Annoying things about your favorite systems?

[0078265317]

Blinking NES was very annoying back in the day.

[BassGuitari]

 

PANASONIC, etc. 3DO: The controller sucks in ways science previously never thought possible.

 

This statement is interesting to me. Can you elaborate? Just curious as to why you feel that way. I actually think 3DO controllers are pretty nice, and I was under the impression (and I should preface this by pointing out I'm only a casual 3DO fan and not especially hip to the 3DO scene) that most gamers have generally favorable opinions of them--apart from the daisy-chaining controller jacks.

 

Many Intellivision games were slow because they were programmed that way not because the processor was slow. Still, the processor was slow. Later Intellivision games, particularly from Atarisoft and Activision show Intellivision games don't have to be slow.

 

Adding to this, I think it's worth noting that, at first, the Intellivision was the "thinking man's" video game system. Even many of its earlier arcade-style games tended to be more strategy-oriented than comparable titles on the Atari or Odyssey.

 

I think when the Atari really started blowing up after Space Invaders came out, Mattel knew it had to have bonafide arcade titles as well. 1981-82 is when we started seeing games like Astrosmash, Snafu, Burgertime, Lock 'N' Chase, etc.

 

PC - Installing games. It takes time I could use to play the game, & back-in-the-day I'd always run out of hard disk space.

 

I know that pain! Although, thinking back, I actually kind of also appreciate it. Having to go through an installer actually built the anticipation of the game for me.

 

Getting to the end of the install only to get slapped with an error message about insufficient RAM, a missing .dll file, or some dumb bullshit always sucked, though.

[80s_Atari_Guy]

Yeah, I have a Panasonic FZ-1, and I quite like the controllers. I also like that you can daisy chain them for multiplayer.

Mind you, I also like the whole system, so I guess some might not agree there.

Edited July 14, 2018 by 80s_Atari_Guy

[Flojomojo]

Controllers are far from the worst thing about 3DO in my mind, but that's cool, this is a very subjective thread!

[BassGuitari]

Controllers are far from the worst thing about 3DO in my mind...

 

 

?

[pacman000]

Is that really the package? O_o

[Flojomojo]

Is that really the package? O_o

Yup. It was the very early days of "multimedia gaming," when developers were experimenting with full motion video because they finally had enough storage. There are tons of embarrassing, tacky titles like this on all the early CD systems (3DO, SEGA CD, CDi were the worst from a western perspective).

 

The "real games" often didn't take up much space at all on the disc, but the CD soundtrack and little movies did. At least the VCR movie fad was mostly over by the time the Saturn and PlayStation rolled up.

 

Yet we've got people excited about a Night Trap remaster. There's no accounting for taste!

[John Stamos Mullet]

Controllers are far from the worst thing about 3DO in my mind, but that's cool, this is a very subjective thread!

yeah - I had a Goldstar 3DO back in the day and the controllers werent terrible. Better than Ataris 5200 sticks or the 7800 euro mushpads

[Lost Dragon]

Usual piss n vinegar moans from myself..

 

Hated the position of the joypad and mouse ports on the ST and buying a 16 bit micro with no hardware scrolling and a soundchip i hated was in hindsight a mistake.

 

Hated the GB screen, Game Gear screen suffered too much screen blur,but it didn't kill my enjoyment .

 

Lynx screen resolution was too low.

 

Master System soundchip was dire.

 

Commodore C64 Power Packs were lethal..mine melted.

 

Hated tape loading on the 800XL but price of Disk Drives here in the UK meant they were out of reach.

 

Dreamcast has the dreaded reset issue.

 

I have large hands, so love the original Xbox controller and Jaguar controller..

 

Cannot get on with NES or Game Cube controllers.

 

Found the N64 pad great for FPS games and Starfox64, but bloody awful for Command And Conquer 64.

 

Hate the nub on the PSP.

 

Hated the awful video out quality on the PS2 along with the deadzone on the Dual Shocks.

 

My OCD loathes the messy power brick set up and external WiFi adapter of the 360 and setting up the 32X-Megadrive-Mega CD combo nearly killed me..leads everywhere and it had separate power packs for everything.

 

The Sinclair ZX81 Ram Pack wobble was my earliest gripe.

 

Nothing to really find fault with on systems like the SNES,Saturn,Amiga 1200 etc as didn't own them long enough to really worry.

