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Gaming Then vs Gaming Now

Meme transcription: A table comparing the steps to start a game ‘then’ vs. ‘now’.

Content of the “Then” column:

  • Double-click GAME.exe
  • Play game

Content of the “Now” column:

  • Launch Steam

  • Steam updates

  • Steam opens

  • Close Steam’s ad window
  • Select Game

  • Game launcher starts

  • Game launcher launches Game launcher updater

  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Ok

  • Would you like to sign up for our newsletter?

  • No

  • Our EULAs have changed. Please review them before continuing

  • Scroll
  • Scroll
  • Scroll
  • Scroll
  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes, sell my soul
  • Start game
  • Skip vendor intro
  • Skip vendor intro #2
  • Skip vendor intro #3
  • Sit through nVidia The way it’s meant to be played
  • Skip opening cutscene

  • Main menu opens

  • Would you like to connect your Steam account to account?

  • No
  • Press play.
  • Play game.
BeezKnuts ,
@BeezKnuts@lemmy.world avatar

Made by someone who wasn’t around back then. Getting games to run was just as if not more tedious than it is now.

Shady_Shiroe ,
@Shady_Shiroe@lemmy.world avatar

I hate that this is so accurate

bleistift2 OP ,

From very recent memory, unfortunately.

Redredme , (edited )

It’s nowhere near accurate. This guy clearly never played wingco 3 with it’s 15 minute intro.

This guy clearly also had never played mechwarrior 3. A game by microprose no wait fasa interactive no wait microsoft no wait some other investment party.

This guy clearly also never fucked around with EMS or XMS.

This guy also never lived in the pre windows era. (clicking on an exe, come on people.)

Reality was:

Installing a game was an afternoon. Ever swapped 14 floppy disks? Then came cdrom which made it better (double speed master race @300 KB/sec! Yes! Now it only took an hour!

Then

D: CD\GAMES\GAME (enter)

GAME.EXE (enter)

this game needs 605 KB free base ram. You have 585 KB. Please free up ram and try again

(muck around with qemm386 and if you where poor emm386) Reboot, reboot, reboot.

CD\GAMES\GAME (enter)

GAME.EXE (enter)

Crash.

Reset.

CD\GAMES\GAME (enter)

Config.exe (enter)

Scroll with arrow buttons to sound Config. Check. You can’t remember the dipswitches you set on your soundblaster pro. Open the cabinet, remove the card. Look at the dipswitches on it. you see now you set the dipswitch to irq 5 instead of 7. Fuck, that’s it. You also make a mental note of the dma channel and the memory address. Fuck that, you couldn’t remember it last time so you write it down. Irq5, dma 1, 220h.

Reinsert to the ISA slot, close cabinet. Reboot. Fuck. No sound from the cdrom. Guess you knocked that flimsy cable loose again. Fuck it, this game fortunately has no cd audio.

CD\GAMES\GAME (enter)

GAME.EXE (enter)

Crash.

WTF?

Oh I’m so fucking dumb, I didn’t set the irq in Config.exe of the game, I just wrote it on this piece of paper. Ffs. Reboot.

CD\GAMES\GAME (enter)

Config. Exe (enter)

Scroll to soundcard, change the irq from 7 to 5, check the dma… That’s good, check the memory address… 240h… Fuck. Good I catched that as well. Change that also to 220h.

Exit,

Game.exe.

Crash.

Godfuckinghelldamnit.

The fucking retarded mouse driver conflicts with qemm. I don’t need that fucker for this game, remove it from Config.sys. Reboot.

CD\GAMES\GAME (enter)

GAME.EXE (enter)

Glide3d error on line 2365. You need version 2.13. You have 2.10.

Oh fucking hell.

CD windows Win.com

No mouse detected.

Fuckingthefuckfuck.

Edit Config.sys, unrem The mouse driver, remove the qemm optimisations because they clashed with the mouse driver.

Reboot.

Win. Com. Click on netscape. Start the modem. [modem sounds] 56k6 baby! That fucker is fast!

Click on the address line (netscape crashes)

Sigh. You’re to tired to even curse at this moment. Click on netscape again. Click on address bar, www.3dfx.com

Wait… (loading at 4k a second)

Click on support

Wait… (loading at 4k a second)

Click on drivers

Wait… (loading at 4k a second)

Click on glide

Wait… (loading at 4k a second)

Click on download latest.

