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Description

Have you ever stopped to think that back then, games seemed to be much more than they feel like nowadays? That despite today's technology allowing games to be magnitudes larger than they could ever hope to be even half a decade ago, that older games still seemed like they had so much more content to explore and find in comparison? Well to be frank, I see it as nothing more than a feeling. Because games today do indeed have way much more content when you do the math: you can fit much more game in a terabyte solid-state drive than you would in a measly 700 megabytes optical disc, or even in a much smaller storage capacity of a cartridge. The main difference is not really in WHAT is presented to you by a game, but more so in HOW it is presented by it. Older games had a bigger air of mystique to them simply because if they didn't otherwise, the illusion would have been broken very fast. And in an era where getting games was admittedly far more difficult than before, it's far more valuable for a gamer to enjoy whatever few ones they could get their hands on for as long as possible. It gave them a more prestigious appeal, but also a magical one; you never knew what to expect from these games, you could potentially find anything at all.

Couple that with both the field of game development being far less accessible as well as the smaller prevalence and adoption of the internet, and something really cool started to form. Word of mouth spreading either directly or through now defunct small web forums or ancient forgotten videos would give rise to gaming myths, legends, folk tales. Nobody could prove them to be wrong, unless you yourself went to the virtual fields and searched it directly. You'd hear a rumor from your classmates, or read something in a gaming magazine, and it would entice you to explore and find these things in your game. Even if you already fully completed it and unlocked everything there was to unlock, all these tales made it seem there's still something more. It was a symbiotic relationship with the then mystical design philosophy, that elevated the size and scope of a game far beyond the developers even imagined.

I myself used to do that. Now, did I REALLY believe on these tales?... To be completely honest, not at all. But I did WANT to believe it, with my own eyes. And exploring these games was the only way for me to find out. I'd spend hours, days, weeks of my play time just trying to find out if these myths were real, and I'd research the web looking for people who had found them or had some clues as to how to get a couple steps closer. Most of them, sadly, were complete lies, and sometimes even just trolling. But even then, people lying that they found something in a game doesn't really prove that it ISN'T in the game... I kept searching, full of hope.

In a certain way, it's kinda like hunting for big-foot. Now unrelated to whether this legendary cryptid is real or not, just think on how cool it'd still be to just go on a hike in a forest to look for one. Even if you don't find it, I bet it's fun to see these places in a different light, pay closer attention to details around you. In games it's a similar dynamic, except you aren't in danger of being mauled by wolves or eating a poisonous berry or something like that. You look around, feeling like some explorer, archaeologist or detective, just finding the weirdest things that many people wouldn't really pay much attention to, and then spread the word of your discoveries to your circles to keep fueling the fires of curiosity for everyone else. Sometimes, you even find other things nobody saw before, and you end up starting new rumors and folk tales, ever so expanding into the culture of gaming as a whole.

Nowadays, this whole dynamic has completely changed. Now people do know better and have tools and knowledge to deeply analyze a game's entire code and assets, and objectively discover if something is or isn't in a game, and quickly spread it to other people through a now immeasurably faster broadband connection. All of this even retroactively ruins the air of mystery in the games you yourself could have used to explore before. And the games that are released now, they have whole webpages entirely dedicated to completely dissect every single aspect of its contents and development. You could say that the magic of curiosity might have left the world of gaming at this point, or maybe even everything else.

But not all hope is lost, however. I have an idea for you. Something that can give you back these same feelings of exploration and discovery, that even still works exactly as before despite the drastic change in environment. If you're really looking for the experience again, you should think a little bit outside the box this time; instead of exploring what's in a game, you should explore the world of gaming itself. Instead of the myths being entirely localized within a game, make the game itself be the mystery.

What I mean with this, is that there's just SO MANY GAMES now. And even if you consider yourself a connoisseur, there's so many that are so darn obscure that nobody even knows of, even less so play them to find out its mysteries. Just rummage through an archive, look for something real weird and strange, play it for a bit, and if you find it cool tell it to people. The sheer niche aspect of these games themselves makes it hard to even research them, so the aura of curiosity remains. If possible, get your friends to play these games and explore together. Who knows, you might find something absolutely insane, or even be the very first person in the world to beat the game and find its secrets. You may even help it become more popular, it'd help the devs a lot for sure.

Just imagine being the very first person to make a walk-through for some random niche game nobody heard of before. Or even better, being the reason the game isn't niche anymore and people get to talk about it in their own circles, or even make one of those hours-long essay videos about them. That'd be cool, right? Not only you'd be working on preserving these games that would otherwise be completely lost to time, but you'd also have a lot of fun doing it.

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Fonts used in the drawing:

- Aileron: created by Sora Sagano. Licensed under public domain. Used in the image's desktop text.

- A custom pixel font I made exclusively for this image. Used in the image's video frame.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Took a lot longer to make this one. Nothing much for reason, just was like, laziness or slowness or something. I'm lazy and slow, just like that.

Still thinking on making more, but not sure when.

