Thoughts or ideas that you had as a younger gamer that seem ridiculous now?

I'll give some examples....

I remember when I was 10 years old or so and first saw Mortal Kombat on arcade and thought it was the pinnacle of videogame graphics. I mean, they used ACTUAL actors as the characters. My friends and I would dicuss how amazing it was and cool to see real people in the game and how it couldn't possibly get better. Little did we know that world size, interactivity with the background and lighting were all important factors.

Also, I remember discussing(on these very gamespot boards) when I had an OG Xbox and the 360 hadn't been announced yet so everyone was speculating what features the new consoles would have. I had an idea that the next Xbox would have 5 or 6 disc changer much like CD players in cars at the time. This way you wouldn't have to get up as often to switch out ur most played games. Obviously, with digital becoming the trend, this seems ridiculous. Plus, it would have made the consoles even bigger.

So, there. Curious what you all may have thought about games or consoles at any time that seems ridiculous, or just a bad idea, looking back.

That I wanted to be a pro-gamer.

Casual gaming is already quite a time sink. I can't imagine trying to make a career of it. Seems rather impractical. But, people do it.

The idea that gaming is anything other than a waste of time. Casual gaming is fine, but as kids we don't do that. So I'd rather not have wasted so much time gaming.

@HalcyonScarlet: Time enjoyed is never time wasted.

I remember, a long time ago now, thinking that a game where you could have space fighter combat, fight through the enemy ships, board an enemy capital ship and then shoot it out to take control of it would be really cool, I was probably playing X-Wing or Wing Commander at the time. I always thought that it would never happen then Chris Roberts came back on the scene and declared that he was wanting to make his dream game, it just so happens that his dream game was the same as mine and I immediately backed Star Citizen.

Dreams occasionally come true even if they do take a bit longer than we'd like.

Getting to pour gas in the GTA games.

The hell was i thinking for something SO dumb.

pressing B after throwing the Pokeball makes it easier to capture Pokemon

That I can make a game... Even with unity and blender it requires vast amounts of work and intelligence.

I used to try rpg maker

An open-world FPS/RPG set in World War II featuring survival elements and major theatres of war (i.e. Stalingrad) with a focus on narrative/story-telling. I thought around the time of Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, the PS3 would be capable of delivering this ground-breaking experience that would blend video games and reality.

How young and naive I was...

I was 10 years old as well, and yes, I actually believed this too lol. To be fair, a lot of people assumed this. How do you get more real than real right? lmao

I also remember being bummed at the "fact" that home consoles would never have graphics that good, even though we ended up with close enough looking ports just over a year later.

The real kicker of it all is that in hindsight, there were already better looking games at the time and even before it. Was just difficult to see past the new car smell of real actors on a blue screen to realize it. Wasn't the first game to do that of course, but the execution was on another level for its time.

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Aside from Mortal Kombat graphics hysteria, here's mine -

3d was the worst thing to happen to gaming. I actually believed that for a short while.

We went from tight, snappy, refined gameplay with lovely sprite art that was full of character to having clunky, cumbersome gameplay with horrid looking 3d graphics. I really enjoyed some of the early 3d games on PC, but when consoles went 3d I wasn't a fan AT ALL. Felt like this huge step backwards in so many ways.

A lot of my favorite franchises transitioned into 3d very poorly. A lot of new franchises played like ass. While I did enjoy Mario 64, I wasn't able to fully appreciate it at the time, and in a way I felt Mario was dead. Yet Mario 64 was one of the better examples of a series going 3d, so you can imagine how I felt about the others lol. I wasn't sold on fully 3d gaming until I played Ocarina of Time, really changed my outlook on things.

Of course it didn't take too long for me to realize that both 2d and 3d can be great, especially once 3d games started to tighten things up, but damn I was bummed about it for a while lol.

But even to this day, I still consider gen 5 to be one of the weakest generations. Full of landmark titles and big steps forward for gaming, but very few of the games still hold up and many of the ones that do aren't even 3d.

At one point I wanted to be a "completionist" on every single game I played, I would try to 100% all the collectibles etc. I think GTA3 or 4 made me realize that was much too time consuming, and ended up overexposing me to games, they lost their luster after a while of just searching for stuff. So I still kind of play like I want to collect a lot of stuff but I don't dwell on it too much and move on. Depends on the game too, some make it a lot more fun and it's a lot more realistic(as a goal), others like GTA5 forget about it.... it would take forever to find everything, no fun in that.

"Pirates are bad, publishers are the good guys"

The first time I played Final Fantasy X I thought "this is good as it gets" when I saw the graphical upgrade from PS1 to PS2 and how the game was fully voiced lol. It still holds up pretty well imo though

Negative: That playing a game like Goldeneye online would be fun. Online games and especially FPS's online are cesspools now.

Positive: Morrowind was the game that changed my gaming world, it was so different and great.

Perhaps.

Saving up for my first (cheap) laptop, and assuming it would just play any game. Didn't realise that minimum required specs were a thing back then.

Also thinking that I'd be a professional photographer when I grew up.

