This is going to be a fun exercise. I can already imagine the thoughtful, well-reasoned exchange of information this piece about RetroPie will inspire.
Yeah, it’s going to be a shit show. I don’t care. Many people think it already; I’m just giving voice to those thoughts.
It should go without saying that I love video games, especially older video games. It’s in my title: Old-School Gaming Specialist. I currently have 23 consoles connected to my poor LCD TV, thanks to a rat’s nest of cables, adapters, switches, and prayers. Every so often, I get an urge to play a game I may not have played in years. When that happens, I futz through the library of games I have liberally scattered about my man cave, clean the cartridge contacts or disc as appropriate, crank up the requisite retro console it plays on, and rip through a couple of hours of nostalgia. At some point in the last twelve months, I have played a game on 22 of the consoles.
(The sole exception is the Ouya. I have no interest in playing on a gussied-up smartphone. It’s a shame, but it’s a fact.)
I am lucky to have a plethora of games from multiple game generations to play. There aren’t many who can switch from the PlayStation 4 to the Nintendo 64 and then the ColecoVision at a whim. However, many retro gaming fans who want to do so have very little recourse. There are some options, but many are cost-prohibitive. Worse, there are no options for a growing amount of retro games. As a retro enthusiast, this bothers me.
During my 2016 bitch-fest masquerading as an end-of-year retrospective, I made a confession. A friend of mine who I care for deeply and – in a twist – may or may not be my ex-girlfriend, is an avid retro gamer. I wanted to surprise her for both her birthday and Christmas with an NES Classic Edition. She grew up playing the Atari 2600, but really cut her teeth on Nintendo’s 8-bit video game savior. I figured gifting her the mini-NES would please her.
Of course, Nintendo decided to control the distribution of NES Classic Minis the way DeBeers controls the distribution of diamonds. The plan is simple: make something that is abundant seem rarer than dark hairs on my scalp. That way, interest will spike. When interest spikes, demand will as well.
I look forward to the day Beyoncé sings about putting a mini-NES on it. By then, they’ll be that rare.
(I managed to include Queen Bey in an article about emulation. Now the site’s traffic will quadruple! You know, if I actually gave a fuck about that.)
Disheartened, I had to search for an alternative. Yes, I could’ve gone with flowers and candy and all that other tired, cliché shit. But I like to give gifts that matter. Flowers die, and candy gets pooped out. I like gifts that have a semblance of permanence.
As I said in the 2016 bitch-fest article, I resorted to emulation.
I bought a Raspberry Pi 3 kit with a 32GB micro-SD card and loaded RetroPie on the card. I then proceeded to jam every ROM I could find that I totally do not have now but had for 15 or so minutes into that micro-SD card until it threatened to report me to Social Services. After tons of scraping and tweaking, I had the perfect birthday/Christmas present for my not-saying-if-she-was-my-girlfriend-at-some-point.
The smile I received was priceless. Nintendo could have caused that smile. They could’ve had my money, too. But Nintendo was too busy trying to be DeBeers.
I went cubic zirconia. She does not even care about the difference. She is playing Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II again. And she is loving it!
Many people who have reached this point in this tale are ready to vilify me as a pirate. RetroPie, you see, is an operating system that consists of a collection of video game emulators and a fancy front-end, Emulation Station, which presents the emulators and games in a very pretty manner. Emulators take copies of original games and allow people who do not own the original game to play the games anyway. This is seen as dirty, underhanded, and illegal in the eyes of the law.
Sometimes, I see it as a form of empowerment.
I say sometimes because I’m aware that emulation does remove the ability for an IP owner to make money off their property. If you can play a game for free, why spend money on it? That’s a great argument…if you had a way to play every game you wanted to. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t seen a legitimate way to play Solstice for the NES floating around lately. If you don’t have an NES and the original cartridge, it sucks to be you if you want to play it.
This could all be resolved, of course, if the original manufacturers of the games gave us viable options for our retro gaming fix. Venues like Nintendo’s Virtual Console, PlayStation Network’s Classics, and numerous compilation releases sate us for a bit. Nintendo’s announcement of the NES Classic Mini wasn’t a perfect solution – only 30 games for a console that had over 800 – but it was noteworthy.
Of course, there’s a form of grift here. I happily bought dozens of 8- and 16-bit classics for my Wii when I owned it. Then I realized I had to buy them again if I wanted to play them on the Wii U. I gave the Wii to my mom; she’s playing all the games I bought on it. I would have to buy them again if I wanted to play them on the 3DS, which I do not own yet. Of course, I’ll have to buy them a fourth time if I were to buy a Nintendo Switch – which I’m not because I’m done with consoles as they currently stand!
Sony’s not faring any better in this department. Just try sifting through their PS1 and PS2 Classics. Yes, there are many great titles for those consoles available, assuming they have the game you want. Then you realize most of the games are for the PlayStation 3 or PSP. Have any of those platforms lying around? Or how about a Vita? You know, that awesome handheld that Sony themselves didn’t seem to support?
