Why is retro PC gaming not more popular?

>>3815760
You can do it on a modern PC in most cases

>>3815768
true for all the retro consoles as well

>>3815771
>Saturn
>Xbox
>Jaguar

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>>3815774
>Xbox is retro

>>3815760
i go to other places for this instead of shitty /vr/

>>3815760
Not enough people who played on PC growing up.
Not enough console warriors to defend their platform with foam at the mouth.
Not enough nintentoddlers to retcon all their games as the best of all time.
Not enough obscure visual novels to attract NEETs from /a/.
Not enough waifus, furfag cartoons and jaypayrguer drama coming from games.
Not enough inflated game prices to attract resellers.
No way to sell you a "retro game PC" with preinstalled games at 3x price it should cost.

>>3815760
how so?

>>3815789
technically unless /vr/ has a set cut off date the original xbox, PS2 & gamecube would or would eventually be considered retro. and considering that the dreamcast is allowed it's only a matter of time before the others are allowed.

also sauce on your pic? I'm getting nothing from reverse image search.

>>3815824
Which part of "cutoff date is 2000" do you not understand?

>>3815817
such as?

>>3815789
>missing the point.

Windows will have native XBox compatibility before Xbox is /vr/. Mark my words.

- "Retro" trends tend to center around childhood nostalgia. Most kids played consoles instead of PCs. PC gaming was generally teens and up.

- Consoles have generations with fairly clear boundaries, while PC has been a gradual evolution. Just look at /vr/'s cutoff at 2000, it's pretty arbitrary.

Because retro computer gaming fucking sucked. Nobody made quality games because there was no quality control factor and people would just pirate your videogames anyways.

>>3815771
Hrmm not quite... you can't, for example play all Saturn games on Dreamcast, or all 3DO games on N64
PC is an all-inclusive box of its own retro

>>3815919
lel 1/10

Huh? It's plenty popular.

>>3815939
I mean, he's semi-right. There are good retro games for the PC but not until the early-mid 90s. Before then they had god awful interfaces due to mice not being commonplace.

If you have to have a cheat sheet just to know which key does what, it's not worth playing.

>>3815919
This. If you wanted quality games back in the '80s, the way to go was arcade > consoles > computers.

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>>3815932
>You can play all Windows 98 games on Windows 10

>>3815818
Not enough people who played on PC growing up.
Are you sure? there's plenty of oldfags who grew up with systems like commodore 64, spectrum and other older computers (and yes, not only europeans, especially the Commodore 64, that shit was popular everywhere). And younger fellas like me who grew up with their IBM PC clone (which also were everywhere during the 90s).
>Not enough console warriors to defend their platform with foam at the mouth.
Oh boy, have you ever seen retro PC threads? Retro PC fanboys are more full of vitriol than console fanboys. For some reason this is something that's more exclusive to the 80s though, since I guess the IBM PC standard dominating the 90s didn't allow for an actual war.
>Not enough nintentoddlers to retcon all their games as the best of all time.
As opposed to Sonyggers and Segatards also retconning all their games as best of all time? Not to mention PCtards also trying to retcon their games as best of all time, this is a moot point.
>Not enough obscure visual novels to attract NEETs from /a/.
HAHAHAHAHA. PC? Not enough visual novels? You're joking at this point. Japanese computers almost purely exist for VN, and even western PCs got VN (although often censored, like YU-NO)
>Not enough waifus, furfag cartoons and jaypayrguer drama coming from games.
furfag cartoons... ever seen a game called Claw? Not to mention AMIGA's (unofficial?) mascot being a furry character. As for JRPGs, you're right, PC is WRPG drama territory.
(cont)

>>3816037
>Not enough inflated game prices to attract resellers.
Well, depends, old PC games are harder to market because for example most old floppy disks are already not working anymore, but you'd be surprised how much some enthusiast are willing to pay for a big cardboard box, inserts and useless diskettes. But the truth is that most people pirated PC games, that was one of the most attractive points of playing on PC back then, you could go to the PC store and ask them to copy games for you on diskettes.

>>3815824
Sauce is [Tsukasa Jun] Biocube

>>3816037
>commodore 64, spectrum and other older computers
I thought we were talking about PC.
> And younger fellas like me who grew up with their IBM PC clone (which also were everywhere during the 90s).
It was more expensive and had a clusterfuck of drivers before the era of plug n play and directx.
>Oh boy, have you ever seen retro PC threads?
PCfags are not numerous in the West, they can't push their agenda how they see fit.
Besides, PC has always been PC. It has never been aggressively marketed for playing games and thus against consoles.
>even western PCs
Again: I though we were talking about PC.
> furfag cartoons
Name me PC games that got TV cartoons in the '90s. I'll wait.

