• Retro gaming

    From Nightfox@eric.oulashin@gmail.com to All on Tue Sep 14 09:14:44 2021
    Who else is into retro gaming?

    I really started getting into retro gaming when I first saw emulators appearing in the late 90s. I thought it was really cool that there were emulators that allowed playing NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, and other console games on my PC. Some emulators also had some fairly interesting features, such as allowing multi-player gaming with other people over the internet.

    Although I have typically been more into PC gaming, I do enjoy console games. And for a while now, it seems there are many ways to emulate old systems, beyond emulation on a PC. A few years ago, I modded my Nintendo Wii and installed some emulators on it (though life got into the way, I got busy, and I haven't played the emulators on that as much as I thought I would). Before that, I bought a GCW Zero (an open-source handheld gaming system that supports emulators, among other things). Unfortunately, it seems the screen on my GCW Zero has failed and doesn't work well now. :/

    In recent years, there's also the Classic Mini systems that the popular game companies have released; there was the NES Classic Mini & SNES Classic Mini from Nintendo, and then Sega, Sony, and TurboGrafX made their own versions for their respective systems. Those are generally moddable too, so you can add additional games.

    Although I've been emulating old consoles for a while, sometimes I've missed having a real console. A long time ago, I had an original NES, a Nintendo 64, and a TurboGrafX-16. For a while, a SNES as well. I just bought a SNES on eBay.. I'm not sure what all I'll do with it, since I can play the games with emulators, but it might be fun.

    Nightfox
  • From Captain Obvious@46:1/120 to Nightfox on Wed Sep 15 18:31:32 2021
    On 14 Sep 2021, Nightfox said the following...

    Who else is into retro gaming?

    I am a bit. Set up a raspberry pi in my living room and have some old NES and SNES games on it as well as a few DOS sidescrollers like Duke Nukem and a few others. I don't play a ton of games anyway. It seems to get more used by my wife and my (college-aged) youngest daughter. Usually Dr Mario.

    Getting ready to build my mom basically the same setup with some SNES and DOS games as well.

    Personally I prefer playing DOS games through DOSBox on my PC (or Steam if they are available).

    Although I've been emulating old consoles for a while, sometimes I've missed having a real console. A long time ago, I had an original NES, a Nintendo 64, and a TurboGrafX-16. For a while, a SNES as well. I just

    Using the Pi 4 with a couple of PS4 controllers gives me that fix when I do want it. It's nice because they are wireless and I'm far enough away from the TV that I don't want cables strung across the living room. For my mom's I picked up a couple of faux SNES controllers. Much simpler than trying to teach her to use a modern controller.

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  • From Nightfox to Captain Obvious on Thu Sep 16 08:41:33 2021
    Re: Retro gaming
    By: Captain Obvious to Nightfox on Wed Sep 15 2021 06:31 pm

    I am a bit. Set up a raspberry pi in my living room and have some old NES and SNES games on it as well as a few DOS sidescrollers like Duke Nukem and a few others. I don't play a ton of games anyway. It seems to get more used by my wife and my (college-aged) youngest daughter. Usually Dr Mario.

    I haven't used a Raspberry Pi, but they sound interesting.

    Getting ready to build my mom basically the same setup with some SNES and DOS games as well.

    Personally I prefer playing DOS games through DOSBox on my PC (or Steam if they are available).

    I like playing old DOS games sometimes too. Last year, I looked more into using DOSBox and started playing a couple DOS games I always liked.

    Nightfox
  • From Captain Obvious@46:1/120 to Nightfox on Thu Sep 16 15:57:13 2021
    On 16 Sep 2021, Nightfox said the following...

    I haven't used a Raspberry Pi, but they sound interesting.

    It's a nice little tool. I've got several around the house I use for various things like Home Automation, location tracking, VPN server, etc., not to mention the emulation. Much cheaper than buying a new PC and they take up a lot less space.

    I like playing old DOS games sometimes too. Last year, I looked more
    into using DOSBox and started playing a couple DOS games I always liked.

    One thing that helped me with that was looking at the configs that Steam uses (they use DOSBox for the old DOS games they sell)

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  • From Digital Man@46:10/139 to Nightfox on Wed Jan 12 23:53:59 2022
    Re: Retro gaming
    By: Nightfox to All on Tue Sep 14 2021 09:14 am

    Who else is into retro gaming?

    I really started getting into retro gaming when I first saw emulators appearing in the late 90s. I thought it was really cool that there were emulators that allowed playing NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, and other console games on my PC.
    Some emulators also had some fairly interesting features, such as allowing multi-player gaming with other people over the internet.

