This laptop is going to emulate the experience of watching my parents fight, throw my 14 year old sister out of the house, and eventually seperate, all while having no friends, and being an athiest attending a catholic school???
Which is about to get a whole lot harder with sony/nintendo shutting down rom sites and abandonware sites. It means you'll need to have the original media the games came on.
And hopefully you can find that copy of Warcraft 2, Tides of Darkness on a cd thats not TOO scratched up.
Archive.org still exists and still has DMCA immunity*, you can get no-intro, goodset & redump sets on there. There is a gap in PC game ISOs currently though afaik, but steam and gog do seem to be good for covering most releases
Failing legal options, those sets will be available forever via BitTorrent
*If you're in the US, please make sure your representative knows how important it is this continues—well, unless they're a republican, in which case, probably better they stay oblivious if they don't already know.
I've got a 486SX industrial PC that I refurbed. Much fun!
But you can hardly expand this thing at all. And there's a hella dividing line between a 386 and any given 486. I got mine loaded with 128MB, USB floppy emulator (a MUST have) and an SSD (through adapters). You just can't do that with this animal, can't even add a math coprocessor.
This is actual hardware. Yes simple arm cores can pretty faithfully emulate much of this. But that's emulation. These are bespoke devices, built from actual old chips. Offering a level of comparability and predictability emulation can't always achieve. It isn't for everyone.
Adrian Black ended up with a non functioning unit sent to him by a viewer that bought one. The seller rather than pay for postage for the broken one to be sent back to China just told them to keep it and sent them a replacement instead. Adrian ends up troubleshooting and fixing it but you can get a pretty good look at everything going on inside and some of the old chips involved.
The M6117C also isn't the original and not that old. Also the 8MB of RAM aren't true to the original.
I'm not sure. I occasionally use emulation. And I think it's fine. Unless you're a speed runner and need everything to be exact to the frame timing, you won't notice. Certainly not for a desktop UI like the Win 3.11 on the photo. I guess it depends on the use-case.
Something like a FPGA or an ESP32 can also be repaired, replaced, programmed and most of the things a CPU or different architecture can do. And if the emulation layer doesn't have too many flaws, it'll be pretty realistic. Not exactly the same thing, but I think it'll do for practically any use-case. And it comes with other benefits.
I think you're allowed to do it just for the sake of it. But I often see people using an original SNES because "emulation is shit" and then they proceed to connect it to the TV set in their livingroom, which isn't even close to the original experience because it adds lots of latency and doesn't have interlacing and the colors are different than on a CRT, too. I think that's just having strong opinions despite being uneducated. And I think I'm equally as well off with my Raspberry Pi and Emulationstation. (Which can also run DOS games.)
In the end everyone is entitled to their opinion. But this also isn't the original (You can get an old Laptop... I have one with an 486.) But this isn't the original but a replica. And it's debatable (in my opinion) whether it's the CPU architecture that does the realism, or other factors. I think for realism, you'd need a black and white liquid crystal display, a NiMH battery that degrades fast if you don't charge it right and half the amount of RAM at most. And maybe just a floppy drive. The CPU is something you wouldn't notice with the current state of technology.
Agreed. I think most prominently competitive gaming; development where you need to assure it later on actually works as intended on the target platform; and business stuff where parties are obliged by contract to guarantee something works flawlessly and keeps running that way - are good examples.
That laptop doesn't look to me like it was intended to do any of that, so that's maybe why I'm being a bit negative here. It's cool and a nice idea, though...
(And we already have ARM-based retro machines, FPGA clones if popular processors available. So there is no need for them to do the exact same thing.)
Wait, is that actually Garbage? That was the first thing that popped into my head when I saw the picture. That Bond music video she did was awesome. World is Not Enough.
board game baggies usually have a tiny hole in them, to let the air out when you're packing the game away.
not so great if you're muleing some molly to your weekly game of Wingspan
Honestly, it puts me off completely. I'm a woman and this is what gaming used to be: women are sluts. The ad isn't even trying to be clever or anything. Like wtf is this this trying to say?
