The "General Games Chat" forum, which includes Retro Game Reviews, has been archived and is now read-only. You cannot post here or create a new thread or review on this forum.
Having recently become a University student (at the beginning of October in fact) money is rather tight. Hell, I had to pay £11.50 for a bottle of Becks and a Malibu and Coke at a club near the end of last term because the stupid club decided that any spirit and a mixer construed a ‘cocktail’, which cost eight or nine quid... But I digress. Point is cash needs to be saved where it can be. Videogames are hardly an essential. Well, okay, new games anyway. And to be honest you don’t really want to be spending all your time playing the new 30 odd hours long blockbuster while at Uni. But when you’ve got 20 minutes until your lecture and haven’t got anything on, or it’s late at night and you stumble in semi-sober you may fancy a quick lash on a game. I certainly do every now and then.
So what to do? Well, much as it may be legally dubious, I play on ROMs. And before you ring the copyright unit and get them to track my IP and have me locked up for killing the entertainment industry, I download old games. SNES era. Hell, even if I wanted to download games of this generation I doubt my laptop could handle them. But to be honest I’m very content reliving some of the finer games from my past, and also discovering some great new ones in the process (for example, Final Fantasy 6, which is currently being played through, albeit at a very slow pace). This isn’t harming any sales. Games from the SNES era aren’t on sale anymore, except second hand. Even then you’re not guaranteed to be able to find the game you want, or you may discover it wasn’t even released in Europe, rendering the second hand PAL console you just bought useless. It’s not like I’m cheating any developers or producers out of cash. And even if I wasn’t downloading ROMs, I wouldn’t be buying new games to give me a gaming fix, I’d simply be on time for lectures a little more often...
As well as this, I think it’s better to have old games freely available on the Internet. No-one’s making money out of them, and I would think it better to have a game I worked hard on for months to be available for people to enjoy rather than fade into memory and obscurity. And if that means some people can enjoy games that they couldn’t initially afford, or people can relive memories of old favourites without having to buy a console again, then all the better.
You may wonder if I don’t miss new games. All the ones people are off enjoying while I’m playing my decade old games on a USB controller that is almost exactly the same as a PSX pad (my attempts at getting a SNES-like pad failed). Well, not really. I mean, at some point all these new games will be up for sale cheap on Ebay. And when they are, and everyone else is off enjoying the next next-gen games, I’ll have a wealth of old games bought cheap to enjoy.
What’s wrong with living in the past, eh?
So what to do? Well, much as it may be legally dubious, I play on ROMs. And before you ring the copyright unit and get them to track my IP and have me locked up for killing the entertainment industry, I download old games. SNES era. Hell, even if I wanted to download games of this generation I doubt my laptop could handle them. But to be honest I’m very content reliving some of the finer games from my past, and also discovering some great new ones in the process (for example, Final Fantasy 6, which is currently being played through, albeit at a very slow pace). This isn’t harming any sales. Games from the SNES era aren’t on sale anymore, except second hand. Even then you’re not guaranteed to be able to find the game you want, or you may discover it wasn’t even released in Europe, rendering the second hand PAL console you just bought useless. It’s not like I’m cheating any developers or producers out of cash. And even if I wasn’t downloading ROMs, I wouldn’t be buying new games to give me a gaming fix, I’d simply be on time for lectures a little more often...
As well as this, I think it’s better to have old games freely available on the Internet. No-one’s making money out of them, and I would think it better to have a game I worked hard on for months to be available for people to enjoy rather than fade into memory and obscurity. And if that means some people can enjoy games that they couldn’t initially afford, or people can relive memories of old favourites without having to buy a console again, then all the better.
You may wonder if I don’t miss new games. All the ones people are off enjoying while I’m playing my decade old games on a USB controller that is almost exactly the same as a PSX pad (my attempts at getting a SNES-like pad failed). Well, not really. I mean, at some point all these new games will be up for sale cheap on Ebay. And when they are, and everyone else is off enjoying the next next-gen games, I’ll have a wealth of old games bought cheap to enjoy.
What’s wrong with living in the past, eh?
True. Would be good if companies did do compilation disks like those Namco Retro Games, or is it Midway... who knows. But if more did that, and stuck a bunch of their old games on a GameCube disk say, and sold it for a tenner, that'd be mint.
:)
:)
Well, yes true... But of the hundreds of great games on the SNES only a handful of Nintendo franchises have been ported over to other systems. And other systems like the MegaDrive have practically nothing converted over to new systems (yeah, there's the Sonic Mega Collection, which incidentally I must get at some point, but other than that...)
I mean, I know using emulators isn't strictly right, but at the same time I don't see I'm making any developers lose out. Well, not in general, there are the examples where games have been re-released on newer systems.
Maybe developers need to look into selling their back catalogue of old games cheaply online. If I could get a bundle of old games as ROMs for about a fiver, or if games were a couple of quid each then I think many people would buy them.
I mean, I know using emulators isn't strictly right, but at the same time I don't see I'm making any developers lose out. Well, not in general, there are the examples where games have been re-released on newer systems.
