Lost all my games and systems

[Papa]

That's why I have night-vision, closed circuit security cameras and I'm at my house, raising children, all day every day! They wouldn't just need the time to rip off games or systems, they would need to disconnect things bedded deeply within giant, heavy arcade cabinets. My wife is trained in locksmithing and has set the locks herself to be as hard to pick as possible and there are several doors between entrances with chains bolts and sliding locks on all. Our house has a naturally confusing layout, and that helps. I have guns, swords, knives and can throw pretty much anything from a knife to a screwdriver with deadly accuracy. I've been trained in martial arts and have had military training and wake up at the slightest disturbance (6-kids and a wife to protect) while using microphones throughout the house. Everything is well documented and photographed. I put things in the pawn shop and then get them out, so they are very familiar with me and all of my belongings. Getting my stuff sold to a local shop would identify a thief immediately! Placing special markings on or inside your belongings can help! It might have helped to have someone there all the time that you can trust. That you haven't commented after the assumptions that you are begging for free stuff doesn't sit well for the authenticity of your claim.

 

On emulation..

 

I still think it sucks when compared to real hardware ('cept BLEEM! with PlayStation games). Your using a lot of wattage on a PC to play something that otherwise would have used very little power. A hard drive is going to fail and so all of your stuff should be backed up on disks or solid state drives if this is your method. Games look different on monitors than on original intended TV's and controllers can have lag and perform differently than on original hardware. Emulation is simply NOT the REAL GAME! Plus, saving states (although fun and great for the time crunched lives we live today) is cheating! If you have a save state and claim that you beat a game you're claim is nothing when compared to the work of someone winning on real hardware with the same limitations intended by the programmers. I often play on emulation (Capcom Classics, SNK classics, Taito arcade, Midway collection, Atari, etc..), but I always will prefer the original hardware and the original cartridge or disks. I use arcade controls, though.

Edited May 7, 2015 by Papa

[Video_Invader]

I just realized that I've already been discussing emulation with the OP in another thread:

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/237109-nulldc-on-dell-inspiron-n5050what-setting-do-i-use/

 

He has a capable system and he even mentions familiarity with emulating and a history of doing so.

that capable laptop was taken as well if you read further up. I didn't know this was going to turn into an accusation issue. For that matter, I don't want anything from anybody. I'll figure this out on my own. Emulation is not for me as I want to play PS one games and ps2 as well. Just gonna have to start over thats all. I've done it before.

[The Usotsuki]

My computer's on 24/7 anyway so emulation is no big deal. That said, I have a few old consoles I crack out from time to time for the experience.

[Papa]

I feel sorry for you, then. People this day and age have no respect for one another. I am currently having problems with people booming super loud music up and down the street all day and night. They were playing it at 1 AM in the morning. We have a city-wide ordinance on noise, fireworks, power tools, constantly barking dogs, etc..but just see if you can get it enforced! We also just had over eight armed robberies and quite a few shoplifters in stores recently. The shoplifters got busted, but the armed robbers are still on the loose! It would seem that if the place has their own security (cameras and workers) then the culprits get busted. I think the lowest of the low are the ones who attack Village Pantry stores and gas stations. These workers barely make enough to live off of and rarely have very much money in the register. The past few armed robberies were near our street and we had cops in our yard and around the block looking for the thief! My wife and I were rolling up our bad-mitten net when it all happened and the cops came up and asked if we saw anyone. We didn't. I'm fixing the cameras on the back yard, as there is a big woods behind us that someone might be able to hide in to get away from the cops. I think these little punk wannabe gangsters riding around terrorizing everyone are probably up to all of this. I've been here for over eighteen years and we never had this much crap hit the fan until recently. The quality of people is falling rapidly. My wife works in the school system and said that based on how the kids are acting as of late it's only going to get worse.

