Stupid Game Chasers

[Ed Oscuro]

Shit, great points guyz.

Topps and the other US sports cards makers went haywire for a while. First they spent the '80s churning out gum cardboard like it was going out of style (and it was, almost as painful to eat as it was to read a Bazooka Joe strip). Then 1995 hit; oh man, people are bored (with baseball?!) so we gotta bling this shit up. Not just gold cards, but BLACK gold cards. sheeit. The flaming wreck of a hobby quickly lost the attention of the world's collecting illuminati (and also normal people).

I don't think the top gaming franchises are any more subtle with manufacturing crap to create UBER RAREZ, nor should they be counted on as seriously either. It seems like the basic impulse of every marketer is to take a collecting hobby and immediately start dumping. Even if you're not a collector, the market is still flooded with shit.

I suppose, if you look at it one way, something like the Demon's Souls collector's ed holding steady around $100 just means that it's not budging in price since release. But that is still, of course, an arbitrarily chosen price point to begin with.

But the gamer identity thing is interesting. After the previous failures of collectables manufacturers to stay the course, and the appearance of almost-life-size Master Chef hats, I don't think a lot of people looked corporate molding of gamer habits seriously. I've always been loner enough that I felt invincible to such draws, but what about the card-carrying dewrito muncher? At the same time we had to also fight the "it doesn't matter, it's just games" digital distribution or DEATH >:( types, who accuse you of killing forests and the ocean when you ask for a physical copy of a game.

I think that the gamer identity thing wasn't solely created by corporations - this is tricky because we're not just talking about the "traditional" game collector, but also other demographics who weren't part of that scene, and never will be game collectors in that sense (even if they have cheap nightvision goggles courtesy of Call of Dookie). However, they certainly have created a lot of it, and probably co-opted the rest.

I don't think that games in particular are a bad investment, but you have to consider price to earnings, roughly speaking, as well as your initial purchase. Stocks are nice as well, and land even more so, but they come with sizeable downsides as well (in the US, aside from taxes on land you also might be asked to give up an easement for somebody else to exploit the mineral rights on your land). There's always risk in investing.

[ACSeraph]

If you want to collect, buy whats cheap today.

^Wisdom

This is more or less how I've been doing it since I very first got interested in gaming as a JHS student. I'm certainly a sort of collector, with a massive pile of games sitting around, but my motivation was always simply that I wanted to play and experience a lot of different good stuff. Being a kid at the time I didn't have money, but there were tons of awesome games to be found for peanuts if you looked around and didn't feel the need to have the rarest stuff. Can't afford Radiant Silvergun? Who cares; Layer Section is like $5. There's so much incredible stuff out there in the cheap range you could play and collect "the real deal" for the rest of your life without breaking the bank. I think people just get some sort of artificial satisfaction knowing they are playing something "rare".

The other wisdom here is that whats cheap today probably won't be cheap tomorrow. I bought the games I thought were good back in the day from funcoland and pawn shops and such, just common stuff in the $10 range, but now the prices have shot into a range I cant afford. The older this stuff gets, the rarer it gets, because no one is producing new copies. 20 years from now common games aren't going to be so common. I think just by buying the cheapest, most fun games the end result is that my collection is currently worth 10x what I paid for it.

[LEGENOARYNINLIA]

I found this article on the whole "gamer" tag interesting.
http://www.usgamer.net/articles/the-peo ... rd-culture

As lame as it is, it feels good to read something I can agree with. Now I'll read some words by Simon Pegg and Alan Moore to feel even better.

[mnneurope]

Me thinkz U should buy as many games as U can, esp those U wont ever play, those that will only collect dust on Ur shelfz

gotta collect them all!

NOW, GO OUT, AND BE THE COLLECTOR!

[Immryr]

There are definitely still tons of good games to be had at fairly low prices. I only recently bought myself a Japanese saga Saturn, which is something I didn't think I was going to do due to the prices of a lot of the games, but then I looked more closely into it and there was at least 30 games I wanted which could be had for under £30 - with lots of those being under £10. As long as you don't have a collect em all type attitude you can find enough games to occupy you for years without spending crazy money.


