Retro Games Industry Booming Despite Pirate-Options Being Super Available

from the breaking-the-myth dept

Mon, Aug 17th 2015 3:53pm — Timothy Geigner

We've all heard it before: [industry X] can't compete in the marketplace because the public just wants everything for free. It's a mantra taken up by the film industry, the recording industry, the literary industry, and the video game industry. And, almost always, we've found that the mantra is complete nonsense. Instead, it's been clear that the public is more than willing to purchase that which is scarce and valued. It's just that those scarce and valued things are often times not the content itself.

The retro-gaming industry is instructive in this for two reasons. Piracy is typically much easier for retro games than modern titles. Most of the older consoles have been fully emulated at this point, with ROMs and games readily available for them online. For older PC titles, retro games often have no DRM or have been cracked so long ago that the cracked files are also readily available. In addition, retro titles aren't policed the same way that modern releases are. And, yet, despite all of that, or perhaps because of it, the retro-gaming industry is exploding.

Sites like GOG.com and Steam's client offer old games with smaller pricetags. The major console-makers like Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft all have their own marketplaces for digital downloads of retro games. Those marketplaces must be doing quite well, considering that the consoles and publishers continue to support them and expand the retro-game catalogs. And, for the actual old products, the interest and prices for retro-game pieces are skyrocketing.

Giulio Graziani says it makes him feel a bit like a drug dealer, even though he's not buying anything illegal. It's part of his job digging up a steady supply of video games from the 1980s and 1990s for his store, VideoGamesNewYork, which specializes in everything from Atari and Gameboy to rare prototype NES cartridges.

Graziani, 50, has been in business since 2003, but says the market only recently began to spike. "Five years ago, I could drive through Texas and stop in little towns and buy everything," he says. "Now they're selling games out there for more than I do!" Even simple pieces, like The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time, which cost $12 in 2010, now go for $25. More coveted games, like Nintendo's Earthbound, can fetch hundreds of dollars, even thousands if they're in the original box.

It's always been this way. Collectors of art will always pay for original pieces, or for the items that go along with the actual content. If the public simply wanted everything for free when it came to gaming, anyone could go on the internet and get an emulator and a copy of The Legend of Zelda and have at it. But, of course, there are scarce items that go along with the collectables that can't be downloaded, and so the prices are paid, even as they rise. And it's not peanuts we're talking about here. Estimates for how big the retro-gaming market is come in at something like $200 million per year.

For those who aren't collectors, however, there's still a reason to buy.

Luckily, for a casual retro gamer, there are some cheap solutions to get a quick dose of nostalgia. Nintendo's Virtual Console allows you to download classic titles to play on the Wii U or Nintendo 3DS. The Retron 5 console by Hyperkin sells for $159.99 and supports games for 10 systems, including NES, SNES, Famicom, SENES, Genesis and Game Boy.

Add to that GOG and Steam, along with the old-game marketplace Sony and Microsoft offer, and the RtB here should be clear: ease of purchase and the platform. Much like it is understood that iTunes is attractive because of the platform, rather than the music catalog that is also available via piracy, so do gamers appreciate the convenience offered by these marketplaces. Which is why they're growing and selling more and more.

If anything should signal the end of the "everyone wants everything for free" myth, let it be retro-gaming.

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Filed Under: compete with free, free, markets, retro games, sales, video games

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Digitari, 17 Aug 2015 @ 4:15pm

but....
if we can't blame the Pirates, then that means our stuff is just crappy, Naaaw! that can't be it, we have to beat and torture the customers until profits rise.

....it worked out great for Captain Bly..........
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Aug 2015 @ 4:26pm

"Retro Games Industry Booming Despite Pirate-Options Being Super Available"

But the industry should be concerned. Because of piracy they were out a hundred trillion dollars. After all each infringement is a lost sale and when you add them all up it's trillions.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Aug 2015 @ 4:33pm

Oooh! A whole Geignerism of silly new assertions to bat down! First: "gamers" are irrational, quite literally addicts who'll steal to get their fix,
so can't prove anything for the wider, honest, populace by them.

Your first paragraph makes the inherently contradictory assertion that games successful precisely because so many purchased them legally would be equally successful for the producers if everyone had pirated them.

