Does the technical side of gaming kind of bring down the fun

[Xyga]

Well we can play emulators in their original resolution (mostly) on a genuine 15KHz crt.
It works very well if you are ready to spend (a lot of) time reading and fiddling to get it right.

When people don't get it just tell them in the kindest crypto-contemptuous patronizing way to go play CoD or PES on their Xbone, things for kids their age.

[bobrocks95]

Maybe your friends shouldn't be such condescending assholes lol. I'll get lots of questions, and usually people won't really understand why I do it once I explain, but they aren't shaking their head of laughing...

[gray117]

playing with some screens and cables is technical hardship?... I imagine you're dressing up obsession as a technical necessity in order to justify it.

The specificity and individuality of each little piece is part of the fun for me, but like with any interest, if you start spending too much time over something you don't enjoy then you're organising your life wrong. It might be a small detail that could restore the balance, it might be a different philosophical approach, or it might be you'd be better off selling a bunch of clutter and freeing yourself.

[Stompp]

I too like the tech side as much as the actual gaming today, but I admit part of the motivation is...yeah...'OCD-ish'

That goes for me too. Luckily I'm not into consoles so I only have the cabs to worry about. But cables.....oh those cables they gotta be the right length, clamped and hidden away.

[leonk]

OMG! There's 2 things in common it seems with people that say "hell yeah!" to OP! OCD and a word that doesn't exist so I'm going to invent it .. Retrophile.

All hobbies have them.. Audiophile, videophile, ...

All my retro playing systems are modded to squeeze the most out of them (and use everdrive like devices). I also own unmolsted in the box system + games as part of collection on display. I role this way and I'm sure many others do as well.

[gray117]

All my retro playing systems are modded to squeeze the most out of them (and use everdrive like devices). I also own unmolsted in the box system + games as part of collection on display. I role this way and I'm sure many others do as well.

I think the key distinction here though is that you sound like you enjoy what you're doing, so all power to you. Unlike the thread title which suggests a lack of enjoyment in some aspect of whatever it is they're doing (or just perhaps how they're currently doing it)... there's no single recipe for enjoying yourself, but I'm sure most people maintain a certain self awareness and respect of others that lets them actually really get the most out of that hobby.

At the same time I'm sure everyone's overdone it a bit at some time or another, in one way or another... the trick is to recognize how best to balance it for yourself, you might find some of your current ideals are simply not geared to your enjoyment.

[evil_ash_xero]

OMG! There's 2 things in common it seems with people that say "hell yeah!" to OP! OCD and a word that doesn't exist so I'm going to invent it .. Retrophile.

All hobbies have them.. Audiophile, videophile, ...

Yeah, Audiophiles. You can go to the Steve Hoffman forums, and see how that aspect ruins a lot of people's enjoyment of music.

I go to that forum, yes.

[cicada88]

I used to be more OCD about things in general when I was younger, but with gaming I think it's actually a saving grace.

Yes, I look at games as creative works of art, but it has really brought me more into the technical side of things like programming, video signals, etc. A lot of this knowledge learned is very satisfying to me and it does pay dividends in other areas of life. Before I got back into "retro" gaming on CRTs or on TATEable LCDs, I only had this type of technical knowledge in regards to audio.

For me the OCD part really is not that bad any more. I just take it one system at a time, and I don't hoard games. I buy the cables I need, and I can respect a little patina on the stuff that I do have.

I do want to get a couple of candy cabs at some point though, and I'm sure the PCB game is a whole different ball game.

*Also the audiophile mindset is such bullshit. It's just playing off humans' OCD nature or need to be special. Obviously, the sky's the limit for sound setups, but at the end of the day it's all about the music, films, games---whatever you are into in regards to Audio/Video. Never let the equipment get in the way of your appreciation of that stuff.

[evil_ash_xero]

Well, the problem with music and audio has very little to do with the equipment. It has to do with the mastering.

Another topic, another day.

[cicada88]

Well, the problem with music and audio has very little to do with the equipment. It has to do with the mastering.

Another topic, another day.

It's all so arbitrary though. Like if one respected producer or engineer overseas the remastering, then it's right. 10 years later, another one redoes it and now that's "right". They just rehash and remarket to sell more copies.

Or with video, it gets a version thats just an upscale on Blu-Ray. Then it gets a really proper well done transfer but people say the color-timing is off from the original theatrical prints. Then the director approved version drops with slightly different color, and some people still disagree.

