First, some background: in the late-90s playing a four player game, for example GoldenEye 007, had its drawbacks. With all the action divided into four sections on one telly, each player was able to see what everybody else on the screen was doing. The upshot of this being that you couldn't very well plant Proximity Mines in the Facility without the other three players seeing exactly what you were planning. It was an inherent flaw in gameplay back then, which today seems anachronistic, however many fond memories of playing with mates in the same room you might retain. Gaming magazines used to frequently run stories about people who went through a lot of hassle to play four-player split screen games split over four separate TVs so each player could plot bloody murder in private. Now, these days that sounds like nothing - today you'd set up a LAN if you wanted to be old fashioned about it, or more likely you'd just scrap the cables and play online together. But the 1997 solution for the hardcore was mad. Some bizarre section of society actually did the following: you had to first purchase a four-way splitter cable that allowed you to plug the N64 into four TVs. Then you had to use tape and cardboard to black out the other three "screens" on each TV. Hardly sounds worth it does it? And besides, you'd still be able to hear everything everyone did, even if you went to the further trouble of putting each TV in a separate room. Which other old gaming problems will today's gamers never understand? Share your thoughts below in the comments thread.
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.
