Which is more fun? Setting up game hardware & tweaking? Or playing?

[Keatah]

Years ago, decades ago, we would have tons of fun playing our vidyah games. Getting a cartridge was a big stink. Copying that floppy was done in a party-like get together. Playing hours on end was fun! And there was minimal setup for all that like making some connections to a switchbox or plugging in peripherals.

 

So, today, do you find yourself still enjoying playing games? Or might your interests have morphed into setting things up and optimizing your rigs? Think video & scan converters, console mods, audio enhancements, custom controllers, tweaking emulator settings and organizing a virtual collection, setting up a MiSTer, setting up everdrives and Flash memory solutions. And don't forget other gaming related activities like curating and collecting, upsizing and downsizing, online discussions and troubleshooting stuff.. Perhaps developing if you're a developer..

 

Back in the day I was 90% or more into playing. 10% setup more or less. Nowadays that's shifted to 40% playing or less, and 60% other activities. After all, there's only so many games of Basic Math one can play!

[Lost Monkey]

I typically enjoy taking consoles and controllers apart to clean and restore them more than playing games nowadays.  I've been picking up "non-working" stuff to tinker with for about 2 years now and enjoy it a lot.  It is pretty satisfying to bring a dead console back to life.  I just picked up a lot of 30 consoles (Gameboy through Xbox 360) the other day which are all in various states of disrepair.   I intend to get every last piece up to speed eventually.

 

I have an Xbox Series X that I have spent 90% of the time on it messing around with emulator settings vs actually playing anything.   

 

 

Edited March 9, 2023 by Lost Monkey

[Tanooki]

Playing, the modding is secondary to improvement of the enjoying the games, if not just to repair a design defect or oversight.  Like I could be happy playing on a Virtual Boy, but knowing it'll fail at any second, even if it's largely behaving, I'll tear it open and solder fix that thing every time.  And sure I can enjoy a pre-lit GB, GBP, GBC, AGB but I'd rather not use some cast down cheap bulbs or get uncomfortable under a lamp anymore so in goes a new screen.  But I won't go all kung fu with the upgrades and insanity, just get it to where it's modernized enough and onto the far more pain and worry free play.

 

The time I most cared about tweaking was the golden era of PC gaming in the 1990s.  Tweak that CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT!  Get that speech pack in Wing Commander II going, get pissy Comanche to see and play finally with enough XMS, whatever it may be.  I got where I could get it around 610KB base(of 640) memory free that opened up all sorts of fun doors gaming and with cool euro-scene demo stuff like what Future Crew pulled off.

[Cynicaster]

I've wondered about this especially when it comes to emulation.  Nowadays with all of the emulators, access to a bottomless pit of ROMs, and piles of different hardware gadgets of different shapes and sizes that can be configured to play them, it's pretty easy to get lost in a destination-less journey.  Like these guys that have youtube channels where all they do is review the latest and greatest ways to play your library of 10's of thousands of games - for every one of those, how much time is spent with the setup?  Transferring files, configuring front ends, gathering metadata, video clips, pictures, blah blah blah.  I still use MaLa on my MAME cabinet because it's dead simple and I just want to play.  For everything else I use Launchbox/BigBox - which also can be setup with very little effort.    

 

Anyway, it's a fair question and people should do whatever they enjoy, but I'm definitely about playing the games, personally.  That's not to say I don't enjoy any of the tinkering - but I view tinkering more as a means to an end rather than the goal itself.  

 

[Flojomojo]

I really like updating OpenFPGA cores on my Pocket and setting up/tweaking little Linux handhelds with pir8 roms. I do most of my game playing on a Switch though. 

[Razzie.P]

Playing.  I got sick of the setting up, tweaking, etc long, long ago.  

[Reaperman]

Probably 'buying' games was the most fun. 😁 But I think I've actually mostly broken myself of that habit recently.

 

After that, and to answer the question, comes 'perfect setupism.' Getting the right combo of hardware, mods, and often roms to get that 'all the games' feeling. Sometimes that's tricking your PS2 into taking a 2TB drive, or building dual-hdd modded wii-u/v-wii unto a briefcase, spending insane money on ISA soundcards, or futzing with a MiSTercade. In almost every case these days, the perfect setup also involves blowing my monthly datacap downloading every game I think I might someday want to play, as if the apocalypse is coming and I'll never get another chance to download cyberdogs.

 

Then, once all that is done...I play a game or two. Usually the same couple games I've always played on ________ system, and could have just stuck to a stock setup. But what fun would that be?

Edited March 20, 2023 by Reaperman

[Keatah]

2 hours ago, Reaperman said:

spending insane money on ISA soundcards,

I did that one or two times, but years ago. Nowadays sound is whatever comes out the motherboard jacks and that's good enough for me. In a roundabout way, the good-enuf-4-me built-in sound experience reinforced that the basic SB16 and AWE64Gold are, well, good enuf for my my two retro-rigs.

