How is the community doing?

[ZP3]

Sadly, I got out of collecting and goodwill-hunting and all that jazz for awhile; college and a new PS4 will do that to a person. However, I was just curious how this site has been doing since I last posted, oh, a year ago or so? I was going through my collection after a day of PS4ing, and I thought "Damn, these are some good games!" So, my question for you all is as follows: if you had to recommend one game from every system you own, what would you recommend?

[buzz_n64]

My favorite games and systems out of the ones I own. No portables. If I don't have a favorite, it's not listed.

Wii- Super Mario Galaxy

PS3/360- GTA V

PS2- GTA Vice City

Dreamcast- Sonic Adventure

N64- Super Mario 64

Playstation- Crash 3

Saturn- Nights

3DO- Gex

32X- Knuckles Chaotix

SNES- Donkey Kong Country 2

Sega CD- Sonic CD

CD-i- Hotel Mario

Genesis- Sonic 2

TG-16- Bonk's Adventure

SMS- Shinobi

NES- Super Mario Bros. 2

Atari 5200- Pitfall II

Atari 2600- Pitfall II

PC- Duke Nukem 3D

[celerystalker]

I'll try to go a different route and recommend something less popular but still fun

Atari 2600-Warlords

Intellivision-Shark! Shark!

Arcadia 2001-Break Away

NES-Legacy of the Wizard

Famicom-Space Hunter

Master System-Golvellius

Turbografx 16-Ninja Spirit

Turbo CD-Exile

PC Engine-Download

PC Engine CD-Kunio-kun Downtown Nekketsu Koushin Kyoku Daiundokai Soreyuke

Genesis-CrackDown

Sega CD-Android Assault

32X-Space Harrier

Mega Drive-Sailor Moon

Mega CD-Cosmic Fantasy Stories

SNES-FireStriker

Super Famicom-Cho Aniki Bakuretsu Rantouden

CD-i-Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon

Neo Geo AES-Sengoku 3

3DO-Psychic Detective-my favorite FMV game

Jaguar-Tempest 2000-okay, I know it's popular, but it rules.

Jaguar CD-Battlemorph

PC-FX-Battle Heat

Saturn-Enemy Zero

Japanese Saturn-Soukyugurentai

PlayStation-Board Game: Top Shop

Japanese PlayStation-Super Robot Shooting

Nintendo 64-Mischief Makers

Japanese Nintendo 64-Sin & Punishment

Dreamcast-Bangai-O

Japanese Dreamcast-Treasure Strike

PlayStation 2-Chulip

Japanese PlayStation 2-Twinkle Star Sprites: The Petite Princess

GameCube-Eternal Darkness

Japanese GameCube-Cubic Lode Runner

Xbox-ToeJam & Earl III

Wii-Gunblade NY/LA Machine Guns

Xbox 360-Culdcept Saga

Japanese Xbox 360-Gal*Gun

Playstation 3-Dragon's Crown

Japanese Playstation 3-Ryu Ga Gotoku: Kenzan

[JSoup]

However, I was just curious how this site has been doing since I last posted, oh, a year ago or so?

Still dying a slow death, with the 20 or so of us keeping the life support running.
Business as usual, really.

[Scotterpop]

Still dying a slow death, with the 20 or so of us keeping the life support running.
Business as usual, really.

HA! That's nothing compared to the sad remains of the old RGVC newsgroup. Totally depressing. Used to be my go-to site for classic gaming discussions and brag postings when I first got into collecting in the late 90s/early 2000s. Definitely makes me appreciate what little we have here : )

[ZP3]

Hmmm. Why the drop in activity? Is the hobby in general losing steam?

[Jorpho]

We've had other threads about the decline of this board in particular.
http://forum.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?171261-digitpress-com-New-Owners

[ZP3]

My favorite games and systems out of the ones I own. No portables. If I don't have a favorite, it's not listed.

Wii- Super Mario Galaxy

PS3/360- GTA V

PS2- GTA Vice City

Dreamcast- Sonic Adventure

N64- Super Mario 64

Playstation- Crash 3

Saturn- Nights

3DO- Gex

32X- Knuckles Chaotix

SNES- Donkey Kong Country 2

Sega CD- Sonic CD

CD-i- Hotel Mario

Genesis- Sonic 2

TG-16- Bonk's Adventure

SMS- Shinobi

NES- Super Mario Bros. 2

Atari 5200- Pitfall II

Atari 2600- Pitfall II

PC- Duke Nukem 3D

I like the Super Mario Bros 2 pick on the NES!

