Are retro games "meant" to be bought by these people?

[Sliter]

I can't wait until this fad dies out so prices can be reasonable again.

Also if you aren't buying to collect you are doing it wrong. If you need "hardware" so badly you can buy everdrives and pay someone that deserves the money rather than greedy scalpers.

not only collect, play it important :v to just show it's no need to be more than a housing with a label on it, a broken console...

This have no need t be working games and consoles.. even more becaus they gonna die there :v byebye screens if no use XD
(pffff western green )

 

[gamesquest1]

"get your empty housing here, i have hagane, little samson, nintendo world championships, all in glorious shelf ready condition with the PCB ripped out to save on postage costs "

 

[RemixDeluxe]

not only collect, play it important :v to just show it's no need to be more than a housing with a label on it

You can emulate than if you need to play it. I won't tell you how to spend your money but I certainly wouldn't buy up 20+ year old games just to play them.

 

[sarkwalvein]

You can emulate than if you need to play it. I won't tell you how to spend your money but I certainly wouldn't buy up 20+ year old games just to play them.

Why not?
People even buy beautiful old classic cars (that don't go quite well and waste fuel like shit), and they do so not only to "store them in a garage" but to ride them and feel them from time to time.
Why would this be different with old hardware?
You know, whatever floats your boat they say.
If you're turned on by playing with good old overpriced videogame hardware, then whataver suits you.

PS: And I mean it in a possitive way.

 

[Sliter]

You can emulate than if you need to play it. I won't tell you how to spend your money but I certainly wouldn't buy up 20+ year old games just to play them.

if they arent over priced, why not ? xD
well its personal anyway... one friend one time argued with me about collecting games, that it are bad, box and stuff serve to nothing and make poluition etc, that everything should be virtual content etc
but for himself, he collect manga (and don't like virtual content, only printed, no ebook for him XD), master and diligent to traditional art (now he is learning digital art, oh well), when I compared my desire for collecting games with his to collect manga the told me " but it's not the same thing" but well... it is...

"get your empty housing here, i have hagane, little samson, nintendo world championships, all in glorious shelf ready condition with the PCB ripped out to save on postage costs "

if it's just to show in your wall, you want an actuall painting or one good printed replica?
To each their own ...

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

If you're turned on by playing with good old overpriced videogame hardware, then whataver suits you.

I think the only problem there is being overpriced... this don't really have a reason for that ? they teall aboiut market, demand and offer but wel.. i'ts not coffe or bananas that if nature bugs someway it can became something you can never find again XD
(even more because well done replicas /o/
Why they are taking too much to flahs n64 carts? I have some to recycle :v)

 

[gamesquest1]

i play my retro games....i collect them and play them, that said if i have some £1000 game i probably wouldnt be playing with it more than just to ! test it, and b have a good playthrough of it....just because

repros are good to have if you mainly just want to play the game and look like you have mega bucks (same deal as fake designer clothes) i mean any collector worth a bag of peanuts would be able to tell the difference straight away, but for the desire to have a game sitting on a shelf i can take down and play they serve their purpose.....(so....lets play a game, which is fake? which is real?.....maybe they are all real.......or maybe they are all fake place your bets )

Spoiler

small pic to make it a bit more difficult

I think the only problem there is being overpriced... this don't really have a reason for that ? they teall aboiut market, demand and offer but wel.. i'ts not coffe or bananas that if nature bugs someway it can became something you can never find again XD
(even more because well done replicas /o/
Why they are taking too much to flahs n64 carts? I have some to recycle :v)

fake N64 games have already popped up now, so if you going to buy that bargain copy clayfighters sculpters cut......best have a gamebit on hand to crack it open

 

[Sheimi]

I collect retro games because I want to replay it on original hardware with none of the extra bs.

 

[FAST6191]

I can't wait until this fad dies out so prices can be reasonable again.

