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My console gaming started in the early 90's. The beginning of gaming was focused around the Master System, SNES and Mega Drive. Up until about 4 years ago, I had no idea about the history of gaming, no idea about its origins, it's growth and just what had led to the great 'Mario versus Sega' battle of the golden age of gaming. I was lucky, because I just got into gaming as it was at its 2D pinnacle. But the question I ask myself - what went before.
All you 'oldies' on the forums. You know who you are - Meka, pb, Ice Blaster, Tony, Snuggly. Do you remember all the early arcade games. Defender, Pac-Man, pong. Well, do you want to know what? I've never played any of these games on an arcade machine, or their original consoles. I've never played an Atari or other consoles of the 80's. I haven't played games which rival the addictiveness of games nowadays, and were hits in their own right.
Never, until now. Yesterday, my Xbox was chipped. I'm not a pirate, I did it for two things. Importing, and emulating. I'm told what I'm doing is illegal, and I suppose to an extent it is. I'm not paying anything for any of the games I've downloaded, I'm essentially 'stealing' the intellectual property of many developers of yesteryear.
If I was offered an Atari 2600 with the classics I've mentioned, for a reasonable price, I would probably buy it. I'm not saying that I'd spend thirty quid on an old piece of plastic, I'm thinking the price of an old console. Then at least the developers can have the satisfaction of knowing that, despite them getting nowt in extra royalties, I'm not playing an illegal version of their game.
Well, you know what I'll say to that! Games which are twenty years old cannot be bought anymore - go into game and you'll be laughed at. But anyway, as I said, I got my Xbox chipped. Since then, I've played SNES games I do own somewhere, Mega Drive games which I binned when they broke, and freeware which is just plain nifty. Tell me this - what am I doing that is so damaging, so industry-breaking that I should be stopped? All I'm doing is putting a bit of life into something which to me was otherwise dead.
No matter now much Microsoft say to the contrary, the Xbox IS a PC in a box. I've seen the insides, I've seen the almost identical-to-a-PC hard drive and the nVidia graphics chip. To tell me that an Xbox has more than a PC, or less than a PC is a load of crap. Because they're the same.
I think the future for the Xbox does lie in it becoming a standardised PC. The creators of MameX were turned down when they offered their product to Microsoft, which opened up a massive online piracy network. Except you can't say something is pirated if you own it anyway.
The future of the Xbox did lie in emulation, if developers of old had given the ok to use their games, perhaps at a quid a go or something, then the Xbox could have opened up. Xbox live could have had these downloading, since a 1MB file on a broadband network is a drop in the ocean.
But no. Emulation is obviously not Bill Gates' aspiration for the Xbox. If anybody here can tell me that old games are boring, I'd tell them they're lying. It's fun playing Super Mario RPG, Gundam Wing and DragonBall Z on my Xbox. It's especially great because, despite all the claims of Xbox corrupting files and incompatibility, the Xbox is brilliant for emulation. It's boring playing a game meant for a console on the PC, but on the Xbox possibilities open up.
Whatever happens to the Xbox in future, one thing remains clear. To the underground world of coding, emulation is a brilliant aspect of the Xbox. And it's also a brilliant aspect which has been turned down by Microsoft, the one thing which could have made the Xbox really popular with more mature gamers, people who remember Outrun and Marble Madness. Oh well, I know I'm going on a bit, but MameX, Xsnes and Ngen are brilliant, life giving tools. I don't endorse piracy in the least - I endorse the gaming industry.
All you 'oldies' on the forums. You know who you are - Meka, pb, Ice Blaster, Tony, Snuggly. Do you remember all the early arcade games. Defender, Pac-Man, pong. Well, do you want to know what? I've never played any of these games on an arcade machine, or their original consoles. I've never played an Atari or other consoles of the 80's. I haven't played games which rival the addictiveness of games nowadays, and were hits in their own right.
Never, until now. Yesterday, my Xbox was chipped. I'm not a pirate, I did it for two things. Importing, and emulating. I'm told what I'm doing is illegal, and I suppose to an extent it is. I'm not paying anything for any of the games I've downloaded, I'm essentially 'stealing' the intellectual property of many developers of yesteryear.
If I was offered an Atari 2600 with the classics I've mentioned, for a reasonable price, I would probably buy it. I'm not saying that I'd spend thirty quid on an old piece of plastic, I'm thinking the price of an old console. Then at least the developers can have the satisfaction of knowing that, despite them getting nowt in extra royalties, I'm not playing an illegal version of their game.
