Old consoles

[Foxi4]

I'm with you Foxi4. I want to see the original game in all its glory. I want to play it on the original system, even if I have to get an old boob tube to play it on

To be fair, some games are downright unplayable or don't display correctly on a modern display, so you have a point. Anyone can go ahead and try playing a CGA game on a modern display, enjoy the vomit-inducing magenta. Meanwhile on composite, on a CRT tube, the pixel bleeding effect breeds colours-a-plenty. Informational:

 

[Pipistrele]

Depending on definition of "old", of course. Some platforms age relatively well and have consistently enjoyable games, while others are better left admired from a distance aside of couple exceptional titles. Atari 2600 and ZX Spectrum come to mind when it comes to latter - by all the established basic standards of game design, a lot of games from those two are beyond the definition of "playable".

 

[Foxi4]

Depending on definition of "old", of course. Some platforms age relatively well and have consistently enjoyable games, while others are better left admired from a distance aside of couple exceptional titles. Atari 2600 and ZX Spectrum come to mind when it comes to latter - by all the established basic standards of game design, a lot of games from those two are beyond the definition of "playable".

I beg to differ. I never grew up with a 2600, I only purchased one a few years back and I've had a great time with it. Obviously the level of fun depends on the game, there's a lot of really cryptic stuff on the Atari, but there are some gems on there if you're willing to look past the graphical limitations of the platform.

 

[VinsCool]

I beg to differ. I never grew up with a 2600, I only purchased one a few years back and I've had a great time with it. Obviously the level of fun depends on the game, there's a lot of really cryptic stuff on the Atari, but there are some gems on there if you're willing to look past the graphical limitations of the platform.

The homebrew scene is still going strong for these obscure machines too. Some really impressive stuff still gets released occasionally. Stuff that would have blown everyone's mind in the 80's.

 

[Foxi4]

The homebrew scene is still going strong for these obscure machines too. Some really impressive stuff still gets released occasionally. Stuff that would have blown everyone's mind in the 80's.

I still want to play Halo 2600, being the Master Chief fanatic that I am. It looks great!

 

[kuwanger]

I'd say I'm most the opposite when it comes to hardware limitations and creativity. I actually prefer modern retro-style games that aren't ardently limited in colors-per-tile, has sprite limits (resulting in flicker), slow down, etc. To me it was never about the games being limited. Like Foxi4 said, it's about the level of fun. For a lot of games, limited graphic and sound doesn't diminish from the fun. For me, it's more that the unlimited (more or less) graphics of the modern era causes too many game developers to turn a "game" into a tech demo or a "movie" which, because the developer put so much time into it, becomes either literally unskippeable, de facto unskippable because a one second bit of critical info is in said cinematic, or ploddingly slow and unenjoyable*. This was, and still is, done in more "retro" 2D games, but it's a lot less common.

So, going back to the original question: it's not that I like "old consoles". I like "good games", and I'm willing to look through old consoles to try to find them.

* As an example, Tomb Raider (2013) has the first 20 minutes of Lara having critical damage (which she shrugs off after a while) and so much plodding around, the second I was out beside a cliff I jumped off (to properly kill her off) and haven't played the game since.

 

[VinsCool]

I still want to play Halo 2600, being the Master Chief fanatic that I am. It looks great!

And there are even better homebrew games, I can assure you!

 

[Psionic Roshambo]

I like some of the older games, although honestly when I play older systems these days 99.9% of the time I do it via emulation out of sheer convenience. Another point is that some of the older games where never remade on newer systems. So enjoying these "lost" fun games is something I enjoy.

In the distant future I suspect emulation is the only way we will get to play some of these games, the old systems are rotting away and you can only rebuild so much before something important will fail.

On the 2600 in specific there are some games I still enjoy a quick play here and there, but the number has fallen drastically over the years. I would say these days maybe like 20 good 2600 games are still worth a quick play. Other than those the system is largely dead to me. I played a hell of a lot more back when it was alive but that was a long time ago.

 

[sarkwalvein]

To be fair, some games are downright unplayable or don't display correctly on a modern display, so you have a point. Anyone can go ahead and try playing a CGA game on a modern display, enjoy the vomit-inducing magenta. Meanwhile on composite, on a CRT tube, the pixel bleeding effect breeds colours-a-plenty. Informational:

To be honest, you don't need a new display for getting the vomit-inducing magenta.
Back on the day some 30 years ago that is the only way I played it.

Well, actually either black and white on an Hercules with SIMCGA+mono 30+ years ago, or in the glorious magenta using a VGA monitor 30- years later. CGA cards and their composite connection were so unpopular around my homeland that I didn't get to know it wasn't supposed to be magenta until decades later.

 

[Foxi4]

To be honest, you don't need a new display for getting the vomit-inducing magenta.
Back on the day some 30 years ago that is the only way I played it.

Well, actually either black and white on an Hercules with SIMCGA+mono 30+ years ago, or in the glorious magenta using a VGA monitor 30- years later. CGA cards and their composite connection were so unpopular around my homeland that I didn't get to know it wasn't supposed to be magenta until decades later.

That's a good point, you definitely needed the right kind of setup. Thankfully VGA quickly took over.

 

[Deleted User]

I love how limitations lead to creativity --something we never see anymore, pushing higher specs requirements instead.

I also have a soft spot for sound chips, so here's why I have a bunch of stuff for music making purpose being collected

The argument that hardware limitations lead to better games goes both ways. You can find examples of technical limitations forcing developers to find innovative solutions to their problems. You can also find examples of technical limitations reducing the quality of games. Secret of Mana was originally planned to be a SNES CD game, but Nintendo and Sony cancelled the SNES CD after they had their disagreements and fought like two dogs after the same bitch. To fit Secret of Mana on a cartridge, Square had to cut a lot of content and lower the music quality.

It depends on your definition of "better". To me, "better" means being able to capture magical moments from the past, with the imperfections et all. I don't see any reason to run 240p games in 1080p+, I only ever bother with removing minor annoyances like unreliable loading methods (diskettes, tapes etc.) or imperfect video hook-ups (coax, composite etc.), that's about as far as I'm willing to stray. Heck, sometimes I don't even bother with that - there is a certain charm in loading a game from a grinding, humming floppy drive.

We have two very different definitions of "better". I prefer to remove imperfections rather than embrace them.

 

[Foxi4]

The argument that hardware limitations lead to better games goes both ways. You can find examples of technical limitations forcing developers to find innovative solutions to their problems. You can also find examples of technical limitations reducing the quality of games. Secret of Mana was originally planned to be a SNES CD game, but Nintendo and Sony cancelled the SNES CD after they had their disagreements and fought like two dogs after the same bitch. To fit Secret of Mana on a cartridge, Square had to cut a lot of content and lower the music quality.

We have two very different definitions of "better". I prefer to remove imperfections rather than embrace them.

It's not so much a matter of "removing imperfections", rather it's a matter of playing games how they were intended to be played at the time of release. I value the accuracy of the experience, it's a big part of the equation for me. Sonic games immediately come to mind - the pixel bleeding effect was used by the creators to render transparencies on hardware that wasn't really meant to render them - on a modern LCD and an emulator they're just blocky. It's all a matter of preference, of course.