-edit- I also don't get this whole thing about being a gamer. I've never identified with that. Are people who come home from work and just watch the tele TVers?

[tighecg]

um, ok, wow. For the first time in two years I am willing to see what my wife has been saying, 'this is stupid'. When I started this conversation I was discouraged with the price of a game(Mighty Final Fight), and now I'm discouraged with my involvement in this market at all. When I think about the hours and resources I have wasted 'collecting', I get a little sad. Should I have been outside teaching my boy to throw a curveball? Probably. Why was I 'collecting'? to relive a moment when I was 10 playing Metroid at 3 in the morning, a moment that with expensive CRTs and the original equipment I can never accurately reproduce anyway. I don't mean to be a party pooper, but I feel that I have been a pawn in a marketing scheme masked in my childhood, and I just need to grow up. At 40 years old, I thought I was smarter than this.

I'm not giving up yet. Minty, I am interested in the info you have on programming. Right now it is a beautiful day where I am, and I'm inside reading philosophy of gaming. I think I'm going to take a walk and try to cheer up. If anybody wants a near mint CIB copy of Caveman Games or Jack Nicklaus Golf, let me know.

Also, is Chris Hardwick evil?

[broken harbour]

um, ok, wow. For the first time in two years I am willing to see what my wife has been saying, 'this is stupid'. When I started this conversation I was discouraged with the price of a game(Mighty Final Fight), and now I'm discouraged with my involvement in this market at all. When I think about the hours and resources I have wasted 'collecting', I get a little sad. Should I have been outside teaching my boy to throw a curveball? Probably. Why was I 'collecting'? to relive a moment when I was 10 playing Metroid at 3 in the morning, a moment that with expensive CRTs and the original equipment I can never accurately reproduce anyway. I don't mean to be a party pooper, but I feel that I have been a pawn in a marketing scheme masked in my childhood, and I just need to grow up. At 40 years old, I thought I was smarter than this.

I'm not giving up yet. Minty, I am interested in the info you have on programming. Right now it is a beautiful day where I am, and I'm inside reading philosophy of gaming. I think I'm going to take a walk and try to cheer up. If anybody wants a near mint CIB copy of Caveman Games or Jack Nicklaus Golf, let me know.

Also, is Chris Hardwick evil?

Woah now, so long as you are taking care of the more important things in life (Family, Job, etc...) there's no reason to feel guilty over your hobby. This whole thread seems to have gone off the rails a bit. I agree that retro game prices have gone full retard in the last few years, hell where I live, Pikmin 3 a current game is going used for $100. I look at it this way... if you spend silly money on a game (and yes I have done that, recently) then you'd better make sure you get the enjoyment you wanted out of it, if you don't, then turn around and sell it for what you paid... at that point it became free fun.

[drauch]

Teach him a curveball in Super Baseball 2020 and everyone wins.

Don't feel bad. Nostalgia is a dangerous game with a lot of players. More people need to reserve that one for a shelf piece.

So poetic.

[broken harbour]

Should I have been outside teaching my boy to throw a curveball? Probably.

There's nothing wrong with including your boy in your hobby either. I have many 25+ year old happy memories of playing Gauntlet with my dad on our Atari Lynx's via link cable.

[MintyTheCat]

Minty, I am interested in the info you have on programming.

Sorry, I am not sure how to answer this - what do you want to know?

But if you fancy having a crack at SMS development then Z80 and the SMS' VDP is the best place to start.
There are plenty of books too so let me know if you want one.

http://www.smspower.org/

I would start here:

http://www.smspower.org/Development/GettingStarted

SMS Power is a well run SMS Dev site that is by far better than Sprites Mind for the MD. I find the MD Dev scene to be pretty dead in comparison to the PC Engine, C64, SMS and even NeoGeo scenes.

Best to start small and aim for what is achievable but something like 70% of your work will involve the VDP in the SMS I would wager.

