How to play old games?

[Sliter]

I was here thinking, there tons of old games, some I played, most of them I haven't but when I think that I should play a old game, how I should play them?
I mean, mostly the games back there had some lots of changes, translation erros, and today someone may have "improved" them via hacking, or restoring content taken out on the localization, correcting or adding new stuff, and even fan translation for my language (or english if it haven't been released), some got remasters or relaunch for new systems...

If I already played it, it could be " lets play like it was back there for the nostalgia" or " let's play a restoration mod to see was it was lacking!", but in a case that I really never played it, I get a time to decide what to do first xD

And about you?how do you play your old games?

 

[Deleted User]

While I keep most original versions of games on-hand just in case, I have several folders on my hard drive containing "enhanced" versions of old games that fix bugs, refine controls, add new elements to a game, and just generally customize the games to my liking. Sometimes I feel the process of modding old games to do new stuff is half the fun of emulation in general. It's cool to play through Mega Man X3 freely swapping between X and Zero, or to play Sonic 1 and 2 as a combined game. And it's practically a lifesaver if you're playing Pokemon to catch them all and don't want to have to go through the game several times. Often, I find it's alright to play these games in a way that's a little better than how I remembered them.

As for games I've never played before, sometimes I'll look around for a fan patch that fixes bugs or enhances controls or the like, but most of the time, I try to play the game in its original form, so I can get a feel for what the original experience was like. Once I've finished the game (which almost never happens because I'm a horrible procrastinator with a horrendous backlog), then I try to look for ROM Hacks and patches to see in what ways the game can be enhanced.

 

[FAST6191]

Do you have infinite time on this planet?
Probably not.
Best then to play the best version you can.

 

[Taleweaver]

Erm...emulators, mostly.

But I figure this is mostly about PC games. And I'll be honest here: I rarely bother. Some games have aged fairly well (Unreal is a good example), but others are just butt ugly. Monitor resolutions have slowly grown but on old games...wow. Playing starcraft or C&C is almost a joke (how the hell did we commanded entire armies back then? We couldn't even see our entire base on one screen! ).

So yeah: remasters, fan projects, remakes...it's no guarantee of a better game (I hear silent hill 2 remaster removed all the fog in the game), but it usually is.

...

*checks*

Dang...Red Alert 2 is still at best "flakey" on OpenRA.

 

[DinohScene]

Original hardware is the best way, all the way.

 

[matthi321]

i use dgvoodoo2 and reshade to upscale old games to 1080p and apply other graphical enchanments

 

[FAST6191]

Said original hardware is often annoying to run with cheats, hacks, modern and better controllers, savestates, nice filters, my own backing music and so forth, all of which the non hardware methods likely support trivially out of the box.

 

[DinohScene]

Said original hardware is often annoying to run with cheats, hacks, modern and better controllers, savestates, nice filters, my own backing music and so forth, all of which the non hardware methods likely support trivially out of the box.

Nostalgia factor aside, emulators n what not are usually better in terms of performance and compatibility yeh.
But the bugs and glitches that are present on the original hardware/untouched game is what makes it so much more fun.

 

[FAST6191]

I want to play good games though and glitches and bugs get in the way of that. Not to mention "bug for bug compatible" is a thing emulators do these days, all while still having cheats, savestates, filters...

 

[banzai200]

I'm kinda half in half

I mean, i do play a good romhack with an actual modification and makes the game more fun or diverse

But with the state of my life right now, i rarely sit down and play a game on pc or console, i mostly go portable with my psp and 3ds, and a good emulator to boot with that (or virtual console)

However, i do support compilations, for an example, megaman legacy collection is a half assed compilation of the megaman games on the 3ds, but i do still get a kick out of it, especially with the easy pickup and play thing it offers, even megaman X legacy is a t-e-r-r-i-b-l-e way to make a game compilation, but i'll buy anyway, because maybe i will get the megaman x9 i'm DESPERATELY hoping for

There's a reason to support the virtual console and compilations of games, but playing games is the important thing here, so as long as i can play any game from any console anytime, even illegal emulation will be cool with me

 

[Deleted User]

I want to play good games though and glitches and bugs get in the way of that. Not to mention "bug for bug compatible" is a thing emulators do these days, all while still having cheats, savestates, filters...

