They've existed even before that, but the shutdown of those digital stores has definitely been a middle finger to preservation and certainly encourages more piracy.
The fact big companies like Nintendo and EA simply pretend their classic games don't exist is quite sad. I would totally buy their old games if they simply bothered to let them available to be purchased. But since they don't care might as well sail the seven seas.
@SammEater Grr, I hate how Nintendo treats fans or older Nintendo consoles like garbage! Also, it's better for gamers (including me) to stop buying remakes/remasters of retro triple AAA games (including the Nintendo ones) and instead, start buying indie games and AA games.
@@SammEater With Nintendo it's even more bizarre, because unlike EA which acts like their old games don't exist, Nintendo pretends they're readily available.
The irony here is that it is the software pirates who are now the good guys. They have enabled the preservation of a huge amount of games. Long may they continue to do so!
@@SawGudman Piracy is not theft. Piracy is monopoly infringement. That is a big difference. Property laws are there so people can keep their stuff. Monopolies are put in place to prevent people from having stuff, so that those people -who would otherwise produce their own stuff- need to buy it instead. When you copy something, you do not take anything. No one loses property. So you are not stealing. What you are doing is using your own resources to produce something - a copy in this case. And if that something is restricted by monopolies (like copyright) than you would be violating a monopoly.
@@dr.c2195 I wish I could take credit for this, but a user on one of the plethora of UA-cam vids I've seen on this topic said "if buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing", and I think they're absolutely right. The comment was made in response to the ability for companies to take away access to content people have paid for via DRM, but I think it applies here too, especially since subscriptions are DRM in different clothing.
@@notimportant3033 If nobody is owned by governments or companies, this could be true. If companies and governments own nobody and nothing, this could be a reality.
@@imacg5 That's not what it means. They all want you to live as a serf, eternally indebted to them and unable to break free. You will own nothing but they will own you.
Tax it! 50% of revenue and 50% of the absolute value of the profits, so that they pay whether they make or lose money. Render all this Service As A Substitute completely unviable as a business model.
They can't let the younger zoomers and Gen Alpha knowing games once shipped complete with unlockables including cosmetics,secrets, cheat codes and etc. Oh and when there were expansions (Half Life Opposing Force and Blue Shift for example) they were worth the price of admission and didn't come with cosmetics you had to purchase.
they dont know because they grew into everything on a phone etc. they dont know nothing before the phones existence. or what it was like before computers were everywhere ; etc. they dont have that experience and never will. they were born into a "fast and messy world". id rather go back to being a little "slower"
They don't want you playing old games because they're better, lmao. It's not a nostalgia thing either cause I've gone and played heaps of classics I've never played before, on systems I've never played before, and they've become my favourite games ever.
It’s amazing how even the younger generations have picked up on this and are into retro games. I kept telling them that Minecraft sucks. Now they can believe me.
And its so annoying that AAA apologists will try to convince you that old games are actually bad and you're just nostalgic. They use the most bizarre mental gymnastics
Any minute spent on old games = Minutes lost that could have been on current consoles with micro transactions and DLC. Any dollar spent on old games = Dollars lost that could have been used on current games, micro transactions, and DLC.
Wait, how does this make sense? Why would you WANT micro-transactions and DLC as a paid service? Any minute spending time acquiring classic video games = worthwhile as we can SAVE and keep, but generally if you do it the ALT way... >:D Any minute spent on current video games = life lost because they can take them away at a moment's notice and you are out the money you spent to acquire it because of their FORCED RENTAL CONSOLES. Thus, video game preservation.
That's not my point@@borginburkes1819 . My point was it sounded like that is a desired outcome, not any forceful pushback against this type of behavior.
Imagine if any other industry were this blatantly anti-consumer. "NOOOO you can't watch Citizen Kane you have to watch the latest Adam Sandler movie!!!"
Only the entertainment industry can get away with this. Not just MAFIAA, others have done insane things as well. In the music industry there was the Loudness War that ultimately benefited nobody. Then Sony Music using malware as DRM in music CDs.
Then again in this fast paced society where this generation has a short attention span and has difficulty understanding complex themes with little to no humor who would want to sit down and watch Citizen Kane start to finish? At least the Adam Sandler movies are easy to understand with characters that keep your attention and has humor audiences can enjoy. A better comparison was Nirvana and MGK
@@elwen8525Agreed 💯 percent. I am currently enjoying a pirated version of Specs Ops in all its glory and at chapter 11. Gem of a game preserved by those gamer friendly pirates. If buying digital games isn't owning, pirating games isn't stealing... it's sharing.
Kudos to all the thieves for copying illegally games for generations to enjoy. You are all champ-thieves. (There, I corrected the sentence with its true meaning for you).
@@clapiotis These pirates are simply sharing games not stealing them. They don't break into the offices of developers or steal anything. If buying a game isn't owning, pirating isn't stealing. (There, I corrected you to bring you out of your fantasy land).
I play alot of older games only because they are more fun and enticing than newer games. Even my son enjoys playing the older games that I've been playing than the newer games. Not to say that there aren't some good current games, they are just far and few. You have alot of rushed unfinished games, micro transactions, buggy and so on. No love and passion is involved anymore and it certainly shows. It's priority is now money first. It's kinda sad really. When you make with love, it shows. When you make without it, it shows. Awesome video sir. ❤
Even back then it was about money. Games weren’t cheap like they are now. A 60$ game was a lot more expensive when people earned 3$ an hour instead of the current 15-20an hour on the low end of employment.
@@Bonanzaking You're right. I mean look at the Atari 2600 at it's later years. ET, Pac-man, Amidar, Pooyan. The mentality was for them to release it and we'd buy it just because of the name even if it's bad. The passion and love started with the NES, Genesis and SNES. Most companies put in alot of passion into these games for these consoles but there are some who didn't and we know where they ended up. I see the same thing happening for current generations if these companies keep doing what they are doing. I was so disappointed when Cyberpunk 2077 came out and I had very high hopes for it. So many broken games released for that quick buck.
@@AmberShort i still remember playing the original Pokémon games as a kid on my gameboy that felt like games built on passion compared to the more modern releases. The games were expensive back then. Now a game is less than half a days wage. It wasn’t so not too long ago.
This is the best expose I've ever listed to regarding the preservation situation in gaming. I also appreciated your critique of games journalism. It's worth it for us to own our games physically or DRM free.
Lets just cut to the chase. Majority of these new games just suck.. Its like something is missing. Sure it has pretty graphics and new engines with the bells and whistles but the story mostly sucks, variety sucks, no replay value, being repetitive, etc. Dont get me started with paying for extra content. It just seems no reason to really even play these new games. Its like the gaming industry is just not listening to its customers and just giving us crap and acting all surprise when the games fail. I mean i get making games a new generation but the idea of a video games was to make them fun. Fun factor.. Its crazy to me how the older games have crummy graphics but fun as hell to play.
Or some older games are still being updated by the fans. Take X-Wing Alliance for example on the PC. It was released back in 1999. And even now it receives updates from the game community. From a complete graphics overhaul, sound overhaul to a complete incorporation of the classic TIE Fighter game. I don't see things like this happening with the current games. Call of Duty 47, Battle Field 198 etc.
As an elder millenial, I had been not gaming much for some years, but as of the past five years or so, I've been playing a lot of indie games: Celeste, Hollow Knight, Ori, Afterimage, Thumper, A Hat in Time, Cuphead, Ender Lillies, Hue, Bloodstained. It seems that hard 2D platformers run in my veins.
When you play old games you realize how much better they are and you will demand more from modern game studios. This is why they don't want you playing old games.
I'm also afraid that someday games on streaming platforms like Microsoft xCloud become a popular thing and companies start to launch their titles exclusively on them. If that happens, games would be server-sided and could never be downloaded, thus would be terrible for both preservation and game ownership, since you would be tied to a subscription to keep accessing them and they could be removed at any moment.
@@BagOfMagicFood That's exactly it. You had to pay for the service and then pay after for each game you wanted to stream, and you still owned nothing! That's not even getting into the fact that latency was an issue and a lot of people don't have good enough internet even now for that kind of service. Streaming games is a lot more demanding than streaming music and movies.
That is exactly the direction they are going in. Make no mistake, any given industry is going to have long term road maps for the direction they want to go in, and it is easier and easier to manipulate consumers in this day of everything collecting telemetry on everybody. They do these thing at a slow and steady pace so that most people don't notice, and those that do get shut down as anti-progress or conspiracy theorists. Microsoft got themselves in hot water with the release of the Xbox-One by trying to limit the sale of used games if memory serves. That goal has been there for a long time most likely, but they tried to push too hard and too fast. Then the Ps5 has a digital-only model, and even with many "physical" copies of modern games you still have to go online to get day one patches or verify the game, assuming the disc isn't just there to hold a digital key for online purchase. Many modern computer towers don't even have slots for DVD/Bluray drives in the front anymore because who wants to buy a physical copy of something when you can just buy a DRM riddled copy that won't work offline or stream it.
@@h0laPlaneta No installation times? Funny, I have dim memories of feeding in a handful of floppy disks to install DOS games back in the early 1990s. Or a CD from the mid-1990s to mid-2000s (and the game often didn't come close to filling it). Games you can play without installing them were a rarity. The Lost Mind of Dr Brain is close. It runs off the CD and relies on the Windows 3.1 equivalent of a Start Menu shortcut to point it to where you want your saved games, so it takes next to no disk space, but there's still technically an installation step to set up that shortcut.
You absolutely nailed it, i have always preferred the physical copy of a game and I still have my old school hardware. and I have 2 very good used video game stores in my area a few blocks apart that can fix anything that goes wrong and always have a great selection of games. Old school games will never die. Good stuff.