[8bitgamer]

HA! That's nothing compared to the sad remains of the old RGVC newsgroup. Totally depressing. Used to be my go-to site for classic gaming discussions and brag postings when I first got into collecting in the late 90s/early 2000s. Definitely makes me appreciate what little we have here : )

I think Twitter and Facebook have taken the place of message boards for many people. For example, the majority of CGE 2014 talk was on Facebook, not the DP thread.

[Gentlegamer]

Hmmm. Why the drop in activity? Is the hobby in general losing steam?

Professional resellers and yuppy instant collectors have taken over the hobby.

[thom_m]

Professional resellers and yuppy instant collectors have taken over the hobby.

This. Exactly this.

As for the recommendations:

Atari 2600: Turmoil

NES: Rockin' Kats

Famicom (in my case, via adapter): Gradius II and The Goonies

Master System: Psycho Fox and The Lucky Dime Caper

Mega Drive: Kid Chameleon

SNES: Super Metroid

Playstation: Skullmonkeys

Dreamcast: Crazy Taxi 2

Playstation 2: Guitar Hero 2

[sfchakan]

Professional sellers, instant collectors burning through money, and kids being exposed to older stuff through Youtube are all strangling existing supply. Oldschool "good deals" (read: DIRTY FUCKING CHEAP) are now much less common.

I'm sure this is killing some enthusiasm for some people.

Also, many of us have been hanging around for a decade to two decades now online. Talking about the same old shit for the tenth time this decade gets old.

[JSoup]

Also, many of us have been hanging around for a decade to two decades now online. Talking about the same old shit for the tenth time this decade gets old.

It's not just that. Some subjects are pretty thoroughly covered, everything there is to discover has been discovered, every discussion to be had has been had. Unless you're talking about homebrews, protos or stuff that hasn't been fully researched due to extreme obscurity, there isn't anything really new to bring up.

[Gentlegamer]

I like talking about the games themselves rather than the Butter Monster chase for r@re games.

[ZP3]

Still, I love discussing the hunt and the collection building aspect of the hobby. Hopefully that doesn't die down too!

[treismac]

2600- Seaquest

7800- Commando

NES- Punch-Out

SNES- Super Mario Kart

N64- 007

Gamecube- Puyo Pop Fever

Wii- Wario Smooth Moves

Turbografx-16- Ninja Spirit

Sega Master System- Wonder Boy

Genesis- Dynamite Headdy

Saturn- Saturn Bomberman

Dreamcast- Crazy Taxi

PS1- Soul Edge

PS2- Katamari Damacy

XBox- Outrun 2

[sfchakan]

It's not just that. Some subjects are pretty thoroughly covered, everything there is to discover has been discovered, every discussion to be had has been had. Unless you're talking about homebrews, protos or stuff that hasn't been fully researched due to extreme obscurity, there isn't anything really new to bring up.

That too. Often, you can find any answer by Googling like someone who's not a retard.

Kind of takes the fun out of it. :(

So that eliminates a lot of people who might post a request for information. Then you get people who don't bother Googling and ask anyway. They are often treated to quick answers with a link to the appropriate information.

What's left? Opinion threads. They're not for everyone.

[Steven]

Hmmm. Why the drop in activity? Is the hobby in general losing steam?

As others have stated, there's been a shift in the scene over the past handful of years. Things aren't as they were 10 years ago when online discussion of our classic old favorites was still relatively somewhat fresh. We hadn't discussed a majority of games to death yet, and people were more active.

It makes me appreciate being a part of the scene at that time, as it was fun to talk about various games and get 20 replies. Nowadays, I've noticed in general, most game boards are much less active. Of all the ones I visit, NintendoAge is still kicking like a monster, but most others have slowed down tremendously in terms of user activity.

It's 2014. It's a different animal today than it was even 4 years ago.

[sfchakan]

Boards that are fairly active generally have a lot of off-topic stuff going on.

