3 games that you remember being much bigger than they actually were

In our childhood, everything seems somehow bigger. Even games. Yet some of them were much smaller than we remembered.

Games are no longer what they used to be. This is often heard, and one can certainly catch themselves thinking back to classic games. Back then, the challenges were more heroic, the worlds were more fantastic, and above all, bigger. But is that really the case?

There are quite a number of games that one recalls, which seemed gigantic at the time. However, as big as they seemed to us, they were not that large in reality. We therefore look back at a handful of games that seemed insurmountable but ultimately were not.

In the Gaming subreddit, the community discusses exactly such games: games that felt huge but, in retrospect, were not that big.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

To this day, Ocarina of Time is considered one of the best, if not the best, Zelda ever released. It was the first Zelda for the Nintendo 64 console and thrilled players with 3D graphics and what we would now call an “Open World.” Traveling through the lands of Hyrule and visiting the various towns felt fantastic and, above all, vast.

• “I felt like this back when playing Ocarina of Time. You could traverse the entire Hyrule map in 2 minutes, but when I was on the way to Gerudo Village and accidentally fell into the river that carried me all the way to the lake, I was so angry as a child.” – Crazy-Path-7929

Mario 64

Another game that is often mentioned is Mario 64. Here, you could not only explore a large castle but also find individual worlds within the many paintings of the castle, each filled with tasks to earn stars. Upon closer inspection, however, these worlds were not that gigantic in the end. Often, these worlds consisted of just one or two single rooms or a single mountain around which everything took place.

• “Each individual level from Mario 64 felt like it could have been its own game back then. The first 3D environments just felt gigantic.” – PowerSkunk92

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

The various games of the “Elder Scrolls” series, especially Morrowind, also rank high. The game world has remained memorable for many as it often felt like you could walk indefinitely in any direction and discover something new everywhere. Today, with a more sober perspective, it’s not that gigantic anymore.

• “Morrowind felt like a world so big that you could never explore it completely. The systems were so esoteric, they felt like you were truly learning magic. The game has aged millions of times better than most games from that era, but it certainly does not compare to what we have today.” – wvtarheel

Back then, you had to experiment and search yourself longer

Why weren’t these games actually that big? It’s mainly because many of the games were released in the 1990s or very early 2000s. Back then, the internet was not as widespread and, by far, not as filled with information as it is today.

Anyone facing a problem or a seemingly unsolvable task in a game back then had to find information differently: They bought magazines with walkthroughs or exchanged ideas with friends about the game.

“Just quickly looking up the solution on the internet” was only possible on rare occasions back then, if you even had an internet connection at all. Therefore, you had to spend longer with a game and couldn’t shout “I don’t get it!” after 5 minutes and read on your phone how it continues.

Cortyn says: A game that felt extremely large to me back then was Grandia 2. After I had been playing mainly the Final Fantasy games for a long time, I was fascinated by the somewhat action-oriented battles with tactical decisions in Grandia 2, getting lost in the game world. I remember playing for weeks and thinking the game would never end. A little over a year ago, I played it again and was surprised at how quickly it was over – somehow it had lost its size, even though it had never changed.

What games from the past do you remember that somehow seemed bigger and today don’t appear that big at all? Are there games that you viewed with fascination as a child or teenager that in hindsight were significantly smaller than you thought?
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