Lmao the original price sticker on the box for insult to injury.
5 years ago this would have been like $30. The jump in price has been insane.
Fuck playing this on original hardware then I guess. Even if I was rich I couldn't justify spending that much on a hunk of plastic. Thank god for emulation.
It just kind of sucks because retro gaming on original hardware used to be something even poor people could do. It used to be if you couldn't afford the new stuff, you'd buy the old stuff. Seems like during COVID people realized they could charge more for nostalgia and then capitalism went brrrrr
Cartridges mean nothing to me. If I want to play something old I pirate it, and phone hardware has advanced to the point where you can get used phones from a generation or two ago for not much, slap a phone controller to it, and now you have a handheld that can play anything retro, but also 3ds/wii/GameCube/some PS2 titles even/I guess Dreamcast too. It probably won't be long until phones are capable of switch emulation either.
I know that doesn't mean much to people who like physical disks and whatnot, but personally I don't see the value in collecting stuff in some kind of funko-pop gamer consumer aesthetic. Also, emulation gives you the opportunity to upscale the games you play. I just did radiant historia at 4x upscale with a ai-upscaled texture pack on my phone and it was a huge improvement.
I love emulation, but sometimes the games don't look or sound as intended (Segas stupid robot fart sound chip took them ages to figure out how to emulate properly haha). Shouldn't be too long before all emulation is flawless though, hopefully.
It does take some work fiddling with the sound or display outputs to get it more 1:1 with original, sometimes. These days they even have things like crt filters to give it the classic look (I know snes era emulation sometimes looks better with a bit of a blur to emulate tube tvs)
It's true. Bless the people who make emulators, all without profit motive. You love to see it.
Megadrive cartridges wont live forever I don't think. What I did was get a megadrive and one of the chinese everdrive copies and slapped an sd card in with all the games. Much cheaper but I still get the native experience. Also the consoles themselves are dirt cheap and the megadrive 1 through retrotink 5x is a sight to behold, it upscales so well and scanlines plus forced hdr just looks great.
Played through all the sonics that way and the save files works fine in sonic 3 as well.
That sounds AWESOME thank you.
Yeah I still have my copy of Sonic 3 from when I was like 5 years old. The save stopped working like... 15 years ago? It's ooooold.
Everdrive (which I assume is some kind of flash cart?) Sounds like the best way to play on real hardware. Thanks for the tip!
This is the one I got if you wanna get the same if its available in aus. It works fine even came preloaded for me with all the games. Takes a little while to flash the game onto the sdram chip like 30 seconds but ones its done you don't need to reload the game again only when you change game. Doesn't have save states but I got burned by getting a top tier everdrive from my gamegear with save state support and it doesn't bloody work half the time anyway.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/185939608896?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=rxAtccZ3QJK&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=wLBQ59f6TK2&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
People have always known you can charge more for nostalgia. What happened is that everyone who played those games as a kid is now in their prime earning years and has disposable cash to spend outbidding each other for collector’s items. It’s that generation’s version of baseball cards or comic books or vinyl records.
I’m really grateful for emulation for that reason. Retro gaming can still be enjoyed by anyone regardless of whether or not they happen to own a specific hunk of plastic. The nostalgia market can have the plastic bits, I just want to be able to enjoy the games.
I just buy reproduction carts off Etsy if I really want a physical copy. They're usually about 20 dollars and look just like the original games, just newer. Still, emulating on Wii with a CRT is beyond Goated. Its the most accurate emulation IMO.
The ones that really suck are the Saturn discs. There's almost no emulation scene out there and the discs and hardware are increasingly hard to find.
God bless pirates