 

I wish the best for you and your new collecting endeavor! The only positive from this would be that you get to pick what you want from the ground up (although that probably doesn't help much.)! A PS2 would probably be the first thing to get, as you can get big collection disks and there are lots of games for it everywhere. You've got your Arcade, Pinball, Sega Genesis, Neo Geo (although the emulation is shoddy), Activision, and Atari right there! Too bad they never made a 5200 compilation disk, huh?

[Keatah]

that capable laptop was taken as well if you read further up. I didn't know this was going to turn into an accusation issue. For that matter, I don't want anything from anybody. I'll figure this out on my own. Emulation is not for me as I want to play PS one games and ps2 as well. Just gonna have to start over thats all. I've done it before.

 

It should not have turned into an accusation at all. No one on this thread knows anything for certain, only assumptions. That matter aside. Emulation for home consoles is good up to N64/PS1 specifications. Anything from that era and onward is spotty due to lack of development. Improper reverse-engineering techniques by the developers is at the root of inaccuracy. Not power.

 

Once you get into PS1 territory the emulators become hybrid emulators-simulators. That means games have patches and the "emulators" are now taking shortcuts by using their own routines instead of virtually recreating the hardware. I believe this trend was started with ultraHLE - an N64 emulator. They were trying to do too much with the then-available computing power. Not to mention the 3DFx craze, and pc 3D movement. The half-assery that resulted from trying to map N64 graphics through Glide was ridiculous. Nothing ever worked right. Stuff was glitchy.

 

Emulation shines for the real classics, like those of the 8/16 bit era. It is here that a lot of work has gone into making them accurate and worthwhile. 8/16 bit emulators have been in development for many years. Some for 20+. And the work continues today.

[Papa]

Here are some contrasting views of emulation vs hardware.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnF9mMEpwaA

 

 

 

I think that emulation makes piracy into child's play. Too many people just snatch and grab titles that may or may not still have a real license behind them. Colors will never be perfect, the screen will never be exact, controls will never be totally 100% the same as on the original hardware, and side by side you CAN tell a difference. Your supposed to own the game that you're emulating or it must be abandonware/freeware. People don't care anymore and just like with Napster and music, everything went downhill from there! I care about the authenticity of my experience to the degree that I would rather have the real processor and cartridge or disk playing on the screens that they were intended for. The only thing I think emulates better than it's original is the Playstation with big enhancements that are only available through PC emulation. Gran Turismo cranked up to high resolution (you can read the signs!), or Tekken 3 with all of the extra details popping out that can't even be seen on the PS1 make it worth it in those minor cases. NES with the wrong colors, screen tearing, jittering and sloppy controls doesn't even come close to the real thing. I can't even believe they put SNK Classics out with the amount of crap emulation that is going on in that game with the PS2. It's nice to be able to play a lot of arcade games all at once and some emulation is 'alright' I 'guess', but I really love the original stuff!!

Edited May 7, 2015 by Papa

[Andromeda Stardust]

I'm building a RaspberrY Pi MAME cab right now. Well gotta wait for the parts.

 

To the OP, I feel you man. We had our house burgalerized in December 2006. My entire Game Cube collection was stolen but the Wii was just coming out and Game Cube games were cheap as dirt for a while and I repurchased most of the good ones. The theives didn't touch my retro cart systems so I was thankful. They ramsacked my mom's jewelery drawer though.

 

Police caught the bastards and retruned a Mini Mac system and a 1600x1200 LCD monitor. The monitor had some minor screen damage (scratches) but otherwise worked flawlessly. My game Cube and my mom's jewelery were never recovered.

Edited May 7, 2015 by stardust4ever

[Video_Invader]

Thanks guys for understanding. I guess even tho I have used emulation in the past, I still prefer the real thing because of nostalgia and its stuff I grew up with. This has been a disaster but I have hope. I got a call a couple hours ago saying they think they've found the jerks that did this. Apparently they hit several houses in the area. I'll know more in a couple days. I picked up a dream as for 40 bucks so I'm happy bout that.

[Keatah]

Thanks guys for understanding.

 

Absolutely.