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>>3816057
>Name me PC games that got TV cartoons in the '90s. I'll wait

>>3816072
Heh, what do you know. They actually existed

>>3816057
>I thought we were talking about PC.
Well, nowadays you have AMD vs Nvidia wars, which are also more full of vitriol than console wars. I think this is because PCtards don't have the same sense of banter as consolefags. They take brand war seriously.
>It was more expensive and had a clusterfuck of drivers before the era of plug n play and directx.
Clones weren't that expensive. And even if they were clusterfucks, they were everywhere. Even if your house was poor, PCs were available in every school computer lab, and they always had games.
>Besides, PC has always been PC. It has never been aggressively marketed for playing games and thus against consoles.
You mean IBM PC? IBM is one of the most aggressively marketed brands of electronic computers in history, lol. But yeah people didn't care because, again, cheaper clones.
>Again: I though we were talking about PC.
A bit arbitrary but okay, IBM PC clones still got their share of visual novels and H-games. Games like Evangelion Girlfriend of Steel were released for Windows.
>Name me PC games that got TV cartoons in the '90s. I'll wait.
You didn't mention anything about TV cartoons.

Still, you're trying to cherrypick silly reasons as to why PC gaming isn't more popular.
It is popular, just not as much as consoles because of lack of japanese support, outside of the odd Capcom or Sega port

>>3816089
>nowadays you have AMD vs Nvidia wars

In russia you have AMD and nvidia fanboys killing each other.
http://fraghero.com/russian-guy-murders-his-friend-over-argument-about-which-graphics-card-is-better-nvidia-or-amd/

>>3816037
>>3816057

There are shit ton of people like me mostly in european and latin american regions who grew up playing nothing but PC in the 90s ( we are 30 and up now ) and ofc arcades ( and some sega but compared to PC or Amiga thats a small number )


Although you are right. I'd say it's not that we aren't numerous in the west, but that pc gaming wasn't that popular in America specifically. Since American consumerism/youtubers etc.. is usually what drives up prices/starts fads/advertises whatever and drives these kinda things, it's whats lacking in PC gaming. Also I guess floppies/oldcds are harder to care than cartridges. + almost all my games were pirated
besides simcity and simcity2000 ( which my father bought for himself ^^ ) and 3000 ( which he gifted me to play himself ) and ofc some other things but you get the idea so maybe ( although there are many people that collect these things too ) I guess it's sort of a second nature to just pirate and play them rather then it becoming a collecting hobby thus making it maybe more on the spotlight ?

I bet there are many old school pc gamers ( rivaling those of nintendo ) that just download and play shit on dosbox etc.. ( after all a keyboard and a mouse is the original hardware anyways )

It hasn't become this commercialized popular hipster economy

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>>3816109
>^^

>>3816072
Also Night Walker, ToHeart and Kakyuusei

>>3816089
First off, let me clarify: I thought we were talking about DOS/Windows, as OP's pic suggested.
> Clones weren't that expensive.
Don't actually remember how much they cost, I only remember they were way more expensive in general. But still you could just get a console for way cheaper. Pirating on consoles was harder but still possible.
> PCs were available in every school computer lab
That's still not as accessible.
> IBM is one of the most aggressively marketed brands
I meant for games specifically. They never opposed PC to consoles, and vice versa. Sega never tried to attack PC, neither did Nintendo and Sony. They knew they weren't competing.

> you're trying to cherrypick silly reasons as to why PC gaming isn't more popular.
Cherrypick? I named you the actual reasons retro DOS/Windows gaming isn't very popular, assuming we're talking about North America first and foremost. It's simply that in the West people were heavily marketed consoles, and they grew up with them. It's a bit different for other countries though like >>3816109 said.

>>3816139
>But still you could just get a console for way cheaper.
Many households still might prefer to buy a PC (since it would also help kids for school, etc) rather than a new video game console
>That's still not as accessible.
But it is, kids who were too poor to have a PC (or a video game console for that matter) at home could play PC at school. I do remember kids playing stuff like Stunts or Carmen San Diego at school, they were very excited because it was an occasion to play vidya, I didn't care because I had PC and consoles at home. (and a much better PC than the ones at school)
>t's simply that in the West people were heavily marketed consoles
I think both were popular, the reason PC gaming isn't very popular nowdays, again, is because of lack of japanese support. Take a look at /vr/, it's mostly japanese gaming discussion, no matter if it's americans, europeans or latin americans, japanese devs reigned supreme during /vr/ times, and they weren't on PC, just on arcade and console.

