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Post by Scylla on May 12, 2012 15:46:28 GMT -5
Then I saw replies in the comments section basically agreeing that a guide is needed; one even theorizing that LoZ was developed to sell NP. They're just clueless. Nintendo Power didn't even exist at the time, and the Famicom version is older yet. It's silly to suggest that a Japanese game would be made to sell an American magazine that didn't exist yet. Anyway, to get at the general topic here, I find I'm good at living in my own little gaming bubble (just look at the photo I recently put in the "show yourselves" topic, haha). I don't care much for many ways in which games are progressing, but it really doesn't matter. On the rare occasions when I play something modern, I'm still behind the curve because I extremely rarely pick something up at launch. I'm cheap, so I wait for mark downs (and I'm in no rush because I have so many games that most will sit on my shelves unplayed for years, anyway). I get to skip all the hype and fanboy BS, and I don't care about online gaming. While everybody else is whining about the new 360 dashboard and ads and such, I just laugh because I never get online with it and don't update until a game forces me to. So I'm pretty comfortable in my bubble of 80s and 90s gaming (and a little past 2000). I read old Nintendo Power issues cover to cover, play the games that got coverage in them, and just immerse myself in the atmosphere of that time. I do refer to GameFAQs and such from time to time, but I also happily draw maps and make notes too, even when I could just as well get that stuff online. I also love digging deep into the most obscure of the obscure. I feel like the Lewis and Clark of gaming, haha. While everybody else is playing what everyone else is playing (and this even applies to retro gamers to some degree), I'm playing Last Imperial Prince on PC-FX or something, haha. I love the feeling of discovery, trying out games that have basically no information available online in English related to them. So I'm pretty good to sticking with what I like about gaming and rejecting whatever I don't. I don't see myself ever giving up gaming or collecting. I think maybe a key difference between myself and other gamers is that I already had a period in which I didn't have access to games. My childhood NES was actually my brother's, and he chose to sell it once he grew out of gaming. That left me with a couple years or so with no games, and I so badly missed them in my life. I spent over a year saving up the $100 to buy my own SNES when I was 11, which was no small feat because I wasn't one of those kids that got an allowance. I basically had to save what cash I got on my birthday or Christmas, and then wait for the next special occasion. If not for the special promotion Nintendo way doing, giving out free copies of Super Mario All-Stars, I would've had to save up even longer since I only had enough for the bare unit. Once I had games back in my life, I've never looked back. As for collecting, I just love the visceral feel of holding the actual game, flipping through the manual, popping it into the system, holding the system's controller, and playing on an SDTV. I couldn't see myself ever giving up my physical games in favor of emulation. For the most part, I just can't get into a game when it's emulated. I don't feel invested in it. And even when I use a controller to PC adapter and hook up the PC to a TV, it's still not quite the same. One thing I think keeps me from burning out is that I've never been a marathon person. I don't care how much I like something, I don't want to do it for hours and hours straight. I need to mix things up. As much as I love playing games, it's not unusual for me to go a week or two without playing anything, or even a month, just because I have other things going on in my life. But I'm always happy to go back to them. Another thing that makes my gaming more enriching is that I connect with many people over it. When I was a child, it was very different. When I was a little girl, I basically had no one to play with. My brother wasn't interested, and my friends were more interested in playing with dolls and other more stereotypical girl stuff. That was fine since I loved Barbie, My Little Pony, Cabbage Patch Kids, etc. too, but that made video games pretty solitary for me. Then when I got into my teens, I didn't even bother to ask because I was better off hiding my hobby. Most other teenage girls had zero interest in video games, and the girls and boys alike would consider you a weirdo if you're a girl that loves video games. But once I became an adult, all of that changed for me. Admittedly, I still keep my hobby mostly to myself, but I'm such a quiet person (outside of in writing) that I keep most everything to myself anyway. My fiance, who's been with me over 10 years, is a gamer too, as is his brother, his sister, and our friends. I've gotten so much enjoyment out of socializing over games, be it multiplayer gaming, just watching one person play, or whatever. We gather together and game all the time, both new stuff and old stuff. If gaming was still totally solitary for me, I don't know where I'd be with it, but I have great appreciation for being able to bond over it and it only increases my love for gaming. TL;DR: I really like video games, haha. |
