Internet-less games that recognized it's potential

[Memory]

Oh hey hi

...I know i know, the title is a mess and you probably don't understand what i'm saying, i'm bad at words and that's the only way i felt i could talk about it, so let me explain where this post is coming from and maybe you'll get a better idea

I was in a family trip to pass christmas in a coast house my grandparents built ages ago, as an old house and one we don't use very often, it has no wifi, so i decided to download some GBA games to play on an emulator, i downloaded some i previously known like Kuru Kuru Kururin or Chu Chu Rocket, and i decided to give myself an RPG to pass the time more efficiently, and i decided to go with Pokemon Mystery Dungeon

It's a game i'm not gonna feel ashamed in saying that it's rather complex for my brain , there are a lot of systems, many things to take into account, and for someone who seeks instant gratification when playing (like me) it can be a doozy; however, in one of those many systems i found something really neat

Brief gameplay overview in case you don't know: in Pokemon Mystery Dungeon you explore dungeons in order to complete a task, such as "Get me a certain berry" or "Find this pokemon in floor n", in the dungeon there are wild pokemon that attack you and your partner and you have to combat, failing to do so will kick you out of the dungeon and make you fail the mission...or does it

You see, if you connect a link cable to someone with the game, you can ask them for help to bring you back to the floor you were in, they need to get to where you were and give you a hand, a neat way of implementing the link cable that's to be expected from a pokemon game, but it goes even further

You see, there is also other way of getting back on track after being defeated, and that's by sending an "SOS mail" to "Pokemon far away", it's a code that someone else, no matter the distance, can put in their GBA, go rescue you, and send an "A-OK mail" to confirm that they did indeed save you, and you send them a "Thank-you mail" in return

I thought for a moment "Why is this here?, if i had someone close instead of giving them a code i'd just use the link cable", and then it hit me, it was meant to be posted on the internet in order to get help from other people, that then in return would need to send you the A-OK mail, it made sense since Mystery Dungeon released in a time where forums were all the rage, this entire system was meant to be shared online

Of course, it was a system made to be shared in forums and sites and all that, people from around the world could help you by just typing in perfectly a 48 digit code, playing through the dungeon you failed at, sending you a 48 code back, and then thanking them for their efforts with another 48 code

...Yeah it was clunky as hell, and i guess it needed to since there's a lot of information being encrypted, such as the name you chose, what pokemon you and your partner were, the layout of the dungeon, so on and so forth; but i think it's cool nonetheless 

And i know it's not the only one, Animal Crossing has the so-called "Nook codes", which are equally clunky codes that allow someone to get one of your items; that system inspired Animal Crossing fans to amass a list of every possible item code in what was called "Project Hyrule" (since the codes would've come from "Link" from the town of "Hyrule")

The time between games that couldn't implement internet features due to system limitations (thus sticking with codes) and consoles not being able to connect to the internet is a pretty short one, but it was a neat exercise in creativity in my opinion

Do you know any other example where a feature that would've just been a link nowadays had to be a code of some kind?, i'd be eager to know more about this (frankly niche and obscure and probably not even made with the internet in mind) phenomena

[starbreaker]

This isn't quite what you had in mind, but I think you might enjoy it.

Back in the day (as in the 1970s and 1980s), universities and businesses would have these big-assed computer systems (not as big as a mainframe, but bigger than a PC) that dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people might use at the same time via dumb terminals. These systems usually ran (some kind of) UNIX or VMS, but sometimes ran even more obscure systems.

You were supposed to do work on these systems, but people also played games.

One such game was called "rogue", which spawned a bunch of imitators like "moria", "angband", "hack", "nethack", etc. The dungeon was procedurally generated, and you played until you managed to beat the game, or died. Death was permanent, incidentally.

(One of the most famous games from this tradition is the original Diablo, believe it or not.)

What would happen in these old roguelikes, which were played on multiuser UNIX and VMS systems, is that whenever a player's character died, the system would keep a record of it. In nethack this is called a bones file and is used to generate a bones level. That character's ghost (and the level where they died) could end up in another character's, carrying some or all of the gear they had on them when they died, as an enemy!

That's right. Play nethack long enough, even on a machine nobody else uses, and you might eventually face the ghosts of your old, failed characters.

[alexela64]

I play a lot of Honkai 3rd, and there's a couple different things that are like this.

For one, there's a beginner's/veteran's feature where you enter a different player's code to obtain rewards. I haven't done this one in a while, so i don't remember exactly how it works, but i think the number of rewards you got capped after you entered a certain number of codes.

Another fun one is the 'red envelope' system in global chat (although i don't know how much longer global chat will be around due to the current overhaul hi3 is getting). People can send red envelopes to global chat, and whoever taps to open the envelope first obtains a reward. In turn, the person sharing also gets a reward. The person obtaining the envelope will also get an envelope to share. I've always thought this was a fun little system.

There's a lot of social stuff like that in hi3 that i hope they keep in future updates, like the guild (armada) system. It's a good way of fostering community.

[creaturefeature]

I think the first animal crossing itself had a system where you could go to your friends house, bring your memory card with you and then your friend would be able to visit your town, talk to villager and see the letters you sent them, buy your items on your gyro. and sometimes their villagers end up moving to your town, while sometimes mentioning your friend.

This was pretty much the only way to do it.

However funny thing I remember reading how a group of friends decided to share an animal crossing save file through the use of dropbox and the dolphin emulator. it was wild you have a read of it here

basically they end up creating a fully online multiplayer mode even thought the game was innitially made to play with people who life in the same house as you.