And why is it a "trashy hot" woman despite the target audience being 99% young men at the time? This is what I mean. The ad speaks to a target audience that is not on the poster.
Oh, she’s trashy? Why? Please don’t tell us you did not get whooshed by the ad now.
The ad has combined the image of putting tablets on a womans tongue, while also having her in a pose with tongue out that is also used to imply the desire to perform oral sex. This is highlighted by the fact she is looking up, with the camera focused on her face.
That said, I'm guessing here, but I'm sure as hell not going to tell a woman she's not allowed to be offended by sexualization of another woman to sell Playstations.
Yeah, so you can see the logos forming the pattern of the face buttons on the pills.
This is highlighted by the fact she is looking up, with the camera focused on her face.
becausw she's getting high, this is really common "being high" imagery. That's even why it looks slightly sexual: orgasms are just a different kind of high.
but I'm sure as hell not going to tell a woman she's not allowed to be offended by sexualization of another woman to sell Playstations.
Nobody said she can't be, they just pointed out her reasoning doesn't really hold much water, because it doesn't. People can feel however they want about something, none of us can stop them.
When i saw this ad, all i thought was ecstasy, rave and playstation. Not "women are sluts" or anything like it. If i didn't get the reference, i probably would think the same about the ad as her. I don't think she got the reference, not after her initial comment.
Tongue out with ecstasy on is something you would see at raves. The eyes up is odd i give you that, that's made to look submissive, and sure there are sexual connotations, advertisers are clever.
But raves were also not some sterile asexual gatherings either. I don't know.
Tongue out with ecstasy on is something you would see at raves. The eyes up is odd i give you that, that’s made to look submissive, and sure there are sexual connotations, advertisers are clever.
Yeah exactly, but also come on everyone, ecstasy is a drug that tends to make you want to fuck. So I think the ad -> sluttiness could be from, and I'm guessing here, that she's in a submissive pose that just so happens to be identical to a sexual one, taking a drug that makes one want to fuck, and that's her 'role' in this ad.
That said, you'll notice not a single person asking the woman who posted why she saw it that way, they just jumped to tell her she's wrong.
So @stufkes , on behalf of men on lemmy, I'm sorry you got this reaction. I really hope at least one person in this thread goes "Wait... I don't see it as problematic, but someone else does. Maybe I should understand why?"
It's edgy marketing. You're not wrong it's also clearly sexualizing her, but they're pushing a console like a party drug.
On the one hand, it's a very dated ad, on the other I really wish marketing companies would do weird shit like this more. Just maybe with a bit less sex appeal?
There’s nothing wrong with sex appeal. Removing sex appeal, drugs, whatever else is how you get boring corpo bullshit ads instead of edgy corpo bullshit ads.
They absolutely can. This just isn't really one of them. Ads in the 90s all treated women as sex objects to be "played". And this ad isnt wild in that regard, but you're kidding yourself if you think they didn't choose that angle and lighting deliberately.
Maybe not, but damn it, that's our reality. I kind of like it better than the hollow virtue signaling these days. And of course it would be great if corporations could actually be virtuous, but apparently that's been litigated away.
Nah this is still corpo bullshit. It's also one of the tamer specimens of that era. The only difference is, the corpos in charge of advertising at that time were all sentient hardons who heard stories about how drugs are and peaked at 14. None of them lived in the real world and they just churned out knee-jerk sexist bullshit because they wanted to appeal to boys going through puberty and men that never left that headspace.
<rant>
A lot of the ads from that era are uncomfortable. Hell, a lot of the games were. It was rare to see a female character that wasn't ditzy and helpless, a thinly-veiled copy of the writer's mom, or exactly like a dude but hot. Those were the options. I'm not saying I needed every game to be a work of great literature with complex and tormented characters and copious backstory; I just wanted female characters in games that didn't like someone doing a ventriloquism act with their fleshlight.