Trading values produced and paid for previously is NOT same as pirating. It's same as used book. No relation or significance for piraty.

That companies find it profitable to milk some more out of old products is sheerly matter of cost (near zero) and current income (any is gravy). NOTHING NEW HERE, EITHER.

Note that at least the one dealer FEELS that he's stealing merely for legally re-selling physical items! That's what normal people feel when downloading and why they don't do it. You pirates are those who have suppressed that normal feeling of stealing other people's stuff.

"items that go along with the collectables that can't be downloaded," -- Meaning NOT softwares. What's your point? You're just conflating physical items with content.

"Much like it is understood that iTunes is attractive because of the platform," -- That's not understood at The Register: "Virtually no one is using Apple Music even though it is utterly free"
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/06/two_months_to_cancel_apple_music_subscriptions/

Why isn't "Nintendo's Virtual Console" itself pirated? -- Effective DRM. Anyone still say DRM doesn't work or is too much of a turn-off for gamers?

>>> If anything should signal the end of the "everyone wants everything for free" myth, let it be retro-gaming. ... Er, umm, I can't quite parse your lousy phrasing and foggy thought, but the accusation never was against "everyone", only you pirates who have, do, and will continue to want content without paying for it.
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godfist314, 17 Aug 2015 @ 4:50pm

Not all retro games are legally availbile
I mostly agree that a good number of retro games are readily available for people to get. However the only way to *legally* play Killer Instinct 2 is for me to save up $300-400 and drop it on an XBox 1 system and get the KI2 port they've made. And let me tell ya I wish I could because the arcade version is pretty crude and lacks a number of modern features. Yes yes there is that crappy N64 port KI "GOLD" which is ok but that was like 19 years ago or something. :/

The problem is that I feel most of the big console and PC game makers have total control of hundreds of thousands of retro title copyrights and pick and choose when to port them to a modern platform when they feel like getting around to it and/or enough fans complain.

What needs to happen is that the entire VG producers need to get off their sorry butts and make their games, retro or not readily available on as many platforms as possible. I guess that's reaching on my part but really....
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Aug 2015 @ 4:50pm

Re: Oooh! A whole Geignerism of silly new assertions to bat down! First: "gamers" are irrational, quite literally addicts who'll steal to get their fix,
Do you yell at clouds often?
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Black Art (profile), 17 Aug 2015 @ 4:53pm

Many of those old products were promoted by piracy
For a long time when you would ask a company why you could not buy a product they would claim "there is not a big enough demand". The "pirates" would then find a way to get that product through some other means, building up the popularity through word of mouth (or net). Once it hit a threshold level, the copyright holders would figure out they could make money after all (since all the hard promotion work had been done for them) and started selling it, while stomping down hard on the people who made it popular in the first place.

A prime example of this is Japanese Anime. It used to be next to impossible to get it legally in the US is an acceptable form. (Like accurate subtitles instead of craptacular dubs, if at all.) Anime fandom spread through bootleg tapes and fan subs until the market was recognized by the distributors.

The same could be said for Doctor Who fandom. When the new series appeared the US markets did not want to carry it because it was "too British". (Yes, they actually said that!) It was not until they saw just how many people watched the bootleg copies from the UK that they changed their minds.

Piracy built the markets that they now try to claim.
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godfist314, 17 Aug 2015 @ 4:56pm

Re: Many of those old products were promoted by piracy
The part about Doctor who....yeah they're finally available in US but from what I've seen they are insanely expensive. Which seems reeeeeally backwards if piracy is what prompted an official retail version in the first place.
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Black Art (profile), 17 Aug 2015 @ 5:00pm

Re: Re: Many of those old products were promoted by piracy
Piracy is what got it shown in the US at all. The pricing of discs is not connected with reality, it is based on the greed of the BBC.
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That One Other Not So Random Guy, 17 Aug 2015 @ 5:14pm

Re: Re: Oooh! A whole Geignerism of silly new assertions to bat down! First: "gamers" are irrational, quite literally addicts who'll steal to get their fix,
He just shakes his cane at them.
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Hugues (profile), 17 Aug 2015 @ 5:16pm

