Collectible retro console "upgrading" or refurbishing?

[Night]

Recently, after a friend of mine and myself started finding old consoles in rather interesting places, along with the added effects of instant nostalgia. I started taking a liking for collecting old consoles and games.

But as experience shows so far (mostly with the old PS1's we found), the old media and hardware parts (like CD-Drives and PS1 Games) tend to break after a while due to their poor manifacturing quality or mistreat by previous owners (or maybe both of us just got unlucky).

So after feeling a bit sad and merciful for the good old systems (that still worked otherwise), i started doing a bit of research online and eventualy did stumble upon ways to make the machines interface with SD Cards, such as the PSiO for the PS1 and the various Everdrives for cartridge based systems. After a while, I also kept finding various newly made replacemnet drives on eBay, which in turn are way more affordable than the replacment SD-Card adaptors (sort of).

All of which brings me to my question for the collectors amoung this community: Which is according to your experience and opinion is the better option?

 

[Tenka]

Play all of your old console games with emulators on a wide use computer, and ironically mod your old game consoles into lower purpose but still interesting other computers.

 

[Pritchy]

Emulators are the way to go as far as I'm concerned. They don't 'feel' the same, but you can get close if you output to a TV and get the right controller. I suspect a large dollop of makes if feel different is good old rose tinted glasses  :mellow:

The day a handheld can accurately emulate PS2 is going to be a pretty damn good day.

 

[Asmo]

All of the options. Own & collect, maintain & modify (unless mint in box), emulate for regular play and posterity.

 

[Null]

Option 3, since most of my consoles/handhelds are limited edition ones and therefore for display only.

 

[NearTao]

Collecting is very personal. Get what you want... Not what someone else thinks is cool.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N900A using Tapatalk

 

[Night]

..ironically mod your old game consoles into lower purpose but still interesting other computers.

Well call me a bit superstitious if you wil, but in my opinion i would say playing the games on the original hardware that they were designed for is the most natural thing to do (if such opportunity does present itself).

Sure there's quite some supurb options for emulation out there, such as with the pandora (big thanks to the excelent developers of this community by the way ) or the PC, but don't you think not using the original hardware is kind of a loss?

I suspect a large dollop of makes if feel different is good old rose tinted glasses :mellow:

The day a handheld can accurately emulate PS2 is going to be a pretty damn good day.

I think the amounts of nostalgia the gamer ingested previously has more of an influence in this matter, but fairly i can understand why.

If one would want to truly revisit his good old times, merely emulation might not do it full justice and as a result that one gamer may chose to seek the actual hardware in order to get a closer "Retro experience" of sorts.

@NearTao: That's what i think too. ^_^

In case you misunderstood though, it's just that i am kind of a newbie.. so i was also aiming for someone experienced with collecing retro consoles and games to maybe give his advice and opinion on refurbeshing or modding the likes of the PS1 and other consoles.

 

[vcoleiro1]

If collectable is your aim, it's sort of against the grain of the the last option..

Focussing on the top two options, keep original or mod.   That's a good question, I have seen modded NEC Turbo Expresses go for more than unmodded ones.  But I beleive in the longer term, original will hold more value - but that's just my guess.  

I recently (this week) recapped a Sega Game, I noticed on the forums that you could also do all sorts of mods to it, like putting different back lighting and LCD.  In the end I decided to keep it original.

 

[comradekingu]

Original controllers and emulators is a nice mix and match

 

[Night]

If collectable is your aim, it's sort of against the grain of the the last option..

Focussing on the top two options, keep original or mod.   That's a good question, I have seen modded NEC Turbo Expresses go for more than unmodded ones.  But I beleive in the longer term, original will hold more value - but that's just my guess. 

That's a fair point, but the idea of "collectible" that i was actually more refering to wasn't the one about the game's or console's value in the long term, but rather more about collecting as result of things like nostalgia or aquired liking for old video games.

So my question actually also had a more of technical side to it that regards the preservation of such a collection, which if to refrase my question in that regard would be as follows: "What according to an experienced collector's partialy technical opinion will keep a collection alive for a longer term, without sacrificing (or at least sacrificing as less as possible) any aspects of any sort that in his opinion are important to preserve?"

 

[EvilDragon]

I'm using all my original old stuff for playing at home and the Pandora on-the-go.

Got SNES, N64, TG16, SMS, NES and MegaDrive hooked up with Everdrives to play roms off SD-Card.

Pretty much awesome, since battery saved games are compatible with the Pandora, so I got the SNES Emulator on the SD Card as well, play games at home, save, put the card in my Pandora and continue playing

Amiga 1200 has a compact flash card built-in as harddisk which I can easily mount via WinUAE and copy new stuff over.

C64 has JiffyDOS and an SD Card adaptor.

Most other more recent systems are modded so I can copy my original games to play them

 

[Fzero]

I had to [storage just wasn't there in the flat I moved into plus bills were skinting me] part with a fairly large collection of consoles, which was a big pity for me, even though I was emulating and not using a lot of them, I liked to have them in their boxes as furniture and just as part of a collection.

I still plan to buy them all back again one day, not the very same ones of course but those same consoles again. When I've a bigger place and some spare cash I'll go mad on ebay and round them all up again.

Parted with a NES, SNES, SMS, MD, 2600 Woody, GC, couple of 360's, PS1, PS2, some NES clone box... around 100 game carts.

Gutted.

Kept all my handhelds as they were not claiming much space, so my collection shrank drastically

Prefer to play on the original systems myself, flipping those old original switches and mashing those original buttons. Can't be beaten.

....ahhh...that Megadrive volume slider

Oh well... again one day

 

[Night]

I'm using all my original old stuff for playing at home and the Pandora on-the-go.


Got SNES, N64, TG16, SMS, NES and MegaDrive hooked up with Everdrives to play roms off SD-Card.


Pretty much awesome, since battery saved games are compatible with the Pandora, so I got the SNES Emulator on the SD Card as well, play games at home, save, put the card in my Pandora and continue playing

Man that's awesome, didn't think you could do that.. sure kicks the retro gears up a few notches!

I wonder if the PSiO guys could make the save files competible with emulators like PCSX, it would make things much more glorious.

I had to [storage just wasn't there in the flat I moved into plus bills were skinting me] part with a fairly large collection of consoles, which was a big pity for me, even though I was emulating and not..

..Parted with a NES, SNES, SMS, MD, 2600 Woody, GC, couple of 360's, PS1, PS2, some NES clone box... around 100 game carts.

While i was not as remotly emotional, your story does remind me of this scene, only with video games instead of scotch and nostalgia instead of money.

Would be great to break loose and raid eBay one day for the old stuff though, wish you luck on finding everything again .