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Post by jjmcjj on May 13, 2012 3:39:55 GMT -5
As for collecting, I just love the visceral feel of holding the actual game, flipping through the manual, popping it into the system, holding the system's controller, and playing on an SDTV. I couldn't see myself ever giving up my physical games in favor of emulation. For the most part, I just can't get into a game when it's emulated. I don't feel invested in it. And even when I use a controller to PC adapter and hook up the PC to a TV, it's still not quite the same. I think the best advantage is the guarantee the games will work as intended. While most emulated games I've tested out work fine there still is a lot of configuration fiddling that needs to be done to get games on more modern or at least complicated hardware to play properly, and even then it's still never quite perfect (e.g. the Silverload article on here brings up the issues pretty much every PS1 emulator for some reason has with the game's voice clips). Sometimes emulators can give the games perks not normally had on the regular system, like a far more robust selection of controller options, some plugins giving the games higher-res graphics, ScummVM enabling mouse support and a better save function for the NES Maniac Mansion, and of course the ability to actually play physical copies of these games on your computer via the emulators and being able to save your game on it and creating as many memory cards as you want is pretty awesome too (not to mention generally hassle-free multi-region compatibility!). Of course I have heard that physical discs tend to run more sluggishly on emulators than actual disc images do but I'm not able to verify this. But overall yeah it's preferable to own the original copies along with the system in most cases and being as flat broke as I am is the only thing preventing me from favoring buying actual games and systems over emulating them (even then there are literally tons of games near impossible to find or ludicrously expensive outside of emulation so there's that). |
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Post by X-pert74 on May 13, 2012 5:16:43 GMT -5
Fixed  |
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Post by r0ck3rz on May 13, 2012 7:42:51 GMT -5
As for collecting, I just love the visceral feel of holding the actual game, flipping through the manual, popping it into the system, holding the system's controller, and playing on an SDTV. I couldn't see myself ever giving up my physical games in favor of emulation. For the most part, I just can't get into a game when it's emulated. I don't feel invested in it. And even when I use a controller to PC adapter and hook up the PC to a TV, it's still not quite the same. I think the best advantage is the guarantee the games will work as intended. While most emulated games I've tested out work fine there still is a lot of configuration fiddling that needs to be done to get games on more modern or at least complicated hardware to play properly, and even then it's still never quite perfect (e.g. the Silverload article on here brings up the issues pretty much every PS1 emulator for some reason has with the game's voice clips). Sometimes emulators can give the games perks not normally had on the regular system, like a far more robust selection of controller options, some plugins giving the games higher-res graphics, ScummVM enabling mouse support and a better save function for the NES Maniac Mansion, and of course the ability to actually play physical copies of these games on your computer via the emulators and being able to save your game on it and creating as many memory cards as you want is pretty awesome too (not to mention generally hassle-free multi-region compatibility!). Of course I have heard that physical discs tend to run more sluggishly on emulators than actual disc images do but I'm not able to verify this. But overall yeah it's preferable to own the original copies along with the system in most cases and being as flat broke as I am is the only thing preventing me from favoring buying actual games and systems over emulating them (even then there are literally tons of games near impossible to find or ludicrously expensive outside of emulation so there's that). Both sides have their advantages. I had thought about collecting, but then it's like, how much longer do you suppose the media containing the software will last going into the future? Last thing I want to see is 20 years from now I feel like an NES game, only to find that the circuits are wasting away with time. Right now, I had been sticking with 2d cartridge emulation. Even if I wanted the physical copy, with discs, I've never seen a wussier media. It's like they scratch and become unplayable when you so much as look at them the wrong way. Then you've got the consoles laser eye. I don't think there's a console that has one that lasts. Christ, I think ISO's will do more for preservation of the generations that use discs than roms will for the cartridge generations.... Also, there's a certain side of gaming that pretty much requires emulation: www.romhacking.net/ |