Wait… For 30 minutes for it to download. (loading at 4k a second)

Your mum wants to call your aunt. You have to hang up that computer bullshit NOW.

Fuckingthefuckhelcuntshit.

Mum, it’s only 5 minutes remaining! I don’t care, I’m out of eggs and I need them. Maybe you’re aunt has some otherwise I have to go to the store. Hang up now!

Fuck. Hangup.

Wait.

Do it all again.

Finally downloaded. You just know you’re going to get your ass chewed up by your dad because you where downloading for over an hour, it probably costed somewhere around 5-7 bucks to download this driver because of the egg fiasco. Anyway, install the driver.

First unzip it.

C: Cd\temp Unzip Glide3d.zip

Error unreadable byte at 435543.

Sigh.

Download it again

(now you know for sure you’re going to get it)

This time it unzips.

Install.exe.

It installs.

Finally.

Reboot. Start game. Not enough memory because of the new glide driver. And you forgot to unload the mouse driver.

I’ll take current day ads, tracking and the sacrifice of the soul of my firstborn due to EULA’S any fucking day

It’s like jack Nicholson said in a few good men:

THE TRUTH? YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!

(I lied a tiny bit, Glide3d usually meant a dos4gw game which finally meant 32 bit addresses and no conventional memory bullshit. But you can change that for any other driver you needed)

Shady_Shiroe ,
@Shady_Shiroe@lemmy.world avatar

I’ll be honest I didn’t read most of that but I see you are a tormented soul and sorry that we are not that old to know or had the misfortune to play many buggy games.

9488fcea02a9 ,

Insert disk 14…

[Angry grinding noises]

Failure reading drive A Abort, Retry, Fail? R

[More angry grinding noises]

Kids these days have it so easy…

snowe ,
@snowe@programming.dev avatar

The meme clearly isn’t about installing games, it’s about starting them. And I seriously doubt OP is referring to any sort of floppy games at all. They’re most likely referring to many of the cd rom based games that literally were “click exe to start” and they just did. Everyone here is focusing on their experience with floppy games and completely ignoring that there was a time where games did work like this.

Redredme ,

The meme’s is that it was better back then.

It truly really wasn’t.

I know. I was there. There was no “just clicking an exe” in the nineties. Pc’s where work machines. Made for boring stuff like excel and typing letters. Getting them. To play a game was a task on its own.

To play games on them you really had to go through several burning hoops. Every time. Because game A used xms, game B didn’t care, game C must have ems. Etc. You where reconfiguring your pc for each game in a different way.

Later, win vista and XP solved a lot of problems but caused several others just as worse.

It was with win7 it finally all started to work like it more or less should.

And really, I meant it: I take current day tracking and ads any day. 3 steps forward, one backwards.

snowe ,
@snowe@programming.dev avatar

I’m saying that OP might not be talking about the 90s. They literally might be talking about windows vista or 7. You have no way of knowing.

Redredme ,

In 7 and vista you already used steam and battle.net. The last time you clicked on an exe really was a long time ago.

Every installer ever since windows 95, made an item in your start menu. No clicking an exe.

unless you pirate your games, but then you’re still just clicking an exe and this post doesn’t make sense.

But hey, he made fun with his meme, I had fun typing my response, that’s all there was to it, no?

snowe ,
@snowe@programming.dev avatar

Yeah I don’t really think they meant actually clicking an exe file, it’s just that’s a lot shorter than saying “click the shortcut in your start menu”. It’s a meme, not a diatribe. But yeah it’s a joke so we can just move on. Thanks for the conversation.

WhiskyTangoFoxtrot ,

Gotta add a few hours of fiddling with your AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS to free up memory to the “Gaming Then” column.

nailbar ,

Luckily my brother took care of that part. I just had to remember:


<span style="color:#323232;">d:
</span><span style="color:#323232;">cd games
</span><span style="color:#323232;">cd cannon
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[Space][Space][F3]
</span>

To play Cannon Fodder.