You may be waiting a long time there. A bubble may burst, and I am not sure I would count this as a bubble, but it is probably never going to be like the 80s and 90s again, times where people generally just wanted their silly old toys out of their garage/attic as their kids were onto the new shiny (or maybe even passed them by like a pogo stick) and would sell it to you for pocket change. Beyond that as the populations of gamers grow and the supplies of games remain the same, or even slightly dwindle as such things are hardly indestructible, then it only takes a small fraction to want to "see where they came from" (which of course will continue to be promoted) or a few others to want to relieve their past to generate demand that strips supply. Beyond that even with the inflated prices it is still cheaper than playing with vehicles and other such hobbies in many cases.

repros are good to have if you mainly just want to play the game and look like you have mega bucks (same deal as fake designer clothes) i mean any collector worth a bag of peanuts would be able to tell the difference straight away

I am still of the fuck repros opinion, even if they cleaned up their act a bit it is still direct, straight up, paid for piracy and for my money no different to selling a CD with ROMs on. What I more wanted to question was the designer clothes thing -- I do not have a high opinion of the materials usage and design quality of most fashion types (fashion is one of the world's oldest cons and all that) but they do occasionally operate above the baseline and make something of marginal interest, to that end having more sensibly priced versions of those can have some practical appeal.

On collectors then yeah right now it is easy enough, at least if I can see the PCB and have a reference, I reckon though I can make fakes that you will need a proper lab to test for, and we are probably not too far off having it profitable -- some of the higher feature size Chinese chip fabs are rapidly coming down in price for fairly modest runs, you find some donor boards or spend a bit longer also colour matching a PCB and you are done (give or take faking a silkscreen and maybe a laser etching). Depending upon the people doing it then the better test will be probably be checking their history as few will likely have properly aged and sufficiently used ebay accounts to sell things on, or may well have to pretend they are a lucky bastard and found a box of goodness from their dead uncle's old game store in the attic.

 

[gamesquest1]

You may be waiting a long time there. A bubble may burst, and I am not sure I would count this as a bubble, but it is probably never going to be like the 80s and 90s again, times where people generally just wanted their silly old toys out of their garage/attic as their kids were onto the new shiny (or maybe even passed them by like a pogo stick) and would sell it to you for pocket change. Beyond that as the populations of gamers grow and the supplies of games remain the same, or even slightly dwindle as such things are hardly indestructible, then it only takes a small fraction to want to "see where they came from" (which of course will continue to be promoted) or a few others to want to relieve their past to generate demand that strips supply. Beyond that even with the inflated prices it is still cheaper than playing with vehicles and other such hobbies in many cases.



I am still of the fuck repros opinion, even if they cleaned up their act a bit it is still direct, straight up, paid for piracy and for my money no different to selling a CD with ROMs on. What I more wanted to question was the designer clothes thing -- I do not have a high opinion of the materials usage and design quality of most fashion types (fashion is one of the world's oldest cons and all that) but they do occasionally operate above the baseline and make something of marginal interest, to that end having more sensibly priced versions of those can have some practical appeal.

On collectors then yeah right now it is easy enough, at least if I can see the PCB and have a reference, I reckon though I can make fakes that you will need a proper lab to test for, and we are probably not too far off having it profitable -- some of the higher feature size Chinese chip fabs are rapidly coming down in price for fairly modest runs, you find some donor boards or spend a bit longer also colour matching a PCB and you are done (give or take faking a silkscreen and maybe a laser etching). Depending upon the people doing it then the better test will be probably be checking their history as few will likely have properly aged and sufficiently used ebay accounts to sell things on, or may well have to pretend they are a lucky bastard and found a box of goodness from their dead uncle's old game store in the attic.

tbh if it got to the point where someone made perfect repro's then the price of the game would plummet once the first few start to emerge, if people cannot tell the difference then it ruins the supply and demand equation as supply would be endless and as such the game would be as cheap as any other third rate game, as pretty much all the most expensive titles are midocre games that are expensive only for their scarcity, i cant see perfect replica's being viable for more than a 5 mins flood of the market before the market is ruined, and to make perfect replicas at a cheap price you would really be wanting to mass produce, so either your going to be trying to slip them into the market slowly but surely (so you have a big investment and would be waiting over a year or 2 to rake it back and hope that in the meantime someone else doesnt do the same but flood the market and cause the game to loose its value nearly instantly

 

[Sliter]

i

fake N64 games have already popped up now, so if you going to buy that bargain copy clayfighters sculpters cut......best have a gamebit on hand to crack it open

