but saturation was definitely under control. Developers were trying all kinds of neat ideas, playing with hardware in various ways from the controller to pushing technical limits to simply trying new concepts for games. Let me put it this way - you aren’t going to see a game like “Vib-Ribbon” or “Intelligent Qube” in the 2020’s, and if you do, it's most likely coming from an indie developer, not Sony. Say what you will about some 90’s classics not aging terribly, looking at the biggest titles of that decade, they definitely seem more interesting than the abundance of live service games we’ve been subjected to in recent days. What do you think was the best or worst aspect about 90’s gaming? Let us know down in the comments, and don’t forget to subscribe to MojoPlays for more great videos everyday!
