Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Tag: retro

Should Retro Games Be Declared as Public Domain?

Posted on by Viljami

How popular are old NES or SNES games? Just think about how popular were NES Classic Mini and also the one that had tens of SNES games on it. I remember that I was working in a game shop as we had hundreds of customers that had ordered a NES mini. They had to wait moths to get one. This same happened with SNES mini. Although customers started to understand and not order a device that couldn’t even be delivered in a reasonable time.

This is exactly the matter when we are talking about the popularity of retro games. These games were released 30 or 40 years ago. They aren’t properly available to us gamers. Nintendo has made them available on their web service. That alone doesn’t make me want to pay for the subscription. You can get a console, maybe original NES or some other type of console, that you can play original games with. This however is expensive. You might have to pay 40 euros for a game. Some games are sold for hundreds or even thousands of euros.

Publishers seem to be holding on to these game titles. How does this make sense? If someone buys a used game from a game shop that is a private entrepreneur how does this give any more profit to the publisher of the game? There have been many sore comments on Facebook ads of this certain web shop that offers money for used retro titles. They pay you about fifty percentage or maybe even less than that for your rare games of the price they are actually selling it. This makes producing and downloading so called pirated copies of these games popular and tempting.

I just today read a story that was dealing with the ability to play old games that were released in 2010 or earlier. This is actually very hard. The writer was very concerned about older games just disappearing somewhere. These games are valuable in a certain way. Future game designers can learn a lot from old games. Someone might be willing to play these games. And many are having this certain appeal to these games now and also in the future.

What would be the solution? I think that certain games should be made a public domain. You could download them and share and even maybe modify them freely. We should have devices available that could convert the game cartridge to a rom file and they should be easily available. There could be devices dedicated to this in libraries or maybe in some other places. I have to tell you that we are already seeing all sorts of video games available in libraries already today.

So, to conclude, we should, in my opinion, share these old games and make them as widely available as possible. We already have these most important video game systems emulators available. Someone might support legalizing some mild drug. I am right now stating that I support the freeing of retro games. This is even today illegal. Who is this statute working for one might ask. I am not supporting or saying that you should break law. That is not the case. I am saying that we should change the law since it seems that old games are getting hard to play and to enjoy.

Some More Hype for The GameCube Gaming Console

Posted on by Viljami

The game I have been playing lately is Medal of Honor – Frontline for GameCube. I managed to get a copy of this game and it’s a cheap purchase. If you consider the hype that surrounds GameCube nowadays the price for this game was low. I have seen many GC games sold for hundreds of euros. I am not going that way…at least not yet.

What do I think about the game? It’s a nice and kind of early first person shooter. There was a  Medal of Honor released also at the same time for PC. They somehow wanted to separate the console version from PC version. This happened in 2002.

GameCube controller brings this games input a bit more sensitive. It is although far from perfect. If you compare this FPS game to what we see and feel today it is not even decent experience. But I am not a person that purely rates games and especially when they are retro games. You got to just give props to the makers. It has been over twenty years and a game that you can play today is valuable in this way in my opinion.

We can take Halo and compare it to Medal of Honor – Frontline. Where Halo wins is the smoothness of controlment. Just the way that your crosshair moves over the screen feels magical. I think Halo was the first FPS that actually worked very nicely in this matter.

I somehow still like the feel of this game because it just brings so many memories to my mind. If the controlling is a bit clumsy there are still elements in this game that I like.

I have many other games for GameCube. It’s a nice gaming console. The controller is unbeliavable especially when you consider that it’s over 20 years old. If you like retro gaming I can definitely recommend for you to get yourself a GameCube.

Prices of Retro Games Are Rising – But for How Long?

Posted on by Viljami

I have noticed that prices of retro games are rising. You don’t necessarily have to make a reasearch to find this out. It is enough to just browse through games and their current prices. Some already sold games, that still appear on a webshop, can make this very clear. It seems like this progression only took a short amount of time.

I got to think about this as I was looking for some GameCube games. The rising is present in PS1 games also. What will the future be like? Will we see more games with more increased prices? Who is buying all these games? Who is selling them? I think you do have to do some sort of a research before you sell your game related property nowadays.

Of course retro gaming systems are getting older alll the time. It would make sense that these consoles are going to be broken ones one day. I mean, technology doesn’t last forever. Where are all methods and ways to repair your broken gaming console? I guess we, game consumers and retro gamers, are too foolish to even demand a service like this. It seems easier to just buy another classic mini console. Well, I don’t think that everyone would have the opportunity to own one since there is a limited amount of new devices available.

“But Viljami…What about emulation?”, you might be asking. Well, that’s an interesting question. There are ways to install an emulator to so many different devices. You can use your desktop PC for this. You can also use Raspberry Pi. Why wouldn’t you get a dedicated PC and install Lakka OS or some other Linux type of operating system? There are lots of possibilities.

Aren’t game roms and emulation illegal? Yes, basically they are. But if you think about it, you might have to consider this with a common sense. Can you really buy a game? Is it really available in where you live? Of course, some games get published as remakes or something like that. But this is not the case in every situation.

Should we wait for a remake on every possible and popular retro game? I think old games are valuable. And I mean this in a way that’s not the actual amount of money you get from it. I actually think games are part of our culture. When you consider Commodore 64 games there already is a website that can be accessed by everyone that is dedicated to bringing C-64 fans their favorite games. I don’t know if this is actually illegal but it makes sort of a sense.

Should we just not care about copyrights anymore? Maybe there should be a more strict law that handles old video games. I think music has a copyright that gets sort of out of date when the music is old enough. What if there would be a law that makes a 20-year-old game to not have a copyright.

If we once more use our common sense, I think that if a game is not anymore available as a new game or even as a used game, it would make sense that it wouldn’t have a copyright anymore. And maybe we should just avoid some major cases where there is a certain benefit for someone in not respecting a copyright.