By this photho nah? I like to play it in person XD (actually I did it few times with friends hahah one got siad to discover is golden sun gba was a fake lol)
I know about fake n64 games, I've meet 2 or 3 in my life XD but never someone that do it or a way to flash a rom and use on an original cart (and maybe give it save feature since the lot of not wanted n64 games or don't have save feature or use that memory pack thing xp), like they do a lot with snes and some gba carts ...
I would sue it for own use , I don't want to cheat anyone and the wya I'm lucky, I bet I would get caugth on the first sale xD
but well.. an alternative to have one of these "rar overpriced games" and maybe even translations xp

 

[FAST6191]

Possibly. As I sit here I can't think of a similar situation for an intellectual property driven affair, much less what is effectively an illicit thing -- there has never been a great run of fake but rare CDs, LPs, books... that I am aware of. You get the occasional one for repair parts where a part gets hard to come by and then someone makes a viable alternative. There have also been some for earlier CDs where some people made not necessarily clones but very legit looking things for some of the shmups on the PC engine I think it was. edit Found it. http://www.superpcenginegrafx.net/sapcomp1.html
That said at the same time you have made proper pressed discs for years and years at this point if you have but a few connections and a couple of grand to stump up, I wonder at some level if it was because the viable candidates lack the mind share of the more mainstream stuff.

On mass production then I am talking really cheap for some of these chips-- not 15 or 20 grand but maybe 2 grand for a decent run and only going down. You would need to put the cash in in the first place and I guess we share an opinion of the selling and con artist skills the average repro/fake cart maker exhibits (I can imagine the "10 loose copies of Bubble Bobble Part 2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" listing too), however if prices are going to be what they are then you could make a decent return.

 

[Sliter]

not sure if I got it right, but remind me the story of a guy that get a 3D printer and made "repro"(lol) rhyno horns with keratin and sold very cheap on places that hino hunting was an issue, so the prices droped and the hunt comercy was gone
(not sure if all of this was true)
If we do it with "rare games" we can have the same effect? hahha
About legit looking don't need much since we can use actuall parts like the housing itself and the circuit, just make it righ and a nice printer... uinles it an special edition full of stuff ... or you want to make it look old and stuff but nah I don't see why try to fool someone lol this would be better for people that want to play it, not for that " wow a rare game in nice price let get it and resell for over nine thousand!"

 

[FAST6191]

I will have to look that up as I had not heard anything like that before, though it is not impossible bar people that want the horn for magical/some flavours of traditional "medicine". There is nothing poisonous, radioactive or otherwise particularly dangerous about rhino horn for it to be banned, it is more that you necessarily have to kill or at the very least seriously maim (you might be able to cut it off a live one but it is a tool which it uses) a rhino and they are rare enough as it is.
The problem with games has never been the difficulty in creating working copies, just that it goes against intellectual property law for some random to do it. I also don't know what Nintendo or Sega might say and they quite notably tried to force things to be licensed and that probably extended in perpetuity (or to the end of the copyright, which many speaking here will probably not live to see). Nintendo is typically held as being quite opposed to lots of things in this world, we already discussed some of their approaches to emulation (that GDC talk covering some of the efforts they went to when straight emulation would have been far easier) and this is hardly better.
If we could find some legitimate unlicensed game (illegitimate unlicensed is a thing, Nintendo famously went to court for that one and won in Atari Games Corp. v. Nintendo of America Inc, and Nintendo could frustrate that) then that might be possible to spin up another run however many years on this is, similarly for things like the C64 and atari which had no real restrictions and anybody could be a dev if they had the skills then licensed/sanctioned repros could be a thing.

Going for the murkier side of things then again I have no clue what would happen. The idea that prices would crash probably stems from the same logic as general economies destabilising/collapsing when you inject enough counterfeit money into it (it is why doing it as a state is possibly considered an act of war and it is otherwise treated very harshly when individuals do it). On top of that you would still have the first edition, low serial number, original print... stuff to contend with -- if you have ever seen someone turn up a game because it was in a grey box/a later version and not because they were doing a speedrun or something then same idea really.
I have never seen something similar though for anything like this. Parts for repair I have but parts for repair are less protected and it is usually quite doable to make a generic replacement, to say nothing of parts being consumable/breakable by nature.

The people that want to play it already have flash carts for the most part, though this would help make flash carts better if you can make the special chips rather than have to program them into a FPGA or something. Also if I am sitting there and I can make a fake cart for £20 and sell it to someone for £30 to play it, or I can do the proverbial rub a teabag on it and stick it in the oven to make it look old and then sell it to someone for a couple of hundred then I know what I am doing if I don't fear the law.

