Do you sometimes feel like unlimited access to ROMs and Emulators makes you not want to play retro vidya? Nothing feels special or fun if anything is available for free on tap
Do you sometimes feel like unlimited access to ROMs and Emulators makes you not want to play retro vidya?
No. Nothing feels special or fun because I'm 30 years old and I already know all this shit inside out. Also I have real life to care about
This
Except I still have fun and can get into games.
There's a balance between forcing yourself to finish games that you dislike and immediately moving onto the next thing after 5 minutes because a game starts slow or has an annoying section. The issue with having so much available is just that people indulge their short attention spans instead of giving the games a fair chance.
Try some different genres or systems, get out of your comfort zone.
We are achieving heretofore unseen levels of cope
The fact is many of us are tired of these overpatched (cause they suck get it? That's the only reason you ever need to patch a game. That means devs can intentionally make shit games for you because they know you'll be okay with it in the patch age. Huehuehueh) intangible (read, unsatisfyingly detached user experience), and last but not least the pigeon-brained form of selling games by word of mouth ego-stroking propaganda instead of goodie incentives and the game being "found" media that just happens to be the best thing ever.
>wtf why would you want the latter. Don't you know you are the cancer killing g-
*smack upside the head*
Stfu. If a game comes out that you've never heard of from a studio you've never heard of, you'd better be damn sure you offer more than the promise of "good gameplay" to get me to bite. Most games by triple A studios succeed in spite of these things. But only just. And that's why games like ARMS don't get sequels even after seven years of being the best game this gen. You baka casuals wouldn't know a good game if it bit YOU in the ass. So don't you even think of trying to pretend OP's sentiments come from obtusity.
>Nothing feels special or fun if anything is available for free on tap
>available for free on tap
Is it though? The roms are free yes, but the means to play them - controllers, handhelds, emulator boxes, MiSTer, Raspberry Pi cases etc. are not. Emulation itself is only a means to an end. Many people emulate, but few take full advantage of it. It's a lot more than just grabbing a few rom files from your favorite site and using an Xbox controller to play them. A proper emulation setup can cost anywhere from $20 to $200 depending on what exactly you are trying to do. That is not counting the time it takes to download (and if necessary curate) rom sets so that you actually can have unlimited access to every game and system.
Emulation just makes it easier for us to enjoy these games, but pretty much you still have to make the effort to discover them and make time to play the ones that interest you the most. That is the part you have to do on your own, and that is maybe why some people lose interest in retro gaming. It's easy to just keep playing the same games over and over again, much harder to look for something new you might enjoy and just dive in.
is the other reason, real life and other hobbies have a real impact on how much time we spend playing retro games. It's one of those things that's just kind of hard to get around, even if you really want to play retro games. Obligations are obligations, sadly
Would anons be interested in a sort of book club like thread for retro where anons try out a new specific rom every week?
I would :3
I'm down for this. I know a Discord I used to be in used to do a Game of the Month thing
No. Game tourism is cancer. Get into game deeply or don't play it at all
This sounds vaguely like gauntlet threads that were on /vr/ some time ago.
>That is the part you have to do on your own, and that is maybe why some people lose interest in retro gaming. It's easy to just keep playing the same games over and over again, much harder to look for something new you might enjoy and just dive in.
Usually I'd just be tempted to play NES games like Kirby or SMB2 I'd already done thousands of times. A while back I picked up Rescue Rangers and played it to the point of now getting PTSD attacks from the music.
>is the other reason, real life and other hobbies have a real impact on how much time we spend playing retro games. It's one of those things that's just kind of hard to get around, even if you really want to play retro games. Obligations are obligations, sadly
Each second spent playing vidya means I can't be on here discussing vidya or on Ganker insulting Taylor Shit.
the adult brain is a little less adaptable than the child brain. it's harder to train yourself to do something new, although you can do it with enough effort.
I hate that you’re right
fpbp, but collecting the physical copies and hardware helps a lot. I stopped emulating years ago and started a PS1 & Dreamcast collection so when I get a chance from daily life to play it actually feels right. Plus hang out with /vr/gins irl that feel the same way, definitely helps when your /vr/ bros are playing with you.
Unfortunately we’re getting older and it’s natural for you to grow out of playing video games in general. Hanging on to that feeling eventually becomes a disease. Just be grateful that you’re childhood was great.
Games are more fun as an adult.
it's not that i find vidya less fun, i'm just more short on patience when i get stuck in a game than i used to be
When I was a child I had no hope to finish extremely difficult games, when I went to the arcades my experience was usually playing games for two minutes, losing and then watching demos.
Today I have the cognitive ability to understand games better, find ways to learn their mechanics and discover the titles that suit my tastes, so I get a lot more enjoyment out of the hobby.
Having been a kid back when arcades were everywhere in my region feels like a waste, they would have been so much fun as an adult with money and skill.
then why are you here
What I feel is that 90% of games, even the good ones, are not worth my time when I have better choices. Do I really want to play Castlevania when I could just frick off and play final fantasy tactics? That’s the problem.
Nothing sucks my soul out like having an entire romset to sift through and I end up playing like 25% of the games for 1 minute each.
Curating your local rom folders is key.
But I still like seeing stuff in old magazine scans or referenced on Twitter and going to look up a rom and play it.
No because I actually like games enough to be engrossed by them.
>Nothing feels special or fun if anything is available for free on tap
I can't sympathize with that sentiment because I had like 4 dozen of pirated PS1 games when I was a child. My dad had access to fast internet at his job so he downloaded PS1 disc images to his laptop's hard drive there and burned them at home. They weren't strictly free (there's still the cost of the CD-R disc lol), but I had a lot of choice in what I played and if a game was bad then I just changed the disc and started playing another one.
No.
I appreciated my games a lot more when I collected physical. Purchasing, cleaning, travel involved etc all give you some skin in the game and make it more likely you’ll give something the chance.
Likewise I enjoy a game a lot more when I don’t abuse cheats or save states to beat it.
It just takes me back to the rental psychology of my youth
Not anymore, the honeymoon period of feeling "overwhelmed" wore off. Now I pick set schedules for systems. Make a list of 5 or so games and play them until I beat them or drop them because i didn't like them. I do not care about FOMO anymore, I probably won't ever play chrono trigger or earthbound and I'm better off not forcing myself to try and like them. Once I finish or drop the games for a system, I move onto another system. This ensures I play games from all the roms/emulators, consoles/games I own and stops me from getting burnt out from a systems aesthetic.
The schedule thing you described works for me. Too much choice is definitely a problem, and the best way to fix it ime is to either do exactly what you said, or to just plug in the first game you see that sounds even remotely fun, don't even look at the others, just slam that shit in and play it. Choices kill.
It's not strict, like I don't need to finish a game in a certain amount of time , but I find it helps keep things fresh.
>chrono trigger
Make time for it, its best feature is its pacing.
Frick you
don't listen to these gays. I forced myself to play it and it was worse than Chrono Cross by far. Zoomers first retro JRPG
Can’t relate. My enjoyment doesn’t just come from owning something, the experience of playing the game is much more valuable. Are you sure you don’t just have a spending problem?
No. Just sit down and play the damn game.
Emulators are just not fun at all and I don't know why
I'm not a nostalgiagay or a collector at all. I feel nothing for that stuff. But I just don't like emulating at all. Its a shame because I have no consoles right now. And ODEs and everdrives are expensive too.
I never download rom list
Just individual game and only the immediate next one i want to play
I agree for consoles but computers sometimes you have to because the hardware is too expensive/complicated/hard to maintain or deal with.
nobody's gonna import a real PC-98 just to play crappy anime strip poker games
Sounds like you just don't enjoy playing games in general, you just want to hoard crap.
I said the opposite
Yes. If you grew up poor, saving to afford a game or receiving a gift felt very rewarding. I'd look carefully at both sides of the box, read the manual, listen to the title theme, and savor every fricking second of gameplay. Now that i'm old I just rush through most games and skip some side content because I will never have time to play all the games I want.
I was poor and had no games as a kid. I discovered emulation in 2014. I played the shit out of super metroid, chrono trigger, etc. I've played over a hundred games since. The sad realization is that 90% of retro games are bad and not worth playing compared to the best of the best titles. Like, Chrono Trigger is probably the best JRPG on the snes because of how characters can combine their attacks and how little grinding is required, and the SNES is full of copypasted uninspired JRPGs.
But the best games of every retro system are still a lot of them.
>and the SNES is full of copypasted uninspired JRPGs.
JRPGs fundamentally suck so this shouldn't be surprising. Like of all genre's it's weird you singled this out.
I get this feeling too, there so.many fricking games and so little time. And also I always sabotage myself when o try to play something because I'm thinking I could waste this time with my family or friends or meeting some girl. I still play videogames with my friends tho, the jokes, the banter, the autistic screams and talking around it makes it more alive as a hobby.
Never too busy to blogpost on Ganker though, right?
no, not really. I never really liked playing on emulators much, though, so I understand that at least. Since I bought flashcarts some time ago I've no problem picking a game from a big 'ol list I curated and playing for awhile.
like i mean after reading a couple of Commodore PET repair threads on various forums i was like "Yeah...I'm just gonna stick to VICE if I need to play BASIC games made with text characters. Frick this shit."
