Scrappy Mechanic / Game Systems

Sometimes it isn't the game itself that has problematic mechanics so much as the platform it's on...

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Platform-specific issues

Arcade

• Almost nobody who runs an arcade or collects arcade hardware likes dealing with Konami's Bubble System hardware, used for some of their games, most notably Gradius and TwinBee. To make a long story short, it uses "bubble memory", an early attempt at memory hardware that doesn't use moving parts unlike floppy disks or hard drives. Unfortunately, the Bubble System imposes a waiting timer in order to warm the hardware up to operating temperature, and it is very fragile and vulnerable to electromagnetic fields, which are everywhere in your usual arcade due to how many other cabinets are present. Bubble System games ended up being ported to more traditional ROM chips for overseas releases.
• Konami's eAMUSEMENT services goes down for maintenance on a daily basis, from 5 AM to 7 AM Japan time; during this time, players cannot log into the eAMUSEMENT network on games using it to access their personal data (including score records, unlocks, and the like); anyone attempting to play at the time will be forced into "guest" mode where only a subset of features will be available. This isn't a problem for players in Asia, as most arcades are closed at the time, but this becomes a hassle for players in the United States, as due to time zones maintenance happens in the early to mid-afternoon over there as a result. Even more obnoxiously, this also applies to the Konasute PC ports of arcade games, which can impact players in Asia who want to play at that time and not just ones in Western time zones, resulting in a very frequent maintenance schedule even by the standards of always-online home games (which typically only do maintenance periods during emergencies and just before major updates).
• Updates for arcade games on the exA-Arcadia platform and for the system hardware itself aren't done through downloads over the Internet like with many other modern arcade platforms; the owner has to actually ship the physical goods to the company's headquarters in Tokyo and then wait for them to be shipped back. This is meant to be a more secure way to apply updates, since the exA system and its game dongles are proprietary hardware, and likely isn't a huge problem for those in Japan, but for foreign owners (exA games are sold globally), shipping typically costs money, on top of customs fees depending on the combination of countries and possible delays (e.g. if there is a major hiccup in shipping routes). This means an exA owner not in Japan can possibly have to wait several weeks to get their game or system back just because of a software update that other arcade platforms can simply apply in an instant, and while it's exceedingly rare, there is the possibility that the shipping courier they use could lose their product entirely.

Atari 2600

• The Atari 2600 controller has its sole button to the left of the joystick, making it unusable for left-handed players unless you open the controller up to mod it. Imagine being a kid in the 70s, going to your friend's house where said friend has multiple controllers for you and your friends to use, only to be unable to play effectively or competitively with them because you don't have the right-hand dexterity needed to use one of their controllers. Sure, you can just plug in a Sega Genesis controller now since it uses the same connector, but that wasn't an option in the 70s.

Game Boy / Game Boy Color / Game Boy Advance

• The Game Boy Advance's 240×160 screen was able to show amazing graphics for the time, but it created some problems when it came time to port games from the Nintendo Entertainment System's 256×240 and the Super Nintendo's 256×224 resolution. Particularly, as the GBA screen was wider it resulted in games having to be "trimmed" vertically to fit, which added Fake Difficulty to titles like Super Mario World and Mega Man & Bass: enemy and hazard placements that were visible on the SNES would be off-screen on the GBA, and it was very easy to ram into unseen hazards. Mario World made up for it by adding features that made other aspects of the game easier (saving wherever you wanted, keeping accumulated lives when you save and quit, and spawning colored Yoshis in levels), while games like Mega Man and Bass did not.
  • The Game Boy and Game Boy Color suffered even more with the limited screen space, as they were both 160×144 and some developers, Nintendo included, insisted in porting or making new games without regards to how much smaller the screen was. In games like Mega Man that is not so bad mainly because its five games were made from the ground up to account for that, but then you get Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, or Blaster Master: Enemy Below, where you can only react in time if you know something is there.
• The Game Boy Advance SP infamously doesn't include a headphone jack, particularly annoying given that it's a handheld console. Somewhat mitigated in that third-party adapters and SP-compatible headphones exist, but they too have their own issues, namely that they plug into the same port as the SP's AC adapter, thus meaning one can't charge the SP and use headphones at the same time.

