EMULATING VS COLLECTING

[reaper71129]

I'm just curious how many people here both collect and emulate.. I have quite a large physical collection of systems (probably 30) and games (about 1500). However, most of them aren't hooked up at all and i just emulate on my pc thru bigbox. Way easier (after long setup) and can look better (personal opinion i know). But i know several people that have sold all of their old stuff and just gotten into emulation. i continue to do both... what does everyone else do?

[Lordmonkus]

I do both but what I collect is kept very limited to the stuff I really care about, I don't buy crap just to have it in the collection.

[brenavich980]

Tried collecting but found out real quick that it was WAY too expensive for my blood. I'm all in on emulation as a hobby to see what can be built and trying to achieve the best setup possible. Playing the games, for me at least, is almost secondary.

[reaper71129]

yea.. i try not to too have to much junk.. but i'm a completeist too... lol, if i have sonic 1.... i gotta have all the sonics... but i find that i'm buying less and less due the costs going up in the last few years... plus i found out about launchbox about a year ago... and darn it... this program is addictive... i think i have about 16,000 games in launchox.. but noticed some have way way more.

[subatomic09]

To be honest, the satisfaction of collecting and organizing with LaunchBox is almost as much fun for me as playing the games. The idea of building the perfect "all-in-one" system that has only the best core games and hidden gems for each system is very appealing to me. When friends come over, and they play around with BigBox, it just blows their minds. 

I just don't have the space or money to be collecting retro games and systems. I'm very happy with buying PC games on Steam and emulating the classics.

So, for me it's more like emulating AND collecting.

Edited April 9, 2018 by subatomic09

[reaper71129]

yea... setting it up to be exactlly want you want is part of the fun of collecting to me.... i keep telling myself.... you'll play more when it's done..... lol

[subatomic09]

Just now, reaper71129 said:

yea... setting it up to be exactlly want you want is part of the fun of collecting to me.... i keep telling myself.... you'll play more when it's done..... lol

Exactly. Sometimes I literally have to say, "Hey, stop organizing and play a game!" My wife and I have about 1,600 books in our library, all organized and alphabetized by genre and author, and she has a masters in library science, so I guess it's just our "thing." 

[reaper71129]

lol... at least your wife understands.... mine... not so much... but she lets me be happy, and it helps me relieve stress...

[Chris Kant]

1 hour ago, subatomic09 said:

To be honest, the satisfaction of collecting and organizing with LaunchBox is almost as much fun for me as playing the games. The idea of building the perfect "all-in-one" system that has only the best core games and hidden gems for each system is very appealing to me. When friends come over, and they play around with BigBox, it just blows their minds. 

I just don't have the space or money to be collecting retro games and systems. I'm very happy with buying PC games on Steam and emulating the classics.

So, for me it's more like emulating AND collecting.

thank you for speaking for me :-) it is the same for me

[Zombeaver]

I do both; and I curate both. I collect the stuff that's good and of interest to me - not just "everything ever."

PSX, PS2, DC, and big box PC are the main things I collect physically but I've got a little bit of everything. It seems like there's this weird notion that emulation and physical collecting are somehow mutually exclusive but they're really not. It's a hobby, like anything else. Both are fun for me.

[subatomic09]

That's a nice-looking collection, Zombeaver!

2 hours ago, Zombeaver said:

It seems like there's this weird notion that emulation and physical collecting are somehow mutually exclusive but they're really not. It's a hobby, like anything else. Both are fun for me.

I totally agree, you can do both. If anything, emulation is a great way for collectors to protect their physical collections. Keep it all nicely tucked on the shelves, and emulate for actual playing. Unless we're talking about retro gamers who need the feeling of playing a real cart in a real console to get their fix, I guess.

 

[Zombeaver]

1 hour ago, subatomic09 said:

That's a nice-looking collection, Zombeaver!

Thanks! I've got several other shelves of stuff, but those are the ones I'm most proud of. I've pretty much run out of room at this point though  Always need more shelves. Big box PC stuff, especially, takes up a lot of space.

