Anybody completely switch to emulation and not look back?

[akator]

I haven't had too many problems with 8-bit hardware, either computer or console. In contrast, the 16-bit computers have been a major disappointment.

 

I used to think emulating old Macs, Amigas, and STs was a PITA... until the last few years when I acquired the actual hardware. More time has gone into repairs than any of these systems has been working. Now emulation seems a lot more appealing. I'm now using the "3 strikes" rule, in which if a system needs repair 3 times without a significant period of use I will repair it once more and get rid of it. Collecting is great... until I become a slave to the collection, a curator that maintains stuff but never gets to enjoy it.

 

Emulation is far from perfect, however IMO emulation is way more fun than having a stack of dead computers piled up waiting for me to repair them...

[Lord Helmet]

emulation sucks. real hardware or not at all.

 

No and no serious gamer ever would.

 

Not true at all.

[sandmountainslim]

emulation sucks. real hardware or not at all.

 

No and no serious gamer ever would.

 

Not true at all.

 

 

Absolutely not true.

I consider myself not only a serious gamer but a member of Generation X, The Vanguard of Videogamers and I have played from Pong on up.....I dig my Stella and Emulation in general.

Wp

[Rev. Rob]

 

Anybody completely switch to emulation and not look back?

 

 

Fuck no.

[SlowCoder]

Honestly I am seriously considering moving over a lot of it to emulation. I JUST DO NOT HAVE THE ROOM! Currently the4 majority of my consoles/computers/systems are under the bed, behind the couch, in the closet etc, I take out and hook up to play or record to make youtube videos and it is just a hassle. We live in a 1 bedroom condo with no kids (there will never be any) and this is where we will likely remain well into retirement and beyond and that is that. Don't get me wrong, I definitely want to keep certain items but this business of 2-3 or more of the same system cannot go on, also hope over the coming year to really go through everything and if it has been sitting or collecting dust for 6 months or more I want to sell and trade it and put it back into growing and expanding the parts of my collection I wish to keep, streamline my collection going for quality over quantity as they say. Back on topic though and all arguments against emulation I am happy to emulate whatever I feel meets my personal opinion of quality emulation, to me NES and the majority of 8bit, 16bit emulation is fine so I can live with just using that instead of the actual console. Systems that I feel the emulation is sub par or just not intuitive etc I will keep the original hardware/games. IN MY OPINION Sega Saturn, Jaguar, PS2 emulation just isn't there yet and may never be, to many incompatibilities, graphic glitches etc, but original Playstation or even N64 emulation is pretty good in my experience. So yeah, I just need to make some final decisions on what I am willing to emulate and what I will still stick with in terms of original hardware. Again, this is not what I WANT to do, like most I would prefer to keep everything, get more and always use original hardware but it just is not practical in my situation and if I gotta start storgin games or systems in the car or refrigerator my wife is gonna kill me so it's about survival to......my survival lol!

This is a good example of the *need* to emulate over using real equipment. Sometimes its just better to emulate for the sake of sanity.

 

Like many others, I've found that using the real equipment is much more interesting and fun. On the other hand if the TV is taken, or I'm on a trip, I can still emulate Mario on my laptop and play.

 

So IMO emulation has its place and function in the world of classic gaming.

[SRGilbert]

I seriously doubt you will find many on a video game community site that will ever COMPLETELY switch to emulation.

 

In spite of the fact that I have 16+ systems set up and ready to play, I still don't own every system ever, much less every game for every system. Thus, one of the best things in the world is a modded Xbox to supplement what I don't already have.

[toiletunes]

NES was a PITA for me, so I downladed a few games to the WII and never looked back. I just picked up a Harmony cart and have no intention to use Stella again. I'm not getting rid of my 2600 carts, and I plan to pick up more on the way. Just nothing over $20.

 

It depends on what you call emulation, it depends on convenience, it depends on availability. The answer is maybe sometimes but usually no.

[+thegoldenband]

After many years of sticking with emulators for most systems, I've picked up a lot of real hardware in the last few years. Flashcarts have helped that along even further. Plus I'm on a PPC Mac, which substantially restricts my emulation options.

