Random Gaming Thoughts

[RCBH928]

PPSSPP has to be the nicest looking emulator I've ever seen. Beautiful, clean, very nice.

Emulators are not the issue anymore, Roms are. Rom sites (and torrents) seem to be disappearing and you have to look harder for the ones you want, and websites that provide them seem to be getting shadier by the day.

[marurun]

Given the increasing number of legitimate and legal ways to play older games, that shouldn't be surprising. It's not necessarily a bad thing, either.

[RCBH928]

Given the increasing number of legitimate and legal ways to play older games, that shouldn't be surprising. It's not necessarily a bad thing, either.

Its only problematic when the game you want never got another release which then you have to get a working older console and a working older game(with shipping $) to play on your modern HDMI tv which becomes a lot of inconvenience. For ex. WWF In Your House for PSX.

While buying say a $5-10 Medieval from PSN on PS3 is the better choice.

[Reprise]

Finding isos and roms has never been easier, in my experience...

[Segata]

Only downloaded an ISO for an unreleased DC game. Other than that never downloaded an EMU or ROM. Just never saw the appeal personally.

[Reprise]

I was big into the emulation scene in the early 2000s up until about 2010.

I don't generally bother anymore. I buy the games I want these days, whether its second hand retro games or legal re-releases on PSN, Steam and the eShop etc.

That said, I download a bunch of NES roms when the NES Mini came out. I haven't bothered hacking the SNES Mini (yet?)

[BoneSnapDeez]

Emulation is pretty essential for retro gaming preservation and documentation. As original hardware gets more scarce and unreliable we're sure to see more of it.

[RCBH928]

Finding isos and roms has never been easier, in my experience...

actually, I noticed corporations and govt. are a lot more aggressive lately and many people are scared to host or support any kind of illegal/grey-area material online. I noticed many iso/roms website taken down over the years not to mention torrent websites. I would name few for examples but maybe its against the rules here.

I believe a lot of them turned to being private trackers

[Ziggy]

It doesn't matter. It's the kind of thing that as soon as one is shut down one more pops up. What was the big upload site that was shut down? Mega Upload? That was years ago now, and it didn't effect the downloading of copyrighted materials much. It was more of just a hiccup.

[Reprise]

The war on torrents and file sharing has largely failed and the only reason why their use is not so prevalent now, is because companies finally successfully created the kind of online models that they hadn't previously had the foresight to consider until piracy forced their hand. Now they offer a lot of convenience to consumers, so people will use iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, Netlix etc. as they're all reasonably priced and super easy and convenient to use. We've also seen similar models with video games, with the likes of the virtual console on the Wii/Wii U/3DS and similar things with PSN and XBLA.

But obviously, if people want to pirate, then they will and video games are different, in some ways, due to the huge library of video games that would simply be lost in time if it weren't for back ups and emulation.

Sites will go and new sites will pop up. I honestly don't see how people can say there's any problems finding ISOs or roms now. I guarantee, even though I'm not really into the scene these days, that I could find a load of sites hosting them right now. I know of at least two major sites people use that are still up, because people in the retro gaming groups I'm a member of on FB are still using them.