NES

• In an attempt to distance themselves from The Great Video Game Crash of 1983, Nintendo of America ditched the traditional top-loading cartridge mechanism used by the NES's Japanese counterpart, the Family Computer, for a "zero insertion force" slot: The cartridge is slid into the front of the system and then pressed down, similar to a VCR. Unfortunately, this mechanism was infamous for being unreliable and constantly causing the infamous "flashing screen of death", as well as gradually bending the pins in the cartridge. It gets even worse today considering the system's been long out of production and many functioning NESes are in fairly worn states today, with all official repair services for them having been discontinued a long time ago^note Thankfully, you can buy third-party replacement cartridge slots that are quite easy to install, requiring nothing more than disassembling the console and swapping them out (they pressure-fit to the circuit board), but it's nevertheless something a lot of people wouldn't be comfortable doing and unless you know how to properly ground yourself you risk burning out one of the console's chips with an errant static shock which would irreparably ruin the entire console.
• On older games with battery-backed saves, when you power the system off, you must hold down the reset button while shutting the system off, or there's a chance that your save data might become corrupted due to the NES CPU still running for a fraction of a second after the system is powered off, with the reset button preventing further code execution that might unintentionally affect the save data. Newer cartridges with battery-backed saves that use the MMC5 mapper fix this by being able to detect when the system is reset/powered off, but nowadays, most players used to just turning the system off normally after saving their game may not know about the older cartridge type's restriction or just forget to do so. And, even if you do remember to perform this action when necessary, chances are that the battery's already empty, meaning your save data is lost regardless.
• Two pins used for hardware expansion in the Famicom's cartridge slot were removed from the cartridge slot of the NES, resulting in an inferior audiovisual game experience for some U.S. games compared to the Japanese version (such as Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse) and causing some games to just not get exports of any kind due to relying on cartridge-side expansion chips to run properly (such as the Famicom adaptation of Gradius II).
• The CIC lockout chip was a cause of never-ending frustration owing to it being a little too eager to do its job. It was designed to send a signal to the game's chip, which would send a response signal, and if the console chip didn't receive one it would reset the console once a second to prevent play. That's right, any time you put a cartridge in and the console blinked was just this ornery little bastard not happy with the signal it got from the console, as it was very easy for dirt or corrosion to interfere with the signal. This thing was so infamously hated and problematic that the top-loading revision of the NES excluded it completely. Thankfully, pin 4 is what sends the reset signal, so all you have to do to put this little bugger in its place and circumvent it entirely is to crack your console open, find the 16-pin chip labeled "3193A", and cut pin 4 with a set of nail scissors. If only we knew this back in the 1980s...
• Even though the NES's Japan-region counterpart, the Famicom, is known for being more durable and more developer-friendly than the NES, it does have one noticeable strange design choice: The controllers are hard-wired into the console, meaning there's no easy replacements if either controller gets damaged. Besides, it lacks of RCA composite video and audio output ports like the NES, with the RF output port as the only option.
• Furthermore, the Famicom's 2P controller has no Select or Start buttons. This meant that early games like Super Mario Bros. didn't let Player 2 pause, even when brought stateside for the NES, so Player 2's Start button is useless in those games.

