Retro games and emulation - Discuss retro shit in case you're stuck in the past or a hipster

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Games are pricey now, but It really depends on if you're desperate for moeny or not. I don't know how many games you own, but a shelf or so of 100–200 games, will probably fetch you a few thousand to maybe the low 10s if you have some gems. I'ts good money, but it's not going to really stretch that far in today's economy.
Yeah, that’s how I feel. I already sold a handful of my most expensive games that I had little to no emotional attachment to, and even that felt like a chore.
CRTs have a nice visual effect that modern monitors can't really replicate and it’s something that makes you stand out from all of the other zoomers.
Wait until those zoomers learn about shaders on high refresh rate displays. Sure, it’s a bit of “look what they need to mimic a fraction of our power” but you can’t argue with the improving results.
 
Same. I just like arcade style games, where you can beat them in one sitting when you're good and you don't need to waste your time watching cutscenes or anything. Plus I'm very, very Anti-Woke/Far-right. Old games are free of that for the most part.
I don’t mind cutscenes as long as they aren’t overly dragged on for too long and boring. Arcade style games tend to be some of my more played games as well as they are easy to just pick up and play. In terms of wokeness, I’m very much against that sort of stuff as well. There’s this one guy on Steam (and there’s also a similar forum here on Kiwi Farms) who created a list of games with DEI nonsense to avoid.
 
Wait until those zoomers learn about shaders on high refresh rate displays. Sure, it’s a bit of “look what they need to mimic a fraction of our power” but you can’t argue with the improving results.
The crt_royale shader has come such an extremely long way that it's 10x more practical than carrying around 20 year old technology that might break at any time that most zoomers do not have the expertise to repair. The only holdout is that you need a 1440p monitor at a bare minimum to make it look good. Even something like crt_easymode_NTSC is really good for what it does.
 
My money is on the people feeling the financial squeeze trying to gather up cheap entertainment, probably those that don't know how to pirate.
Super Nintendo has been in "collector's market" territory for a long time. It's not a place for cheap entertainment.

Collector's markets are completely insane and irrational. If I had to bet some really odd people are calling market peak on pokemon cards or whatever and moving on to where they think another frenzy will be. It's happened a bunch of times before.
sorry Canadian sellers, never buying from you again,
You know I don't sell but I prefer buying in Canada since the shipping ends up a lot easier and there tend to be less outright scams than I see in US listings. Maybe I should see if there's anything on my list from years ago when I gave up buying aggressively, might be a good opportunity if activity from the US is lower.
PS2 prices and the default ten years ago was 6 dollars for a generic common non-shovelware game. Now those are 12 dollars even though the consoles to play them
That's almost inflationary at this point. Almost everything is 2x as much as 10 years ago, and while official inflation numbers don't indicate that I really don't trust them because I have eyes to see.
I've read online that zoomers are obsessed with non-Internet connected electronics and are loading up on things like VHS tapes, cameras and old games. They call it an analog lifestyle.
They even managed to make UMDs go up in price...
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But it would also be tedious and time-consuming for just a few thousand dollars, and I’m not strapped for cash.
I could probably hit a few thousand selling < 10 things just off the top of my head. I would do it if I was desperate but my view has always been that the value of everything I own is $0 since I don't intend to sell any of it.
 
The crt_royale shader has come such an extremely long way that it's 10x more practical than carrying around 20 year old technology that might break at any time that most zoomers do not have the expertise to repair. The only holdout is that you need a 1440p monitor at a bare minimum to make it look good. Even something like crt_easymode_NTSC is really good for what it does.
OLED's look great for old pixel art games. I prefer playing my old systems through rgb, and I never really cared for the color blending and blur of playing games thought composite,, the appeal for me with CRT's is the bright colors that look great with pixel art. I'm sure in 20 or so years when CRT's are mostly dead TV's at that point will be able to make these games look just as good without the need for any old special tech.
 
OLED's look great for old pixel art games. I prefer playing my old systems through rgb, and I never really cared for the color blending and blur of playing games thought composite,, the appeal for me with CRT's is the bright colors that look great with pixel art. I'm sure in 20 or so years when CRT's are mostly dead TV's at that point will be able to make these games look just as good without the need for any old special tech.
I actually have a CRT and it looks great. Got my SNES, Super Famicom, GameCube, and Wii all hooked up to it.
 