 

[gamesquest1]

honestly i doubt anyone would ever go to the lengths required to make perfect repro's there will always be some corner cut that will expose it (funnily enough its usually the badly handcut corners that are the first telltale sign), collectors are very territorial and don't take too kindly to anyone trying to pull a fast one, it would be one thing to make something that looks very close, but the resident experts would always find something to identify the fakes, be it a different pinout on the nand chip or trying to ID the chip on the board (not the markings, but hooking it up to a nand reader/writer setup and pulling the manufacturer/chip id from the chip etc) sure it wouldnt stop them being made, but the cat would be out the bag and all the real high bidders would exit the game unless the seller has proof of history, but once those things become the norm and people dont know who to trust then nobody would want to buy any of the expensive games out of fear of being conned unless they get it cheap enough to not really care i.e prices drop

well i honestly hope it never gets that bad i have seen a few recent stories of people using OTP EPROMS to make fake copies of little samson trying to pass them off as legit, but its still fairly obvious, its crazy the person was trying to sell it as legit, but had botch jobbed the label as it was cut by hand, i honestly feel the kind of people trying to pass them off as legit wouldn't have the knowledge or resources to actually pull off a truly impressive fake.

 

[DaFixer]

I love retro games,consoles and home computers.
I don't really care on witch device I can play those NES,SNES,MD,NEOGEO,PSX games, if it looks good (scanline filter on) and play great i'm happy.
Some time ago I build a nice Retropie console loaded with games and use a PS3 or Wireless snes controller to play my games.
I works very well and i'm happy with, but it comes with old home computers. I like to use original hardware (like the C64,Amiga500,ZX Spectrum) becase for those machines I have more nostalgic feelings for those machines. The smell off the old hardware, the floppy's and disks,typing on those old keyboards and reading sound off the diskdrive. But for those machines is it very easy to play pirate games.
So most of my games are pirated, only I have a few original tape based games for the show. If you got a working C64/Amiga500 or ZX Spectrum you are ready to play all games you need, then you must buying new hardware to keep those machines alive in 2016 and connected to new led,tft screens

 

[FAST6191]

I still reckon I could have something that would take real chemical analysis to test for, and most of that is at least partially destructive -- I could fake the chemical glue that holds it together but at that point it is getting a bit ridiculous (and if I am that good I would probably fake wine instead and try to sell a £10 bottle of plonk for £10000 or something). At the same time are you going to allow me to lift the corner of the label to get a glue sample? Right now it is a hard game to do it and make a profit but the prices seriously are falling fast.

The pinout stuff is what I was mentioning as the world is changing here. All the older feature size chip processes are becoming available to us mere mortals now; nobody needs things that large in any kind of real industry, however they are fast enough and can pass enough power to be useful to someone (certainly enough to give a microcontroller a run for its money), and thus for as environmentally inconsiderate as China is they do a fine line in the reuse part of the big r's of recycling when it comes to industrial gear.
To that end it is not a different pinout, it is not a breakout/adapter board, not something you might be able to read a serial for and tell -- it is a real pin for pin, clock for clock same chip if you are good enough. NES mappers, SNES special chips, N64 CIC and the like might make this a bit harder, but not much.
I am surprised people hose up labels as much as they do, printing something as basic as a NES label has long been a solved issue for me (if nothing else do a search for die cutting machines)... maybe it is a bit too old school.

Again I too tend to find anybody truly capable of this is probably doing something better/more lucrative, however if you look at flash carts it was often more that someone made a baseline workable thing and then people ran with that. I never got my hands on it but there was a "R4 maker kit" doing the rounds in Hong Kong for not the most money -- it has the BOM, gerbers, pick and place listings, shell mouldings (or similar), and programming for some flavour of R4. Get something similar into the hands of someone that can do something about it for these old carts and the barrier to entry drops considerably.
No doubt once it comes to pass then someone will do half the job, maybe use a donor board from 4 years after it would have been made, or 3 years before it or something, but it is not waiting on a replicator before it happens. Though it would likely not be cost effective I could do it tomorrow (or in 5 weeks as I hate spice and chip design and would have to swear at it for ages first) for the sorts of money I would buy a car to do up and go to trips out with.