I ended up chasing gameplay and trying to ignore how fucking awkward and immature most of the shooters were in that era and I don't think I was alone. I think a lot of gamers grew up and drove the market in a slightly more mature direction. Some people blame woke bullshit, but for me it was just being utterly sick of how fucking juvenile everything was and voting with my money. There's still a vocal minority out there that wants the good old days back, but I'd stop playing if the industry went back to exclusively 3xtr33m l33t 4ct10n d00d bullshit.
Sidenote: I played the demo for some Cliffy B game a decade ago on my XBox and hard-quit and deleted when the guy on my comms told me to "fire a rocket directly up the bad guy's poop chute." I was in my 30s and Cliff was probably pushing 40 at the time. What the hell? Are we nine years old again? Then again, he was the guy that threw his cat into his scanner and posted a picture of it every day until the internet told him to stop. Ugh. Let's never go back there.
</rant>
I’m 41 now, so I was around for all that stuff. I must admit, I love those old ’90s and early ’00s games like Duke Nukem. I was also going through puberty at the time, so there’s that nostalgic factor.
I don’t think those days are ever coming back, and I’m okay with that. I enjoyed those games at the time, but I can now see how others may have found them offensive—something I never really considered back then. Many of those ads and games were a product of their time, reflecting the MTV era, which, as we know, eventually gave way to reality TV, for better or worse.
These days, it seems like we’ve evolved in some ways but regressed in others, with thousands of porn games on Steam, which is definitely not my thing. I appreciate that the industry has matured and is now more inclusive and diverse. While there’s still room for improvement, I’m glad to see that gaming can offer more sophisticated and varied content that appeals to a broader audience.
None of them lived in the real world and they just churned out knee-jerk sexist bullshit because they wanted to appeal to boys going through puberty and men that never left that headspace.
It really took the industry a long time to get out of that, too. It was all through the early 2000's, and people forget, also had wonderful shit like:
this, which should have taken that franchise down. People just gloss over it now like 'oh yeah, haha, people were just like that back in... 2009!? Oh, shit, uh...'
(EDIT: Feel free to explain your downvote, you miss ads like this?)
Yes, and I really hope more people see this. It was an embarrassment, and people tried to quickly forget. Before they did though, we got to see the absolute art piece that was the Battlefield teams response.
Yeah that's actually funny. Calling it FRAGS is just the icing.
Now that it's less broken, I've been playing Cyberpunk a lot and it feels like edgy shit done correctly. All the big tough guys are actually just weirdos enamored with the sound of their own voice, the ads are ludicrously over the top, it's bloody, and everyone's a human being. I haven't felt gross with any of the content in it so far and it has at least as many strippers as Duke 3D had. I think the loud edgelords keep trying to paint it as free speech vs censorship but it's really about not making players complicit in whatever infantile world view the director has.
Not the downvoter, but i appereciate how the punchline of the ad wasn't explicitly spelled out, despite the punchline being "slur funny."
I feel like we tolerated the assholes of the time because, immature though they were, they were the life of the party, which was "the point" of gaming for a demographic, to be the exact opposite of work in every way.
We need high-energy, charismatic, boundary pushing people if we want games that are fresh and innovative. Unfortunately, those tendencies can amplify the worst in us. But we don't need to tolerate asholism for the sake of entertainment, its never worth it.
I feel like we tolerated the assholes of the time because, immature though they were, they were the life of the party, which was “the point” of gaming for a demographic, to be the exact opposite of work in every way.
Hard disagree there, particularly as someone who worked in the industry, has a gay kid, and worked with women in the industry. The 'frat boy' stuff was amusing to 13 year old fans, sure, but it was abusive, cruel, and awful to be anywhere near. There's a billion different ways to achieve the same objective without being homophobic, sexist, etc, like say this masterpiece response to said ad.
Late 90’s/early 2000’s E3 and game shows were greasy
I posted this elsewhere, but people pretend like that just ended abruptly in 2005, but I want people to always remember this shit. That's 2009, not 1999, gross.
