Emulation is absolutely the way to go. For the older cart-based systems especially, even full romsets barely take up any space, so you can just grab the whole thing and decide what you want to play later:

NES - 280 MB
SNES - 3 GB
N64 - 12 GB
Game Boy - 200 MB
GBC - 675 MB
GBA - 13 GB
Master System - 100 MB
Genesis - 1 GB

When you get into the disc-based era things get more into the terabyte range, but even then it's very much in the "cheap HDD" range:

Saturn (US) - 80 GB
Dreamcast (US) - 115 GB
PS1 (NTSC) - 500 GB
PS2 (NTSC) - 2.5 TB
PSP (NTSC) - 500 GB
Gamecube (NTSC) - 500 GB
Wii - 5-6 TB (?)
Nintendo DS - 200 GB

Obviously, about 80% of that (conservatively) is games you wouldn't actually ever want to play, so you can easily store every ROM you'd ever want from every system from the PS2/GCN/Xbox and before (+Wii) on a single cheap drive and run them all on a potato PC (with enhanced graphics for the more modern ones, too!).

Want to waste money anyway? Buy the old systems. You'll definitely not regret buying an Atari Jaguar.

I am thinking of composing a video essay titled Xenogears Is Probably Not Marxist But You Never Know.

i n d i e g a m e s

Why would I play anything besides Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead??

Who needs COD when boomer shooters/90s FPS are a thing.

Can I remind everyone of our good and long-standing friend, open source games.

I never got a console after the 360 and Wii lol

Modded Wii might be my favorite console tbh, there's a lotta neat stuff you can do with it

I just learned that modern phones can play ps1 games. Some ps2 games maybe.

I am going to get a Bluetooth controller for my phone and just enjoy myself.

thinking of starting Deus Ex soon.

Last week I started playing a rom hack of Pokémon red called purergb which has QOL improvements and bug fixes and lets you catch all 151 Pokémon without trading! I haven’t played a new release game in probably 2 years lol.

I thought even pricing aside the switch 2 announcement was a real wet fart. I’m sure there are some people out there really excited for multiplayer bloodborne but I have never been a from software guy.

The only exclusive that enticed me was Metroid prime 4, but even then I much prefer the 2D Metroid games (dread was incredible).

games peaked in the gba era don't @ me

I love playing older games. And even though they’re a lot of fun, technical issues can be frustrating sometimes.

Right now I’m playing Divine Divinity and I’m really enjoying it. But I get random crashes occasionally, and after getting 2 crashes back-to-back I have to take a little break now. Like, I don’t want to go through the stinking sewers again for the third time. Why can’t I just skip that?

No new games are allowed until everyone has beaten Super Mario Bros. Special for the NEC PC-8801.

You've got the right idea. Old games through like the GC/PS2/Wii era can now run on most hardware and there is an absurd amount of incredible games to be played.

Real heads are still out there refusing to play another game until they beat Heroes of the Lance on NES.

Were there other games released after Sonic Adventure 2 ?

Decompilation and PC port projects are also pretty cool.

• OpenGOAL
• sm64
• N64Recomp

master list of low spec games: https://pastebin.com/MTCXZxCN

i was actually playing ZORK (1982) and paper mapping on my desk while i played. even though it wasn't the most insane game experience i've ever had, was really fun to learn/experience a part of gaming history. it also holds up REALLY fucking well to today's standards. being gameplay and not graphic based will do that.

I crave weird experiments like Seaman on the Dreamcast.

I also regret that I live on this side on the revolution. That I would have to live and most probably die through the revolution I am failing everyday to help organise.

Despite all this "learn to code" rhetoric my whole adult life, it feels like a desert of actual software. So much of society still perilously runs on software relics that only proliferated because it was dangerously easily to make them in access and VB6. Games are just asset flips or repackaged nostalgia. The latter will lead to a crack down on game emulators and ROMs, the open distribution of which are hiding the obscurity of people's lack of curiosity.