Nintendo 3DS

• With past Nintendo handhelds, there's no Region Coding, so if you're traveling abroad and you see a game you want to buy, or a game you want is not available in your region, you can grab it and immediately start playing it on your different-region device. The 3DS, however, is the first Nintendo handheld system to lock out games based on region, much to the ire of import collectors and fans, with no publicly-announced plans to address this. While there are hacks to disable the region-lock, these can cause problems with your 3DS, from voiding the warranty and disqualifying it from official repair services to outright bricking the system, and even if they don't Nintendo will more often than not patch them by the next system update.
• There are two ways to add friends: Locally via local wireless, or via Internet by exchanging friend codes. For whatever reason, you can't provisionally add friend codes if your 3DS is not connected, unlike with Nintendo DS games, and there are many possible use cases where you can't meet with the other player locally but also cannot connect your 3DS to the Internet. You could use a smartphone as a mobile hotspot (aka "tethering"), but not every 3DS user owns a smartphone, and mobile providers can disable tethering unless you switch to one of their other plans that do offer it.
• The microSD Card slot on the New 3DS requires using a screwdriver to gain access to, just so you can do things like access your photos and screenshots on your PC, unlike the non-New 3DS and both 2DS models where you simply pop off a tab with your finger to access the slot. There is an option in the Settings area to allow data on the microSD card to be sent over a network via SMB (Windows file sharing), thus sidestepping the entire screwdriver issue, but the location of this option is only intuitive in hindsight and is notoriously finicky regardless. To date, nobody has found a way to get a non-Windows computer to reliably connect to the New 3DS's variety of network sharing. Some players just opt to permanently remove the screws and keep the hatch in place with tape instead.
• Anything that strictly relies on StreetPass becomes this if you do not live in Japan, due to the lack of population density coupled with relative popularity of handheld gaming in most other countries. You can stroll around even the busiest of metropolitan areas in the US and be lucky to StreetPass even one other player. Your only options for farming them in bulk will be to attend Fan Conventions and other events geared towards video game players, or to find a StreetPass Relay point that's somehow still functioning. And with the Switch in full swing and Nintendo quietly sidelining the 3DS at the end of the 2010s, even going to Japan or conventions is no guarantee when more and more people are leaving their 3DSes at home or selling them outright in favor of the Nintendo Switch.
• The New 3DS's and New 2DS's C-stick is derided for having the feel of a pencil eraser or a laptop mouse nub compared to the full Circle Pad provided by the Circle Pad Pro, which is not compatible with these versions of the 3/2DS (partly because the ZL and ZR buttons on the system itself are in the way). Furthermore, it can wear down over time, particularly if you have long nails. Sure, the built-in C-stick means you don't have to carry a bulky accessory that runs on a separate battery if you want to play games that require that secondary analog input or at least play better with it, but it's just not as comfortable to use as a full-sized Circle Pad, especially for games that make heavy use of a secondary analog (such as all three 3DS Monster Hunter games and Kid Icarus: Uprising if you're left-handed).
• Every 3DS comes with an SD card and the "new" 3DS line comes with a microSD card, but they only offer a paltry 2 and 4 GB respectively. While this is usually no problem for small games like third party indie titles or Virtual Console games, big budget titles like a Pokémon game can eat up far more memory storage than the included SD card can hold. Even if you know this ahead of time and purchase an SD card, the 3DS has another issue regarding the storage size of said SD cards. Using any SD card that's bigger than 32 GB will not work due to the 3DS only accepting SD cards in the FAT32 format (larger SD cards use the ExFAT format). While it is very easy to format larger SD cards to be in FAT32, most people that aren't tech savvy won't know about it.

Philips CD-i

• The second controller port is on the back instead of on the front, which makes it harder to reach on different levels depending of where the console is installed — considering controller 2 is not kept plugged in since the first setup. That is, if there's a second controller port... because it was only added two years after the console's release, when its focus shifted more to gaming.
• Game settings and save data, as well as the system's settings, date and time, are stored in an NVRAM chip named Timekeeper. This chip is powered by a battery that, if dead, can make most models of the console other than the original 910 not only unable to save games and store settings, but also to read games or even to boot up at all. Although this battery is easily found, replacing it is quite difficult, as seen here.

PlayStation 4

• The messaging system was changed, becoming more akin to the PS3's party chat mode. This can be fairly irritating when people randomly pull you into group chats where you know nobody in the room, but the only other option is restricting DMs to friends only, which deprives you of any other messages you'd receive (except for the ones sent by Sony themselves).
• Online leaderboards (on games that have them) refresh every 15 minutes, unlike most other platforms that support the feature, where your score is instantly shown after uploading.
• The ports of PS2 games have the Start button unchangeably assigned to the touchpad. Due to that, PS3 legacy controllers (including most arcade sticks) are useless on them — unless you alternate with a PS4 controller to go past the title screen and to pause, which is especially annoying if you're playing a fighting game and need to use the pause menu many times.