WhiskyTangoFoxtrot ,

You could’ve just typed cd gamescannon to save a step.

nailbar ,

Note that only a few years earlier I was rebooting the computer whenever I got stuck in King’s Quest, which was a lot, since I didn’t understand english.

I don’t know which King’s Quest.

Meowoem ,

I used to have the irq of my sound blaster 16 memorised because you need to put it in for every game.

captain_aggravated ,
@captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works avatar

Who here remembers inserting disk 4 of 12?

AngryCommieKender ,

14 of 32… windows 3.11 on floppy was a beast.

SeaJ ,

That was more Windows 95 or NT but the point still stands. CDs were a massive leap in capacity.

Thorry84 , (edited )

3.11 had a floppy pack bundled with Office, it was freaking huge, something like 60 floppies. And they were those freaky 1.68MB floppies as well.

Omgpwnies ,

Fun fact: Those were still the exact same floppies that you would normally have formatted to 1.44MB, but Microsoft formatted the disk differently to allow 1.68MB. Works well for small numbers of large files, but not so great for general purpose storage.

PraiseTheSoup ,

Unreal Tournament 2004 was 7 CDs if I remember correctly. That’s the most I ever dealt with, and I would gladly insert 100 CDs if it meant we got games of that quality again.

ArianaGrande ,

Yes!! UT04 was phenomenal

Hadriscus ,

I had it on one DVD The ways I spent modding the maps in the map editor ! Every time I listen to the Offspring again, like I did at that time, it takes me back to DM-Rankin and its creaky stairs

marv99 ,

I know what you mean, but who are this “double click” and “exe” guys?

  • Press RUN/STOP and SHIFT.

  • PRESS PLAY ON TAPE

  • Press PLAY on tape.

  • OK
    SEARCHING
    FOUND Ultimate Game II

  • Take walk with the dog.
  • Play game.
bleistift2 OP ,

Judging from your username, you must have had very old hardware when you were young.

marv99 ,

Or … 99 has a more uncommon meaning for me 🤓

(in reality the hardware in question was brand new hottest stuff when I was young)

waz ,

And when it’s loaded: ‘> You are standing at a crossroads, there are ways to the North, East, West and South. There is a Dwarf. The Dwarf throws an axe at you, the axe misses ‘>_

ProvokedGamer ,
@ProvokedGamer@lemmy.ca avatar

‘>Grab the axe

DmMacniel ,

Datasette was so fricking slow…

Thanks for fastloader

DrPop ,

Commodore 64?

marv99 ,

Yes indeed. It would also work (at least similarly) for the VIC-20 and other Commodore computers 🧑‍🏫

GreenMario ,

Ok, gramps it’s tile for your nap.

marv99 ,

https://feddit.de/pictrs/image/85fd8165-48b5-49ad-90d0-943d63e62359.png

Vlyn ,

Absolute bullshit, lol. Nowadays you can boot your PC, launch Steam and start into your game while 20+ years ago you were still looking for the damn CD.

And don’t get me started with game updates, you had to do them MANUALLY. Go to the developer website, look at a download page, then you get offered updates: 1.0.1a, 1.0.1b, 1.0.2, 1.0.2b, 1.0.3, 1.1.0, 1.2.0, 1.2.1abc, …

For smaller updates you had to install them in order, so you download 1.0.1a, install it, then download 1.0.1b, install it, then download… if you are lucky the bigger updates like 1.1.0 or 1.2.0 could be directly installed without any in-between steps.

Oh and installing games? World of Warcraft had 4 CDs and if you bought it with Burning Crusade you had to use 8 CDs in total for installation! And the install took ages too.

And during the installation you had to type in a cd key, which took longer than all your popups you’re describing together.

I’ve been mostly playing on PC for the last 27 years, what we have today, even if some stuff is annoying, is 100 times better than how it was back then.

altima_neo ,
@altima_neo@lemmy.zip avatar

The fact that the “then” is missing so much of the bullshit we dealt with back then shows whomever made this “meme” never gamed back then.

There’s also the issues with your disks getting corrupted, discs getting scratched, or losing them because they came with so goddamn many.

GreenMario ,

Same type of kid whom believes every single game worked perfectly on release and didn’t need patches back then.

