• neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    22 hours ago

    Most games aren’t available elsewhere. There are a good amount of retro games have rereleased, but it’s mainly the popular titles and when you look at the whole picture that is just a small percentage of retro games.

    Not even all of Nintendo’s first party games are available.

    • otp@sh.itjust.works
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      12 hours ago

      I was being overly pedantic, yeah.

      What I was getting at is that there’s still a way to play retro games using original hardware. It’s not impossible, and using original hardware can be fun for its own merits.

      But yeah, “not available anywhere else” can be implied to mean “for sale by the rights owners” and that’s fair.

      • emeralddawn45@discuss.tchncs.de
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        2 hours ago

        Theres still a way for a handful of enthusiasts to play games using retro hardware, usually at a huge personal expense. Not everyone could, as there are extremely limited numbers of these consoles and games available now. Not to mention the collectors who argue that any of these consoles that still run should be preserved for as long as possible rather than be used to play games.

        • otp@sh.itjust.works
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          15 minutes ago

          Yup. All I was getting at was that it’s not impossible. And I know that “impossible” isn’t what the other commenter said!

      • Sturgist@lemmy.ca
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        10 hours ago

        But yeah, “not available anywhere else” can be implied to mean “for sale by the rights owners” and that’s fair.

        Not really true. For loads of classic games…and this might come as a shock to you…there are no rights holders.

        There’s uncounted games where the Dev company went out of business, so they don’t have the rights. The publisher of these games also can go out of business. The original devs can attempt to get rights to their game before all other holders are dissolved, this isn’t always possible.
        This leaves the used market. The used market where there’s one major valuation company, who has been verifiably manipulating the “collectables” market so that the owner and his pals can make an absolute metric shit tonne of money selling off their games.

        On top of all that other bullshit. As if all that wasn’t enough. Physical media degrades over time. So even if you manage to find an original dingdongdoodle box, and a cartridge for fiddlefart9000 that you loved playing as a kid…both the original hardware and cartridge could be completely fucked due to age, expired electrolytic capacitors leaking and destroying all the traces and chips, humidity destroying all the traces and chips etc etc etc etc. And you might pay $1mil for it.

        Edit: also… maybe we should both look up the definition of pedantic, because I’m pretty sure what you were doing wasn’t pedantry, but being incorrect.
        Emulating modern games, sure, knock yourself out, but for classic games there’s often literally no legal(in most parts of the world, regional laws often have little to do with American law) way to acquire or play them.

        • otp@sh.itjust.works
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          3 hours ago

          I’m sorry, what are you saying is not really true about the part you quoted?

          What I was getting at was that they aren’t for sale through official means, implying that they’d be for sale on the secondhand market. And while physical media does degrade, there are plenty of people who prefer to use physical hardware to play retro games.

          The games are generally available. They’re also available for sale, but on the secondhand market. If you don’t like the secondhand market, that’s perfectly valid. But they’re still generally “available”. Hence why I conceded that my prior comment was overly pedantic (using the definition of “getting overly caught up in minor details”).

          I’m not anti-emulation, and I think some people got that perception from reading the first couple sentences of my original comment ans moving on. Which, again, is fair, and why I acknowledged that my comment wasn’t the best, lol