Does anyone else dread/worry about not being able to play old games?

[HowNo]

Yeah, emulators and VMs can manage most things, but Moore's law is the enemy here and eventually you'll start hitting hard assumptions about available hardware made by the original developers (e.g that cpu or gpu bottlenecks will be rate limiting, and they don't need to control timing). I have disk images of old machines that means I'm still able to run (occasionally for nostalgia) even Windows 95 and XP based games in a VM, but only if I throttle it, otherwise you get weird race conditions and panics, and anything not turn based can be tricky to get at a playable speed if the clock isn't quite right. After my last upgrade the sliders are now all the way to the left for the Win95 machine so next time I'm probably have to go for some inception style vm within a vm...

There are some quite nice Rasberry Pi based emulators of old consoles out there  too, if you want the full plug-it-into-the-tv retro fix.

[Family sedan]

10 hours ago, Steerminator said:

I swear PS2s are the most unreliable console on the planet.  We've had to buy that damn thing more times than I can count because they stopped working.  I think people should stop buying original PS2 games and just stick to either buying ports/digital copies on PSN, or emulation at this point.

You're going to hate me for saying this, but I've had the same PS2 since I believe 2001.  I was a sophomore in high school when my parents got it for me.

[Steerminator]

On 5/30/2021 at 10:57 PM, Family sedan said:

You're going to hate me for saying this, but I've had the same PS2 since I believe 2001.  I was a sophomore in high school when my parents got it for me.

LOL I don't hate you.  Consider yourself extremely fortunate for having a PS2 that worked for so long (and STILL works O_O).

Edited June 5, 2021 by Steerminator

[Family sedan]

Maybe the PS2 is my good luck charm.

[Heatman]

Well, most old games are too low on graphics quality and it's boring playing such games now after having played games with far more better graphics. 

[m76]

I don't just dread, it already happened to several games, that I no longer can play due to servers being shut down or other technical difficulties.

Most disappointingly Test Drive Unlimited 2

[Heatman]

4 minutes ago, m76 said:

I don't just dread, it already happened to several games, that I no longer can play due to servers being shut down or other technical difficulties.

Most disappointingly Test Drive Unlimited 2

Seriously, the shutdown is something that no one can ever get used to because it's totally out of our control, we just live with it. 

[m76]

10 minutes ago, Heatman said:

Seriously, the shutdown is something that no one can ever get used to because it's totally out of our control, we just live with it. 

That literally makes zero sense. Living  with it is the same as getting used to it. Game preservation is important and we should demand publishers to release offline executables for single player games they shut down the servers of.

[Shagger]

38 minutes ago, Heatman said:

Well, most old games are too low on graphics quality and it's boring playing such games now after having played games with far more better graphics. 

 

There's more to games than graphics, to the point I would say that's on the lower on the list of factors on what defines a good game. Art design, style, story, sound and most importantly gameplay matter so much more when it comes to engaging the player and overall enjoyment. Some would argue that order games handle those aspects better than more modern titles. So I'm sorry, but the statement "lower graphical fidelity makes games boring" makes no sense at all.

[Heatman]

Just now, m76 said:

That literally makes zero sense. Living  with it is the same as getting used to it. Game preservation is important and we should demand publishers to release offline executables for single player games they shut down the servers of.

Seriously, it's not understandable why they do such, maybe they feel it's no longer important based on the lots of new games coming out, I can't really say.