What gaming and computing do you actually still do?

[Harrison]

Most of us have been here a very long time. We are all fans of the Amiga, that's a fact. We are also all passionate about retro hardware, software and gaming across many platforms and emulation. Most of us are also big current gamers on both PC and console.

But we all have lives, and as we get older many things take over or restrict what we do in regard to gaming, emulation, computing.

My question is, what do you actually still do?

Do you play current games? PC, console, phone?

Do you still play retro games?

Do you still run retro hardware and play around with configuring it, upgrading, customizing installing?

Do you still run emulation? What do you run it on and what do you emulate?

[Harrison]

I will begin. I definitely don't have all the time I once had. A lot of my retro consoles and all my Amigas are still boxed up since my last move.

Currently I only have a SNES mini, xbox 360, and a PS4 setup. And 2 of my PCs.

I tend mostly to do PC gaming, plus a bit of emulation at the moment. Have been playing a few SNES games too since getting the mini last Xmas. Finished Zelda again on it. Ironic considering I still own my original working snes and all the same games.

Definitely trying to get motivated to get the games room finished so I get get an Amiga setup again and rest of the consoles setup. But for now it's mainly PC gaming and emulation.

[Stephen Coates]

I don't play games much myself, but at a recent LAG meeting I had a go on an Oculus Rift. That made for an interesting experience, although it took a lot of getting used to. Didn't really do anything beyond the initial demo though.

Can't say I do much with emulators these days, although I was playing with WinFellow on my Windows 95 laptop at LAG last year.

Just recently I've been playing with my BBC computer. I finally got floppy disks working on it and can now make use of the 40 track single sided 5.25" drive I bought years ago. (3.5" DD PC drives work too). Currently got it set up on my desk.

IMG_6053edit.JPG

Amigas and other old machines are still usually lurking around somewhere.

I repaired my 21" Trinitron monitor a while back and that is now hooked up to my old Pentium III machine and my PowerMac G4, and precariously balancing on the knackered desk where it used to be, although now it is up in the loft.

The ThinkPad A31 (with a Pentium 4) which I mentioned in another thread is also getting a lot of use.

loftdesk.jpg

[J T]

My question is, what do you actually still do?

Do you play current games? PC, console, phone?

Do you still play retro games?

Do you still run retro hardware and play around with configuring it, upgrading, customizing installing?

Do you still run emulation? What do you run it on and what do you emulate?

In order

Nothing
Not really (save for the odd basic word puzzle game on my phone)
No
Nope
None

Now imagine I pasted some sad face and crying emoticons in here

[Teho]

I'm not quite as into gaming as I was but I am still gaming quite a bit. I hardly buy games on release any more, I still have a huge backlog from when I kept buying everything I wanted. So for new releases I can easily wait till the price drops and I actually know I'll be playing it.

I definitely mostly play on PC, with the odd PS4 game. The most recently released games I've been playing was the latest God of War a couple of months ago, played that till I got the platinum trophy in fact. I rarely do that, this was a really good game. I'm also playing Wreckfest on PC a lot, that's the latest game from Bugbear who made the first two Flatout games. Wreckfest goes for a more realistic approach and emulates real banger/folk racing. The physics are spot on and though the game is about wrecking there are a lot of "clean racing" servers where people do just that, proper racing. Because the driving physics are so good and no other driving game emulates these kind of races.

I still play Elite: Dangerous off and on. More off than on. Other than that I pick something out of the backlog, whatever I feel like at that moment.

I don't play on the mobile at all. I do have Pinball Arcade and Pro Pinball: Timeshock installed on it and they work great on the mobile. But I hardly ever fire them up.

I absolutely still play retrogames, when I say I still play games I mean I still play games from all eras, not just recent ones. Just a month ago I played Stunt Car Racer for a bit. Still can't get through the super divisions. One day though. One day. Before that I played through the adventure game Universe which is one of my favourite adventure games and I go back to it every now and then. I know all the puzzles since forever and a playthrough will only take two or three hours for me. Amazing to me that this has fallen into obscurity, but it is by Probe and not by either Sierra, Lucasarts or Revolution so not one people will generally come across. I also did a full playthrough of Black Crypt not too long ago. I had a pirated copy back in the day but never got into it. I got hold of the original a while back and finally sat down with it. It is actually a very good dungeon-crawler, but bloody hard. Not because of monsters but because the dungeon itself is hard to figure out. Tons of hidden switches you have to find just to progress where in other games they only open secret areas. Hidden floor switches with delayed action or requiring to be stepped on a number of times, and you can't even see them nor do they make a sound! Fortunately the manual has the complete maps of every level, and I don't think I would have bothered without them. They're still no walkthrough, they do give away the location of all those switches and how they work but you still have to figure out a lot for yourself.

