When collecting games, particularly when trudging back to the past to play iconic games I haven't played yet, I always try to experience the game in its original format. Especially if you're trying to capture the same sensation that others felt who did play them at their respective times. In an industry full of ports, remasters, and remakes, I always wonder about if my first experience of a game is sullied or deceptively better because I didn't start with the original.
But a prominent aspect of the industry today is games being a bit more like a service. I first thought about this after playing and thoroughly enjoying Yooka-Laylee. When it first released, I remember seeing a bit of backlash that it wasn't as polished as people were expecting: glitchy, poor camera angles, etc. I don't know the full details because, well, I never played it until several years later! Several years and several patches later. I actually haven't gone and done the research on what exactly has been patched into Yooka-Laylee, but I know for sure there were at least some mechanical tweaks and glitch fixes, and I'm assuming more content was added too, making my first experience more fleshed out compared to others'.
I've also played a fair bit of New Pokémon Snap since getting it for Christmas, and it would appear as though a decent chunk of free content has been added via free updates since release. More areas to explore and more Pokémon to snap. My initial thoughts were being pleasantly surprised by how much content there is and the length of the game... alhough, that may just be because I started playing it much later!
Sometimes it seems the intention is to drip-feed content so the experience is drawn out over a long period of time. But of course, if you're not there at the time, it all gets dumped on you in one go for your first experience! It is a little jarring sometimes when you start a game for the first time and get bombarded with update notifications for new features and levels when you don't even know anything about the game yet.
Similarly for Skyrim, been wondering which version to play because there's like a gazillion versions and I'm sure a gazillion patches for each one. It seems most people tell me, iirc, I'm usually pretty drunk, the remastered version for PC? Definitely a PC version anyway so that the option for third-party mods are there... Which also change the game in a variety of ways... Let's not go down that rabbit hole lmao.
But what do you guys think? Are there any games you've played and wondered what the original was like? Or played games late and wondered what they may have been like without game changing patches?
As a side note, even games from the N64 and GC era got ghost updated and had different versions released over time. Smash Melee had quite a few character tweaks between regional versions, essentially like balance patches they do today. Always find it funny that the version usually played at the biggest tournaments is the NTSC version, not even the latest patch!