Sorry bro you only remember the Gems. At least a game isn’t getting released that will delete your OS when you uninstall it.

chocobo13z ,

Ooh, was there a game that did that?

fkn ,

Actually there was a steam script that deleted your Linux root drive… that was a real thing.

I could also totally see a botched install script for win95 totally bricking a win98. Install…

GreenMario ,

Myth II by Bungie of all people

As well as Pool of Radiance 2

brick ,

DOS/4GW Professional Protected Mode Run-Time Version 2.01a.

Fatal error (1307) not enough memory. PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE…

Runtime error (1604). PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE…

Error (2504): can’t create swap file “.” DOS/4GW Professional fatal error (1101): initialization error [1] PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE…

Ok, guess I’m just never going to play Wing Commander then…

Dubious_Fart ,

I wish I still had options to install updates or not.

Cause sometimes I like to fuck around with silly bugs and exploits in your old solo games, or because some amazing mod only worked on X version and not Y version. which is not something you can do anymore because you are only allowed to have the most recent version or else.

shadowSprite ,

FYI GOG lets you decide whether or not to update, and if you update and don’t like the update or it’s buggy you can roll it back. They don’t have as wide a selection as steam, but they have a lot, and they actually have a ton of old games too. I love it for games that I’ve modded and the mods get abandoned, I can play my modded version forever

Vlyn ,

Not true, go to your Steam library, right click the game you want to change, Properties -> Betas -> Select the game version you want.

Not every developer offers this, but there’s plenty where I could go back 10 years in updates.

Zron ,

Most of the time, at least up until a few years ago when I last had to do this for a Bethesda game(thanks tod for releasing Skyrim 7 times) You can also download any released version of the game from the steam database, provided you own it of course.

I needed a specific patch of the original Skyrim release for an overhaul mod I wanted to play, and was able to find the release through the steamDB.

Of course, that’s a game that released 1.0 on steam. Anything released before steam, and you’re probably still going to have to go spelunking through old archives and shady websites to find old versions of games.

festus ,

Not to mention how annoying it was to even buy games - if a popular game was released you might have wait for the store to open to buy it before it went out of stock, and if it was more niche you might have to mail an order form in and wait for them to ship it to you.

altima_neo ,
@altima_neo@lemmy.zip avatar

Back when you preordered because theyd run out!

Valmond ,

That was IMO part of the charm :-) especially as they don’t seem to do games like that anymore (again IMO).

Vlyn ,

I absolutely hated it. If you just wanted to switch between games you had to get up and physically get the other CD. Oh and you better not drop that CD or scratch it, or your game might be lost.

Besides that buying games sucked too. Nowadays I can buy and download a game in an hour tops, smaller games in minutes. Back then you had to go to a store or wait for shipping…

Don’t get me started on DRM, SecuROM doesn’t work nowadays, so all games you bought with it are broken.

There was no charm, it all sucked.

Valmond ,

Totally true.

But you waited for Diablo 2, Red Alert, and so on so …

johnthedoe ,

God damn I completely forgot about multi disc installs! That was the pits.

KSPAtlas ,
@KSPAtlas@sopuli.xyz avatar

Depends on the game, factorio is available both on steam and as a direct download (in fact, devs recommend purchasing on their site and transferring to steam if you want) and you can just click the factorio executable to start the game. Now KSP2? That’s the second thing by far

bleistift2 OP ,

Factorio is the shining example of doing things right in the gaming industry, IMHO.

AngryCommieKender ,

Dyson Sphere Program as well. Though this whole Unity thing may fuck that up

KSPAtlas ,
@KSPAtlas@sopuli.xyz avatar

Why do factory games do well so much?

ObviouslyNotBanana ,
@ObviouslyNotBanana@lemmy.world avatar

The steam ad window can be disabled in settings.

doctorcrimson ,

I leave it on just in case a game I never got to play goes 90% off.

Dave ,
@Dave@lemmy.nz avatar

You can wishlist games and they will email you when they go on sale.

danteog ,

Wishlisting all the games

doctorcrimson ,

TBH I open steam more often than my email. Probably not a good thing, in hindsight…

boogetyboo ,
@boogetyboo@aussie.zone avatar

*never will play

Collecting is most of the fun

LinkOpensChest_wav ,
@LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.one avatar

People praise Steam, but it’s one of the most bloated, unnecessarily convoluted examples of feature creep on my machine, and it always wants to run in the background and check for updates. Even when I do remember to exit properly, it takes several seconds of thinking before it closes. I’ve resorted to using task manager instead.