 

Having said that, I've switched completely to emulation for the NES, and see no reason to change my mind. The system is emulated more or less perfectly, the original hardware is a hassle to maintain, the controllers are basically generic, and the games are often more fun if you have the option of using savestates anyway (if for no other reason than to practice later levels and difficult platforming sequences). Sure, there's something nice about the real thing, but it's not worth the hassle for me.

[sandmountainslim]

Let me clarify myself.

When I say I have "switched totally to emulation" I mean for the Atari 2600 only. I assumed since this thread was in the VCS section that is what it meant. For other consoles I still use the real hardware but for Atari I use the Stella because I dig it and its right here on my desktop and I can play it anytime and I get to playtest new games in development.

Wp

[psquare75]

I'm in that gray area of Harmony cart and a real 2600. What does that count as?

[svenski]

I think emulators are great - you can just download a ROM and play away - ideal for the prototypes and homebrew ROMS that have been released.

 

I prefer to play games on real hardware though where possible.

[Mirage]

I'm in that gray area of Harmony cart and a real 2600. What does that count as?

 

That's not emulation. It's real code, so it's not simulation, and it's on real hardware, so it's not emulation.

[Emehr]

The beauty of real hardware is that it is using all of its potential to run the games. Nothing is going to waste. The console is never working harder than it has to. It is running the games precisely as the programmers intended, utilizing their every optimization and programming trick.

 

Emulators are great for preservation (hail MAME!). They will keep these consoles alive for as long as there are interested developers. Ironically, they probably require more maintenance than a real console with the endless updates, bug fixes, keeping up with operating systems and devices, etc.

 

Real consoles are static and pure. They will never need an upgrade card, a firmware update, or drivers. They have one purpose: play games.

[donssword]

Since moving my emulation to the Wii, I haven't booted Stella on my PC for months, and my 2600 Jr doesn't get turned on more than once or twice every couple of months at this point.

 

I have finally installed 7800 emulation on my Wii as well, which I had never had the pleasure of playing before--fun stuff.

Edited December 30, 2010 by donssword

[maiki]

Wii has one big plus: it supports old school video modes unlike Xbox, Xbox 360, PS3. But for me there is only one thing to make it 100%: standalone unit based on real arcade monitor (WG D9500), PC hardware, optimized Linux and USB controllers. It will have all the old school games and display them on real arcade RGB CRT profi monitor.... nothing else, simply 100% retro gaming that was not possible back in the 80s with those RF/composite and one button limited joysticks.

[Chuplayer]

I'll use emulation without hesitation, but I still like using and maintaining my original consoles. I actually put together a nice emulation PC that outputs S-Video to my TV, and I usually play NES, SNES, Genesis, 2600, 7800, and MAME games on it. Since discovering stuff like RetroZone's carts and the new 2600 and 7800 games here on AtariAge, I've been getting more and more oddball cartridges and playing on the original hardware.

[Nerf Herder73]

I loved owning classic hardware. I turned to emulation because I had to box up my classic systems when I moved in 2002. There they stayed until they were put into storage in 2007. Earlier this year I was no longer able to keep paying the cost of storing my belongings and lost all of my pre-1995 systems.

 

True hardware is great, but emulation provides a good and close enough experience for me. Besides, it's all that I have left.

[Keatah]

Anybody else think this thread should be stickied coz its a pretty major deal for alot of people i use real harware coz having to clean teh cart a million times before you get it to boot then play for about 10 mins is part of the fun.

 

-Darren-

 

That's funny, I never thought of cleaning cartridges and untangling wires as actual fun.

[Keatah]

Emulation for me is a simply a matter of convenience and portability. It's fantastic to play Atari-2600 Missile Command at the same park you were at the day when your parents brawtt home that game, for example. Or perhaps getting a new game or two before vacation. Playing it once or twice then having to leave it all behind for the upcoming week.

 

Now I can game anywhere, anytime!

 

All it takes is some form of portable computer.

 

And as for convenience. I don't have to spend hours searching through literally mountains of cartridges and wires and consoles to get set up. There were times I had so much stuff going, it could take days and days to sort through it and get it cleaned up. Dumping a carton of cartridges took an hour to put back. It was that bad. Nasty.

 

Today, I just shove the usb drive in the desk and I'm done!

 

I will agree though about the maintenance; while in the day we had to clean contacts and patch wires and replace switches and stuff like that. Emulation requires updating of the software, in some respects emulation can take more maintenance time with testing configurations, especially with video modes and controllers. But you have the beauty of the setup basically lasting forever and not wearing out or degrading over time.