Rétro games
I just completed a small cleanup of my shelves this weekend. I send some old CDs like Xcom, Syndicate and Master of Orion. I purchased these copy on GOG.com. but you have to realize that initially I pirated these games before buying them many times over. Yes I was a poor student at the time, but I bought more Xcom games because I could play with it as a pirate. I also bought the new version of it, the iPad version and the board game. That was not the case with all the games I played free at the time but over the time I tried to purchase legitimate licenses for the best games. I always think that good games deserve to be paid for. Maybe not always on day one at their full price.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Aug 2015 @ 5:25pm

Yes you can pirate almost any game on a pc,
many people prefer to play games on xbox,ps3, ps4 on a large tv.
Theres always sales on steam gog etc
so its hardly worth pirating games now .
Pirating games on consoles is much harder than on pc,
so most people dont bother .
10 Years ago most asian anime were not released in the west,
so they only way to watch them was thru fansub copys,
now theres legal streaming sites,crunchyroll etc
You can download games on xbox 1, ps4 but in many cases the app store games are more expensive than buying a preowned copy in the local game store .
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That One Other Not So Random Guy, 17 Aug 2015 @ 5:26pm

Re: Oooh! A whole Geignerism of silly new assertions to bat down! First: "gamers" are irrational, quite literally addicts who'll steal to get their fix,
Ha ha ha idiot... Nintendo's VC is also FAILING MISERABLY.
No one WANTS to pirate that CRAP. AND I still have my Wii disks, AND I still have my Nintendo 64. NO NEED to buy games I ALREADY HAVE.
-
Ha ha ha... boB... so much fail in such a short amount of time.
-
You are comic relief though. I picture you running in double speed around the Google parking lot waiving your cane while men in white coats follow you around. LOL.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Aug 2015 @ 5:38pm

Re:
out_of_the_blue just hates it when due process is enforced.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Aug 2015 @ 6:04pm

Response to: Anonymous Coward on Aug 17th, 2015 @ 4:26pm
Where could you buy it?
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Aug 2015 @ 6:17pm

Wait these are used game sales. The publisher/developer makes no money on used game sales. That's just as bad as piracy! FIRE UP THE LAWYERS! What, we already fought this battle and lost? Shit, well keep blaming pirates then.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Aug 2015 @ 6:40pm

Re: Oooh! A whole Geignerism of silly new assertions to bat down! First: "gamers" are irrational, quite literally addicts who'll steal to get their fix,
"First: "gamers" are irrational, quite literally addicts who'll steal to get their fix" You're projecting so hard we could point you at a wall and show powerpoint presentations.
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Groaker (profile), 17 Aug 2015 @ 7:01pm

Ego soothing
The producers of what is called entertainment are soothing their own egos by claiming that their works are actually good enough to be stolen.

Their constant babbling about "pirates" sending them to the poorhouse has been disproved so many times that the real cause of the calumnies heaped on the population, can only be based on emotional problems.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Aug 2015 @ 7:02pm

Re: Many of those old products were promoted by piracy
Sadly, I'm apart of the anime fandom. I've still got VHS rips of LaserDiscs from japan. The one thing is that in the anime groups, there were dedicated fansubbers that actually manually input those subtitles into the VHS. These weren't imported at all into the US. So my first copy of Tenchi Muyo, Ranma 1/2, et al were basically just rips usually subtitled by college groups or fans that imported the japan copy. So while I guess this was piracy, it was something that wasn't even available at the time and the fansubbers basically made a product by translating the material for us. I guess I started in the early 90's before the internet even really took off, I was still on BBS and MUDs.
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Anonymous Anonymous Coward, 17 Aug 2015 @ 7:45pm

Old Games and Issues
I blame the game developers along with the hardware developers and the OS developers with some equality, Their desire to build 'better' totally ignores the existing user base. The assumption that everyone will spend the money to upgrade is arrogant and greedy. That they continue this trend speaks sadly of both the market's acceptance of this corrupt paradigm, but also of their salacious outra reasoning for supposed improvements. Security as a feature, anyone? Has anyone got that yet?

I loved Decent I, but Decent II came out and it would not run on any existing hardware (unless one had a state of the art machine, bought within a month of the game release). This pretty much took me out of gaming, except for Flight Simulator, and when I finally got the hardware to run FS10, Win 8.1 claimed it was NOT COMPATIBLE!

