ROMZ... C/D

eventually, you'll be ready to handle them again, and there they are.

ROMZ, more pros: No longer having to deal WITH DODGY AND AGED ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT (oh, I see, my bad for hitting the TAB key and then ENTER, duh)

Cons: Illegal
Immoral, if you believe in that sort of thing
May hurt original game creators' feelings
Highly addictive to play and to collect

x-post:

Dunno, I'd rather be done with them entirely, you know? It's not like USENET/IRC WAREZ cabals are going to disappear by the time I can play them again reasonably, no? Besides which, I might go legit by that point, never mind the fact that my last go-around with legit nostalgia ended in disaster and broken NES players.

So, do people here tend to indulge? And if so, are you completists or dilettantes?

i wouldn't could on this. Same thing with abandonware; many creators are just happy that folks are still playing them(e.g. Al Lowe).

The interests of the companies involved are a different case. A lot of ROMZ really are abandonware at this point. Then there's the case of the companies that have rereleased old school games in the arcades, like Namco (I don't worry about that much for some reason, especially since my local bar/old school arcade bumped the price to play those up to 50 cents! Come on guys, those aren't even original versions! 50 cents for emulated Missile Command with a sodding CONTINUE FEATURE?). And the St4rR0MZ guys, who I pretty much ignore since they had fuck all to do with creating the games to begin with and money given to them will never result in new games being created (whether that's only dubiously immoral of me or actually very evil and I will burn in hell for b/c I don't properly respect the magic of Capitalism and "intellectual property" rights, I dunno). But then there's the case of the Japanese companies that have rereleased old NES/SNES stuff since there's still a market for it. You don't have the excuse of avoiding paying collector's prices for an SNES Chrono Trigger with a dodgy save battery because Square released it for the PS, similarly there's a lot of collectable/"classic" games out for the GBA, etc. Helping or hurting in that case, I really dunno, or know if I or anyone else who doesn't have a financial interest in the case should especially care.

So, piracy: slightly naughty or very naughty? To be honest, me not wanting to have to worry about this stuff anymore is another motivation to quit the WAREZ/piracy racket. That and the fact that I'm already 27 fucking years old and entertain hopes of having slightly less adolescent interests someday before I die. (No diss to the new board-- ILC is where I spend the majority of my ILXing time as it is.)

I wholeheartedly welcome the re-release of classic games with marginally improved (or greatly improved) graphics. I think plenty more developers besides Nintendo will want to get in on this (squarenix has already been doing it).