Well, you know what I'll say to that! Games which are twenty years old cannot be bought anymore - go into game and you'll be laughed at. But anyway, as I said, I got my Xbox chipped. Since then, I've played SNES games I do own somewhere, Mega Drive games which I binned when they broke, and freeware which is just plain nifty. Tell me this - what am I doing that is so damaging, so industry-breaking that I should be stopped? All I'm doing is putting a bit of life into something which to me was otherwise dead.
No matter now much Microsoft say to the contrary, the Xbox IS a PC in a box. I've seen the insides, I've seen the almost identical-to-a-PC hard drive and the nVidia graphics chip. To tell me that an Xbox has more than a PC, or less than a PC is a load of crap. Because they're the same.
I think the future for the Xbox does lie in it becoming a standardised PC. The creators of MameX were turned down when they offered their product to Microsoft, which opened up a massive online piracy network. Except you can't say something is pirated if you own it anyway.
The future of the Xbox did lie in emulation, if developers of old had given the ok to use their games, perhaps at a quid a go or something, then the Xbox could have opened up. Xbox live could have had these downloading, since a 1MB file on a broadband network is a drop in the ocean.
But no. Emulation is obviously not Bill Gates' aspiration for the Xbox. If anybody here can tell me that old games are boring, I'd tell them they're lying. It's fun playing Super Mario RPG, Gundam Wing and DragonBall Z on my Xbox. It's especially great because, despite all the claims of Xbox corrupting files and incompatibility, the Xbox is brilliant for emulation. It's boring playing a game meant for a console on the PC, but on the Xbox possibilities open up.
Whatever happens to the Xbox in future, one thing remains clear. To the underground world of coding, emulation is a brilliant aspect of the Xbox. And it's also a brilliant aspect which has been turned down by Microsoft, the one thing which could have made the Xbox really popular with more mature gamers, people who remember Outrun and Marble Madness. Oh well, I know I'm going on a bit, but MameX, Xsnes and Ngen are brilliant, life giving tools. I don't endorse piracy in the least - I endorse the gaming industry.
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i have a snes emulaor with lots of good games, even earth bound, which wasn't released here. i would try to get some DBZ games, but they say they are 70% translated.
Emulation, a subject that many of us will know of or no doubt experience at some point in our gaming lives. I think emulation is a suitable thing if and only if it is only used for the older consoles, consoles that are no longer sold and the developers have made all the cash they had hoped to make or all the cash they have made. In a way I think it is ok for the developers as PC's (which are the usual format for Emulators) just can't perform the same actions as the consoles of today (Well not most normal desktops...YET) But soon they will be able to and we may well see XBOX emulators etc. I think the XBOX seeing as it has an architecture very similar to that of a PC could be the first of the next generation consoles to be emulated on a PC.
So far every console that has been released has had no way of updating or modifying the performance, well not in the way we can do with PC's. It is this reason that makes PC's the ideal format for emulators and also shows us that emulation is not always a good thing. If someone was to find a way of emulating one of the latest consoles it could and would be a terrible thing, Ok so we could play Downloaded ROMS for free on free software, but the developers would loose out and in the end may well end up going out of business which would be a bad thing for the gaming industry. Emulators are legal to use, downloading and playing ROMS is a copyright violation. UNLESS you own a copy of the game, or have written consent from their developers. Wonder how many people have got wrtitten consent. While it may not be legal I am pretty sure that the majority of emulator users don't own the original format of the ROM's they have downloaded.
In a way software, in particular games emulation, is similar to the illegal MP3 downloads or Movies rips. Like napster, Kazaa, Morpheus and all the others there are hundreds to thousands of sites where you can download emulators and the game ROMS. I have an amiga emulator and a couple of games, I don't use it much only got hold of it to play one game - "Zak McKraken" which I hadn't played for a long time and it was one of my favourite as a kid. I think as long as the console or games machine that is being emulated is no longer a main stream console then emulation isn't harming the industry - just squeezing the last bits out of the the older consoles.