 

 

I guess even tho I have used emulation in the past, I still prefer the real thing because of nostalgia and its stuff I grew up with.

 

Totally fine with that. Whatever works best for you.

[82-T/A]

I feel sorry for you, then. People this day and age have no respect for one another. I am currently having problems with people booming super loud music up and down the street all day and night. They were playing it at 1 AM in the morning. We have a city-wide ordinance on noise, fireworks, power tools, constantly barking dogs, etc..but just see if you can get it enforced!

 

 

Have you heard of "car sniffing?" It's where you exploit the car's onboard Bluetooth to get command and control of the radio, etc. You can do this simply by doing promiscuous scanning of the 2.4 PANs in the area, and then doing a forced pairing with them from your anonymously identified system. Then... every time they drive by and get stopped at the light, you can immediately pair with them again (matter of 1-2 seconds) and you can start playing your own audio. Generally, most newer cars have the hands-free system that silences the radio when voice / Bluetooth is operational. Then again, if this dude is driving an 80s something Olds Cutlass that's been donked out with boom in the trunk, then you're on your own.

 

But it would be very embarrassing for him to be cruising down the road, and have his stereo suddenly blast "I'm a little tea cup, short and stout!"

 

Get a Raspberry Pi, and set it up manually and hide it in the base of one of the street lamps to do it automatically... and then change out the batteries every couple of days. It's not illegal... because it's ONLY illegal if you break encryption, but there's no encryption on Bluetooth, and signals broadcast over the air are free and clear, so packet and SSID capture is totally LEGAL. You're also broadcasting across the correctly allotted frequency, so you're not violating FCC rules either. It's a grey area... but you're not hacking...

[Keatah]

Your supposed to own the game that you're emulating or it must be abandonware/freeware.

 

What about in the case of theft, or fire/flood loss? What if you dumped a cart, suffered a fire loss, but your dump survived?

[Papa]

I think if you can prove that you owned the game and it got stolen then I personally would have no problem sympathizing with that, but I still think that too much piracy happens today. Don't get me wrong, I think that if you download a game to try it out (usually within the rules, I guess) then you may seek out the real game and the world of collecting gets free advertising.

 

I used to back up all of my DVDs and only play the backups. I later pawned much of my DVD collection and sold it. I kept the back ups for a long time, but then realized that I rarely, if ever, watched the backups and then destroyed it all and threw it away. I felt a lot better about that and haven't really felt like ripping things too much since.

 

I think the law is pretty smoky on what is legal with downloading and playing ROMS. Many media licenses were only fifteen years back in the day (I'm pretty sure I read that somewhere..), so even though a lot of titles aren't declared abandoned, they couldn't be pursued in a court. I used to argue that it was free advertising for the game and that a true collector or enthusiast would buy something that they otherwise may not even know about, due to emulation. Now I think that people can just find whatever they want pirated and it has a negative impact on the industry.

 

Emulation can be fun and all, but there really is a high level of piracy involved today. I bought a few movies recently and found out when they arrived that they were bootleg knock-offs. Sometimes it's cute, and it doesn't mean much. In at least one case, though, the movie didn't play worth a crap and it was a big rip off. I've purchased games thinking they were rare and found them to be knock-offs. Really my gripe is more about the performance of the game itself.

 

The original hardware seems to play better, in my opinion. I use emulation every day when programming and then try the game out on real hardware to settle how I feel about it. The real hardware always makes me happier. Back when I did much of my gaming on an Athlon 600 with a Voodoo 3500 with TV-Out and a SB Live! I would not have agreed. SNES emulation was very fun and I really loved finding extra details in Playstation games using Bleem!.

 

To each his own!

 

I hope they found your stuff!! Let's see pics of your collection after you get it back from the cops!!

[Keatah]

A great point<->counterpoint discussion.

 

From another post I made in another thread:

Clicking on the Altirra icon is like flipping the power switch on my old (and long gone & destroyed) 400/800. In many respects it is better because I don't have to maintain it or allocate loads of physical real-world space for it and all the other consoles I enjoy through the magic of emulation. All I have to do is maintain 1 machine - the host. And all the emulated ones fall into place. If one works, all work!