Incredible stench of Reddit in this thread
My favorite thing to laugh at in the modern world is console wars and remakes. Why even bother? The first is tribalism with no roots. The latter is pure consumerism with no actual end product.
>first discover emulation
>download zsnes and super metroid, because I had metroid 2 and fusion as a kid
>absolutely fricking blown away by how good this game is despite the horrible zsnes audio and glitches out the ass. I realized that the gba was an absolute piece of shit and inferior to the snes.
That was an amazing moment I'll never forget.
>boohoo I hate actually playing videogames, I just want to have vaguely videogame-themed conversations on Ganker :~~*((
Please consider going to >>>Ganker and never coming back, your people are waiting for you there.
I dislike emulators as well although I know some games are not viable on hardware for various reasons. For example no Mr. Gimmick on a NES, you lose half the sound.
You get what you pay for.
Don't waste your time replying.
You'll figure it out.
SNES games on a real console+good quality CRT look amazing, the graphics have a vibrancy to them that you miss on emulation.
Nope, I was poor when I was a kid. I only had hand-me-downs and second hand stuff. By the time the late 90s rolled around I didn't need any of that stuff because I could grab any high rated game with near 0 effort and play it at leisure. Now I can use anything to play excellent games. Cellphone and BT game pad good-to-go. Laptop at a friends house and a couple BT controllers, a-ok. There is not a damn reason in the world to jump on any hype train, and blow cash on games that might be good, when you can just look back 5, 10, 40 years and have your pick of absolute winners.
Nah, picking which game to play next can be a pain sometimes but having access to all this stuff is great
This is actually a real thing. When someone is presented with too many options, it results in
It's called "overchoice".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overchoice
This is closely related to "analysis paralysis".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis
Basically, you have so many options to choose from that when you think about what to play, your brain refrains from making a decision, other-wise it feels like it's making the wrong decision.
It can also cause people to feel overwhelmed, while simultaneously feeling joy at the plethora of options, causing cognitive dissonance and causing the brain to short-circuit in a way, causing them to feel no desire to make a choice.
I've figured how to counter this though; keep playing a game you love to normally play. Sooner or later you'll feel inclined/drawn to play a different title after a while and the cycle continues.
Pretty much. Being overwhelmed by a task or even a hobby is what stopping you from engaging with it. Solution is to break it down and avoid having too much choice like romsets and shit.
Also, the idea that you need to "beat" or finish every game you play is also detrimental to your enjoyment. At least it was for me.
>And that's why games like ARMS don't get sequels even after seven years of being the best game this gen
Didn't read all the post but Arms really kicked ass. Kind of like a distant cousin of Virtual-on.
Yeah kinda, but I mitigate this through the hunt for what to play. I don't just pick random games to play, I search until I find something that I can't wait to play. Basically I do reverse marketing.
No? I actually like playing games, not just hoarding stuff.
Full romsets, wikipedia and youtube have allowed me to go through every console game up to 1994.
The games I played felt special because I found them - they were chosen on the merits that I value, and not just some groupthink homogenised list meant to try to please everyone.
No not really
I only download games that I know I will play. If I download a whole romset then maybe I'd face this issue but otherwise it's not any different to being in a game shop with a lot of video games to choose from
Based fellow only-downloading-the-games-you-want-to-play anon.
I guess another way to do this if you want the romset offline is to just put them all on another drive or in another folder, and move them to your small library folder when you want to start them.
I just download the games I want to play, so I don't have to search through a huge folder. And I play each game thoroughly, unless I really hate it in which case I'll just drop it. Don't have any problems with boredom this way. If anything I'm worried I won't have enough time in my lifetime to play/read/watch/listen to everything I want to.
Also, relating to soul when emulating, I get an original controller or good replica through USB, minimize input lag, and use a good CRT shader that looks the way I remember my CRT looking, and simulate the best output signal for the console. It's not the same as a good old CRT, but at least I can use fast-forwarding, save states, don't have to get expensive flashcarts, and don't have trouble with dirty contacts or whatever.
Don't play more than 1 game at a time. Finish what you start before "checking out" other cool games.
I agree with the first part but not the second. Sticking out a game you don't like on principle can make your hobby feel like a chore. If it's a short game, give it an hour. If it's a long one, give it four, tops. If you aren't feeling it at that point, drop it and don't look back.
Not really. People just have more stuff to do when they're older. I still play those old PSX JRPGs, but only once every three months, not every week. And I don't go for 100% anymore.
Yes this is why I use flashcarts and play a shitty old TV instead of an emulator on my computer I've dumped $3k into on a 4k TV. I feel a lot more compelled to play them that way.