One thing that I thought of during this is - Does emulation encourage piracy? Such as chipping consoles etc? Well my views are a bit of both - yes and no. If you don't own the original game then with most emulators you can download the ROM and legaly keep it for 24 hours but most will keep it a lot longer. So if the option to get their console chipped and play games at a cheaper price then most of the emultor users would no doubt choose to do it as long as the dangers were very low in terms of damaging the console etc. You have your Xbox chipped to play imports and older consoles games, but who is to say that some clever chap isn't going to write software onto chip that allows you to play copies of XBox games(something which I think isn't far away from happening)
In the industry right now piracy isn't as major a problem as it used to be, just because of the high risks and difficulty in copying the games at a reasonable price - not enough to make a profit in the end. But how long before piracy creeps up again and causes more prolems? The similarities between the PC and XBox again here is an issue for me, can Microsoft keep piracy away? If not it could well see their XBox slump once again.
I think most console developers have concentrated a lot on making the console very hard to chip, PS2 and Gamecube are the two I know about. Not too sure on the XBOX but I'm sure it will be pretty secure too. With the PS2 the main chipset is not designed for additional chips so chipping the console may cause it to overheat and eventually may "fry" the chipset. Ultimately killing your console. There are also a few software techniques used, so only official games are recognised as games. But now CD copying programs will copy 100% of the contents of the disk, including the security software. With the gamucube the overheating bit also applies due to its size, not designed to cope with extra chips being added. Also the small optical disks are not commonly used and therefore expensive to reproduce.
I'm pretty sure in a few years we will see emulators that allow us to insert Roms of our Gamecube, PS2 or XBOX disks into a PC and play the games with little difference between the console version. The big problems will start happening when someone develops software to emulate a console while it is still a main contender in the industry, something that I hope dosn't happen - Sure we could play the games without having to buy the console, maybe just having to make a few modification to our PC's but in the long term it will be us gamers that suffer, not as many developers will be still in operation giving us fewer games, less variety, maybe more expensive games and consoles. Just more problems, more harm than good.
So keep the emulators to consoles from the past, the classics. That way we don't spoil and ruin future generations of consoles and in the end better standards and options for us gamers.
Nice post Halfpint, wish I seen it sooner. :-)
So far every console that has been released has had no way of updating or modifying the performance, well not in the way we can do with PC's. It is this reason that makes PC's the ideal format for emulators and also shows us that emulation is not always a good thing. If someone was to find a way of emulating one of the latest consoles it could and would be a terrible thing, Ok so we could play Downloaded ROMS for free on free software, but the developers would loose out and in the end may well end up going out of business which would be a bad thing for the gaming industry. Emulators are legal to use, downloading and playing ROMS is a copyright violation. UNLESS you own a copy of the game, or have written consent from their developers. Wonder how many people have got wrtitten consent. While it may not be legal I am pretty sure that the majority of emulator users don't own the original format of the ROM's they have downloaded.
In a way software, in particular games emulation, is similar to the illegal MP3 downloads or Movies rips. Like napster, Kazaa, Morpheus and all the others there are hundreds to thousands of sites where you can download emulators and the game ROMS. I have an amiga emulator and a couple of games, I don't use it much only got hold of it to play one game - "Zak McKraken" which I hadn't played for a long time and it was one of my favourite as a kid. I think as long as the console or games machine that is being emulated is no longer a main stream console then emulation isn't harming the industry - just squeezing the last bits out of the the older consoles.
One thing that I thought of during this is - Does emulation encourage piracy? Such as chipping consoles etc? Well my views are a bit of both - yes and no. If you don't own the original game then with most emulators you can download the ROM and legaly keep it for 24 hours but most will keep it a lot longer. So if the option to get their console chipped and play games at a cheaper price then most of the emultor users would no doubt choose to do it as long as the dangers were very low in terms of damaging the console etc. You have your Xbox chipped to play imports and older consoles games, but who is to say that some clever chap isn't going to write software onto chip that allows you to play copies of XBox games(something which I think isn't far away from happening)
In the industry right now piracy isn't as major a problem as it used to be, just because of the high risks and difficulty in copying the games at a reasonable price - not enough to make a profit in the end. But how long before piracy creeps up again and causes more prolems? The similarities between the PC and XBox again here is an issue for me, can Microsoft keep piracy away? If not it could well see their XBox slump once again.