Given this is a print ad, I think the primary payload is just "SEX DRUGS AND ROCK & ROLL" shouted as loud as it can to get the reader to stop flipping through the magazine and actually look at it, and then once it's got the reader by the foveas it then says "Sony Playstation 2. Circle Cross Triangle Square."
PS2 launched in late 2000 so this ad would be targeting tween, teen and young adult millennial boys and men, so the secondary payload here is to associate the PS2 brand with thoughts and imagery that demographic is interested in or curious about, such as clubs/raves/parties, girls, sex, party drugs, and sex with girls on party drugs at a club or rave and thus transfer some of that interest/curiosity to itself.
The tertiary payload would be to use association with more grown up imagery (also during this time were ads featuring four condoms in see-through packets bent into the Circle-Cross-Triangle-Square shapes among others) to set themselves apart from Nintendo, who generally maintains an all-ages friendly image, and especially during the GameCube era when they revealed The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker to much fan backlash at the "childish, cartoony" graphics. The PS2 looked more like a piece of AV equipment than Nintendo's Barney The Dinosaur purple box, and could play audio CDs and DVD movies, VERY important socializing tools for teens in the 2000s.
Bottom line is it FUCKING worked. The PS2 sold like toilet paper. Sony sold 155 million PS2s worldwide, Outselling the GameCube (21.7 million and the Wii (101.7 million) combined And they did it with ads that said "Hey, if you're grown up and with it enough to recognize what this chick is doing, ours is the game console for you."
Bottom line is it FUCKING worked. The PS2 sold like toilet paper.
You really didn't need the ads. PS2 absolutely dominated because they were the ones with the all of the huge publishers. Sega, Nintendo, and Microsoft couldn't hold a candle to the sheer amount of great exclusives. It was only when Xbox 360 and later the Wii came out did the console wars start to shift.
It was this webcomic that put this idea in my head and I just can't stop seeing it everywhere "I don't like this because I'm a woman" comes up. The original commenter also slut shamed the model in the ad which is why I figure it's either homophobia or sex negativity in general.
But yeah yeah I know homophobia is bad and you can't accuse women of being bad.
Oh yeah, the culture was toxic af. Lots of folks never grew out of the toxicity. Granted it was preexisting toxicity coopted and reinforced in the gaming culture, not created by it. We're in a much better place in that regard these days.
No, the imagery was supposed to invoke the rave culture at the time. Lots of men, women, boys, and girls doing X, and the pills usually were white like that.
People arguing with you without acknowledging that this was just an ad in a sea of sexist as fuck ads. Maybe is not as sexist as the average one, but still.
I miss that era. Companies didn’t mind a bit of edginess and weren’t afraid to market to adults. The console culture itself also isn’t what it used to be.
These days, gaming consoles all need to be safe enough for five year olds to play on them. And it’s caused everything to be just too bland and safe, both in marketing and the console itself. Can’t really have things like Xbox 360 Uno with the live camera feed and no moderation. Or the wholly uncensored COD lobbies.
I like the part between your two paragraphs. The early gaming era was really shitty when it came to diversity and... It's not even representation, it's not having to play sluts or princesses or whatever.
The now-era is all AAA all-the-same sanitised stuff, nothing to do with lack of edginess. Just corporate safety in mainstream appeal. Currently, indie games are where the experiments and interesting ideas happen.
I'm certainly not going to say you're wrong on that first part. I've been online since 1996. At that time, the internet was the domain of white, heterosexual, nerdy, generally well educated guys. And me being a white, heterosexual, nerdy, well educated guy... well... going online felt like coming home. Those were my people. I still really miss those days.
But I also know that the experience of someone not like me would've been wildly different. I learned a bajillion slurs on COD lobbies after all. It's a good thing that more people now feel welcome online, as it led to platform growth and functionality that we otherwise wouldn't have had if it was just 'my kind of people'.
