‘sup. When rebuilding the site I couldn’t help but notice just how fucking much I ramble on about bullshit and go off on tangents when I write anything. It was kind of a running joke. But I also think it can get pretty annoying when trying to read. So I’ma try an’ cut to the chase here.
I like old games. I’ve been specifically collecting older games and consoles for a long time now. Two main reasons:
1. I really like video games in general, and I think the older ones are some of the absolute best. I really admire the creativity that was born from the hardware limitations of the various generations of consoles.
2. Gaming today fucking sucks. Everything is a subscription service. Every fucking game is designed around a god damned season pass to sell you on extra bullshit rather than just being designed to be a game that’s fun to play. It’s rare for me to actually have FUN with any new games. Additionally and more importantly, the always-online aspects of modern gaming and complete integration into online services means that games can just straight up disappear. If a service is no longer profitable it can get shut down and the games on it are now inaccessible. I buy a game, I want complete and total personal access to it at any given moment. (I mean if a game is specifically a multiplayer game then yes of course I don’t expect it to work without the internet, I’m talking generally here.)
A lot of the games in my collection are things from my childhood, but even more of it is stuff I never played. With adulthood came disposable income and I wanted to try out some of the games and consoles that I always wished I had as a kid. I figure I might as well write about some of my thoughts and experiences with the various games and consoles here whenever the mood takes me.
So my plan is to make a separate category here just for my retro stuff. It’s gonna be mostly freeform because holy shit the internet is packed full of assholes capitalizing on nostalgia with countless bullshit youtube channels reviewing old games and I don’t wanna be just another maggot crawling in the pile. I mean, that’s exactly what I will be, and I’m not tryin’a come up with some unique selling point here because this isn’t for money or attention. It’s more about just getting my thoughts out there on all this stuff that I like and really wanna share in some small and ultimately meaningless way.
Sometimes I’ll talk about a specific game if I feel it’s worth discussing, but I also intend to talk about collecting itself, the consoles, the hardware, the repair work and modding I pretty frequently do (because retro collecting also got me into starting to learn fundamental electronics repair, as a necessity with the old hardware requiring maintenance.)
Another thing I’ll probably talk about here: CRT TVs vs flat screens. Certain tech relating to that (such as light guns in particular – I really love light gun games but haven’t played any in DECADES because I don’t have a CRT and light guns only work on CRTs. With the exception of the Sinden light gun – I have a couple on order and I’ma totally be trying those out and posting some thoughts here as and when that happens, real excited about those.)
Anyway that’s enough for now. Keep an eye out here if my old man rantings are somehow of interest to you. Until then here’s a vague and messy look at some of my collection right now. I’m gonna be working to really go nuts turning my basement into a retro game arcade/museum like every other chucklefuck out there at some point – for now it’s a comfortable mess.
Anyway, that’s part of my collection, in all its disorganized and cluttered glory. I have plans to totally redo my basement soon and really do this up right. I don’t like that everything is inconsistent, the shelves are dust magnets right now, the lighting isn’t great, and it’s in desperate need of cable management. Once I’ve got everything the way I want it I’ll post some updates I guess, because while I’m proud of the collection I’m definitely not proud of how it all looks right now. But the thing is, I fuckin’ play the hell out of all of it, so it’s function over form at the moment. I’m not one of those bullshit collectors. My toys don’t stay in the packaging.
But you’ve heard enough… of my secrets.
Comments
Wow, that is a real man cave, adorable plushies and all. Now let me one-up you when it comes to rambling about bullshit.
I enjoyed living vicariously through your retro gaming menagerie. It’s admirable that you went to the length of learning to repair and maintain electronics in order to play old games on their original machines. I also enjoy playing old games, but I’m a lazy faggot so I just emulate the stuff I don’t have physical copies of/don’t own a console for. I haven’t played a recent game in about 7 years, because almost everything is tainted with always-online bullshit and a made-by-committee feeling, as you said. I’m sure there are some recent gems, but there are so many good old games I haven’t played that I feel no urge to try anything recent. I read in an interview with Takayoshi Sato (Silent Hill modeler) that the typical budget of a PS1 game was about 1 million, while a PS2 game would be about 7 million. I’m pretty sure it’s getting into the hundred millions for AAA games now, with teams of hundreds of people, so it’s no wonder that the individual creative spirit has been completely stifled.
Agreed 100% on how much better old games look on a CRT compared to any digital display. It’s particularly noticeable with PS1 games that have a lot of dithering, because the CRT smoothed everything out and made the pattern invisible, while also giving the impression of more color variation. And that’s just the visual side; some old games have segments that are hard as balls on digital displays because the CRTs had so much less input lag. It’s too bad that they’re just too inconvenient to be worth manufacturing anymore.
Also agree 100% on all the assholes capitalizing on nostalgia with old game review channels. Man, I really appreciate all of the instructional videos one can find on Youtube now, but I’m pretty sure that the bulk of content posted to the site is soul-killing bullshit made with 10% interest for the topic at hand, and 90% desire to get lots of views for advertising revenue.
Yeah, I fucking hate youtube. Like, there are a ton of youtubers that I love, and I hate that they have to play by the infuriating rules of censorship and homogenized sponsorship bullshit just to get their content out there.