    I just bought one of these for my brother: https://retrododo.com/powkiddy-max-2/

    and based on his experience/review, will consider getting something similar for myself. I didn't realize how hot the market is for retro gaming handhelds. There are a ton of options!
    --
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  • From Nightfox to Digital Man on Thu Jan 13 12:27:31 2022
    Re: Retro gaming
    By: Digital Man to Nightfox on Wed Jan 12 2022 11:53 pm

    I just bought one of these for my brother: https://retrododo.com/powkiddy-max-2/

    and based on his experience/review, will consider getting something similar for myself. I didn't realize how hot the market is for retro gaming handhelds. There are a ton of options!

    Yeah, there really are a lot of options out there.

    Several years ago, I bought one of these handhelds:
    http://www.gcw-zero.com
    However, a few months ago (after not using it for a while), I noticed its LCD seems to have stopped working properly, as it now shows a really distorted image.

    That review for the Powkiddy says it's "stacked full of ROMs" - It sounds like it comes preloaded with ROMs for various game systems? I'm not sure how customizable it is from that review. One thing I liked about the GCW Zero is that you could install whatever emulators and ROMs you wanted on it - and people even developed native games for the GCW Zero (though the developer community for the GCW Zero wasn't all that large).

    Nightfox
  • From Digital Man@46:10/139 to Nightfox on Thu Jan 13 17:22:19 2022
    Re: Retro gaming
    By: Nightfox to Digital Man on Thu Jan 13 2022 12:27 pm

    That review for the Powkiddy says it's "stacked full of ROMs" - It sounds like it comes preloaded with ROMs for various game systems? I'm not sure how customizable it is from that review. One thing I liked about the GCW Zero is that you could install whatever emulators and ROMs you wanted on it - and people even developed native games for the GCW Zero (though the developer community for the GCW Zero wasn't all that large).

    Yeah, it's similar in that regard: add your own game ROMs, custom firmware, screen bezels, etc. Similar to the other RK3326 based devices, it runs EmuELEC
    (https://github.com/EmuELEC/EmuELEC) to emulate many different retro game platforms. Appears to be infinitely customizable.
    --
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  • From Nightfox to Digital Man on Thu Jan 13 18:15:15 2022
    Re: Retro gaming
    By: Digital Man to Nightfox on Thu Jan 13 2022 05:22 pm

    That review for the Powkiddy says it's "stacked full of ROMs" - It
    sounds like it comes preloaded with ROMs for various game systems?
    I'm not sure how customizable it is from that review. One thing I
    liked about the GCW Zero is that you could install whatever emulators
    and ROMs you wanted on it - and people even developed native games for
    the GCW Zero (though the developer community for the GCW Zero wasn't
    all that large).

    Yeah, it's similar in that regard: add your own game ROMs, custom firmware, screen bezels, etc. Similar to the other RK3326 based devices, it runs EmuELEC (https://github.com/EmuELEC/EmuELEC) to emulate many different retro game platforms. Appears to be infinitely customizable. -- digital man (rob)

    That's cool. I might look into buying one.
    Does it only run emulators, or are there also native games/apps developed for it?

    Nightfox
  • From Digital Man@46:10/139 to Nightfox on Thu Jan 13 20:50:46 2022
    Re: Retro gaming
    By: Nightfox to Digital Man on Thu Jan 13 2022 06:15 pm

    Yeah, it's similar in that regard: add your own game ROMs, custom firmware, screen bezels, etc. Similar to the other RK3326 based devices, it runs EmuELEC (https://github.com/EmuELEC/EmuELEC) to emulate many different retro game platforms. Appears to be infinitely customizable. -- digital man (rob)

    That's cool. I might look into buying one.
    Does it only run emulators, or are there also native games/apps developed for it?

    I've seen in YouTube reviews mention native ports of SuperMario-based games and other N64 titles, but they look like perfect replicas to me. I think someone manages to do an instruction set conversion to the native instruction set of the device for performance reasons (N64 titles are hit and miss as to weather they'll run fine/fast or not). But yeah, it's all about the retro gaming. I don't know of any *new* titles that have been created for these class of devices. <shrug>
    --
    digital man (rob)

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  • From phiax@46:10/131 to Nightfox on Fri Feb 18 10:38:07 2022
    I love retro gaming and was probably into it before it had a resurgence. Collected a fair amount of NES and Genesis in the late 00s/early 10s but have
    a wide swathe now of a bunch of consoles and handhelds. Hell, even got rid of some that I was less interested in keeping [like the Dreamcast... not because it isn't good, but because I am not nostalgic for the hardware].

    Anyway, emulation has gotten really solid. I can't always say much about
    those underpowered retro handhelds [some I hear are good, some are not and/or have bad sound], but even a Raspberry Pi 4 has a good emulation of N64/PS1 era gaming and older ones can go 90s hardware no problem. Even tough I have hardware, I often emulate for convenience. The trick is, however, to never
    use "modern" scalers [keep the pixels crispy and add a CRT filter if you like them] and use actual hardware controllers. I have drawer of NES/SNES/Genesis/etc. adapters for USB and a bunch for the Wii [which when hacked is an amazing retro machine]. Having an actual controller in your hand takes you back in a way that playing with a modern controller does not.

