Is it worth the cost for real over emulation?

[Anapan]

The clincher for me was guardian heroes. I Finally dropped a hundred something on it, played it once, went "meh" and put it on my shelf.

More fun with 2 players.

[Forlorn Drifter]

I think at this point, I'm going to focus my the collection aspect for myself on Gamecube/Wii/Wii U/PS3 and possibly the whole slew of Gameboy stuff, and just emulate for everything non-CD and non-Gameboy. I might not be having the most amazing collections and such around, but I'll have a sizable and worthwhile collection of stuff I want to play and access to the others through emulation.

I'll still pick up deals if I find them, and for the handful of N64 stuff I want I'll probably still bail out the money, since there's only around 10 games I want and most run 10-30 bucks.

[Jrecee]

There's some Etsy sellers that make n64 repro boxes... I wonder if they would make half sized cartridge size versions, would be a cool way to store loose carts.

[Forlorn Drifter]

I'd have to check, but IIRC correctly someone out there makes those clamshell plastic boxes to hold carts, similar to the ones they have available for NES, SNES, Genesis, etc.

I do need to get a box protector for HM64...

[Jagosaurus]

Looks like you can just leave all that shit inserted, huh? Retron 5 won't boot with multiple carts in its slots.

Yeah, you can leave all 3 in but I really don't. Say you want to play some NES via the N8 (furthest "back" slot), when you flip the power to NES, you cycle through Genesis/MD & SNES "on" options meaning you temporarily send power to those cart slots. Something about repeatedly hitting $200+ flash carts with a quick hit of power doesn't sit well with me :/.

Worth noting some of the tougher games for clones such as Castlevania 3 will run fine via the N8 in the R-Trio. Also import ROMS from all regions ran without any issues (Pulseman!). I was pretty impressed.

@ OP, I'll agree with a previous comment about soft modding a Wii. I'm seriously falling in love with my recently modded oXbox & have held back mentioning it too much in this thread. I went full blown OCD tonight & made sure I liked the thumbnail icons for each emulator I know retro emu via the Wii is legit as well & the guides will be much more updated. Look into it. All you need is the console and a USB/SD Card. Could meet all your needs on the cheap.

[IcKy99]

There are just some systems that emulation isn't good for imo: n64, saturn, dreamcast, ps2, ogxbox things like that I'd always take hardware route first.

[chuckster]

There are just some systems that emulation isn't good for imo: n64, saturn, dreamcast, ps2, ogxbox things like that I'd always take hardware route first.

This is very true, and for some, it's the plain truth for more than these obvious problem consoles. I play on a modded Wii for NES-SegaCD and that feels good to me, especially if I play with controller adapters. For others, the little extra lag, or perceived inaccuracies from emulation, or just the need to have that cart in their hands and "thunk" it into the console means that routes like that won't ever be good enough.

I feel that sometimes, which is why I started collecting for original hardware a couple of years ago. I dusted off my old Genesis collection, got a cheap SNES from a friend with a few games, and started looking for more. This really did feel better for me, it was worth that investment (about $50, not including my obsession with CRT broadcast monitors).

After looking though, I found that games were just far too expensive for me to really consider, by and large. If I wanted to play Earthbound, or Demon's Crest, or MMX2 or 3, I just simply couldn't do it. Or I could do it for the cost of a mini-vacation at least. So I held on to my consoles while also investing in a Wii. This was the cheapest route at the time (though I will eventually get flashcarts), and gave me access to all the old games at native 240p (a big deal for me). I was already well versed in PC emulation, so this was a step closer to the original experience for me, which felt good, while not requiring hundreds of dollars each month as I played through games.

So I found my medium. The price of collecting original games wasn't worth it to me. It's going to be different for everyone. Flash carts are my eventual goal, they seem to give the practical advantages inherent in both OG hardware and emulation. They should leave me completely set for SNES and Genesis. I'm still not sure what to do about my other favorite console, the PS1. PSIO isn't accessible enough in my view, so emulation will be my answer for the foreseeable future.

[Anapan]

There are a couple of ways to get 15Khz through a computer. The cheapest (free in most cases) is to install Soft15Khz for your particular video card. The most straightforward is to buy an ArcadeVGA card. It's quite cool to get the games running through a cycle-accurate emulator out the VGA port straight to SCART or Component(transcoded from SCART) input on a CRT @ 240P. pSX can run Playstation 1 games at original resolutions quite well - I was able to get nearly every system I tried outputting perfect graphics - most surprisingly all the hundreds of MAME resolutions work really well with little tweaking. If you use a Blissbox to make the original controllers for all the systems work, the emulation becomes almost undetectable in most cases to me at least; If the machine was in a cabinet, I'd never know with any of my favorite games up to the Playstation.
It's nice to be able to output 240P from a WII so easily through Component. I've never been able to do that with an original Xbox. Using 480P with scanlines requires a modded bios, and many CRTs don't like 480P.

[chuckster]

There are a couple of ways to get 15Khz through a computer. The cheapest (free in most cases) is to install Soft15Khz for your particular video card. The most straightforward is to buy an ArcadeVGA card. It's quite cool to get the games running through a cycle-accurate emulator out the VGA port straight to SCART or Component(transcoded from SCART) input on a CRT @ 240P. pSX can run Playstation 1 games at original resolutions quite well - I was able to get nearly every system I tried outputting perfect graphics - most surprisingly all the hundreds of MAME resolutions work really well with little tweaking. If you use a Blissbox to make the original controllers for all the systems work, the emulation becomes almost undetectable in most cases to me at least; If the machine was in a cabinet, I'd never know with any of my favorite games up to the Playstation.
It's nice to be able to output 240P from a WII so easily through Component. I've never been able to do that with an original Xbox. Using 480P with scanlines requires a modded bios, and many CRTs don't like 480P.

I have tried CRT_Emudriver on my old Radeon HD6870, but I believe I botched the install and it never worked right. I could output the desktop and browser at 240p, but anything that used DirectX or OpenGL just refused to show anything. It is still something I need to look into though, it'd be the best option really.

[darsparx]

The clincher for me was guardian heroes. I Finally dropped a hundred something on it, played it once, went "meh" and put it on my shelf.

More fun with 2 players.

Has to be better than Advance Guardian Heroes.....that game just fell flat on me and i think it was bought for $6. Worst game ever that I've gotten my dad to buy me at gamestop when I was in middle school I think?