I found a hack for Decent 1 to work on recent Windows machines (XP), but it required a Decent 1 disk, which I had. Then a new version of Windows came out, and it no longer worked.

I will vote positively for Warzone 2100 https://wz2100.net, it worked through all upgrades, though I had issues using the trackball (mouse) in Linux. I would have to shut down bottom edge functions in order to scroll down in the game, a PIA I was not willing (though knew how to) deal with.
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TheMan (profile), 17 Aug 2015 @ 8:31pm

I also think the main reason is the lack of inovations from developers. They are making ony sequels every year with no great improvements
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That One Guy (profile), 17 Aug 2015 @ 9:12pm

Re:
It's a matter of risk aversion and playing it safe. If they're going to spend insane amounts of money on a game, not many are going to want to risk it on something 'new' or 'different' if they don't have to.

Why chance it with something different when they can toss out WarcombatSimulator 24(Now with even more vulgar barely teens in multiplayer!) or YetAnotherSportsGame '16(like the previous year, but with a few minor graphical tweaks!) and watch it fly off the shelves, bought by idiots with more money than sense?

This is one of the biggest advantages of the indie boom, smaller budgets means less risk if the project tanks, so developers are more willing to take risks on new stuff.
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Rekrul, 17 Aug 2015 @ 11:34pm

Re: Many of those old products were promoted by piracy
The same could be said for Doctor Who fandom. When the new series appeared the US markets did not want to carry it because it was "too British". (Yes, they actually said that!) It was not until they saw just how many people watched the bootleg copies from the UK that they changed their minds.

It should be noted that the copies of Doctor Who aired in the US are edited to allow more commercials. The recent UK series Humans suffered the same fate. Each US airing was at least three minutes shorter than the UK version. To add insult to injury, the copies available from the US version of iTunes were the cut US broadcast copies, not the uncut UK copies. Gee, I didn't know that stuff on iTunes had to fit into rigid timeslots just like traditional TV channels...
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Rekrul, 17 Aug 2015 @ 11:43pm

Re: Old Games and Issues
I found a hack for Decent 1 to work on recent Windows machines (XP), but it required a Decent 1 disk, which I had. Then a new version of Windows came out, and it no longer worked.

D2X-XL is a source port that will play both games on modern systems;

http://www.descent2.de/d2x.html

There's also DXX-Rebirth

http://www.dxx-rebirth.com/

Yes, I know; "If it's not the original EXE file, then it's just some cheap imitation that is nothing like the REAL game!!!"
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Rekrul, 17 Aug 2015 @ 11:51pm

While emulation isn't perfect, playing old console games on emulators does have advantages, like ease of taking screenshots, save states, enhanced graphics modes, etc.

That said, I've noticed that there seems to be a world-wide ban on dumping the ROMs of any games that have come out for retro consoles in the last decade or so. Checking the Atari websites shows that a steady stream of games has been released for the Atari 2600 and even some for the 5200, 7800 and Colecovision. Sadly it seems that virtually none of these games have been dumped. Personally I find it a little hypocritical that they wanted all the classic games dumped for "preservation", but refuse to allow any new games to be "preserved".

As for computer games, DOSBox does a pretty good job of running games meant for MS-DOS. It doesn't run everything, but you're now more likely to get an old DOS game working on a modern system, than you are a game designed for Windows 9x.

I think it's ironic that while there are several different virtual machine programs, which all tout the ability to run modern operating systems, support for running Windows 95 or 98 in a way that would be beneficial to actually running old games is seriously lacking.

Why has nobody created a decent Win9x VM?
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Aug 2015 @ 12:22am

DRM works
consoles are proof of that, nobody pirates consoles. Just try and find roms for PS3, nobody can even match the hardwire of it, its way too advance even for all the pirates and their computers.
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PaulT (profile), 18 Aug 2015 @ 1:31am

"If anything should signal the end of the "everyone wants everything for free" myth, let it be retro-gaming."