Microsoft is faring slightly better in this department. Their Xbox One Backwards Compatibility program allows Xbone owners to play some of their favorite Xbox 360 games on the console. Just some. And only 360 games. No Jade Empire or Halo for the original Xbox. Hell, I can’t fire up Deathsmiles, my favorite bullet-hell shooter, for the 360 on it. But I can play Uno.
But if I build a RetroPie box with the Pi 3, I’ll be able to play most of those games whenever I want. I don’t have to pray Nintendo decides to release it on a Virtual Console like they recently did with Pokémon Snap on the Wii U. Fine, there’s no Xbox 360 emulation, so I still can’t play Deathsmiles whenever I want. But I can sure as shit play all of Sony’s and Nintendo’s games. It’s all about choice.
Gamers love to have choice. For many console manufacturers and game distributors, their goal seems to be to remove choice. If you want to play a game they make, you can play only the games they say. Konami wants you to keep playing Pro Evolution Soccer 2017 and Metal Gear Solid V. Konami wants you to get excited for Metal Gear: Survive. Do you want to play Castlevania III for the NES? Can’t have it! We’re saving Castlevania for pachinko machines!
If you’re a Mega Man fan, you have some more options. You can buy Mega Man X on the Wii, Wii U, and 3DS. Bought it on the Wii? Buy it again if you want to take it on the go. Mega Man 9 and Mega Man 10 are available on the PS3, Wii, and Xbox 360. Have a PS4, Xbone, or Wii U? Fuck you, go get a Wii or fuck off!
If you’re a Golgo-13 fan, then…well, I hope you have an NES and some disposable cash. Top Secret Episode for the NES is not available anywhere else for you. Neither are Clash at Demonhead, Sword of Vermillion, ActRaiser 2, Castlevania: Bloodlines, or Power Stone. These were all great games, and unless you have the original copy AND the original system, you’re boned.
They’re all available in the RetroPie build, though.
Of course, the original IP owners have a right to their games, and it’s not fair for people to play them illicitly. That’s the main argument thrown about, and I am sensitive to it. If you emulate games, the IP holders are cheated out of money. These games belong to them, and they should be able to benefit from the sale of those games. And I would love to give them my money.
I wouldn’t want SquareEnix to miss out on potential royalties from the sale of any Final Fantasy games. Those games are available in a number of platforms, and they deserve to reap the benefits of owning the rights to the series. I have purchased each entry in the Final Fantasy series at least twice, on multiple consoles. The series is beloved by me, and I want to show my love by buying the games.
But the Final Fantasy games are readily available for my purchase in a multitude of ways. Where are the Dragon Quest/Dragon Warrior games?
I absolutely love the Dragon Warrior series. They reignited my love of role-playing games back in the day. They are every bit as important as Final Fantasy. The games are even owned by the same company! But if I want to play the originals, I have to resort to smartphones.
Or I could just light up the RetroPie build. All of the originals are there. Even the Japanese-only SNES remakes are there, which I can’t easily play in North America because of Nintendo’s region-locking shenanigans. And they’re translated because modders care about the community and want lovers of the series to be able to FUCKING UNDERSTAND THE GAME!
Mother and Mother 3? Not available legitimately in the States. Neither is the Eldorado Gate series for the Dreamcast. These are JRPG series I loved or wanted to experience, but were not available legitimately here. I can play them on RetroPie, though.
For the record, I don’t own a Raspberry Pi 3 box with RetroPie in it. The only one I purchased was gifted. But the idea of owning one is not as problematic to my conscience as it once was. Although I have dabbled in some form of emulation for longer than I can remember, I have tried to stay a purist. My only Retro Review that used an emulator was the review for Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for the Sega Saturn. It’s not available here legitimately because it’s Japan-only, and I refused to pay $150-plus on eBay for a used copy.
I want choice when I play games. Game distributors want to strip my choice. RetroPie gives it back, even if they don’t like it.
I’ve decided I will soon purchase another Raspberry Pi 3 kit and build a RetroPie box for myself. When I do, I will chronicle everything I do to get it up and running on Digital Crack’s YouTube channel. Those who are interested in making their own can use my videos to do the same. I will not be showing how to get the ROMs; I have a small vestige of scruples, and that would be going too far. Building a RetroPie box is completely legal; loading it with ROMs and ISOs is not.
The last RetroPie I built brought huge smiles. It’s still being used today. She goes on and on about her ability to play old games she no longer has access to legitimately and loving it. I should feel guilty for enabling her. The money I spent building the RetroPie box could’ve gone to rewarding the makers of the original games.
Then again, if they wanted my money, they would’ve found a way to earn it. Nintendo made their NES Classic Mini scarcer than diamonds. Soon, I’ll be playing Kid Icarus and Balloon Fight anyway. I guess Nintendo didn’t want my money badly enough.
