Silent achievements ··· Happy 2024!

General Off-Topic
#1

It is now 2024. I hope you had a good time this holiday season.

Sometimes things happen that can’t be valued, quantified, or even thought of as goals. They just happen and affect the environment, they can even create new forms. On this occasion I would like to write some reflections (paranoias would say my ex) of things that have affected in some way or had repercussions in the emulation environment.

The gamer environment is a special case, the user community has imposed itself anarchically to the publicity system and is the one that defines and generates the trends. A famous case was “Let’s play Atari”. To call a product by the name of a brand is a very difficult feat to achieve. And shortly after a surprise, it changed “Let’s play Nintendo”, and then the unthinkable “Let’s Play SEGA”, until the miracle happened, it happened again a 4th time and in a resounding way “Let’s play Playstation”. Never in the history of mankind has anything like this ever happened and this is the work of the user. This is why today it is the entertainment industry that generates the most revenue and will continue to do so.

We are talking about “Core”. I don’t know if RetroArch was the first emulator to use the concept, what I am sure is that before it was something unknown, now it has become an everyday thing, it has even been adopted by other projects. Just like the LibRetro module system, it is becoming more and more common to see emulators with modular systems for their different features.

It’s easy to forget what Interfaces were like before RetroArch, or it’s easier to have total ignorance that some didn’t even have (and still don’t have). This “recent” trend of easy interfacez in emulators is no doubt driven by RetroArch’s effort to improve the end-user experience.

Likewise Portability, there’s not much that can be said, there’s just no comparison. It offers the most cross-platform compatibility.

Porting emulators is something we have easily become accustomed to, but creating a New Technology and generating a whole movement in a specific branch is something few projects can boast. To name a few, Parallel, RunAhead and the recent Preventive Frames, Shaders…

And speaking of, Shaders and Overlays have generated a Creative Tsunami in the community, they have always existed (or similar things), what changes is the implementation and development in RetroArch, it has the absolute focus on retro-gamer modding.

Fame costs and appear at the top of the searches is not something easy to achieve in a market as saturated as the emulators. RetroArch is first in everything and in all media. So much so, that if you search for “Arcade” videos, the first option that appears is RetroArch (to a good understander, few words). :speak_no_evil:

Checking these things is simple, look at the surrounding Community, it is the relentless witness that reflects unmistakably the overall state of a project. Despite some uncomfortable problem, the project is solid and is represented by an “amazing” community, full of intelligent people, respectful and kind users, exceptional developers who make magic, very talented artists and content creators who indirectly contribute positively to the community. Here there is no doubt, it is RetroArch’s best silent achievement.

( With a few exceptions “I don’t breathe until they make me an emulator”, I can’t get over it ) LOOOL

I wish you a prosperous new year.
Thanks for everything, thanks for so much.
Take care of your health and keep loved ones close, the rest comes on its own.

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#2

Happy 2024 to you too. You already listed a lot of important points where RetroArch was innovating and the leading edge. In addition to the list above, it’s also fully controller driven too, without the developer the need to implement this feature or some other features. And the auto configuration support for so many controllers and input devices is also really cool. DOS Box Pure is a game change and it started in RetroArch as well.

One thing though: I don’t know anything about the Let’s play stuff you listed.

1 Like
#3

Thank you!

Yes, the achievements are many, making a list would be complicated, however my idea is not to list specific goals and achievements, but the fortuitous ones, as I explained at the beginning, those casual events that are generated organically by the community.

The retropad is a great idea, but I understand that the opensource drive with support for many game controllers is an Apple invention.

Have you ever been invited or invited to play? How did they say?
Come to my house, “let’s play videogames”.
Or, “Let’s play Nintendo”.

#4

I think it may depend on the country, for example “let’s play nintendo” sounds like it may be common in USA where NES was a real big chunk of the market and came out after the US crash, but in my case (european, italian) It never happened to me to hear that.

also in europe there was (I think) more variety on game console/8 bit micro computers. NES came later here and actually Master system sold a little more and c64 was still going well in mid-late 80s. So maybe there was more “awareness” about brands and machines.

Not sure, but that’s what I think :sweat_smile:

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#5

Yes, I am referring to a general consensus. In the USA it is for sure and the rest of America too, I am from Venezuela. I guess it would have more impact in countries where consoles were predominant.

I know that Europe was dominated by micros (what envy), and maybe it was not a practice with Atari 2600 because of its limited distribution, but what about the Playstation 1? That was a worldwide event and micros no longer existed.

#6

So now I understand what you meant. I thought you was referring to some specific events or products from 2023, lol. I am from Europe/Germany and we obviously did not use the “Le’ts Play” wording, but the brands were used as synonym for “Videogames” as well. First “Atari” was mostly used by the older generation whenever they talked about videogames. Later and younger generation (90s) used “Nintendo”.

