Retro Gaming

[FireAza]

Is anyone here into retro gaming? I've been into it for over a year now, and I've amassed quite a collection of both consoles and games! So far I have:
Nintendo Entertainment System (American)
Super Famicom
Sega Mega Drive (Japanese)
Sega Mega CD (Japanese)
Super Nintendo (PAL)
Super Nintendo (American)
Nintendo 64 (PAL)
Sega Saturn (Japanese)
Dreamcast (Japanese)
Game Boy Advance SP (backlit version)
Virtual Boy (Japanese)
Family Computer
PS2 (PAL)

All these consoles have been personally refurbished, basically I've dissembled, cleaned and repaired (including reversing yellowing) them to make them look as good as new!

What about you guys? Other other collectors of retro games here?

[BtEO]

I keep a well maintained emulator and ROM image collection around and frequently dip into classics from my younger days. But the consoles I own are all ones obtained since I gained the personal income to acquire them myself so my collection consists of:
Dreamcast
Gamecube
Wii (With homebrew naturally, including emulators)
Xbox 360
Gameboy Advance (I also have a full set of four GBA-GC cables)
Gameboy Advance SP
Nintendo DS Lite
Nintendo 3DS

Only the first two, and the GBA on the portable side could be considered retro. My brother does own a working Mega Drive, SNES, and N64 though.

I also have a long-standing policy of not trading in games ever, born of frustration when the main console in the house was an N64, but we only ever had 3-4 games available as they'd frequently be traded in (trade-ins were worth a lot more back then) to fund new games — once I commanded my own income I did not duplicate this practise — most of the staff in the local game shop know not to ask if I have any games to trade in. As a result between all my console and PC games I command something in the range of 150-200 legitimately owned games.

[Vektor T. Gecko]

I mostly emulate everything from the NES - PS2 era. Albeit fairly infrequently. But there is a lot of good stuff in there to be sure. I could maybe see looking into emulation further if I ever get around to hooking a system up (or streaming) to a TV screen with a sofa, so I can play 'em as they were meant to be played. Computer room is separate from the TV though - so although video streaming could be done, controls might be an issue.

I also own a fair sized collection of DOS games because, well, I used to game primarily on my 486 back in the day. I know a couple of web shows that deal with this (Ancient DOS Games and Lazy Game Reviews).

[FireAza]

Emulation pales in comparison to the real thing! Plus, collecting hardware and playing games the way they were meant to be played (cartridges!) is also awesome.

[Vektor T. Gecko]

All that hardware's going to stop working some day.
Emulation is fine as far as I'm concerned. I don't need scanline spacing, bloom and flicker to be 100% accurate to 1980's television construction to enjoy a game.

Although things will get interesting when people figure out how to churn out inexpensive FPGAs that implement an entire original NES system, in hardware, on a single chip. Last I heard, they had these pretty close to perfected.

[FireAza]

You'd be surprised at how repairable these old system are. Exploded capacitors can be replaced, dead lasers can be replaced, worn drive belts can be replaced etc.

When I was talking about "comparison", I wasn't talking the televisions that were used back then (half the mods for older systems like the Family Computer and PC Engine revolve around giving them better quality video output like RGB and composite instead of RF-only!), but getting the games looking, sounding and "feeling" like the way they were intended to. This is a very easy thing to screw up, even with a licensed clone system, the audio will often be messed up and graphical elements will be glitched or missing entirely. For some games, they relied on complex programming tricks to achieve results that are beyond what the hardware should be capable of. As such, these tricks only really work on the original hardware.

[Doc Giggles]

Let's see...
I have the following still
Atari 2600
colecovision
NES
SNES
Sega Genesis
Sega CD
Sega 32x
Turbografx 16 (PC Engine)
Sega Saturn (with mod to let it play import games)
Panasonic 3DO
N64
Sony Playstation - Original (with mod to play import games as well as heatsinks and cooling fans to keep the CPU from cooking the optic)
Sega Dreamcast
Gamecube
PS2
Xbox
Xbox360
Wii

Handhelds
Gameboy
GBA
DS Lite
Sega Lynx
PSP

There may be one or two others that I'm forgetting.

[FireAza]

Nice collection! The Atari and Colecovision are a little bit before my time, and a smidgen too primitive, so I've never really had the desire to add one to the collection. You can get region-free BIOSs for both the Saturn and the Dreamcast that let them play all region games, I've found them to be eaiser to install and more reliable than mod chips.

I've added a PC Engine and CD-ROM2 add-on to my collection! Unfortunately, the middle gear in the CD-ROM has turned into cheddar cheese, so it doesn't work at the moment. Currently in the process of refurbishing the consoles, with the PC Engine being white, it yellows real easily. Finished de-yellowing the lid of the CD-ROM, here's how it compares to the neighboring, yellowed plastic:

[Deacon]

How did you whiten it up?

[Rorschach]

How did you whiten it up?

With RASISM.

[FireAza]

Yes, I white-washed it

Seriously though, what I actually used was a combination of hydrogen peroxide, UV light and oxy-action laundry power. In my case, I use a hydrogen peroxide creme from a hair salon, since it's basically impossible to find straight H202 in strong strength and in a large volume. The added benefit of the creme is it's thick, so I can paint it onto the surface, instead of having to buy enough to submerge the plastic.

You then add a little bit of the oxy powder to the H202, paint it onto the plastic then wrap the whole thing in cling wrap, since the mixture will bleach the plastic if it dries out. Then you expose it to UV light, I use a UV light bulb inside a foil-lined box, since the sun is a pain to involve in this process (it keep moving, it goes away at night and it's heat tends to bleach the plastic).

Then you wait, and when it looks good, take it out and wash off the hydrogen peroxide. Its a good idea to seal the plastic with some kind of clear acrylic sealant spray (preferably with UV-filtering properties), since the process slowly reverses if the plastic is exposed to air.

[Doc Giggles]

Nice collection! The Atari and Colecovision are a little bit before my time, and a smidgen too primitive, so I've never really had the desire to add one to the collection. You can get region-free BIOSs for both the Saturn and the Dreamcast that let them play all region games, I've found them to be eaiser to install and more reliable than mod chips.

Thanks. The Atari and Colecovision I got new... Yeah, I feel old just saying that. I did the mod to my Saturn long before the region-free BIOs came out. It doesn't have a mod chip. Sega used the same board for all parts of the world with just a change to the video output. It uses jumpers to tell what region games it should play. A simple switch made it so you could change it whenever you wanted. I should look into doing the BIOs change to my Dreamcast though.

[FireAza]

It doesn't have a mod chip. Sega used the same board for all parts of the world with just a change to the video output. It uses jumpers to tell what region games it should play. A simple switch made it so you could change it whenever you wanted.

Oh, so it's just like the Mega Drive then. Still, I'd rather not have to drill the case up to add a switch

I should look into doing the BIOs change to my Dreamcast though.

HERE'S HOW YOU DO THE BIOS SWAP