Spreading the virus one gamer at a time

[Goblin]

Last year I gave a friend a 2600 so he could get into gaming. I've invited him to Philly and NAVA meetings but he so far has resisted. Well over the weekend he broke down and bought a Dreamcast without any intervention from me.

After hearing this I mentioned the various emulators available and offered to burn him the Colecovision one. To which he floored me by saying that he was actually thinking about buying a CV along with an INTV in the not so distance future. I knew I had planted the seeds, but I didn't expect it to grow so quickly. Now I finally have someone to swap games with. So here is the question, have you done your job to spread the virus?

[SAV2880]

Not quite as retro but since the good NES emulators have come out, I've been giving as many people as I can find copies of it so they can re-play all of the NES games they loved. I've seen many the Contra, Blades of Steel, and other much weirder games in action again ...

Of course, I'm worried ... my friend Pretzel was kinda getting off on the NES game Athena ... worrisome it is! :roll:

[GENESISNES]

I persuaded my friends to get Atari 2600's or 7800's. I will finally have somebody to swap atari games with.

[jkernea]

Where do you guys get these emulators with tons of games on them, etc.??? Will they work on ANY Dreamcast or must you have a modded one or what?? I've had my DC for awhile now, but I've never used an emulator disc or whatnot before. I would like to get some classic SNES games and Genny games though. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Josh.

[CrazyImpmon]

www.dcemulation.com has everything you need to get started. All you need is a plain vanilla CD burner and a collection of ROMs to play games.

Also you might have heard rumor that certain DC won't work with CD-R. That has yet to be verified as my DC was made in Jan 2001 and plays any CD-R just fine (rumor claimed DC made after I think Oct 00 won't work) I think the actual fact is the DC made after certain date haqd a change in the BIOS to block certain boot disc.

Oh yeah, you don't need to use mod.

[digitalpress]

Excellent. Continue to spread the good word of electronic gaming, my dark brothers :twisted:

[theaveng]

I torture my family every Thanksgiving by hooking up the old Atari and playing all the old games. They think I'm nuts. "Whaddyu wanna play such old games for?" Oh well... some people just don't understand the simple addiction of Joust or Pac-Man.

I also give away free emulators and roms to anyone who's interested. Recently gave my boss's kid all the ROMs for Atari to Super Nintendo. Now he's spending more time playing the old classics than his new Gamecube!

[WiseSalesman]

Just a caveat on the DC emulation for people who haven't done it before:

16-bit games run terribly slow, and the NES games have severe sound glitches. You shouldn't expect the quality of either to be near as good as PC. My SNES emulator disc for DC is so slow it's unplayable. I can play the NES one, but it's best with the sound off. Even that runs a little bit choppy, but it's barely noticable.

From what I hear, the pre-NES emulators run pretty close to perfect on DC, but I don't play any games older than NES, so you'll have to judge that one for yourself.

[Tritoch]

Here lately I've been spreading the virus to my wife via Animal Crossing. Just the other day I was playing Lord of the Rings (Xbox), and she commented "That looks interesting". I then explained to her why I was going to blast it in my forthcoming review, and she was actually *interested* for once. She always had a gamer lurking deep down inside of her (loved playing Breakout and Mortal Kombat as a kid), but I've awoken the beast thanks to fuzzy little animals.

Be careful who you spread it too though...now it's hard for me to get her off of it so *I* can play. :lol:

[Revolt]

I sold a friend on buying a playstation after letting him see tekken 2. that would be it i guess :oops:

[Raccoon Lad]

My dad just bought a Dreamcast. I guess playing Crazy Taxi with my brother nonstop for 4+ hours when they came over to visit this summer sold him on it.

[IGotTheDot]

I got someone into collecting and now he is a moderator on this site and his collection is probably better than mine. :shock:

[WiseSalesman]

I got my Dad in to PC FPS' when I was young with Wolfenstein 3D. After Doom 2 he lost interest. I recently revitalized that interest with half-life, but after he played through that, Blue Shift, Opposing Force, and RTCW he got out of it again. I bought him AvP2, but he hated it. Anyone have any suggestions? He really needs a new FPS.

