Random retro thoughts

Piepacker - a cloud gaming platform with a social focus - has gone into open Beta.

https://piepacker.com/ 

There's about sixty games here, with a mixture of indies, SNES, Mega Drive, PlayStation, N64, Neo Geo, GBA and Arcade. They're mostly pretty good games as well - could be worth a look.

Definitely better than another bit of hardware! In all fairness it's nice to see retro curation is really gaining steam now (including, er... Steam, no pun intended). I still don't have time for it, but Antstream is much more appealing than that Evercade thing.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

Piepacker - a cloud gaming platform with a social focus - has gone into open Beta.

https://piepacker.com/ 

There's about sixty games here, with a mixture of indies, SNES, Mega Drive, PlayStation, N64, Neo Geo, GBA and Arcade. They're mostly pretty good games as well - could be worth a look.

I signed up for this after reading about it in this month's Retro Gamer. Turns out my internet is too crap though! Hopefully when I move place next month I'll have a better setup, but this does look pretty slick and user-friendly. And it has the underrated Street Racer!

It doesn't work for me very consistently either, but with consistent internet I think Piepacker looks like a really worthwhile thing.

If nothing else, I recommend that folk use it to give Xeno Crisis a try - it's superb, one of the best neo-retro games I've played.

You might have seen that yesterday a Brand New Sealed Graded North American Super Mario 64 sold for $1.5 Million, breaking the record which was only set a few days ago to make it the most expensive game ever sold.

This has even been on BBC news, peeps on Twitter & Retro Community going it's some money laundering thing, some going on about NFT's how they've crashed that rich people now putting money into games and so on.

With it being on national news, I can see some dude at a boot sale with a yellowed cart only SM64 wanting £100 for it, and I've seen this before after likes of The Sun printing article how your GameBoy is worth £800+ etc

That sites like you mention might be the way to play retro games, as we've seen rising prices already, and now might go even further.

I've been seeing it unfold in Pokémon cards, there's a big rich youtuber performative spending thing going on, along with the standard bullshit tax dodge that is buying art and stuff. Yeah, it is more or less money laundering.

So far, this kind of bollocks is much less pronounced in Japan. Partly I think that's because people generally take better care of stuff, so it doesn't become as rare, and also people value new shit. I need to sort out my studying so I can just renounce buying English Language games entirely.

Buskalilly wrote:

I've been seeing it unfold in Pokémon cards, there's a big rich youtuber performative spending thing going on, along with the standard bullshit tax dodge that is buying art and stuff. Yeah, it is more or less money laundering.

We get a lot of Pokemon content recommended on our TV's Youtube app. Sometimes we bite and watch something we know we'll hate. Watched a dude open packs of cards that were worth $5 through to something silly like £1000.

If that's your hustle, that's fine. There's an audience who obviously want to watch people open expensive toys and live vicariously through that. But this dude was just opening stuff, immediately putting the cards in a protective sleeve, and basically talking about nothing but it's monetary value. His critique of the art was limited to adjectives such as, "good."

I will never understand this side of collecting, where the everything is lensed through capital and what the actual art/product is couldn't matter less.

I bet he hasn't seen Toy Story 2.

For what it's worth, I hope the retro games market never sees silly prices. But we're humans of late capitalism so buckle up.

This is like when we let ourselves click on that Sargon video after that Matt Lees.

Anyway, all value is artificial.

It is but I like that my Fire Emblem Path of Radiance worth almost £200.

I mean . . . do you ever plan to sell it?

I'm not having a go, just curious, because it isn't something I think about at all. I'm sure I have a couple of valuable items among my transformers and comicbooks but I couldn't tell you what any of them are worth.

I don't plan to and had simlair talk in work when I bought indie Dreamcast games then kept sealed, at time never planned to sell but did.

Guess amiibo like I opened my Monster Hunter Stories 2 ones even though going for good money, as I want to put on display.

That bit of a mix.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

"WORTH £1125329!"

Can't believe I missed this.

That's the picture that will be in the newspapers when Castle is done for some gross Whispa Gold related sex crimes.

