retrogaming anyone?

[Bowflex]

Ps2 was probably the peak system for arcade retrogaming. It had the various Williams/midway/Atari collections plus sega genesis, capcom, konami and namco collections. Plus plenty of others. Wii was quite the system as well but the pricing structure and ultimate lack of support kind of killed it.

 

[night]

I almost bought the SNK Neo Geo system in the 90s, but it was expensive. Now I buy Metal Slug in the app store for a few euros. Pretty amazing game with one of the best sprite graphics I have ever seen. The Japanese where masters in making top quality sprites.

I forgot to mention my fav retro racing game: Sega's OutRun! I love this game, great atmosphere, soundtrack(!) and retro graphics. With present racing games you have to walk through a menu with a zillion options before you can start driving a boring test round. With OutRun you just press start and go! (And there is a blond chick sitting next to you in the car as well).

Alien Syndrome was also a fav arcade, inspired on the Alien movie.

 

[Dutch Pinball ball]

I almost play retro games only.

Have gridlee for ipad. Still a big fan of Bagman, miss pac man and alot of shmups. Its awsome with a controller on ipad.

Some other games i like.

Pengo
Shinobi
Ghosts and goblins.

 

[Bowflex]

I always thought xenophobe was underrated but joust and rampage are the most fun you can have! Even the world tour was good!

 

[Baramos]

I started with the NES, then it went through SNES, N64, PS1, PS2, and now PS3. Sometimes I dig out my SNES collection but often I just replicate the experience via emulators (which is also a good way to play a lot of games that weren't released in the U.S., like Terranigma). I think the last time my collection saw the light of day was two years ago when I dug out my copy of Earthbound because I was wondering if I should sell it (Ultimately nostalgia overpowered my desire to make a quick $200 on eBay. I must have beaten Earthbound ten times as a kid).

Probably the last real retro-gaming purchase I made was the Mega Man collection on PS2. Brought back a lot of memories. I was still able to beat MM2 and 3 pretty effortlessly, as I spent the most time with them back on the NES. For some strange reason I never got around to getting the Megaman X collection, despite owning and loving the first one on SNES.

The annoying thing I'm sure for people just now getting into retro-gaming, younger gamers, is that if you want the actual machines and cartridges, you're going to have to pay out of your nose. There's no real reason for this in most cases, as you could easily find 9/10 of the games in digital format on one modern console or other, and games considered "rare" like Super Mario RPG, Final Fantasy III (VI), or Chrono Trigger are not actually numerically rare but go for very large amounts like $80 on eBay. It used to be the best places to find games like that were at used electronic stores or yard sales, as the owners were somewhat unaware of the prices they go for on eBay, or had a baseline price for the things regardless of which cartridge it was, but now they are savvy and charge based on eBay prices. Unfortunately, they also scam people--I've seen Super Mario World at a flea market for $30. Now, Super Mario World CAME with pretty much literally every SNES sold, at least when it launched, and if not every one and their brother bought a copy. But here's someone scamming someone interested in retrogaming. It's sad. I'd price it at about 7 dollars, or MAYBE ten.

EDIT: I suppose I should mention I had every iteration of the Game Boy, as well. Never had a Sega or Sony handheld, though.

 

[danivempire]

Yeah, flea market can be a good place for retro gaming but with 10 flea market I do i sometimes make 2 or 3 good deals (for video games).
And as retro gaming is cool again the prices go up for sometimes no reason at all.
I remember one time zelda on the nes. Just the cartidge. I ask for the price: ten euros!
But the lady went "it's because it's a rare game, the case is like gold"...
Yeah...
Just like every zelda nes games that were made...

 

[Jeff Strong]

Thank God for emulators. There's no way my wife would let me have all my old systems laying around. She's the opposite of a hoarder. I have to keep tabs on all my old stuff or it mysteriously ends up at Goodwill.

 

[brakel]

The annoying thing I'm sure for people just now getting into retro-gaming, younger gamers, is that if you want the actual machines and cartridges, you're going to have to pay out of your nose.

Things are only worth what people will pay. I'm in full support of not buying things that I don't see the value in. But it's not a scam for someone to put an inflated price on something unless they represent the item as something that it is not. Rarity doesn't have anything to do with it unless people actually want to buy it. In the early 1990s I bought a Disney sing along songs VHS tape for my daughter. I was working at Blockbuster Video then and the tape was being released the next day. I waited until midnight and bought it before I closed out the computer because I was off the next day and didn't want to come back. The next day before opening the morning manager got a sales directive on the morning report from corporate to pull that tape and send them back. Turns out Disney didn't have the rights to sell one of the songs outside of the movie it was in. My VHS tape is VERY rare. But it's worthless or worth whatever old VHS Disney sing along songs are worth. 50 cents maybe? There's no market for rare VHS sing along songs.