 

Going through the options menus is akin to swapping hardware and trying new features on different machines. The faster processors, the add-on boards, the drives..

 

And organizing all the disk, tape, and cart images is not unlike filling wallspace with holders and cubbyholes and shelves.

 

When a new version of one comes out I feel like I just did an upgrade or repair to a real console, in strange sort of way. I always consider an emulator update as a virtual form of Preventative Maintenance. Each update is like taking a console into the shop for a little fix-it-up and check-it-out deal. Maybe get an enhancement or upgrade.

 

Emulation is indeed magic, there's enough mystery (to me) that I can enjoy it like a kid would.

 

I also don't try to emulate anything much beyond the PS1 era. The consoles are too complicated, too many custom chips and all that. It's not that today's PC can't handle it but more so the haphazard programming resulting in compatibility issues. And this stems from incomplete reverse engineering and/or datasheet & schematic availability (to the emu programmers). I guess. So I usually use the presence or absence of a "list of working games" section on the homepage a clue as to whether the emulator is worth getting into and setting up.

 

To make things easier I made a little chart for each emulator on high quality cue-card stock. Printed it out and keep it in a notebook. It includes basic information like where its settings are stored, .ini or registry, and what the major keys are for each "special function", like save state, screenshot, load rom, and so on and so forth.

 

To spiff it up I made overlays, or rather something I call cue-strips, that rest atop the keyboard, highlighting the important commands and controls. Not these gaudy 1990's gamer overlays that cover the whole keyboard, but a 2 or 3 inch-wide strip with a tongue that slips in between the function keys and the keyboard housing. It bends at a 45 degree angle. Each "cue-strip" is styled around emulated system's logo and basic color scheme and font. Like the Atari Fuji graphic and woodgrain texture and color of text. Similar to the VCS control panel.

 

 

On emulation..

 

I still think it sucks when compared to real hardware ('cept BLEEM! with PlayStation games).

 

With respect. Bleem! is/was one of the worst emulators for PSX. They had some kind of copy protection going IIRC? And it was too much ahead of its time. You had to have the perfect setup setup just right. It is a hybrid simulator more than an emulator. What with the mix of Glide / D3D rendering. Bleem! embodied none of the characteristics of an elegant emulator. Fuck that..!

 

 

On emulation..

 

Emulation is simply NOT the REAL GAME!

 

Of course it is. It's just a matter of where the game's code resides, what form it takes.. Bits on a disk or bits in a silicon rom. All the same. The essence and interplay of code instructions and variables is all there.

 

If it makes you feel better, defrag your roms so all the bits may be in close proximity to one another. Ahhh-AAA-hahahaha!

 

 

On emulation...

 

A hard drive is going to fail and so all of your stuff should be backed up on disks or solid state drives if this is your method.

 

This is solid advice with anything in any digital format. Digital data is vulnerable to many pitfalls such as natural disasters, mistakes, hardware failures, and so on and so forth. Theft being one of them. With emulation this is a huge and immeasurable positive. If something goes awry you have a backup.

 

 

On emulation..

 

Plus, saving states (although fun and great for the time crunched lives we live today) is cheating! If you have a save state and claim that you beat a game you're claim is nothing when compared to the work of someone winning on real hardware with the same limitations intended by the programmers.

 

I can see that. One could say similar commentary about a pause mod for the VCS. But in the end, just don't use it. If you're participating in HSC or similar and you cheat, you're doing nothing but making yourself feel better in the short term. It's not real, it's not honest, it isn't even you. So play by the rules or become that much smaller.

 

SaveStates is just one of the many awesome features of most emulators. You can break up a lengthy gaming session easily. Or build skill at a certain level without having to laboriously trundle through the early beginner levels. You can also assist in debugging activities too.