I wrote quite a bit on both Universe and Black Crypt on the norwegian forum Spillegal, but I wrote in norwegian of course and I tried google translate now and it absolutely butchers them. Hardly readable at all, and many of the sentences that are readable end up having the opposite meaning. Google never was any good at translating norwegian. So I guess those links are useless to everyone here except PG. Oh well.

All of those games were emulated. Partly because of the ease of getting screenshots since I knew I wanted to write about them, and partly because of the ease of use as a whole. I do prefer using original hardware and I often do, and I always argue strongly that the only correct way to play them is on an old-fashioned CRT. Mainly because the graphics were usually designed with the typical colour-bleeding in mind, so gradients and dithering look a whole lot better on those screens. I know for a fact that Dan Malone, the Bitmap Brothers graphics artist, hate how his graphics look on modern TVs. So much that when his graphics were to be included in the book Bitmap Brothers Universe he insisted they make them look like they originally did and not like they do in hi-def today. And he's not the only one who feels this way. There's also the fact that retro systems did not render perfectly square 1x1 or rectangular 1x2 pixels, but modern TVs do. So modern TVs simply can't display the graphics at the correct aspect ratio and they are all a little bit squashed. Modern TVs can't stretch pixels the way you could on the old ones. It's most obvious if you have a large round object displayed, the title screen for Moonstone for example, the big moon is obviously an oval shape on an HDTV. See for yourself. So I still have an old CRT TV just for retro systems. Demoscene productions is another thing that hardly ever look right on an emulator since the demoscene coder happily played around with overscan and such. It can be very hard to configure an emulator to display a demo correctly without seeing ugly things in the borders that you were normally not meant to see. So plenty of good reasons to keep the old hardware around in my opinion.

[J T]

This thread was worth it alone for the view of Steve's desk and loft. I have recently come to find little insights like that to be strangely intriguing, especially the messy ones. There's something about a too-tidy workspace that makes me think.... 'psycho'

[Tiago]

My turn:

Retro: last time i played something retro i think it was in middle 2018, it was last time i fired my A1200.

PS4:
I tried to play spider man.... i was able to play 3 or 4 hours... then.... bahhhhh
I played Red Dead Redemption 2, i play it all, i liked. a bit hyped... looks nice, good details...
I played The council. Very nice game. Good Story, good characters.

PC: Last Games i 100% enjoy:
- Subnautica !!!!! boy i loved this one. I can't remember last time i enjoy a game so much. Best game for me in last 2 years, any platform.
- Kerbal Space Program - Superb game. So technical, so much potential. Perfect.

[Harrison]

I hardly buy games on release any more, I still have a huge backlog from when I kept buying everything I wanted. So for new releases I can easily wait till the price drops and I actually know I'll be playing it.

Exactly the same. So many games on Steam still to play. Still grab games from my wish list when they are on really good special offers, but hardly ever buy a game on release. Thr only one I did recently was the Resident Evil 2 remake.

[Kin Hell]

In order:

Yes - PC only
No - They look shit graphically
Occasionally - just to remind myself how clever I use to be
No - Never these days.

& Yeah, Steve's hole in the Loft is great, but Steve.....

Is that a split in your seat or just years of accumulated Snail Trails?

[Harrison]

- Subnautica !!!!! boy i loved this one. I can't remember last time i enjoy a game so much. Best game for me in last 2 years, any platform.
- Kerbal Space Program - Superb game. So technical, so much potential. Perfect.

Those are definitely 2 great games. Kerbal is bloody hard though. I had to cheat with some guides to build something that achieved anything! Lol

And I love underwater games. Looking forward to Aquanox Deep Descent. Loved the original 2 games, and this looks promising. Also want to try out Uboat.