[IGotTheDot]

1942!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It's awsome!

[WiseSalesman]

Does it have a good single player quest? Because that's the only part he likes. (He hates UT, Quake 3, etc.)

[kevincure]

MoH Frontline and Deus Ex.

[Achika]

I got my bf into games. First he fell in love with my dreamcast, so I told him he had to get his own. I came home one day with an extra Genesis 2 unit and gave that to him. About 20 carts later he's playing all the games he missed out on as a kid. In recent months he's also taken the dive into Gamecube and Gameboy Advanced. Now I'm pissed because he keeps stealing my games!

Oh, and I've gotten my mom to start playing the SNES while I'm away at school. I've tried to get her to play the PSX, but that idea was shot down rather quickly.

[WiseSalesman]

He doesn't like Deus Ex because it has too much RPG, and he wants all action. On the other hand, he doesn't like serious sam because it's too fast. He's very picky about it. I'll give MoH frontline a look though. Seriously though, does Battlefield 1942 have a decent single player mode?

I got my mom into puzzle games a LOOOONG time ago, beginning with Dr. Mario.

[The Young Game Collector]

I have been doing my best... in recent memory, the coolest stories i have to tell are of:

My friend charles:
He used to not play games at all, but we found his uncles ps when cleaning the garage, and well, lets just say hes for gotten about sunlight. :lol:
The Only Downside:
I HAVE ALL MY WRESTLING GAMES MISSING. I wonder whos they could be at??


And Taylor:
He was a once in a whiler, but i quickly changed that. i got him in to genesis, and thats all he plays lately. :)

[NE146]

the NES games have severe sound glitches. You shouldn't expect the quality of either to be near as good as PC. I can play the NES one, but it's best with the sound off. Even that runs a little bit choppy, but it's barely noticable.

What the heck are you talking about.. the NES emulation on Dreamcast as of ver. 6.0 is nearly perfect. Heck I'd go out on a limb and say with the exception of a couple of games that don't run, the emulation is flawless. It'sl like an NES plugged into your tv (except you can choose from a list of 2000+ games) :)

What you're describing really does sound like you have an older version of Nester DC..

[WiseSalesman]

Roger that, I'll have to check out the new version then. It was about a year or so ago when I made my last NES disc (and it took me HOURS and lots of busted CDRs to get it to work right....hopefully that's been ironed out). My SNES and Genesis experience is far more recent, so I would assume my opinion on that subject still stands?

[NE146]

Yes.
Snes emu on dreamcast is slow (and not worth it imho). Genesis emulation on the dreamcast.. well the gameplay seems spot on, but the sound is extremely wonky ("boings" in place of explosions, delays, etc.) so it really throws you off. Worth it? That depends on the person I guess. Some people don't mind it. I personally can't stand it, :P

So far the best emu on DC is the NES for the reasons above.

The next is probably Atari 5200 and Sega Master System emus for the exact same reasons. (However the last I checked, you couldn't save in the sms one.. which made playing RPG's that much harder). But that may have changed. Atari 5200 emulation on the Dreamcast has taken a big leap and I'd say it's near perfect as well. Runs about 80-90% of the games including the proto's of SuperPacman and Tempest. However it's not too user friendly (but easy to burn! check here for the BEST and easiest directions around: http://members.chello.nl/~m.schuitemaker/atari/

Colecovision emulation is also pretty decent.. but you have to tweak the screensize and speed.

Atari 2600 emulation via Stella seems like it's going pretty good w/ a new release not too long ago. I have yet to try it, but the last I checked it ran games ok but with crappy sound. Maybe the current one is better...

That's about it.. Now on to Xbox! ;)

[theaveng]

What about PS1 emulation?