Well, except for the fact that retro gaming has been a reasonably successful industry for the entire time that rubbish has been spouted.
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Anonymous Cowherd, 18 Aug 2015 @ 1:36am

It's a shame modern games have been stripped of all things physical and collectable. Even the game disk itself, for games that even come on disks anymore, may well be a useless piece of plastic a few years down the line, when DRM servers get shut down.
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PaulT (profile), 18 Aug 2015 @ 1:46am

Re: DRM works
What a load of disingenuous crap. First of all, of course you can't find "roms" since the term usually refers to rips of cartridges or arcade chips. If you search for PS3 Blu ray game disc rips, however, there's a huge amount available.

Secondly, not only is "nobody can even match the hardwire (sic) of it" a pretty dumb thing to say, it also makes an assumption that people aren't using pirates games on a PS3 console. Whether your PC can emulate a PS3 effectively is irrelevant if you're using a cheap modded console to begin with, and it's absolutely going to be cheaper than buying PC hardware anyway.

I suppose that, at a stretch, you can argue the fact that since digitally purchased games are tied to your account and modded consoles can be banned from online services, that this somehow counts as DRM (though it's not really). But, the fact that Sony have offered useful online services that encourage people to use the service legally (for example, the online multiplayer functions that were free during the PS3 era, and the PS Plus service that allows dirt cheap access to major titles) has more to do with that than any DRM.

But, hey, I suppose you have to be deluded or basing opinions on lies to be able to defend DRM in any way. Thanks for proving that.
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Aug 2015 @ 1:46am

"More coveted games, like Nintendo's Earthbound, can fetch hundreds of dollars, even thousands if they're in the original box."
Let's not forget that in the eyes of publishers, the problem is that, due to the first sale doctrine, THEY'RE NOT getting any of those "hundreds of dollars, even thousands".
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LRDTHK, 18 Aug 2015 @ 1:49am

Re: DRM works
It's only a matter of time for consoles.

I remember a time when people say GameCube wasn't pirate-able. Then now Dolphin is a thing.
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Aug 2015 @ 1:50am

Re: DRM works
Nice trolling there m8.
PS3 is the easiest console to pirate on once you have the custom firmware sorted out.
Unlike Xbox 360 which can only be hardmodded and its complicated transfer process, on the PS3 you literally copy and pirated games to an USB drive and paste them onto your PS3's HDD.
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PaulT (profile), 18 Aug 2015 @ 1:52am

Re: Old Games and Issues
"I found a hack for Decent 1 to work on recent Windows machines (XP), but it required a Decent 1 disk, which I had. Then a new version of Windows came out, and it no longer worked."

You can get a version now that is guaranteed to work on newer machines, and GoG tend to be pretty good about supporting newer Windows versions as they come out. They also have regular sales if you don't like paying $9.99 for 2 games you apparently also own. I might be annoying to pay again for games you bought once, but I tend to look at this as paying GoG to do the testing and compatibility work for me rather than me having to mess around with DOSBox configurations and such things.

http://www.gog.com/game/descent_1_descent_2
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PaulT (profile), 18 Aug 2015 @ 2:06am

Re: Oooh! A whole Geignerism of silly new assertions to bat down! First: "gamers" are irrational, quite literally addicts who'll steal to get their fix,
" That's not understood at The Register: "Virtually no one is using Apple Music even though it is utterly free""

Well, no it's not. You're tied into a contract where if you don't cancel after a set time it starts costing you money. It's also hardly unique. Most people interested in such a service will already have been using Spotify, Rdio, Pandora, Napster or any of their other competitors. I haven't used Apple Music myself, but that's primarily because I've been subscribing to a Spotify premium account for several years and I'm happy with their service, not because of the strawman fantasies you've constructed.

But, what your obsessed little mind apparently forgot, is it's also not iTunes. You responded to a comment about iTunes with something about Apple Music. They have different names because they're not the same service. Durrr.

"Why isn't "Nintendo's Virtual Console" itself pirated?"

It is. Oh, it won't be called that if you search for it, because the VC service is basically just a bunch of emulators and ROMs optimised to run on the Wii. Those things already existed on PC long before Nintendo got into the market and with very few exceptions all the content will be available elsewhere.

Another failure from the drooling idiot too busy tilting at windmills to understand reality.

"only you pirates who have, do, and will continue to want content without paying for it."

