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Folks on this site likely know the feeling; You and three 'friends' are in a heated Super Smash Bros. Melee when someone cries out, "My "R" button isn't working! Hey guys, wait!" Or that heated Joust versus match with the controller that just doesn't 'flap' as fast, or the time you were excited to show off your rare Sega CD Snatcher on one of the four days of the week that the drive tray doesn't want to work...
If you are a retro gamer that plays as well as collects, you know the effort it takes to upkeep your library. Vintage video game collecting is like classic car collecting or pinball machine collecting; it's more than just having space for the stuff and the ability to find and pay for the games and hardware. If it is going to remain playable, there's some know-how and some elbow grease that will become part of the hobby. From notorious controller wear and faulty optical drives, to analog drift and bad capacitors, every retro player/collector has to get comfortable with just how far down the rabbit hole they are going to go. Perhaps you are fortunate enough to have a passion for a console that seems immune to all but psyonic attacks (SNES, Game Boy Color) or maybe you've fallen for a glass snowflake (Famicom Disc System, a Turbo Duo with good sound), but either way there is always some basic maintenance needed.
Continue reading Thoughts On The Upkeep of Retro Game Collecting
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Pic from Kotaku and about a million bookmarks
Approximately a million years ago in Internet time, I wrote an article intended as a sort of clarion call about losing our gaming history. You can dust off the electrons and find it here.
This weekend, two events reminded me of that article. The first was reading about how Alan Wake, the Remedy developed atmospheric action game, was about to be delisted from digital sale from Steam and Xbox Live storefront due to music licensing issues. When smaller titles are released in only the digital format, they occasionally disappear and the lost content may be lamented on an equally small scale. (Not to claim irrelevance, just the level of awareness.) To have a decently successful IP such as Alan Wake become unavailable for purchase seven years after release may still seem pretty reasonable in our gaming economy. Every game goes out of print eventually, right?
Continue reading Saving Games...Continue?
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