skavenhorde
Little BRO Rat
It's why I expect there to be more interest, almost on a month by month basis, in retro gaming, with retro PC gaming in particular getting more interest. After all, how many times have we been told of the 100's of million's of PC's in homes around the world, and how quickly has someone said 'but thy can't run the latest games'. No. But they can play all the games from, say, 2001/2 backwards! Even if you're a gamer that still wants the box, most pre 2002 games can be bought for $5-$10, which just the odd Planescape Torment or System Shock 2 needing the full $50 of a new game.
Given the state of the market, I wouldn't be surprised if a cheap laptop pre-configured with 20-30 DOS games (utilizing DOSBox) that you could just start the game from a list by double clicking on it, all with PDF manuals, or at least readme's for those games with no tutorial, wouldn't sell quite well! Add a freeware word processor spreadsheet and internet capability and I think it would attack a decent market! If only I had a 100,000 to get the thing off the ground! Put my money where my mouth is, as it were!
I'd buy it, but you and I have a distinct advantage over newer gamers. We were slowly introduced to better and better graphics. Ahh the good ol' days of EGA, VGA then SuperVGA etc....But one problem even some hardcore RPGamers have is the inability to overcome the dated graphics.
I have no problem popping in Realms of Arkania, Starflight or even really good C64 games like Autoduel or Moebius (although I've never passed either), but I have nostalgia on my side where as others don't. A lot of gamers joined our ranks with Fallout/Baldur's Gate and anything older just doesn't appeal to them.
Having said all that I am reminded of your post about the 10 millionth download of Dosbox. Even I didn't know about that and I think that program is the next best thing since sliced bread. Do you know how hard it was to get anything running before that program existed? Well, actually you probably do, but that is another subject.
I don't know. I certainly wouldn't mind retro games becoming more popular and with sites like GoG looking like it's doing well and Dosbox's success maybe a healthy shot of retroness is what this industry needs
When I was writing my little comment about AAA games and movies I flashed on what happened to E3 last year or the year before (my memory is horrible). But the gist was it became too big for it's own good and had to be downsized from the gigantic monster it had become. It would be great if the devs and publishers stopped concentrating on big and flashy and started concentrating on quality.