My wife and I never wanted to over spend for a house in the Chicago area. So we rented. We rented cheap compared to buying in our neighborhood. We always planned on moving to a little town a couple of hours outside of Chicago but on one of the train lines once we retired. We could buy a nice place for under $60k. Then the housing crash hit. We bought our place for 150k. Thirteen years before that our place sold for 190k. Two years before we bought, similar properties in our neighborhood were being sold for 280k. It was crazy. That's why we didn't buy. Until it made sense to us. Free markets are weird.

Oh, and the idiom that you were looking for is pay through the nose.

 

[Baron Rubik]

Latest Android retro gaming emulator discovery for me today is... Retroarch...
Retroarch https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.retroarch

One emulator to do a large list of systems and growing.
Quicker in operation with intensive roms (darius gaiden actually plays smoothish on my N7-2012, smoother than Mame4droid).
And, it's free.

This shows the loadable cores available ATM

I can even use it to display my CAD models from work. Wow!

 

[brakel]

I am emulator ignorant. How do I get games for this?

 

[danivempire]

Games that are on cartidge (for example) are copied into a file (dumped) called a ROM.
ROMs are not legal unless you have the original game.
For example if you have the original cartidge of super mario you can have the rom of the game.
Now you can download a rom to test it and keep it for 24 hours, after that you are supposed to delete it.
I'm not gonna post links for rom sites but... google is your friend

 

[night]

I don't like stealing software, but with retro games ROMS I find this different. They belong to another time, once they where the newest cool around the block, people put hard work into them, programming, graphics and music. I think it is a honour and a tribute to their makers to still play these 20/30 year old games that otherwise would go lost in time.. ("like tears in rain", yup Blade Runner quote).

 

[Terminator]

I use RetroArch for my iPhone 5s. N64 plays flawless.

 

[superballs]

As a big fan of emulation, I find it to be one of those strange areas where legality and morality branch away from each other.

I can see a huge problem if people are emulating the XBOX360 or PS3, as while these systems aren't the latest, they are still very relevant.

XBOX/PS2/GameCube is a bit shadier territory as the hardware can still be had. The problem is with extremely inflated prices. I'm finding that run of the mill XBOX games typically go for 5-10$, but try and find Conker: Live and Reloaded and you are looking at 35-90$ minimum, some copies going for over 200$. I wish there was a way to make an offer on eBay, especially for products that are just sitting there and sitting there and sitting there.

Anything before the XBOX/PS2/GC generation, I feel is fair game, let's face it, the N64 is no longer a relevant system, regardless of the poorly supported Virtual Console. The PS1 is no longer a relevant system so it should be fair game as well.

Beyond the legal/moral argument is the importance of emulation. I think the XBOX/PS2/GC (and Dreamcast fits in that generation as well but was released earliest by far)

Video games have a very interesting history and the leaps from infancy to where we are now are a display of phenominal innovation. Consoles, controllers, games and entire genres have been defined and lost in the past 50 years. Think about it...we have what? 8 major generations of game consoles since the early 80s? That's not even counting the strange stew of an ecosystem that the gaming world was before the major players like Atari and Nintendo were part of the fray (one of the first video games ever was a modified oscilloscope). A lot of the formats of the past are lost forever without emulation. A lot of people will never know the history of the development of the technology. In fact, i think some consoles are already harder to find than ancient Roman artifacts these days.

 

[gooche77]

I am emulator ignorant. How do I get games for this?

Cool Rom is my favorite site.
Hover over the ROM Files link in the header and select your system of choice.

 

[Baramos]

Yeah don't link any actual ROMS or anything. They are copyright infringement. I'm assuming doing such would be against the board rules. A simple Google search will get anybody what they want, including instructions.

It's actually not even legal to download them for 24 hours. That's just a myth. I mean that would be like saying I can download any movie legally that I want and watch it within 24 hours and its legal. It's not true.

Now the ETHICS of it? Completely different argument.

 

[brakel]

So, what's the legal way of using these emulators?

 

[LeRoy3rd]

There's not one. Even owning the physical game isn't legal since making a copy is illegal... The only way to legally play retro games is to buy the retro console, and play the retro game on it.

 

[superballs]

There's not one. Even owning the physical game isn't legal since making a copy is illegal... The only way to legally play retro games is to buy the retro console, and play the retro game on it.

Might be the case where you are but not necessarily everywhere.

 

[brakel]

There's not one. Even owning the physical game isn't legal since making a copy is illegal... The only way to legally play retro games is to buy the retro console, and play the retro game on it.

Might be the case where you are but not necessarily everywhere.

In the United States I believe it is illegal, which is why I was asking. We used to have the right to make a backup copy of software even if it was to a different medium but we never had the right to copy that software to another platform.

There are a few SNES games that I'd like to play but I try to respect the rights of the owners of software. It's just a personal thing though. I don't think any less of people who use emulators and ROMs.

Thanks for helping me to understand the emulator thing!