A long time ago, there was a big difference between PC and console gaming. The former often came with headaches. You’d fight with drivers, struggle with crashes, and grow ever more frustrated dealing with CD piracy checks and endless patches and updates. Meanwhile, consoles offered the exact opposite experience—just slam in a cartridge, and go!

That beautiful feature fell away when consoles joined the Internet. Suddenly there were servers to sign in to and updates to download and a whole bunch of hoops to jump through before you even got to play a game. Now, those early generations of Internet-connected consoles are becoming retro, and that’s introduced a whole new set of problems now the infrastructure is dying or dead. Boot up and play? You must be joking!