most of us can exaggerate something we did in the past and, as long as we don't become too separated from reality, that's ok

it's a general tendency to have fond memories in which we embellish or 'improve' our own participation in some way. If you ever had a relative that you heard telling the same story again and again you may have noticed that over time his/her role in the story improves.

well maybe we do the same in our minds even for something like playing a game!

"I remember being great at game x, and online I was pretty leet!" = I was ok but still used cheats to win and a couple of times online I came 3rd out of 10 in a deathmatch, which was nice!

"all my friends would come round all the time and we'd play Doom for hours back in the day" = 2 friends came round on 3 separate occasions for a couple of hours each and played doom

additionally, I think we are less filtered when we are young, more impressionable - every sensation just pours in and feels so much bigger than a comparative experience today such that, even if it wasn't a huge deal, the experiencing of it back then was by comparison much bigger than it would feel today

it's all part of nostalgia

Well, after replaying some of my childhood favorites, I realized that I'm no longer enjoying those games as much as I did back then. Specific examples include WarCraft 1&2 and Tomb Raider 2.

But there are other games which I loved as a kid and still enjoy playing. Tyrian, Master of Orion 2, Fallout, Doom, Duke3D, Heroes of Might and Magic 2, Transport Tycoon and the original Tomb Raider are just as good as they were back in the day.

So I guess it depends. I remember playing pretty much anything that I could get my hands as a kid, and enjoying most of it. I guess my tastes have gotten more specific over the years, and I can no longer endure some gameplay annoyances that I could glance over back then.

While I usually collect few videogames/consoles/computers more than actually running videogames, when it happens to play old videogames I end up having good moments (because the game was actually well written/designed even decades ago) and also often realizing they gets boring. Imho the logic is clear, the game and the computers/consoles remained the same but the player mind has changed with the life problems and not that lighter mind I might have played those games in that past with.
If I've to think twice to those times (for example MS-DOS based games) I do remember those/every videogames became boring even in that time too. Maybe cause I've never been a serious videogamer that finish a game in a few hours no matter what. This doesn't mean that those weren't good games/times, simply I suppose there's a time we might have had more patience to play a videogame until it got boring and replay it soon until it was finished but because many probably lived those years in a happier/lighter period of their life and not in a time where videogaming in the best case scenario might be a retro hobby where it's more important the reassembly of the computer for example than the gaming itself.

I suppose it's how the human brain works with memories.. good memories when recalled appears often much better or more significant that they really were in the real time scenario. But I don't think the brain should work otherwise often because we compare those time with the actual one and it's difficult that the common person might have no life problems, few free time, health problems, where it's even difficult to find the serenity to concentrate on any hobbies without thinking to anything else.

I often remember old game's graphics to be much better than they actually were. For example better than how they looked in accelerated 3D while back then I only played them in software render. But it's only for games with early full 3D or 3D combined with 2D sprites from the mid-to-late 90s. Probably my mind is playing tricks on me remembering the impression I got from 3D games after 2D rather than how they actually looked.

About the graphics I remember when I first saw games like Stunts (1990) and Wolfeinstein3D (1992) (while still having Z80 based 2D consoles) or later early PSX games (while still having the 80386SX pc) I was so impressed like those were the highest possible real time graphic ever seen. So it's not difficult to understand how graphic "at that time" sure was impressive cause nothing more was possible in real time just like nowdays with modern ones. So I suppose getting used to modern graphic would downgrade that feeling but the truth imho is that those games were actually really "impressive" for their times.

DooM was hyper realistic when I first saw it on a 13" monochrome monitor. And on a 14" color monitor it was as real as real life.

Few NES games looked like SNES or Genesis titles, but today I look them, and they really not.

Most DOS games are a LOT harder than I remember them being, especially platform games where you can only save your game between levels rather than mid-level. And I have no idea how I ever played first-person shooters before WASD + mouselook came along.

"Did you ever have a realisation that your retro memories or assumptions weren't quite accurate?"

Well, to err is human, people say.

Luckily, that doesn't affect me. (*mew!*)

About 30 years ago, I remember playing a game titled Empire, enjoying it and then, for some reason, misplacing the floppy it was on . That memory recently re-entered my conscious mind and I looked it up on Mobygames .