>>3816145
>Many households still might prefer to buy a PC
True, but even then, some had PCs left for work, not for play. If you bought an inexpensive one, you had to prepare for inferior video quality and such. If you wanted to get the best graphics, buying a console was just far less expensive and hassle-free. Tons of action games to choose from, arcade ports, etc.

> Stunts or Carmen San Diego at school, they were very excited because it was an occasion to play vidya, I didn't care because I had PC and consoles at home.
Do these games hold up today? Wouldn't say so really. Yeah, it's cool for one nostalgic run, but not much else. And certainly having CIB Carmen Sandiego collection is nothing to brag about for your average normie.

>the reason PC gaming isn't very popular nowdays, again, is because of lack of japanese support
I am confused now. Are we talking about retro gaming, or modern gaming?

If it's retro, then to begin with the whole schtick with retro games initially revolved around consoles. Nintendo helped meme it further with VC, new super mario bros, etc. Meanwhile, PC pretty much discourages retro gaming with every new Windows cutting support for old software, if it wasn't for GOG and such enthusiasts.

>>3815919
I sort of miss the bins of shovelware games they would have at Walmart. It's a shame that lots of them are lost to obscurity. I'd like to replay a lot of them.

>>3816072
I've always thought of this as an Apple II game.

>>3816167
It's ironic that if that shovelware was on SNES, autists like byuu would be all over it for muh preservation. How can UNESCO world heritage even compete?

>>3816157
>True, but even then, some had PCs left for work, not for play. If you bought an inexpensive one, you had to prepare for inferior video quality and such.

Better than nothing, if your household could only afford one system, they might opt for PC instead of a console (unless it was a hands me down console from siblings, but still you were behind the new tech).

You're with the impression that marketing does everything. Yeah, while marketing is a big important factor, it's not like PC gaming was this obscure little thing only for enthusiasts who coded their own D&D text adventure, PC, especially during the 90s, exploded in popularity.
I mean, hello, Doom.
But PC still had less amount of games people wanted to play, simple as that. Consoles had arcade ports, as you said, besides stuff like the acclaimed licensed games from TV cartoons like the Disney and Warner games Capcom, Sega and Konami produced.
PC had a lot of edge-cutting stuff (Magic Carpet, Quake, AitD), but also a lot of actual kiddy stuff like the many edutainment games that were popular, like that one fish or the blue boy, don't know their names because I had different edutainment stuff growing up, but I see the fish and the blue boy are still remembered as a nostalgic thing. It just doesn't generate a devoted fan following, or "normies" getting interested in them because well, they're edutainment.
Doom though? Look at the Doom generals, it's all Doom skins on newer engines like Source.

I think it's because old PC gamers are too busy playing their superior games to care about posting on this shit board (actually they're probably all on reddit). Me, I grew up playing PC games at my house, and I only played on consoles at friends houses, but I have heavy nostalgia for both.

>>3815916

Unlike consoles more reliant on hardware for clear distinction it's clearer to focus on software on PC's. DOS games clearly are retro, as are Windows 9x games. Of course there are some non-IBM compat's that are easy to distinguish via hardware, Commodores, Amigas and the like.

>>3816189
>it's not like PC gaming was this obscure little thing only for enthusiasts
I am not implying otherwise. I'm saying that it was a fraction of console gaming in size. At a time when Goldeneye 007 sold 8 million on a tough luck console like N64, the most popular PC games sold around 1 million or so by rough estimates.
And I remind you, that OP asked:
>Why is retro PC gaming not more popular?
I was answering his question. I'm talking about why not as many people playing old PC games today as with consoles.

>I mean, hello, Doom.
That's 1 game. Otherwise, what surfaces on /vr/ usually? Occasional CS and HL maybe, C&C and Theme X, and then threads like "was Quake even good???", etc.

You know what games really made waves on PC? Probably Myst, Sims (not retro though), etc. They did reach the comparable potential as consoles. As for the rest, maybe Diablo and C&C were still comparable; maybe Starcraft, Theme X, Civ and such, but they weren't as big as these.

> But PC still had less amount of games people wanted to play, simple as that.
See: marketing. See: driver clusterfuck. See: smaller userbase, hardware cost, piracy.

