I’ll never forget when Spyro the Dragon was first released; it seemed like everyone wanted it and my mum went to a game store and found the last copy they had. She said afterwards I was super lucky because that was the last one they had in store and, you know what? It felt lucky!
Kids nowadays will never understand how that feels…
That was back when pre-ordering meant something. The stores got limited quantities shipped to them and if you wanted a popular game near launch day you had to preorder. Even then we did not have to pay full price for the game, most stores charged you $5 for the initial order and you paid the balance on pickup. Plus you could get a refund if you found out the game sucked before you picked it up, just tell them you did not want the order and they gave your $5 back.
Back then Beta testing was not something you paid for the "privilege" to do. You had to apply for Beta testing and where expected to fulfill the testing requests the company sent you. If you actually did the work you where rewarded with a free copy of the game. Today you pay to beta test, have your feedback ignored and your reward is a few extra days access for the full price of a game before it really was close to being out.
Not everything from the old days was worse than today in gaming.
