10 Ways Gaming Was Infinitely Better In The '90s
6. No Patches To Download
Despite the age of broadband, patch file sizes are out of hand: 20GB for the Halo Master Chief Collection because of issues with matchmaking and bugs. Call of Duty WWII's patch was 9GB. Destiny 2 players who didn't log in regularly enough missed out on smaller patches, leading some to complain of 30GB+ patches.
Worse still is when patches don't work. Gran Turismo 6 has a FAQ on downloading its patches. They won't download as one continuous update. You download one, cancel the next and install one at a time. The guide for this wasn't written by Polyphony: it was by the players, for the players!
But gaming in the 90s had none of this. CDs and cartridges weren't re-writeable; memory cards were in mere megabytes. Developers had to ship games finished and as bug-free as possible.
Imagine: no Day One patches, no waiting for broken content to get fixed, no sitting around having the newest game spoiled by an hours-long download. You get the game out of the case, pop it in and WHAM! New game is a-go.
Game-breaking bugs were only fixed in a second run of cartridges, so if you bought early then got stuck, you'd send for a replacement. Turok: Rage Wars, was one example.