1. 10 Things Today’s Gamers
Wouldn’t Understand
http://www.gamebasin.com/news/10-things-todays-gamers-wouldnt-understand
As an increasingly old and, as some would have it, bitter man, I’ve recently begun to cast my
resentful mind back on the many trials that afflicted the 90s gamer which today’s youth would
doubtless fail to grasp. I’m not talking about the obvious here: graphics have gotten far better and
we didn’t have touch screens on our Sega Mega Drives. Instead the list below gathers together
some odd things even those who lived at the time may have relegated to the limits of their
subconscious and one you may never have heard of (though I’m certain I haven’t made it up).
Quirks, practices and technological limitations that your grandchildren, dear reader, will scarcely
be able to believe afflicted you: the greatest generation. I could have mentioned demo discs,
“cheats”, the size of the original Game Boy (above) or the fact that we used to pay £60 for games
which now live on phones. Yet the ten items below are the ones that I think best summarise my
experience as a gamer in 1990s.
10. When Fog Was Unintentional

2. If fog closed in on you now in some slick Unreal Engine powered AAA title, you’d naturally assume
it was intentional – part of the atmosphere and perhaps designed to increase the difficulty of a
section. However, rewind to 1997 – to a time when Acclaim was a games industry publishing giant
– and you’ll find yourself wrapped in ever‐present mist. The mist of graphical sh*ttyness. A
hallmark of early N64 titles, “fog” – as best typified by uninspired, muddy‐textured launch title
Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (above) – was the colloquial term for a technical limitation of the day that
saw some games suffer from an incredibly short draw distance. The upshot of which being that you
often couldn’t see too far ahead of where you were going. It’s hard to remember with any clarity
now (much like Turok’s more recent sequels), but we really did wander around game worlds
endlessly getting lost, unable to see the next enemy until he was in your, by now, horribly tearful
face, with Christmas well and truly ruined. The release of a RAM expansion pack for the console in
1998 improved matters for Turok 2: Seeds of Evil – and even more so for the outstanding Star Wars:
Rogue Squadron – but the fog wouldn’t be banished entirely for several console generations.
9. When We All Talked In “Bit”
I couldn’t put an exact date on when this practice stopped, but when I were a lad discussions of
video game graphics were restricted to talking about “Bit”. At least in school playgrounds. If you
were stuck with a Master System, then too bad buddy, it may well have Alex Kidd built‐in (you know

3. what I’m talking about), but it was sadly an 8‐Bit console and everyone else had a 16‐Bit Super
Nintendo. They would then salivate over the promise of the 32‐Bit Saturn (it always had to be
doubled, for reasons more tech‐literate people can probably explain) until Sony came along and
ruined everything. After the N64 all the Bit stuff seemed to stop. No one spoke of a 128‐Bit
Dreamcast or a 256‐Bit XBox 360. And the world was poorer for it. I for one can’t wait for the 1024‐
Bit Playstation4.
8. When Disney Games Were Good
Disney don’t have a clue these days when it comes to video games. Presently they are closing good
console game developers like Black Rock (Split/Second, Pure) and re‐focusing on social games and
smartphones. Yet the entire last decade or so hasn’t yielded too many gems from the Mouse House
(I liked Warren Spector’s Epic Mickey, but it fell well short of expectations). Film cash‐in games are
woeful in general these days and Disney have provided few exceptions to that rule. But it hasn’t
always been this way, as you’ll know if you had a Sega Mega Drive in the early 90s. Back in those
halycon days, some of very best games were made by Disney. Admitedly, saying Disney themselves
used to make good games is misleading – after all the likes of Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey
Mouse, its sequel World of Illusion (two player co‐op with Donald Duck!), Quackshot (above) and
decent film tie‐ins like Aladdin and The Lion King were often made in‐house by Sega (or in the case
of the SNES Aladdin, by Capcom). They were some of the best platformers of the day and remain
among the best uses of Disney licensing period.
7. When Sonic And Mario Were Enemies