Description

Have you ever stopped to think that back then, games seemed to be much more than they feel like nowadays? That despite today's technology allowing games to be magnitudes larger than they could ever hope to be even half a decade ago, that older games still seemed like they had so much more content to explore and find in comparison? Well to be frank, I see it as nothing more than a feeling. Because games today do indeed have way much more content when you do the math: you can fit much more game in a terabyte solid-state drive than you would in a measly 700 megabytes optical disc, or even in a much smaller storage capacity of a cartridge. The main difference is not really in WHAT is presented to you by a game, but more so in HOW it is presented by it. Older games had a bigger air of mystique to them simply because if they didn't otherwise, the illusion would have been broken very fast. And in an era where getting games was admittedly far more difficult than before, it's far more valuable for a gamer to enjoy whatever few ones they could get their hands on for as long as possible. It gave them a more prestigious appeal, but also a magical one; you never knew what to expect from these games, you could potentially find anything at all.

Couple that with both the field of game development being far less accessible as well as the smaller prevalence and adoption of the internet, and something really cool started to form. Word of mouth spreading either directly or through now defunct small web forums or ancient forgotten videos would give rise to gaming myths, legends, folk tales. Nobody could prove them to be wrong, unless you yourself went to the virtual fields and searched it directly. You'd hear a rumor from your classmates, or read something in a gaming magazine, and it would entice you to explore and find these things in your game. Even if you already fully completed it and unlocked everything there was to unlock, all these tales made it seem there's still something more. It was a symbiotic relationship with the then mystical design philosophy, that elevated the size and scope of a game far beyond the developers even imagined.

I myself used to do that. Now, did I REALLY believe on these tales?... To be completely honest, not at all. But I did WANT to believe it, with my own eyes. And exploring these games was the only way for me to find out. I'd spend hours, days, weeks of my play time just trying to find out if these myths were real, and I'd research the web looking for people who had found them or had some clues as to how to get a couple steps closer. Most of them, sadly, were complete lies, and sometimes even just trolling. But even then, people lying that they found something in a game doesn't really prove that it ISN'T in the game... I kept searching, full of hope.

In a certain way, it's kinda like hunting for big-foot. Now unrelated to whether this legendary cryptid is real or not, just think on how cool it'd still be to just go on a hike in a forest to look for one. Even if you don't find it, I bet it's fun to see these places in a different light, pay closer attention to details around you. In games it's a similar dynamic, except you aren't in danger of being mauled by wolves or eating a poisonous berry or something like that. You look around, feeling like some explorer, archaeologist or detective, just finding the weirdest things that many people wouldn't really pay much attention to, and then spread the word of your discoveries to your circles to keep fueling the fires of curiosity for everyone else. Sometimes, you even find other things nobody saw before, and you end up starting new rumors and folk tales, ever so expanding into the culture of gaming as a whole.

Nowadays, this whole dynamic has completely changed. Now people do know better and have tools and knowledge to deeply analyze a game's entire code and assets, and objectively discover if something is or isn't in a game, and quickly spread it to other people through a now immeasurably faster broadband connection. All of this even retroactively ruins the air of mystery in the games you yourself could have used to explore before. And the games that are released now, they have whole webpages entirely dedicated to completely dissect every single aspect of its contents and development. You could say that the magic of curiosity might have left the world of gaming at this point, or maybe even everything else.

But not all hope is lost, however. I have an idea for you. Something that can give you back these same feelings of exploration and discovery, that even still works exactly as before despite the drastic change in environment. If you're really looking for the experience again, you should think a little bit outside the box this time; instead of exploring what's in a game, you should explore the world of gaming itself. Instead of the myths being entirely localized within a game, make the game itself be the mystery.

What I mean with this, is that there's just SO MANY GAMES now. And even if you consider yourself a connoisseur, there's so many that are so darn obscure that nobody even knows of, even less so play them to find out its mysteries. Just rummage through an archive, look for something real weird and strange, play it for a bit, and if you find it cool tell it to people. The sheer niche aspect of these games themselves makes it hard to even research them, so the aura of curiosity remains. If possible, get your friends to play these games and explore together. Who knows, you might find something absolutely insane, or even be the very first person in the world to beat the game and find its secrets. You may even help it become more popular, it'd help the devs a lot for sure.

Just imagine being the very first person to make a walk-through for some random niche game nobody heard of before. Or even better, being the reason the game isn't niche anymore and people get to talk about it in their own circles, or even make one of those hours-long essay videos about them. That'd be cool, right? Not only you'd be working on preserving these games that would otherwise be completely lost to time, but you'd also have a lot of fun doing it.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fonts used in the drawing:

- Aileron: created by Sora Sagano. Licensed under public domain. Used in the image's desktop text.

- A custom pixel font I made exclusively for this image. Used in the image's video frame.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Took a lot longer to make this one. Nothing much for reason, just was like, laziness or slowness or something. I'm lazy and slow, just like that.

Still thinking on making more, but not sure when.