I think one of the busiest retro-friendly boards I know of now is Racketboy. There's so much stuff posted daily I gave up on trying to keep up with it.

[JSoup]

Boards that are fairly active generally have a lot of off-topic stuff going on.

That or they fill a popular niche.
-NintendoAge is a center of buying and trading, whatever your opinion of their community practices are, so the sales and collections boards get the most activity. If you hop over to their playing forum, it's one of the slowest moving boards.
-RacketBoy is another one that fills a niche, but most of it's activity is off-topic stuff.
-GameFAQs, believe it or not, has a fairly active classic gaming board, with one topic that has spanned 10 years.
Etc.

[xelement5x]

I will also say I've noticed a lot of Facebook groups popping up as well. I can't really stand Facebook in general so I stick to forums even as they slow down.

[ZP3]

If I were to be really into buying/selling, would it be worth checking out Nintendo Age?

[Gentlegamer]

If I were to be really into buying/selling, would it be worth checking out Nintendo Age?

To my knowledge, NA is *the* website for retro marketplace right now.

[Tanooki]

I'd disagree with that about NA, and it has nothing to do with my distrust/dislike of somethings there but an established history of change in the last 4 years. When I first registered there in 2010 after lurking it was an entirely different marketplace across the board from ethics to pricing, to community feel of it. What is there now is not what it was at all and it's not really worth buying there today unless you can snap up a lucky find, it's basically just gamegavel without the fees (I'd say ebay but that place is a traffic beast.) 4 years ago there was the community aspect of it where people looked to ebay and then gave a discount over what the fees and cuts were from that site, it was a bonus for being at the site as you'd get treated right. There always were reseller types, but the amount of them then to now has exploded. Those modern resellers/shop owners just make an account to sell there and they'll ask the high paid BIN level of ebay or more so the deals are gone in that respect. There are few deals to be had at NA now, most often, unless it's something obscure or unique, or a random lucky refresh at the time, you'll pay less using ebay and have a lot more copies of X game to pick from. If you're after the obscure and unique it's the best place if you want prototypes homebrew with limited run stuff and oddball merchandise finds go for it. If you're wanting games, systems, and accessories, stick to ebay for a better price and more of them posted to find the price/quality you want.

[JSoup]

To my knowledge, NA is *the* website for retro marketplace right now.

If you don't mind constant e-mail harassment, GamersGavel sees a lot of business.
If you don't mind dealing with idiots and a dumb exchange system, Goozex is another busy retro place.

[wizardofwor1975]

I think Twitter and Facebook have taken the place of message boards for many people. For example, the majority of CGE 2014 talk was on Facebook, not the DP thread.

I agree. It certainly looks like Facebook is stealing some of the Digital Press's thunder. However, I think this is going to be a marketing decision based on larger potential advertisement revenue and the possibility of reaching a much larger target audience and is not based on any deficiencies of the DP or it's users.


Also, many of us have been hanging around for a decade to two decades now online. Talking about the same old shit for the tenth time this decade gets old.

Seconded, as a newcomer the topics to me are fresh but I completely understand your point as a DP veteran that some of topics are becoming stale by sheer repetition.

[Gentlegamer]

I'd disagree with that about NA, and it has nothing to do with my distrust/dislike of somethings there but an established history of change in the last 4 years. When I first registered there in 2010 after lurking it was an entirely different marketplace across the board from ethics to pricing, to community feel of it. What is there now is not what it was at all and it's not really worth buying there today unless you can snap up a lucky find, it's basically just gamegavel without the fees (I'd say ebay but that place is a traffic beast.) 4 years ago there was the community aspect of it where people looked to ebay and then gave a discount over what the fees and cuts were from that site, it was a bonus for being at the site as you'd get treated right. There always were reseller types, but the amount of them then to now has exploded. Those modern resellers/shop owners just make an account to sell there and they'll ask the high paid BIN level of ebay or more so the deals are gone in that respect. There are few deals to be had at NA now, most often, unless it's something obscure or unique, or a random lucky refresh at the time, you'll pay less using ebay and have a lot more copies of X game to pick from. If you're after the obscure and unique it's the best place if you want prototypes homebrew with limited run stuff and oddball merchandise finds go for it. If you're wanting games, systems, and accessories, stick to ebay for a better price and more of them posted to find the price/quality you want.