[mr_me]

They can't all be your favourite systems?

[Lost Dragon]

I look back at the games on them all with fondness.

 

The systems themselves just a means of playing them.

 

 

 

ST era aside, i found myself having to buy more than 1 hardware platform per generation as games were either exclusive to a system or differed enough to warrant buying on a second system.

 

I wasn't sure how many to list, but i don't really class old hardware in top 5 type lists or have favourites.

 

I prefer classic eras of gaming.

 

Something i fear the current generation will not fall under in years to come.

 

I don't think anyone built a perfect system.

 

I seen the thread creator list multiple systems so there didn't seem to be a limit to number you could list.

 

I wouldn't rate the ST,PS2 or 32X as favourites, so i probably shouldn't of included them.

Ditto the GB as that was given to me as a gift.

 

Got a little carried away finding fault with old hardware.

 

Ahhh the purchases you come to regret.

Edited July 15, 2018 by Lost Dragon

[AMenard]

My biggest annoyance with one of my favorite system, the ST, is the way they designed the video output making the use of a modern display more complicated than the Amiga. On the Amiga a simple scandoubler or an upscaler and you're set. On the ST I have to use two cables and two display...

[youxia]

ZX Spectrum had that crazy command line interpreter with predefined BASIC commands assigned to specific keys.

Amiga: 3.5" disks were expensive. Yeah, I was a poor kid. I pulled all kinds of stunts to get the computer itself and could afford only a box of 10 to go along with it.

PSX: I can't think of any flaws. So solid and versatile.

[Jess Ragan]

It's been a while since I used them (I have UFO adapters purchased from another AA member), but the stock pads for the Panasonic 3DO had problems. Button placement was weird and the D-pad had immense difficulty reading diagonals unless you loosened the screws on the bottom. Game Fan was the first to reveal this trick, shortly after the system was released.

 

Another annoyance is that nobody knew what the pause button was supposed to be. Most companies chose P, but Capcom decided that it was going to be an action button and that X would be pause instead. Makes it slightly difficult to get a suitable fight stick when nobody can decide which button does what.

[mbd30]

ZX Spectrum had that crazy command line interpreter with predefined BASIC commands assigned to specific keys.

 

 

I would think that awful sound, weird colors and chiclet keys would be the Spectrum's biggest issues, but I guess those could be considered part of its charm as well.

Edited July 15, 2018 by mbd30

[youxia]

I would think that awful sound, weird colors and chiclet keys would be the Spectrum's biggest issues, but I guess those could be considered part of its charm as well.

The stuff coders managed to squeeze out even from the beeper (never mind the very popular AY chip) and the "weird" colours was nothing short of amazing. In fact, I switched to C64 later on but was always kind of disappointed by its lower res blocky gfx.

 

Chiclet keyboard was probably a chore to type on but we did not care much for typing and for QAIOP gaming it was just fine. Later models got better ones anyway.

[Austin]

NES - 1. Having to retry games multiple times to get them to work. 2. The controllers. They are a favorite of mine for certain types of games, but the sharp edges can make them uncomfortable when coming from the smoother molds of later generation controllers.

 

Jaguar - Red screen of death.

 

Atari 7800 - 1. The stock joysticks. Ugh. Just.. UGH. 2. The official gamepad. Wonky d-pad and buttons that are too far apart. Ugh.

 

Sega Saturn - 1. Internal battery that likes to die quickly. 2. Finicky cart slot (seems to vary from unit to unit).

 

CD-I - 1. Timekeeper. If it goes, then the system turns into a raging drunken schizophrenic. 2. Games always do this long drawn out fade between scenes. It sort of slows down the pace of things and the games have less of a distinct identity as a result.

 

3DO - 1. A lot of games do the fade thing like on the CD-I, but not as often. Still kind of annoying here. 2. Super limited internal system memory on the FZ-1. 3. I guess I should complain about daisy chaining controllers, but honestly I've always been more annoyed at losing the caps that cover the daisy chain ports.

 

PS1 - Small memory card sizes. I'm not a huge fan of having to micro-manage a bunch of different cards.

 

XBOX - Softening filter is applied to everything. You can apparently disable this with a hack, and I've tried that, but it doesn't seem to work for me.

