I play board games on my platform. My platform is the dining room table.
optical media bad
The worst part is you can’t return the game after opening the box.
So far I haven’t seen any ‘no cartridge’ disclosures on Switch games, but surely they’re there… surely?
Again this bullshit.
Old consoles did not have mechanisms to prevent you from playing games. Mainly because internet was not widespread enough for hardware vendors to make it mandatory.
A game(or the OS of the console/PC that runs it) that is 100% on your physical media can still require you to connect online, login with an account and all other kinds of bullshit. It was done in CD/DVD distributed games in the 00s. There are of course games released on physical media today that are not complete and require release date updates to run.
A modern unhacked console could refuse to run a game from disk if you don’t connect/login to get permission from mommy Nintendo/Sony/MS. Them not doing so is not a limitation imposed on them by physical media. It’s a policy, hopefully forced upon them by law.
TLDR: We don’t need physical media, we need an unrevocable right to be able to play games we purchased with effective enforcement. Additionally we should have a right to modify the games as needed to be playable in other hardware/OS since we can’t expect original hardware to last forever.
I feel like we should strive for both, the actual ownership and the physical media
What does physical media actually give you?
Although controversial here, but in the age of AI, one can create engine replacements for games with DRM and/or behind obnoxious launchers to play them fully offline. For example, I am a huge fan of Anno 1602, but I was disappointed by the History Edition from Ubisoft. LLMs helped me a lot to build a new engine from scratch in quite a short time with all the enhancements, qol and features I would have loved to see in the History Edition without all of the Ubisoft crap. It runs super stable and smooth (especially multiplayer). This is the version my friends and I are playing now.
Unfortunately it’s the rich who run those models. Maybe if it was pirated?
I understand your sentiment and it is fair if you don’t want to use these models at all. I have a copy of the original from GOG, the setup is saved on my hard drive and server, so there is that. I don’t care what Ubisoft is doing with the HE of Anno 1602. If you or anyone else is interested in trying out my engine replacement, it is fully open source under GPL-3: GitHub.com/x4rd4s/open1602
I will be uploading release builds soon, but you can already build it yourself.
By it I meant the model :)
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Reject volatile tradition, embrace modernity:
~/Games/ROMs/Nintendo 64/Also use a shitty CRT shader that mimics a broken black-and-white TV from the 50s for more tradition.
Oddly enough, I read this while wearing an N64 shirt.
Lug around an ancient, bulky, heavy, obsolete, actual progressive scan CRT for maximum tradition. Bonus points if it has a built-in VCR.
built-in VCR
You managed to make it worse with one simple feature!
Hey though, I found out an INCREDIBLY fun feature with those TV-VCR combos. It was really easy to record gameplay! :D
I thought that was pretty neat at the time. Got to show my friends some fun console gaming antics before it was easy to capture / upload / send such things.
That just sounds like a capture card. Nice that you figured out it could record more than TV shows!
Can I get Starfox on VCR?
Reject volatile tradition, embrace modernity: ~/Games/ROMs/Nintendo 64/
Yeah, lol. I don’t need a huge stack of game discs and cartridges when I can have a folder full of roms on my computer, with good backups.
Best of both worlds, really. The convenience of not needing physical media, the permanence of having it (maybe even more permanence, since files with good backups should last longer than physical media would – potentially forever).
And then there’s the extra bonus of emulation allowing me to make various improvements – running old games in widescreen with higher resolution, for example. Or using AR/Gecko codes to implement some quality of life features in old games that could really use them.
Yarrrrrr, I don’t mind digital distribution! Ahoy mateys!
Actually it can, if they disable it. Bring back offline gaming.
Actually, in the case of discs, it can.
Say it with me everyone, “Optical media bad!”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_degradation
Unfortunately, playing a burned copy requires modifying your hardware.
Most of you are probably too young to remember, but back then, the fact that Sony chose optical media and implemented DRM on the PlayStation was very controversial to people who knew the implications of those decisions. Unfortunately, that number of people was, and remains, very small.
Every disc copy of every game is a ticking time bomb, and the only way to defuse it is to make an unauthorized backup copy, then hack your PS1 to play the copy. There is no way to slow, prevent, or reverse the eventual decay of the data on the original disc.
This is true of every storage medium. Some bit rot faster than others, but eventually entropy comes for us all.
The important thing is the ability to make backups.