Then again, some big PS games were released on PC. FFVII, MGS, to name a few. But people didn't give a fuck really, most had consoles.

>>3816109
>There are shit ton of people like me mostly in european and latin american regions who grew up playing nothing but PC
latin american and MSX was pretty big here
hell even amiga had a larger than usual niche. the only thing we didnt had was speccy and amstrad

>>3816218
>See: marketing. See: driver clusterfuck. See: smaller userbase, hardware cost, piracy.

Again you can't blame it all on marketing alone. Driver clusterfuck could be a legit reason but it's not like it was rocket science either, and most people bought their computers with everything pre-installed from the PC store. I remember my dad was friends with the owner of the PC store, when we got our 482 (upgrading from our 286) the guy installed windows 3.11 (for free, of course, a pirate version), and a bunch of games on DOS, one of them being the newly released Doom II.
That's the reason why sales didn't match consoles, piracy. It was also why it was popular as fuck.
You can't measure popularity by sales alone when you have piracy this rampant being a factor.

It has more to do with games being popular, rather than just marketing, or system set up stuff. You forgot to mention many other popular games on PC: Lemmings, Worms, SimCity, Age of Empires. All of these were mad popular, and before Doom, it was Wolf3D. Not to mention the shitloads of Doomclones that followed after (Heretic, Blood, etc). People played most of these for free, you'd just go to the store and ask them to copy the game on a few diskettes, that's how you got PC games back then.

I do remember buying a few big box games, but it were rare occasions (and I ended up with disappointing ports that were better on console, like the DOS port of SFII The World Warrior)

>>3816057
Sengoku Rance

I guess because it's difficult to find working retro parts, but there is lots of Youtube videos of people building retro gaming PCs,also I know a girl that is into old Point and Click adventure games that found an old laptop in the garbage that worked and she installed Win XP to play those games from original boxed copies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoWHmnOume0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EipIq8nnwas

>>3815789
>>imitative of a style or fashion from the recent past

neither is anything we talk about on /vr/

>>3815768
In my experience, not true. There's usually tons of compatibility issues. Even running the game in compatibility mode usually doesn't help. I've tried everything to play Spongebob Squarepants: Employee of the Month on my modern PC and it always crashes. Using VirtualBox may or may not work, but the mouse will be sluggish and it's generally a shit experience.

With consoles, you just hook them up to a CRT, pop in the cartridge and it works like a charm.

>>3815760
Just got a compaq lte elite 4/75 the other day, wrastlin to get it up and running with a Compact Flash memory card. Dead floppy drive too.

Re-learning dos commands, config.sys and autoexec. emm386, himem, drivers and stuff. A little overkill just to play some old games, but I'm a glutton for punishment. :)

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>>3816057
>Name me PC games that got TV cartoons in the '90s. I'll wait.
Battletech/Mechwarrior.

Maniac Mansion.

Sam & Max Hit the Road

>>3815830
>year of our lord 2120
>PlayStation 59, XCube Pi and Nintendo WiiVRi battle it out for interactive movie dominance
>4chan somehow survived Hiroyuki's shitty management
>/vr/ still discusses genesis vs snes, doom and the same games it always has because of autism
>Hillary is still not president

>>3815760

i shove a game in my NES and it Works

shit was a pain in the ass back then, IRQ settings, etc

sure i could use dosbox

but why would i want to revive my 20 year old PC which i use to hold up my desk?

aint worth it

i shove a game in my SMS / NES / "Mega Grive" / SNES and it just Works

>>3817006
>but why would i want to revive my 20 year old PC which i use to hold up my desk?
unlike your old console?

>>3817004
go back to /v/ newfag

>>3816013
>>3816996
Fair enough... still you would only need a handful of systems from different "periods" to address compatibility issues. To answer OP's question, there's no solid period or configuration commonality for what "retro PC gaming" is so there isn't a defined scene.

>>3815771
A pc takes up more room and is more effort to set up. Having 5 consoles isn't an issue for most people, having 5 PC's is.

>>3816996
>With consoles, you just hook them up to a CRT, pop in the cartridge and it works like a charm.
>there is never disfunction with consoles
good one
Also, good job trying this hard to find a game that wouldn't work on modern pc (Spongebob, really?).
>Yeah VirtualBox exist but I don't like it!

fact is, console emulation is better on pc, so the reality is most people won't "just hook their console to a crt", but rather just install an emulator and download the games so they can play it in better conditions. This is the actual truth.

>>3817195
Well, most people don't really have standards.

