/vr/ - Retro Games

>>10605842
>do you ever feel overwhelmed with the amount of great games available to you to play at any moment?
no because i just autistically replay the same games from my childhood over and over

>>10605842
No because I wasted my life playing them all. It's (mostly) all gone. Ask me about any game, I've probably at least tried it

>>10605848
based

>>10605842
No, I'm so jaded at this point that a game has to be really great and timeless for me to enjoy. Very few can manage that.

>>10605842
I did at one point, especially when I just had the full ROM sets and all, I still do, but I keep them in their compressed folders I download them in, so I only extract the titles I'm sure I'll want to play, I think that one thing that really helps me is that I'm quite autistic, so not only do I mostly just go and replay stuff I already like, when I do try some new title, it's usually a franchise I already like.

I'll usually go "Where's my hyperfocus at right now?" and choose what to play based on that, I have around a dozen franchises that are my real favorites, so I got all of the ROMs for all of those.

One example is Sonic, and yes, the autistic anon is a Sonic fan, I know, the joke writes itself, still I do love the franchise, so I have all of the major titles downloaded, and try to finish all of those.

I guess my backlog is every title that looks alright for me that's from one of those dozen IPs I really like, it's a shame because I rarely try anything I haven't played before or grew up with, so I feel like I'm missing out on a lot, but then again if I had all of those possibilities I'd likely feel quite overwhelmed too, so maybe my autism is a sort of blessing in disguise for this specific scenario.

>>10605851
Props for self-awareness. What are your picks for the most overrated and underrated games?

>>10605842
There's a modern game I was going to play today.
It's 75 GB.
I pay 50 USD for 50 Mbps and get about 20 Mbps.
I would need to wait 9.5 hours just to download this.
And there's a chance that I will play for 30 minutes and turn it off.

>>10605842
> do you ever feel overwhelmed with the amount of great games available to you to play at any moment?
I had the same dilemma with books. I decided to consciously focus on 2-3 games and books I already have downloaded. Better than getting some of the way in eleventy medias I won't finish

>>10605842
It's a lot like the massive weight of having a gigantic dick. A good problem to have. Eventually, you'll learn to quit having FOMO over your backlog and come to love it, because it's not that that there's so many great games you STILL haven't played, it's that there's so many great games you have YET to play.

>>10605842
In December I got my first chinese linux handheld, and over the days put there more than 200 roms, excluding arcade sets. Never dwelt too deeply into the psx, so this was my first foray. It's hard to stay focused due to the massive library of great games plus all the good games I never payed attention on the GBA, let alone snes, genesis, DS, and so on. As you say it is a headache. Like no matter where I look there is some real gem waiting to be experienced. I just beat Arc the Lad and started Alundra, but I could have begin to play Tenchu or Zelda 2. I just don't know.

On the bad side, playing classic games when none care is kind of sad. You come here to discuss a game you never played before and it's all drama over youtubers or controversy, or being called a zoomer.

>>10605842
No, I have like 30 roms tops in my PC right now, I'm not one of those who download entire sets

I've never been overwhelmed with the amount of great retro games. In fact, I'm underwhelmed that there are so few of them and they are all so short.
Now, I'm overwhelmed with the amount of great modern games. I still haven't got around to Hitman 3 or Hi Fi Rush or Hogwarts Legacy or Final Fantasy 16.

>>10605993
>On the bad side, playing classic games when none care is kind of sad. You come here to discuss a game you never played before and it's all drama over youtubers or controversy, or being called a zoomer.
I know, it can suck, but when you make a thread, it's not about the 10 annoying replies you'll get from people that don't give a shit, it's that one reply from another anon that genuinely wants to talk to you about some video game that really counts and makes it all worth it, it's the whole point of /vr/ for me, if I can talk about something I just played with someone else, then I'm good.

>>10605842
Just get in the mindset you'll never play everything you wanna play.
You'll never watch everything you want to watch too.
Just accept it and be glad you do your decisions.

>>10605842
You don't have to play everything just because you have it. Stuff disappears from the internet all the time, better to have it on your hard drive than some server in Russia.
If you're concerned about not using your roms, remember the story of the boy who got a shitload of video games for free and actually did complete them all. His name was Chris-Chan.