Steam

• On Steam, soundtracks were once classified as DLC — meaning you had to purchase the base game in order to purchase them as well. It did not matter if you already purchased the game through another retailer or for another platform, or if you just wanted the soundtrack and not the game. While some publishers are kind enough to sell soundtracks through services that are independent of whether you bought the game or not (such as Bandcamp or itch.io), not every publisher does it. However, this was changed in January 2020 so that soundtracks can finally be bought as standalone purchases, without having to purchase the game.

Steam Deck

• There's a Desktop Mode that you can switch to, effectively turning the Deck into a portable Linux PC, which vastly opens up possibilities for your Deck such as installing mods or non-Steam games. However, while the mouse cursor can be manipulated with the touchscreen or analog sticks, the virtual keyboard is disabled in this mode, so if you don't happen to have a way to connect a keyboard to the Deck (which will entail a Bluetooth wireless keyboard, a dock with a USB-A port so you can hook up a conventional keyboard, or a keyboard with a USB-C terminal, which aren't quite common), or install remote desktop software and then remote to your Deck from another PC, Desktop Mode is as good as useless.
• Sharing screenshots is a massive pain in the ass. There is no option to, say, post screenshots to Twitter or Facebook, or transfer them to another device via a local wireless connection. Instead, if you want to share screenshots, you have to upload them to Steam Cloud, then log into Steam on the device you want to upload from, go to your uploaded media library, and save the screenshot from there. Further creating headaches is that depending on your connection, you might have a situation where your Deck is connected to the internet but cannot connect to Steam servers for some reason, meaning your Deck might as well be completely offline. While one could work around this by installing third-party Steam Deck tools, or installing something like a web browser or Discord and then setting it up as a non-Steam "game" in Game Mode (the default mode for Steam Deck), that requires going into Desktop Mode with all the problems that entail.
• For those who have a PC that only runs Windows (which is to say, a lot of gamers), the Steam Deck does accept microSD cards...in a format that is recognized by Linux, but not Windows. So if your PC has Windows only, that throws the prospect of using a microSD card to put non-Steam software you want to run on your Deck or transfer screenshots from your Deck to your PC out the window, when traditional consoles and handhelds that allow use of an (micro)SD card or USB drive to transfer files between them and your PC don't face such a limitation.

Xbox 360

• The "classic" model of the Xbox 360 is infamous for being the only console of its generation to require an adapter for Wi-Fi connectivity, which can be troublesome if your 360 is somewhere where an Ethernet cable can't reach easily. While Wi-Fi may not be as suitable for multiplayer gaming as a good old wired connection, this is still a glaring disadvantage for those who just want to receive game and system updates as well as purchase games digitally.

Xbox Series X|S

• Unlike the PlayStation 5, which allows its internal storage to be expanded via any high-speed NVMe M.2 SSD, the Xbox Series X|S opted to utilize proprietary CFExpress based cards as its expandable storage solution. On paper, these expansion cards are far more consumer friendly in terms of easy installation since they can be slotted right into a dedicated port in the back of the Xbox instead of needing to physically open up the console with tools like the PS5. But in practice? The Xbox's storage cards are exorbitantly expensive, with a simple 1TB card costing almost as much as the Series S itself. Things really started to rear its ugly head around the time of Black Friday, when there were a plethora of sales for PS5-compatible SSDs that made them as cheap as $50 to $60 while the Xbox cards by Seagate (which were the only officially-licensed Xbox expansion cards at the time) remained in the $200 range.

Wii U

• The Wii U allowed most games to be played on the gamepad so that no one can hog the TV while playing. While this sounds like a good idea in theory, the gamepad has to be within the same room as the console itself or it can't communicate with it due to the effective range being just a mere few feet. This means that you can't, for example, take the gamepad with you to the bathroom if nature calls. This flaw was addressed with the Wii U's successor, the Nintendo Switch, which can be played anywhere.