[tighecg]

Calm down guys, I simply meant that I'm done with the 'Gotta collect'em all' bullshit. Not that that was ever my intent, no more garage sales for me. No more buying something just because its cheap and CIB, or buying Contra on the NES when what I really want is Metal Slug on the MVS. An added frustration is all the other crap I buy at them such as board games, albums, and toys just because they look cool. I'm in the process of building a house, and my wife is pissed that I'm bringing home other peoples junk that we are just going to have to move, and cluttering up the Apt we are in while we build. The time I spent on the collecting does piss me off now that I have come to this realization, I could have utilized it better.

That article did make me question my involvement in the market. It made me feel like a trend follower as opposed to someone who enjoys games. The article and some of the thoughts I have read here also lent some support to the idea that a person almost shouldn't own anymore then the game they are currently playing. I don't think I will ever get to that point.

Minty, all I was looking for was a point in the right direction, and you did that. I have only skimmed through SMSpower so far but it looks good. recommendations on some Z80 books would also be welcome. You don't need to send me any, but I appreciate the offer. Shipping from Berlin to Omaha would be too much, and I do need physical copies. I have a lot of dead time at work, but no access to the internet. I can pick them up on Amazon or somewhere else. I ran across some other websites, but they seemed kinda lame.

Also if anyone can recommend quality sellers for that Metal Slug? I have read some MVS buyers faqs, but buying Neo Geo stuff on ebay scares me more than buying ANYTHING else on ebay. I'm fine with carts only, just want real SNK stuff.

[Strider77]

Does anyone ever bitch at their wives for crap that they bring in the house?

[Skykid]

I found this article on the whole "gamer" tag interesting.
http://www.usgamer.net/articles/the-peo ... rd-culture

Hugely interesting (this and the article it links to within) and certainly makes it easy to understand the reasons why game collecting has grown. I think there's definitely value in the argument that as big business has surreptitiously cajoled entertainment seekers into joining "nerd" ranks and allowing themselves into a culture once sectioned off for a much smaller, lonlier demographic, so too has this bled into gaming.

I mean, it had to. Gaming is huge. Superheroes are huge. Comic TV series are huge. It's only natural that the pursuit of collecting retro game stock would affect a wider audience simply because it has a fabricated 'nerd vogue' about it.

I agree with Simon Pegg completely, however - we are becoming increasingly infantalized by the narrowing options presented in media. Before I've been accused of a get-off-my-lawn moment when I've suggested everything and everyone is getting dumber. But in reality Idiocracy is partly in place

Once, perhaps not even fifteen years ago, people used to go and watch movies that had a broad thematic range, with superheroes reserved for kids and intermittent summers, now it's literally all superheroes with very little original, dramatic, or thought provoking material in the mainstream. And it's definitely a business driven propaganda that's moulded the situation (it always is).

So I'm saying yes to all of this. Nerd is a word that's lost its meaning. The entertainment market has become colourless and disinteresting because of the drive to create and pander to the newly weamed audience. The more we put down books and outdoor activities for TV, games and superhero flicks, the more infantalized we become, and not necessarily of our own volition. In the end, like any overt marketing propaganda drive, it feels like free will to tell everyone you're also watching Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, and caught the premiere for Age of Ultron - but in reality you've been suckered into a pool of interest designed to extract cash from your wallet, time from your day, and without any rebate on lost brain cells.

And those aftermarket game collecting prices are tied right into it, and set to go up the bigger the balloon inflates.

[MintyTheCat]

Minty, all I was looking for was a point in the right direction, and you did that. I have only skimmed through SMSpower so far but it looks good. recommendations on some Z80 books would also be welcome. You don't need to send me any, but I appreciate the offer. Shipping from Berlin to Omaha would be too much, and I do need physical copies. I have a lot of dead time at work, but no access to the internet. I can pick them up on Amazon or somewhere else. I ran across some other websites, but they seemed kinda lame.

Yes, some books worth getting are usually anything written by Lance Leventhal - the man did many books on a number of Microprocessors:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Assembly-Langua ... ywords=z80

I have this one myself and it is not bad.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Programming-Z-8 ... ywords=z80

I have this one too but I cannot remember if it was decent.

There are several written in Japanese that are also good. Many of the ZX Spectrum books are also worth getting as they tend to apply what you learn about the Z80 to something real and useful as opposed to just being about how the processor functions.