But it was mostly used like this from people who was not deep into gaming culture as their main hobby, knowing all the differences. In example my friends where deep into gaming and we never used phrases like “let us play Atari or Nintendo”, we literally called the systems or games by their name. But if my non gamer uncle or cousine asked to show up, they usually asked me to play “Nintendo”. Some even said “Game Boy” to everything videogame related.

As the years progressed and videogames became a mass phenomena, more people got involved with gaming, the previous generations got older with a good understanding of games, less and less people used the brands as synonym for gaming. At least this is my experience of this topic.

#7

You know how English is, it is English.

That’s exactly what I mean, that the way to mimic the word was a phenomenon produced by the community. Now nobody speaks in a general way “let’s play Xbox”, they name a specific game.

The most famous microcomputer in Italy was the Commodore, in Spain the Spectrum. Which microcomputer was more famous in Germany at that time? Amstrad?

#8

It might be the Amiga in Germany. Can’t say if C64 was that big in Germany too. We had Amiga disks in flea markets everywhere, a few friends and I had an Amiga 500. I know Schneider (rebranded Amstrad) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad_CPC#Schneider_Computer_Division got a bit feet in Germany, but I never encountered one in my youth, or for that matter didn’t heard of back then.

#9

I think Amstrad (CPC) was popular in France and also present in Spain. maybe in UK too? Usually it all depended on the local (national) distributors.

#10

A few days ago I saw a video that talks about this and the xcopy program. lol
Who’s going to want to switch to an Nes, having an ocean of games at the touch of a click.

The king was Commodore, without a doubt, the 4th most famous, the MSX, I hardly know people who tell me about it, maybe it was more known in the USA.

#11

Happy New Year!

In Japan, “Let’s play on the Famicom” was a popular game.

In Japan, the name “Family Computer” was used instead of “NES”. The Family Computer. So it is called “Famicom” for short. We never called it Nintendo. I think there were quite a few people who did not know that the game was made by Nintendo in the first place. Later, the SFC came out, but it became a mixture of “Let’s play on the Famicom” and “Let’s play on the Super Fami”.

As a side note, many Japanese at that time could not read English spelling as well as we can now, and there were quite a few people who called the game “Pamicom”.

Except for “Let’s play on the Famicom”, there were others like “Play on PC-98”, “Play on MSX”, “Play on TOWNS”, and “Play on X68000”, but I remember that these were like one-person machines unlike the Famicom and were not used to invite people.

However, I think the Japanese market was the most active for MSX because the Japanese MSX was an initiative by ASCII, not Microsoft.

As time went on, “Let’s play with Sega” and “Let’s play with PC Engine” began to appear, and once SegaSaturn and PlayStation came out, “Let’s play with Famicom” was no longer heard.

In terms of the market share of classic personal computers, NEC PC were the most common, followed by MSX, Sharp’s X1/X68000 came in third, and then FM TOWNS, I think.

Later, NEC PC, Sharp X68000, and FM TOWNS all disappeared at once because of the release of Windows 95, which was specially designed for each of them. MSX had the advantage of low-cost programming, but MSX2+ and MSXturboR were failures in terms of standards and disappeared quickly.

MSX/MSX2 was never bad, as Dragon Quest was also ported…

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#12

Yes, that’s why I wanted an Amiga 500! but in my case I got it second hand and very late (91-92 I think…) the thing is that Amiga was very expensive when it came out while other console and micros where very cheap in comparison!

Xcopy… what a great memory! :star_struck:

@Ranmori very interesting! thanks for sharing!

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#13

The pronunciation of English in Japan is something special, I imagine that they got used to “Pamicom” and when they found out it was “Famicom”, it seemed strange to them. :sweat_smile:

It’s obvious, in Japan the launch was different, Nintendo is a well known company, it’s a native product and had a better diffusion of information. On this side we suffered the names.

But here is another case of those that I comment.

The Nintendo in the west was called “Entertainment System” and it was the community who baptized the console as “Nintendo”, I guess it was because of the little information, that generic name that seemed like a subtitle and the terribly poorly designed packaging.

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Not counting set-packs, “Challenge Set” people would ask, “Is this a Nintendo?”

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The users said Nintendo and that’s how it stayed, so much was the impact that influenced the name of the next generation. “Super Nintendo”, and this time if they designed the box well, to clearly identify the name.

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But the set-packs, they were not saved, it was a disaster, “Super Nes, Super Set, Super Nintendo, Entertainment Sustem”?

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Nes or Snes was the name of the pack, I don’t remember it being used to name the console.

Living in the country where most of the consoles were born is a wonderful experience, some time ago I saw some videos of people queuing up to buy the Dreamcast, and the face of happiness was unique.

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