But there were BBSs and other ways of venting. I still don't remember people complaining about how short many games were back in the day. The original Ultimas weren't particularly long either. Even Ultima 7, once I realized why I always got stuck on Horace (because I was an idiot), was beaten in a single weekend (and it wasn't a weekend of nothing but Ultima 7).
The only SNES games I remember being particularly long were the FF games.
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Games have been getting longer, in my mind, since the NES days, but even in the NES days you had things like Zelda, Metal Gear, and Metroid.
It was hard to make a long game pre-saved games.