>>10605842
Yes, absolutely. Having access to every game from PS2 and before leads to serious choice overload. Right now I'm playing through Castlevania COTM and The Legend Of Zelda. After that, no clue what I'll pick. Maybe just going through Zelda games or something.

>>10605973
Don't forget it'll probably get a massive update too. Modern game sizes are out of control, and you get a broken, unfinished game for a solid 6-18 months.

>>10605842
>how do you decide what game you want to commit to
Maybe I should play a Genesis game, let's see what we got, oh I've never played much of Bloodlines and Castlevania is one of my favorite series, man this game is cool, reminds me of how they called the prologue Bloodlines in SotN even though it wasn't, oh yeah, Symphony of the Night, I like that make maybe I should play it, man this game is cool, the Draculas Curse references make me nostalgic, maybe I should play that one again, oh screw it I will, man this game is cool, NES had a bunch of really cool platformers like Mega Man, maybe I should obsessively play through all 6 Mega Man games, man I forgot how cool those games are, makes we want to play Mega Man X, that makes me X2 and X3, and then I think about all the other cool platformers for the SNES like Super Castlevania Bros, and then I realize I played like 10 straight games on Nintendo consoles, so I think maybe I should play a Genesis game and I see Castevania Bloodlines and I think about how cool it was so I decide to replay it.

>>10605842
>1993: i think i'm gonna play this genesis game for 5 weeks straight cuz it's all i have
>2023: which of the 500+ genesis games should i play for the next 2 hours? [1 hour later] nah fuck it i'm gonna play that one game from 1993

>>10605842
You just, choose a game and play it.
One day you're reminded of a game you've seen as a kid but never got to play, or you're browsing 4chins and someone posts a screenshot and describes a game that looks cool.
So you download a rom and play it. It's not hard.

>>10605842
If I play a game and want to keep playing, I keep playing it. There aren’t as many great games out there as you think there are, don’t let the majority or ecelebs make you think that you should play a game. Once you realize this, you’ll skip over a lot of “must play” games that you just don’t mesh with. Out of all the 10/10 games out there, you probably won’t like more than half, so don’t worry about having enough time and just slow down and enjoy.

>>10605842
I used to feel that way when I had full romsets on my computer. Opening the emulator and having hundreds of games to choose from was certainly overwhelming, I think I didn't even play that much because sometimes I'd open a game, then another one, and so on.
Nowadays I just keep very few roms on my computer, the one I'm playing and the 3-4 games I'll play next, no more. If I read about a different game that really interested me for whatever reason and I want to play it soon, I'll most probably remove one of the pending roms, not to have too many games on my computer.

>>10605959
Okami is kind of overrated. It's a very slow game. In terms of dungeon design it's also really inferior to Zelda.

FF6 is an absolute mess. Too many characters that are just there to add bits and pieces but ultimately they're just there to distract you from the fact that the main plotline is awful.

Shenmue takes the cake for worst game I've ever played that people think is good. Just because you have a bunch of systems that make things feel 'so real', doesn't mean you made a good game

Idk about underrated. There's lots of great games that just don't have any popularity to them, and that's why they're not acknowledged more often. So it's harder to say. The best stuff is probably romhacks and the like, because that stuff just gets minimal attention. Pokemon has a lot of crazy romhacks that offer more value than a commercial game ever would. But you're still playing Pokemon so maybe that's not to everyone's taste. You really gotta go outside commercial games I think

>>10605842
No, because once a game interests me I intend to finish it or play long enough until I get stuck and genuinely lose interest.

Also don't think for a second coomlectors aren't susceptible to choice paralysis. Having too many options either physically or electronically causes that.

>>10605842
Given that the vast majority of ROMsets consist of sports games and a lot of barely-functioning shovelware, there's not nearly as many as it seems. I just go where my curiosity leads me to play and see if it hooks me enough to go all the way to the end. If it's part of a series, usually a non-retro entry, I'll usually try other, older games in it so I can better understand the inevitable references the new entries make.

>>10605842
I avoid downloading romsets and play on handhelds without internet access.
It's easier to just play the ROM I'm currently playing than to go download something else.

>>10606109
I personally don't like emulating games on my main laptop. Any ROMs I want to play will go on one in my trio of NES/SNES/Genesis Minis (usually matching the game with its console) or my 3DS if it's a handheld game.

