[ddingus]

At a minimum, those gamers need to look at the past, and their own future.

See, when hardware was more open, I was able to preserve and continue to play the games I enjoy. In fact, I can disassemble them, learn from them, make my own.

The gamers of today won't be playing the games of their formative years on their terms, if they are playing them at all.

This is just one of the many things Stallman is right about. Laughing at him is generally unwise. Ask a bunch of us how we know. Seriously.

[lovich]

>won't be playing the games of their formative years on their terms

Do they care? Lots of these games are like fashion, where the core gameplay loop is pretty similar to exactly the same as previous games, just with a different art direction on top. The fact that its popular is what makes it popular until its not.

[the_af]

> "Do they care?"

I guarantee you that they will.

They might not think so now, but when in a couple or so of decades they suddenly remember a cherished videogame from their youth (maybe associated with the joy of discovering videogames, maybe with a memory of a friend who's passed away, maybe just because of doing videogame archaeology) and they cannot play it at all because of DRM or unsupported hardware (and the impossibility of porting it without breaking some law), then they will care.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Gamer nostalgia is a niche within a niche. The modern hardcore gamer market has tens of millions of customers - maybe hundreds if you include trivial but addictive phone games.

The nostalgists who want to get Jetpack Willy running again so they can relive a misspent youth number tens of thousands at most.

And in fact there are few/no DRM issues for these vintage games and emulations, because they're distributed as binaries.

If I really want to play Marble Madness on an Amiga emu, I can, even though the original code was never open sourced.

[the_af]

The emulators themselves frequently employ some "grey area" techniques in order to reverse engineer or otherwise replicate the systems these games ran on.

The emulator community your beloved games run on is rife with dodgy things. You know, how to get certain firmware, how they cracked this or that protection, and of course the ROMs themselves.

Gamer nostalgia is a niche within a niche? I totally disagree. It feels like a niche until you feel it yourself. Most gamers haven't aged enough yet.

PS "the modern hardcore gamer market": I care little about that short-sighted institution. I want to preserve the cultural digital heritage of mankind, and videogames are a vital part of it. And because they are games, they are meant to be played, so a blog post with some screenshots won't do. If you disagree -- we are not on the same page, and it's not worth continuing this conversation.

[ddingus]

I really question the size of the niche. We've got Recreations of all the classic machines going on right now, people buying arcade cabinets, and even casual gamers into Retro. Their organizations now into digital archaeology going back through trying to tell the stories communicate the impact on culture and a lot of other things.

A lot of people thought gaming is shallow, but it's really not. It has packed a major league punch on culture, tech itself given its age.

My take is we're going to have the early Roots stories oh, because things are open enough and simple enough but we can get them, and we're going to get them wall a lot of the people are still alive. But after that it's going to be a mess.

[crtasm]

You don't need to be a hardcore fan of anything to want to revisit experiences from your youth and there's a lot more people playing games now than when Jetpack Willy released in the 80s, certainly not a niche market.

Think of the situation with today's games 40 years in the future rather than 40 year old games today.

[simonmic]

Jet Set Willy, you philistines!

[Ekaros]

And then I try one and wonder this looks really ugly. This mechanic is rather annoying, yeah maybe it isn't worth the nostalgia.

Thankfully, I am PC gamer so most things work, outside certain set of DRM...

[mellavora]

yet there seems to be quite an active scene around restoring aspects of 8-bit games, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiptune https://www.retrogamer.net/top_10/top-ten-atari-8-bit-games/

and I'm sure someone actually into the scene could pump out a long list of much better links than these.

[ddingus]

That scene is currently vibrant. A lot of people are revisiting that early era, 1977(8?) through to the 90's.

8 bit systems, and I mean consoles, computers, industrial automation, enjoyed relevance through what is seen today as a long, diverse era of computing and gaming. The Apple 2, 1Mhz 6502 systems, was sold in various forms from 1977 through to 1994, I believe. That is crazy!

Sidebar: I snagged a 1990's machine and if you want to explore this early era of computing, an Apple Platinum is the most recent system and is very reliable. Recommended.

End Sidebar

Today, there is an active hardware scene with people making new old computers and sometimes extending their capabilities a bit. Jim Bagley and Spectrum Next wishbone example.

The MISTer FPGA system is basically a hardware emulation of a ton of retro hardware. These are hard to distinguish from the real deal, and connect to newer and old displays for a great visual experience.

Hardware cards are being made for the Apples. I have several in mine. Great experiences.

Games are being developed, and Nox Archaist is an Ultima style RPG worth a look. The C64 is seeing a lot of releases, AtariAge is where you can go for news on that.

RetroRGB has news on a lot of consoles, MISTer and others.

Sorry, no links I am on mobile and just killing a few minutes here. But, a quick google on the names will get you somewhere fun in no time.

Retro is pretty big right now. There is a lot going on.

[the_af]

This.

Since joining some C64-related facebook groups after buying my TheC64 retroclone, I was surprised to find the large number of new and original games for the C64 being released all the time. And they are commercial, not free!

Really happy to find the community lives on.

[the_af]

Looks really ugly? Not in my experience. This mechanic is rather annoying? Very often true! But I'd rather be able to replay that classic oldie and find out, than never be able to do so again.

[ddingus]

They will. They will want to share their roots, tell their stories, etc...

[Semaphor]

FWIW, many Unity games are not protected/obfuscated at all. I can look at the full source code of my current favorite game, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous.