Alternative Ways to Play Video Games

foreign [Music] hello and welcome to the arcade you know I think there's an inherent understanding among Gamers and even collectors to an extent that video games are typically best played on their original intended Hardware there's just something magic about putting a cartridge into that original NES connecting that to an old CRT and playing it the way the developers intended at the time the game came out I might even go as far as to say that the original DMG version of The Game Boy is the best way to play those old Game Boy games even though the Game Boy Advance and The Game Boy Advance SP are still undeniably great ways to play too but the Game Boy Advance just isn't the original that magic of playing a game on its original intended Hardware is something that's kind of hard to describe but I think it's easy enough to recognize especially once you've experienced it for yourself however the more the years go on and on the more likely that these original ways to play are going to become more and more rare faulty and just downright inconvenient heck they're already inconvenient let's be honest for those of us who don't already incorp create a CRT into our gaming setup it can be a chore to Lug that thing out of the closet or the attic or wherever you can find room for that Beast of a TV especially when we have access to newer consoles that are just way easier to boot up and play at a moment's notice no matter where you are and that is typically when we begin to play games particularly older ones on unintended Hardware there are so many different kinds of unintended Hardware ranging from absolutely despicable to debatably Superior there's even quite a few that are developed released and supported by the original developers of those decade old games so today I want to talk about a few ways that we play games on unintended hardware and some of the strengths and weaknesses of doing so so let's take a look first we should talk about the rising trend of third-party handheld emulation devices as technology advances quicker and quicker older systems like the NES get easier to emulate leaving these kinds of knockoff game boys rotting in bins at Five Below I say rotting but that's not really even true people especially non-gamers actually buy these things whether it's as a cute little novelty or as a gift for somebody that they know that likes video games I've tried a couple of them and while I can say the experience varies widely I can tell you that most of the time you get what you pay for these cheap ones from Big Lots or Five Below have no real or licensed games on them just simple clones of flash games for the most part you might find one or two clones of NES games thrown in there too it is nice that this one has a rechargeable battery though and the ability to Output to a TV or monitor but the games on here just aren't worthwhile in my opinion the better option would be to spend the extra cash to get yourself something like this the pow Kitty Q90 there's better emulation devices that are handheld on the market too I'm just using this one as an example because it's the only one I currently have while the stock firmware on here leaves a little bit to be desired there are options for making it better so it can run more games and more better even with a small SD card you can fit over a thousand game ROMs on here but the 16-bit era is where the emulation starts to get a little iffy but everything from the Game Boy line and the NES works great which I definitely think of as a pro but the small screen the handheld form factor and basically unlimited selection dampens just a little bit of the magic of playing these games on their intended Hardware that sounds counter-intuitive but I'm just not as connected to any of these games as I am to my three actual NES carts that I own I find myself jumping from game to game never able to stick with anything it's definitely a great thing to have for killing time if you need it but as for an ideal way to play these games I would say no not really the next category of unintended Hardware that I want to talk about is repurposing older consoles or modding sure some people may mod their switch their PS5 or their Xbox series s but what you see a lot more of these days is people modding their Wii the Wii U the original Xbox and the PlayStation Vita appear in this scene quite a lot as well but it seems apparent to me that the Wii is the easiest system to mod and the most easily attainable console on the secondhand Market provided you don't actually already have one it will barely take you an afternoon to get your Wii modded and have an SD card full of games loaded up and ready to play The Homebrew Channel on the Wii is full of emulators and even original games as well it makes it so simple to load up all these games and give your Wii a new life if you'd already stopped using it but again it's just not the same as playing games on the original hardware and while the Wii did originally have this same idea that being the Virtual Console and it works just fine that's all it is to me it's just fine but there is one trick that I use to make it better if you you have a modded Wii loaded with old games and you still have an old CRT tube television hook up the Wii to that old TV when you play these old emulators for NES games Super Nintendo or whatever else it just makes the whole experience that much more authentic when you're playing it on a CRT and that's because old CRTs are likely what all of these old games were intended to be played on anyways at