 

2 hours ago, Reaperman said:

In almost every case these days, the perfect setup also involves blowing my monthly datacap downloading every game I think I might someday want to play, as if the apocalypse is coming and I'll never get another chance to download cyberdogs.

Well.. as has been shown time and time again, what's online today may not be available tomorrow. Get it while you can.

[Mr SQL]

I think lack of setup time is a good argument for the real hardware over emulation and dedicated consoles over high-end PC's.

 

[Cynicaster]

On 4/4/2023 at 6:11 PM, Mr SQL said:

I think lack of setup time is a good argument for the real hardware over emulation and dedicated consoles over high-end PC's.

 

 

As someone who has been a major user of emulation forever but has very recently started to ramp up use of real hardware to my highest level in 10+ years, I can say that it's all about the trade-offs.  I do really like the power-up and power-down process for a retro console vs. an emulation PC.  You just hit the power buttons on the TV and console.  But the dedicated hardware takes up so much space, and doesn't have the convenience factor of emulation.  

 

One thing I've noticed is that playing more shoot-em-ups on real hardware has made me much more sensitive to input lag when playing similar games via emulators.  For years I never noticed it.  Now, it drives me nuts.  So this is a very strong argument in favor of real hardware for me, or perhaps one of those nifty FPGA things which I may get into someday.  

 

   

[Mr SQL]

8 hours ago, Cynicaster said:

 

As someone who has been a major user of emulation forever but has very recently started to ramp up use of real hardware to my highest level in 10+ years, I can say that it's all about the trade-offs.  I do really like the power-up and power-down process for a retro console vs. an emulation PC.  You just hit the power buttons on the TV and console.  But the dedicated hardware takes up so much space, and doesn't have the convenience factor of emulation.  

 

One thing I've noticed is that playing more shoot-em-ups on real hardware has made me much more sensitive to input lag when playing similar games via emulators.  For years I never noticed it.  Now, it drives me nuts.  So this is a very strong argument in favor of real hardware for me, or perhaps one of those nifty FPGA things which I may get into someday.  

 

   

 

Agree on the input lag being very discernable, OS booting delays are also very noticeable.

 

FPGA looks very cool for having the potential to match the real hardware more closely, I'd like to try one also. 

 

[+bent_pin]

Emulation is great for homebrews and developers, but when possible, I prefer the real hardware. I recently purchased a bunch of broken 2600s for restoration. I will be restoring most of them myself, but three are earmarked for my young computer engineering students. They will each got to restore a console, some controllers, and a box of carts. Then they will learn to program them.

 

My favorite parts of the process:

1) Watching people play with the things that I make

2) Teaching people how to make games

3) Building and restoring stuff, I guess that's setup

4) Actually playing

 

I just got a very nice copy of Dig Dug, which was the first cart I paid for with my own money. As soon as I finish setting up my new lab, I look forward to playing it.

[Tanooki]

I still lean towards the play, but damnit I had a good run in a 12 hour period not last night but the one before into yesterdays lunch-ish break I didn't lunch.

 

I got to talking to a person in town on messenger + another on discord (VGS) and both are into arcade stuff, console, restore, tweak, rehab.

 

I got a bit brazen and over the one evening I tore the back off my NeoGeo, used a plastic tool, at good risk of getting some sweet burns, wiggled me way down to a ferrite coil adjustment pot for my CRTs horizontal size.  Long story short, took a couple hours of careful approach and fiddling, but the stupid thing was so far OUT(up) I had to dig it down another centimeter or 3/4" lower.  My screen has never been right with games cutting off a good chunk of one side or the other.  I finally using originally a couple testy games I knew did what on, then the no-game cross hatch the cabinet does got it well dialed in so the entire red boxes perimeter is visible almost completely, well within tolerances.  It looks great now.

 

And then the lunch but not...I don't know if I put it in the thrift/finds thread, I traded a few common games for a 9" Panasonic PVM about two weeks ago.  It was not oriented well and a little blown out on brightness and a little hazy.  I got fed up, found the service manual, looked through and found all the way to custom tweak the thing internally. A dozen screws and 45min of work, it went from not filling the screen in any direction and being shifted right like a 1/2" losing some view area to being as on point as I'm willing to take it, tamed the over bright, and tightened the focus.

 

A little nerve racking but enjoyable and rewarding, definitely.

 

Here's some before and after, before is a bit tricky but you'll see the centering on Duck Hunt is well shifted left, like an entire block letters size worth to the right.

Then below is SMB3 and easier to see bordered character screen of SMB2.  Also the gray blow out brightness vs sharp black differences.

 

[MrMaddog]

Me, I actually prefer doing research and currating of retro consoles as a hobby.  The fact that LaunchBox works like a database (that uses XML files) and can turn any ROM dump into a treasure trove of images and information.  Just type a name in the search field and I can compare different versions of the same game on different platforms.  And each game even has a Wikipedia link to read more about it.

 

Of course if I need to take a break from all this work I just play a game or two...