I just shake my head everytime I see these kinds of compilations released. I’ve been playing these games for years, through emulation. These bundles advertise being able to use filters for ‘authenticity’ gameplay, online playability and such. Emulators can and have long done these things too.
But, there are people out there, who’ll wait for years on end for these compilations to be made and some shamelessly buy them. When you can cut all of that down by spending less than 2 minutes grabbing a ROM and grabbing an emulator before you’re well on your way to revisit your old favorites.
Knowing how to do things can save you lots of time, money, or both in many of different areas of life.
I can’t imagine you’ve min-maxed every area of your life, why shit on people who are happy to pay for someone to package things up for them?
These games go on sale for just a few bucks. It’s better than being lost forever.
It’s way better than not having the game at all on online storefronts. Digital content still can become lost media, by offering them through storefronts that risk is lessened by a lot.
These compilations are a lot more than just ROMs with an emulator, which is why I support them. Also quickly go on sale for quite a lot cheaper all the time.
The re-releases sometimes come with improvements, such as the ability to save mid-game, or networked multiplayer, that would have been impossible with the original release, e.g. a standup arcade game.
…That you can do through emulation also.
I’m fine with people paying for the Just-Works™.
I’ve just ventured into DosBox stuff, starting with pre installed game folders (best case scenario). Just mount the .7z into dosbox and… Wait, unarchive it, make it a .zip and… Wait, just unzip it and remake the folder structure to match the .cfg, rezip and… Wait, unzip and re-write some of the setting in the .cfg, re-zip and… Wait, mouse support on a touch screen, why is the keyboard unresponsive?
Tinkering is fun, but I just wanted to play fallout 1. Romm just added dos support. I was elated. But all my games are .7z. and the 2 I tried (FO1 and a 1-0 soccer, it was first on the list) both didn’t fire up, fallout 1 required tinkering to fire up in a DosBox instance. A fun project, I wasn’t gaming though.
Oh, had no idea romm added support for dosbox, that’s awesome. Half tempted to dump the ExoDOS collection into it to stress test it.
I can’t vouch for it. But my understanding is that DOS is it’s own wild west of Case By Case Basis. My understanding is that if DosBox pure would be happy with the .zip you give it, Romm may or may not be. If DosBox won’t fire it up with no tinkering god help you.
I got fallout to run in a desktop instance, but it still didn’t run on Romm. Gpt suspects it’s the nested folder structure
/INTRPLAY/FALLOUT/[game stuff here including data folders]Gpt is wrong more than it’s right though.
All the spendies on this thread are making me sad. You know money buys food, right?
What I’m not understanding, are the boot-lickers who’re praising the publishers for making these ROMs available on the market. Like, pirates are the ones who have been doing the archiving and preserving while video game companies kicked the can down the street for the longest time. And only recently are these compilations released, are some people going like “WOW! THEY ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT PRESERVING! IT MAKES MY DICK HARD NOW!”
Like dude? These ROMs have been available for a long ass time and they weren’t because of these video game companies you’re happily throwing money down to.
the same reason hollywood keeps remaking and remaking and rebooting and remaking every movie from 1980 to 2000 and beyond. it doesn’t matter how fucking godawful the final product is, the nostalgia draw will guarantee funding
at least the video games are the actual video games from our childhood (i assume)
I will never understand those of you who feel the need to virtue signal about your piracy.
All the spendies on this thread are making me sad. You know money buys food, right?
My biggest issue with these is they dont document the process or treat it like preservation at all. Did you know Primal Rage, an arcade game, is extremely difficult to emulate because of special security on the original arcade boards? They have a MAME emulator specifically for it and it still does not cut close to an original cabinent. All the console remakes similarly have issues because of the original including whatever these security components were (I thunk they were a chip on the boards).