Maybe developers need to look into selling their back catalogue of old games cheaply online. If I could get a bundle of old games as ROMs for about a fiver, or if games were a couple of quid each then I think many people would buy them.
hehe, can now truely tell your a student. Buying new N64 games I use to do before I started Uni. Forty odd pounds a time from SR they were. Shocking! But when you get to Uni and realise you have bog all money to spare, soon sends you down the road of just setting yourself 6 months to a year behind everyone else, and buying all the games they paid £30-40 for, for only £10 or less.
It is a wise choice to make though as you end up buying million more games for less! Makes sence to me. :)
As for the SNES games. Well if your Nintendo you go "I know what would be a good idea! {add floating light-bulb above head} Lets go on holiday for a year and leave some monkeys here to port some old Mario games, rename them, and release them on the Gameboy and hope no-one realises we're not doing anything."
So if they allowed their SNES ROMs for free on the internet, everyone would realise all these GBA games came out like 10 years ago, and so wouldn't shell out £25 a pop on them!
:)
It is a wise choice to make though as you end up buying million more games for less! Makes sence to me. :)
As for the SNES games. Well if your Nintendo you go "I know what would be a good idea! {add floating light-bulb above head} Lets go on holiday for a year and leave some monkeys here to port some old Mario games, rename them, and release them on the Gameboy and hope no-one realises we're not doing anything."
So if they allowed their SNES ROMs for free on the internet, everyone would realise all these GBA games came out like 10 years ago, and so wouldn't shell out £25 a pop on them!
:)
Having recently become a University student (at the beginning of October in fact) money is rather tight. Hell, I had to pay £11.50 for a bottle of Becks and a Malibu and Coke at a club near the end of last term because the stupid club decided that any spirit and a mixer construed a ‘cocktail’, which cost eight or nine quid... But I digress. Point is cash needs to be saved where it can be. Videogames are hardly an essential. Well, okay, new games anyway. And to be honest you don’t really want to be spending all your time playing the new 30 odd hours long blockbuster while at Uni. But when you’ve got 20 minutes until your lecture and haven’t got anything on, or it’s late at night and you stumble in semi-sober you may fancy a quick lash on a game. I certainly do every now and then.
So what to do? Well, much as it may be legally dubious, I play on ROMs. And before you ring the copyright unit and get them to track my IP and have me locked up for killing the entertainment industry, I download old games. SNES era. Hell, even if I wanted to download games of this generation I doubt my laptop could handle them. But to be honest I’m very content reliving some of the finer games from my past, and also discovering some great new ones in the process (for example, Final Fantasy 6, which is currently being played through, albeit at a very slow pace). This isn’t harming any sales. Games from the SNES era aren’t on sale anymore, except second hand. Even then you’re not guaranteed to be able to find the game you want, or you may discover it wasn’t even released in Europe, rendering the second hand PAL console you just bought useless. It’s not like I’m cheating any developers or producers out of cash. And even if I wasn’t downloading ROMs, I wouldn’t be buying new games to give me a gaming fix, I’d simply be on time for lectures a little more often...
As well as this, I think it’s better to have old games freely available on the Internet. No-one’s making money out of them, and I would think it better to have a game I worked hard on for months to be available for people to enjoy rather than fade into memory and obscurity. And if that means some people can enjoy games that they couldn’t initially afford, or people can relive memories of old favourites without having to buy a console again, then all the better.
You may wonder if I don’t miss new games. All the ones people are off enjoying while I’m playing my decade old games on a USB controller that is almost exactly the same as a PSX pad (my attempts at getting a SNES-like pad failed). Well, not really. I mean, at some point all these new games will be up for sale cheap on Ebay. And when they are, and everyone else is off enjoying the next next-gen games, I’ll have a wealth of old games bought cheap to enjoy.
What’s wrong with living in the past, eh?
So what to do? Well, much as it may be legally dubious, I play on ROMs. And before you ring the copyright unit and get them to track my IP and have me locked up for killing the entertainment industry, I download old games. SNES era. Hell, even if I wanted to download games of this generation I doubt my laptop could handle them. But to be honest I’m very content reliving some of the finer games from my past, and also discovering some great new ones in the process (for example, Final Fantasy 6, which is currently being played through, albeit at a very slow pace). This isn’t harming any sales. Games from the SNES era aren’t on sale anymore, except second hand. Even then you’re not guaranteed to be able to find the game you want, or you may discover it wasn’t even released in Europe, rendering the second hand PAL console you just bought useless. It’s not like I’m cheating any developers or producers out of cash. And even if I wasn’t downloading ROMs, I wouldn’t be buying new games to give me a gaming fix, I’d simply be on time for lectures a little more often...
As well as this, I think it’s better to have old games freely available on the Internet. No-one’s making money out of them, and I would think it better to have a game I worked hard on for months to be available for people to enjoy rather than fade into memory and obscurity. And if that means some people can enjoy games that they couldn’t initially afford, or people can relive memories of old favourites without having to buy a console again, then all the better.
You may wonder if I don’t miss new games. All the ones people are off enjoying while I’m playing my decade old games on a USB controller that is almost exactly the same as a PSX pad (my attempts at getting a SNES-like pad failed). Well, not really. I mean, at some point all these new games will be up for sale cheap on Ebay. And when they are, and everyone else is off enjoying the next next-gen games, I’ll have a wealth of old games bought cheap to enjoy.
What’s wrong with living in the past, eh?