The current safe, sanitised, gentrified gaming sphere also has benefits: COD lobbies these days are very pleasant by comparison. You even have to sign a code of conduct to get on multiplayer. It feels more welcoming, less hostile. Of course, companies certainly have been financially incentivized to attract as wide an audience as possible. For example, the very first GTA game sold about 6 million copies. GTA V has sold 200 million. And with ever-increasing development budgets, you can't afford to cater to a niche, you want to cast as wide a net as possible to recoup those costs.
I don't think I've met any Brazilians back in those days; (online) gaming is really expensive there from what I heard, right?
One fun thing in the old COD lobbies was always to teach others slurs and general cursing in your language. I learned how to curse folks out in like 50 languages. Each country also has its own unique style of cursing. We Dutch really like to incorporate diseases for example.
I used to play Rune Quake with a guy on MPlayer named 'svfox' and he was from Brazil - this was 96/97. I miss him sometimes; we managed to lock down games of Rune Quake and CTF we played so well together.
"the internet was the domain of white, heterosexual, nerdy, generally well educated guys. And me being a white, heterosexual, nerdy, well educated guy... well... going online felt like coming home. Those were my people"
Thank you for putting it so clearly. Yes, it is completely valid to long for a time where the own niche was the in-group. As someone who's been on the web from early on but a woman, it wasn't really "my people". It was never a safe space for me, but I totally understand where you are coming from. It's great to be on the side of the "default".
The only spaces I genuinely miss are phpbb forums. I honestly believe they are better than reddit, or the fediverse for that matter. Smaller interest groups have a self selection mechanism and better moderation. I think they could still foster a great environment today that would welcome nerdy educated people on a shared interest without specifically speaking to just one type of educated nerds.
I miss forums as well, and I'm actually moving back to them. Back in the early 2000's, I visited like a dozen forums each day. I was a member of like three watch forums, a camera forum, a Star Trek forum, some gaming forums and others. Just 'doing the rounds' kept you busy for a while. People also were insanely knowledgeable on those niche forums, and they all had their own specific culture and flavor to them.
Places like a niche subreddit are... OK at best. They are convenient and easy to visit, but don't tend to have the level of knowledge and discourse that I generally enjoy. You also run the risk of your sub getting ruined by people who are into the wrong aspects of your particular hobby. For example, on a watch FORUM, the discussions are about design, mechanical features, history, photography, how to repair, etc. etc. On the subreddit, a lot of posts tended to be drive-by posters who 'found a watch and wanted to know what it's worth'. or 'is this fake'. The subreddit didn't curb that, so eventually I and many others just stopped going there. It was basically too easy for people to post there just because, well, they could. Whereas on an actual watch forum, you can do a bit stricter moderation and the registration requirement weeds out low effort posting.
Some consider that 'gatekeeping', but I see it as a valid way of protecting one's chosen community.
It was basically too easy for people to post there just because, well, they could.
I expect the difference you're describing was partly due to moderation (and lack thereof), but also partly due to the barrier to entry imposed by the forum signup process.
Unfortunately, the signup barrier cuts both ways: Despite loving high-quality discussion forums, I seldom bother participating in them these days, mainly because jumping through signup/captcha/email-validation hoops and then having to maintain yet another set of credentials for yet another site, forever, became too much hassle once I had more than a couple dozen. (I have hundreds, so I'm very reluctant to add to the pile.)
OpenID managed to solve a good deal of that hassle, but it's mostly forgotten these days. I think well-moderated federated services have the potential to solve it completely, though. Here's hoping.
It's the eternal pendulum swinging between slut and saint, whore and Madonna. AAA games are afraid of sexuality, and one can see why when looking back on how Lara Croft was portrayed in magazines. We need games that, when appropriate, acknowledge sexuality in a way that reflects its role in people's lives.
"Hey, you know what would be a good way to advertise our system? Let's just give children nightmares for about 40 seconds and then splash our logo on the screen at the end."
I think most ads for consoles in the early 2000s were like that, at least for ps1, ps2 and the original xbox. Not necessarily nightmare fuel, just "weird" stuff unrelated to the console or games.
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