Ridiculously long passwords

Saving games wasn't commonplace until the generation of the Playstation and N64. There were instances on previous systems where you could save on some cartridges, but when the Playstation and N64 came around, we were able to save games all the time. Game features would unlock and stay unlocked! Some games would have the option to rewatch a game's ending after you had beaten it! It was a massive change from the previous generations of games.

Well, there were video games before the Playstation, so how did you continue your progress back then? Certain games, like Zelda, had the benefit of battery backup that allowed you to save! Other games had a password system...

Some games had much nicer password systems than others.

I still remember my friend's copy of Burai Fighter for NES from when I was a kid. The game was okay, but the password system was one of the best! The passwords were so short and simple, I was able to successfully guess many of them. Basically, you just pick a four letter word. Very few games had password systems that were so easy and user friendly; if your memory was decent, you didn't even have to write them down.

Here are some of the passwords to various levels of the game:

BALL
CAMP
DOLL 
EDEN 
FACE 
GAME 
 HEAD 
JEEP
KING 
LIME 
MILD 
NILE

It would have been so sweet if all passwords were like this! 

On the other side of the coin, certain games had passwords that were just ridiculously long and difficult. Capital letters, lowercase letters, numbers, special characters, etc. made these passwords a nightmare. Imagine being a small child and writing down 30 characters on a piece of paper. They better be perfect or your hours of progress have disappeared, and some games made the process as hard as possible. Did you write a zero instead of the letter "o"? Well, your password won't work. Is that a lowercase "l' or the number one? If you mess this up, prepare to do some replaying.

River City Ransom is my fave all-time NES title, but the password system is one of the worst. I know that River City Ransom has rpg elements featuring a number of different stats, but there are other rpg/adventure games with much gentler password systems! I took a screenshot from Mobygames.com to demonstrate.

Imagine writing all of this down without making a mistake. Now imagine inputting all of this in each time you play.

With modern cell phones and their built-in cameras, you can snap a picture and at least skip the possibility of writing the password down incorrectly, but you'll still have to enter it all the same. Although I love old school gaming, this is definitely a part of it that I don't miss.