4. These days they are more likely to be palling around at the Olympic Games than coming to blows,
but there was a time when Mario would have become physically sick if you mentioned Sonic the
Hedgehog in his presence, so great was their mutual disgust. Mascots of two gaming empires and
nobody crossed the boarders. You were Sega or you were Nintendo – or at least that’s how it was
for kids in the early 90s. These days they are forced to sit together awkwardly and pose for photos,
like Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger at an LMA dinner. Ok, they may never have been “enemies”,
but you try telling that to a six year‐old Sega fan in 1991! Back then you knew where you stood.
You dare not look at the Nintendo section of the Argos catalogue for fear that Shinobi would kick
you into next week. These days I flitter between Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo like a cheap whore,
going wherever the latest decent game might be. Portal 2 is marginally better on PS3, so 360
achievements be damned. A new Mario game is coming out? Time to find my Wii (seriously, I don’t
know where it is). Like any sensible adult, I have no blind brand loyalties. Though this tribal rage
still exists between fans of the different consoles, but also between fans of different types of games
(or even different games in the same series). But I can’t take part any more because my team went
down valiantly with Ryo Hazuki and the Naomi Arcade Board counted among the casualties.
6. When Rare Were Beyond Awesome
Today British video game studio Rare are a subsidiary of Microsoft and are consigned to making
XBLA avatar content and Kinect titles. This makes me weep openly. For Rare, makers of the

5. ignored Grabbed by the Goulies, irksome Ocarina of Time‐clone Star Fox Adventures and the
anticipated‐by‐no one Kinect Sports: Season Two, used to make some of the finest video games
planet Earth. They are best remembered for their days working for Nintendo, notably in the N64
era where they bashed out Mario 64‐clone Banjo‐Kazooie, underrated Mario Kart 64‐clone Diddy
Kong Racing and Blast Corps, as well as film tie‐in GoldenEye 007 – for many of my generation, THE
game (though I suspect it’s aged terribly). But even before then, Rare made the awesome Teenage
Mutant NinjaTurtles rip‐off Battletoads, Street Fight/Mortal Kombat amalgam Killer Instinct and
the seminal Donkey Kong Country titles that defined the SNES. Even though Viva Pinata is the only
game my girlfriend has ever been obsessed by (creating an elaborate series of folders and charts
to help monitor her gardens), it is safe to say that Rare today exists in name only – scarcely even a
shadow of their former glory. But don’t hate them for Perfect Dark Zero, gentle reader, share in
their sorrow. If you are drinking whilst you read this (and why wouldn’t you be?), please join me in
a toast to our good friend Rare.
5. When You Had To Visit The Arcade To See
Amazing Graphics
Yes kids, the above used to count as amazing graphics. That cowboy hat would move around the
dashboard and that tornado… wow. You’d sink pound coin after pound coin into cr*p like Eighteen
Wheeler Pro Trucker just for the chance to stare. And to dream. It was only really with Sega’s fondly
remembered Dreamcast, itself modelled on the Naomi arcade board, that arcade‐quality graphics
game into the home – with perfect conversions of House of the Dead II and Crazy Taxi. When I got
an arcade perfect copy of Eighteen Wheeler on the ill‐fated console and found that it was actually
total rubbish if you spent more than 60 seconds playing it, I knew the arcade’s days were
numbered. But before then, even though the Mega Drive laid claim to arcade quality graphics and
sound, the likes of Altered Beast and Golden Axe were poor cousins to their coin‐op counterparts.
It’s all changed now though. Visit most arcades in Britain and you’ll find the same, creaky units that
were there ten years ago. And even if they do have a more recent game, it won’t look at good as
Crysis will it? Indeed, today you could walk into an arcade with a perfect port of SEGA Rally running
on your iPad and laugh at the man who works there as he tries to sell you tokens, perhaps pointing
at your touch‐screen and doing a little dance. And you’d do that, wouldn’t you? You despicable

6. person.
4. When Mum Would Knock The Controller Lead
Well it didn’t strictly have to be your mum – it just most often happened to be in my experience –
but, until recent times, people would often walk in front of video game players and into the
outstretched lead of a controller, either a) yanking said controller from the gamer’s unsuspecting
hands or b) sending the console flying off the shelf (this was worse). The original Xbox of 2002 tried
to solve this problem prior to the invention of wireless controllers, by ingeniously making it so that
the first thing to give in the event of a human/controller cable collision was the lead itself, which
would detach into two pieces like a frightened salamander – to the relief of all concerned. My hazy
memory leads me to recollect that, at this point, the game you were playing would automatically
pause. Though I may be making this up. Try telling that to the kids today with their wireless motion
controllers and hands‐free, bluetooth‐enabled, smart‐pads (or whatever). They’ll never know what
it was like! Honestly, it’s enough to make you want to attack your own eyeballs with a rusty spoon.
3. When “Blowing The Cartridge” Was The
Solution

