Has buying retro died on Bordersdown?

[Leon Retro]

If you have a monitor you just adjust to fill the screen.

Yeah, I used to do that. But then you have to adjust it again when a game is full screen.

This problem shouldn't have happened, but that's the early days of gaming for you. If you had had modern development standards applied to the Amiga, most games would have been full screen. Having games that only take up around half of the screen just wouldn't be acceptable now. There would have been a clear method to make sure people got a nice full, or near full image on a PAL 4:3 screen. Developers doing their own thing without strict standards was part of the Wild West vibe the British gaming scene had back then.

I'm just glad that some Amiga games are actually full screen and look really nice. Sensible Soccer is a great example.

[Brad]

Agreed!

The ST port thing is valid. If the graphics were already drawn for 320x200...
Explains the games that had borders and still didn't work on NTSC too.

[wakka]

Retro buying may be on the decline but extensive, detailed discussions about the borders on PAL games is certainly alive and well on here.

[Zen Monkey]

Buying retro is too expensive and, honestly, usually disappointing too. A friend of mine has one of those mini SNES consoles and it's full of games games I loved, but when I play them now they seem awful. And I often have the same feeling with remakes/remasters. Nintendo's oldies still shine but very little else.

[Leon Retro]

A

The ST port thing is valid. If the graphics were already drawn for 320x200...

It's funny how the issue of ST ports can still make you feel... We can look back and rationalise it in some ways, but when you play games that actually take full advantage of the Amiga, it's still annoying to think that some publishers were happy for devs to simply port a game from the ST.

Amiga 500 owners paid more for the machine: £399 compared to the ST's £299. And games were £5 more on the Amiga. It's sad to think that Amiga owners didn't get treated properly by some publishers and devs.

[importaku]

Retro buying may be on the decline but extensive, detailed discussions about the borders on PAL games is certainly alive and well on here.

It's not called bordersdown for nothing you know lolol

[Nico87]

Buying retro is too expensive and, honestly, usually disappointing too. A friend of mine has one of those mini SNES consoles and it's full of games games I loved, but when I play them now they seem awful. And I often have the same feeling with remakes/remasters. Nintendo's oldies still shine but very little else.

Agree about the first part, that’s why I’m JP only when it comes to GB/GBA. Some games can be expensive (Castlevania’s are usually 7-9k) and I had to shell out 15k each for CIB copies of Kid Dracula and Contra but most of the stuff is at MSRP or, in most cases, lower (paid 700 Yen for Wario Land 4).

North American DS games are $10-30 with some exceptions, same with Wii games.

If a N64 Mini never comes out then I’m getting a UltraHDMI unit and I’ll go JP CIB for that as well.

[Leon Retro]

detailed discussions about the borders on PAL games is certainly alive and well on here.

It will never end.

But seriously, the Amiga having huge borders in lots of its games shouldn't have happened. We all know why PAL consoles had borders top and bottom, but the Amiga was only a big thing in PAL territories, so developers should have always made sure to deliver a full screen image. It's not like Commodore would have dictated anything in regard to that sort of thing.

A friend of mine has one of those mini SNES consoles and it's full of games games I loved, but when I play them now they seem awful. .

I had the opposite feeling - playing all the games reaffirmed why I loved the machine and its games back in the day. I think lots of people have felt the same emotion.

Maybe you are just someone who doesn't like to go back to old stuff. I remember when I felt gaming was always about the 'latest & greatest' hardware and games, but around 15 years ago I delved into retro gaming and became hooked on what vintage hardware and games have to offer. It's now my main passion when it comes to games.

If you had told me 20 years ago that I'd be obsessed with old 8 & 16-bit games in 2018, I'd have said you're talking nonsense.

[Zaki]

Sold 11 PCBs this month. Already freed up loads of corner space I'm not stopping there, got loads more to sell. It's pretty crazy that most of the games I've sold have almost doubled in price since buying them 2 years ago I hate to think how much it will cost if I wanted to buy them back in the future.

Currently negotiating selling my entire NTSC-U N64 collection to another collector (200+ mint games including rare variants) - I've been building that for 15+ years!

I will still have enough retro games to play/master in my life time. I'm more addicted to selling than collecting at the moment, which is something I never thought I'd say. Might even part with a cab or 2!

[chojin]

I haven't bought anything retro since I built a RPi3, there are a handful of MD and SFC games I would like to add to my collection, but it's not the end of the world if I don't own them. I think I have gotten all of the 'I must own that' out of my system....

Well maybe getting a cab is the only itch I have yet to scratch

[S3M]

I look at the inactivity in the "show what retro items you've bought" thread in comparison to days gone by and it makes me wonder where we're all at. I'm curious if that particular thread being so much less active is as a result of:

1: Members being older and having everything they want having lived through the periods of gaming we love?
2: We've all sold up and moved to emulation or SD cart solutions?
3: No one wants to pay the prices that retro kit is now being sold at?
4: lack of availability?
5: Something else?
6. We just don't have that many active members, compared to other sites

I look at the prices stuff is going for on eBay, someone is obviously buying it, but who are these people paying ridiculous sums for games that we owned for comparatively next to nothing in our purchasing history?

Corrected your post Colin with a new option, that sadly the case, Bordersdown doesn't have than many active members these day, it still a great crowd. These days it more that quiet pub the old gentleman drink at, rather than the busy and trendy up market bar. There are a lot more places to talk about games these days.

There's been a huge boom in the market, the fact your starting to see companies reissue games and making new ones said it all. Do I think the boom will last no, no, it won't.

I still buy plenty of retro stuff, but I just can't be bothered to post it, if you go over twitter and search the #retrogaming there are hundreds of accounts of people posting, left, right and center of what game they just bought.

In the end it gets a bit vain and a lot of it is more about bragging rights I suspect than anything else. Most of us are well into are 30 on here and I suspect for most we've grown out of that phase.

[Leon Retro]

and I suspect for most we've grown out of that phase.

It's nice to see interesting and unusual items. Or if someone has bought something they are really happy with, then it's nice to feel the enthusiasm they have. Of course, what one person finds interesting can be completely different for someone else.

Sometimes when people post pics of items they've bought, it can stir up conversation, so that's always a positive aspect. So as much as we've seen tons of stuff over the years, I would still encourage people to post pics of stuff they've bought. It helps keep the retro section alive.

[S3M]

It's nice to see interesting and unusual items. Or if someone has bought something they are really happy with, then it's nice to feel the enthusiasm they have. Of course, what one person finds interesting can be completely different for someone else.

Sometimes when people post pics of items they've bought, it can stir up conversation, so that's always a positive aspect. So as much as we've seen tons of stuff over the years, I would still encourage people to post pics of stuff they've bought. It helps keep the retro section alive.

That I agree with 100%, certainly places like here it's more likely to start a good discussion.

[BigDeadFreak]

Corrected your post Colin with a new option, that sadly the case, Bordersdown doesn't have than many active members these day, it still a great crowd. These days it more that quiet pub the old gentleman drink at, rather than the busy and trendy up market bar. There are a lot more places to talk about games these days.

Personally that's something I really like about this site. It's not just full of kids screaming at each other and trying to get their post count up. Everyone here really wants to be here, and for the right reasons. Everyone's always respectful and there's none of the nonsense associated with almost every other forum in existence.

I love martial arts and would love it if there was an MMA equivalent of Bordersdown. Every now and then I go on Sherdog and immediately want to shoot myself.

[Colin]

Well, maybe not always respectful.