>>10605842
No. If I feel like playing something specfic, I play that. If I feel like playing something random, I'll just roll for something. I don't feel the need to play only the greats when I can find other lesser known stuff and see the history part for myself, especially as popular history outside of the most popular systems is a bit distorted. That's just my autistic way of enjoying the hobby though.

>>10605842
>do you ever feel overwhelmed with the amount of great games available to you to play at any moment?
Not really.
I play games I'm interested in, when I get interested in trying them out, not whatever people claim to be a must-play/best of all time. If I'm not having fun in the first 5-10 minutes of playing a game, I just delete it and try something else, until I'm finally out of games to try out and finalize my personal list of games I like and will always enjoy getting back into.
It's not a complicated way to live.

>>10605973
>I pay 50 USD for 50 Mbps and get about 20 Mbps.
And Americans will get mad at you when you rightly point out that they live in a third-world country.

There’s a random option on my Retroarch front end. It’s a bit like Russian roulette when you’ve got a bunch of romsets. Sometimes you get an under-appreciated gem that you’ve never heard of, sometimes you get Super Godzilla.

>>10605842
No because I have ceased to think of games in terms of "having them".
They just exist and I play any of them at my leisure. I don't keep a huge collection of roms at any time. I download on an as-needed basis as my whims take me.

>>10605842
>do you ever feel overwhelmed
Yes
>how do you decide what game you want to commit to?
I pick random games from a variety of genres, play for an hour or two and then decide if I continue or drop it, when I feel burned out I go back to games I can always replay.
Honestly, I've dropped so many games that I consider stopping and just replay the ones I've already listed for the rest of my life.
I have enough for a lifetime anyway and some games like Harvest Moon can take hundreds of hours on just one playthrough, score attack games can be constantly replayed hoping to get a slightly higher score etc.

>>10606023
Yeah this is how you use 4chan correctly just in general. Disregard the peanut gallery

>>10606010
bad bait

>>10605842
No because I am not gay.
I play through the series I enjoy and if I find a new one I get them.
Eventually you end up with a good library of games for when the world ends. The only stuff I am lacking in is PS1 games and worthless consoles like the TG16

>>10605842
None, I just keep playing new things and dropping the ones that arent interesting.

>>10605842
Spin the wheel!
Thanks to emulators I have the opportunity to play games that I would never be able to play otherwise.

>>10605842
No not really, I'm more just thankful that I can play basically anything I want to play for free almost immediately.

>>10606594
I remember taking the spinner from a board game and putting the names of the games I owned on it (I had like, maybe 8 at the time) so I could choose a game at random.
I thought it was cool, until my older brother saw it and told me if I have that much time I should go outside more.

>>10605842
>do you ever feel overwhelmed with the amount of great games available to you to play at any moment?
Sure I do, but I feel content knowing that I can pick any of them up and play them at my own pace or convenience, and that I already have the game ready-to-access, instead of having to acquire all the necessary hardware first required to play it, then barter and battle bidders on eBay or local game shops with inflated prices thanks to "content creators" and social media influencers.

>how do you decide what game you want to commit to?
Usually I run into it on the Internet or I see it referenced in another game, and if I take interest in it, I'll get whatever is needed to emulate the game and its system and play it. I can use whatever console, display and setup I want to play it, no specific controller, console or display required, and I could always recreate the experience if I ever wanted to with computers and emulation.

>>10605858
Fave light gun games? Most obscure?

>>10607193
Meant to say "controller" instead of "console" but you get the idea. I don't have to shop around for hardware taking a chance due to its age and condition just to play a game when I can use hardware I know is reliable and have just the same, if not a better experience when playing the game.

What I do is download a ROM set so I don't have to worry about it getting taken down or becoming suddenly hard to find or something.

Then I give it a quick look through and pick out titles that are already ones I've been wanting to try, or at least recognize. Ones that I've just heard of over the years and seen get praise. I copy/paste them in a separate folder with good in the title, so then I have two folders named for example "all ps1 games" and "good ps1 games". When I'm in the mood for new retro content I look in the good folder and there's maybe 20-30 games to choose from instead of 800 or whatever.

