@Solo_Wing , do you ever replay any games? Just wondering why you sell a lot of your systems? Are there no games or systems you like to keep? Well, aside from Panzer Dragoon Saga and your Saturn…
I find myself converting everything to emulators, ISO’s and roms these days. But, I always keep my old systems and truly great games as backups. I tend to replay and revisit a lot of old games each year. It’s sort of a tradition of mine. As far as newer games go, I only truly play the great ones. Or ones that stand out amongst the rest as being truly unique and worth my time.
I do replay older games sometimes, particularly the more arcade style ”pick up and play” games such as Ikaruga, many of which I have repurchased for PC in Steam sales. But mostly, I tend to keep moving forward as there’s always new games coming out.
Megadrive and Saturn emulation is fairly good now. I’m not sure where Dreamcast emulation is up to, but most of the noteworthy Dreamcast exclusives have been ported to modern systems (we just need a Skies of Arcadia remaster).
I don’t like having a bunch of old systems sitting around, cluttering up the place. It makes it difficult to move, they collect dust, take up valuable storage space etc.
Thankfully it seems that Xbox is striving to be backward compatible now, so I can just buy a newer system if I want to replay those older games again one day. For example, if I end up getting a Series X, I can (probably) replay Orta and Crimson Dragon on it. And I expect that the PS5 will be mostly compatible with my PS4 library. So, I think holding onto older systems is becoming less of an issue.
It would be nice if they could get Jet Set Radio Future working into newer Xboxes and the Ico/Shadow of the Colossus collection working on PS4/5. But haven’t held onto the older systems just for those games. There’s always YouTube/Twitch playthroughs if I want to revisit them.
I know what you mean about the systems taking up space. I’m running out of space as it is! But, I wouldn’t dare sell some of my highly sought after games and their corresponding systems. I guess, I’m going to have to eventually store them away somewhere…
I don’t know what the state of Dreamcast emulation is either. Games like: Skies of Arcadia, Sonic Adventure series, Shenmue can currently be played on Dolphin emulator or in Shenmue’s case, the PS4…
And you can Play Skies of Arcadia on the Dolphin emulator upscaled to 5K!!! Why wait? But I’m sure you won’t need to go that high!
I would never part with all my old consoles and games. They’re all stored in big plastic boxes in the loft, but they have such a great sentimental value to me.
I have my Game Gear, Mega Drive and Saturn stuff all copied to my PC so I can emulate them any time, but yeah Dreamcast and Xbox games are a bit of a problem. To be honest I will probably only play those games maybe once more, so my plan is to at some point have a few months dedicated to replaying DC games, and then Xbox games. I doubt the emulation for Xbox at least will ever be up to scratch.
@UrbanReflex Yeah, I tried to emulate Orta, but failed miserably…
To be honest I think Orta and Ghost Recon 2 are the only Xbox games I really want to play again, and the former I have purchased digitally to play on Xbone.
Im really hoping that when xCloud kicks off it’ll be possible to play all these old games streamed to PC.
Original Xbox emulation has made huge strides lately. If you’re interested in JSRF particularly, the game has minimal issues at the moment. I haven’t played all the way through, but it seems to be the best running game on Cxbx. Orta is coming along pretty nicely, it’s semi playable now. On the latest build of Cxbx, I’m getting perfect framerates, but there’s still missing visual effects and the game tends to crash at the end of the episode. It’s bound to improve though, I couldnt even get ingame a year ago. In contrast, Dreamcast emulation has been really good for a long time now.
Ultimately, emulation is the best way to preserve older games, and keep them as convenient and accessible as possible. Physical copies and hardware don’t tend to last forever. Having everything boiled down to easily replicable data and be carried on across different platforms and systems is pretty invaluable. I can’t imagine the type of hardware and setups you’d have to commit to for getting a lot of older arcade games working, as opposed to running the game off an emulator and setting it up for any controller you’d like. The ease, accessibility, and flexibility of the type of experience you have makes emulation a much more attractive option for playing older games (especially when the emulator allows you to bypass usual hardware limitations and allow you to run the game better than the actual console would).
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Oh? Using which emulator(s)? I would like to give it another go if this is the case!
I’ve always used NullDC because it handled most things I threw at it perfectly fine, but it’s fairly old and not as complete as some of the newer ones available these days. Between that and maybe one or two of the others you’d be looking at some fairly good compatibility. As far as I know, you can even connect online with some of them as well.
Thanks for the info, I’ll have a look into this at the weekend! 
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