Almost any launcher is less annoying to me than Steam, but then I’ve never been one to use or want the various social aspects. I wish there were a lite version for people who just want to use it to buy and play games.

Getallen ,

Yeah, steam is way too bloated for me. Usually it makes it impossible to do stuff at startup since the new UI version uses more resources

LinkOpensChest_wav ,
@LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.one avatar

I’ve come to accept that it’s going to update every time I launch it, which makes it a pita since I work long shifts and have very little time to play games to begin with.

rodolfo ,

I wonder if a batch program wouldn’t help you to bypass task manager too, mmmh

LinkOpensChest_wav ,
@LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.one avatar

It would! I’ve actually considered that, but honestly I just don’t use Steam enough to justify it. I’d probably use it a lot more if it didn’t feel like such a chore to run.

thisfro ,

What other launchers do you use?

For me its like yeah steam has some annoyances, but overall it is pretty good and mostly works. Ubisoft and EA usually have more annoyances and/or straight up don’t work.

LinkOpensChest_wav ,
@LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.one avatar

EGS only takes a few seconds to launch, doesn’t shove an annoying popup ad in my face every time I open it, and completely exits the application when I click X

I’ve actually bought the EGS version of several games just so I don’t have to deal with Steam’s bullshit

I’ve also got some indie games that don’t use a launcher at all, and I use the Windows version of ESO so I don’t need a separate launcher for that, which is my most-played game of all

thisfro ,

Interesting, for me it is EGS that has all the bs haha

Its slow, ads all over, store is horrible

LinkOpensChest_wav ,
@LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.one avatar

At least it’s just a few ads for games, and my recently played games are right there at the left, ready to be launched.

Steam is virtually unusable upon opening, looks like visiting a virus-ridden site without an adblocker, and it made me sign in again even though I’ve just used it recently. The only way to prevent having to sign in frequently is to leave it running in the background at all times, and that’s not going to happen.

thisfro ,

Yeah maybe its just works well for me. I set steam to load the library instead of the store and I never get these popups. Also I never have to sign in again. But steam is always open, since I use my desktop nearly exclusively for gaming at this point.

TheOakTree ,

Legitimately why I still pirate games that I purchase through Steam.

The pirated copy runs better 95% of the time, and people can’t even argue that you’re meaningfully stealing because you already own access to the same exact game.

CoolBeance ,
@CoolBeance@lemmy.world avatar

well at least I don’t have to keep the CD in the CD Drive to actually play the game now

Floey ,

For most games, including ones on Steam this is what I do.

Being up program launcher with key combination.
Start typing name of game, hit enter.
Then if Steam is not open Steam launches,. Game launches.

Get yourself a launcher program. Having to bring up Steam and search a library of dozens of games seems maddening when you could just type a few letters.

bleistift2 OP ,

So I install a launcher that launches steam to launch the game launcher?

Floey ,

By launcher I mean something like Spotlight on Mac OS. The Windows Start menu probably has some of this functionality, at least for launching applications and can be brought up with a key, there are probably alternatives as well. I’m on Linux and use Rofi for this.

I don’t mean a large program necessary for launching games, I mean a very lightweight program that can launch your games, or any other app, and more.

dutchkimble ,

He means like Wox or Power Toys Run

ICastFist ,
@ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

To be fair, the vendor intro 1-2-3 taking a while has been a problem since PS1 era. With the PS2 came an extra serving of infinite cutscenes

AngryCommieKender ,

You cannot tell me that the opening/title cutscene of Chrono Cross is anything less than a legendary example of a proper opening sequence both visually and musically.

youtu.be/180sjeAMKPE?si=xRFXcywMYCQo7TyR

youtu.be/PZ595N9NZVg?si=T76rJ3M3tGO1zUu8

Thorry84 ,

Agreed, it has been around way before that. The Apogee intro is still engrained in my brain.

UsernameIsTooLon ,

Don’t forget you gotta update your driver’s too before even beginning “Launch Steam”

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