A little rant about some oldschool gaming forums

[m1omg]

On some forms about old games, I've noticed 3 types of people who give annoying answers to some questions (not here, it is more noticeable on forums about MS-DOS games).

These are:

1. The "it's supposed to be authentic [but actually much crappier than original hardware]" guy:

"Well, if you want to play old games, you must buy really crappy hardware. I for example play my games on a Hercules XT with disabled cache that has been dropped from a bridge. I use a composite green monitor with a downscaler to 40x25 resolution and then add scanlines so big that you can't see the picture. I do this to achieve the authentic look of games I played on my XT that my dad used to drop from a window every week."

2. The "old hardware is evil, you must build a "RETRO" GAMING RIG WITH PENTIUM II AND 128 MB RAM" (for DOS games) guy:

"Playing games on the hardware we had back in the day is an excruciating exercise. After all, my 286 only gave me 50 fps in Prince of Persia and that's very slow so you must buy a Mach 32 or Tsung ET6000 accelerator to achieve 300 fps that is the minimum for me to play. You should also add nitrogen cooling to your rig because you want to play Doom at 180 fps right? At least a Pentium II 450 Mhz is essential for Wolf 3D to achieve optimum performace after all. You should also buy a Roland MT32 sound card premium edition and a 200 GB harddrive to play all DOS games. Also TSUNG ET4000 TSUNG ET4000 TSUNG ET4000 TSUNG ET4000"

3. The "you must have this exact configuration for this game" guy:

"Well, I play Wing Commander only on my 386SX 25 Mhz with 4 MB RAM. Any higher or lower and its all shit because you are out of the "sweet spot". I also play Alley Cat only on the IBM 5150 original PC and Quake only on my 200 Mhz Pentium."

[lifeschool]

I seem to have seen those guys around too. Yeah, there are some purists around who like to use the hardware they grew up with, ..and conversely - those who stand by their emulators above real hardware any day. I'm really not too fussed as long as it plays ok and feels right. For example, I could play the same C64 game on a real C64, or using WinVice, or sometimes I've even been known to boot into WinUAE - go into Magic64 - and load into a game via an emulator installed on another emulator!

Have you ever tried the Emulator Stack Challenge?? The challenge is to boot into (and chain) as many emulators as possible and still be able to play a game. For example, I could go into Dosbox, load winUAE, go into PC Task3.1, go into an old PC c64 emulator and play a game (to have a stack score of 4). Or I could use UAE, go into Shapeshifter, then PC Emul, then a ZX emulator to play jumping jack (for a stack of 4). Yeah I know it's crazy.

- I had a chuckle as you described the ideal XT PC as one which gets thrown out of the window every week Funny. And true.

[m1omg]

Well, I don't really have problems with guys who want to play the game on the HW they played back in the day, just with those who basically shitty up the game to unrecognisable point - basically like advising you to use scanlines so thick that you can't see the image, the worst composite monitor... it seems a bit weird to me considering I played most DOS games on a 386DX 40 Mhz and they ran better than on the emulator (and it booted in 4 seconds). Basically, many people want to imitate hardware that is actually much shittier than the real thing. Sure, XTs, 286s... are worse than a 386, but they are not as bad as some people remember them. Most DOS games run perfectly fine on a 286. This is what a 286 setup can do http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lBHxfsCqWw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZPX1jtk3-M&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4gBgUyVuY0&feature=related . It is, IMHO, much better than DosBox at least for non-protected mode games.

I also don't get the DOS gaming community's obssesion with Wing Commander . Although I never played it, I saw it on Youtube and my question is - is this supposed to be the shit that Amiga users converted to PCs because of?. Honestly, it seems like total bull. And it does not even have fixed speeed, which is why one of the first responses to someone posting images of his kick ass 386DX/40 was "well, but it will run Wing Commander too fast 25 Mhz is better..." .

I love DOS games too but this seems to be 1 of the beautiful things about Amiga - most games run perfectly on a 1 MB RAM Amiga 500. A PC AT at 7.09 Mhz (let's say somebody overclocked the original 6 Mhz AT) would barely run most DOS games and most XT era games would still run too fast - and the graphics, sound and animation would be crap compared to even 512 KB RAM equipped Amiga.

[Chuckles]

[lifeschool]

[Chuckles]

[a_three_headed_monkey]

I'm the "cable" guy.

Not really interested in playing my old systems the same way I did back in the day, because more often than not I used a crappy TV connected with RF & frankly, it looks horrible by today's standard.

Nowadays I have a large flat screen LCD TV & old consoles look even worse on them when using RF or composite, so now it's all about using the correct cables for the nicest picture, the way it was originally intended. Whether it be RGB scart, s-video or component, I'm always trying to get my games looking as crisp & true as possible, something I was largely unaware of back then & unable to do due to crappy screens & poor cables.

The most money I have spent on a cable would be for my Gamecube. I have an original Japanese component cable for it that cost over £60. It was expensive because it's rare, but it makes the games look lovely!
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[m1omg]

I guess for an Amiga a CRT RGB monitor would be ideal (and period accirate as well).

[m1omg]

[LinesMachine]

Firstly, the type of people the original post refers to do exist on lemon. They're just (from my exp) watered down somehow.

Secondly, my own stance is that I want to replay the games from my past coz they were awesome back then and are awesome now. Dungeon master still scares the shxt out of me when I go to sleep behind a closed door (nice and safe) and start to make a cup of tea only to be "woken" by some monster kicking seven bells out of me whose managed to open said door. And robocodnstill gets me dancing tonthe music, and elitenstill blows me away about how big a game it is and etc etc...

Thirdly, I have some original hardware, but i rarely use it unless my brother is in town at Xmas! I've got no issue with full emulation. As long as it runs the orginal game at the original speed.

God bless Amiga!

[Oge_user]

[retrogamer_downunder]

im the i like the real original machines but i must restore them kinda guy.
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damn this bloody machine!

[hottrout]

I agree that using old hardware actually brings you back to the time when you played it for the first time. I still have an Amiga 1000 and although I use WinUAE 99.9% of the time. I do still pull out the 1000 and load up speedball just to relive my childhood.

Sad but tru and very very fun.
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Nintendo SNES ROMs Downloads

[MIK UK]

Reason I use the real thing is because it was more than just a games machine. Plus I have all that I need here and now and much more so don't have to go looking for it online to feed an emu.

I don't mind people using emu's of older machines, that's up to them. Not for me and don't get me wrong I am not some mug buying stuff on ebay either, I bought what I wanted all in real time new when you could just pop out for the afternoon and buy it from a shop lol. Yes in the later years I would drive up to Power Computing and the like to feed my Amiga haha!
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A1200T, Apollo 1260, 32MB RAM, 3.1 ROMS, 4GB HD, Z4 Board, Picasso II, IOBlix (Serial/Parallel), Squirrel SCSI, 2X CD, IDE 100MB Zip Drive, OS - DOpus Magellan II. Plus an A500+ Yum.

[Kodoichi]

There's the fourth kind:

"Yeah Amiga was nice back then, I still play some games through emulation, but grow the fuck up, go with the times and use contemporary hardware and gadgets for everyday life!"
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Mandatory reading for all Amiga webdesigners:
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell

Amiga is dead, get over it