 

PS2 - A huge portion of its library runs at 480i. This isn't a problem on a CRT, but it looks ugly through my upscaler and capture card. Lots of games that should run in 240p also tend to run at 480i instead (classic game compilations in particular).

 

Dreamcast - 1. Admittedly it is kind of loud. It has never really bothered me, but it is something I have to think about when streaming (depending on the mic I use, I have to make sure the system is far, far away from it). 2. Battery issue, much like the Saturn. A minor inconvenience, I usually don't worry about it.

 

Neo-Geo CD - Load times. Really these don't usually bother me for the most part in the action games, most of the data is loaded in the beginning and in some games that results in no load sequences mid-game. That's cool, but it doesn't generally work the same in a large portion of the fighting games where there are long load times between matches (or in the KOF games, between rounds when doing 3 on 3). It's just a shame I have to ignore a chunk of the library in order to get a more consistent level of enjoyment out of the system.

 

PC Engine - Super CD games still making constant use of the stock PCE sound hardware for most sound effects and some music. This was probably by design, but it clashes with the nice CD audio and some of the higher quality sampled sound effects. Most noticeable in Dracula X, where it switches from redbook audio to music driven by the PCE sound hardware.

 

Sega CD and 32X - Similar to the above, many games don't take advantage of the added sound hardware and often times rely mostly on the Genesis sound processor instead.

[Lost Dragon]

Talking of PS1...

 

Third party memory cards were often a risk.

 

Corrupt saves seemed common place at times.

 

Xcom:Terror From The Deep, which i seem to recall took a lot of slots...was prone to it.

 

And on a game like that..that was was very bad news.

[Classic Pac]

Atari 7800: Sound quality it is the worst of the 8 bit era

[atarilovesyou]

Colecovision: splash title screen, lol

 

VCS: wimpy, easy to break power AC jack

 

Vectrex: the Hum

 

NES: carts and connector require upkeep

 

Gameboy: green screen motion-blur

[zzip]

I know that pain! Although, thinking back, I actually kind of also appreciate it. Having to go through an installer actually built the anticipation of the game for me.

 

Getting to the end of the install only to get slapped with an error message about insufficient RAM, a missing .dll file, or some dumb bullshit always sucked, though.

For me, the worst part of the installers is that they always seemed to be bundled with some 3rd party crapware that you don't need, but is selected for install by default. No doubt the publishers were getting kickbacks for doing this. And if you do need it (Adobe Acrobat Reader is a common example) it is an old version you don't really want.

 

Another annoying thing about PC games: The era of manual-based copy protection, circa late 80s/early 90s (please go to page 36 of the manual, enter the 3rd word in the 4th paragraph). If you want to play those games today, chances are you don't have the manual handy

[Flojomojo]

Another annoying thing about PC games: The era of manual-based copy protection, circa late 80s/early 90s (please go to page 36 of the manual, enter the 3rd word in the 4th paragraph). If you want to play those games today, chances are you don't have the manual handy

 

On the flip side, if you're playing those old games today, chances are you can find a cracked version or the missing documents with a quick web search!

[John Stamos Mullet]

For me, the worst part of the installers is that they always seemed to be bundled with some 3rd party crapware that you don't need, but is selected for install by default. No doubt the publishers were getting kickbacks for doing this. And if you do need it (Adobe Acrobat Reader is a common example) it is an old version you don't really want.

 

Another annoying thing about PC games: The era of manual-based copy protection, circa late 80s/early 90s (please go to page 36 of the manual, enter the 3rd word in the 4th paragraph). If you want to play those games today, chances are you don't have the manual handy

You mean I need to RTFM to get Larry laid? LAME!

[Tanooki]

Talking of PS1...

 

Third party memory cards were often a risk.

 

Corrupt saves seemed common place at times.

 

Xcom:Terror From The Deep, which i seem to recall took a lot of slots...was prone to it.

 

And on a game like that..that was was very bad news.

 

Many games with large blocks set aside or multiple spaces like Diablo and Warcraft II are easy victims too. The thing is, that's not a PS1 issue alone, N64 was identical both with size and spaces eaten for saves, but third parties universally made gutter trash quality high failure prone cheapo knockoff memory cards. I can't recall ever having one that didn't screw up, but I do know they came second hand as I refused to buy the junk knowing they were bad even back then in the early internet days as people called it out 20 years ago too.