 

Some of the limitations of early hardware (no pause/save/resume) was not by choice of the programmer. It was a limitation of the existing hardware.

 

 

On emulation..

 

I often play on emulation (Capcom Classics, SNK classics, Taito arcade, Midway collection, Atari, etc..), but I always will prefer the original hardware and the original cartridge or disks. I use arcade controls, though.

 

In that case, the arcade controls would be considered a peripheral.

 

People don't care anymore and just like with Napster and music, everything went downhill from there!

 

I don't think Napster was the problem. About the time Napster came to be was about the time the music industry started putting out greater amounts of shit. One camp would have you believe one way, the other the other way. I digress.

 

In any case for every new top 100 songs I hear I may accept 1 or 2 of them into my music collection. That isn't a hell of a lot! And for those I try to acquire the real CD.

 

There's still a lot of 70's and 60's material I hadn't heard before, just the same as 90's and 2000's stuff. Both are on equal ground since they're brand new to me. And I prefer the 60's and 70's more.

 

 

I think the law is pretty smoky on what is legal with downloading and playing ROMS. Many media licenses were only fifteen years back in the day (I'm pretty sure I read that somewhere..), so even though a lot of titles aren't declared abandoned, they couldn't be pursued in a court. I used to argue that it was free advertising for the game and that a true collector or enthusiast would buy something that they otherwise may not even know about, due to emulation. Now I think that people can just find whatever they want pirated and it has a negative impact on the industry.

 

Most of us are now well off and it is cheaper and easier to just buy the material outright. Or just don't bother, period. Pirating stuff today often takes a lot of time. Most games are DRM/DLC and would require seemingly herculean efforts for the amount of return. If you can do it at all.

 

The videogame industry is doing very well. What are they nowadays - 20 billion/yr? 40 billion/yr?

[Austin]

Thanks guys for understanding. I guess even tho I have used emulation in the past, I still prefer the real thing because of nostalgia and its stuff I grew up with.

 

Everyone prefers the real thing. The thing with emulation is that beggars can't be choosers. I never had my stuff stolen, but I was in a situation at one point where I had no game consoles because things were that bad, financially speaking. I had to make do with emulation and didn't have a choice about it. All things considered, it worked fine. You learn to appreciate it. ("Well, I have nothing.. but at least I can still play Mario or Sonic, even if it's on a PC with this crappy third-party game pad. Life is good!") You'll get back to the point where you can buy new systems and you can abandon emulation when that happens.

[Buttons]

Papa said something as me..oops..

 

I agree with him though!

 

Try out his new game "Run Out" pretty soon, for the VCS (emulation if you want!?!)!!

Edited May 8, 2015 by Buttons

[Papa]

Thank you Buttons! LOG OUT NEXT TIME... BAD KITTY!!

 

I happened to have the dream machine for Bleem! They got sued by Sony for showing a real pic of what Gran Turismo looked like on the PS1 compared to the PC with a good graphics card. My games ran great! What it did for me was raise an eyebrow to what eventually would be the Sony marketing strategy for many popular titles..switch up the resolution and paint on some new textures and rebox and resell the same game again, and again, and again. The reason they hated emulation so bad was because when you put a game like Tekken 3 on a PC with a Voodoo 3500 and a good processor you saw details in the characters eyebrows, etc. that couldn't even be seen on a PS1! Why put detail there that the user can't even see with the intended system? The signs in Gran Turismo are another example, as well as the sheer detail of the car models and backgrounds! You can read all the signs as they fly by in high resolution with a PC and Bleem!, whereas on a PS1 you can barely make out what they say and the fine print is illegible! This proves that they programmed things with a higher resolution future in mind and the blatant recycling of software for the user. Some people might view this as a rip off and back away from the console market in favor of PC's.