least as far as the display is concerned and hey maybe for a few hours you can trick yourself into thinking that you've traveled back in time to the good old days when life was simple responsibility was a four-letter word and the biggest thing you had to do was homework and just a couple chores before you could jump back into that game and all that said I honestly do love the idea that these aging consoles are getting new life as emulation devices but like I said a couple times already it's just missing the magic of playing on the original Hardware another major category of unintended Hardware is computers there's an unbel believable number of emulators for PCs I personally use retroarch to find emulators and I use the Dolphin Emulator a lot too retroarch is probably the most reliable way to get emulation going on your PC and it has a ton of customization options as well it can feel pretty odd to be playing a game boy game on your computer using a controller like this but it's so convenient that you probably won't mind one of the great things about emulation on PC is how the creators of these emulators add in upscaling options to bring your old games into super high resolution the Dolphin Emulator is so good at this it can actually bring Wii games up to 4K and you can do other cool things too like use an actual Wii remote or just map all the motion controls to a more standard controller if you want you can play split screen and you can create save states and I talked before about bringing New Life to Old consoles but emulators on PC can bring new life to old games themselves with these upscaling options and save states other mods and stuff like that it can be a great way to re-experience older games with a fresh perspective the last category that I had some thoughts on is the unintended intended Hardware have you noticed just how many retro games are available from Sony and Nintendo on their modern platforms these days Microsoft 2 to an extent the Nintendo switch online service has more NES SNES and N64 games than I think I'll ever be able to get through and that's not even to mention all the Game Boy games and Genesis games they have as well this first party type of emulation is something that I have a lot of appreciation for it just feels right to be playing these old Nintendo games on current Nintendo Hardware where I didn't have to obtain the ROM from a totally legal means all I had to do was pay the 20 or 50 a year and then I have access to these games from the original developer or publisher it just feels more legitimate which I guess is obvious but it helps my peace of mind while playing another type of game that fits into this category would be remakes and remasters all the big game companies have done it and while I believe it works great in a situation where you take a couple PS2 games and re-release them on PS3 to me it dampens a little bit of the authenticness of it when you do it with super old games like NES and original Game Boy and bring those to the switch don't get me wrong I love that idea but it just doesn't feel as good or as authentic as playing these older games on their original Hardware it's just simply due to how old they are playing NES games on a Nintendo switch Pro Controller just doesn't feel right to me don't get me wrong though I love these Konami Classics collections I love the ability to have all these Contra games and all these Castlevania games right here on my switch it's a great thing and they even add in a lot of options like a CRT filter and other options to make it look more like you're playing it on an old TV and on the old console as well I also want to talk about the Sega Genesis mini and the Super Nintendo classic I have both of these and while I do love these consoles especially the Genesis they just don't have quite the amount of customization options I want to see and they're really intended to be played on HD TVs and not Old Tube TVs which should be obvious since they only have HDMI out but at least the Genesis can switch to full screen mode if you happen to be using an HDMI to AV Adapter like me just to force the picture onto an old tube TV just to make it feel a little bit more authentic I could go on for hours about this topic but hopefully I got my point across getting The Full Experience out of a game typically requires the original intended Hardware that the game was released on plus a CRT television if the game calls for it based on the time that it came out I just feel like it's the most authentic way to experience the art in the way that the artist intended and while I don't really think there's any wrong way to play games I do you think that you lose a bit of the magic when you're not playing these old games on the original Hardware they were designed for but what do you think do you like playing games on unintended Hardware or do you keep it classic let me know your thoughts in the comments section below and thank you so much for watching [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Enter The Arcade

Views: 128

Keywords: nintendo, sony, microsoft, powkiddy, anbernic, emulator, emulation, unintended hardware, snes classic, snes mini, genesis classic, genesis mini, homebrew, homebrew channel, wii, mod wii, modded wii, retroarch, konami, mario, ico, shadow of the colossus, handheld, handheld emulator, switch online, switch online games, star fox, n64, nes, genesis, snes, game boy, gameboy, gba, dmg, emulator on pc, review, best games

Id: girvo9kFqmc

Length: 10min 43sec (643 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 30 2023