Hi,

I know we are blessed with technology now with apps and resources that do everything.
I know most old games are fully supported and have various tweaks and patches available.

But still, playing an old game on my Win7 system does not fell 'right' and I cannot explain why that is.
Anyone else feel like this or is it me just getting old and nostalgia kicking in?

I think what you miss is the old CRT monitor... :)

Nostalgia definitely....

I know the feeling, but get the right old game and feel those old time vibes come flooding back.

The surroundings you played those old games in back in the day probably had a big effect on the way you felt about them....

Nostalgia would be a good memorable feeling.

If you're not feeling right about playing older stuff on newer systems it might be anxiety. You might feel like you're wasting time rehashing the same trail you were down a thousand times before when there are newer trails to experience.

As for 'nostalgia' however, like the above poster mentioned. I will always have fond memories of Ys: The Ark of Napishtim because I was hopped up on Codine and painkillers throughout the entirety of it.

Yeah it doesn't feel right to me, but I know why: Old games that are a certain age and older on new computers will never quite run right, because they run too fast and cpu cycle emulation in programs like DOSBox can't perfectly emulate hardware the games were designed for.

As Robbeasy mentioned, if I play the right game, it's like nothing has changed at all (i.e. Conquest of the New World).

I think what diminishes the experience somewhat, for me at least, is the context in which I'm playing these games. My mind is more pre-occupied nowadays. And while I would have thought that gaming would have provided an escape from these things, it seems as though the opposite is occurring and real life concerns are persistently intruding upon what was once a carefree activity.

The rose tint on your glasses isn't so strong when you're actually faced with that old game that you remember differently.

You're playing a game designed to fit within the technical restraints of years old hardware rather than something cutting edge and current like it was at the time. The gameplay mechanics are of a time that had yet to benefit from the enhancements and refinements we've seen since.

Simply put they suffer from the fact that we now know how they could be bettered.

Win7 doesn't bother me... playing on a large "1200p" LCD monitor sometimes does though. Someday I might build an old system with a CRT monitor.

I play games on an 1920*1080 native res LCD monitor, and some really old games just doesn't look right on LCD monitors. Also, a lot of games from my favourite era (the Amiga golden age) looks downright bad on LCD monitors today, like Cannon Fodder. That could be due to the PC version being a horrible port of the Amiga version, or it's due to the monitor.

I have a dream that I can someday afford to have a really large room dedicated solely to gaming and computing - and when that day comes, I'll have a 486DX - 66mhz or something like that, for the sole reason of playing old DOS titles, and a Pentium 90 or something like that for the somewhat later DOS games and early Win games. Yeah, I know, for those two I don't really need much space, but that's just a couple of examples of what the room would inhabit. I would also have a C64 or two, an Amiga 500, Amiga 1200, NES, SNES, N64, Megadrive, Dreamcast, etc etc.

But to stay on topic, some games just doesn't look good or even as intended on modern monitors. I do remember thinking PC games looked too "pixelized" back in the day, when I was used the Amiga and the free "anti-aliasing" it had, due to using RGB or composite. But I really doubt they looked as bad as they do today on modern monitors.

May I have that 1200p monitor then? I'll give you my 13" CRT from '94. It still works!

I feel EXACTLY the same way, and it pisses me off when i try to find a nice moment to get some old school gaming done.
But alas although i can technically afford it, i'm not willing to upgrade my system so that i can enjoy the newer generation of games... so i'm stuck searching for enjoyable older games :/

Modern machines just don't have this anymore...

Ahhh. I need to put that as a desktop wallpaper somewhere.

CRT monitors had that ability to be just blurry enough to emulate antialiasing.

They help.

Some old games are just not doable anymore for a lot of people. Their formula has been used many times over and improved upon for years. Some old games, however, are excellent classics and are just as fun today as ever.

These days, I play Dragon Age, Drakensang, Battlefield Bad Company and HAWX just as much as I play Baldur's Gate, Hardwar and Neverwinter Nights. Sometimes, you just can't put down great classics. even on modern machines.

;_;