Page 20 - Old School Gamer Magazine Issue #43 FREE Edition

Once originally released on PlayStation, gamers completed missions and played the game and quickly realized how much there was to do in the game. A rental was not enough. It was barely the tip of the iceberg.
Like The Legend of Zelda, Dragon Warrior, and so many other open-world experiences, the original GTA and all of the follow- ups were teases if you rented them. They were games that demanded dozens of hours of gameplay.
THE WORST:
LOADED (Saturn, PS)
Loaded is an amazing
game on both the Saturn
and PlayStation, an early
example of what a top-down shooter could be on a 32-bit console. Controlling a ragtag group of killers escaping an intergalactic prison,
it was the kind of game that could make your grandmother throw up (true story). It was also a game that wasn’t exactly made for the rental chains. That hasn’t hurt its legacy, but it didn’t help it when it was originally released.
“It was the first time people had seen something ‘next-gen’ and new,” developer Michael Hirst
said. “I know the term ‘next-gen’ means something way more advanced now, but so many elements came together in this game: great character concepts, 3D levels, colorful lighting, gore, huge weapons so powerful they could distort the level, and cool music. It hasn’t aged well, in fairness, but
at the time it was something very new.”
This all rings true if you own it. That is, if you invite friends over and beat it with all the characters. If you rented the game, however, you wanted the payoff—that sexy ending that made all the grinding
and death worth it. In the end,
in spite of the frenetic gameplay and the amazing characters (that spawned a short-lived comic book series) and a kickass score, Loaded had one of the most simplistic and short endings ever.
There was virtually no payoff. It was a 15- to 20-second cutscene and a Game Over screen. That’s it.
Lion King
(SNES, Genesis)
Although
one of
Disney’s
biggest
successes
at the box
office and
a million
seller as a video game, one that spawned re-releases and ports on several consoles, Lion King was developed in record time on the Genesis and Super Nintendo. So much so that compromises had to be made during the development cycle.
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As a matter of fact, some of the design changes made in
the game may have directly affected your childhood.
“We’ve given lots of interviews, so I’m not sure what secrets are left,” developer Louis Castle said. “The
two lesser-known things are that we made level two much harder in the eleventh hour and that the adult lion levels were inspired by footage that was cut from the film. On level two, we had to expand and make the monkey puzzle very hard to meet
a ‘playtime’ criteria set by Disney to fight game rentals.
We just didn’t have time to add levels, so making the puzzle harder was the only way to have the game take long enough not to finish in a weekend.”
As a result, if you bought Lion King, this just meant you spent a few more days on these sections. If you rented the game, however, they derailed the fun and stopped you
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right in your tracks.
So now that you’ve read about our experiences with rental games in the ’90s, head to the Old School Gamer Magazine website now and share your thoughts! We can’t wait to hear from you!