There’s not a lot of video games that don’t have software.

You’d have to back to what, Pong? I see Monaco GP from 1979 listed as one of the last TTL-based games from Sega, but not sure about other companies.

I’m still trying to find a place that can resurrect my Atari 7800.

I have so many games for it.

If you have the money for it and really want to go hardcore into the scene, you might look into an FPGA like the Super-nt. They typically aren’t like all of those emulation boxes out there, compatible with real SNES cartridges and accessories but don’t have to worry about the issues with aging hardware and works mostly native with modern TVs/etc. It’s very expensive, but it’s also definitely very cool.

My brother and I have opposing views on this.

He likes to collect hardware. He loves buying old systems and cartridges.

I like to collect software. Very few games are worth much to me individually, but I love the ability to fire up any old game when it pops in my head.

I ended up buying an SNES Mini on eBay that was jacked and loaded with ROMs from EVERY system it was capable of running. I understand wanting the original hardware, but for me, getting EVERYTHING preloaded for about $200 just made more sense for me.

I have bought two of those hacked systems from the same seller. I can check if they still offer them, and share a link to the product, but only if someone asks for the info. I’m not trying to promote anyone, but I feel like this is a market that could be prone to fakes, and I personally would appreciate someone suggesting a trustworthy seller.

I look on local classifieds. But a lot of people inflate the price.

I picked up an SNES junior for $50 at a garage sale a few years ago. Finds like that are rare but they do exist.

It depends on what you want and where you are, honestly. I would recommend different things to people depending on whether they have a large pre-existing library of cartridges and a CRT or they just want to play some old stuff every now and then.

How dead is that NES? There are a few frequent faults in some models that aren’t terribly hard to repair and used old consoles are getting expensive in general.

Playing FF7 on my Steam Deck with the old school PS1 loading screen chefs kiss

Gameplay is always king.

Graphics can contribute a lot - some games are fucking gorgeous, and I’ll stop and appreciate good scenery in digital environment the same as IRL.

But jaw-droppingly incredible graphics can never compensate for bad or even mediocre gameplay.

And shit graphics will never kill a game with good gameplay. Done right, shit graphics can even be charming in a nostalgic kind of way.

SNES, Genesis and TG16 do have top notch graphics for those who can’t do without them.

Almost all of my modern games are indies. Most cost between $5 and $30. I love retro too but if we’re going to only include modern “AAA” titles in the comparison…

Modern games: requires $300+ game console or a $300+ GPU to get 30 FPS

Retro games: runs on your grandma’s Dell Pavilion still running Windows XP that she refuses to stop using, gets 50/60 depending on region

I assume they’re referring to actual hardware. I’d imagine the percentage of gamers playing emulated games is much higher than 14%.

Edit: Found the article

It appears I am correct.

Hell, chess is huge right now, and it’s over 1500 years old.

Fax is commonly used at least in the US because it has regulatory recognition as a secure means of transferring information, it’s highly interoperable, and it doesn’t really have a successor that has caused the network effect to die out entirely.

11% seems slightly higher than I’d expect, but not crazy. Contracts, medical records, interactions with the government are all good reasons to need to send or receive one occasionally. That about 1 in 10 households did last year? Makes some sense.

Signatures as a form of authorization I think held up the facsimile tech way past it’s best by date

According to American Dad! widespread continued use would have gotten us the blorfer.

I live in an area with a large population of Amish, they fax everything.

I give my fax number to anything that asks me for a phone number. It’s a valid number that can’t recieve calls, meaning when my number is inevitably leaked/purchased by telemarketers, scammers, etc. I don’t even notice.

The physical medium is a license as well. But that’s semantics. We can all agree if you own physical, it cant be (realistically) taken away. You can still own physical. You can still take that power back (unless the game requires online). When I got a PS5, I was planing on finally ending my attachment to physical discs… but I just couldn’t do it. To this day, I still buy PS5 discs, I haven’t spent anything on PSN, but had PS+ for maybe two years and Im well aware those PS+ games were transactional. I cant do that anymore on PC so if steam dies, so does my library. At least my physical discs will be OK. Now on to my next fear… disc rot. Will I actually be able to boot up the Halo 3 DVD when im 80 and play it?

No you didn’t. They just had no way of deactivating your copy.

Edit: All copyrighted material that you use is just licensed to you by the copyright owner. You could only actually own it if you yourself held the copyright. Downvotes don’t change that.