What I don’t miss about retro gaming.

I love video games. I have been playing video games for over 40 years, starting with Pong in the mid-70s. Many people have a romanticized view of playing video games from the 1970s and 1980s. There are many reasons to look back with nostalgia at the games of the past, including the simplicity of the gameplay. However; there are just as many reasons to appreciate the progress that has been made in today’s games. The following are several things that I do not miss from that era of gaming.

Wired controllers only

After transitioning to wireless controllers, there is no going back. Nowadays you can even turn the console on and off with a wireless controller. Nobody wants to be forced to be chained to a console anymore by controller wires.

Poor game controllers

Nobody wants to go back to the days of the crappy Atari joysticks they would frequently break and only have one button. Today’s controllers are the manifestation of many years of improvements that I would never want to give back. Admittedly, along the way the D-pad was ignored a bit. It looks like steps have been made to correct this oversight.

No game endings

Everyone wants a reward for toiling for weeks or months at a time for finishing a game. Back in the very early days of gaming (pre-NES), there were very few endings to games. The ones that we actually got were usually awful. I understand now that there were severe memory…