 

I remember a friend of mind saying, when the PS1 was still kicking, that he was under the impression that console systems were superior to PC's. To this I could only remind him of how everything was first programmed on a PC and then set up for a console. There are slight graphical enhancements for old systems that curve up or soften pixel edges in emulation giving the user a different experience, much like Bleem or PCSX but to a lesser degree. Beyond the PS1 we still find that emulation has a long way to go. I have yet to see acceptable levels of performance for most systems beyond that. N64 can be okay, but the original system is so much fun and reliable that I always prefer that.

 

Even the lower end emulation is beginning to deflect me. I'm hunting down ways to try and fix the audio on the At-Games Genesis. At first I thought that the instrumentation was better and so it wasn't bad. Then I heard a LOT of off-sounding and wrong tuned notes doting games. I wondered if they couldn't give us the real music or if they just couldn't afford to emulate it properly and still make a profit. What gives? My 2 year old doesn't mind and I don't mind running those games on my Everdrive with real hardware even if I don't own the cart. I bought the games somehow, so I own them! There are mods for the earlier dye-drop emulators and so I'm waiting for someone to figure out how to mod that system to fix the audio.

[Keatah]

Gaming on the PC was never ever EVER native, and nothing in the architecture is geared toward it. Nothing! Sound, graphics, "multi-media".. All of that shit, it's all add-on! Nothing inherent. Only its versatility allows it to play games.

 

Things like the AT-Games / Flashbacks / multi-game arcade PCB's use either emulation or FPGA as the main engine. Maybe even a half-assed mixture. I don't know enough of the specifics to say exactly what the deal is for each. During development it probably sounded good enough, and they left it at that.

[Keatah]

There are slight graphical enhancements for old systems that curve up or soften pixel edges in emulation giving the user a different experience, much like Bleem or PCSX but to a lesser degree.

 

This supersampling and anti-aliasing and smoothing effects probably seems cool to some people. Hey look! I'm playing Pac-Man at 4096 x 4096 with no jaggies! Fuck that..

 

None of it takes into account how a CRT behaves. To do it right you need to start using the graphics card and hlsl.

 

Blargg effects were a good first effort.

 

I would rant more, but we're getting off-topic.

[mehguy]

damn son... sorry to hear that... was there any valuable games you lost?

[Video_Invader]

Emulations ok. I've tried it off and on since 2005 but I usually stick to the real thing. Nothing really rare taken but they did confirm it was them. They even admitted and bragged about it. Turns out the truck they were in is stolen too. They have recovered a bunch of stuff. Have to go in tomorrow to identify my stuff. I hope nothing damaged. My last ps3 got the red light so fortunately, the newest machine they got was my ps2.

[chas10e]

have the police report with you & dig up some photo's if you can as well

 

I do hope you recover a good majority if not all of your property

[Video_Invader]

Woohoo! The somehow managed to recover everything that was taken. Lucky break! Looks like they'll be in lockdown for awhile. My whole point of this is we all need to do whatever it takes to protect our collection. I'm gonna be moving soon anyway. Tired of drug dealing going on down the street and speeding vehicles. I have a child that cant even play outside because of this.

[Keatah]

Fuck'n A man!!

I'm going to play 1 game of Missile Command in celebration of the good news. This is an award I don't give out frequently, so consider it an honor and something to cherish.

 

Which version do you prefer?

1- Atari VCS

2- Atari 400/800

3- Arcade

[OldSchoolRetroGamer]

 

Fuck'n A man!!

I'm going to play 1 game of Missile Command in celebration of the good news. This is an award I don't give out frequently, so consider it an honor and something to cherish.

 

Which version do you prefer?

1- Atari VCS

2- Atari 400/800

3- Arcade

 

 

Wow...........

[Nutsy Doodleheimer]

 

Fuck'n A man!!

I'm going to play 1 game of Missile Command in celebration of the good news. This is an award I don't give out frequently, so consider it an honor and something to cherish.

 

Which version do you prefer?

1- Atari VCS

2- Atari 400/800

3- Arcade

Hey you should also put /5200 as well on number 2 :-P. All 3 are great, but the arcade is just awesome!! Best Game Over screen in video game history IMHO. 35th anniversary of it's release in June!!