You are quite lucky to have them nearby. Sadly, retro video game stores are starting to die quite rapidly :( Particularly in the less densely populated areas.
Old school games will def die. The avg person doesn't even know where their old games went. Ask your non-passionate gamer friends where their old games are and you'll see. Its up to us to preserve them! (I just started collecting physical copies again and have a ton of digital ones).
There really should be some kind of international video game repository where anything you want to play is right at your fingertips on a unified software platform online. Each game should also be accompanied with research content as much as possible including interviews and articles about the games' development process to credit the teams that created the said games.
A problem with that is that if a single company owned that whole repository and all the rights to all games within it, they can charge outrageous prices and have really sketchy policies. But hey, that's just my two cents.
@@newgameld2512 I was meaning a repository or a museum that's publicly funded through donations. Yeah if it's owned by one or two companies then we wind up right back in the situation we're in now.
This is a great discussion. Before I feel like we paid less and got more in terms of content, replay value, and gameplay design/gameplay loop. Now we pay more and get gorgeous looking games but we don't own it and probably won't play it through again multiple times, they're more like movies that you'll watch once every other year if even that. They want us all to be at their mercy in terms of "ownership" where they own everything and you keep renting from them.
Also one of the reasons why I support 'game preservation' AND fight against 'games as a service/gamepass/cloud subscriptions etc..' and DRM. Because one ultimately will not own their games.
If they actually let those games available, but they won't even do that. There are some games that companies that Nintendo simply won't re-release no matter how many players want access to those.
Remakes are often warranted, but the original games should never be delisted. Dead Space and Resident Evil did it right. Remasters, I think are a lot less warranted, though I think it's fine if the original game was never on PC to begin with. I'd be perfectly fine with a _proper_ Red Dead Redemption 1 remaster, for instance.
@@KazeiraPorts are trying to be replacements? Lmao, what? A port is the exact same game reworked to run natively on newer hardware. It's like saying the fan port of SM64 on the Wii is somehow different.
I collected a few thousand roms on my own. But then I broke down and bought a consoleX2pro just to collect 126,000 roms in a niced menu's package. Just copied the card on my pc and I have it all, just deplaced the emulators with my custom once and kept the sweet menu. You can have everything from 2005 and earlier compacted and easy to play. I bought my thing like 2 years ago. Probably a better version now. Just research. Fuck the corporations. This shit belongs to everyone and it is not preventing them from selling new games. No one loses...unless these classic works of art disappear. Then everyone loses.
those consoles dont have enough space for all the isos....i have over 200 000 games on my hdds....all the gc, ps2, wii, ps1, saturn, ps3 for example....games takes to much space for the consoles and windows 10 is more compatible with roms
I've bought one of those TV sticks. It came with a 128 gb SD card filled with 40k+ games from basically all consoles up to the PSP and PlayStation 1. From the era of my childhood till my early 30's. It came with 2 wireless controllers as well, which work very well. I've copied the SD card over to my laptop and can play all the old classics when I want. The total cost of the whole things pretty much equals the price for a single PC or console game today. Not counting possible DLC's and other cash grabs.
Good video. One point about Xbox back-compat. They have more recently said that they want as many Activision Blizzard games on Game Pass as possible. I expect the back-compat team has been hard at work on getting Activision games running. Microsoft said they’d reached the limit of what their current technology and licensing allowed. When it comes to popping in the disc and running the game, the main limitation is what the publisher allows. Once the ABK purchase is complete, Microsoft can add a tonne of Activision games to the back-compat list. And those that don’t have other licensing issues (music, etc.) can also be added for digital sale.
Oh, we hit that point a long time ago. Somewhere around the mid-2000s. I remember running across an image comparing the G-Man from the Half Life franchise between Half Life 1, 2, and Alyx. There's a huge difference between Half Life 1 (1998) and Half Life 2 (2004), but a much smaller one between Half Life 2 and Half Life Alyx (2020). Seems to me that around the point where we got programmable shaders was the point of diminishing returns for graphics.
Completely agree with this video. Things are so messed up in the industry and It feels like its just getting worse everyday. Thank you for speaking out about this!
I am playing Legend of Zelda TP and Enternal Darkness Sanity’s Requiem…. Freaking awesome games and ED is 20+ years old and is still holds up very well, a masterpiece in many ways
*3* *IDEAS* 1. Library Collections - Send in requests to public libraries to create a classic games collection that people could check out and experience like they would DVDs. Perhaps there would be a special purpose room setup with the systems ready to go. Maybe start a petition and send it to congressmen. The petition would be to add classic games to the library of congress. It could be good for their next election. 2. Game Clubs - Establish classic game clubs on college campuses. Start chapters with universities that have a strong technical curriculum. 3. Commercial Opportunities - Recently there has been an uptick in classic arcades. Perhaps request these venues to include consoles as well. If not, then maybe create your own business where people can purchase day/week/month/year passes where they can play all of the classic games they want.
I always find it strange how older games get rinsed on the big gaming websites the way they do. “This game doesn’t play like as well as a modern one.” Well no shit. There’s more to going back to older stuff than just how it plays. Atmosphere, vibe, the pure historical aspect of seeing what was done with the tech available at the time. How can games ever be seriously considered as art when the manufacturers, gaming press, and even a lot of gamers keep treating it like a fucking product and nothing else?
That's the thing if games were universally considered as an art form then there'd be funding like there is for most of the arts, and in this case games and consoles, like we see for film and music that could help with preservation and protection of creative works. Huge point not really discussed by anyone else.
is monopolizing gonna be a way of life in the near future? We have to unite and fight for our right as a consumer no matter what business it is. Thank you for this video.
Let the Retro Community be a Thorn in their side holding them accountable, tearing business from them. Its time to stop treating these companies as potential sponsors and allies and as our abject enemies. Piracy is morraly justified. And holding on to physical media is a threat to their shareholders. The old games will run again.
The main reason why companies don't want you to play old games is because 6th - 7th gen is the golden era of gaming and they know it, which is why most old games are stream only when it's available by a company.
Sony had the perfect formula during the PS3 era with backward compatibility and even selling older games on the online store. Then they just intentionally gave up on it on the PS4 and even shut down the whole thing. I don't want to rely on piracy to play older games but they make it hard not to, especially with how the price of ps1/ps2 games are going up to ridiculous amounts.
It also came out at a large cost too - The PS3 was incredibly expensive at first because they had to support all the extra hardware to support direct compatibility. They cut that out and moved to emulation later on to cut costs for the hardware. Unfortuantly the cell archecture for the PS3 is really difficult to get working on the PS4 which is why they never got it running there - the lack of perceived demand wouldn't justify the costs in Sony's mind. Sony has really changed their perspective on older content as well, moving to a perspective of "who wants to play older games".
@@purelogarithm And that's the part the sucks the most. The emulator was working pretty well. I only had 2 PS2 games out of over 40 that didn't work. I have a hard time to believe they couldn't pull it off on PS4 for at least ps1 and 2 games. Like you said, the current CEO simply hates older video games and doesn't even hide it.
You forget how often GOG just gives stuff for free. Not as often as EPIC, but that free stuff is also DRM free. And I have now a pretty big library full of just free retro games there.
@@psymagearcade Yeah, GOG isn't perfect, they definetly have their own issues, (As evidenced by the launch of Cyberpunk) but they're absolutely killing it when it comes to preserving some retro games.
They just want you to forget that once upon a time, the standards for a game release were higher. Back in the day, a game came completed day one. What you had on the disc was the entire damn thing: no extra content needed, no extra patches needed, no extra monetization, no online requirement either. If there was extra content, you had to actually unlock by playing. Either that, or you had big ass expansion packs that doubled the content. I am a younger millenial, my childhood years were the 2000's, I definitely remember the standards of that time.
@@psymagearcade and there was nothing that could be done about it either. Nowadays you have patches, but the problem is that the companies are getting lazier too, they know that they can fix it later. On that I have no one to blame but the braindead consoomers that still buy them anyway. Imagine buying a car that has one wheel missing but being promised that they will mail it to you later. Why can't people apply the same standards to games as they would to any other product?
God forbid the younger generation experience what gaming was like in the golden age. Finished games that were polished and perfected. Zero microtransactions. Different and unique games, not just another shooter. I bought a PS5 and I'm still playing GTA5. Where are the PS5 games that are not PS4 ports. I go to the playstore and see games that should be on SNES. That are rip offs of Castlevania or Metroid. Thank God for my emulator.
The completionist was found to be allegedly committing charity fraud. He had all that money to buy those games but not enough to donate to his own charity.
The newest problem for PC gaming is the ongoing problem of preserving and playing Windows 3.1 games on modern systems, as Steam and GOG still currently doesn't have any Windows 3.1-era games on their storefronts emulated via OTVDM, due to the fact that Microsoft discontinued the NTVDM and the 16-bit Windows on Windows subsystems in Windows 11. Wish to see Ziggurat Interactive, Piko Interactive, Pixel Games UK or Night Dive Studios re-release old Windows 3.1-era PC Games on Steam and GOG using OTVDM in the future.
Oh yeah, I didn't even think about 3.1. Granted, it didn't last that long because Windows 95 took off, but there are games from that era that need to be preserved.
@@GenyaArikado No. Windows 3.1. There are some games made just for 3.1 that aren't DOS based, albeit there aren't many of them though. That was right before Windows 95 took off.