There's a very general book that serves more as a background for a beginner written by a French guy about 10 years ago:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0672 ... 1_1&sr=8-1

It wil give enough of the basics but nothing really meaty.

Sadly, there is very little that discusses Videogame development on these old consoles written in English with most of the books I have being written in Japanese.

Examples:

Develo for the PC Engine which included a development kit.

A Japanese Developer known as toru hidaka who worked on RPGs mainly wrote several books on practical game development for the older consoles and also wrote a couple of books about the Z80, x86 and one or two that used the 68000:

http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/4756 ... ge_o02_s00

http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/4883 ... ge_o01_s00

But these are all Japanese only.

You will need to get tools to work on the SMS and my advice would be to use a good Emulator that includes debug facilities for the SMS before you try to develop on the real hardware.

There is a really good Emu for the SMS that has good debug facilities but I have not used it for years and have forgotten its name

Let me know if you need more guidance and I hope you wish to develop a Shmup

I work on the Megadrive myself and with the MD VDP and the SMS VDP being similar enough it would be easy for my tools to be adapted for SMS support. For libraries though I cannot help as most of my stuff is 68K and I have not done anything with the Megadrive's Z80 as yet.

Cheers,

Minty.

[MintyTheCat]

Does anyone ever bitch at their wives for crap that they bring in the house?

The single guys - 'past' tense?

[MintyTheCat]

Once, perhaps not even fifteen years ago, people used to go and watch movies that had a broad thematic range, with superheroes reserved for kids and intermittent summers, now it's literally all superheroes with very little original, dramatic, or thought provoking material in the mainstream. And it's definitely a business driven propaganda that's moulded the situation (it always is).

I agree entirely and this is why I tend to watch films mostly from the 1970s - they have decent stories and have few special effects and certainly do not rely on SFX to 'attract' viewers. They instead require the viewer to ask themselves questions or to try to work out what will happen next and often with some twists along the way. The concepts were simply higher and expected more from viewers but people read back in those days.

I firmly believe that people have been dumbed down. Very few people understand how to apply the rules of grammar these days and in part this is due to Schools being too lax when it matters and people reading less and indeed having a narrower spectrum in their reading. I have read volumes that are up to four hundred old often and indeed a greater understanding of language and its rules are required. What I find is that it gives me more personally but, I think this is very out of fashion these days

The same I could say for Mathematics but that would be a different set of issues

[Bloodreign]

The key to be a happy collector, buy only what you like and will play, in my case I like a lot of old games, and try to play them (daunting task indeed). I'm not one that goes for full sets, have a few turkeys in my collection, don't want more turkeys. I've also played the waiting game in the past locally and online, and sometimes I got lucky getting some expensive games for cheap (Bonk NES, $20 yes, Image Fight/X-Multiply PS1, $57 extremely yes).

King of Fighters Nests Saga Collection reprint locally years ago, $50 passed on it, got it late last year, original print, $30 on Amazon from an American seller. Can't say the same for 02 UM Tougeki version, the regular one can go for as low as $50, but this bug fixed version, not happening.

[drauch]

I found this article on the whole "gamer" tag interesting.
http://www.usgamer.net/articles/the-peo ... rd-culture

That definitely hits the nail on the head pretty damned hard. Although I disagree that the pop culture nerd market at this point is male centric, because I'm seeing what seems like equal, if not maybe more women into stuff like subscription boxes, merchandise trinkets, and verbal and written prideful jubilation about being a nerd on my end. It's a frustration I deal with on a constant basis now almost everywhere I go, physically or virtually. At work my boss encourages the entire company to call us nerds. The office is plastered with no fewer than 15 posters and stickers like "Nerd St.," Pi symbols, a clock with scientific formulas, and various bits of stupid computer lingo. His defense is it's a badge of honor, because nerds are cool now and "run the world." I was almost burned at the stake for not watching shit like The IT Crowd and Big Bang Theory when I started. A friend told another convert of nerdom that he hasn't seen, and doesn't plan on watching, Firefly. He was informed that "all nerds like that," and so should he. Facebook is so full of generated loot crate and comic con ads and people incessantly referencing Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Game of Thrones ad nauseum. You can't escape it.