This ignores the underlying issue this post was about. Games being sold on physical media will likely last longer than games sold as digital downloads.
If you store a professionally pressed optical disc in an environment with good temperature control and low humidity, it may last 50 - 100 years. Only about 10% of pressed optical discs fail in under 25 years. Meanwhile, companies like Sony will take down their storefronts with little to no thought.
Yes, for backups, you’re better off storing bin/cue files than trusting a cheap burned disc that will only last 1-5 years. But games getting sold with physical disc gives people the ability to rip them.
If you store a professionally pressed optical disc in an environment with good temperature control and low humidity, it may last 50 - 100 years.
Reduce that to like 1 to maybe 5 years if it was being played in an original X-Box with a Thompson disc drive. (If ya know, ya know.)
I’m still salty about being so careful with all my discs and watching Crimson Skies and Halo: Combat Evolved load backwards before showing
"Disc Read Error."Meanwhile, companies like Sony will take down their storefronts with little to no thought.
Goodbye Vita store, hello Henkaku and PKGJ.
Games being sold on physical media will likely last longer than games sold as digital downloads.
Maybe the reason physical seems to outlast digital is because Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft are the companies most known for switching from physical to digital. These companies are greedy and anti-consumer and they seemed to have made the switch in order to push more anti-consumer practices.
There’s no natural reason a physical game should outlast a digital one. The reason they do entirely comes from corporate greed. My steam library contains a copy of Gazillionare, a game released in 1994. A game still available for sale on Steam and that runs on my Linux box today. Games sold as digital downloads aren’t inherently bad. The underlying issue is corporate greed.
Sure. I wouldn’t be working as part of the Retro eXo team if it wasn’t possible to preserve games digitally. But physical discs do something beyond not being possible to delist - they provide a snapshot of what the game was when it was pressed, which cannot be altered. Say a company is licensed to include music in a game for x number of years. After that time runs out, they may strip the content from the game. Another example is how companies like GOG strip out drivers and setup files from the retro games they put online. They rip content out of games as bad as dialup era websites like Home of the Underdogs did. A game might only be left with a single EGA video mode and Sound Blaster audio. Forget stuff like MT-32 - GOG always removes the files necessary for it to work. In the end, we can’t really trust the companies to keep anything online.
Apparently this is an issue with modern flash carts too. If you don’t boot your 3DS games once in a while they will corrupt.
There is no way to slow, prevent, or reverse the eventual decay of the data on the original disc.
Maybe no way to prevent it or reverse it, but I bet there are ways that could slow it. Preventing exposure to light – especially sunlight – probably helps. And if you kept them at very low temperatures (like in a freezer), that would probably help as well. Pretty much every physical/chemical process slows down at lower temperatures.
I’d not freeze it, I fear it may actually break it due to materials shrinking/expanding with such temperatures
I was first excited for digital to replace vinyl and then for magnetic media mostly biting the dust, then latter for optical burning (heh) out. Anyone wanting to go back to the old days didn’t have to actual hassle with old tech.
UNLIMITED POWER
CDs and carts are worthless if the game is unplayable without a Day 1 patch.
Or being forced to sign into your Epic/EA/Blizzard/whatever account before you can play offline story-mode.
I can’t imagine if Goldeneye on the N64 was unplayable on day one. Modern standards are six feet under.
Reject rentals, embrace ownership
In a way we’ve come full circle.
If gamers are dumb enough to pay these companies to continue with worse and worse habits, fine by me. Gaming money and consoles are 100% disposable income.
Good luck getting any of those classics at an affordable price, have you seen what the market looks like?
Good luck getting any of those classics at an affordable price, have you seen what the market looks like?
Good luck getting Switch 2 games at an affordable price.
Sure, the old games used to be cheaper than they are now, but most of them were more expensive back then (accounting for inflation)…and they’re generally cheaper than current-gen console games.
…and they’re generally cheaper than current-gen console games.
The wild thing is that a lot of in-demand titles aren’t. I lost my original copy of Boktai 1 a while back and I’d love to replace it, but take a look for yourself how much that one goes for.
Hence why I said “generally”! I know some games have outrageously crazy prices. But I’d genuinely wager that the majority of retro game titles are cheaper now than they were when they launched, adjusting for inflation.
At least if you forgo the box/paper. I think strong arguments in either direction could be made about whether that’s a fair comparison.
This reminds me to test and list the chipped PS2 in my garage for sale.