I believe it is this https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/empire___ from 1985 .

I remembered that the "graphics" were rather basic, but my memories were still prettier than the screenshots i just saw . 😉

Hardest thing I have is sticking with a game.
20 years ago me could play Doom, C&C or whatever all day.
The me of today struggles to play more then one level. I get annoyed and give up more easily now.
I'm sure that's partly down to having a lot less free time so feel I want to get more achieved in the few hour I do get.
But I'm also out of practice, That's been the interesting thing about playing C&C Remastered against my brother and best mate just like we did 20 years ago.
We may played a bit ourselves over the years but damn did we suck in our first online game.

Dos graphics always surprise me. Firing up Doom for the first time in 12 months and it looks like a big blocky mess, but that soon goes as you get used to it and looks perfectly fine again.

chinny22 wrote on 2021-07-02, 08:53:

Hardest thing I have is sticking with a game. 20 years ago me could play Doom, C&C or whatever all day. The me of today struggle […]
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Hardest thing I have is sticking with a game.
20 years ago me could play Doom, C&C or whatever all day.
The me of today struggles to play more then one level. I get annoyed and give up more easily now.
I'm sure that's partly down to having a lot less free time so feel I want to get more achieved in the few hour I do get.
But I'm also out of practice, That's been the interesting thing about playing C&C Remastered against my brother and best mate just like we did 20 years ago.
We may played a bit ourselves over the years but damn did we suck in our first online game.

Dos graphics always surprise me. Firing up Doom for the first time in 12 months and it looks like a big blocky mess, but that soon goes as you get used to it and looks perfectly fine again.

true about graphics, it looks 'worse' than we remember (maybe because we get used to new games) - but then the difference fades quickly once playing

you're right about sticking with a game too - we put up with irritation or frustration in games more then, that's a youth thing or maybe just having free time - i just don't have that time nor inclination to 'beat' a game but i still see lots of people putting amazing hours into a game now

C&C online - my first times playing online with a friend, one time I thought i was playing him but he put his son on, who was still a kid, and i simply couldn't keep up, the kid 's click rate was way beyond mine and thus, even though it was simple 2xharvester plus endless gunner hordes tactic his ability to click and direct each gunner individually in rapid rotation was impressive, i was zerg rushed before zergs existed!

I don't know if I could play all the way through DOOM now, I did that a few times years ago and never feel like doing so again

Also all these games would benefit from a CRT monitor too.. to run them on a LCD even low size loose that sharp native resolution effect. But about getting annoyed I suppose it's just the downside of getting old. I get annoyed even driving a car while decades ago to drive was always a pleasure. Nowdays I can see only downsides on driving, you never know what might happens on the road like car accidents and everything became much more stressing.

haha yeh, I get annoyed at inanimate object's so much now like a bit of clothing getting hooked on a door when walking past or not been able to fit something in the fridge.
I'll swear its It's down to stupid modern design... of something that hasn't actually changed in decades.

I challenged my brother to Cloak and Dagger from the Covert missions last week. That's the only level in both the original C&C or RA I never cracked.
Took him less then 24hrs.

That and the fact he wins most games now (that used to be me) I'll have to admit I must be getting to old at 41 and cant keep up with 33 year olds!

I understand that, I get annoyed to many things too back in the past I didn't even care. But I suppose it's not only the "getting old" explanation also maybe the everyday life is more stressing than it should be. I understood videogaming can't seriously be an everyday hobby at a certain time of the human life cause it doesn't (and can't) fit with the life problems, stressed minds, job problems, at the end it'd be impossible to concentrate so much to enjoy it as originally intended by developers, and it's right that way. Also there's the circumstances factor; the real random moments when those games were played were random unexpected moments, like running a game that had the best graphic ever seen and the unexpected factor.

But this doesn't mean that some few times it isn't still possible to enjoy an old videogame somehow with similar mind focus. For example lately I finished both the first and second "Thief The Dark Project and Thief II" Direct3D games bought them again and played on a slow config more or less with a rendering speed similar to what I played (and couldn't finish) back in that past. Against any predictions I ended up finishing them both and I didn't have the patience in the 2000 to do the same. And it was a great retro-videogaming experience and awesome titles to still play nowdays beside the old graphic. But it's not easy to find that patience or the right moment for it nowdays anyway.