From Atari Pong to the PS5 I own nearly every console ever released so I see myself as a video game historian and I am proud to know the whole history but it also makes me really sad that most people will never experience most historical points in gaming. The gaming industry is focused too much on technical evolution. No game is ever outdated. I know that games like Fifa are replaced each year but even those games are still respectable games. We have to stop thinking that games or graphics can be outdated and are replaced by their successors. I am not even joking by saying that even Pong is still a very good and playable game. Oh by the way I play most of the time retro games and I am rarely buying new games so I guess the gaming industry hates people like me. Subscription services are the saddest business model to me. Actually I play all my games on original hardware but I have to preserve my games and make my collection future proof so I am using ODEs, Everdrives and othe solutions where I can save and play my games on
As a younger gamer, even games from 15 to 20 years ago can be incredibly hard to experience. Pokémon games as recent as only _11_ years ago are starting to absolutely jump up in price. DS and GBA games in general can be very pricey, and 3DS and Wii U games are getting there, too. I don't think the 3DS Pokémon games will get much more expensive, because everything after XY is kind of just terrible, but other 3DS games will. Dragon Quest 8 is already expensive, DQ7 is pretty expensive, and so is Kid Icarus: Uprising. I'm sure Samus Returns, the Zelda games, Fire Emblem, Kirby(Epic Yarn, yikes), Mario&Luigi: Dream Team, the Atlus games, Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon, and more will also grow in price significantly over the next decade.
This, alongside with licensing problems are what holding old game rerelease. This problem occurs towards bit newer titles. Examples are: Old NFS? Need to relicense the musics and cars. Old Forzas? Idem. Old sport games? Yet another licensing issue if it was used. Old GTA? Songs deleted because licensing issues. Sega's outrun? Ferrari holding it back. There's also a prototype of GoldenEye 007 for xbla... Only to be cancelled because James Bond licensing. But it got discovered somehow.
I feel like these licensing deals need to be more modernized going forward to cover re-releases in order to avoid these situations. I don't know how companies in other industries would feel about that though.
It's simple, video games should be subject to use it or loose it laws present in other mediums. If the owners of the content don't exercise rights by attempting to monetize then the IPs should enter public domain. I have no issue with paying a publisher for a work at a reasonable rate once every 20 years (ie remastered releases that add compatibility for new OS' or platforms), but if they just shelf it and don't offer it to the public then those titles should be free for others to resell.
When it comes to "old-school" arcade games, the PS1 & PS2 probably have the best selection of "classic gaming collections" out of any of the older consoles. Many of the these collections were released on multiple consoles, but some were exclusive to SONY. It would certainly be nice if all these older collections got remastered & re-released on today's consoles. Something like "Atari 50 Anniversary Collection" is a good step in that direction. Hopefully SEGA, Namco, Taito, Midway, & others will follow suit.
Atari 50 was interesting in terms of the presentation and the bonus content. The game selection could have been better, but you can tell a lot of thought was put into it otherwise.
@@psymagearcadeYeah the Jaguar selection was not great. Granted the Jaguar didn’t have the best line up period but Trevor Mcfur was TERRIBLE. No AVP, Wolfenstein 3d, Doom..
@@Nick_Nightingale Most of the lack of games boils down to rights - Digital Eclipse were only able to get access to games that Atari owned rights to - lots of games were made by other companies.
Excellent video, hopefully gaming doesn't crash. I've been playing since the 90's, and still have 3 of my childhood consoles. Atari 2600, Nintendo Entertainment System & Genesis.
Gaming won’t crash because there’s really only 3 options in games and 1st party made games don’t just crap out games to see if they will make money like release like 50 games a year
The most important change that needs to happen to help protect preservation is changing copyright law itself. Under no circumstance should copyright extend beyond 50 years, as anywhere beyond that, IP’s simply face the real risk of going extinct due to the extensive damage that years without any support will do. The current state of copyright means that by the time any of us will be able to freely take all necessary actions to preserve a game, most of us who remember it to begin with will have already passed away. Copyright for many of these products is functionally forever. As long as that is the case preserving media will always be a massive uphill battle.
I agree that the copyright system in the U.S. has some problems that need to be fixed. It shouldn't have taken as long as it did for Steamboat Willie to enter the public domain.
I walked into a GameStop two or three weeks ago for the first time in three years and it was a ghost town. It felt sad looking around for more than a minute or two. Wasn't much there either.
@@psymagearcade they'll fade away like the Toys R Us's and other "necessary" stores of their day. I do miss the fun times at Gamestop early 00s around Halo time lol
I think it's paramount that gamers migrate to PC over console. If the industry were to colapse and companyies like Microsoft and Sony pulled out completely. Your new consoles become bricks at best. Even with indies picking up the pieces, without those companies to approve new games on the console you simply don't get any new games. Whereas the PC is an inherently open platform. Even despite the reliance on Steam. You have access to emulation so you can always play older games even if the consoles are no longer available due to time and misuse. You will always have access to indie games. Even if Steam goes away. Because there is no central authority who delcares what is or is not allowed on a PC. Even if Microsoft get more authoritarian with Windows people have the option to switch to a Linux distro. There is always another way to play games with PC. Whereas with consoles you are just stuck with what you're given and have to trust the big corporations have your best interests in mind.
It's telling that the few companies who are interested in real game preservation, by way of those massive Collections re-releases (such as the recent Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection) are all from companies that don't make consoles
Loved your video! You are absolutely correct that the Industry is Curbing Competition. After all they do not just compete with contemporary games, but from games across time.
Very eye opening, thanks for this! I own an N64 and I buy cartridges, at the second-hand market of course, and I like to joke that I'm happy Nintendo isn't getting a single cent out of it. I also have a jailbroken Wii for all emulation purposes up to GameCube. 🎉
I love old video games! Fact is, I still play games made for the BBC Micro on BeebEM because the games of the eighties were seriously excellent. I also still play video games from the early two thousands because they were seriously excellent given the hardware limitations of the time.
Unfortunately these companies will never change because their actual customers are the shareholders and since shareholders have a stake in the company they’ll obviously want to focus on maximizing profits. Basically the consumer base is secondary to shareholders. Valve’s Steam is by no means some shining beacon of hope but since they’ve made great success as a private company they can actually make and do things that is representative of the people in the company and their values. Shareholders by concept alone compromises the quality and output of games. Their are definitely a bunch of talented people at shitty companies like EA but the people in business suits limit their impact and creativity.
I've been collecting games and original hardware since hurricane Katrina destroyed my life and everything I owned back in August 2005, after gen 8 I have refused to upgrade my console hardware ever again because I could tell 5 years ago in 2018 the industry I once knew and loved is not only long gone and never coming back but the industry that has replaced it will never live up to the golden age of 1990-2006 that came before it as the issues which plague the modern industry started around 2006-2007 and have only been getting worse. I'm much happier with previous gen hardware than wasting my money on the new stuff, its just not worth the money they're demanding of consumers anymore.
Yo!! Psymage arcade! Perfect video my friend! I couldn't have said it better. We need more videos like this. A lot of these new generation gamers need to be in the know and watch this video. I've been trying to tell my ol' lady's son about how much our video games were much better than their modern games. I think the PS3, WII and XBOX 360 era was the last great generation of gaming. The ps4 was also a great console too, but nowhere near as good as the previous gens.
Thank you! I'm glad you mentioned the PS3/360/Wii era because that was the last generation where I felt like we saw a big performance leap from the previous one. I still remember the hype for the 360 and PS3 and all the trailers back then and how much those systems blew my mind.
So I find this an interesting topic because a lot of it reflects television/movies and streaming. I finally cut off Netflix because I didn't want to support their poorer service for higher prices and less content. Then, I wanted to find some older shows and began to notice the complete lack of availability besides hunting ebay for an older or bootleg copy (The Critic, Dilbert, Titus). All the while, even newer shows find the chopping block and never even had a physical release (Westworld) I hate to say it, but we're going to go back to Piracy hard or for those who wise up, stop consuming couch media. Cause video games, music, TV/Movies and similar want to keep us in one place - spending money with no quality of life benefits. Great video and Opinion Piece. Definitely makes ya think.
Some people will just buy anything that gets released , in the older days you had to play at a kiosk in the store as a demo or at a friends house , games were pretty expensive too , so people would only buy something that they liked and would play .There was no internet updates so games really had to work fairly well or people would not buy it .I have a pc and have bought older games on steam , and find them fun as well as harder to play then some newer games that hold your hand the whole way .
One of the big issues I think is, the hardware, unlike music or movies, that I can play a digital copy in my phone, even though I got them on iTunes almost 2 decades ago, is that we got the restrictions of hardware, gaming hardware can be so especific that one generation console is completely incompatible with the next gen one even though they are made by the same company, and kudos to Microsoft with their retro compatibility efforts on Xbox, which may not be perfect but it is good to have, but Sony and Nintendo are really leaving us in the dark being unable to easily play their libraries without any issue or being able to rediscover some classics, so yeah, it is either PC or emulation on PC. And I don't say, let's steal from the big corporations, for examply my PlayStation and Switch are not modded, but if I want to play a game from 25 years ago that is not compatible with modern hardware I rather download the ISO and emulate it with QOL improvements than paying too much to scalpers online to play on dodgy old hardware.
I agree with everything you said, but some constructive critique; that background track you had playing made it hard to listen to what you were saying, maybe its the track itself, the volume, or even my device but it made listening harder
I can really agree with this video, Gaming has been not good recently it feels like gaming got boring with newer games, Most newer Video Games have Microstransaction, Features being removed new games that we liked from older titles, Not interesting gameplay etc. the last time gaming felt fun me was back then for me was the PS3, X360, Wii and Wii U etc.
