I enjoy video games from throughout the medium’s history, but all of my favorites lie in the 8- and 16-bit eras. Gamers of all walks of life will argue which generation of video games had the best titles, with arguments of varying weight. However, one Sherman tank of a talking point that’s firmly on the retrogamers’ side is this: back in our day, we didn’t have to worry about “patches” or “updates.” Our games were done right the first time!

There were plenty of crappy games, to be sure, but we identified them and stopped playing them; simple as that. High-quality games, on the other hand, were much more polished worked perfectly the first time. There was no developer laziness, wherein problems were fixed later. If there was a bug, they found and fixed it before the game shipped! If, heaven forbid, some game-ruining glitches did find their way into a finished product, the game was often derided for a lack of quality control, as well it should be.

The overly complicated nature of modern video game consoles has caused bugs and glitches to multiply rapidly. Newer consoles are harder to program for, so naturally, more problems are going to rear their ugly heads. Still, that’s no excuse for poor quality control. Don’t let the issues that make running programs on a personal computer such a hassle sometimes interfere with a dedicated unit like a video game console! The whole point of owning a console is that it’s not a computer. Convergence may be coming quickly, but that doesn’t mean we need to inherit the computer gaming world’s problems as well as its strengths.