1 hour ago, subatomic09 said:

I totally agree, you can do both. If anything, emulation is a great way for collectors to protect their physical collections. Keep it all nicely tucked on the shelves, and emulate for actual playing. Unless we're talking about retro gamers who need the feeling of playing a real cart in a real console to get their fix, I guess.

Yep, that's what I do. I actually rip my own stuff as much as possible too. It's weirdly super satisfying to throw a 20 year old disc in my PC and then install it through DOSBox haha.

I used to visit /r/gamecollecting quite a bit but whenever the topic of emulation came up and I voiced my opinion on the matter (that they're not mutually exclusive and that emulation is a good thing for collectors, not a detriment) it was universally met with some really illogical, vitriolic nonsense.

People need to understand that all this stuff is going to stop working at some point. All of it. It might not be tomorrow, or a year from now, or even in our lifetime (although it absolutely can be if you don't take care of it), but eventually all this physical media is going to stop functioning; and when it does, then what? Suddenly we just no longer have access to that history of games because somebody arbitrarily decides that emulation is "bad"? People need to think more than 5 minutes in front of their face. Collectors, of all people, should be the biggest advocates of emulation, not detractors. Emulation is the only way to ensure that this stuff is preserved for future generations. 75% of all silent films produced in the US are lost forever. Why? Because nobody thought it was important to preserve them for the future. I'm a huge fan of Lon Chaney, but I'll never get to see London After Midnight because of that. The Mona Lisa was completed in 1506. The photographic process as we now know it was in its infancy in the early 1820s with the earliest surviving photograph dated 1826 or 1827. Let's say that in 1825 there was a tragic fire and the Mona Lisa was reduced to ash. Barring forgeries, without the photographic process, that piece of artwork would be lost forever. Would the world be better off if that were the case? I think few would argue that it would be. So why in the shit do people act as though emulation is high treason? People need to grow up.

They seem to think that it's somehow harmful to the value of collections. Not only is that completely ignoring the preservation aspect, it's frankly just not true. Plenty of games that were obscure at the time are worth considerably more now purely because they were popularized through emulation. Speaking personally, I've bought quite a few games physically as the direct result of playing them emulated first. The notion that emulation devalues physical copies is just nonsense. The average guy that downloads Suikoden II rather than paying $120 for it on Ebay isn't likely to do the latter regardless of the existence of emulation; or, if they're me, they play through it emulated, discover that it's amazing, then drive to another state, nearly get run over by a giant dump truck in the process, and buy it used at a Gamestop for $60 (the fact that I probably lost most of the savings in gas is irrelevant) as the direct result of emulation.

Sorry haha /rant

[subatomic09]

Well said, Z. I really think the vitriol from some people about emulation comes down to ego. It threatens some collectors' egos that the rare game they paid $600 for can be perfectly emulated by people without the money to buy it. They'll use arguments about the morality of piracy, keeping the secondhand market alive, etc., but it's really about perishing the thought that their collection is less valuable in some intangible way because it's not exclusive. I admire (and even envy) those who spend their hard-earned (or trust fund) money on great game rooms with CIB collections and systems, but what we're doing inhere is not having any tangibly negative effect on their hobby. Quite the opposite, as you so perfectly put it, when you emulate that game that you love so much you have to have it in your hands, even risking life and limb to get it!!

I, on the other hand, am that guy you mentioned, who isn't going to pay for the game even if I can't emulate it. I would love to try out the Virtual Boy Hyper Fighting homebrew, which is not available as a rom. But I'm not going to spend the money to get a real cart and a VB just to play it. Even if I had the money for a physical collection, I don't have the room for it. Those carts and systems will find better homes than mine to live in.

Hell, collectors should be happy that they have less competition at the flea market thanks to emulation!