Don’t forget emulation. I bet these companies see the hell arcade 1up gets and the troubles they can’t overcome. I heard N64 mini wont come out ever due to emulating problems. I’m and snes and ps4 collector. I’ll always buy duplicates of my games. Best investment and plus the historical value of it too, I remember VHS tapes would be $1 a pop and not now lol that B level horror movie that was tossed away isn’t toss-able now lol
N64 emulation on PC has gotten much better in recent years due to Parallel RDP, but you need a good CPU for any emulator using it and the cheap boards these companies would prefer to use are not going to cut it
@@psymagearcadeMy Steam Deck blows up N64 games to 4K on Parallel no problem. I'm sure they could make a mini console with a $120 price tag that runs N64 games at 4x without issue.
@@TheAbsol7448 no, I really don't think they could. It would likely be way more than that since they have to make profit and compensate license holders - there just isn't any money in such a system
all about, CONTROL smh. industry refuses 2focus on creating great games & let the consumers decide who wins. That piracy angle IMO iz BS. Bcuz even when I did download music back in the day, if the album was HOT I went and bought the original out the store. + downloaded songs/artists I never knew of ie EXPOSER. The industry is really eliminating COMPETITION.
There is some truth to your argument about piracy in music, especially if you apply it to the original Napster back in 1999 /2000. A lot of people were on it at its peak, but sales were still going up for the industry initially. I do think that eventually, a lot of the pirates just didn't want to pay anything, but I also think the major labels putting out a worse and worse product didn't help either, so the hot albums just weren't coming out most of the time.
I picked up another PS3 so I could play The Simpsons Arcade game and Wolfenstein 3D again. 2 purchases I made way back just sitting on my account doing nothing. Definitely worth it and I’m buying up a lot of physical PS3 media for next to nothing (Midnight Club LA for $3!).
EA's Need For Speed Shift was one of their best-selling titles because it deviated away from cop chases/street racing, and focused on circuit track racing. They came out with two titles, and now you can't purchase them anywhere 😢
Older games being completely accessible would force the industry to make better games. Imagine not having to cough up $300 to play Pokémon Emerald and being able to play that over the trash that's on Switch?
The Switch had gone nearly a full console gen lifespan and there is STILL no TurboGrafx-16 games on Switch online... And people are hoping in vain that Gamecube is coming. It really is sad.
I think Nintendo is waiting for their next system to do Gamecube emulation. Also, I don't know if Turbografx 16 will ever be part of their subscription because Konami doesn't seem to care about the old Hudson Soft library.
I don't think GameCube games will be ever coming in the Nintendo Switch online subscription. Pikmin 1 and 2 have their own ports, the first Luigi's Mansion has a 3DS port (but only the second will be ported to Switch... weird), Metroid Prime has its own remaster (but not in a trilogy like on Wii)...
No company has been as profitable by re-releasing older titles than Nintendo. I can't see this changing soon. The greatest sales model for permitting customers to play earlier purchased digital titles, has been Steam on the PC. I can still download titles from 2005, while Nintendo closed their stores. Second to Steam is Xbox's digital store, which permits me to play a majority of my Xbox 360, digital titles, on my Series X.
But none of this had anything to do with Nintendo playing Soldier Boy and shutting down his console! No one was willing to help him. His console had all the games nobody plays anymore, but once Nintendo seen he sold 250k they sabotaged him! The truth comes to the light!
I’m pretty sure all of those people that are still only playing super Mario as the only game They play Are buying all of the super Mario merchandise and the fastest way to make sure somebody leaves your franchises leave a sour taste in your mouth eventually will stop buying your merchandise Just because somebody doesn’t buy all the new video games doesn’t mean they’re not buying the new merch like I know call of duty fans that still play older call of duty games, but they buy the modern colour duty merch
When i bought games for the Mega Drive collection on PC i was absolutely happy because i could 100% legally buy these games as ROMs inside an official emulator environment. So i frequently supported that with my money. Didn't matter that most of these games were already as physical copies in my vintage game collection i had since my childhood when these games were brand new. And yes, i do support GOG as well. Not just for the re-release of older games but also to have DRM-free versions of games you can get on Steam. And i do make sure i make offline backups on several redundancy backups like BD-R, DVD-R, external harddrives or flash memory. Sometimes this is crucial because you never know if an update completely changes the whole game. Like Deepsilver did with Saints Row the fourth.... and completely replaced it with their shitty new Anniversary edition that is VASTLY INFERIOR to the original release. On GOG they completely replaced the original version with no way to get the original version anymore. If you didn't download and backup the original version.... you can only try "illegally" downloading the old version somewhere... CDPR did a better job with The Witcher III where they moved the original GOTY release to the Extras. So you can at least still get an offline backup of the original version and they leave you a choice.
I'm glad you mentioned Sega's Mega Drive collection on Steam because that's one of the few examples of a major company not locking down the ROMs. I wish they would do a Master System collection like that. It can't be too expensive to do releases like that. And yeah, these publishers sometimes don't care about letting players play previous versions of their games, even if it screws over the customers.
@@psymagearcade Oh yeah when i saw there was a folder with the original uncompressed ROM files in the install folder of the Mega Drive Collection, that i could load with every emulator of my choice, this really made me wanna buy even more of their releases in that collection. It's a shame they never continued with it but i'm still willing to support it if they continue somehow. Or at least with standalone PC ports, like they did with "Zero Tolerance" for example. Heck yes!!!! A Master System collection would be awesome!!!
I've bought that collection as well. Never owned a SEGA myself, as I was into the Nintendo Super NES. But now I do own the classics which the Mega Drive Collection ships with.
Nintendo closing down the Wii Shop Channel, the eShop, and others is the reason why rom sites are a thing.
They've existed even before that, but the shutdown of those digital stores has definitely been a middle finger to preservation and certainly encourages more piracy.
@@psymagearcadeit encourage you to buy re-release on newer console. That is their tactics
The fact big companies like Nintendo and EA simply pretend their classic games don't exist is quite sad. I would totally buy their old games if they simply bothered to let them available to be purchased. But since they don't care might as well sail the seven seas.
@SammEater Grr, I hate how Nintendo treats fans or older Nintendo consoles like garbage!
Also, it's better for gamers (including me) to stop buying remakes/remasters of retro triple AAA games (including the Nintendo ones) and instead, start buying indie games and AA games.
@@SammEater With Nintendo it's even more bizarre, because unlike EA which acts like their old games don't exist, Nintendo pretends they're readily available.
The irony here is that it is the software pirates who are now the good guys.
They have enabled the preservation of a huge amount of games.
Long may they continue to do so!
always have been the good guys
They have always been the good guys.
@@SawGudman Piracy is not theft. Piracy is monopoly infringement. That is a big difference.
Property laws are there so people can keep their stuff. Monopolies are put in place to prevent people from having stuff, so that those people -who would otherwise produce their own stuff- need to buy it instead.
When you copy something, you do not take anything. No one loses property. So you are not stealing. What you are doing is using your own resources to produce something - a copy in this case. And if that something is restricted by monopolies (like copyright) than you would be violating a monopoly.
@@SawGudman Pirates do not take anything. Their crime is that of production, they produce copies.
@@dr.c2195 I wish I could take credit for this, but a user on one of the plethora of UA-cam vids I've seen on this topic said "if buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing", and I think they're absolutely right. The comment was made in response to the ability for companies to take away access to content people have paid for via DRM, but I think it applies here too, especially since subscriptions are DRM in different clothing.
I'm reminded of "You will own nothing and be happy."
That's what I think a lot of companies want for consumers.
@@psymagearcade Not just companies, entire governments too.
They’re all in on it
@@notimportant3033 If nobody is owned by governments or companies, this could be true. If companies and governments own nobody and nothing, this could be a reality.
@@imacg5 That's not what it means. They all want you to live as a serf, eternally indebted to them and unable to break free. You will own nothing but they will own you.
F*ck gaming as a service. Leave the power to the consumers! Physical releases and preservation are more important than greed.
I like physical media, but I think that DRM-free digital games are fine. DRM is the real enemy, not necessarily the digital files themselves.
Tax it! 50% of revenue and 50% of the absolute value of the profits, so that they pay whether they make or lose money. Render all this Service As A Substitute completely unviable as a business model.
Actually the reason they don't want to preserve older games is GREED!!!!!!💵💵💵💵💵💵💵🤑🤑🤑🤑🤑🤑
Isn't that the reason for anything that involves companies?
@@supersonicmario56 Exactly, which is why I'm amazed at these videos getting so much attention when their so obvious!
That's the point of the whole video. Facts. It's about money. Plain and simple.
A...greed! lolz
Big N needs to realize proprietary consoles are all but dead now. PC is the way to go.
They can't let the younger zoomers and Gen Alpha knowing games once shipped complete with unlockables including cosmetics,secrets, cheat codes and etc.
Oh and when there were expansions (Half Life Opposing Force and Blue Shift for example) they were worth the price of admission and didn't come with cosmetics you had to purchase.
THIS. JUST. THIS. I myself am refusing to do any of this crap. My target is to make a good game, not a trash game, and AAA's methods ain't it, Chief!
they dont know because they grew into everything on a phone etc. they dont know nothing before the phones existence. or what it was like before computers were everywhere ; etc. they dont have that experience and never will. they were born into a "fast and messy world". id rather go back to being a little "slower"
They don't want you playing old games because they're better, lmao. It's not a nostalgia thing either cause I've gone and played heaps of classics I've never played before, on systems I've never played before, and they've become my favourite games ever.
It’s amazing how even the younger generations have picked up on this and are into retro games. I kept telling them that Minecraft sucks. Now they can believe me.
@@AngryCalvin Yeah, Minecraft does suck. It didn't have to, either.