[tighecg]

good stuff Minty, thanks. Yes, I am planning on a shmup, with some run n' gun in it. I've liked shmups since I was a kid, at that time I think the draw was 'Cool, space ships!'. As I got older it developed into something more. I was never a huge fan of Contra, but sometime in 97 I walked into an arcade and found Metal Slug. I dropped way more quarters than I should have that day, I would put half a paycheck in it today, if I could find an arcade. I always thought, what if I could land my spaceship, get out, and kick some ass. I wanna do that. I'm sure that game already exists, but I'm not aware of it.

[broken harbour]

Sometimes I wonder if these "gotta have em' all" collectors/gamers are the same OCD types that have to collect every star in Mario 64, 100% every game they play, and must get the platinum trophy in a game. I wonder if its related somehow.

I myself, have never been a 100%-completion guy, I'm happy to play through a game, get the game experience, then move on, and have also not gotten caught up in the collecting bug all that much. I certainly have some turds on my shelf, but its generally because I like the game anyways. What I am bad for is collecting a whole series even if I like just one game. For instance I have every Final Fantasy game even though I hate half of them. Same goes for Zelda, and the Burnout series.

[tighecg]

I just realized I already own that game. Velocity 2x, I think that game is pretty sweet. I can't believe I overlooked that. But it's not the vibe I'm looking for.

[scrilla4rella]

Once, perhaps not even fifteen years ago, people used to go and watch movies that had a broad thematic range, with superheroes reserved for kids and intermittent summers, now it's literally all superheroes with very little original, dramatic, or thought provoking material in the mainstream. And it's definitely a business driven propaganda that's moulded the situation (it always is).

I firmly believe that people have been dumbed down. Very few people understand how to apply the rules of grammar these days and in part this is due to Schools being too lax when it matters and people reading less and indeed having a narrower spectrum in their reading. I have read volumes that are up to four hundred old often and indeed a greater understanding of language and its rules are required. What I find is that it gives me more personally but, I think this is very out of fashion these days

Similarly, I find it regrettable that a substantial proportion of our generation's online social interaction involves discussing nothing but 'nerd' stuff. I think of it as first-world-problems^2. There is a huge world out there with crazy shit going down every minute, yet they spend 99% of their energy obsessing over corporate game coverage and the moves of major publishers and devs without so much as acknowledging any sort of broader cultural, historical, or social contexts.

For a laugh, take a look at this Twitter account: https://twitter.com/stealth___ The videogame/social media equivalent of the insurance salesman who loves talking about his job at a cocktail party

[Ed Oscuro]

RE: retro CPU programming - I haven't gotten through them, but I own three of Rodnay Zak's classic books (one for the 6501, one for the Z-80, and one for Z-80 applications, i.e,. interfacing the Z-80 with other components). Zaks writes in a very clear and precise style, and adds exhaustive detail on many issues (the opening chapters of his microprocessor books discuss not only binary operations, but also BCD, one's and two's complements, and corrected arithmetic using each method). There are many exercises for readers.

One note - most of these books came in multiple editions and you might find errata in older ones. They are also hard to find, never having been scanned for reading on the Internet, and are sometimes expensive or difficult to find online.

RE: Game hoarding - I will buy $10 original PlayStations all day long. It's not hoarding, to me, just to have a good selection of parts or backups in case of failures, and it's also nice to be able to use different revisions.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Fascinating how there still seems to be absolutely no way to load PSX ROMs without working CD drive onto real hardware. That generation of consoles might share the cassette players' fate.

[Tregard]

I work for a media agency (please don't kill me), and we recently centred a whole pitch to one of our bigger clients around the "rise of the nerd" and how they as a brand should be reaching out to these people and using them as their new champions. It's marketing gold at the moment.