What's amusing about your usual lying screed here is that not only is it as fictional as always, but literally the last title I bought was Rare Replay. So, not only are you as much of a lying prick as always, you're completely on the opposite side of reality with regard to the exact subject at hand in my case.

Does it pain you to know how constantly wrong you are? Or are you so pathetic that lying on the internet is your only source of entertainment?
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Seegras (profile), 18 Aug 2015 @ 2:18am

Re:
Why has nobody created a decent Win9x VM?

Why would you want that when you've got https://www.winehq.org/

Hm, I just realise, this does not work on Windows, you need a Unix (Linux, MacOS, BSD) to use it..
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Aug 2015 @ 2:46am

it has never been about money or losses as far as the entertainment industries are concerned, it's always been about and always will be about control. not just them being able to control who can have what, when they can have it and where, it's about them being able to say the who, the what and the where! they missed out on the Internet Revolution and the introduction of torrent protocol. because they were so fucking stpid and backwards thinking, when everyone else was on the band wagon, they were still sitting in the giant office, saying to the publishers or whoever, 'we'll let this out in 2 months, but only to the USA, then in 6 months we'll do this'. what plums! and because of their own stupidity, they want everyone to regress now to the level they refuse to advance from
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jameshogg (profile), 18 Aug 2015 @ 3:58am

Re: DRM works
Then why depend on copyright law at all?
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Gamero Uno, 18 Aug 2015 @ 4:05am

Good Old Games is the best!
Gog.com, what could I say... Simply the best! And their bonus material is simply unbeatable offering, with soundtracks, digitized original manuals, posters, backgrounds, and anything else found in original retail boxes. I have steadily built a collection of previously unattainable games over the past three or four years. Their prices for old gaming gems flawlessly running on top of customized DOSboxes is simply... unbeatable by any means. Thumbs up, polish folks from Witcher 2/3 fame!
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Aug 2015 @ 6:36am

Re: Oooh! A whole Geignerism of silly new assertions to bat down! First: "gamers" are irrational, quite literally addicts who'll steal to get their fix,
Is this satire?
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Aug 2015 @ 6:54am

why bother?
Why do you even bother to respond to this nitwit? Even worse, why do you keep the idiotic long-winded subject intact. At LEAST change that if you just feel you must respond.

Otherwise, you (and everyone else) get the report button, at least from me. Maybe it will catch on again and take the wind out of this troll's sails.
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Aug 2015 @ 8:34am

Re: Many of those old products were promoted by piracy
Abstute observation
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crade (profile), 18 Aug 2015 @ 10:08am

Retron 5 and translations
One thing I found really interesting about that Retron 5 is that it allows people to put patches (but not actual ROMS) onto an SD card, and apply them to the games. Now all of a sudden all these Translation patches for Japanese games, and patches that make games harder, or add new levels, etc. Move from grey market cases where they can basically only be used with illegally obtained ROMs to perfectly legitimate mods.
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phils, 18 Aug 2015 @ 1:54pm

xyzzy
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Jake, 18 Aug 2015 @ 3:57pm

Anyone who's even slightly surprised by this has never spent two hours fiddling with config settings and peering at badly-scanned PDFs of game manuals while trying to get DOSBox and their chosen game to play nicely together. I've gladly paid $5.99 to let GOG.com's backroom boys do all the hard work.
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Rekrul, 18 Aug 2015 @ 9:04pm

Re: Re:
Why would you want that when you've got https://www.winehq.org/

Hm, I just realise, this does not work on Windows, you need a Unix (Linux, MacOS, BSD) to use it..

Because it doesn't work in Windows and it doesn't run everything. There are a bunch of copy protection methods it can't handle.

I could be wrong, but it's my understanding that the only reason Windows 95/98 aren't properly supported in most virtual machines is that they haven't written proper graphics and sound drivers to allow Windows to interface with the emulated graphics and sound cards.

Virtual Machines emulate an entire virtual computer, including graphics and sound cards. However to take advantage of those cards, you need drivers which are compatible with the version of the OS that you're running and for some reason, the VM makers have decided not to create Win9x drivers.

If they have, or if I'm misunderstanding the issue of running games in a Win9x virtual machine, please let me know.
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