@@AngryCalvinMinecraft as a concept isn’t bad at all, it’s just the updates that completely ruined it
And its so annoying that AAA apologists will try to convince you that old games are actually bad and you're just nostalgic.
They use the most bizarre mental gymnastics
Same.
Any minute spent on old games = Minutes lost that could have been on current consoles with micro transactions and DLC.
Any dollar spent on old games = Dollars lost that could have been used on current games, micro transactions, and DLC.
Yep, the gaming industry can't have those things happening.
Yo you just did an opportunity cost analysis between spending time on old game vs new. Good job!
Wait, how does this make sense? Why would you WANT micro-transactions and DLC as a paid service?
Any minute spending time acquiring classic video games = worthwhile as we can SAVE and keep, but generally if you do it the ALT way... >:D
Any minute spent on current video games = life lost because they can take them away at a moment's notice and you are out the money you spent to acquire it because of their FORCED RENTAL CONSOLES. Thus, video game preservation.
@@DaWhiteTygerthe company wants you buying micro transactions and DLC cuz they get away with selling less product for more money.
That's not my point@@borginburkes1819 . My point was it sounded like that is a desired outcome, not any forceful pushback against this type of behavior.
Imagine if any other industry were this blatantly anti-consumer. "NOOOO you can't watch Citizen Kane you have to watch the latest Adam Sandler movie!!!"
Haha yep. Or even better: "You can't listen to Nirvana. You can only listen to Machine Gun Kelly".
Only the entertainment industry can get away with this. Not just MAFIAA, others have done insane things as well. In the music industry there was the Loudness War that ultimately benefited nobody. Then Sony Music using malware as DRM in music CDs.
@@rps215Yep, even my poor innocent Amerie was affected by Sony in the mid 2000s by that.
Then again in this fast paced society where this generation has a short attention span and has difficulty understanding complex themes with little to no humor who would want to sit down and watch Citizen Kane start to finish? At least the Adam Sandler movies are easy to understand with characters that keep your attention and has humor audiences can enjoy. A better comparison was Nirvana and MGK
then no one watches the adam sandler movie; and movie bombs . then you hear crickets
Kudos to all pirates for preserving games for generations to enjoy. You are all champs.
Ik I had to hand it to them for preserving spec ops the line on pc
@@elwen8525Agreed 💯 percent. I am currently enjoying a pirated version of Specs Ops in all its glory and at chapter 11.
Gem of a game preserved by those gamer friendly pirates. If buying digital games isn't owning, pirating games isn't stealing... it's sharing.
Kudos to all the thieves for copying illegally games for generations to enjoy. You are all champ-thieves.
(There, I corrected the sentence with its true meaning for you).
@@clapiotis These pirates are simply sharing games not stealing them. They don't break into the offices of developers or steal anything. If buying a game isn't owning, pirating isn't stealing.
(There, I corrected you to bring you out of your fantasy land).
I play alot of older games only because they are more fun and enticing than newer games. Even my son enjoys playing the older games that I've been playing than the newer games. Not to say that there aren't some good current games, they are just far and few. You have alot of rushed unfinished games, micro transactions, buggy and so on. No love and passion is involved anymore and it certainly shows. It's priority is now money first. It's kinda sad really. When you make with love, it shows. When you make without it, it shows. Awesome video sir. ❤
Agree 100%. Thank you for watching! Also, it's awesome that you got your son into classic video games.
Even back then it was about money. Games weren’t cheap like they are now. A 60$ game was a lot more expensive when people earned 3$ an hour instead of the current 15-20an hour on the low end of employment.
Yeah, the gotcha and freemium system has impacted the quality of newer releases.
@@Bonanzaking You're right. I mean look at the Atari 2600 at it's later years. ET, Pac-man, Amidar, Pooyan. The mentality was for them to release it and we'd buy it just because of the name even if it's bad. The passion and love started with the NES, Genesis and SNES. Most companies put in alot of passion into these games for these consoles but there are some who didn't and we know where they ended up. I see the same thing happening for current generations if these companies keep doing what they are doing. I was so disappointed when Cyberpunk 2077 came out and I had very high hopes for it. So many broken games released for that quick buck.
@@AmberShort i still remember playing the original Pokémon games as a kid on my gameboy that felt like games built on passion compared to the more modern releases. The games were expensive back then. Now a game is less than half a days wage. It wasn’t so not too long ago.
This is the best expose I've ever listed to regarding the preservation situation in gaming. I also appreciated your critique of games journalism. It's worth it for us to own our games physically or DRM free.
Thank you! That means a lot to see that the message has resonated with people, because I've been thinking about this issue for a while.
Lets just cut to the chase. Majority of these new games just suck.. Its like something is missing. Sure it has pretty graphics and new engines with the bells and whistles but the story mostly sucks, variety sucks, no replay value, being repetitive, etc. Dont get me started with paying for extra content. It just seems no reason to really even play these new games. Its like the gaming industry is just not listening to its customers and just giving us crap and acting all surprise when the games fail. I mean i get making games a new generation but the idea of a video games was to make them fun. Fun factor.. Its crazy to me how the older games have crummy graphics but fun as hell to play.
Or some older games are still being updated by the fans. Take X-Wing Alliance for example on the PC. It was released back in 1999. And even now it receives updates from the game community. From a complete graphics overhaul, sound overhaul to a complete incorporation of the classic TIE Fighter game.
I don't see things like this happening with the current games. Call of Duty 47, Battle Field 198 etc.
LOL 2023 is LITERALLY one of the greatest years in gaming ever chief
As an elder millenial, I had been not gaming much for some years, but as of the past five years or so, I've been playing a lot of indie games: Celeste, Hollow Knight, Ori, Afterimage, Thumper, A Hat in Time, Cuphead, Ender Lillies, Hue, Bloodstained.
It seems that hard 2D platformers run in my veins.
When you play old games you realize how much better they are and you will demand more from modern game studios. This is why they don't want you playing old games.
Companies want endless profits, that is the reason why game preservation is never on their agendas.
We will one day have to tell our kids, "Yeah, video games used to come in these cases; you bought them in the store."
I'm also afraid that someday games on streaming platforms like Microsoft xCloud become a popular thing and companies start to launch their titles exclusively on them.
If that happens, games would be server-sided and could never be downloaded, thus would be terrible for both preservation and game ownership, since you would be tied to a subscription to keep accessing them and they could be removed at any moment.
Yep, that would be a great example of "You own nothing" if that comes true.
@@psymagearcade Was the Google Stadia the same sort of thing? Now you can't get any games exclusive to that!
@@BagOfMagicFood That's exactly it. You had to pay for the service and then pay after for each game you wanted to stream, and you still owned nothing! That's not even getting into the fact that latency was an issue and a lot of people don't have good enough internet even now for that kind of service. Streaming games is a lot more demanding than streaming music and movies.
And if they can take the games away forever, they can keep using Fear Of Missing Out as a selling point...
That is exactly the direction they are going in. Make no mistake, any given industry is going to have long term road maps for the direction they want to go in, and it is easier and easier to manipulate consumers in this day of everything collecting telemetry on everybody. They do these thing at a slow and steady pace so that most people don't notice, and those that do get shut down as anti-progress or conspiracy theorists. Microsoft got themselves in hot water with the release of the Xbox-One by trying to limit the sale of used games if memory serves. That goal has been there for a long time most likely, but they tried to push too hard and too fast. Then the Ps5 has a digital-only model, and even with many "physical" copies of modern games you still have to go online to get day one patches or verify the game, assuming the disc isn't just there to hold a digital key for online purchase. Many modern computer towers don't even have slots for DVD/Bluray drives in the front anymore because who wants to buy a physical copy of something when you can just buy a DRM riddled copy that won't work offline or stream it.
Old games don't have IAP and DLC, something that modern games relay to.
Or installation times, long updates, always online checks, ads, etc...
@@h0laPlaneta No installation times? Funny, I have dim memories of feeding in a handful of floppy disks to install DOS games back in the early 1990s. Or a CD from the mid-1990s to mid-2000s (and the game often didn't come close to filling it). Games you can play without installing them were a rarity. The Lost Mind of Dr Brain is close. It runs off the CD and relies on the Windows 3.1 equivalent of a Start Menu shortcut to point it to where you want your saved games, so it takes next to no disk space, but there's still technically an installation step to set up that shortcut.
You absolutely nailed it, i have always preferred the physical copy of a game and I still have my old school hardware. and I have 2 very good used video game stores in my area a few blocks apart that can fix anything that goes wrong and always have a great selection of games. Old school games will never die. Good stuff.
Sadly, I only have one retro gaming store nearby and they're alright, but their selection has gotten worse over time and they don't do repairs.
You are quite lucky to have them nearby. Sadly, retro video game stores are starting to die quite rapidly :( Particularly in the less densely populated areas.
Old school games will def die. The avg person doesn't even know where their old games went. Ask your non-passionate gamer friends where their old games are and you'll see. Its up to us to preserve them! (I just started collecting physical copies again and have a ton of digital ones).
They hate preservation,so their are plenty of people wanting to keep it alive and do right for retro players including newcomers as well.
There really should be some kind of international video game repository where anything you want to play is right at your fingertips on a unified software platform online. Each game should also be accompanied with research content as much as possible including interviews and articles about the games' development process to credit the teams that created the said games.
A problem with that is that if a single company owned that whole repository and all the rights to all games within it, they can charge outrageous prices and have really sketchy policies.
But hey, that's just my two cents.
@@newgameld2512 I was meaning a repository or a museum that's publicly funded through donations. Yeah if it's owned by one or two companies then we wind up right back in the situation we're in now.
