Re: When Is A Game Old?

On 4/20/2024 4:21 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

I was always a "Might & Magic 2" fan myself. Played it to death on an
8-bit computer. It was an absolutely ridiculous game, with ridiculous
encounters (in particular, I remember fighting off hundreds of
'Cuisinart'* monsters, each of which did hundreds if not thousands of
points of damage per attack. Finally having a party able to not only
withstand those attacks but nuke them en masse with magic spells was
/such/ a satisfying experience). The visuals were a noticable step-up
from the first game (which was surprisingly text-heavy). The new skill
system made the game feel more like a tabletop RPG, the automap was a
very welcome QOL improvement, and the huge open-world was the Skyrim
of its era; so much to explore, so many hidden things to discover, so
many quests to do!
 But by the time "Might & Magic 3" rolled around (1991), I was pretty
much done with the franchise. It's combat-heavy game-play and
tile-based presentation felt very old school when compared to
contemporary CRPGs like "Ultima 6" or even (the then venerable) "Pool
of Radiance"). "Underworld: The Stygian Abyss", which would release
less than a year after "Might & Magic 3", was the final straw,
cementing the fact that the franchise was officially behind-the-times
(at least in my eyes). And if I really wanted to play a tile-based
dungeon-crawler, the "Eye of the Beholder" games had a freshness to
them that the Might & Magic games lacked.
 But I'll never forget the joy of smashing cuisinarts. ;-)

I only started with 4, then got 5 (and enjoyed the experience of putting both of them together to make the combined world; that was one expansion which totally held the promises it made), then moved to 3. I all got them as cover discs on some magazine that only existed for selling old games to people (Bestseller Games). I spent a lot of time in games from that magazine, and I didn't mind they were older because at least they were running fine even on my antiquated computer at the time.
  >

 As for disks... the early 90s were the definite transition period
between 3.5" and 5.25" disks. I just have to look into my collection
of games; "Underworld" came on 5.25" 1.2MB floppies, but my copy of
"Wing Commander II" was on 3.5" 1.44MB disks. Not only did many games
release in different SKUs, each individually marked with what sort of
disk could be found inside the box, but pretty much every game also
included a 'disk exchange card', with instructions on how you could
swap your 3.5" disks for 5.25" floppies (or vice versa) for a minimal
charge.
 Floppy disks were a surprisingly costly part of game development in
the 90s, and ate up a significant chunk of the profits for publishers.
Disks were expensive and - even purchased in bulk - could cost
anywhere from 50 cents to 2 dollars US! So with a game that shipped on
8 floppy disks, that might mean $10 of that might be spent on media
alone! The weight of all those disks also made it more expensive to
ship the games too. It's one of the bigger reasons why publishers were
so quick to switch over to CD-ROM, even when the game didn't really
need all that much storage space; it was a huge cost-saving for them.
 

I never thought about that, but that actually is totally true. I thought it was mostly the convenience, but yes, just shipping one disc instead of 8 was certainly cheaper, even with the higher prices for CDs back then.
I still remember that some publishers went overboard and started to ship some games on multiple CDs (FMV games mostly, which everybody forgets for good reason)
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