I've only been trading on NA for the past year, and I think I found good deals. Of course, most of that is common stuff. The "rare" stuff often looks like an inflated ebay BIN, as you note, thought I think I received a good deal on PCE Dracula X at $88 shipped compared to $125+ on ebay.

[Steve W]

Social media is everybody's go-to for retro gaming info now, especially considering that all social media is designed for smartphone access, whereas an old-school webforum is a lot harder to use on a phone than with a computer.

Anyway, to the other question, what's the best game for each console? I don't have much of an opinion on which game is best, but these are the games I want to play when I fire up a console, so they're my particular "flavor" of gaming fun. And I don't have extensive collections for each machine, they're just the games that I crave and come back to the most often.

Atari 2600 - Escape From The Mindmaster
Atari 5200 - Adventure II
Atari 7800 - Midnight Mutants
Intellivision (with ECS console) - Mind Strike
Colecovision - Spectar
TurboGrafx-16 CD - Exile
Atari Lynx - Warbirds
Genesis - Outlander
Atari Jaguar (with JagCD) - Battlemorph
Dreamcast - Unreal Tournament
Nuon - Iron Soldier 3
Xbox - Roadkill
PS2 - Star Trek: Shattered Universe
GameCube - Phantasy Star Online
Gizmondo - Sticky Balls
Xavix GamePort - Bowling
GameWave - Letter Zap!

If I've left a console off, it's because I have no hard opinion on it.

[sfchakan]

I think NA used to be a little better off when I first stumbled onto it. A lot of people were fairly friendly and even helped others fill out their collections.

Now everyone's trying to outdo the next guy and make as much money as possible.

[ZP3]

I think NA used to be a little better off when I first stumbled onto it. A lot of people were fairly friendly and even helped others fill out their collections.

Now everyone's trying to outdo the next guy and make as much money as possible.

See, that's too bad. I always felt like the forums were the place to help out fellow collectors when you have something you don't want, whereas eBay was the place for (attempting) to maximize cash.

[sfchakan]

When I first stumbled upon NA, there was even a thread where people posted to great Buy It Now deals. Good luck seeing that happen now. Most of the members there (and people elsewhere) would snatch it to resell.

EDIT: It appears as if some people do randomly post in a current era version of that thread (http://www.nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?StartRow=1&catid=3&threadid=117328).

[wizardofwor1975]

Social media is everybody's go-to for retro gaming info now, especially considering that all social media is designed for smartphone access, whereas an old-school webforum is a lot harder to use on a phone than with a computer.

Good point. I wonder if it would be possible to quantify how much market share webforums have lost to smart phones and social media.

[celerystalker]

I've never used social media for game info. It always seems to me that social media is either common knowledge stuff or uninformative surface stuff like screenshots without details. I've had more fun and better luck with forums or reading sites like HG101. It seems like the old hands who really know a lot still haunt the long-running forums.

[sfchakan]

You get a lot of the same problems with social media as you do with forums, only with more people.

The barrier for entry is lower, so I feel like the quality of conversation drops a bit as well.


DAE REMEMBER THIS HIDDEN GEM?!?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7e/Mario_Kart_64box.png

and other bullshit.

and it gets posted again every week.

[Steven]

I check DP daily and it saddens me a bit everytime. User activity here has really dropped from when I first came 10 years ago (wow time flies). I just remember this place was HOPPING back then, and now, it's not nearly as active. It makes me wonder if there are thousand others like me... logging in to see if there are any interesting new threads we can reply to, but when we don't, we do nothing and thus that accounts for the lack of activity. But it just seems nowadays (in general) people don't find much that riles them up enough to go and start a new topic about.

Kind of just the sign of the times we living in, really.

Chakan, lol at that MK64 pic.

[JSoup]

I check DP daily and it saddens me a bit everytime. User activity here has really dropped from when I first came 10 years ago (wow time flies). I just remember this place was HOPPING back then, and now, it's not nearly as active. It makes me wonder if there are thousand others like me... logging in to see if there are any interesting new threads we can reply to, but when we don't, we do nothing and thus that accounts for the lack of activity. But it just seems nowadays (in general) people don't find much that riles them up enough to go and start a new topic about.