@@newgameld2512Exactly. Anti-monopoly laws. It's bad enough that Disney now owns half of the media.
This is a great discussion. Before I feel like we paid less and got more in terms of content, replay value, and gameplay design/gameplay loop. Now we pay more and get gorgeous looking games but we don't own it and probably won't play it through again multiple times, they're more like movies that you'll watch once every other year if even that. They want us all to be at their mercy in terms of "ownership" where they own everything and you keep renting from them.
As with many things, Mr. Krabs has the answer:
*"Money"*
The industry conditioning of gamers is that new is better.
an update of today, the xbox 360 will have its store closed, its time to return to the plataform to preserve the digital only games
Thank you for that update. That's the first I'm hearing of it so I appreciate it.
If your playing old games your most likely not playing new games. I play both but love old games more
You can play both even with limited time but personally, much more times goes to the older games 😛
That is simple they now realize they can make a ton of money off remasters and remakes to re-sell the games to you. That is the #1 reason.
Also one of the reasons why I support 'game preservation' AND fight against 'games as a service/gamepass/cloud subscriptions etc..' and DRM.
Because one ultimately will not own their games.
Yeah but ports and remasters are not preservation, in reality it's the opposite as they try to be replacements
If they actually let those games available, but they won't even do that. There are some games that companies that Nintendo simply won't re-release no matter how many players want access to those.
Remakes are often warranted, but the original games should never be delisted. Dead Space and Resident Evil did it right. Remasters, I think are a lot less warranted, though I think it's fine if the original game was never on PC to begin with. I'd be perfectly fine with a _proper_ Red Dead Redemption 1 remaster, for instance.
@@KazeiraPorts are trying to be replacements? Lmao, what? A port is the exact same game reworked to run natively on newer hardware. It's like saying the fan port of SM64 on the Wii is somehow different.
Because freedom is their biggest rival. When consumers have freedom, they cannot control the consumers.
I collected a few thousand roms on my own. But then I broke down and bought a consoleX2pro just to collect 126,000 roms in a niced menu's package. Just copied the card on my pc and I have it all, just deplaced the emulators with my custom once and kept the sweet menu. You can have everything from 2005 and earlier compacted and easy to play. I bought my thing like 2 years ago. Probably a better version now. Just research. Fuck the corporations. This shit belongs to everyone and it is not preventing them from selling new games. No one loses...unless these classic works of art disappear. Then everyone loses.
those consoles dont have enough space for all the isos....i have over 200 000 games on my hdds....all the gc, ps2, wii, ps1, saturn, ps3 for example....games takes to much space for the consoles and windows 10 is more compatible with roms
I've bought one of those TV sticks. It came with a 128 gb SD card filled with 40k+ games from basically all consoles up to the PSP and PlayStation 1. From the era of my childhood till my early 30's. It came with 2 wireless controllers as well, which work very well.
I've copied the SD card over to my laptop and can play all the old classics when I want. The total cost of the whole things pretty much equals the price for a single PC or console game today. Not counting possible DLC's and other cash grabs.
You completely and utterly forgot about arcade games, especially the japanese ones of today.
That's a fair critique, but arcade game preservation deserves its own video anyway. I was really thinking more about console and PC with this video.
Good video. One point about Xbox back-compat. They have more recently said that they want as many Activision Blizzard games on Game Pass as possible. I expect the back-compat team has been hard at work on getting Activision games running. Microsoft said they’d reached the limit of what their current technology and licensing allowed. When it comes to popping in the disc and running the game, the main limitation is what the publisher allows. Once the ABK purchase is complete, Microsoft can add a tonne of Activision games to the back-compat list. And those that don’t have other licensing issues (music, etc.) can also be added for digital sale.
Video game tech has hit the Point of Diminishing Returns. That's why AAA games are disappointing, while low budget retro games have been killing it.
Oh, we hit that point a long time ago. Somewhere around the mid-2000s. I remember running across an image comparing the G-Man from the Half Life franchise between Half Life 1, 2, and Alyx. There's a huge difference between Half Life 1 (1998) and Half Life 2 (2004), but a much smaller one between Half Life 2 and Half Life Alyx (2020). Seems to me that around the point where we got programmable shaders was the point of diminishing returns for graphics.
Completely agree with this video. Things are so messed up in the industry and It feels like its just getting worse everyday. Thank you for speaking out about this!
I am playing Legend of Zelda TP and Enternal Darkness Sanity’s Requiem…. Freaking awesome games and ED is 20+ years old and is still holds up very well, a masterpiece in many ways
I've never understood the hate that TP gets.
*3* *IDEAS*
1. Library Collections - Send in requests to public libraries to create a classic games collection that people could check out and experience like they would DVDs. Perhaps there would be a special purpose room setup with the systems ready to go. Maybe start a petition and send it to congressmen. The petition would be to add classic games to the library of congress. It could be good for their next election.
2. Game Clubs - Establish classic game clubs on college campuses. Start chapters with universities that have a strong technical curriculum.
3. Commercial Opportunities - Recently there has been an uptick in classic arcades. Perhaps request these venues to include consoles as well. If not, then maybe create your own business where people can purchase day/week/month/year passes where they can play all of the classic games they want.
Some arcades are actually including areas inside with classic consoles and CRTs. There's one a few hours away from me that does this.
I always find it strange how older games get rinsed on the big gaming websites the way they do.
“This game doesn’t play like as well as a modern one.”
Well no shit. There’s more to going back to older stuff than just how it plays. Atmosphere, vibe, the pure historical aspect of seeing what was done with the tech available at the time.
How can games ever be seriously considered as art when the manufacturers, gaming press, and even a lot of gamers keep treating it like a fucking product and nothing else?
Yeah, that's definitely a problem. It's like a nefarious form of revisionist history at times.
That's the thing if games were universally considered as an art form then there'd be funding like there is for most of the arts, and in this case games and consoles, like we see for film and music that could help with preservation and protection of creative works. Huge point not really discussed by anyone else.
is monopolizing gonna be a way of life in the near future? We have to unite and fight for our right as a consumer no matter what business it is. Thank you for this video.
“You will own nothing and you will be happy” -WEF
i'm playing my old games and ain't nobody gonna stop me. i still have my wii, ps2, n64, wii u, 3ds, ps3, and ps4.
Hate Microsoft?
@@DominikSobolewski yes.
Same here, plus my XBOX 360.
@@Anonymous-wb3nz I have 2 modded wii systems, modded wii u, modded 3ds and a modded ps3 slim. 😁
@@TheMegatron673 nice!
Let the Retro Community be a Thorn in their side holding them accountable, tearing business from them. Its time to stop treating these companies as potential sponsors and allies and as our abject enemies. Piracy is morraly justified. And holding on to physical media is a threat to their shareholders. The old games will run again.
*Lazy Town's You Are A Pirate increases in volume*
AAA companies - "WHY AM I HEARING BOSS MUSIC? I THOUGHT YOU TOOK CARE OF THEM!"
Games today are more theatrical emersive and impressive graphics. Games are no longer about fun
The main reason why companies don't want you to play old games is because 6th - 7th gen is the golden era of gaming and they know it, which is why most old games are stream only when it's available by a company.
Sony had the perfect formula during the PS3 era with backward compatibility and even selling older games on the online store. Then they just intentionally gave up on it on the PS4 and even shut down the whole thing. I don't want to rely on piracy to play older games but they make it hard not to, especially with how the price of ps1/ps2 games are going up to ridiculous amounts.
Yeah, the PS3 had amazing backwards compatibility when it came out.
It also came out at a large cost too - The PS3 was incredibly expensive at first because they had to support all the extra hardware to support direct compatibility. They cut that out and moved to emulation later on to cut costs for the hardware. Unfortuantly the cell archecture for the PS3 is really difficult to get working on the PS4 which is why they never got it running there - the lack of perceived demand wouldn't justify the costs in Sony's mind. Sony has really changed their perspective on older content as well, moving to a perspective of "who wants to play older games".
@@purelogarithm And that's the part the sucks the most. The emulator was working pretty well. I only had 2 PS2 games out of over 40 that didn't work. I have a hard time to believe they couldn't pull it off on PS4 for at least ps1 and 2 games. Like you said, the current CEO simply hates older video games and doesn't even hide it.
Piracy and second hand market is actually thriving in our country. In fact, it is my main mode of gaming.
You forget how often GOG just gives stuff for free. Not as often as EPIC, but that free stuff is also DRM free. And I have now a pretty big library full of just free retro games there.
I've definitely claimed some free games from GOG over the years. Good point!
@@psymagearcade Yeah, GOG isn't perfect, they definetly have their own issues, (As evidenced by the launch of Cyberpunk) but they're absolutely killing it when it comes to preserving some retro games.
They just want you to forget that once upon a time, the standards for a game release were higher. Back in the day, a game came completed day one. What you had on the disc was the entire damn thing: no extra content needed, no extra patches needed, no extra monetization, no online requirement either. If there was extra content, you had to actually unlock by playing. Either that, or you had big ass expansion packs that doubled the content.
I am a younger millenial, my childhood years were the 2000's, I definitely remember the standards of that time.
Yep, and if a game happened to be a mess at launch back then, especially on consoles, it was forever a mess and was criticized accordingly.
@@psymagearcade and there was nothing that could be done about it either. Nowadays you have patches, but the problem is that the companies are getting lazier too, they know that they can fix it later. On that I have no one to blame but the braindead consoomers that still buy them anyway. Imagine buying a car that has one wheel missing but being promised that they will mail it to you later. Why can't people apply the same standards to games as they would to any other product?
God forbid the younger generation experience what gaming was like in the golden age.
