10 Things Today's Gamers Wouldn't Understand

You don't know you're born.

Today's gamers don't know they're born. They aren't faced with the many trials that afflicted the 90s gamer and they simply do not have the capacity to empathise with a community whose problems went well beyond DLC, open worlds with limits and only six or seven consoles to choose to play on. Obviously, that doesn't just relate to the obvious here: graphics have gotten far better and nobody had the luxury of touch screens on their Sega Mega Drives. Instead the list within 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. Quirks, practices and technological limitations that your grandchildren, dear reader, will scarcely be able to believe afflicted you: the greatest generation. Obviously there could have been room to mention demo discs, "cheats", the size of the original Game Boy (above) or the fact that everyone used to have to pay £60 for games that would now be classed as rudimentary on phones. But the ten items below best summarise the experience of being a gamer in the 1990s.

 
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Contributor
Contributor

A regular film and video games contributor for What Culture, Robert also writes reviews and features for The Daily Telegraph, GamesIndustry.biz and The Big Picture Magazine as well as his own Beames on Film blog. He also has essays and reviews in a number of upcoming books by Intellect.