Retro games and emulation - Discuss retro shit in case you're stuck in the past or a hipster

[ShadowAngel785]

People always say that modern games with shitty graphics "look like a PS2 game" but if I'm being honest PS2 games don't even look that bad. When will people realize that the early Xbox 360 and PS3 era was the ugliest era of 3D gaming so far? Every entry going from PS2 to PS3 or Xbox Original to Xbox 360 looks significantly worse at best and unfinished at worse.

Jaguar/3DO/PS1/Saturn era was definitively worse, especially since on PC with Voodoo cards you got better graphics without all the warping, fucked geometry and heavy aliasing - and better resolutions to boot (honestly, just compare Tomb Raider or Carmageddon or compare Screamer to Ridge Racer).
It's actually quite brutal to go back to those games today. No nostalgia can make it bearable and you're happy with emulators that can fix all the graphic errors and ramp up the internal resolution. PS2 to X360/PS3 wasn't that bad, except of course that the Xbox originally had no HDMI and even with RGB Scart (poor muricans who never got to experience that) it was bad

 

[Samuel Fuller]

this has fuck all to do with retro games or emulation but I'd like to take a moment to mention something that vaguely has to do with CRTs and my complaints with modern televisions. You know what I miss the most about older tvs, channel surfing. You're probably thinking, what are you talking about you retard? There was nothing good on then, and there's nothing good on now. besides, you can surf channels.

to the first point, true. to the second, not efficiently. now I'm not sure if it's the digital tuners and signals, or if it's the little computers/processors in a modern television, but there's a fucking delay that drives me up the god DAMN wall when you change the channel. It loads the fucking channel. tvs never used to load the fuckin channel, you'd press up or down and it'd go up or fucking down.

my crt doesn't have a digital tuner, the antenna is run through a late model VCR/DVD combo and it seems to be faster than through my Samsung and Sony Bravia OLED smart tvs antennas so maybe it's a smart TV thing. In any case, it fucking sucks. I haven't had cable in years but I imagine it also has to fucking load when you change channels now although I'd just use the guide anyways. That's the other thing, new tvs have built in guides and that should kick ass but they're slow as fuck to load. the vcr has one too for it's tuner, and it's instant. Fucks up with that? anyways this was irrelevant I just wanted to complain. Thanks for reading.

There were wildly varying levels of tuner quality in TVs ever since tuners went solid state, and VCRs ALWAYS had better tuners, because nobody wanted to be know as the VCR that had bad recording quality, when recording broadcasts was one of their primary purposes. As TV moved more toward cable and satellite, which required their own tuner boxes, putting one in a TV became less of a priority, as it was unlikely to be used much. Hell, outside North America it wasn't unheard of in the early HDTV days to be able to get models with no tuner in them at all.

I lived in places where a set-top antenna on my TV couldn't pick up shit, but my VCR could bring in signal from 300 KM away on an indoor antenna.

 

[Two Dollars]

Jaguar/3DO/PS1/Saturn era was definitively worse, especially since on PC with Voodoo cards you got better graphics without all the warping, fucked geometry and heavy aliasing - and better resolutions to boot (honestly, just compare Tomb Raider or Carmageddon or compare Screamer to Ridge Racer).

N64 chads win again

 

[BrunoMattei]

Yeah, that first generation of 3D games was ugly as shit. Very few hold up well. Whereas I think PS2/Gaycube/Xbox held up okay. God Hand, RE4, Silent Hill 2, etc all look pretty good today.

 

[HexFag]

Jaguar/3DO/PS1/Saturn era was definitively worse, especially since on PC with Voodoo cards you got better graphics without all the warping, fucked geometry and heavy aliasing - and better resolutions to boot (honestly, just compare Tomb Raider or Carmageddon or compare Screamer to Ridge Racer).
It's actually quite brutal to go back to those games today. No nostalgia can make it bearable and you're happy with emulators that can fix all the graphic errors and ramp up the internal resolution. PS2 to X360/PS3 wasn't that bad, except of course that the Xbox originally had no HDMI and even with RGB Scart (poor muricans who never got to experience that) it was bad

While the early PSX/Jaguar/3DO/Saturn/N64 era might be rough in terms of 3D graphics, I'd still argue that the 32-bit era of games during that time period are absolutely timeless and mogs anything in the early Xbox/PS3 era visually. Hybrid 2D-3D should have never left AAA gaming. The closest thing we have now is HD-2D which looks terrible depending now how much bloom they want to apply at any given time. Most of these also aren't nostalgia as I only played these games in the last 5 or so years.