Finished games that were polished and perfected. Zero microtransactions. Different and unique games, not just another shooter.
I bought a PS5 and I'm still playing GTA5. Where are the PS5 games that are not PS4 ports.
I go to the playstore and see games that should be on SNES. That are rip offs of Castlevania or Metroid.
Thank God for my emulator.
The completionist was found to be allegedly committing charity fraud. He had all that money to buy those games but not enough to donate to his own charity.
Yeah, that was pretty crazy. Seemed like such a nice guy before all that came out.
@@psymagearcade His brother Jacque seems to be a lot dirtier than him.
Keep all your consoles, people. It's tempting to sell them when you get the next generation but trust me, keep them. I kept all mine in the attic
The newest problem for PC gaming is the ongoing problem of preserving and playing Windows 3.1 games on modern systems, as Steam and GOG still currently doesn't have any Windows 3.1-era games on their storefronts emulated via OTVDM, due to the fact that Microsoft discontinued the NTVDM and the 16-bit Windows on Windows subsystems in Windows 11.
Wish to see Ziggurat Interactive, Piko Interactive, Pixel Games UK or Night Dive Studios re-release old Windows 3.1-era PC Games on Steam and GOG using OTVDM in the future.
Oh yeah, I didn't even think about 3.1. Granted, it didn't last that long because Windows 95 took off, but there are games from that era that need to be preserved.
@@psymagearcade you mean DOS games? i have all dos games on my hdds
@@GenyaArikado No. Windows 3.1. There are some games made just for 3.1 that aren't DOS based, albeit there aren't many of them though. That was right before Windows 95 took off.
@@psymagearcade okey..i will look up those games
@@GenyaArikado MS-DOS games have been rereleased on Steam and GOG via DOSBox, but nothing regarding Windows 3.1 games have been rereleased via OTVDM.
From Atari Pong to the PS5 I own nearly every console ever released so I see myself as a video game historian and I am proud to know the whole history but it also makes me really sad that most people will never experience most historical points in gaming. The gaming industry is focused too much on technical evolution. No game is ever outdated. I know that games like Fifa are replaced each year but even those games are still respectable games. We have to stop thinking that games or graphics can be outdated and are replaced by their successors. I am not even joking by saying that even Pong is still a very good and playable game.
Oh by the way I play most of the time retro games and I am rarely buying new games so I guess the gaming industry hates people like me.
Subscription services are the saddest business model to me.
Actually I play all my games on original hardware but I have to preserve my games and make my collection future proof so I am using ODEs, Everdrives and othe solutions where I can save and play my games on
As a younger gamer, even games from 15 to 20 years ago can be incredibly hard to experience. Pokémon games as recent as only _11_ years ago are starting to absolutely jump up in price. DS and GBA games in general can be very pricey, and 3DS and Wii U games are getting there, too.
I don't think the 3DS Pokémon games will get much more expensive, because everything after XY is kind of just terrible, but other 3DS games will. Dragon Quest 8 is already expensive, DQ7 is pretty expensive, and so is Kid Icarus: Uprising. I'm sure Samus Returns, the Zelda games, Fire Emblem, Kirby(Epic Yarn, yikes), Mario&Luigi: Dream Team, the Atlus games, Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon, and more will also grow in price significantly over the next decade.
Newer games especially the big ones feel like you’re watching a movie and just randomly hitting buttons sometimes.
This, alongside with licensing problems are what holding old game rerelease. This problem occurs towards bit newer titles. Examples are:
Old NFS? Need to relicense the musics and cars.
Old Forzas? Idem.
Old sport games? Yet another licensing issue if it was used.
Old GTA? Songs deleted because licensing issues.
Sega's outrun? Ferrari holding it back.
There's also a prototype of GoldenEye 007 for xbla... Only to be cancelled because James Bond licensing. But it got discovered somehow.
I feel like these licensing deals need to be more modernized going forward to cover re-releases in order to avoid these situations. I don't know how companies in other industries would feel about that though.
It's simple, video games should be subject to use it or loose it laws present in other mediums. If the owners of the content don't exercise rights by attempting to monetize then the IPs should enter public domain. I have no issue with paying a publisher for a work at a reasonable rate once every 20 years (ie remastered releases that add compatibility for new OS' or platforms), but if they just shelf it and don't offer it to the public then those titles should be free for others to resell.
I would be fine with this. Great idea.
Good music choice, but it'd be better if the music were made quieter in post-production.
When it comes to "old-school" arcade games, the PS1 & PS2 probably have the best selection of "classic gaming collections" out of any of the older consoles. Many of the these collections were released on multiple consoles, but some were exclusive to SONY. It would certainly be nice if all these older collections got remastered & re-released on today's consoles. Something like "Atari 50 Anniversary Collection" is a good step in that direction. Hopefully SEGA, Namco, Taito, Midway, & others will follow suit.
Atari 50 was interesting in terms of the presentation and the bonus content. The game selection could have been better, but you can tell a lot of thought was put into it otherwise.
@@psymagearcadeYeah the Jaguar selection was not great. Granted the Jaguar didn’t have the best line up period but Trevor Mcfur was TERRIBLE. No AVP, Wolfenstein 3d, Doom..
@@Nick_Nightingale Most of the lack of games boils down to rights - Digital Eclipse were only able to get access to games that Atari owned rights to - lots of games were made by other companies.
@@purelogarithm Yeah I know. Still sucks. That's why some people sail the high seas.
Excellent video, hopefully gaming doesn't crash. I've been playing since the 90's, and still have 3 of my childhood consoles. Atari 2600, Nintendo Entertainment System & Genesis.
I don't want that either because some good, smaller developers will also suffer. However, I don't see a possible crash being as big as the 1983 one.
Gaming won’t crash because there’s really only 3 options in games and 1st party made games don’t just crap out games to see if they will make money like release like 50 games a year
@@psymagearcadeit only crashed in US but the rest of the world, game thrives.
@@tr1bes That is very true, and it was mostly the U.S. console market in particular that got the worst of it, not PC and arcades.
The most important change that needs to happen to help protect preservation is changing copyright law itself. Under no circumstance should copyright extend beyond 50 years, as anywhere beyond that, IP’s simply face the real risk of going extinct due to the extensive damage that years without any support will do. The current state of copyright means that by the time any of us will be able to freely take all necessary actions to preserve a game, most of us who remember it to begin with will have already passed away. Copyright for many of these products is functionally forever. As long as that is the case preserving media will always be a massive uphill battle.
I agree that the copyright system in the U.S. has some problems that need to be fixed. It shouldn't have taken as long as it did for Steamboat Willie to enter the public domain.
we went from bringing the arcade home to bringing the home to the arcade.
Gamestop: Actually it's because we want you to preorder...
I walked into a GameStop two or three weeks ago for the first time in three years and it was a ghost town. It felt sad looking around for more than a minute or two. Wasn't much there either.
@@psymagearcade they'll fade away like the Toys R Us's and other "necessary" stores of their day. I do miss the fun times at Gamestop early 00s around Halo time lol
I think it's paramount that gamers migrate to PC over console. If the industry were to colapse and companyies like Microsoft and Sony pulled out completely. Your new consoles become bricks at best. Even with indies picking up the pieces, without those companies to approve new games on the console you simply don't get any new games. Whereas the PC is an inherently open platform. Even despite the reliance on Steam. You have access to emulation so you can always play older games even if the consoles are no longer available due to time and misuse. You will always have access to indie games. Even if Steam goes away. Because there is no central authority who delcares what is or is not allowed on a PC. Even if Microsoft get more authoritarian with Windows people have the option to switch to a Linux distro. There is always another way to play games with PC. Whereas with consoles you are just stuck with what you're given and have to trust the big corporations have your best interests in mind.
It's telling that the few companies who are interested in real game preservation, by way of those massive Collections re-releases (such as the recent Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection) are all from companies that don't make consoles
I got 3 CRT TV’s with backups of every major release up to Gen 7
Awosome video Bro Good Job and Good Luck for Future Videos🎉
Loved your video! You are absolutely correct that the Industry is Curbing Competition. After all they do not just compete with contemporary games, but from games across time.
Very eye opening, thanks for this! I own an N64 and I buy cartridges, at the second-hand market of course, and I like to joke that I'm happy Nintendo isn't getting a single cent out of it. I also have a jailbroken Wii for all emulation purposes up to GameCube. 🎉
I love old video games! Fact is, I still play games made for the BBC Micro on BeebEM because the games of the eighties were seriously excellent. I also still play video games from the early two thousands because they were seriously excellent given the hardware limitations of the time.
6:28
this is the 1 and only reason modern gaming is where it is today. nothing more, nothing less.
Unfortunately these companies will never change because their actual customers are the shareholders and since shareholders have a stake in the company they’ll obviously want to focus on maximizing profits. Basically the consumer base is secondary to shareholders. Valve’s Steam is by no means some shining beacon of hope but since they’ve made great success as a private company they can actually make and do things that is representative of the people in the company and their values. Shareholders by concept alone compromises the quality and output of games. Their are definitely a bunch of talented people at shitty companies like EA but the people in business suits limit their impact and creativity.
Agreed on shareholders being prioritized over gamers. That is sadly the reality of AAA gaming today.
Honestly the N.F.L. Blitz series was the most fun of the football games at the time. Simply because of it's humor and easy gameplay.
I'm a big fan of the series myself. Also, I'd add that the speed of the game gave it an edge as well.
Companies should make good games again then
In the end it always comes down to money. As always.