>>3817207
What standards?

A lot of people prefer playing console games on a couch in the living room rather than hunched over a pc. Sure they can set up an emulation box but if you allready have the console and games why bother?

While PC games have allways been played hunched over the computer, so those feels are accurately replicated with dosbox.

>>3817250
>if

>>3817217
Exactly.

>>3817264
Yes, if.

Kids jumping on the "lol, so retro" bandwagon may aswell emulate. But many of us have consoles and games from when we were kids.

>>3817272
What if we still have the computers and games we had when we were kids?

>>3817274
And if you have the space to leave a second pc set up for gaming, or the desire to set it up and pack it away every time you wish to play games, then knock yourself out.

Plenty of people do, but it requires more effort and/or space than leaving your NES plugged in under the tv. Thus making emulation the more attractive option to many, even if they have the genuine hardware.

>>3817284
>Plenty of people do, but it requires more effort and/or space than leaving your NES plugged in under the tv.
My spectrum and my MSX are same size or even smaller than most of the retro console (and some new consoles as well, looking at you gigantic xbox)

>>3817331
>spectrum
>msx
Are you being deliberately obtuse or do you really not understand what this thread is about?

>>3817358
what about you?
>plugging 15 consoles on TV is obviously easier than playing an old pc game with dosbox

>>3817361
No one made that argument...

>>3816959
Can attest. Win95/98 was when I got into PCs and I believed the lies about PC backwards compatibility and got rid of my old machines. Now I can buy a brand new top of the line gaymen rig cheaper than I can get a pentium 2 and a voodoo 2. I am a sad batman.

>>3817195
Not him, but virtualisation doesn't like games. These are designed to run business software as fast as possible. Games like nice consistent frame times and run like jittery shit in vmware no matter how fast your hardware. Plus emulated DX5/6/7/8 graphics doesn't have any hope of working on commercial games. You can pass through PCIe graphics cards direct to VMs but if you could run old games on modern cards then you wouldn't need virtualisation.

>>3817004

I don't know about that. Most of the people who enjoyed those games would be dead, and the ones still alive wouldn't be able to type, much less play.

>>3817580

Yep. Just a daily reminder that all your "children" won't enjoy these games the same way you did because they did not grow up with them.

This entire board will be obsolete in 20-50 years.

>>3817572
And? You will actually need VM for what, 3 games among 50000? The only game that actually needed VM in my memory was Garage.

>>3817585
A lot more than that. Basically everything windows only up until XP. Even gog releases of win98 era games don't work quite right. You need real win98 and compatible hardware. VMs emulate that hardware but they aren't designed for games, ergo, problem and a giant hole of PC gaming history not playable.

>>3817608
you are full of shit, holy cow.

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>>3817582
>it's another anon underestimates the amount of underage playing cheesy romhacks of sonic games through sega's official emulator on steam episode
I mean they're not playing them exactly like we did, but they eat that shit up. Even the whole LP and speedrunning stuff is a post /vr/ culture, and most of those kids did not grow up with the games they're playing. And it's common for the generation who grew up on Square-Enix to go back and play pre-merger games. They're not so bad. Do not abide grumpiness, man. We are a groovy board, for groovy people.

>>3815760
Because things you don't know about don't exist?

>>3816959
>win xp
Cut off all relations with the grril

>>3815760
Because ebay jews can't shill it. And GOG /DOS archives/etc exists.

>>3817095
>5 PCs
You're retarded.
>more room
We already had gaming laptops in 1998, poorfag baby.

https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1185591-1998-dell-inspiron-7000-retrospective-review/

>>3817608
This goy is right. 64bit systems hate retros. Also Mechwarrior 3.
>>3817635
>Not you
>>>/tumblr/

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>>3817797
>1998 LCD technology
>responsive PC gaming

>>3816959
>also I know a girl that is into old Point and Click adventure games that found an old laptop in the garbage that worked and she installed Win XP to play those games from original boxed copies.
.
.
.
>grill
>dumpster diving for old PC hardware to restore
>installing and cracking WinXP
>ordering boxed P&C adventure games off Ebay
.
.
.
Does "she" have a feminine penis?

>>3817639
Really? I only watch speedruns because of sheer nostalgia and I feel kinda ashamed for it...

>>3817801
What? I can play Mechwarrior on my PC.

>>3817797
>gaming on a laptop
>gaming on a 90s laptop

Far be it from me to tell you that you're having fun wrong, but you're having fun wrong.

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>>3817806
>Does "she" have a feminine penis?