7. OK, the death of this one is easy enough to pinpoint, as it ended with the fall of the last cartridge‐based
home console, the N64 (apparently in 2001, but more likely somewhere between 1999 and
2000). But before then the following was common practice. If a game cartridge didn’t seem to want
to work (which was not uncommon) the user would retrieve it from the console, turn it upside
down, bring it to their lips and blow into it. Why? I never knew and – to be honest – I never thought
to question it. Was I getting rid of dust? Cooling it down? Who knows. But regardless, it seemed to
work. If geek‐based sitcom The IT Crowd had premièred in 1992, “have you tried blowing into it?”
might easily have been a national catchphrase.
2. When You Had To Use MS DOS Prompt
I’ve neglected to mention PC gaming on this list thus far, but for a huge chunk of my adolescence I
did play a lot of Windows 95‐based games (Age of Empires, Little Big Adventure 2:
Twinsen’s Odyssey (AKA the best game ever made), Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight) and, in that era, it
wasn’t uncommon to encounter slightly older, DOS‐based games (often on 3.5″ floppy disc) which
would require you to faff about to make them work. I was about ten years old when I was trying to
install Theme Park, Tie Fighter, Discworld, Monkey Island and Little Big Adventure, so I have bad
memories of going through the MS DOS prompt (seriously, I’ve lost the kids with this one haven’t
I?) and typing things like “d:install” or “c:tie.exe” to try and get things to run. It could be a
nightmare and I usually had to wait until my dad got home before I could play anything at all. In

8. those days there was an incredibly high chance that any PC game you bought would not work. And
you’d often have no idea why. I remember, when installing the aforementioned LBA, messing
around in settings for hours to try and find out how I could get the sound to work. It was worth it
though, as many of the games I’ve mentioned rank among the best I’ve ever played.
1. When… Um… I Don’t Know How To Describe
This…
Unlike the above, this one has probably never effected you personally. But it’s the weirdest 1990s
gaming memory I have and it inspired me to write this list in the first place, so I’m going to put it
here regardless. Before I tell you about this it requires some background: in the late‐90s playing a
four player game, for example GoldenEye 007, had its drawbacks. With all the action divided into
four sections on one telly, each player was able to see what everybody else on the screen was
doing. The upshot of this being that you couldn’t very well plant Proximity Mines in the Facility
without the other three players seeing exactly what you were planning. It was an inherent flaw in
the way we played games back then which today seems anachronistic, however much we all retain
fond memories of playing with mates in the same room. Now, I can’t find any images, videos or
articles to support what I’m about to write, but I 100% remember various N64 magazines (yes, we
all used to buy magazines back then) running stories about people who went through a lot of hassle
to play four‐player split screen games split over four separate TVs so each player could plot bloody
murder in private. Now, these days that sounds like nothing – today you’d set up a LAN if you
wanted to be old fashioned about it, or more likely you’d just scrap the cables and play online
together. But the 1997 solution for the hardcore was mad. Some bizarre section of society actually
did the following (I promise I’m not making this up): you had to first purchase a four‐way splitter
cable that allowed you to plug the N64 into four TVs. Then you had to use tape and cardboard to
black out the other three “screens” on each TV. Hardly sounds worth it does it? And besides, you’d
still be able to hear everything everyone did, even if you went to the further trouble of putting
each TV in a separate room. But there you go, that’s probably the most ridiculous 90s gaming story
the kids today won’t appreciate.

9. PC Game CD Keys:
 EA Games CD Key http://www.gamebasin.com/publisher/ea.html
 RPG Games CD Key http://www.gamebasin.com/pc‐games/rpg‐game.html
 ACT Games CD Key http://www.gamebasin.com/pc‐games/act‐game.html
 FPS Games CD Key http://www.gamebasin.com/pc‐games/fps‐game.html
 Adventure Games CD Key http://www.gamebasin.com/pc‐games/avg‐game.html
 Racing Games CD Key http://www.gamebasin.com/pc‐games/rac‐game.html
 Sport Games CD Key http://www.gamebasin.com/pc‐games/spt‐game.html
 FTG Games CD Key http://www.gamebasin.com/pc‐games/ftg‐game.html
 RTS Games CD Key http://www.gamebasin.com/pc‐games/rts‐game.html
 SLG Games CD Key http://www.gamebasin.com/pc‐games/slg‐game.html