And I get it – if it’s their main source of income, then they’ll have to do what it takes to get that paper, but that doesn’t make the system any better. Recent example – Summoning Salt, a guy who basically documents speedrun history in the form of documentary-style videos, recently made his longest video ever, over an hour long. Researching, compiling, scripting and editing a video of even a fraction of that length would take forever, so you know damn well that video alone was weeks of work and would also have been a decent money-maker for him. He only recently switched to full-time youtube too, so this would have been his first really major income earning video as a full-timer actively doing this as his job.
Well one of the clips was of a speedrunner popping off after finally getting a world record and god forbid they said “fuck” a few times in the clip and that got the whole video demonetized. And what pisses me off even more than youtube pulling that kinda shit using the bullshit “tHiNk Of tHe CHiLdReN” excuse, is the people who DEFEND it like “Oh well he should have known and just censored that part of the video!”
The FUCK, motherfucker? Advocating for censorship is the first strike, but just the very idea of making a HISTORIAN censor the actual events that he’s documenting? FUUUUUUUCK that.
Anyway, that’s just one example of youtube being shitty and once again I’m rambling off topic.
CRTs are fucking great and I can’t wait to get one. Mostly it’s about finding a good deal or getting insanely lucky these days though. You can’t get those things shipped because they’re enormous and heavy, and will almost definitely break in shipping, AND you’d be paying eBay money. Gonna have to hit up local donation places or maybe even yard sales and such to luck out. And yeah, the extremely fast response times are the best part about CRTs. That and games of that era were just designed specifically to be played on CRTs.
As for big game budgets these days – yeah, I heard rumors that GTA6’s budget is somewhere over a billion? Which is fucking ludicrous because you know damn well it’s literally going to be the same thing as GTA5 and GTA4 before that, and most of that budget is absolutely going into in game monetized garbage for the online stuff.
We are our own harshest critics. I never thought you rambled on incoherent or unrelated things. You and SA always said something relevant and I even learned a few new things.
Your 1. Absolute 100% in-sync agree.
Your 2. Absolutely. It sucks for those reasons and much more. Can’t stand it.
It’s so focused on money rather than fun. It’s designed to be frustrating, addicting, just shy of satisfying, so you keep playing. I’ll never forget that one South Park episode Freemium Isn’t Free. But sadly it applies to normal games releases too and not just certain types of games/models. I haven’t enjoyed a modern game in forever as well.
Modern games are sold on looks and brand recognition alone, and the stupid masses eat it up and actually defend the games/corps from fair and necessary criticism. So we can’t get anywhere and nothing improves.
I’m in the same boat as you so it will be really fascinating for what you post. Your reasons make total sense and what you said just sounds innocent and awesome. I’m interested in what you’ll say about the electronic maintenance since I’ll probably have too look forward to that someday. I want to mod my Wii as well. Already feel the ick of modern corporate gaming falling away.
It was really nice of you to share your space. In your first picture, what is that box next to the game shelf? I simply cannot figure out what I’m looking at. It’s under the baby yoda.
Yeah that is a sweet Nintendo case! It’s cool your wife played. Mine has not outside some Mario Kart at cousins. I don’t begrudge her anything of course and I don’t force her to play anything. If you didn’t grow up with it, navigating a 3D game is a nightmare.
Whoa you modded the screen for a backlight? That’s superb! It definitely needs one.
I’m looking into youtube alternatives. It’s such a scumbag site. It’s clickbait, incentivizes dishonesty, hypocrisy, and flagrant disregard for it’s own rules when the rules themselves aren’t bullshit. It can be a good tool, but I don’t know how much even that is worth it with what a cesspool it’s become.
It’s gotten even worse in the past week or something.
Yeah I’ve seen a few of those Summoning Salt videos. Neat stuff. Not to get too depressing but I remember when AGDQ was just a bunch of nerds having fun for charity and actually trying to get speedrun records. Now…heck even since a few years ago…it’s not even worth the words to finish that sentence.
Oh god, your point about GTA6. Money doesn’t mean quality and the people in charge and their sycophantic bootlicking fans don’t understand that and never will. I don’t even want to think about it. You’re exactly right of course, but man, depressing stuff in the future. Not like I care about the game itself but I hate the effect of these brands on people. They praise from the rooftops this shallow bullshit that basically came out decades ago and it’s just been monetized to hell in vaguely prettier graphics.
Classics and some fan games are the only way to go now.
The box under Byoda is a pachinko machine from the 70s. Specifically a Nishinjin B. Was a gift from my father in law, he got it from a friend of his and it’s been sitting in his basement for decades untouched, so I bought a bunch of balls for it and cleaned it up. Works great.
Oh wow neat!
Hey small question, do you happen to know about how much “game mode” actually helps on TVs? Or an opinion about it? Not sure I’ve ever noticed a difference.
Game mode makes all the difference in the world.
Modern TVs all come set up with utterly vile post processing effects like motion smoothing. For gaming, it fucks with the intended appearance and adds input lag. Personally I also find it makes watching actual movies or shows garbage too.
I put game mode on every single one of my modern TVs, even just for watching TV. It makes the colors look more natural and the motion look normal.