I guess putting good in the folder name is an act of faith because they're games I haven't tried yet, but whatever.

I don't marathon them all but do one like every few weeks or months. It's been fun. I think playing them gradually like that also makes them more meaningful and helps them stick out in my memory more.

I don't bother looking up underrated or best of lists until I'm done with whatever games for the system I already have set aside.

>>10605993
>On the bad side, playing classic games when none care is kind of sad. You come here to discuss a game you never played before and it's all drama over youtubers or controversy, or being called a zoomer.
Relatable.

>>10606023
>>10606392
Based.

>>10606082
I think the only reason anyone likes Shenmue now is because it's absolutely silly and full of soul. It is a very boring game once you've experienced all the funny stuff and start getting stuck on what to do next.

I couldn't into Okami because the game has legitimately slower text than Ocarina of Time and slower pacing than Twilight Princess.

>>10605993
Alundra is so good, keep at it. I also recommend Beyond Oasis on Genesis, it's a very short game but extremely tight.

>>10607268
I do the same. I have a "Complete" folder for every system, and a "Selects" folder which I treat as my personal digital collection. The "complete" folders are actually also stripped of all the sports games, games show adaptations, and duplicates. I used the complete US region romsets as my starting set, and then added all English language (EU, Australia etc) ROMs that never saw US releases. Japanese or other Asia only releases only got in the folder if I saw them recommended anywhere or had other reasons to add them.

Took me many hours to put together, and I still find some errors sometimes, but overall I'm very happy with my ROMs folder nowadays.

>>10606105
>>10607367
Why are sports video games so looked down on here? A lot of them are fun to play even if you don't particularly enjoy playing and/or watching the real life sport, and if you do then that makes them even more enjoyable most of the time too.

>>10607369
They can be fun, but they tend to make up a third of most romsets, whichmakes it harder to find the games you're actually interested in from the list

Here's the list of words I used to filter games from my world sets based on their title. Removing all the duplicates (different versions of the same game) manually sucked ass and took forever lmao

>>10607369
because they were hilariously uncreative cash grabs especially during 6th gen and are always the same game rehashed each season because they worked out deal with the leagues and EA to just deliver the same game in advance with just updated uniforms and rosters. they only ever really updated the engine and gameplay when a new generation console came out.

its always hilarious reading top titles of 6th gen and 50% of the titles over 90 metacritic rating are sports games but they were always just dog shit cash grabs by EA and people lapped that shit up back then.

the only games i ever still see at thrift stores in this day and age are sports games so it tells you how little people want to play them.

>>10607369
Most sports games don't have much of a fantastical element to them that can't be done in real life. Real life sports as a concept came into existence as training and preparation for eventual wars and conflicts, but between playing a game about tossing a handegg to your teammate and a game where you toss a grenade at your enemies, the latter is more exciting.
You can have a myriad vast, immersive fictional worlds in a videogame, but a sports game is just the same set of rules for the real thing that has existed since its inception. You can do the real thing at any moment, it's not something unreachable.

>>10607415
You don't always have access to equipment or other people who want to play the sport. If I wanted to go snowboarding or play beach volleyball where I am it'd be very difficult.

>>10607367
On my old computer I did something like that, now I like to have a truly complete ROMset just for archival's sake, so I know that resource is always available to me. After all those romsites finally got taken down some years back I became paranoid about other losing the remaining sources. My "good x" folders are enough sorting for me. Your "Selects" is a nicer naming convention though.

>>10607369
It's a number of things, and they don't just apply to retro gaming. There has almost always been a noticeable line drawn between sports games and all other gaming, been that way since...I want to say a year or two after the NES came out? Very early arcade sports games were all over the place. The NES sports titles sold great and were probably just seen as no different than any other game early on, but I think a lot of people just went for Mario, Zelda, other immersive fantasy or action games and thats where the divide began. Wii Sports is a successor to the NES sports titles but was something few gamers had interest in, Madden consistently did great but it was never something you saw discussed on forums like other games unless it was some distant ridicule by people who probably never played a single one.

Anyone with a serious interest in the history of games should play them. For that reason I should play them more than I have. They have always been a very neglected side of games when it comes to game history.

