Back in the day, the entire game came on physical media, and patches were things you sewed to your clothes, so the publishers had to, at least try to, ship a working game, with all it’s features in place.
Some games still got patched but you’d just get that if you bought it late. You can see this if you ever look at rom packs, as even some SNES games and such get revisions.
I’m way too lazy for modern gaming. As soon as I needed a password to do anything, I noped out. All of my game systems still have their original functionality. What’s degraded is me (vision, hearing, attention span, stamina).
Back in the day, the entire game came on physical media, and patches were things you sewed to your clothes, so the publishers had to, at least try to, ship a working game, with all it’s features in place.
Now get off my lawn you kids!
Some games still got patched but you’d just get that if you bought it late. You can see this if you ever look at rom packs, as even some SNES games and such get revisions.
And it’s usually to fix some absolutely game-breaking bug…that only happens if you do MissingNo-level oddities.
Some old games could use a patch. I think there were some regional versions of Digimon World for the ps1 that could not be beaten due to a bug.
I’m way too lazy for modern gaming. As soon as I needed a password to do anything, I noped out. All of my game systems still have their original functionality. What’s degraded is me (vision, hearing, attention span, stamina).