It's endless and the consumer isn't in control anyway. Unless you are an expert with a photographic memory and a close relationship to the director, you can never know exactly how it original was, or how the director truly wants it now or then. Or if he even cares one way or another.

[evil_ash_xero]

Well, compression and clipping is the big problem.

Another topic!

[SGGG2]

It certainly feels that way at times, and it can be absolutely infuriating when you have a persistent issue - but I often find enjoyment in the technical side of things for it's own sake. Scalers and RGB have brought me more joy in retro gaming than I knew was possible, I honestly can't believe how good some of these old games look.

And I know you're referring to retro stuff here but this is the same argument that console gamers often trumpet in regards to PC gaming. I recently built a high-end gaming PC and no, native 1080p, 60fps and stereoscopic 3D aren't "superfluous" features or gimmicks; 3D makes it far easier to track objects and map environments, 60fps provides more feedback and responsiveness and the higher the resolution the more detail and clarity present. I even noticed a difference going from the 8-bit analog sampling of the Dual Shock 2, to the 10-bit present in the DS3. Frankly, I'm not sure I'd even be playing modern games at all if it weren't for PC's, I've grown increasing frustrated at the technical limitations of consoles and the loss of the plug and play experience over the years.

As an aside, I'm not too impressed with Retroarch shaders so far; 1080p isn't detailed enough for a decent CRT look and my Retroarch Wii 240p / XRGB-3 / Gefen Scaler Plus or Optoma HD3000 set-up looks much better. I imagine 1440p and 4K are a different story. I have no experience with HLSL.

[Ed Oscuro]

Well, the problem with music and audio has very little to do with the equipment. It has to do with the mastering.

Here, let's do some A/B testing on this special budget speaker setup (might be a piece of string and an old tin can, no promises).

I'm not too impressed with Retroarch shaders so far; 1080p isn't detailed enough

To be reasonable, the blame goes to the resolution, not the shaders. If 1080p isn't working with the shaders, I doubt display of real hardware on a FHD set is going to look good either. Myself, I don't mind dirty scaling much.

Of course a lot of emulators with "CRT look" settings have the rather major failing of defaulting to a tiny window, which totally defeats the promise of a CRT look.

[aaronmjr]

Doesn't bring down the fun for me. I have had to draw the line in a few places though. I will make a good stab at fixing geometry issues, but I need to tell myself "OK that's good enough." because I will go crazy chasing the perfect picture. I also refuse to do the whole million switchboxes and power strips, mess of wires, hooking everything up at once thing again. I've done the let-it-all-hang-out method, I've zip tied, velcro tied and made everything tidy and perfect as well. And regardless it ends up being so fiddly, and dusty and complicated that I dread having to make a change or chase down a bad cable. Also a fire hazard with all of these 20 year old AC adapters plugged in. "Turn off the power strip when you're not playing, dummy." Yeah, that sounds good on paper but I don't always remember. So the next time I have a room to myself (were hunkered down in a condo saving for a new house) I am going to do something really cool and different that I haven't seen before. I don't want to give all the details, but I will hook up a console when I want to use it. There is a fun twist that I think you all will enjoy though.

The other part of hardware that's great is that I can enjoy something related to gaming, without actually gaming. I have 2 very small kids and a wife that works so I can't play very often. But I can definitely whip apart a piece of hardware to refurbish it a few minutes at a time and scratch the gaming itch a bit.

[Lord of Pirates]

It doesn't bug me any, though dealing with all the cords was a pain the first time around, my brother was a bit skeptical at first but his tune changed after seeing the results.

[andykara2003]

Hey evil_ash_xero - I've been thinking of posting this question for a while as this has affected my life in some negative ways. I have an awesome CRT setup now with the best cables, scart switchers, transcoder, really high end component switch etc. I have an NEC XV29 plus, BVM 20E1E, and high end (Loewe) consumer CRT permanently set up so I can switch (almost) any input between them - and plenty of backup CRTs, all with low hours.

Basically it became an OCD and has taken some of the pleasure out of gaming for me. I've stopped my collecting now and am taking a break from the whole thing & plan to return to it for the simple pleasure and magic of gaming and nothing else. In one way, I did really enjoy the research, building and collecting, but in another way I always had an unsatisfied feeling if I felt like my setup was lacking in something or not working as well as it should. It ended up controlling me basically - and taking up too much of my time.