I've sold a few rarities in recent years purely because of a mild necessity and I always regret that I no longer have them now, not because they're worth even more but because I genuinely liked that I had them to look at and admire. Seeing my Amiibo collection go from over 100 to just the Wind Waker Link and Squirtle I have on my bedside table is a little sad. I'm at the point now where I'm quite determined to hold on to my rare games/tat, don't think I'll ever sell my Pokémon cards because I know how lovely they to look at.

I’m at a point where I’m determined to keep hold of my rare games/tat too, but space is definitely becoming an issue. I thought I’d solved that problem once before, when I put about 200 games into charity shops and into the local GAME. But my collection has slowly built up again. I can see myself having to be more ruthless with selling/gifting my collection in future, but at the same time I honestly felt like I’d streamlined my collection to just the things I wanted. That’s still many hundreds of games though.

I’ve been in that situation where I’d have to sell things out of necessity, and I majorly regretted it too. I hope neither of us have to do that again.

Ohh yeah I've run out of space and when I was unemployed sold my Jaguar, Virtual Boy etc can't imagine how I would have room for them now.

When I was working at Tesco - not a living wage - stuff was constantly getting traded in and flogged on. I can't describe how good it feels just to not reach every payday with literally nothing left every month.

Hope none of y'all hit that again.

One for Jim maybe


Think £120 is quite a lot for only 25 games and myself can't remember if I had a 500 or a 1200 or one of the others as I had some Christmas game on it.

From what I know about the Amiga 500 it seems like they’re including the right games – it’s none of this PlayStation Classic nonsense where they don’t have Crash Bandicoot or Tomb Raider. If affordable, I’d assume that Retro Games Ltd would be able to license some of the LucasArts adventures for this too (as they’re already on Antstream), and maybe a Turrican game too? I’m guessing that Sensible World of Soccer and Cannon Fodder will be two of the remaining games as well.

I’m half interested in playing more Amiga games, but personally this isn’t something I’ll buy at £120. Basically, that’s because I grew up with the Mega Drive versions of these games, and they’re widely available elsewhere. After a price drop though, I’m sure I’d give it another look.

masofdas wrote:

One for Jim maybe[/url]

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

From what I know about the Amiga 500 it seems like they’re including the right games – it’s none of this PlayStation Classic nonsense where they don’t have Crash Bandicoot or Tomb Raider.

WHERE THE FUCK IS CAPTAIN BLOOD ON THIS LIST
But seriously, you're right, the games are probably the right ones for Amiga fans - and I'd agree with your other suggestions as well, there - the Sensible Software and LucasArts games are the obvious gap fillers, and I'd add you want Exile, and Elite II, probably.
But

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

I’m half interested in playing more Amiga games, but personally this isn’t something I’ll buy at £120. Basically, that’s because I grew up with the Mega Drive versions of these games, and they’re widely available elsewhere. After a price drop though, I’m sure I’d give it another look.

Cappa, you are right again, albeit the SNES games in my case, they were also superior. I'd wait until it was cheaper, but I'd much rather get this over the Spectrum, C64 or the PS1 minis.

Is the image behind the text on this article a clue as to the other games?
EDIT: No it's a stock image of C64 games.

EDIT EDIT: Oh no, now I've been on the Amiga Power Top 100 list - scrolling to the final one in 1996, there's loads of games I'd actually be excited for. Oh dear, is this the stupid piece of retro crap that reels me in?

I watched the newest OSW Review video earlier on, and I had to rewind it a couple of times when I heard that Midway paid Michael Buffer $100m to license in perpetuity his trademark phrase "Let's Get Ready To Rumble!!!". Apparently it's a true and well-known fact too. It's no wonder they went bankrupt.

These days I get Midway and Acclaim confused a fair bit. They're both big N64-era companies that went bankrupt in consecutive years, and that's the sort of move I'd expect a company that tried to advertise a game on gravestones to make.

Yeah that Michael Buffer deal sounds like someone agreed to $10m and misread the contract. Nobody in their right mind would sign off on $100m on a series that was only ever going to be mildly successful. It's not as if Mortal Kombat 4 was doing GTA 5 numbers. Fair play to Buffer though.

I do like Glenn Plant's N64 channel but this feels like a bold move. Naming names and taking aim. Although it's good to hear honest criticism of N64 Magazine, which is often worshipped as the holy grail of Ninty mags when it did have some suspect reviews. Mostly the wrestling ones.