- Game Manuals and maps
- Starting a game quickly, without tutorials and long intros
- Strategy Guides (they haven't been gone long but I always liked and collected them)
- Cheat devices
- No patches or installs on consoles
- Unique consoles
- The magic others have referred to
Remember when you opened an SNES RPG and you would pull out a map, thick manual, a poster with all the enemies on it and their stats? Remember the 'get the guide free from Nintendo Power with subscription' card that came in the box? Yeah, I miss those.
I used to start an RPG, get the feel for it and make my new player mistakes (like buying the wrong items) and then restart it with my newfound knowledge so I would have a good start. Modern games take hours before they let go of your hand and let you get a feel for it and if that isn't annoying enough, imagine restarting and going through that all again.
I also miss cheat devices like the Game Genie and Gameshark, they were like my security net that I rarely used but would help if things got too difficult and I couldn't progress. Also, unauthorized cheat codes are better than built in authorized ones.
Patches have been known to make games worse like patches that remove licensed music or patches that re-balance a game for the worse. Patches make it possible for devs to release a barely tested, almost broken game with the knowledge that they can fix it later. This will be a problem in the future when the patches are no longer available. Installs just mean that YOU are paying for storage twice, once on the disc and once on the HDD, SSD or MicroSD card. If you buy digital then the publisher pays nothing for storage but the price is the same. I think it's a no-win for the consumer.
Remember when people would ask 'can the Genesis run Donkey Kong Country' or 'can the Super Nintendo run Sonic the Hedgehog'? Consoles capabilities were different, controllers were different. Even when systems shared games you could see the difference between the N64 and PS1 version, for example. This was exciting and drove the imagination of what you may or may not be missing by playing it on this system instead of that one. These days, the same games look almost identical and play almost identical. The controllers are almost exactly the same and it really doesn't matter if you choose the PS4 or Xbox One version. If you choose the Switch version you may still play with an almost identical controller and it will feel almost identical too with a graphics downgrade.
The magic people are talking about being gone. Part of that is because we are here. We come here to read and discuss everything gaming and that helps to destroy the mystery (the magic). We see what goes on behind the scenes, we hear about how game developers are mistreated by publishers and that takes some enjoyment out of gaming I think. Reading every piece of news about an upcoming game removes most surprises. Here we are though, some of us spend more time talking games than actual gaming because once the magic is gone......
Also I have said this for years, hype is a bad thing for consumers. Hype creates huge expectations and it's often impossible for a game to live up to it's own hype. It's not good for consumers or developers and I guess the only real beneficiaries of hype are the publishers. So stop the hype, please.