I think most console developers have concentrated a lot on making the console very hard to chip, PS2 and Gamecube are the two I know about. Not too sure on the XBOX but I'm sure it will be pretty secure too. With the PS2 the main chipset is not designed for additional chips so chipping the console may cause it to overheat and eventually may "fry" the chipset. Ultimately killing your console. There are also a few software techniques used, so only official games are recognised as games. But now CD copying programs will copy 100% of the contents of the disk, including the security software. With the gamucube the overheating bit also applies due to its size, not designed to cope with extra chips being added. Also the small optical disks are not commonly used and therefore expensive to reproduce.
I'm pretty sure in a few years we will see emulators that allow us to insert Roms of our Gamecube, PS2 or XBOX disks into a PC and play the games with little difference between the console version. The big problems will start happening when someone develops software to emulate a console while it is still a main contender in the industry, something that I hope dosn't happen - Sure we could play the games without having to buy the console, maybe just having to make a few modification to our PC's but in the long term it will be us gamers that suffer, not as many developers will be still in operation giving us fewer games, less variety, maybe more expensive games and consoles. Just more problems, more harm than good.
So keep the emulators to consoles from the past, the classics. That way we don't spoil and ruin future generations of consoles and in the end better standards and options for us gamers.
Nice post Halfpint, wish I seen it sooner. :-)
if you mean the DBZ game i know, but its funny when you cheat to fully level them up and they still get killed by the first boss. Its really funny
maddmun wrote:
> i play some roms, but only because i can't get them anymore. i'm a DBZ
> fan (laugh all you want) but Legend Of The Super Saiyajin was only
> relesed in Japan so how can i get my hands on it? Roms are the answer.
> ROMs are illegal because companies lose money from them but if they
> don't sell the games anymore are they really illegal? Think about it,
> why should we suffer for their "no longer stock"ibish when
> we want to play games such as Donkey Kong and Super Metroid (even
> though i own both). Its just not fair
Funny you should mention that - I was playing it this afternoon and thought it was absolute crap :-D :-D :-D...
> i play some roms, but only because i can't get them anymore. i'm a DBZ
> fan (laugh all you want) but Legend Of The Super Saiyajin was only
> relesed in Japan so how can i get my hands on it? Roms are the answer.
> ROMs are illegal because companies lose money from them but if they
> don't sell the games anymore are they really illegal? Think about it,
> why should we suffer for their "no longer stock"ibish when
> we want to play games such as Donkey Kong and Super Metroid (even
> though i own both). Its just not fair
Funny you should mention that - I was playing it this afternoon and thought it was absolute crap :-D :-D :-D...
i play some roms, but only because i can't get them anymore. i'm a DBZ fan (laugh all you want) but Legend Of The Super Saiyajin was only relesed in Japan so how can i get my hands on it? Roms are the answer. ROMs are illegal because companies lose money from them but if they don't sell the games anymore are they really illegal? Think about it, why should we suffer for their "no longer stock"ibish when we want to play games such as Donkey Kong and Super Metroid (even though i own both). Its just not fair
The one bad thing about all this, is that the games suck. It's only REALLY classic ones which are worth playing, the rest is just utter crap. I mean, you only really need Mario games, Sonic games, perhaps Street Fighter 2 and Streets of Rage. Maybe a few RPGs. Chanses are, you'll never play the likes of Lost Vikings (I do - I love that game :D)
I still play the Megadrive emulator on my Dreamcast. The benefits are that you don't have to chip the machine, you can just run an Action Replay cart before loading the boot disc.
Nice.
Nice.
Yup. That's it.
I have a site with a bunch of emulators for the Xbox (you can't call them Xbox emulators because that would be something different! :-D).
Say I managed to get the emulator along with a load of roms onto a CDR/RW and put it into a chipped Xbox, does the emulator automatically load itself up?
Say I managed to get the emulator along with a load of roms onto a CDR/RW and put it into a chipped Xbox, does the emulator automatically load itself up?
It was simply a case of downloading the emulator and a few roms which I wanted, putting the roms in the /roms directory, creating an image using a special program which I downloaded, then writing to a CD. I use CD-RWs because it means I can just erase and rewrite the CD when I get new roms. But yes, it is very easy. And you don't need to install any extra software, just the chip. EvolutionX, an alternative Xbox dashboard, isn't that good. Alternatively, you can store them on the Xbox hard drive too, although that requires EvoX.
I could point you to a place to download them, but I think SR won't be too happy.
So, if you have me on MSN speak to me, if not add me ([email protected]).
I could point you to a place to download them, but I think SR won't be too happy.
So, if you have me on MSN speak to me, if not add me ([email protected]).
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