I agree wholeheartedly with the comments made about infantilisation - it's something that's been weighing on my mind a lot lately. There was an ad on the London Underground recently trying to raise the issue of abuse of their staff. Where in the past they've used quite matter-of-fact messaging ("Don't take it out on our staff"), their latest approach was something like this:

Mummy came home from work today
She said a bad man yelled at her
I asked her if she was ok
She said it was just something in her eye

Then you've got shit like the "Dumb ways to die" video where people are encouraged to stay away from railway lines by a series of emojis gurning along to a cute little song, something that seems more suited to a C-Beebies audience than anything else.

I would hope that most adults have enough common sense to stay away from electrified railway lines and be decent enough to not abuse people going about their daily job. The fact that LU seems to have found it necessary to treat with their audience in the same way a teacher would a five year old is fucking depressing.

[MintyTheCat]

One note - most of these books came in multiple editions and you might find errata in older ones. They are also hard to find, never having been scanned for reading on the Internet, and are sometimes expensive or difficult to find online.

Hehehehe - I learned to handle a lack or Erratas and it was good training to be be more discerning for me personally

They are not hard to find really. Check Amazon, old book shop, garage sales and EBay. They often had large print runs as folks in those days were true bedroom coders so the readership was larger

Also, for the classic Microprocessors such as the Z80, 6502/etc and the 68000 many magazines ran sections and articles on programming and that got many into it (me included) so often you can find large collections of scanned computer magazines and books if you look around but it pays to have the book to hand as well. I think all technical books should come as physical copy and a PDF personally as it gives you the best of both worlds when developing.

[BryanM]

Once, perhaps not even fifteen years ago, people used to go and watch movies that had a broad thematic range, with superheroes reserved for kids and intermittent summers, now it's literally all superheroes with very little original, dramatic, or thought provoking material in the mainstream.

People generally don't go to watch a movie to feel bad about being alive. Like I've so often compared things to, do you really get a damn thing out of a Hitchcock movie, or is it effectively just masturbation to kill a few hours?

Honestly the only difference between then and now is love.

Love is merely that feeling that reinforces dependency. You're dependent on this person to not starve and to learn how to function in society. You're dependent on this other person for sex. You're dependent on this other person to play Monster Hunter games with you (because god knows no one else will. This ain't Japan.).

The Hitchcock movie was disposable. One off. Consumed and thrown into a trash can. Maybe you'll like the next one he does, maybe you won't. But today we're given so much more. You want another Evil Dead movie starring Bruce? FUCK THAT SHIT. Have 5 evil dead movies a year for every year it's still profitable instead.

Games are much more enduring. You get way more hours per $. If it features some human interaction for content, like PvP, you're talking thousands of hours of someone's life potentially. It's easy to see why some people would have an extreme amount of dependency (and therefore affection) for the things if that's the only thing they do to kill time or interact with other people. It's why it's easy for me to conclude that we're the worst, for having such an extreme amount of emotion tied into inanimate objects. Even worse than furries, with their strange star trek X sonic X inflation porn.

I wouldn't say the additional ease we have of going into a cave of denial is good or bad. How much power does a peasant really have? And when you do stick your head out of the cave, what do you see? Some cops choking a man to death on tv and not even going to trial for it?



<<< I considered not posting this post because it's such a clusterfuck, but then I remembered that as gamers we have many many hours to kill and it might therefore be an act of violence to not inflict the internet with my useless ramblings >>>

[MintyTheCat]

What the hell on God's green Earth was that, Bryan?

That's bloody funny

The sex and love bit fails when you consider hours and addiction for example heroine and nicotine - hardly love now it is?

Rather love ends up being several facets and if I tell you then you will never know

[Strider77]

It's game chasers guys...

[tighecg]

I just had a thought. Are we forcing our kids to relive our childhoods through our own regression into retro culture? Walking through my sons room I see more from my childhood than his. Transformers, TMNT, My Little Pony. He doesn't have MLP, but it is a female example. movies like the MCU and Star Wars. Even gaming is something that started with us. older things like hot wheels, although things like HW, G I Joe, and Barbie could be argued were put on us by our parents. I do think that HW and Legos are timeless toys that could and maybe should go on forever. To be fair my son asked for those toys, I didn't just buy them for him. I see very little of there own, there are examples like Skylanders, I just wonder if we should be letting them find their own way and make new memories all their own.