As the medium of gaming has changed as the decades have gone on, many trends and design philosophies have come and gone. While everyone is bound to hold some level of nostalgia for their preferred eras of gaming, there are genuine reasons to look to the past for ways the current climate can be improved.

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It would be easy to be like me and simply shirk away from self-improvement whenever possible because we all know that’s near-impossible, but it would certainly be a plus for gaming. We don’t miss pretending a handful of pixels is a brutal warrior, but even the oldest generations have some wisdom to bestow.

10 Games That Don’t Hold Your Hand

Yes, I know Souls-like games exist, but those aren’t exactly the rule. I may not be ready to get into a battle of wits with Albert Einstein, but I can figure out a game if you just let me play it for long enough without interruption.

A lot of games now like to gently guide you exactly where you need to go and make every single mechanic explicitly clear. Those things make discovery so much less rewarding. I do not need every path to be lined with inexplicable gold paint, even if it does really tie every room together.

9 Bad Graphics, Great Games

Now this one isn’t something we need to go back to, but it is something that added a lot of charm to games of the past. Back when 3D was in its infancy, video games were in their awkward teen stage when it comes to looks.

They weren’t really sure which table they could sit at during lunch, so sometimes a game, like Final Fantasy 7, would try to mix blocky, chibi sprites with “realistic” cutscenes to bizarre effect. Those games could be really ugly, but they proved, just as many of them have, that you can’t judge a game by its lackluster graphics.

8 The Lack Of Emphasis On the Internet

I would never fault anyone for enjoying online multiplayer, but the emphasis companies put on it has been a bit much. There are entire major game releases that come out now without any kind of campaign. How in the world are you going to charge someone full price for a portion of a game?

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Back when most people weren’t even aware internet connectivity for consoles was a possibility, things were magical. All those fantastic split-screen experiences. Sure, you’d end up in shouting matches with your friends for constant screen peeking, but that just added another layer to the gameplay.

7 The Splitscreen Experience

Speaking of the split-screen experience, most games don’t even include split-screen functionality anymore. It’s hard to get excited about playing a new game with some friends when you know you all have to be on your own sitting in your own dingy basements.

I don’t always want to be a creature of the cave! Sometimes, human companionship can be a beautiful thing, and getting back to the days of Donkey Kong 64 or GoldenEye's hilarious and chaotic multiplayer is something more people need. This point expands to local multiplayer as well, because once again, human connection isn’t as scary as the internet leads us all to believe.

6 Games Could Be Really Weird

You might argue against this point by pointing to the few oddballs of the modern era like Goat Simulator, but older games were filled with truly odd gems. The reason for this was the lack of major figures for a lot of companies and the sheer ease of trying something new.

Making games now is really expensive and time-consuming, so risks aren’t as likely. Just because risks don’t always pay off doesn’t mean we don’t need a game as bizarre as Fester’s Quest or Shaq-Fu.

5 Cheat Codes

PC players sort of have access to cheat codes with mods and console commands, but the days of genuine cheat codes seem to be long gone. Do I need to play through the Uncharted series with big head mode or paintball mode? No, but it would be a lot of fun.

Adding in a few cheat codes would probably be great for newer players since it could turn a difficult game like Dark Souls into a breeze with the option for unlimited souls. We all know most Dark Souls players are too proud to ever use something like that, so don’t act like that’s blasphemy.

4 Trial And Error

When it comes to trial and error in the modern era of gaming, that’s mostly reserved for games that are intended as throwbacks. Truly being able to throw yourself at a problem with no guidance, and slowly adapting based on what you learn and your tool kit is a fantastic way to add value to a game.

It’s almost like that’s why Dark Souls is so universally loved, despite its difficulty. Let me fail! Maybe we all get more than enough dosages of failure in our tough day-to-day lives, but it’s the game character experiencing those failures, not us.

3 Those Awesome Manuals

I think most people can agree that we just didn’t appreciate video game manuals enough while we had them. If you were a weird kid like me, you probably poured over every game booklet that came inside a new game’s case.

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Sadly, there weren’t enough weird kids like me (story of my life), and now we don’t get those fantastic manuals. They added so much personality and only fueled the hype that young minds had on the way home from renting our buying a brand-new game.

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2 All The Weird Extras

Gaming is pretty standard nowadays. You get a console, you get a controller, and you play. Only a few short years ago, you were actually able to play video games with a chainsaw, bongos, or even a guitar.

Going even further back, there were bazookas and totally tubularly rad Power Gloves to use. The functionality of all of that was a bit suspect, even back then, but hey, we continue to let companies give us odd attempts at motion controls through things like Kinect, so why not make the odd swings even odder?

1 Any Character Could Be Something Special

If you talk about the greatest video game characters nowadays, you’re probably going to hear the same ten names over and over again. These days, mascots are a major factor in a series’ success, but back in the early days of gaming, any character could be an icon.

Lester The Unlikey probably wasn’t ever going to be an A-lister, but I like to think he had a fair shot. Back then, every new game felt exciting, like it could be the next hit, even Diddy Kong! That couldn’t possibly be the case, but it was nice to get varied characters instead of the same five archetypes found in most games today. We love the grizzled dad takes kid on an adventure trope, but we’ve seen it way too many times over the last few years.

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