I've been collecting games and original hardware since hurricane Katrina destroyed my life and everything I owned back in August 2005, after gen 8 I have refused to upgrade my console hardware ever again because I could tell 5 years ago in 2018 the industry I once knew and loved is not only long gone and never coming back but the industry that has replaced it will never live up to the golden age of 1990-2006 that came before it as the issues which plague the modern industry started around 2006-2007 and have only been getting worse. I'm much happier with previous gen hardware than wasting my money on the new stuff, its just not worth the money they're demanding of consumers anymore.
Yo!! Psymage arcade! Perfect video my friend! I couldn't have said it better. We need more videos like this. A lot of these new generation gamers need to be in the know and watch this video. I've been trying to tell my ol' lady's son about how much our video games were much better than their modern games.
I think the PS3, WII and XBOX 360 era was the last great generation of gaming. The ps4 was also a great console too, but nowhere near as good as the previous gens.
Thank you! I'm glad you mentioned the PS3/360/Wii era because that was the last generation where I felt like we saw a big performance leap from the previous one. I still remember the hype for the 360 and PS3 and all the trailers back then and how much those systems blew my mind.
I have often wanted to have access to all of the old games and thought it was strange they are not available.
I only have, buy and play physical media and games!
So I find this an interesting topic because a lot of it reflects television/movies and streaming. I finally cut off Netflix because I didn't want to support their poorer service for higher prices and less content. Then, I wanted to find some older shows and began to notice the complete lack of availability besides hunting ebay for an older or bootleg copy (The Critic, Dilbert, Titus). All the while, even newer shows find the chopping block and never even had a physical release (Westworld) I hate to say it, but we're going to go back to Piracy hard or for those who wise up, stop consuming couch media. Cause video games, music, TV/Movies and similar want to keep us in one place - spending money with no quality of life benefits.
Great video and Opinion Piece. Definitely makes ya think.
Great video!
Thanks!
Some people will just buy anything that gets released , in the older days you had to play at a kiosk in the store as a demo or at a friends house , games were pretty expensive too , so people would only buy something that they liked and would play .There was no internet updates so games really had to work fairly well or people would not buy it .I have a pc and have bought older games on steam , and find them fun as well as harder to play then some newer games that hold your hand the whole way .
One of the big issues I think is, the hardware, unlike music or movies, that I can play a digital copy in my phone, even though I got them on iTunes almost 2 decades ago, is that we got the restrictions of hardware, gaming hardware can be so especific that one generation console is completely incompatible with the next gen one even though they are made by the same company, and kudos to Microsoft with their retro compatibility efforts on Xbox, which may not be perfect but it is good to have, but Sony and Nintendo are really leaving us in the dark being unable to easily play their libraries without any issue or being able to rediscover some classics, so yeah, it is either PC or emulation on PC.
And I don't say, let's steal from the big corporations, for examply my PlayStation and Switch are not modded, but if I want to play a game from 25 years ago that is not compatible with modern hardware I rather download the ISO and emulate it with QOL improvements than paying too much to scalpers online to play on dodgy old hardware.
I agree with everything you said, but some constructive critique; that background track you had playing made it hard to listen to what you were saying, maybe its the track itself, the volume, or even my device but it made listening harder
Game publishers should embrace selling roms as passive income. Emulate on new systems. Sell the games digitally.
I agree. It's too bad that they learned the wrong lessons about digital distribution and have gone down a similar route as the movie industry.
You’ve got it, everything you said is right.
I can really agree with this video, Gaming has been not good recently it feels like gaming got boring with newer games, Most newer Video Games have Microstransaction, Features being removed new games that we liked from older titles, Not interesting gameplay etc. the last time gaming felt fun me was back then for me was the PS3, X360, Wii and Wii U etc.
Don’t forget emulation. I bet these companies see the hell arcade 1up gets and the troubles they can’t overcome. I heard N64 mini wont come out ever due to emulating problems. I’m and snes and ps4 collector. I’ll always buy duplicates of my games. Best investment and plus the historical value of it too, I remember VHS tapes would be $1 a pop and not now lol that B level horror movie that was tossed away isn’t toss-able now lol
N64 emulation on PC has gotten much better in recent years due to Parallel RDP, but you need a good CPU for any emulator using it and the cheap boards these companies would prefer to use are not going to cut it
@@psymagearcadeMy Steam Deck blows up N64 games to 4K on Parallel no problem. I'm sure they could make a mini console with a $120 price tag that runs N64 games at 4x without issue.
@@TheAbsol7448 no, I really don't think they could. It would likely be way more than that since they have to make profit and compensate license holders - there just isn't any money in such a system
all about, CONTROL smh. industry refuses 2focus on creating great games & let the consumers decide who wins. That piracy angle IMO iz BS. Bcuz even when I did download music back in the day, if the album was HOT I went and bought the original out the store. + downloaded songs/artists I never knew of ie EXPOSER. The industry is really eliminating COMPETITION.
There is some truth to your argument about piracy in music, especially if you apply it to the original Napster back in 1999 /2000. A lot of people were on it at its peak, but sales were still going up for the industry initially. I do think that eventually, a lot of the pirates just didn't want to pay anything, but I also think the major labels putting out a worse and worse product didn't help either, so the hot albums just weren't coming out most of the time.
I picked up another PS3 so I could play The Simpsons Arcade game and Wolfenstein 3D again.
2 purchases I made way back just sitting on my account doing nothing.
Definitely worth it and I’m buying up a lot of physical PS3 media for next to nothing (Midnight Club LA for $3!).
EA's Need For Speed Shift was one of their best-selling titles because it deviated away from cop chases/street racing, and focused on circuit track racing. They came out with two titles, and now you can't purchase them anywhere 😢
Lucky me i got them before delisting
@@TonyMontana-ys5xz That game was ahead of it's time
I have updated games but gravitate more towards older games because I grew up enjoying 2D games with a little challenge
Older games being completely accessible would force the industry to make better games. Imagine not having to cough up $300 to play Pokémon Emerald and being able to play that over the trash that's on Switch?
You’d think, but unfortunately most care more about what’s new and trendy over sticking with tried and true classics.
The Switch had gone nearly a full console gen lifespan and there is STILL no TurboGrafx-16 games on Switch online... And people are hoping in vain that Gamecube is coming. It really is sad.
I think Nintendo is waiting for their next system to do Gamecube emulation. Also, I don't know if Turbografx 16 will ever be part of their subscription because Konami doesn't seem to care about the old Hudson Soft library.
I don't think GameCube games will be ever coming in the Nintendo Switch online subscription. Pikmin 1 and 2 have their own ports, the first Luigi's Mansion has a 3DS port (but only the second will be ported to Switch... weird), Metroid Prime has its own remaster (but not in a trilogy like on Wii)...
No company has been as profitable by re-releasing older titles than Nintendo. I can't see this changing soon. The greatest sales model for permitting customers to play earlier purchased digital titles, has been Steam on the PC. I can still download titles from 2005, while Nintendo closed their stores. Second to Steam is Xbox's digital store, which permits me to play a majority of my Xbox 360, digital titles, on my Series X.
Good thing I mostly get backwards compatible games on Xbox.
Good stuff … solid backed points here! Thank you!
But none of this had anything to do with Nintendo playing Soldier Boy and shutting down his console! No one was willing to help him. His console had all the games nobody plays anymore, but once Nintendo seen he sold 250k they sabotaged him! The truth comes to the light!
I’m pretty sure all of those people that are still only playing super Mario as the only game
They play
Are buying all of the super Mario merchandise and the fastest way to make sure somebody leaves your franchises leave a sour taste in your mouth eventually will stop buying your merchandise
Just because somebody doesn’t buy all the new video games doesn’t mean they’re not buying the new merch like I know call of duty fans that still play older call of duty games, but they buy the modern colour duty merch
I think I will stick to my older consoles that support physical media, thanks!
Every thing you said is so true I have PS5 and spend more time on my PS2.
As you should.
When i bought games for the Mega Drive collection on PC i was absolutely happy because i could 100% legally buy these games as ROMs inside an official emulator environment. So i frequently supported that with my money. Didn't matter that most of these games were already as physical copies in my vintage game collection i had since my childhood when these games were brand new. And yes, i do support GOG as well. Not just for the re-release of older games but also to have DRM-free versions of games you can get on Steam. And i do make sure i make offline backups on several redundancy backups like BD-R, DVD-R, external harddrives or flash memory. Sometimes this is crucial because you never know if an update completely changes the whole game. Like Deepsilver did with Saints Row the fourth.... and completely replaced it with their shitty new Anniversary edition that is VASTLY INFERIOR to the original release. On GOG they completely replaced the original version with no way to get the original version anymore. If you didn't download and backup the original version.... you can only try "illegally" downloading the old version somewhere... CDPR did a better job with The Witcher III where they moved the original GOTY release to the Extras. So you can at least still get an offline backup of the original version and they leave you a choice.
I'm glad you mentioned Sega's Mega Drive collection on Steam because that's one of the few examples of a major company not locking down the ROMs. I wish they would do a Master System collection like that. It can't be too expensive to do releases like that. And yeah, these publishers sometimes don't care about letting players play previous versions of their games, even if it screws over the customers.
@@psymagearcade Oh yeah when i saw there was a folder with the original uncompressed ROM files in the install folder of the Mega Drive Collection, that i could load with every emulator of my choice, this really made me wanna buy even more of their releases in that collection. It's a shame they never continued with it but i'm still willing to support it if they continue somehow. Or at least with standalone PC ports, like they did with "Zero Tolerance" for example. Heck yes!!!! A Master System collection would be awesome!!!
I've bought that collection as well. Never owned a SEGA myself, as I was into the Nintendo Super NES. But now I do own the classics which the Mega Drive Collection ships with.
I grew up playing emulators and they're the best way to play games period