 

[Baraka Obama]

While the early PSX/Jaguar/3DO/Saturn/N64 era might be rough in terms of 3D graphics, I'd still argue that the 32-bit era of games during that time period are absolutely timeless and mogs anything in the early Xbox/PS3 era visually. Hybrid 2D-3D should have never left AAA gaming. The closest thing we have now is HD-2D which looks terrible depending now how much bloom they want to apply at any given time. Most of these also aren't nostalgia as I only played these games in the last 5 or so years.
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These are the opposite of "timeless" but they are maximum soul.

 

[Never Scored]

N64 chads win again

N64 is just so aesthetically interesting in hindsight. It had all these innovations that show up in modern 3D games, but it also had all these technological dead ends that never progressed any further.

Like, if you look at the way levels are constructed in Mario 64, they actually made scale models of buildings and mountains and shit. You go in a building, the camera follows you through the door, and the size and design of the inside is accurate in size and scope to the exterior. If you entered a building in a modern game, you'd be outside, and when you went through the door, it would load a new area, and it would be this cut away diorama thing that is not necessarily to scale with no front wall. Mario 64 actually just fluidly moves from outside to inside and you're in an actual model of a building with four walls and shit.

 

[Kit Marz]

I installed a flippydrive on my Gamecube two months ago and I guess I did it just in time. When I installed it the discs could still be read, but I recently found some of my old games and wanted to test them and it turns out that either the motor, laser, or both are completely dead. I thought about trying to fix it, but there's really no need at this point. I do mostly play gamecube games on dolphin, but it's fun to play on the actual system. Connecting a GBA to the gamecube is dumb and gimmicky, but it's still has a sort of charm that you can't get with dolphin

 

[Celebrate Nite]

It's actually quite brutal to go back to those games today.

Says you

I can go back to vanilla Virtua Fighter 1 on the saturn and still enjoy the lego block asthetics and "< 30 fps" gameplay. There's a certain charm to it.

 

[Two Dollars]

I installed a flippydrive on my Gamecube two months ago and I guess I did it just in time. When I installed it the discs could still be read, but I recently found some of my old games and wanted to test them and it turns out that either the motor, laser, or both are completely dead. I thought about trying to fix it, but there's really no need at this point. I do mostly play gamecube games on dolphin, but it's fun to play on the actual system. Connecting a GBA to the gamecube is dumb and gimmicky, but it's still has a sort of charm that you can't get with dolphin

Dolphin has functional equivalents for some of that stuff like connecting to mGBA for that connectivity, but I hope it eventually becomes possible to connect a DS, however they would do that. Nintendo Channel isn’t the same without being able to transfer Rhythm Heaven demos.

 

[mentally retarded user]

Is the FS-UAE Amiga Emulator impossible to use or I'm just a retard?
I ended up getting a retroarch core that sets up everything and I could just play.

 

[Kit Marz]

Dolphin has functional equivalents for some of that stuff like connecting to mGBA for that connectivity, but I hope it eventually becomes possible to connect a DS, however they would do that. Nintendo Channel isn’t the same without being able to transfer Rhythm Heaven demos.

I understand that and I'm glad the connectivity is there. I'm talking more of the novelty of connecting an actual GBA to an actual Gamecube. There's really no substitute for playing Four Swords on the Gamecube with four GBAs connected. There's such a specific setup you need for it, but it really is fun when you have everything you need.

 

[Doublefrag]

It's actually quite brutal to go back to those games today. No nostalgia can make it bearable and you're happy with emulators that can fix all the graphic errors and ramp up the internal resolution.

Perhaps retro gaming is not for you if these games look "brutal" to you. Go back to your AAA slop like Red Dead Redemption that is graphically polished all according to the latest consoomer UX standards. Don't force yourself into something you don't like.

 

[Calandrino]

These are the opposite of "timeless" but they are maximum soul.

They don't make 'em like they used to, but I don't see why they shouldn't.

Says you

I can go back to vanilla Virtua Fighter 1 on the saturn and still enjoy the lego block asthetics and "< 30 fps" gameplay. There's a certain charm to it.

I think arcade VF1 ran at 30fps at least. And it looks nice. imo PS1/N64 3D games tend to look pretty rough even compared to flat-shaded 3D arcade games from the 1980s like STUN Runner.

Perhaps retro gaming is not for you if these games look "brutal" to you. Go back to your AAA slop like Red Dead Redemption that is graphically polished all according to the latest consoomer UX standards. Don't force yourself into something you don't like.

I don't consider 5th gen to be retro.