Nintendo Switch

• The Switch's kickstand, while useful in a pinch if you want to play two-player games with someone in portable mode, only has one very upright position, making it uncomfortable to look at the screen unless whatever surface it's on is almost at eye-level, and if you're at a dining room or coffee shop table, it most certainly will not be. Also, since the charging/USB-C port is on the same side as the kickstand, you can't use the Switch in stand mode and charge at the same time, unless you invest in a third-party stand that allows access to the port.
• If you hold down the Home button instead of pressing it, you'll get an abridged system menu where you can put the console into sleep mode, airplane mode (if the Switch is in portable mode rather than docked), and system volume. The last setting would be useful if you don't wanna fuddle with the volume buttons (especially since they're next to the power button, which can be easy to press by mistake in a dark environment), however the game volume is lowered while the system mini-menu is active, even as you adjust the volume from within it, so unless you're willing to call and hide the mini-menu repeatedly, you're better off just using the physical volume buttons.
• Despite the fact that Twitter started allowing 280-character tweets in late 2017, when you share a screenshot to Twitter you are still limited to 140 characters. You'll have to copy the screenshot off of your SD Card and post it with some other device to get around this. This shortfall only stood out even more in a fall 2018 update that allows posting up to four photos in a single tweet...but still doesn't let you post more than 140 characters. This was somewhat remedied with the system version 11.0 update, where you can now transfer your photos and videos to a smart device and tweet with a 280-character limit.
• You have no way of copying screenshots and videos off of your Switch except through social media posts (and you cannot change post privacy or easily switch between Twitter accounts; many Twitter users have more than one account^note Usually a "main" account and a "private" account) or powering down the entire system to safely remove the SD card. While it's still in a way better than using a screwdriver like on the New 3DS, at least that had some way of copying files off of your system onto your PC without powering the system down and removing the SD card. The system version 11.0 update gets around this by allowing you to plug your Switch directly into a PC to access the SD card's contents, as well as transferring photos and videos to your smart device.
• Hori produced a special Joy-Con L that replaces the directional buttons with a proper D-pad, designed for games that strictly use 8-way digital directional movement. Unfortunately, because it doesn't connect wirelessly, it can only be used in Handheld Mode, not in TV or Tabletop modes.
• The Switch counts two Joy-Con as separate controllers even if used in tandem or put in a Joycon grip controller. While this is usually not an issue as most games only allow up to 4 players, in games that 8 players are a possibility like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, to allow 5 players or more means at least 2 players will need to either use the Joy Con stand alone (which can be uncomfortable with some players due to the controller's smaller size) or be forced to get Pro Controllers and/or GameCube controllers with the Adapter (which is a blow to the wallet).
• The Switch's voice chat has been heavily criticized for requiring a smart device to use, a bit of a baffling decision considering that the Nintendo DS and Wii (until the shutdown of Nintendo WFC) did directly support voice chat (with the WiiSpeak accessory used for the latter) and Sony's and Microsoft's consoles have always supported voice chat since the Xbox 360 - PS3 - Wii generation. While the Switch's audio jack can support audio input in addition to output and thus some games such as Fortnite and Killer Queen Black allow simply plugging a headset into the jack for voice communication, very few games support it, none of which are first-party games. Many players instead just use a third-party voice chat app like Discord or Facebook Messenger since chances are they have those already.
• The Switch prioritizes the microSD card for downloads if one is inserted. This by itself is a small if noticeable annoyance for those who prefer to use the internal storage for patches and DLC for their games, but what makes it even more tedious is that the console does not let the user move data between the two destinations in the settings^*Something that the Wii allowed, both when downloading from the Shop Channel and when managing data. Instead, you have to first archive the software or game in question, turn off the console and remove the SD Card, then start it up again and redownload the necessary data. And if you forgot to archive, then re-insert the card after it's done and restarted? The console will promptly delete the downloaded data from the internal storage, forcing you to repeat it again. If it's a game that gets frequent patches or DLC, be prepared to repeat this plenty of times.
  • The 10.0.0 firmware update finally added this option, making moving data much quicker and convenient. Unfortunately, save data can still not be moved using this method.
• Third-party Bluetooth wireless controllers get tacked on with a considerable amount of additional input lag when playing online or local wireless multiplayer. This does not affect controllers that connect to a receiver connected to the Switch via USB, thankfully.