    Cheers,

    -ph

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  • From boraxman@46:3/203 to phiax on Tue Feb 22 22:13:40 2022
    I love retro gaming and was probably into it before it had a resurgence. Collected a fair amount of NES and Genesis in the late 00s/early 10s but have a wide swathe now of a bunch of consoles and handhelds. Hell, even got rid of some that I was less interested in keeping [like the Dreamcast... not because it isn't good, but because I am not nostalgic
    for the hardware].

    Anyway, emulation has gotten really solid. I can't always say much about those underpowered retro handhelds [some I hear are good, some are not and/or have bad sound], but even a Raspberry Pi 4 has a good emulation
    of N64/PS1 era gaming and older ones can go 90s hardware no problem.
    Even tough I have hardware, I often emulate for convenience. The trick
    is, however, to never use "modern" scalers [keep the pixels crispy and
    add a CRT filter if you like them] and use actual hardware controllers.
    I have drawer of NES/SNES/Genesis/etc. adapters for USB and a bunch for the Wii [which when hacked is an amazing retro machine]. Having an
    actual controller in your hand takes you back in a way that playing with
    a modern controller does not.

    Cheers,


    Even though I have a real working C64, with a tape and disk drive, I find VICE emulation good enough, except that I have gamepads rather than a joystick connected to the PC.

    The CRT emulation is a necessary feature. It doesn't look right with crisp pixels. These games were designed for CRT's, for older TV's. In fact, I would say an emulator with CRT emulation is more true to form than the REAL hardware on an LCD monitor.

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  • From poindexter FORTRAN@46:1/115 to boraxman on Tue Feb 22 06:40:00 2022
    boraxman wrote to phiax <=-

    The CRT emulation is a necessary feature. It doesn't look right with crisp pixels. These games were designed for CRT's, for older TV's. In fact, I would say an emulator with CRT emulation is more true to form
    than the REAL hardware on an LCD monitor.

    Off-topic, but I want to use one of those CRT-emulating terminals on my 4:3 LCD. I spent my youth staring into green phosphors into the early hours as a CS major, want to remember what it was like.



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  • From opicron@46:20/110 to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri Mar 4 20:49:03 2022
    For all of you retro gamers. To relive some of the days I can not support the books of BitmapBooks enough. They are a UK based publisher and release awesome books with art and stories about all C64, NES, SNES, SEGA, etc etc era.

    Also a Point and Click book which I browse through every now and these. Beautiful printer hardcover books.

    oP!

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  • From jack phlash@46:1/145 to opicron on Fri Mar 4 14:56:30 2022
    on 04 Mar 2022, opicron said...

    For all of you retro gamers. To relive some of the days I can not
    support the books of BitmapBooks enough. They are a UK based publisher
    and release awesome books with art and stories about all C64, NES, SNES, SEGA, etc etc era.

    They have some create books on microcomputers too - I have one of their Amiga ones and I've checked out their C64 one.

    Also a Point and Click book which I browse through every now and these. Beautiful printer hardcover books.

    And... I own that too. It's a beautiful book. The RPG one is also nice, though I only have a PDF copy of it.

    |08j |15A C K |08p |15H L A S H |08!

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  • From esc@46:1/145 to opicron on Fri Mar 4 21:11:53 2022
    For all of you retro gamers. To relive some of the days I can not
    support the books of BitmapBooks enough. They are a UK based publisher
    and release awesome books with art and stories about all C64, NES, SNES, SEGA, etc etc era.

    Well now, this clearly needs to go in my collection! Thanks for the heads up :)

    Also a Point and Click book which I browse through every now and these. Beautiful printer hardcover books.

    Is this on the bitmapbooks.co.uk site as well?

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  • From jack phlash@46:1/145 to jack phlash on Sat Mar 5 18:13:10 2022
    on 04 Mar 2022, jack phlash said...

    They have some create books on microcomputers too - I have one of their Amiga ones and I've checked out their C64 one.

    s/create/great/

    Weird typo. :|

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  • From boraxman@46:3/203 to poindexter FORTRAN on Sat Apr 2 19:12:57 2022
    The CRT emulation is a necessary feature. It doesn't look right with crisp pixels. These games were designed for CRT's, for older TV's. fact, I would say an emulator with CRT emulation is more true to form than the REAL hardware on an LCD monitor.

    Off-topic, but I want to use one of those CRT-emulating terminals on my 4:3 LCD. I spent my youth staring into green phosphors into the early hours as a CS major, want to remember what it was like.



    I've used cool-retro-term for Linux. It was interesting for a few minutes, but then I stopped using it. It's just not the same as the actual CRT because the screen size is all wrong.

    I've got a monochrome, green phosphor monitor that I'd love to get working again, but I don't have anything which outputs to it except a Commodore 64.

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