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> It's not like they were designed like that on purpose. It was a limitation of the technology of the time. If they could've made as many live service games back then, they would have.

Not every game released today is a live service game and I'm pretty sure people would have had the same objections back in those days.

> Is romanticizing an era of gaming that was not all that great the way forward? I don't think so.

People advocating for video game preservation aren't advocating we all go back to CD-ROM. Video game preservation can be done digitally perfectly fine.

What people are advocating for is that games are designed to remain at least functional once the company doesn't deem it financially viable to provide services for that game anymore.

A game doesn't need to be live service to support cloud saves, though. There are completely DRM free games on Steam that support cloud saves. And PC games that released on discs back in the day still could get updates.

Edit: I also almost forgot, even for users without internet patches for popular games were often distributed on demo discs included with magazines like PC Gamer.

> Oh, scratched your CD? TOO BAD. Maybe try one of these folk remedies with tooth paste or some such.

Not folk remedies, you can take it to a game store and most have the equipment to resurface the CD.

Not all of that is true. Who played with the un-updated CD version?

All of us who never hooked the dreamcast up to the internet.

Dreamcast didn't have game patches over the internet. That wasn't a thing until the Xbox. You could, in rare occasions, download additional content (e.g. PSO had downloadable quests) but the vast majority of games were standalone.

We downloaded patches or get them as an extra with PC gaming magazines just fine. On CD's... everyone backed up them at ISO's and mounted them with dedicated software.