Multiplatform issues

Control

• Both the Nintendo 64 and the GameCube unfortunately have analog sticks that are rather delicate and susceptible to wear and tear. This leads to the infamous "looseness" of the stick that can either make it less sensitive or unable to be pushed to its "full" position, and will eventually happen even after normal use. Some games like F-Zero GX allow the player to calibrate the stick's range of movement and deadzone, but these only apply to the games you calibrate the sticks on. Thankfully you can buy replacement analog sticks that are actually better than the original hardware and will last much longer, but installing them into a controller of course requires some knowledge and confidence doing such things that many consumers simply don't have.
• The PlayStation line as a whole has the "confirm" and "cancel" buttons traditionally be depending on what region console you have. For Japan-region consoles prior to the PlayStation 5, O is to confirm and X is to cancel, derived from the idea that "O is yes, X is no". However, it's the other way around for Western-region consoles, referring to the concept of "X marks the spot" and because the O/X concept isn't really well-known internationally. Is your "home" region outside of Japan and you want to import Japanese games, or vice versa? Prepare for a lot of accidental menu mishaps.
• Namco's GunCon peripheral series:
  • The main design flaw with the original GunCon for the PS1 is that the two side buttons are near the front of the barrel, necessitating a "one hand on the grip and the other on the barrel" grip for games that make heavy use of these side buttons, such as Time Crisis, making it harder to wail on the trigger whenever a high firing rate is needed.^note That said, for Time Crisis there are a few workarounds: One is to plug a steering wheel controller into the unused port and use its pedal. Another, if one lacks a steering wheel controller and is not averse to putting their foot on a controller, is to plug a traditional controller into that port, and press their big toe on the X button. This would get addressed with the GunCon 2 for the PS2, where the auxilary buttons are in multiple places — right above the trigger and slightly behind it, on the back of the barrel, and where the magazine would eject on a real gun — allowing the player more ways to hold the gun.
  • The GunCon 3 has a half-gamepad on the side of the barrel with two trigger buttons and an analog stick, to be used in certain contexts like the console-exclusive mode of Time Crisis 4. Unfortunately, it's mounted on the left side of the barrel and you cannot change this. It's clear Namco did not have left-handed players in mind when designing this controller.
• The controllers for the Switch, PS4/PS5, and Xbox One/Series S/Series X tend to be very susceptible to stick drift, much more so than, say, an Xbox 360 controller.​​​

