If Next-Gen Is Too Pricey Go Retro

Via RetroGaming with Racketboy, a story in the San Francisco Chronicle suggesting that you go retro if the new consoles are too expensive. They single out the (still excellent) Sega Dreamcast console as the best buy for your money vs. enjoyment. The folks at SF Gate also mention several other older games and consoles that will allow modern gamers their fun without breaking the bank. From the article: "Scenario 4: I'm poorer than any of the characters from 'Angela's Ashes' but not quite as poor as Jim Braddock's family when the heat got shut off in 'Cinderella Man.' (I pulled this newspaper out of the recycling bin at BART.): You've presented a challenge, but not an impossible one. I saw a copy of the PC game Grim Fandango, a complete masterpiece that most people never played, for $6 on eBay. Since it came out in 1998, you can probably find an abandoned computer on the curb that will play it. You'll be experiencing about 98.5 percent of the fun that the Getty heir who bought the PS3 is having, at about 1 percent of the price. "

Atari Flashback 2.0

[7grain]

From the article:
The Atari 2600 has come back in several different forms, but the Atari Flashback 2.0 is the only product I've seen that captures the feel of the original late 1970s Atari 2600 console -- including the first Atari Flashback, which is a piece of junk. Among the console's 40 games are the three most important ones: Combat, Pitfall and Yar's Revenge. It's not hard to find a Flashback 2.0 discounted below its $29.82 retail price.

I was initially going to post that I bought one of these last week directly from atari.com for US$19.99, shipping included. Point being that if anyone was interested in this great console, then that was the place to get it.

BUT, now that I'm going to the Atari website to look for a link that I can post, there is no mention of the Flashback console on their website. So... I'm thinking: if you want one, and you see one in the stores, buy it today because it might not be there next month. Whenever I see it in the stores, it's $30.
I'll try to give you this link to the google cache [72.14.253.104] for the page that I ordered from about two weeks ago. Which doesn't help you buy one for twenty bucks, but it does prove that I'm not crazy. :)

Yes, indeed that link does work. Good luck hunting for a deal.

Cheers.

Re:Exactly right

[TrekCycling]

The Dreamcast can still be purchased NEW for $100. If you want your vintage in mint condition that's a great deal. Then you can proceed to have fun with Crazy Taxi, Jet Grind Radio, Chu Chu Rocket, etc.

Re:A new spin on it

[Anonymous Coward]

ROM sites put it on and don't get shut down

There is absolutely nothing legal about ROM sites hosted in the US (or in any country that has signed the Berne Convention or any similar international treaty). Even if you own the original game, you most certainly do not have the right to distribute that game.

Btw don't copyrights run out after 10 years anyway?

If you insist on being misinformed, then at least abstain from spewing your nonsense all over Slashdot. There's enough of that here as it is.

Re:sad

[Mattintosh]

There's no "gray" area if you own the original games, but not the console (except in cases where the console has a BIOS, which started becoming common with the PSX). The games are often easy to find at thrift stores (like Goodwill) or resale shops (there's a good chain called "Slackers" here). Ebay is also decent.

Once you have the game, the ROM is legal, or at least as close as you need to worry about being. (Technically, the ROM is only fully legal if you rip it yourself. It's just that you could claim to have ripped it if you show the original cart, and nobody would bother to call you on it.) PSX games are even easier, as you can play them directly from the CD, and it's not difficult to rip your own ISO if you want the convenience.

As far as controllers are concerned, well, it's easy to find dead consoles, salvage some spare parts, and make a cool console-controller-to-USB or -parallel bus converter. There are even premade drivers for some of them.

Re:A new spin on it

[crankyspice]

The AHRA certainly puts a lot of pressure on other forms of media to conform to the same measure of "fair use". RIAA v. Diamond sets a strong precedent, and not just for audio.

The AHRA was a legislative construct where the 'private copying' exemption was (at least in theory) offset by the tariff [for lack of a better word] placed on blank media. The (c) industry as a whole is pretty strongly opposed to such "taking" and, representing our single largest export and ~5% of our GDP, has some pretty strong lobbying support on the Hill. The odds of an AHRA-like piece of legislation passing both houses is pretty slim, I'd wager, but we'll see what the new Congressional majority's temperment is. As it stands now, Diamond applies only to audio, since it was only space-shifting being presumably "within the ambit of the [Audio Home Recording] Act" that made it fair use. Other copyrighted works don't fall within the ambit of the Act.

It could also be argued that, as the hardware used to play older games is no longer produced, space-shifting is in itself a form of archival preservation, and use of archival copies is simply fair use.

There you might have something, under 17 USC 117(a)(1) (permitting an adaptation as a necessary step in using the software with "a machine"). Though you'd probably want to have copied the ROM to the computer yourself for the cleanest application of that doctrine.

why just last month...

[snuf23]

I installed AMAME on my Workbench 3.0 desktop running in emulation under WinUAE. I had a bit of a problem because my ROM sets were out of date, but the ones that worked, worked fine. The only bummer was that I had to use full screen mode to get proper color support for MAME - which meant that there was no really good way to get a nice screenshot of the Windows desktop with Amiga desktop in a window running AMAME in a windows.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks about these things.