Why do you emulate?

[craigix]

Also - realising that some games at the time were just rubbish but as children very clever advertising campaigns tricked us!


I spent a long time yesterday playing Superfrog on the Amiga (on the Pandora) - Team17's answer to Sonic.


It's rubbish isn't it. Horrible physics, frustrating game goal, unfair instant death (touch spikes even from the side and DIE!) etc.


I seem to remember completing it when I was a child. I don't know how I put up with it. Probably had a cracked version.


It's not the first time I've fired up what was supposed to be a masterpiece at the time and found it was just terrible.

 

[Sugar_Kane]

I agree! I've always sniffed at Superfrog, is was aweful. Whenever I mention Amiga emulation to friends someone always says 'oh yea superfrog, awesome game... ' I usually don't answer that because although I know it's bad, people are so utterly convinced that it's not that I wondered if there was just something that I didn't 'get' about it.


Slightly more controversially I think the same thing about donkey kong country

 

[Prometheus]

I voted "Other". My reason for emulation is format-shifting - I only emulate stuff I own (and in some cases, good hacks of stuff I own), along with stuff that's been made legally-downloadable by those responsible for it (both formerly commercial stuff, and homebrew). A nice side-effect is that it also makes it easier to play fan-translated versions of the handful of Japanese-only games that I have, which is great.


In some cases, I don't own the relevant systems at all, and have bought games with the sole intent of playing them on my Pandora (try as I might, I've rarely found much fun in emulating stuff on my computer - it just feels like some sort of poor facsimile, whereas the Pandora makes it feel like all those games were made for it).


@Craig - I remember trying Superfrog at a friend's place when I was a young'un. I recall quite liking it during the very brief time that I played it (it was probably only ten or twenty minutes, though), but upon grabbing it from Back to the Roots and playing it recently (yay legal download archives ), I'm inclined to agree with your assessment of it. Too much focus on "Let's make another animal-that-runs-fast game, with attitude!", and not enough focus on the fundamentals of a solid game (this also goes for Zool, as well, and also the likes of Bubsy, Awesome Possum, and so on and so forth).


On the bright side, I picked up the three-disk (OCS/ECS) version of Sleepwalker, and got Fire and Ice from Back to the Roots. I'd heard good things about those two, and wasn't disappointed by them.

 

[Sugar_Kane]

Strangely this thread has forced me to spend the past two days buying megadrive games on ebay

 

[FaTBoB]

I voted 'Other' - I am mainly interested in running emulations on portable devices. When I am at home I usually power up one of the real systems that I have stockpiled if I want to play a game but the ability to play on a quality emulation "on the go" makes the Pandora my dream device. Hopefully it will arrive soon.

 

[Tor]

I voted 'Other' too. But that's because I don't emulate games, I emulate old minicomputers..


.. and as I lost the hardware 15 years ago there's no other option than emulate. Until I


get my Pandora I'm running my emulator on my N900 and the laptop.

 

[Trip]

(try as I might, I've rarely found much fun in emulating stuff on my computer - it just feels like some sort of poor facsimile, whereas the Pandora makes it feel like all those games were made for it).

I told my friend this the other day when he asked why don't I just emulate on the PC.


If you sit in front of a PC and emulate older systems your brain expects one thing and receives something completely different. This only leads to disappointment


If however you emulate systems on a handheld computer that were never meant to be played on the move, your brain accepts it easier because it doesn't expect it to feel the same as it used to feel when you were sat in front of the TV. Therefore you enjoy the experience as if it's for the first time


Hence the reason that I've refrained from playing all the old systems again until I could get a handheld that had decent controls.


p.s Can't tell I've got an interest in useful Psychology can you

 

[WizardStan]

Fast Forward is also one of my favourite emulator features. Being able to skip quickly over a cutscene you've already seen, or advance through a conversation that is taking way too long because the text moves slower than you read is simply great

 

[Tickles]

Hence the reason that I've refrained from playing all the old systems again until I could get a handheld that had decent controls.

Me too, I'm saving it all for the Pandora. It's getting really frustrating now though so I've been playing Yoshi's Island on the DS; that doesn't count, does it?


@Wizardstan I also love fast forward for the same reason. I have, in moments of anger, been known to use rewind too... I'm not proud of it :unsure:

 

[Elanzer]

All my original consoles are either dead, controllers worn out, components lost in move, etc. With emulation I can multitask or quicksave to sneak in some play here and there.

 

[Prometheus]

I told my friend this the other day when he asked why don't I just emulate on the PC.