Connectivity

• Games (single-player games especially) that are dependent on a central server, which basically means that the game only functions as long as the publisher allows it, and as soon as they get tired enough of running these servers and shut them down it nobody can ever play the game again. Ross Scott in particular - a huge proponent of game preservation - considers this one of gaming's greatest sins, and has covered multiple games that have been "killed" by this method of DRM.
• Nintendo's "Friend Code" system. The idea is that players receive unique randomly-generated numbers instead of usernames, because of the idea that someone could come up with obscene usernames even if Nintendo implemented username-censoring, which would be bad for Nintendo's family-friendly image. It also has the advantage of allowing users to freely change their names (a massive plus for players who later undergo gender transition or otherwise need to change their name, e.g. stalking or privacy issues or just sick of their old name), unlike on competitors' consoles where display name is also player ID and changing name costs a fee (Microsoft) or is not allowed (Sony). However, even by the standards of randomly-generated user IDs, it's had its share of problems, which have thankfully been recitified over time:
  • Players who want to add each other need to mutually add each other; if one player puts in the other's FC and the other doesn't reciprocate, they're not registered. This made the practice of putting one's FC in their forum signature, social media profile, etc. largely useless. The Nintendo Switch eliminated this issue, only requiring that one party disclose their friend code; in case parents are concerned about their children getting adds from unfamiliar players, there is the option to disable friend requests.
  • On the Nintendo DS, every single game uses its own FCs. Which means if you had^note The Nintendo WFC network, used for Nintendo DS and Wii games, was closed down in 2014. a friend you played Mario Kart DS with, and you wanted to also play Tetris DS, Clubhouse Games, and Planet Puzzle League with them, for example, you had to repeat the adding process for each one of these games. This was thought to be fixed with the Wii with one FC for each system...only for Nintendo WFC-enabled games to continue to use the separate-FC-for-each-game system! This was finally eliminated with the Nintendo 3DS, with games using the system's existing friend list instead of requiring separate FCs.
• The non-DSi Nintendo DS does not support wifi hotspots with WPA or WPA2 security, meaning that back when Nintendo WFC was in service, if you wanted to play games online you had to either spend money on a USB dongle that requires a PC running Windows XP or higher, or downgrade the security of your router to WEP, which has been shown to be crackable even by someone with minimal hacking skills compared to WPA and especially WPA2 wireless security.
  • The 3DS and the Switch do support WPA2...but only the standard, "personal" variant of it that only asks for a password, not WPA2-Enterprise which requires a username along with a password, and the 3DS and Switch don't let you enter a username when trying to connect to wireless networks.^note While WPA2-Enterprise is mainly designed with companies in mind to prevent non-employees from using the network, and about the only time you'll see employees on game systems is on lunch breaks that are 30-60 minutes long, it also sees use at colleges and universities, where game systems are far more likely to be used and students have a lot more free time.
  • Worse, the 3DS's WPA2 support does not extend to its DS emulation. Even if the rest of the system is happily on a WPA2 router, the DS subsystem comes with its own wifi configuration screen, one which mimics the DS's to the point of only supporting WEP security. So if you picked up a 3DS with the hopes of getting in on the tail end of DS WFC without downgrading your router or using a dongle, you were out of luck.
• All of Nintendo's online-enabled systems use peer-to-peer connections instead of linking devices to a dedicated server, a design that creates problems particularly for those who try to play with those halfway across the planet, as well as those who play only to be bogged down with lag because one player out of four is using a low-quality connection, especially if it's a wifi connection. This makes Super Smash Bros. in particular absolutely intolerable online for competitive players unless all participants live close by and have near-perfect Internet connections, due to online Smash turning into a slideshow if anyone's connection is poor. Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics on Switch is known to lag even in turn-based games (you can spend literally a minute just watching the opening cutscene of a game if anyone's connection is particularly bad). The fact that the Switch requires a paid subscription for online play yet uses P2P anyway is a primary source of Broken Base for its users. The Switch does support dedicated servers, but so far the only games to do so are games that have cross-platform capability, such as Fortnite and Rocket League.
• Nintendo's net-enabled consoles suffer from the opposite problem the Xbox 360 has: While they come with Wi-Fi support, they don't innately come with Ethernet ports, requiring you to invest in a USB Ethernet adapter if you want optimal connection speeds and ping time. The OLED model of the Nintendo Switch is set to fix this, with an Ethernet port built into the dock, which is compatible with the "classic" Switch model as well. Unfortunately, by doing so the OLED dock now includes one fewer USB ports than the original version.
• The PlayStation and PlayStation 2 can have two of the same console linked up for certain multiplayer games, giving each player an entire screen to work with. This wouldn't be a Scrappy Mechanic in and of itself, but a lot of games, particularly PS1 games, have multiplayer that only supports linked consoles and not split-screen or online multiplayer (and PS1 has no online capability), meaning that one will need to have not only two controllers, but two of the same console, two of the same game, and two screens (one for each console), and space to have all of these set up (on top of all the elbow grease to put the setup together). Because of the expense, effort, and space needed to set all of this up, the vast majority of gamers treat games whose only multiplayer functionality is link-up multiplayer as not having any worthwhile multiplayer at all. Other consoles can do this sort of setup too, but at least their games almost never make it mandatory to have this sort of multi-console setup and will have split-screen available, and online play lets you have your own screen for multiplayer but without needing the systems and screens next to each other or even in the same building.
• On the Wii, 3DS, and Wii U, you cannot go into the Home Menu while online in a game, not even to, say, adjust brightness options. The Switch has the opposite problem: You can go into the Home Menu, but if you stick around for more than about 5 seconds you will be abruptly disconnected in whatever game you're playing, almost like an unintentional example of Schmuck Bait. This leads to an irritatingly common problem for those not familiar with this: Player decides to open their island gate on Animal Crossing: New Horizons and friends decide to join, player gets a friend request and accepts it, the connection is lost so everyone is kicked off their island with all unsaved changes lost.

