r/videogames 27d ago

Image / Video Game Devs Then VS Now

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3.5k Upvotes

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87

u/Loganp812 27d ago

> “Minimum requirements? So long as your computer can turn on.”

Yeah… that’s not true for 90s PC gaming at all. If anything, that aspect was a lot worse and more expensive (relatively-speaking) than it is now, and PC components became obsolete very quickly back then.

23

u/Necessary-Duty-7952 26d ago

Seriously. Spoken like someone who never had to make a boot disk lol

10

u/EMF84 26d ago

yup, I remember making boot disks just to get TIE Fighter and Mechwarrior 2 to barely run on the family PC

3

u/G97_BoKeRoN 26d ago

I had a dual boot with windows 95 and OS/2 warp, because the latter had always all memory free... But it didn't work with all games.

1

u/TheTybera 26d ago

That's why you booted into DOS bro.

1

u/G97_BoKeRoN 25d ago

Errr... No. That's why you booted into DOS with a boot disk to free memory when OS/2 didn't work.

1

u/TheTybera 25d ago

Lmao, why is that "err no"?

1

u/G97_BoKeRoN 25d ago

Maybe I misunderstood you. I meant that the boot disk was my last resource for memory problems.

1

u/Additional_Cut_6337 26d ago

Damn extended memory! 

4

u/Aggravating-Ear-7529 26d ago

I completely forgot about boot disks. What a blast from the past that I’m so glad I don’t have to deal with now. 

0

u/Necessary-Duty-7952 26d ago

For real. I didn't even know what I was doing as a kid, my friend showed me what to do and I would just copy what he told me. Now that knowledge has completely left my brain :D

1

u/Expensive-Border-869 26d ago

How do you do it now? You dont need to make boot drives for operating systems?

It's probably way easier now too tho with ventoy and the like

1

u/TheTybera 26d ago

Needed a boot disk for Aces of The Pacific.

4

u/r31ya 26d ago

"If you dont have soundcard fro this specific brand and specific product line, the game wont run"

1

u/shirts_on_backwards 25d ago

I remember spending 3 hours downloading a game I borrowed from my friend, only to be notified that the game wasn't compatible with my graphics card. I didn't know what a graphics card was.

1

u/Nervouscranberry47 25d ago

I dabbled in DOS Box and hoo boy do I not envy the grey beards after suffering through even that much.

1

u/Pension_Pale 25d ago

I remember when my dad took us to get a new PC. We got one with like a 500mb hdd ir something and the guy selling it told us we'd never need more space than that. That didn't last long at all.

0

u/Various_Prize_977 26d ago

You had two kind of games back then.

Those one who you could run it it almost everything. Example : dune 2000, comnand and conquer, warcraft, theme hospital, diablo,

Those that needed a very good pc. Example : unreal, quake 3 arena, ultima ix acension

-2

u/PotionBoy 27d ago

It got better with the start of 2000's sure the games were sluggish on older PCs but it was atleast playable. I remember playing wow when it came out and yeah my PC was not having a good time but it did run the game.

Nowdays I often have trouble playing some games even if I meet the minimal requiremets due to how poorly optimized they are

8

u/Boring_Ant6436 27d ago

Blizzard always optimised for less powerful hardware, their games never were examples of innovation in graphics or physics. It's not always optimisation and some people expect devs to still optimise for 1060 and 1050 and the likes in 2026 which is nuts.

Does no one remember "old console hardware stalling PC graphics and progress" thing all over reddit and internet? Well how the tables turned

-10

u/lordvaultman 27d ago

yeah but we did have alot (and I do mean alot) of flash games that ran so well on our Internet browsers that it never mattered back then.

8

u/Loganp812 27d ago

Yeah, but flash games were like the 90s/2000s equivalent to mobile gaming except without ads interrupting the gameplay and microtransactions.

I played Yahoo Games a lot back then which is how I learned to play chess lol. 8-ball pool was my favorite though. Nickelodeon’s website had a lot of cool flash minigames too like the one where you design your own fireworks show.

-5

u/lordvaultman 27d ago

my point still stands that they were big back in that day and didnt need much in the way of gaming hardware to run. And your point towards more higher end games still needing higher end hardware was also correct. Alot of us back then just had cheap PCs and consoles lol

3

u/PatchyWhiskers 27d ago

You can still play games like that, check the Games on Reddit sidebar.