Different ways to play games other than the original medium?

[l0whit07]

The title sucks I know, I apologize.

I had to get rid of almost all of my retro gaming systems for space reasons. I'm left with the PS3, Wii, and N64 (spoiled myself keeping it ).

I want to keep playing retro games, so I figured downloading them from the VC or PS Store was my best options along with buying "collections" such as Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection (any good?).

I've always just played the original versions of games and am new to the downloading games thing.. so I have some questions...

1. Most importantly, do the games play as they should and do you lose certain features?
2. If my Hard Drive or SD card break, am I basically f*****?
3. Would buying a collection disc say for the PS3 or Gamecube be better than downloading the games?

I basically just want the best way to play the games, other than their original medium.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks to anyone and everyone who responds.

[Betamax001]

I would go with comp discs when available because it is a physical medium. I would say downloading them on the Wii or something would be good too. But the problem would be later on if something happened to your hard drive or whatever.

[swiftzx]

Is your PS3 backwards compatible? If so, then there are several collection disks. I'd recommend you to get Metal Slug anthology on Wii, Sonic Gems collection on gamecube, and Street fighter anthology on PS2. Another thing is that some games you can unlock other games; ex Vectorman on Sonic Gems collection.

[CRTGAMER]

1. Most importantly, do the games play as they should and do you lose certain features?
2. If my Hard Drive or SD card break, am I basically f*****?
3. Would buying a collection disc say for the PS3 or Gamecube be better than downloading the games?

Get a PS2, buy all the tons of Retro Collections which are inexpensive and you will never have to worry about question number two.
Plus with YLOD-RROD hanging, will that download support always be there?

Come on, the PS2 Slim doesn't take up that much room! Limited milage of lead free solder on current Gens, good to have PS2 as your Retro machine with original Retro Compilation discs.

[Hatta]

You have a PC. Just emulate, and get a good USB controller.

[Ziggy]

You have a PC. Just emulate, and get a good USB controller.

Even better, get an original Xbox and soft/hard mod it so you can run emulators. People have suggested this to me time and time again, and I finally went for one and I couldn't be happier. Emulation on it is superb and (in my opinion) much better than using a PC.

[Niode]

If you softmod your Wii you can either, run emulators via Homebrew Channel. I find the Classic Controller a very good 'all purpose' controller. Works with the vast majority of games, N64 is a bit of a mind-fuck but you get used to it. If you want to go further and install Custom IOS then you will be able to install WADs of VC games right onto your wii system menu as channels. I have done this for all the games I own on other formats.

Personally I wouldn't bother with collections, there's not that many out there, and they're all emulated anyway. You might as well just use an emulator for the most part.

[Jrecee]

If you mod your wii, nintendo will brick your console.

If your wii breaks, nintendo will make you go through hell to get your games transferred over to a new one.

nintendo basically sucks.

[Flake]

If physical media is important to you, get compilation discs and stockpile memory cards.

If you do go the VC route (which I wholly recommend), take heart in that the games are 99% of the time unchanged from the original. Also, while your games are tied directly to the Wii they are purchased on, the odds are that your wii's disc drive will give out long before the virtually mechanical part free VC component craps out.

[noiseredux]

1. Most importantly, do the games play as they should and do you lose certain features?
2. If my Hard Drive or SD card break, am I basically f*****?
3. Would buying a collection disc say for the PS3 or Gamecube be better than downloading the games?

Get a PS2, buy all the tons of Retro Collections which are inexpensive and you will never have to worry about question number two.
Plus with YLOD-RROD hanging, will that download support always be there?

Come on, the PS2 Slim doesn't take up that much room! Limited milage of lead free solder on current Gens, good to have PS2 as your Retro machine with original Retro Compilation discs.

g'damn! The Wii is really small eh? I mean, I knew it was small, but until seeing it side by side to the other consoles... wow.