 

A virtual collection lets you have pictures of the hardware, reference material, instruction manuals in .pdf form, source listings, hints, reviews, different versions of games. etc.. All in one tiny spot. Definitely for the amount of emulated stuff, I'd have 7 or 8 bedrooms packed solid with the stuff. Crazy! Sanity!

Edited December 31, 2010 by Keatah

[SlowCoder]

That's funny, I never thought of cleaning cartridges and untangling wires as actual fun.

Funny YOU mentioned THAT.

 

I used to race offroad RC (nitro, which got very dirty). My trucks would hit the dirt about 2-3 hours a week for practice, 2 hours at the track racing, and about 8 hours of complete teardown/rebuild before the next week. It was almost as fun to tinker with them, tearing them down to their bare components as it was to run them. If I still had time and money (I poured about $200 a month just in maintenance/repair) and time, I'd still be doing it.

 

As you can guess, the tinker aspect of that has gone into video games. Being able to hold the real thing in my hands is cool. It just feels right. I can emulate, but I don't have a USB controller for each system, so the retro feeling isn't there. And it's cool when I lay out all my retro, cleaned and shined up, consoles on the floor for people to see and remark on. You can't get that with emulation.

 

On top of that, I really do enjoy working on dirty equipment, the diamond in the rough so to speak. I appreciate the work that goes into restoring my consoles, almost to an art.

[Pong]

Only for CD-i. That's the only thing I emulate entirely.

 

That is, if you don't count Virtual Console games as emulation, then everything pre-GBA is emulated.

 

But, if you don't count VC as emulation, then I congratulate you, sirs.

[Keatah]

That's funny, I never thought of cleaning cartridges and untangling wires as actual fun.

Funny YOU mentioned THAT.

 

I used to race offroad RC (nitro, which got very dirty). My trucks would hit the dirt about 2-3 hours a week for practice, 2 hours at the track racing, and about 8 hours of complete teardown/rebuild before the next week. It was almost as fun to tinker with them, tearing them down to their bare components as it was to run them. If I still had time and money (I poured about $200 a month just in maintenance/repair) and time, I'd still be doing it.

 

As you can guess, the tinker aspect of that has gone into video games. Being able to hold the real thing in my hands is cool. It just feels right. I can emulate, but I don't have a USB controller for each system, so the retro feeling isn't there. And it's cool when I lay out all my retro, cleaned and shined up, consoles on the floor for people to see and remark on. You can't get that with emulation.

 

On top of that, I really do enjoy working on dirty equipment, the diamond in the rough so to speak. I appreciate the work that goes into restoring my consoles, almost to an art.

 

Funny *I* mention that?? How so??

 

I have decided to maintain and buff-up one collection, that is any and all stuff surrounding the Apple II, I still have everything from the 70's and 80's .. With some new boards made today!

 

In fact, I have a board that plugs into an expansion slot and let's me play some of the early mame games right on my Apple II+ ! Finally, 30 years after getting the system, it can play the exact arcade game. Finally we can stop complaining that a $2000 computer sucked when came to playing arcade games. Scramble, Frogger, Space Invaders, games like that.

Edited December 31, 2010 by Keatah

[PAC MAN FEVER]

emulation is something only to be used as a tester for games before you buy them the experience is just not the same. this is how i feel about people who use emulators all the time

[SRGilbert]

Emulation for me is a simply a matter of convenience and portability. It's fantastic to play Atari-2600 Missile Command at the same park you were at the day when your parents brawtt home that game, for example. Or perhaps getting a new game or two before vacation. Playing it once or twice then having to leave it all behind for the upcoming week.

 

Now I can game anywhere, anytime!

 

All it takes is some form of portable computer.

 

That's a good point too, portability. A hacked PSP is a retrogamer on the go wet dream. When you can play almost literaly ANYTHING from the 2600 throught the PS1 on a used $75 handheld, that's pretty awesome.

[Keatah]

emulation is something only to be used as a tester for games before you buy them the experience is just not the same. this is how i feel about people who use emulators all the time

 

In time, as generations die off and new ones come around, the usb drive could be part of the family heirloom. It will less likely be sold off than, say a complete gaming setup. Simply because of space requirement.