I'm sure there are plenty of people on this forum who have a much more balanced approach but I'm willing to bet that a good portion of the guys on here have OCD in some form - even if they might not want to admit it to themselves. It isn't a good feeling - a constant feeling of dissatisfaction - of subconsciously wanting the journey to just come to an end so you can just relax & enjoy gaming, but always needing to tweek or to add one more thing to the collection.

I'm being honest - I'm not worried about admitting this here - maybe it'll help someone in the position I was in to just throw in the towel & just enjoy the games. It's better to have a slightly imperfect setup than to have a perfect one that you're not fully enjoying. Kamiboy has a good attitude on this - I'll try to lean more towards that direction from now on I think

[evil_ash_xero]

Yeah, I'm OCD about tons of things. Comics, books, CDs, cards....just everything. So, this stuff can drive me somewhat insane.

You do have to draw a line somewhere, yeah.

Glad (not sure if that's the right word) to see other people with some of the same problems as myself.

I remember watching King of Kong (or maybe it was Chasing Ghosts), and this guy's set up was this little crappy TV on the floor, on no stand. And he just had his dusty, crusty old Ataris and whatevers sitting around it.
Video Games was a passion for this guy, and his set up looked like a pile of junk on the floor.

I don't want to be THAT relaxed about conditions and setups, and settings, but it certainly pops in my mind when I am struggling to get everything just right.

[neorichieb1971]

My personal opinion is that anyone spending more on AV gear that does conversions than the actual console hardware is a bit silly.

When I lived in the USA I bought PVM's, XRGB's and all sorts of cables and spent $100's and never really got any value out of any of it. Ultimately it was a dream that never came true for me. Back in the UK I got some SCARTS and a brand new NOS Sony Trinitron TV and the sound buzzed, especially when the screen goes white. The screen has a black border on the right side and the geometry is a tad out.

I fed svideo and the geometry was perfect, the video was full screen and the buzzing sound was gone. To me, the svideo setup is so easy and nearest to perfect.. The colours jump out at you, albeit the lines around the edges of sprites are a tad blurred. But its a small price to pay for great gaming. For SCART only consoles like the genesis I don't have a solution yet.. Will probably get a SCART lead for that and perhaps adjust the geometry sideways a bit.

My advice is that if you don't play the games in the state you can play them you won't play them anymore with all this AV gear. Its just a lie to yourself that will cost you $100's before you realize.

[Ed Oscuro]

^ The worthwhile point there is one that doesn't really get ignored as much as people think - I think there's recently been more awareness that many things are "old and busted" and shouldn't be messed with. Myself and tempest have decided to give a pass on an interesting lot of PVM 2530s, because of the potential issues. I agree that there's diminishing returns even if you can get everything working with relative ease, but to my mind, a good three-line comb filter doesn't come that cheap (edit: I mean expensive) and S-Video on a cheap set with poor or no filtering isn't really as nice to look at, and that grates. But if it was all I had, sure, I could deal with it. But it's not, and as luck had it what I eventually have found for my liking isn't really too expensive. It's at the end of a journey, but I hope to share my experience with other people considering their way down this road.

It's good to know all the options, and saying "I give up" might be the appropriate one, but you won't know until you've tried, and getting into bad deals because of a lack of knowledge or practical wisdom is preventable.

[Xyga]

^ Trying it is what I do, mostly. I want to see with my own eyes how good gear I can get (only stuff I can reasonably afford though).
It is part for enjoying the quality while I play games, part because OCD, part because I simply want to know/experience it.

As much as possible I try to plan my purchases with the resell value in mind, because ultimately I want to keep only a reduced setup (a big/living room one, and a medium/single player one), for that a lot of the machines will have to go one day.
Current equipment is taking a big third of my living room with 4 displays surrounded by permanently messy shelves full of cables, sticks, eviscerated machines waiting for repair, games, etc -> I don't want this situation to last forever. ><

[andykara2003]

My personal opinion is that anyone spending more on AV gear that does conversions than the actual console hardware is a bit silly.

When I lived in the USA I bought PVM's, XRGB's and all sorts of cables and spent $100's and never really got any value out of any of it.

Its just a lie to yourself that will cost you $100's before you realize.

I don't think that's necessarily the case either - also, as long as you know what you're doing, you should be able to get it all working fine - just do the proper research, use official cables & decent switchers etc.

For me it was more about knowing when to stop - but I'm sure there are plenty of people on here without OCD who have spent a good amount of money & have perfect setups that they really appreciate every day - for them the extra spend was probably worthwhile.

Actually I have an amazing setup that works perfectly & if I can come back to it with a balanced attitude then I'll be glad I built it & it will all have been worth it.

