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Videogame monetisation methods of yesteryear

Started by peanutbutter, June 30, 2021, 07:49:40 PM

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peanutbutter

Listening to the latest Retronauts on Street Fighter 2 and they mention that some of the more bizarre combos in old arcade games were there explicitly to be given to magazines months on so people would return to the game after usage began to drop.

I'm sure it was pretty common in RPGs but I recall FF9 having quite a lot of bizarrely specific achievements and items and pushing you fairly heavily to get the walkthrough (which in itself pushed you to use their online service).



Gotta be lots of these? Games that require specific controllers to play correctly but dont package them with the game?


Edit: Just thought of one that never made it to Europe, Nintendo's card reader thing. Basically loot boxes for Animal Crossing and Super Mario Advance 4, wasn't it?

lazarou

An obvious one but games often having deliberately obtuse sections to sell hint books and/or premium-rate hint lines. Sierra were fairly infamous for this with their adventure games but they were far from the only offenders. (edit: thinking back, it wasn't unusual to see games mags getting in on the hint lines thing too so there was definitely some complicity there)

There was a real trend in old NES-era action adventure games to have hidden items and exits that were often necessary for progression that you would never guess by yourself but I'm a little split as to how much of that was down to wanting to sell guide books and how much of it was just the prevailing design thinking at the time as games were pretty fond of being absolute nails in all kinds of silly ways, not least because it's a really cheap and easy way to pad out your playtime.

Video Game Fan 2000

The weird codes/sequence breaks needed to beat Tower of Druaga, Bubble Bobble and Rainbow Islands.

Jeremy Parish's latest video is about the barcode reader Bandai made for the Famicom, I think that counts.

Quote from: peanutbutter on June 30, 2021, 07:49:40 PM
I'm sure it was pretty common in RPGs but I recall FF9 having quite a lot of bizarrely specific achievements and items and pushing you fairly heavily to get the walkthrough (which in itself pushed you to use their online service).

This one is a damn shame because the game is so beautiful otherwise. They did it again with the Zodiac weapons in XII.

evilcommiedictator

You used to have a studio that would consistently make good games, and then people would buy them.

Now, everyone just buys the latest AAA shite and 8 year olds are propping up Epic

bgmnts

Quote from: evilcommiedictator on July 01, 2021, 03:48:38 AM
You used to have a studio that would consistently make good games, and then people would buy them.

What a bizarre business model.

Catalogue of ills

It's interesting playing old arcade games on the original arcade machines, because the difficulty level is pitched exactly right so that you would have kept loading your 10p coins in, believing you were on the verge of making it to the next level. I experienced this on a Phoenix machine a couple of years ago. Had I played that when I was 15 there wouldn't have been a 10p left within a mile radius of me.

Great video about how the CPU in arcade Street Fighter II cheated like an absolute bastard to keep you chucking money in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laUAgEUunsI

Spiteface

Double Dragon 3 had microtransactions in it. In 1990.

There were in-game shops, where you used your credits (i.e. money you put in the machine) to buy extra weapons, health, characters etc.