That mention of "bug-for-bug compatible" emulators reminded me of something odd I noticed about mGBA; it had a "Yank Game Pak" option in the emulation settings. I can't, for the life of me, see how this would be useful for anyone, but heck, it's fun to play around with. I was always too much of a wuss to rip cartridges out of my GBA when I was a kid, so it's fun to see what the games look like when I yank the cartridge out without worrying about losing any progress (thanks to save states). Such features seem trivial, but they go a long way towards replicating the general "feel" of the original hardware.

But with the state of my life right now, i rarely sit down and play a game on pc or console, i mostly go portable with my psp and 3ds, and a good emulator to boot with that (or virtual console)

Honestly, same. I don't have as much time as I used to, and being able to emulate games on my phone during the morning and afternoon train rides to Uni is a huge plus for me. Whenever I'm at home, I find myself less gaming and more preoccupied with school stuff or something along those lines.

There is a downside to that, though; some games are designed with long play sessions in mind, and playing in 15-minute bursts can be downright impractical for games that rely somewhat heavily on immersion. It's why I tend to stick to emulating portable game systems, as they feature games that were designed with portability and shorter play sessions in mind. Crisis Core FFVII is great in the sense that you can either choose to go through with the main storyline if you have the time, or go on a side mission if you only have 5 or so minutes.

 

[CeeDee]

If you're looking for the best version of a game in general, search out a recent port or remake. Chances are it's better, some good examples of this could be things like Sonic CD on Steam or Zelda: Wind Waker HD on Wii U.

Chances are it could be inferior, of course - plenty of ports may be unfaithful to the source material, like Super Mario 64 DS, which took some creative liberties, but is deemed by most to be a worse version to play than the Nintendo 64 original.

As for the best way to play a specific old version of the game, hardware absolutely tends to be the best way to go, as @DinohScene said, for perfectly accurate gameplay and visuals. Emulators can be the next best thing, though, if you're able to get a good one. Some systems, especially ones like Nintendo 64, just don't have very great emulation at all, though.

 

[Sliter]

For em I think being portable is a good point for me to play ... I really never could play much on a TV (or haven't got much games back there), I think I played very more my DS/3DS than my wii I had more them because I needed to have the right " moment" to play in me (phones so games repetitive sound do't disturb parents, or they outside, can't play in a sunny day because the TV reflects the light and we can't see the image at all, and more), I've lost the fell for table console for me because of that.
I'm also bad at managing time so I became a very toilet-gamer ...
My issues today are really not having a good phone that could play or emulate a lot (or even for GBA, it would went eating too much battery)
so te recent best way for me is having in a portable with me for these "moments to think"or on computer (emulated/steam), but for games still as they are or enchanted? translated? It's hard for me to decide! hahaha
for taste I think doing in the original hardware (as is, if wind waker, in a gamecube/wii, te game modded or not, or if the WWHD, in wiiU/where this be ported), but not against emulation or something, if it's really playable

Do you have infinite time on this planet?
Probably not.
Best then to play the best version you can.

his is what I thought but i lost time finding which is the best version for me lol but what would be the best for you?

While I keep most original versions of games on-hand just in case, I have several folders on my hard drive containing "enhanced" versions of old games that fix bugs, refine controls, add new elements to a game, and just generally customize the games to my liking. Sometimes I feel the process of modding old games to do new stuff is half the fun of emulation in general. It's cool to play through Mega Man X3 freely swapping between X and Zero, or to play Sonic 1 and 2 as a combined game. And it's practically a lifesaver if you're playing Pokemon to catch them all and don't want to have to go through the game several times. Often, I find it's alright to play these games in a way that's a little better than how I remembered them.

I kind like to collect games too, and if possible, replay them on the original system, to others more "hardcore" they can get flashcard and play some "enhanced" games with the original thing that looks a very good idea too xD
but there some stuff you can only do with emulators/other release anyway

Original hardware is the best way, all the way.

both for game release, like it was that time, or "better translation" or other mods are there too?

