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Just because a game is old doesn’t mean it’s not fun. How old are the board and card games again?
Hell, chess is huge right now, and it’s over 1500 years old.
Don’t forget Backgammon. World’s oldest board game!
Is it older than the Royal Game of Ur?
None of my game consoles are younger than 2000. I can’t deal with PC gaming, I hate subscription models, and refuse to download “games” to my phone.
Does software count?
I’m knee deep in Caesar II and Total Annihilation campaigns
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 should’ve just said PC, I don’t know what I was thinking
My brain must have just frozen when I was trying to think of a word in the absence of console
All good. I used to make a strong distinction between “video games” and “computer games” and at the time it was true but now the line has blurred to the point that the distinction is in interface style and the scale between reliability and versatility.
Red Alert 2 on a 4090
🫡
References this site: https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics/media-formats/holding-on-to-physical-media-a3747629925/
Actual data here: https://article.images.consumerreports.org/image/upload/v1718112414/prod/content/dam/surveys/Consumer_Reports_AES_May_2024.pdf
Actual question references “Classic videogame systems that came out before 2000, like the NES or GameBoy” and “used at home in the past year” of which 14% responded yes out of a group of 2022 surveyed in North America (demographic details available in link).
Does it in anyway phrase the question to reference real hardware or original versions?
I feel like a lot of people emulate (including using Nintendo Switch Online) or play modernized remixes of titles like Super Mario 99
Full text is ‘Below are some types of visual media that some might consider old or outdated. Which, if any, have you used in the past year?’ and that is an item on the list, it’s not an incredibly detailed survey.
I will say from the rest of the survey responses, the demographics they’ve selected seem to lean more technically competent and security focused than I’d expect.
My wireless snes controllers just came in yesterday. Love em.
And some people play poker, or even chess. What can you do, people like old stuff.
That… doesn’t sound right. 14% is a ridiculous amount of people.
Full survey data. That’s far from the only stat that’s hard to believe.
I really need to get around to buying a SNES. I have an NES as well but it’s dead. eBay the best spot to get either of these consoles?
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.
Do that, but get a Raspberry Pi and put ROMs on it yourself instead of buying shady, possibly backdoored stuff.
That’s a great solution as well, but the mini has no internet connection, so there’s no “backdoor.”
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.
How dead is that NES?
You try blowing in 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.
I’m still trying to find a place that can resurrect my Atari 7800.
I have so many games for it.
Same, but a 2600. A hand me down from one of my older cousins
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.
I’ve been playing Zombies Ate My Neighbors on original hardware today haha. On my old Apple color monitor.
I mostly game on old systems or my steam deck.
Oh man such a great game. Great couch co-op.
Yeah I tormented my poor daughter with it when she was younger. I did not have the patience to get her through it lol.
Now that she’s older we do great.
I don’t think I ever made it past the werewolf castle level without cheats.
I care more about the backups of my ROM collection than I do about my tax returns or resume or other “important” crap.
If I can’t just decide to replay Mario 2 or Simon’s Quest or Chrono Trigger or Symphony of the Night when I’m in my 70s, then what is all this fancy technology we’ve invented really good for?
Does emulation count?
Yes, the survey summary below shows no exceptions for physical hardware vs emulation in the question
The percentage should be way, way higher, then, since lots of people use the emulators on Nintendo Switch Online.
It’s May 2024 data from 2022 respondents, biased towards people willing to respond to pretty long consumer surveys. I have similar suspicions you’d see a higher % from a larger sample size or reporting from video game platform and store owners who can differentiate that better than your average consumer.
A lot of people using official channel emulators probably don’t think of it as emulation. I have one of the original style PS3 systems where it had PS2 hardware to play the older games. Does that count as emulation or using an older system? Hard to say where one draws the line.
I’ve been tinkering with Canoe (the emulator the SNES Classsic and NSO both use) for years, so it’s very much emulation to me. Compatibility is so-so, but performance on weak hardware is really good, better than any unofficial SNES emulator. The launch PS3 does not count as emulation for PS2, but every version after does.
It should! It’s allowed me to play so many games that are hard to find or expensive these days.
The survey question seems to make it seem like it’s referring to original hardware, but I imagine a lot of respondents didn’t limit it that way.
With emulation being common even officially these days (NSO, emulated games on Steam, etc), I think it’s fair to factor that in as well.
Only if you use an emulator released before the year 2000.
I still own my real SNES from circa-1995, but I’d rather play on an emulator than put wear and tear on it, so yes.
Emulated games are free, polished, complete
Modern games are $80+ steaming incomplete pile of shit
This mystery will never be solved.
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.
Given that nowhere in the article does it say that 14% of people exclusively play on pre-2000 hardware I don’t find this that surprising.
I’m more shocked by the last statistic, 11% of American households still use fax. Fax? Fuckin’ why? That’s like saying people still listen to music on Edison cylinders.
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.
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.
Seems crazy to me. I can’t imagine that 1 in 10 household even have fax machines. All the stuff you mention is business and medical stuff. Nobody faxes in their medical requests from home.
Except for maybe people who have terrible health problems or those who care for them
Nah. They might do it from work or maybe by email gateway.
Hell it’s only even possible for the 27% of homes that still have a landline. There’s just no way.
There are a lot of people with old technology in their home that still gets used. Fax is still needed for lots of medical things, and not everyone has an office to go to.
Think retired people taking care of sick family members.
Nah. It’s got a big fat [citation needed] from me.
10% of people? Sure I’d believe that 10 % of people have transferred data using fax technology at least once in the past year or something. But 10% of households, and you can’t count email to-fax gateways?
No way.
The citation is in the article which is from a Consumer Reports study. In case you don’t know, they’re very trustworthy.
I’m not attempting to convince you that the figure is accurate because I don’t need to that. I’m attempting to get you to understand that a big portion of the population of the USA are just making do with what they have.
According to American Dad! widespread continued use would have gotten us the blorfer.
Signatures as a form of authorization I think held up the facsimile tech way past it’s best by date
I don’t know about you, but here in Europe you just send everything in digitally now
I live in an area with a large population of Amish, they fax everything.