[neorichieb1971]

Well there are a lot of newbs in the AV world especially in this forum that just feel getting the best is something worth striving for.

As I said I spent quite a bit of money on gear only to get into more complications and hurdles. The fact is that any purchase you make on 20 year old CRT's, it is going to die pretty soon even if you do get a working one.

I would be interested to see a live presentation of a 100% perfect RGB setup, but would always prefer an off the shelf solution. I cannot believe that in 2014 people are still chopping cables up.

I don't want to deter the enthusiastic of you all. There are personal rewards in a good setup and the learning in and outs has its own rewards as well.

[andykara2003]

The fact is that any purchase you make on 20 year old CRT's, it is going to die pretty soon even if you do get a working one.

You'd be surprised - it's still not so difficult to find CRTs that have had relatively little use - most of mine have low hours.

[Xyga]

Yeah, CRTs can last decades well over 100,000 hours if they're used with care and some components changed maybe once in a lifetime.
Home low res / 15KHz TV's are the easiest to maintain, which is nice since those are perfect for our needs (especially the cheap European RGB scart models).
Not everyone is hunting for broadcast monitors, nor buying top-of-the-line gigantic LCDs and plasmas.

And even so, I know enough people who fill up their garage or a warehouse with - literally - tons of genuine arcade cabs (half in need of repair), to understand buying a couple good crts or flat panels for home, even a few good scalers or fancy arcade sticks, is a much more reasonable OCD-ish choice.

Furthermore; spending money on good home hardware has become less stupid than spending it on now ridiculously priced games.

[Ed Oscuro]

Well there are a lot of newbs in the AV world especially in this forum that just feel getting the best is something worth striving for.

Yes? Why are you taking issue with that?

It's the cost (money & time) that limits this pursuit. But it's easy enough to give fair warnings.

As I said I spent quite a bit of money on gear only to get into more complications and hurdles.

We keep going round and round with you. Just because some of us had bad experiences getting the ball rolling doesn't mean those will be universal, and if somebody is willing to ask questions they can get fairly good advice to save money and headaches. There's been a lot more instances of people getting good advice now than in the past.

In the late '00s when the online RGB drumbeat was getting started, there weren't many warnings about the pitfalls of old devices, but CRTs were still being made through most of that period. Now people are more likely to advise caution.

If somebody refuses to read or ask questions, that's not my problem.

[bobrocks95]

Furthermore; spending money on good home hardware has become less stupid than spending it on now ridiculously priced games.

Hell yes on that point. It's cheaper to buy something else big for my setup than it is to buy a few games I've really been wanting. Every old console is on the rise- NES and SNES probably have it the worst, but games across any old consoles are starting to climb or have been climbing within the past few years.

It's literally cheaper for me to take several college courses to learn Japanese (which I'm doing right now) and buy Mother 2 than it is to buy Earthbound. It's a loaded example given scholarships and grants and whatnot, but it's all still ridiculous.

[evil_ash_xero]

Any time I hear someone say "you should just learn Japanese" to play a fucking game, I can't help by be like

I never bothered to learn Spanish to talk to some of my non-English speaking family members. I can't imagine learning Japanese tp play some RPGs, that will be fan translated in a few years, if they aren't already.

And you can just get an Everdrive for most of these systems, and avoid the high prices. But some people gotta have that original cart sticking out of their system, for it to feel "right". And I'm OCD.

[bobrocks95]

I'm by no means recommending anyone else do the same, it's a ludicrous concept if you're only learning a language to play a game. Personally, I've always wanted to learn Japanese anyway, and I'll be using it for much more than games. I don't know if you're responding to me in particular, but I wasn't trying to make any statement about anyone else.

And when I modded my PS2 and put a bunch of games on the hard drive, it felt completely soulless to me. There's no sense of ownership, it's just a bunch of files. Feel free to call it materialistic, because it totally is, but it's not for me.

[aaronmjr]

And when I modded my PS2 and put a bunch of games on the hard drive, it felt completely soulless to me. There's no sense of ownership, it's just a bunch of files. Feel free to call it materialistic, because it totally is, but it's not for me.

This is exactly why I don't use emulators etc. I feel the exact same way. I wish I didn't because it's expensive to feel this way! :p

[andykara2003]

Same here - having the physical copy of a game, I feel like I'm holding the end result of years of a talented development team's efforts. Not having paid for it & having it ripped on a hard drive along with loads of other games diminishes that somehow.