A little while ago I wrote about the annoying, frustrating and just plain horrible things that we put up with in order to get our precious video games years ago, but forgot thanks to time and nostalgia.

I think it would be really unfair if I didn’t also talk about the stuff that truly WAS better back then. Turns out there’s quite a lot! SUCH AS:

Hidden Content: Did you know that in order to get your game rated by the ESRB / PEGI / Whatever Ratings Board You’re Dealing With you have to disclose any and ALL hidden content into the game, and failure to do so results in huge fines for everyone involved? This has led to a bit of a crackdown on hidden content making it into the final version, which…is kind of a shame, really. I enjoyed finding little hidden Easter eggs in games that the programmer thought not many people would find.

Plug ‘n’ Play: I’m pretty sure that even though I haven’t turned on my Atari 2600 in a few months I won’t have to wait for it to check the internet for system updates before it takes me to a menu where I can choose the game I just put into the console, and then wait some more while the game installs a series of patches that came out for it. Call me crazy but I think just being able to play the game I want within seconds of turning the power on is a good thing.

New Discoveries: Because of the pioneering work done by many talented people, gaming went from being just Pong to dozens of genres, styles and interests within two decades. It seemed like every year there was a new thing that we discovered games could be about, and then the race was on to find the next new thing. Games like Pac-Man, Tetris, Sim City and Doom got big because there was nothing like them beforehand, not just because they were good.

Same couch Co-op: Someone excitedly told me the other day that the new Diablo lets them play multiplayer with someone else on the same console at the same time, like it was something crazy and wild and new. C’mon! Back in the day every two player game was just expected to offer that as standard. No online subscription, extra machine and television set required. And because it was standard, so many games could derive the gameplay from having a multiplayer focus. Can you imagine Spy Vs. Spy, Super Mario Kart or Pitstop 2 without someone next to you to battle against?

Focus: Maybe it’s because we got so few games back then (unless you went to your local computer club) but it was common to spend a lot of time on a particular game because that’s all you had. Now I open up Steam and see hundreds of games I keep buying but will never play, ever, no matter how many people tell me they’re great.

Pay Once, Play Forever: Man, how steamed would I have been if they released extra characters for Street Fighter 2 Turbo for five bucks each? These days Downloadable Content and Game Of The Year Editions and Online Passes are just par for the course, and I wonder if in ten years new players will be able to enjoy any of it because the publisher’s servers will have gone down years prior. I just want to buy a game and not worry if I’m missing anything by not ALSO buying some extra content I didn’t know about.

Enthusiasm: Maybe I’m just a bitter old cynic, or maybe it’s that my years spent in the proverbial sausage factory has ruined my sense of wonder, but I seem to remember gaming in the old days being more about having fun rather than worrying about frame rates or resolution or any of that nonsense.

No Stupid Stories: Do you remember the rich, deep and fulfilling story of Rainbow Islands? OH WAIT THERE WASN’T ONE yet another reason why Rainbow Islands is pretty much the best video game ever. Did you play the Xbox 360 Rainbow Islands game they released a few years back? It has a stupid story tacked onto the front and man that still makes me so mad, not every game needs a story for you to skip through.

Arcades Used To Be Cool: Yes, Arcades were typically a dimly-lit, smoke-filled basements filled with shiftless layabouts who just wanted to play video games instead of getting a job, but damn it, that’s what made them great. Walk into an arcade now and they’re all “family entertainment centres” with redemption machines and parent-friendly lighting and it’s all been cleansed beyond all recognition.

The funny thing is that as I started writing this I expected the list to be a lot longer, but you know what? Many of the great things about the games we play as retrogamers – the ease of development, the cheap games, the simple visuals, the feeling that something great was just around the corner – can be found today in the indie / mobile gaming scene, and it’s something that we really should be grateful for. So we’re all winners!