If you sit in front of a PC and emulate older systems your brain expects one thing and receives something completely different. This only leads to disappointment


If however you emulate systems on a handheld computer that were never meant to be played on the move, your brain accepts it easier because it doesn't expect it to feel the same as it used to feel when you were sat in front of the TV. Therefore you enjoy the experience as if it's for the first time


Hence the reason that I've refrained from playing all the old systems again until I could get a handheld that had decent controls.


p.s Can't tell I've got an interest in useful Psychology can you

See, that's the odd thing - it never used to bother me at all! The feeling-like-a-poor-facsimile thing seems to be quite recent, for me, and it also doesn't apply to emulation alone (it seems to apply to any type of gaming - even Jazz Jackrabbit 2, which was designed for personal computers, and which I originally played through on my first laptop, doesn't feel "right" to me when played on a computer now). I didn't play Cave Story until I could do so on my Pandora, for example, so it's a pre-Pandora thing for me. :lol:

 

[Trip]

Me too, I'm saving it all for the Pandora. It's getting really frustrating now though so I've been playing Yoshi's Island on the DS; that doesn't count, does it?

As you played it on a hand held I think your safe

See, that's the odd thing - it never used to bother me at all! The feeling-like-a-poor-facsimile thing seems to be quite recent..

Could be because of the switch from CRT to LED monitors maybe?


I know that I've been disappointed by attaching my Snes to newer TV's because it tends to look worse for it. That's the same thing that happens if you try to watch a VHS video through a new TV, it looks crap. I have a 42" CRT TV at home however and videos look great on it


The Pandora doesn't suffer from this because it has a small screen

 

[Prometheus]

Could be because of the switch from CRT to LED monitors maybe?

Nah, couldn't be that. CRTs meant for desktop computers have always given me eyestrain and headaches, so ever since the demise of computers that used standard televisions for their display I've always used laptops with LCDs.


It is one of life's little mysteries, I think.

 

[gp32rich]

Because I can't be arsed dragging around a C64(+tapes/disks, etc), Amiga(+etc) and PSX(...) when one handheld will do.


And I get to explore recommended games and other systems too


And it brings back such happy memories of when I had time, patience and nothing better to do than push pixels

 

[Wintersdark]

First and foremost, to replay the games of my youth. I'm getting depressingly old now, but I've been playing video games for very nearly as long as there has been video games.


I don't have any old consoles anymore - as they've aged, they've died, been lost over the years, etc. It's just too logistically difficult to keep dozens of old consoles and hundreds(..thousands..) of old carts; and the earlier CD-based consoles suffer from, well, using CD's - one of the worst forms of computer media used since punch cards. They get scratched/damaged, or just decay on their own, far too readily.


I'm completely uninterested in the hassle of obtaining old consoles again, though I do pick up old controllers and convert them to USB to use with modern systems and emulators.


That being said... I'm really looking forward to my Pandy for emulating. I have a lot more fun playing old games on handhelds and older laptops than I do on my gaming rig though because i always feel I should be playing something shinier when I'm on my desktop.


The real reason though that I play a lot of older games, though?


Difficulty.


I miss video games that are hard. I still enjoy modern games, but I find I've got to play them all on the hardest difficulty settings from the get go or you just drift through them unopposed.

 

[yoshi41dragon]

I voted for "To replay games i played when i was younger", but that's only half the truth.


Over the last 20 years, I've collected more than 30 consoles and handhelds.


Emulation is a very handy way to replay favorite games on modern hardware without the hassle of connecting several old consoles to modern TVs.


Other advantages are:

• games must not be changed (physically)
  
• save at any time
  
• filters to enhance the graphics
  
• freedom to play the same game on a big monitor or a handheld device
  
• play arcade games which never appeared on home consoles
  

However, there's one thing an emulator can never provide: The REAL retro feeling with the original hardware on a CRT

 

[Asiyura]

For almost all of these reasons, I'm trying to buy back the old consoles I owned or wanted but wasn't able to buy long ago (still missing a NES, SNES, Mega CD and Dreamcast).


And some of the best games of course.


BUT I'm planning to make a Mame & emulators arcade cabinet. Maybe even put the N64 and PS2 inside, because N64 emulation was not perfect IIRC and PS2 emulation require a supercalculator

.


That way I won't have a N64, a Mega Drive, a Wii, a PS2, a PS3, a DS and a PSP with all the controllers in the living room.

 

[Wintersdark]

I've always wanted to build a cabinet, with a full set of emulators. I loved cabinet based arcade games as a youngster.

 

[macsimus]

I play emulators to replay the games of my childhood/adolescence, mostly NES/SNES/NEOGEO/Arcade titles...


I have a very fond memory of these times, and I always feel a bit nostalgic about the early 90's smoky bars, with pinballs, table football, and of course arcade machines..


One of these days, I'll put a sega astro city in my house with a multislot slot SNK MVS.


Meanwhile, i just hope my "1600-in-the-line" pandora will soothe my pain


Kisses


Mac

 

[DaMummy]

Because my name is Guybrush Threepwood and i want to be a mighty pirate!

+1 though i also like revisiting some of the past gems and also want to play some recommended games that i never got around to playing, im too old to be spending money on video games, but im not nearly old enough to spend time on them