Storage

• While older Nintendo systems not having any sort of cloud backup for save data is obviously expected, this has become a glaring problem with their net-enabled platforms, particularly the Wii, Nintendo 3DS, Wii U, and Nintendo Switch, despite their competitors^note Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 for the Wii, PS Vita for the 3DS, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 for the Wii U offering such solutions (granted, you have to pay for Sony's, but at least it's there). Losing your save data to storage corruption or through losing the system outright and having to buy a new one is already harsh enough, but just to rub salt in the wound, if you have to send your system to Nintendo for repairs, they may have to erase your hard-earned saved data depending on the type of the problem. 3DS users can sometimes get around this by purchasing their games physically instead of on the eShop (and many players will boycott the eShop for this reason alone), as many games can save data to the Game Card, but some games only save some data to it (usually, the SD Card data created by the game is just StreetPass data, at the least), or just write all save data to the SD Card which leads back to this problem.
  
  While game purchases can be transferred from a lost or data-corrupted system to a new one by calling Nintendo and providing some details, those details do include the serial numbers of both devices (hope you keep track of your systems' serial numbers), and this does not transfer saves at all unlike the system-to-system transfer that the user does.
  
  Nintendo seems to have finally listened to this when it comes to the Nintendo Switch; cloud backup for save data rolled out as part of their subscription-based online service in September 2018. It helps, because all Switch games, even those on Game Cards, save data entirely to the Switch's internal memory. Unfortunately, not all games' save data are supported (likely done to prevent cheating via Save Scumming, though this has the effect of punishing legitimate players more severely, due to running the risk of losing hours of work in unsupported games should their console die or need to be repaired/replaced).
• Nintendo has made their consoles with very limited storage space for the sake of keeping costs down, yet this causes more problems than it solves.
  • The Wii came with a paltry 512MB of storage that would quickly fill up if you bought a lot of games on the Virtual Console or had games with large save files. Nintendo would eventually release a patch that would allow people to save their games onto an SD card and load from there, but that also had its issues; booting a game from the SD card would temporarily make a copy of the data onto the Wii itself before loading, which meant that you couldn't run the game if you had no room left.
  • The Wii U came in two versions when it came to storage. Nintendo offered an 8GB model (white) and a 32GB model (black). Since you could download games as an alternative to buying a physical copy, storage space could fill up pretty darn fast. The 8GB model sold poorly and was quietly discontinued shortly after launch. SD cards could be used, but only up to 32GB due to needing to be cross compatible with the storage system emulation for Wii Mode. The Wii U did allow external USB hard drives to be used (up to 2TB), but only certain drives were allowed while others were either risky to use or simply did not work. On top of that, the hard drive could only be used for Wii U applications.
  • The Nintendo Switch comes with 32GB of storage like the Wii U before it. SD cards up to 2TB can be used too for more storage. The game cards can hold between 1GB to 32GB of data, but the bigger ones cost more money. Because costs to produce a game for the Switch in a physical copy is more expensive, some developers have opted to using a smaller sized game card and having their customers download the rest from Nintendo's eShop to cut down the costs (resulting in the common complaint of the physical version of such games being pointless); Doom (2016) only has single player mode in the physical copy version and you have to download the multiplayer modes if you want to play them. NBA 2K requires an SD card just to download the rest of the game if you're playing off a game card.
    • Even worse are the handful of games, such as Just Dance 2023, whose only "physical" release is nothing more than a download code in a case.

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