Were you all like

Crysis here I come!!

I used to think Xbox was a good brand, luckily Sonys by the gamers for the gamers mantra enlightened me.

I was resurrected and reborn. Thank you Godny!

@rtehrani: I used to think that fps games and rpg's are a waste of time. Now that I'm older, they have become my new, favorite genres. I also used to think that clay animation was everything we would ever need as far as special effects goes in movies.

@Sam3231: Lmao! Shockingly accurate. O.O Remember booting up Crysis and wondering what all the fuss was about since it was on the lowest settings, before finally clicking on. Luckily Blockbuster allowed a refund on that and Medieval 2: Total War. No wonder that company went bust, noobs like me...

Why are you even here?

It's kind of funny, back in the 16-bit era, I thought the color pallet had expanded so much to enable shading and other gradient effects, by contrast to the flat tones of the original NES, I often remarked how games of the time had truly "brought fantasy worlds to life". I didn't see how they used checkerboard effects to create those seemingly "smooth" shading effects in the digital paintings. But even as primitive as it was then, I suppose there was enough in them to warrant artistic merit as pixel illustrations.

And then when I saw Mortal Kombat, it looked so much more refined than a predecessor to that, Pit Fighter. With the advent of the Neo Geo pushing pixel art I also foresaw how all games would become 2D photorealistic, I imagined forest backgrounds with highly detailed trees of rich bark texture and veiny leaves... that the cartoon visuals would soon be behind us. To me a future Castlevania game would be a photorealstic setting of the castle, albeit in 2D side scrolling of the most realistic looking stone walls and tapestries ever seen. And of course the most human looking Belmont character, and Fighter games with detailed musculature and skin tones.

Yet in all that I still could only see improvements of graphics as pixel art emulating photorealism, getting more refined in the smoothness and crisp detail, without even considering the level design or mechanics. I still could only see game design in 2D context, as side scrolling mechanics or overhead perspectives being the continued norm. I never could have imagined worlds in 3D, actually being unconstrained to navigate completely free along any horizontal axis, let alone verticality. That the world would actually rotate along your viewpoint, being surrounded by the environment instead of being a fixed backdrop, like a stage wallpaper.

Oh and I also thought the advancements in future console performance power would continue being measured as it's Bit rating. Going on from 16 bit to 32 bit, to 64 bit, 128 bit, 256 bit, 512 bit, and so on. Of course after the N64 we do have consoles with 128 bit processors for 3D calculations. But by then the bit count was no longer the accurate way of expressing the "power" of the system (if it ever was) nor the primary selling point, dropped as being the key marketing label on the box. But yeah I was always looking forward to sharing in the excitement along my gaming peers, "ohhhhh YEAH, the new 1024 Bit Nintendo console comes out tomorrow!! I can't wait to get my hands on it and see what the Mushroom Kingdom looks like now!!" lulz.

When I was a young adult, I used to hate the 3D character designs that were appearing in gaming (e.g. Donkey Kong Country) in the early 1990s. That is why I skipped the PS1/Saturn/N64 era. Never did I realize that I will eventually love 3D games during the GameCube/PS2 era as the designs improve.

That's not a good question.

I can't think of anything ridiculous. But, I remembered something while playing Star Raider a long time ago. I remember thinking how it would be nice if the pilot can land on a planet and do stuff. Then, he can get back on his space ship and continue shooting at bad guys.

The concept has since been implemented a gazillion times. That's what I do most of the time in Far Cry 4 with the Buzzer. Rain death from above and occasionally dogfight with helicopters. I'd land at a settlement to replenish ammo (plus repair damage) and then get back aboard and continue raining death from above.

Ace combat was a good "sim", this was prior to experiencing an actual sim, for me Ace combat was the first flight game that allowed me to roll pitch and yaw freely and my little 7 year old brain thought it was the best thing ever.

I figured by now we would have holographic games and not ones you play with some big box strapped to your face.

I grew up in the 70s. Blade Runner and Back to the Future were set in years before now.

Still waiting on my holodeck, too!

If gaming is such a "waste of time" to you, isn't discussing the topic on an online forum even more so of a waste? At least for your time?

That's really two different questions.

1. 'If gaming is such a waste of time to you'. Firstly, as I said, I'm a casual gamer now. The topic was specifically about looking aback on the ideas of gaming as a youth. Looking back from what I've learned now, there is so many other things I think a kid could be doing. If I spent all the time I did playing various versions of SF2 learning an actual martial art for example, or all the hours I've spent gaming, spending more time socializing or socializing and learning something else like an extra class as a kid... So do I believe non casual gaming is a waste of time looking back? Yes. The opportunities someone may pass up to game in a life we only live once is insane and regretful.

So why did I do it? Well even an alcholic or a smoker can look back and know something was a mistake.

2. 'Then why are you here'. To be honest I'm usually here for no more than 10 - 20 min a day. If this was the old SWs before the mods jumped ship, that was different and worryingly addictive, back during the sixth and seventh gen and when Casey was here. This is luckily very easy to walk away from. I'll still come in every now and then, it's a habit.