Have you heard the word of vbender?

[Tanooki]

I haven't been registered that long but I read the place off and on over the years and I agree, it has slowed, but there's no reason it couldn't pick up again. It's just the mystery of how to get the traffic back if that's possible. If a place as high strung and cliquey as NA can get that many posts in a day a more friendlier older place with a wicked database of resources should have a chance to do it too.

[Wraith Storm]

I used to be on here all the time. Every other day before work I would log on and post or reply.

But 2 years ago I had to switch my hours at work which severly limited the time i could get on the internet, and now I have 3 kids under the age of 4. Nedless to say, i seldom get a chance to post anything on DP anymore. But once in a while like today i get a few hours free.

[Nz17]

Just some counterpoints to a few of the points brought up here in this thread:

First I think that the DP forum (although perhaps not the rest of the site) is highly accessible for mobile users. We have multiple mobile themes / skins and we're even integrated with Tapatalk if that app is your thing.

As far as finding things using Google search: it is true that Google is useful for many things including as a search engine, but then again you will have to get that information from somewhere, and that somewhere is either Wiki's being set up at various places or Web forums such as this one. Oh sure, sometimes a little snippet of the page shown on the search results is enough for people, but often times they will follow through to read more in the thread, and occasionally one of those people will stay around as a new forum member (or at least a lurker).

As to Facebook and other social media: sure they're big and popular right now and their momentum is going to carry them for a long time, but then again they're also closed-off ecosystems like a tower or a silo filled with stuff. Most of it you can't see unless you are a member because they want you to be a member, and so their defaults will be set to something like 'show only to your friends' or terms such as that. Most people don't post their items as being publicly viewable to the world, so there's a lot of discussion going on in there, but it's often locked away from the greater Web. Things like the Digital Press message board, where nearly everything is publicly visible, are much more likely to be seen in future Web searches than posts on Facebook. Unless, of course, you're searching within Facebook itself, in which case you might find some stuff, but as others have said, there's a lot of noise in there compared to actual information.

In general, traffic is down for sites across the Internet, not because the quality of the sites has gone down necessarily, but because there's just so many more Web sites and Web pages out there compared to the past. The amount of users/viewers is nearly the same over the past few years though, which spreads the hits thinner overall. And most of that traffic is only going to the top ten sites worldwide by popularity. After all there's only so many people with so many hours free in the day, and so you see a lot of people ending up spending either less time online, or they just visit only so many sites. So while we might not see as many threads or as many posts because of how many lurkers we have or those people who are just doing some quick research, our traffic actually does slowly grow from month to month in terms of total viewers of the Web site.

[Tanooki]

Not to minimize your post there to the end of it, but that's actually the best news of all -- page views are up, even if they are lurking. Eventually some of them will sign up, maybe not a lot, but some. Places like this are open so you don't have to be at the mercy of a facebook or a myspace imploding in on itself while keeping everything locked away unless you sign up.

[celerystalker]

That's pretty much me in a nutshell. Lurked for years, mainly looking at the Import forum looking at pick ups for ideas on new games to try, until one day I decided to join in and see if I could contribute, ask questions, and talk about the stuff I enjoy to a different group of people.

[Tanooki]

Well good for you! It's what I did. I started to get turned off by some stuff online elsewhere, decided I needed a change where I could freely talk about stuff without fear of reprisal so I stopped just being a reader and made the account back then. I liked the game discussion, the old stuff, and the lack of a hardcore collector base with control fascination behind it.

[FrankSerpico]

I don't think less traffic is really a bad thing. The boards here still seem to be largely full of informative topics and intelligent discussion compared to stuff like the retro console boards on Gamefaqs, where you'll find topics like these:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/916387-nintendo-64/69436049
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/916377-genesis/70509662

[ZP3]

I don't think less traffic is really a bad thing. The boards here still seem to be largely full of informative topics and intelligent discussion compared to stuff like the retro console boards on Gamefaqs, where you'll find topics like these:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/916387-nintendo-64/69436049
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/916377-genesis/70509662

Hey, maybe I wasn't aware that you could buy an N64 on eBay ;) /sarcasm