I replayed Dune II about a decade ago... and as I was playing I was also remembering how I used to play it - very slowly, building many unnecessary things - like pavements, walls, defense... doing more defense than attacking... played a level way too long.

About wrong memories... I swear I remember playing Warcraft II when I was in secondary school - but now I see the release date late 1995 when I was already on University and that Battle.net version was released in late 1999 - I swear these dates are wrong 🤣

chinny22 wrote on 2021-07-02, 08:53:

I'm sure that's partly down to having a lot less free time so feel I want to get more achieved in the few hour I do get.

This, and there's also one thing that, once it goes away, I'm pretty certain you can't get it back. I can still remember the excitement of playing an interactive game, whatever it was, when this experience was novel - the very simple fact that you can walk around the world on your screen, or command armies from a bird's eye view, was in itself quite exciting. But once you get used to it - in my case it seems that this was happening rather gradually - some of the appeal of games just dissipates. I'd say there's a trade-off though in that I started to appreciate different things about games as my understanding of them deepened.

I can say for certainty that back in the mid-90 when I was in my very early teens I hardly understood the fine details of game design, while now I often think of games as some kind of a dialogue with their creators, similar to how books have become a way to reach the thoughts and ideas of their authors, rather than just simply enjoy the make-believe worlds and stories that they present.

And I guess yet one more thing is the general suspension of disbelief and the use of imagination. In childhood, it comes off naturally, but as an adult, you have the choice of whether you want to "play along" with a game's world or not. But it's also much easier to switch the entire imaginative thing off and go back to reality.

kixs wrote on 2021-07-02, 10:48:

I replayed Dune II about a decade ago... and as I was playing I was also remembering how I used to play it - very slowly, building many unnecessary things - like pavements, walls, defense... doing more defense than attacking... played a level way too long.

I was introduced to Dune II in the early 2000s, well after Warcraft II, StarCraft and C&C, but I quickly realised what a hidden gem it was, not just a "proto-RTS" it was pictured in gaming media. Loved every bit of it and played through all the campaigns several times (not to mention very extensive modding I dabbled in). I think that it is the proper way to play slowly like you describe - this is how I played it too, even after having mastered its mechanics and secrets. And yes, back then, as a University student, I had way more free time and less commitments than now so I could afford to waste / spend time like this.

I have a slight suspicion that this is not simply an child vs. grown-up thing, it's a general mark of our times that there's less time for slow pastimes than ten or more so twenty years ago. Back in the early 2000s, I used the Internet like once a week, and now it's almost all day, be it for work or leisure. This probably encourages instant gratification urges, but also with at least some games, once you have exhausted the novelty and know the inner workings, a deliberately slow approach might not seem justified unless you're "roleplaying" on purpose.

Back on topic though, I can't come up with any example of a game that I used to enjoy but ended up finding annoying after a long break. In some cases, I believe that I wouldn't go back to a game other than for occasional nostalgic reason, exactly because I think it has nothing new to show me. I still remember fondly every game I used to enjoy, even though in some cases I forget about them unless reminded specifically.

I downloaded Dune2 from a local BBS when it was released and loved that game, played it a few times in a row after I won. I have to say going back and playing it again can be infuriating because of all the advanced in RTS gameplay since then, but it is still fun just not mindblowing.

Reminds me how fun the original Age of Empires and Command and Conquer were even with low resolution and playing head to head over a 33.6K modem or at my house using my spare PC via network. I also have fond memories of playing Tribes online and then of course Unreal Tournament.

I don't think you can replicate the fun of half a dozen people dragging their PCs and heavy monitors to somebodies house, running coax all over the place, and then playing DOOM via IPX Netware for hours. The internet made multiplayer much easier but lots less social.

Interesting post....
I think Flibble said it best - once it's gone you can't get it back

I have pretty much lost interest in games.......sometimes I will go back and play one, but it's combination of been there done that, and knowing it is/was a waste of time

I remember I spent many hours on a specific game 15 years ago.
But when I revisited it, I found that I might exaggerated the time I spent on it, because just a few weekends I played way more content than I did 15 years ago. 🤣.