I actually have a CRT and it looks great. Got my SNES, Super Famicom, GameCube, and Wii all hooked up to it.
It looks so much better than any filter or shader does justice to. There's a feel to them that is really hard to match. I've heard good things about beam simulation with a retrotink 4x but it really feels like this to me:
1774651975553.png
That's a $1000 scaler paired with ideally a $1500 TV to look as good as something you could pick out of the trash (a few years ago)
 
I actually have a CRT and it looks great
I’m not even sure if my CRT looks good (I also might be picky about what “good” means) but I’ve come to terms with the fact that tinkering itself is part of my hobby so I’m excited to get autistic about signals and decoders and shit
 
Welp. After the crown jewels were gone I decided to say fuck it and started liquidating everything. My entire collection had been sitting in a storage unit for years, and going through boxes I found shit I forgot I even had. That pic ended up being only about half of the Saturn games I owned that were worth more than $100. I ended up selling a CIB copy of Saturn Resident Evil for over $400. Legitimately forgot I had it. Apparently I also owned a boxed copy of Bucky O'Hare for the NES and a boxed copy of Castlevania Legacy of Darkness for the N64 that both sold for over $400.

All of my "bangers" for Saturn, Sega CD, 32x, PS1, NES, SNES, 3DO, and Genesis are gone. Still working on selling my TG-16 collection which should bring in some good money. Grossed a little over $13k since I made that post, and hopefully have another $3k or $4k worth of stuff still left to sell. I think I'm going to pile up everything worth $20 or less, separate it by console, put them up as lots on a 10 day auction and just see what happens. eBay fees suck, but I have to remember that if I took everything to a pawn shop or game store I would have almost certainly netted even less. Facebook Marketplace would have taken years to unload the stuff. It is what it is.

I decided to hang on to all of my Dreamcast collection and my Jaguar/CD collection. I was always the proudest of the latter, owning the complete retail library CIB. I'm also holding on to all of my sixth gen stuff. I don't have a ton but I do have a pretty decent little Xbox collection. I think if I ever decide to get back into the collecting hobby that's where I'll focus my attention.
Finished up selling a few weeks ago. Still have a few odds and ends but I'm so tired of packing and shipping shit and dealing with retarded eBay buyers that I'm not really motivated to put anything else up at the moment. Ended up netting a little under $21k after fees and shipping materials. I honestly don't miss any of it and I'm glad that they will bring joy to a new group of people.
 
It looks so much better than any filter or shader does justice to. There's a feel to them that is really hard to match. I've heard good things about beam simulation with a retrotink 4x but it really feels like this to me:
View attachment 8767328
That's a $1000 scaler paired with ideally a $1500 TV to look as good as something you could pick out of the trash (a few years ago)
They never give the warn fuzzy feeling that cuddling up to a CRT will quite literally give you.
 
Laying in bed playing GameCube and PS2 works wonders on old CRTs because the curvature actually works. The phrase sitting around a TV use to be a thing for a reason. Still ain't properly replicated these days
 
Yeah the Neo Geo is (and was) still really expensive even back when it first released. In terms of handhelds, I would say it’s probably between the Virtual Boy and the WonderSwan/WonderSwan Color.
Many years ago I bought a boxed, possibly unsold/unused, Virtual Boy and a whole bunch of boxed games for $20. The shipping to europe cost four times as much. The pro-tip for playing it is lay down flat on the couch and put it over your eyes, don't use that stand it sucks.
Laying in bed playing GameCube and PS2 works wonders on old CRTs
Get an old projector and put it on the floor pointing at the ceiling.
 
Get an old projector and put it on the floor pointing at the ceiling.
That's amateur hour! Set up a harness and projector rig bolted to the ceiling, strap yourself into the harness, facing downward, and project the image onto your bare floor. That's real gaming, and it's far more thrilling when you can hear and feel the bolts fastened to your harness begin winding their way out of the ceiling.
 
That's amateur hour! Set up a harness and projector rig bolted to the ceiling, strap yourself into the harness, facing downward, and project the image onto your bare floor. That's real gaming, and it's far more thrilling when you can hear and feel the bolts fastened to your harness begin winding their way out of the ceiling.

I actually used to play old NES games by pointing a projector up into the ceiling and laying down on the floor. This was back when CRTs were will still standard.
 
It looks so much better than any filter or shader does justice to. There's a feel to them that is really hard to match. I've heard good things about beam simulation with a retrotink 4x but it really feels like this to me:
View attachment 8767328
That's a $1000 scaler paired with ideally a $1500 TV to look as good as something you could pick out of the trash (a few years ago)
As someone who actually does this (have a rt4k and a high end OLED just for this) you're completely correct. I spent more time fine-tuning my presets for different games + console + CRT feel than actually playing games and never came as close to the CRT as much as I wanted.

HOWEVER

Consider that the average CRT you can get today would still be close to the price of the aforementioned if you wanted something better than a shitbox out of a dumpster. Which would be 15' AT MOST, and would need at this point at least recapping and realignment. That's if you're lucky and the tube isn't delaminating. That's not taking into account the storage, weight and other things people conveniently forget about CRTs.

At the end of the day even though it's not perfect CRT emulation, and it does take time and money, I know I'm right, because I can boot up a PS1 game on my setup, show it off to normies and they'll comment that it looks very good or that they wished they had a setup like that cause it looks fun.

And I get to have a 65' screen instead of a 15' one
 
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