 

[Lone MacReady II]

While the early PSX/Jaguar/3DO/Saturn/N64 era might be rough in terms of 3D graphics, I'd still argue that the 32-bit era of games during that time period are absolutely timeless and mogs anything in the early Xbox/PS3 era visually. Hybrid 2D-3D should have never left AAA gaming. The closest thing we have now is HD-2D which looks terrible depending now how much bloom they want to apply at any given time. Most of these also aren't nostalgia as I only played these games in the last 5 or so years.
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Good art will always trump sheer graphical fidelity. I'll take Metal Slug explosions, they're beautiful.

 

[whatever I feel like]

They don't make 'em like they used to, but I don't see why they shouldn't.


I think arcade VF1 ran at 30fps at least. And it looks nice. imo PS1/N64 3D games tend to look pretty rough even compared to flat-shaded 3D arcade games from the 1980s like STUN Runner.

I don't consider 5th gen to be retro.

I remember people saying this back in the day but with the benefit of hindsight I disagree. 5th gen was the last gen where game hardware wasn't strong enough to do everything a designer could want of it-namely level fog blurring out distant objects and (and this is a positive, bear in mind,) for consoles GCN and PS2 online features were very limited. This is as opposed to 6th gen games, which play identically to the current gen, but just look uglier.

 

[PhoBingas]

Just sort of polling the room. How have your PS1, PS2, Saturn, Sega CD, and Gamecube discs been holding up? Has disc rot / age been a big issue?
I've been holding off on disc based consoles, sticking to mostly collecting cartridge based stuff. Out of around fifty Sega Genesis, fifty SNES and sixty NES games, I've got 1 Sega game that didn't work, as in wouldn't start despite not having visible damage to the board inside the cart or anything and 2 SNES games that likewise didn't have damaged boards or contacts but didn't start even after deep cleaning both console and game cart. I'm okay with a like 2% fail rate with stuff that's thirty and forty years old.
Has disc rot totally killed collecting for those older consoles? Would it be worth it to pick up modded systems and just burn games? Or would I be better off just emulating?

 

[Jason_Cruiser]

Just sort of polling the room. How have your PS1, PS2, Saturn, Sega CD, and Gamecube discs been holding up? Has disc rot / age been a big issue?
I've been holding off on disc based consoles, sticking to mostly collecting cartridge based stuff. Out of around fifty Sega Genesis, fifty SNES and sixty NES games, I've got 1 Sega game that didn't work, as in wouldn't start despite not having visible damage to the board inside the cart or anything and 2 SNES games that likewise didn't have damaged boards or contacts but didn't start even after deep cleaning both console and game cart. I'm okay with a like 2% fail rate with stuff that's thirty and forty years old.
Has disc rot totally killed collecting for those older consoles? Would it be worth it to pick up modded systems and just burn games? Or would I be better off just emulating?

Disk rot is a massively over-exaggerated issue. It's one of those things youtubers bring up all the time yet, in reality I've only ever encountered a single game that has suffered from it and I own a shit ton of early CD games for the PCE and mega-cd. I think you should be fine, discs being scratched up is a bigger issue than them rotting. Most cases of games rotting is usually just because the owners threw them in a shed for twenty years or its simply just bad batch of games from back in the day. The manufacturers say these disks should last a century and it's not like these discs were low quality or anything so I have no reason to doubt that number yet.

 

[PhoBingas]

Disk rot is a massively over-exaggerated issue. It's one of those things youtubers bring up all the time yet, in reality I've only ever encountered a single game that has suffered from it and I own a shit ton of early CD games for the PCE and mega-cd. I think you should be fine, discs being scratched up is a bigger issue than them rotting. Most cases of games rotting is usually just because the owners threw them in a shed for twenty years or its simply just bad batch of games from back in the day. The manufacturers say these disks should last a century and it's not like these discs were low quality or anything so I have no reason to doubt that number yet.

Noted. If that's the case, I may pick up that Sega CD one of the retro game stores near me had for sale if it's still there. Might grab a Dreamcast if I can find one with the hookups and controllers for a reasonable price with a few decent games. Can't you can just burn cd-rw discs with Dreamcast ISOs and they just work? IIRC you can, but that might be another console I'm thinking of.

 

[Jason_Cruiser]

Noted. If that's the case, I may pick up that Sega CD one of the retro game stores near me had for sale if it's still there. Might grab a Dreamcast if I can find one with the hookups and controllers for a reasonable price with a few decent games. Can't you can just burn cd-rw discs with Dreamcast ISOs and they just work? IIRC you can, but that might be another console I'm thinking of.

Early dreamcast models play burned games just fine. IIRC Sega tried to resolve the issue with a second revision, but since the system barely lasted a few years those models are a little uncommon. Those 4th gen cd add-ons like the Mega cd have no copy protection.