5 Of The Most Nostalgic Aspects Of Old Games That You Won

From complex emulators capable of rendering titles from different consoles to detailed games with complex mechanics and realistic graphics, there’s a lot to love about the modern gaming landscape. While most modern games support save files, mini-maps, and many other quality-of-life features, old-school games have a lot of charm, despite their usual janky nature.

In fact, many of the older, retro titles had incredible features that disappeared into thin air as the gaming industry continued to evolve. So, here are five nostalgic-inducing elements that you’ll only find in the older games.

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5 Light guns

And other wacky controllers

Besides introducing amazing consoles and equally incredible games, the ’90s also had the most fun lineup of controllers and gamepads. Light gun-shaped controllers were a lot more common back in the day, and there were a surprising number of arcade and FPS titles that supported these gamepads. Heck, even the gamepads included in most consoles, including the failed Sega Saturn and Dreamcast systems, were oozing with personality.

This trend continued into the early 2000s, when some of the most unhinged controllers, such as the Mega Jockey 9000 and Resident Evil 4’s chainsaw-themed gamepad started making the rounds. Sadly, most of the controllers released in the modern era have followed tried-and-tested design cues, with outliers like the Steam Controller meeting slow and agonizing deaths.

4 Overworld maps

Fast-travel points are just inferior to hub-worlds

If you’ve played any retro RPGs released between the 90s and mid-2010s, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Due to the limited processing capabilities of older consoles and PCs, game designers had to split the game into levels and stages, which you could access from an overarching map called a hub world. Every time you leave a smaller level, town, or dungeon, the game would load the overworld map containing the scaled-down versions of all the locations you could visit in the game.

While I’m glad modern games got rid of the random encounters, the overworld maps were a neat feature that provided a sense of scale to the players and made the game feel more alive. The older Final Fantasy titles had some of the best implementations of overworld maps, where you could explore optional areas and fight hidden bosses after upgrading your means of travel. Unfortunately, hub worlds have largely disappeared from the modern gaming landscape, with isometric RPGs being one of the few genres that include overworld maps.

3 Built-in cheat codes

Inflating characters’ heads will never stop being funny

As multiplayer games and esports titles continue to surge in popularity, companies have started implementing anti-cheat systems to provide a fair experience for all players. While cheats are obviously bad for multiplayer games, single-player titles are a different story altogether.

Sure, you could fire up a mod to give yourself unlimited HP and resources, but it was a lot more fun when developers hid cheat codes in their games. While some codes were meant as unlockables after completing certain challenges, others were available from the start of the game, though you had to dig through printed magazines, booklets, and the (rudimentary) forums of the bygone era to find these codes. Sadly, built-in cheat codes have gone the way of the dodo with the addition of microtransactions and in-game achievements.

2 Physical manuals

Especially the more creative ones

Back in the day, buying console (and even PC) games gave you a manual in addition to a cover and a game disk. The manual was usually a small document containing the game’s backstory, some character data, and the game’s basic controls. As such, many games didn’t feature painstakingly long tutorials in older games, because the developers would assume you’d go through the manual before booting the game. While most games followed a similar formula for the manuals, some got more creative with how they conveyed information to the players.

For instance, the original Legend of Zelda on the NES had a 50-page document that provided clever hints and tips in addition to cool illustrations. On the other hand, the Sims series is well-known for including hilarious details in its manuals. Grand Theft Auto titles came with full-on maps that contained interesting tidbits and in-game advertisements, making them similar to real-life brochures. That said, game manuals are pretty much gone from games, with Tunic being the only recent title that took full advantage of this medium.

1 Companion apps

Amazing if implemented properly

Unlike the rest of the choices on this list, companion apps are a fairly recent addition to the gaming scene. Usually designed for smartphones and tablets, companion apps provide an easy way to access the mini-map and check your health and in-game resources when you connect them to a live instance of the game. I’ll admit, many of them were rife with connectivity issues and gimmicky mechanics, though there were plenty of diamonds in the rough.

One of my absolute favorites was the companion app for Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes. Although Konami released another companion application for its successor, the one for Ground Zeroes had more robust functions. If you’ve played the game, you’d know that viewing the map inside the game doesn’t pause it, meaning your character would remain stationary every time you wanted to consult the map. The companion app provided a neat solution to this by not only displaying the map on a mobile device but also providing an easy way to access the cassette tapes and other in-game documents.

Then there’s the Pip Boy companion app for Fallout 4which lets you switch the inventory from your smartphone. There were a couple of other worthwhile applications, like the ones developed for Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag and Red Dead Redemption 2. Sure, even the best among them were just gimmicks, but there’s no denying that companion apps were extremely fun to use. Sadly, most single-player games have already removed their companion apps from Android and iOS app stores, with only a few multiplayer games featuring fully-functioning companion software these days.

Which forgotten features do you want to see in modern titles?

Those were five elements I wish developers would bring back to the gaming ecosystem, but there are many other items that qualify for this list. I’ve always been a fan of bonus costumes that you can only get after completing certain in-game challenges instead of purchasing them via microtransactions. I know I sound rather cheeky when I say this, but I also want to go back to the good old days when companies released full versions of their games that didn’t require you to purchase DLCs to enjoy the whole story or download large day-one patches to fix game-breaking bugs.

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