 

 

[damageinc86]

I am 100% with you on the preservation part.  At a certain point, I think things like this become a cultural phenomenon, and are sort of collectively "owned" if you will.  It's part of our history, and I think we all have a right and duty to preserve it.  Of course you must preserve the physical media and machines as much as possible, but yeah, just like the old films (especially nitrate) they might not make it for a hundred years or more.  Then, as long as we have hardware that can run emulators, we can still preserve the history.  Think of all the artwork assets being made as well, that is all part of it too.  With the speed of technology the emulation itself needs to keep up, it also will be just as hard to preserve if the emulators only run on hardware from the last 10 years.  Maybe an entirely new architecture and way of computing comes into play, and in 50 years what we are on now isn't compatible at all.  It's like this with all archiving and preservation efforts.  Fighting against time and "progress" so that we can still experience important points of our culture's past.

[flatuswalrus]

I used to collect, my collection grew so big I had no more room left for it. It filled a room then another room and then I had to call it quits as it was getting out of control. I eventually made the decision to sell it ALL, which I did years ago. Since then the hobby has gotten way more expensive to the point of being ridiculous. Now I just have my LB/BB setup and I have never been happier. I have always loved playing games but when you collect so intensely it has the potential to lose focus of the playing side of things (which is what it should be about) and you can focus more on obtaining more. Now I save money, time and space and besides the setting up of everything emulator wise I just play. I will never go back to collecting but certainly there is nothing wrong with collecting of course. I am just happy playing games now which again, is what it is all about. I know there are those who say emulating is just not the same and whilst you are not physically placing a cart or disc into a physical system with the use of overlays, shaders and the likes you can have some pretty authentic gaming visually.

[whoozwah]

I used to collect but I've lived in 3 states in 5 years so I have gotten rid of everything except my model 1 sega genesis, everdrive and commodore 1084D1 monitor which I have connected up via rgb through the serial port on the back. I use that for the real deal classic experience but even then with ULMB, black frame insertion, runahead frames, universal shader support and a USB saturn pad I don't even need that anymore. So I pretty much only emulate now. The experience is better than the real thing imo.

[OlDirty]

I played on MAME many years ago, but not very often. One day I stumbled over this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXA0xnl0mls   and all collecting hell broke loose. I could visit him and since then the arcade virus got me (not that i wasn’t addicted when I was a child. ? )

I bought 2 Taito Egret cabs (vertical & horizontal) and just one PCB. Ok another one, but that’s the last one. Haha, yeah right…

Now I’m sitting on near full CAVE PCB collection. Sometimes I really ask myself WHY??!? Hunting for all those “diamonds” were kind of fun I must say.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlDO7KDSs7E

You can play those games all on MAME, so for what you have these? I tell myself because they still can’t emulate the CAVE games 100% correct because of all the slowdowns and stuff like this. But would I sell them if the emulation is 100% perfect? I don’t know if I could let them go :-(. But after I set up now Bigbox with Groovymame I’ll sell a few other PCBs I have. It makes no sense FOR ME to keep the PCBs if the games look absolute the same when you emulate them in a real arcade cabinet.

Nevertheless I collect now A TON of games just for emulation. Will I always play all these? Nope, but collecting and hunting is also fun.

 

Edited August 22, 2018 by OlDirty

[Chris Kant]

11 hours ago, OlDirty said:

I played on MAME many years ago, but not very often. One day I stumbled over this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXA0xnl0mls   and all collecting hell broke loose. I could visit him and since then the arcade virus got me (not that i wasn’t addicted when I was a child. ? )

I bought 2 Taito Egret cabs (vertical & horizontal) and just one PCB. Ok another one, but that’s the last one. Haha, yeah right…

Now I’m sitting on near full CAVE PCB collection. Sometimes I really ask myself WHY??!? Hunting for all those “diamonds” were kind of fun I must say.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlDO7KDSs7E

You can play those games all on MAME, so for what you have these? I tell myself because they still can’t emulate the CAVE games 100% correct because of all the slowdowns and stuff like this. But would I sell them if the emulation is 100% perfect? I don’t know if I could let them go :-(. But after I set up now Bigbox with Groovymame I’ll sell a few other PCBs I have. It makes no sense FOR ME to keep the PCBs if the games look absolute the same when you emulate them in a real arcade cabinet.

Nevertheless I collect now A TON of games just for emulation. Will I always play all these? Nope, but collecting and hunting is also fun.

 

Are you from Germany?

[OlDirty]

Nope.Switzerland,St.Gallen