But many sports games are very similar, game obsessed people like some level of fantastic in their settings/stories which they don't get from these kind of games, and most of all a lot of retro sports games don't really give that unique of an experience. Maybe the early ones will seem unique today because they were so limited but is, say, a fifth gen sports title really THAT different from a 2023 one? There's a certain purity to this genre of game that I can respect but it's a distant respect, I've never enjoyed them as more than a quick curiosity.

>>10605842
Not really because if I never get around to a game then I probably wasn't THAT interested in it to begin with

>>10606218
Actually I'm Australian.
I pay 75 dollarydoos, but no one knows how much that is.

>>10607447
That's a financial matter, rather than the something you literally can never, as a human being, ever do. Though I'll say SSX Tricky has that fantastical element since it's more of a racing game with massive cliffs, maneuvers and speed that would get any real person killed, and wouldn't happen in real life at all. This goes for a lot of racing games too since you can't just buy your way to a pro-level motor racing championship.

>>10607520
>>10607415
You can always sign up for one of the many conflict zones on Earth. Yemen is heating up, Palestine is hot, Ukraine cooled down quite a bit but it's still going on.

>>10607528
Cool. Can I get a free pass into the Navy SEALs right now despite being older than their 28-or-younger age requirement?

>>10605842
So, I have a bad habit of rotating the same two or three games or just straight up playing the same thing over and over again. It's not necessarily a bad thing but I tend to completely forget about all of the other games I've been meaning to play. Just last night I started flipping through my RetroArch playlist and it made me realize I STILL have not played Symphony of the Night, nor did I finish Castlevania Chronicles. I have games in RetroArch that I bought from the thrift shop years ago that I still have not even so much as tried.

I have this fascination with SEGA CD but I have not played my favorite SCD games in months, let alone other games on it like Popful Mail and Snatcher that I also have been meaning to play for probably a few years now. Because I keep playing the same things over and over again. And then I complain that every day is the same. I acknowledge that it's a bad habit and that I need to actually sit down and try some of these other games that I've been meaning to play.

Admittedly though a big part of the problem is time. I work close to full time while trying to run an Instagram page and design cool stuff, and sometimes I don't even get a chance to do all of that. This is compounded by a few other things in my life right now that have made things harder for me. Hopefully one day I will be able to try more of these great games, but as it stands I barely have time to play anything, sadly.

>>10605842
i have a 250GB external hard drive that stores all the ROM's I'd potentially want to play up to the sixth generation of consoles and just pull one or two titles at random from there.
so far I've played through
>Predator: Concrete Jungle
>Darkwatch
>Drill Dozer
I feel you have to balance good games with trash to retain an appreciation for them.
the DS and advamce castlevanias are next.

>>10607520
SSX Tricky is still the fuckin best despite having a lot of jank compared to 3. Peak style and just the most fun characters.

>>10607387
Fair, also good list of words to filter, anon.

>>10607403
6th generation it's when it really started to die out, but previous ones had a lot more competition and variety, different takes on various sports, it was a solid genre before EA.

>>10607415
>>10607520
I get that, but here's the thing, if I play a 1st person shooter, it's because I want to fight a war and shoot people, I could go to a gun/shooting club or enlist in the army instead, so why not? Well, aside from the deadly risks, there's the matter of time and convenience, and that if I'm shooting at a club, it's not the same as fighting in a war, even if it's just in video game for anyway.

In sports it's the same, I can go play outside, but I need more people to play with me for team sports, I need a pitch, it can't be raining, it'll take a few hours to go, play and come back home... if I play a video game it's more convenient and I can do things like become a top manager or play in a World Cup, even win it for my country, stuff I'll never do for real, they have a fatastical element.

I tried becoming a footballer, it didn't work out as I'm not very good, but I have an understanding of things, I just suck in execution, perhaps I'm better for managing, but that's a whole career.

I can play modes where I turn into a player like I wanted to, it's the kind of thing that people who don't care about sports don't get, but to us it's just as fantastical as a fantasy setting.

>>10607454
I suppose they can never reinvent themselves in the way a more fantasy IP could, afterall they're based on real life sports with rules that rarely do change, so the core will always remain the same, I actually quite like this since it shows up quite well the difference in technology from one generation to the next, but still, I think they're the kind of video game only sports fan will like.