 

[SG854]

If you're looking for the best version of a game in general, search out a recent port or remake. Chances are it's better, some good examples of this could be things like Sonic CD on Steam or Zelda: Wind Waker HD on Wii U.

Chances are it could be inferior, of course - plenty of ports may be unfaithful to the source material, like Super Mario 64 DS, which took some creative liberties, but is deemed by most to be a worse version to play than the Nintendo 64 original.

As for the best way to play a specific old version of the game, hardware absolutely tends to be the best way to go, as @DinohScene said, for perfectly accurate gameplay and visuals. Emulators can be the next best thing, though, if you're able to get a good one. Some systems, especially ones like Nintendo 64, just don't have very great emulation at all, though.

Higan (SNES) is the only Emulator I consider equal to hardware.

 

[CeeDee]

Higan (SNES) is the only Emulator I consider equal to hardware.

Yeah, bsnes/higan are the closest to hardware if you want 100% accuracy. Some others can get fairly close, completely playable by most accounts, like snes9x and Nintendo's Canoe (SNES Classic Edition)

 

[Deleted User]

For em I think being portable is a good point for me to play ... I really never could play much on a TV (or haven't got much games back there), I think I played very more my DS/3DS than my wii I had more them because I needed to have the right " moment" to play in me (phones so games repetitive sound do't disturb parents, or they outside, can't play in a sunny day because the TV reflects the light and we can't see the image at all, and more), I've lost the fell for table console for me because of that.
I'm also bad at managing time so I became a very toilet-gamer ...

Yeah, I've have this problem too; thanks to my horrible time management, I never have time to play any games, even though I could if I were to organize things just a little.

Thanks to summer break, though, I've been going through both my ROM and Steam backlog and playing games I may have neglected. It's pretty fun.

both for game release, like it was that time, or "better translation" or other mods are there too?

Sometimes, re-translations are available for games that had poor translations to begin with. Other times, it's to take advantage of extra hardware that may have been only available in Japan.

For example, the Japan-only Famicom Disk System versions of Zelda and Metroid have fan-translations available online. This may seem pointless at first, especially considering that the FDS is a disk-based system with loading times (I doubt anyone is enthused about the concept of NES games with loading screens), however, the FDS versions of these games take advantage of the extra synthesizer to create slightly different-sounding versions of the games' music than what Westerners are used to. Similar case with the original Phantasy Star (the Japanese version takes advantage of some FM channels).

 

[Shulking]

Depends on the game. I wish there was a service that lets me play any older game because some times I feel nostalgic and just want to play a game for an hour and I am happy.

 

[FAST6191]

That mention of "bug-for-bug compatible" emulators reminded me of something odd I noticed about mGBA; it had a "Yank Game Pak" option in the emulation settings. I can't, for the life of me, see how this would be useful for anyone, but heck, it's fun to play around with. I was always too much of a wuss to rip cartridges out of my GBA when I was a kid, so it's fun to see what the games look like when I yank the cartridge out without worrying about losing any progress (thanks to save states). Such features seem trivial, but they go a long way towards replicating the general "feel" of the original hardware.

There are certain homebrew programs that swap carts ( https://www.chishm.com/SendSave/index.html ), might be useful for such things.
I don't know that I ever saw one in the wild but it might also be possible to load a program from a cart, do something interesting and then continue to run in memory before moving to another device. For the most part I imagine people would just use multiboot but I can see scenarios where it is not enough or more practical to use a single flash cart to seed things.

Equally do a search for "cart tilting", the N64 has some of the more notable attempts

But it works on everything.

Should you have a copy of Sonic 3d on the megadrive/genesis you might also like to press the corner of the cart.

 

[DinohScene]

both for game release, like it was that time, or "better translation" or other mods are there too?

No mods, no translations (don't play weeb games anyway) just the original hardware and game.

 

[gameboy]

imagine if this was translated correctly, its unimaginable