Tricks in old games that no longer work

summary

  • Modern consoles don't have the screen-breaking effects seen in older games like Batman: Arkham Asylum.

  • While older consoles used controller port swapping as a gameplay mechanic, this feature is no longer practical.

  • Early games masked small game worlds with fog to hide loading limitations, a technique no longer relevant in modern, massive worlds.

Games have changed a lot over the years. Graphics command top-billing, exploding in our faces by millions of polygons and vertical machines that are in many respects more powerful than we thought. Gaming has come a long way from the early days of Ascii art-based adventures to where we are now.

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It's natural, but we've also lost a few things along the way. A lot of the smoke and mirrors of early games can no longer be done. Many of those tricks were done to hide the limitations of consoles at the time, or became outdated with the advancement of monitors and televisions. This isn't inherently a bad thing, but it's interesting to see many tricks in these games that no longer have the same impact.

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Screen breaking effects

Batman stares at the dead Jim Gordon with glowing red eyes in Scarecrow Nightmare

Before the advent of pixel-perfect TVs, 4K resolutions and plasma displays, we relied on large TVs filled with white noise when not tuned to a source. For the most part, you won't notice it, but if any of the RCA connectors tend to be loose, you'll start to get distorted audio, crackling images, and the like. Modern TVs don't have enough of this, which makes one of Arkham Asylum's most famous effects less effective.

Farther along in Batman: Arkham Asylum, you're chasing the Scarecrow when suddenly, the screen begins to crack, covering the screen with graphical artifacts. You can still control Batman, which makes it look like you're acting on your TV or console rather than an intentional act of the game. But the same parallels cannot be drawn with modern flatscreens.

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Swapping controller ports

A close-up of Psycho Mantis in the cutscene before Boss's fight with Kojima laughing at the picture frame.

Back in the day, which is to say pre-PS3, consoles were a much more tactile affair. The controllers had to be wired directly, all the buttons were physical on the console, and there were countless wires to hook it up and wire it up. And while it wasn't very common, some games took advantage of many of these ports in the gameplay end.

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In the original MGS, there is a boss Pyscho Mantis who can read all your inputs. So how are you going to beat him? You must physically change the port your controller is plugged into. The Master Collection does an admirable job of trying to recreate the moment, but there's no way to fully replicate it with a wireless controller.

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Fog to mask small worlds

When gaming was young, every new game felt like a giant leap. 2D became 3D, sharply polygonal faces were suddenly animated, and so on. But with those giant leaps came other areas of the game that needed to hide weaknesses. Something like GTA: San Andreas probably felt huge at the time, but remove that fog and you can see the entire map from almost anywhere.

The GTA trilogy is a great example of this, with harbors doing a great job of clearing the fog and showing how small the world is.

Silent Hill is another great example of this. Affectionately remembered for the foggy atmosphere that enveloped the city, it was used to completely hide the fact that the city was filled in only small fragments. Consoles are very powerful now, and the worlds are expected to be bigger. If the world is already huge then the fog doesn't serve the same purpose.

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Duplicating characters for reflection

Bleeding Mirror in Silent Hill 3

Reflections are one of the big debates in gaming, path-traced reflections with ray-tracing, the more common and less graphically intensive subspace reflections. With modern ray-tracing, although still expensive, reflections can appear more natural and realistic.

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Older games didn't have this luxury, and a rather inventive solution was found – just duplicate everything. There is no better reflection than the exact same thing. With how detailed character models are now, they'll take a significant performance dip to replicate wholesale. This is a big part of why you don't see working mirrors in many games, new or old.

Today, everything is displayed in pixel perfection. PCs had this form for decades, but didn't become common on TVs with HD screens until the 2010s. Until then, CRTs dominated the home market, with a distinctive look and refresh effect that required attention when creating games.

In the modern day, this has led to a rather unfortunate issue. Ports of older games look rough and pixelated, which for many is linked to nostalgia that makes you think they looked better. But on a CRT screen, they literally did. The effect of these screens is to cause the pixels to bleed together, creating a smooth image. The PS1 Final Fantasy games show what happens to those pre-rendered backgrounds when scaled up to a pixel perfect, high resolution screen.

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3D looking pre-rendered backgrounds

Jill Valentine is running through the Spencer mansion in the Resident Evil 1 remake.

When games first started transitioning to 3D, creating an entire 3D environment was difficult. The cameras had to be changed to fit them, as well as maneuvering. And in many respects, they were less detailed overall. The solution? Pre-rendered backgrounds. These were already incredible artists, and they didn't need that day to create new 3D games.

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The original Resident Evil, and its GameCube remake in particular, are great examples of how pre-rendered backgrounds can fit a scene. And while not strictly impossible to create now, the impression of depth in pre-rendered backgrounds is very difficult to render on modern systems.

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Proprietary tech that just breaks

Games made today are most of the time designed to be made on as many systems as possible. As such, they use technologies and systems that work everywhere rather than proprietary. This is a good thing overall, letting more people experience more games, although it sometimes results in a game that doesn't reach its full potential.

This is most clearly seen in games ported to modern consoles. Some, like the Prince of Persia trilogy, miss a bunch of small details like lighting, audio, and graphical effects. Others, like Final Fantasy 8 Remastered, lose the ability to run at separate frame rates for different elements simultaneously. This is probably one of the main reasons why Metal Gear Solid 4 is already so difficult to emulate and make a modern port.

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Save the file detection

Link holds his sword and harp of age on the left in front of a blue background, and the wand of weather and his sword on the right in front of an orange background.

It is not impossible to do this nowadays by any means, but the function and purpose of the system is completely different. With many early games, especially around the creation of memory cards, many games implemented the ability to save and import data from other games, giving you unique visuals and carry over choices and such.

However, games now take a lot of time to make. Dragon Age is a great example, with two supporting direct save file import, and then Inquisition having to rely on the online service, and then Veilguard abandoning it entirely. Importing a save file is difficult when the distance between games is so long, and different systems can save data completely differently.

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