I'm the opposite. When I was out of high school trying to find a job with nothing but free time it was hard to get into games after a certain point cause it's all what my life was. Now in my 30s with a career and other stuff it's way easier to get absorbed into whatever I'm enjoying because it's not the sole thing I'm occupied with anymore.
easy access can make things seem not worth it. the way around that is to forget playing games for a few weeks or months, then picking up a game and sticking with it for at least a weekend. like video game rentals. or find an old magazine scan, look through the issues, and find a game that captures your imagination. stick with that game until youre tired. look for another game and dont jump in and out of it with another game, just keep trying. youll get the old feeling back if thats what you want
>rentals
When i was in Japan to Visit my Family over the holidays, we actually went and rented some anime to watch from a rental shop. I haven’t been in one for like 15 years at least but the fact that we only had the DVD for like a week made watching it all that more exciting
no because I don't pirate games
its the same with music. it just lost its value through the internet.
No, discovering emulation and roms helped regain my interest in gaming
those old geocities websites taht had like 15 roms to choose from versus .rar files today filled with the entire library and every version of every game. yeah...in the old days finding and dowloading a rom felt special and you played the hell out of it. now it's just tuesday.
The game itself is all that matters.
No. Speak for yourself. Nice well poisoning attempt, corpo. Not buying your shoddy emupacks.
>I HAVE to buy something like a fricking consumer cow to enjoy it
I feel like this, but probably because I have depression. I don't get enjoyment out of games or anime anymore, or anything at all.
How old are you? Just curious
24. I kind of felt like this when I was in high school too but it wasn't bad and only occasional, now it's pretty much 24/7.
would be nice to have the same wonder and enjoyment i did when I was younger, but that's long gone.
I enjoy games more if they're free. If I pay money for them every flaw gives me buyer's remorse, but if I'm playing for free it's hard to get too upset.
If you don't have family or loved ones, you should consider suicide. I'm in a similar boat as you, except several years older, and I can tell you it only gets worse.
>Take my advice I don't follow
Do better.
I have family.
>I'm in a similar boat as you
>you should consider suicide
Then commit suicide.
>If you don't have family or loved ones
Then you're not in a similar boat.
Doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it anyway. Do the kids a favor.
Maybe he has family too; it's unclear. We're similar in that we've both been depressed since high school.
The family I have are my parents, and I know they wouldn't be happy if I killed myself because I've tried and it really traumatized them. But once they go, I go. Anyway this is veering off topic.
Have you looked for treatment, anon? What's been bothering you most? I hope you get better. I was like this too, sometimes I couldn't enjoy anything at all, and other times it went full circle and I felt it was all so awful that just getting the pleasure of playing a bit in peace was a blessing which I felt grateful for, we have ups and downs.
I think the best thing is to be a bit autistic about a feel franchises that you want to finish, so you limit your choices a little bit more.
I play on handhelds which don't have internet access and avoid downloading romsets.
Therefore, I can only pick from the games I consciously chose to play.
Even with a large library, it's all stuff I curated myself. I never feel choice anxiety.
anon, that's just the feeling of "I can play it at any time" and you'll just keep putting it off if you keep doing that. Go play some games you've wanted to try, or clear your backlog a bit.
You guys are pathetic. Be a man.
There's a cure this this, anon, go to an arcade or buy a classic arcade cab and put in real quarters.
It has to cost each time or else you're cheating in more ways than one. For one, playing with your last quarter will give you a performance boost. The feeling of getting to later stages that others have never seen feels great. Plus, if you git gud enough you can take your skills to an arcade and play all day or night for a quarter. Shitheal arcade owners will love you.
You will be so focused on one good game, you'll forget about ROMs for a while.
>Do you sometimes feel like a zoom zoom?
Nope
Get back on topic!!
No condemnation.
Makes me think like the industry went off the rails with polygons. Not how I pictured the future of video games.
And the Indy developers don't get that, though they are the ones with the fair prices. Too bad steam sucks imo.
The game Ricky and Vicky, although it's arguably furry, is the way to go. Same people develop games for Sega Genesis just makes me want to buy a Sega Genesis. If people would do that for the super Nintendo, and the game was good enough I would absolutely buy one just to play the game. it's not that much. But yeah nobody in their right mind has time for that to be a serious priority. So no it's not a wise investment.
Nope lol video games are awesome
go to Ganker if you want to whine about muh feelings
Yes, but not because it doesn't feel special, but because I have crippling decision paralysis.
The expression you're looking for OP is "less is more".
No because 99% of them are not interesting to me. I only play games I've played before and like and the occasional new game that I learn about. Overall my library is miniscule