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Post by Scylla on May 13, 2012 12:18:12 GMT -5
Having dug deep into game restoration (a natural side effect of owning so many games and systems), I find that the longevity of classic systems and games is vastly underestimated. There's a a lot of fear mongering associated with retro games, when in actuality it's the more modern systems that are far more unreliable. There is some level of minor maintenance required to keep classic games working well, but, on the flip side, these games and systems are practically invincible, always able to be restored to perfect working condition with a minor amount of work even when a problem does arise. Outside of prototypes and such, which use more fragile chips because they aren't intended to be a permanent thing, the vast majority of carts should work for a very long time to come (really, there's not much in them to break down), and most manufactured CDs, even the earliest dating back to the 80s, are still working perfect, assuming they were kept in good shape. A lot of gamers see an impending apocalypse with batteries in carts with battery backed-up saves, but again, the vast majority of even the earliest game batteries are still perfectly fine. And on top of that, they're easy to replace, for the very rare instances in which one encounters a truly dead battery (a lot of the time that people lose saves is actually due to dirty carts/systems, so a simple cleaning will set everything right). Most systems hold up very well, although some have unique problems (like the Famicom Disk System and its belts), and it varies between systems that have no moving parts versus those that do. Some systems have issues with lubrication breaking down or dying capacitors, but these are easy fixes too and only represent a minority of systems. Most just need to be kept clean and that's it, and they'll continue to work for a very, very long time.
But even if we speak hypothetically about a day in which, say, every single game for so-and-so system is dead and unable to be repaired, I don't think those games would suddenly become completely worthless. Values would drop significantly, I'm sure, but there would still be collectors. As it is, even with working games, there are many collectors out there more interested in the collecting itself than actually playing the games (which is sad to me, but that's their choice). A rare dead game will still be a rare game and would command more. Packaging would become far more important to collectors if the game is functionless, but I think even loose carts would still be collected. So we don't have to worry about our collections losing all value. If our games were dead, we could still sell them off and then turn to emulation. But, honestly, I don't expect such a situation to ever occur within my lifetime.
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Post by Deleted on May 13, 2012 12:46:01 GMT -5
My NES, Genesis and SNES have all stopped working, and I always kept my stuff in good condition. It's just easier to emulate at this point.
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Post by Scylla on May 13, 2012 12:58:44 GMT -5
They probably just need to be cleaned. Get something like a credit/debit/library/phone card, wrap a thin piece of cotton cloth around it (like a rag from an old t-shirt or something), pour on some isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol (preferably 70%+ and with no additives), and insert that in and out of the system's connectors. Get some q-tips, wet those with the alcohol, and scrub down the contacts of the games. After that, everything should work perfectly.
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Post by Deleted on May 13, 2012 13:15:38 GMT -5
You'll be my hero if this ends up working!
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Post by Ike on May 13, 2012 13:22:23 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on May 13, 2012 13:22:57 GMT -5
Yeah, but you aren't a chick. duh.
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Post by Ike on May 13, 2012 14:13:43 GMT -5
oh
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Post by Deleted on May 13, 2012 14:15:13 GMT -5
That was a joke. I forgot all about your old thread on the subject. I'll have to give it a look and see if it works for me.
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Post by Allie on May 13, 2012 14:51:33 GMT -5
Yeah, but you aren't a chick. duh. And yet we wonder why there's an ever-increasing number of M->F TGs in the Western World. |
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Post by Deleted on May 13, 2012 14:55:59 GMT -5
Man, I feel like a woman.
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Post by Ike on May 13, 2012 15:15:59 GMT -5
Sometimes you feel like a nut.
Sometimes you don't.
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