Why do collectors generally ignore vintage computing?
I've been thinking a lot about vintage PC gaming recently and I was wondering why people generally just ignore the stuff before DOS, Windows 95/98, and Macintosh. I see vast collections of big box PC games out there, but it's mostly made up of stuff from the advent of 3d rendering for gaming.
There are some really beautiful and vast libraries in the vintage PC scene, such a unique history to many of the systems and their "scenes", and the amount of different platforms give a lot of variety for any collector to practically froth at the mouth.
Do you like giant libraries? Try Commodore 64/128, Commodore Amiga, ZX Spectrum, and Amstrad.
Do you like familiarity? Try Atari ST, Atari 8-Bit, Apple II, and Windows 3.X.
Do you like actual gaming machines? Try MSX, PC-88, PC-98, FM-7, FM Towns, Sharp X1, Sharp X86000, and PC-FX.
All of those are just to name a few of the many platforms that exist. There are so many games and pieces history being mostly ignored by the majority of collectors, and I think it's a real shame. There's even more significant libraries like Dragon 32/64, Acorn Electric, TI-99, TRS-80, Commodore VIC-20, and ZX-81. Then you have various other tiny libraries.
Lastly, to add upon all of that, there's the aspect of collecting physical hardware and upgrades. So much technical know-how and accessories. It's really quite interesting and it's a real shame to see so little love for it within the game collecting community.
There are some really beautiful and vast libraries in the vintage PC scene, such a unique history to many of the systems and their "scenes", and the amount of different platforms give a lot of variety for any collector to practically froth at the mouth.
Do you like giant libraries? Try Commodore 64/128, Commodore Amiga, ZX Spectrum, and Amstrad.
Do you like familiarity? Try Atari ST, Atari 8-Bit, Apple II, and Windows 3.X.
Do you like actual gaming machines? Try MSX, PC-88, PC-98, FM-7, FM Towns, Sharp X1, Sharp X86000, and PC-FX.
All of those are just to name a few of the many platforms that exist. There are so many games and pieces history being mostly ignored by the majority of collectors, and I think it's a real shame. There's even more significant libraries like Dragon 32/64, Acorn Electric, TI-99, TRS-80, Commodore VIC-20, and ZX-81. Then you have various other tiny libraries.
Lastly, to add upon all of that, there's the aspect of collecting physical hardware and upgrades. So much technical know-how and accessories. It's really quite interesting and it's a real shame to see so little love for it within the game collecting community.
Comments
That's my thoughts on it, anyway.
Mario was a killer mascot, and that opened the conversation to the other games on the platform, and other consoles. Computer games may have suffered from their diversity. They didn't have the Mario character to spur on conversations, and consequently fuel the nostalgia factor.
That being said, there are people out there that collect computer games, some with collections that rival anyone here. They just keep a lower profile.
Also, cartridges look sexier on a shelf.
I need to revive the disk drive on my dad's old 1984 Mac, but he otherwise had some immaculately kept stuff from back-in-the-day (all of the original boxes and the full suite of accessories).
Getting earlier than that (TRS-80 and the late-70's items) and you're mostly into people that were probably too old to pick up on the classic consoles the rest of us grew up with, in terms of collecting NES-and-later.
(though I'm sure there is overlap with the Atari 2600 crowd)
And prior to the Macintosh, there really wasn't the marketing behind getting these machines into people's homes in a widespread way, so the percentage of people that grew up with a TRS-80 versus people who grew up with an NES is going to be a huge difference in demand in the hobby.
Not only that, but even in areas where home computers were popular, piracy was a lot more prevalent. Today you don't really see many in Europe amassing giant collections of ZX Spectrum cassettes (although I'm sure they exist), you see these people more generally getting SD card reader adapters for their computers and calling it good. The attachment to physical, boxed games or carts just isn't there.
For my own collecting, I mostly limit it to cartridge-based releases which makes it somewhat more manageable.
In the PC game community there may not be a set, but people go hard into Sierra, Lucasarts, id Software, Apogee, SSI etc. It's very much good game and publisher focused which is cool, rather than console games where we go hard into exertainment and 5 minute competition carts.
Computers are also a lot harder to use than consoles. Maybe not overwhelming hard, but any idiot can plug some forks into a TV and play an Atari cartridge. Designing and building a computer to run a specific era of 80s PC games, and figuring out all your drivers, which version of DirectX you want, etc. is a hobby unto itself. I've spent hours on Vogons for my Windows PCs whereas when I got a PC-Engine I plugged it in and was playing in 5 minutes.
I'm not generally all that interested in things that predate me.
Most good reasons have already been mentioned, and the hassle of actually setting up all these different games to play on various arcane systems can be quite a hassle.
I think it's really cool, but I have no problem understanding why old school PC collecting (and playing/streaming) isn't more popular.
I think it's really cool, but I have no problem understanding why old school PC collecting (and playing/streaming) isn't more popular.
And if you did want to just play the games, there's no shortage of options to do it on more affordable hardware.
I think it's really cool, but I have no problem understanding why old school PC collecting (and playing/streaming) isn't more popular.
And if you did want to just play the games, there's no shortage of options to do it on more affordable hardware.
Nail on the head, pretty much yup.
Sierra, Lucasarts, id Software, Apogee, SSI etc.
Just reading this line makes me feel like a kid.
Otherwise, early Sierra games (King's Quest and Leisure Suit Larry especially) are every bit as important from my childhood as NES was. I'd have collected them just as heavily if there was a big interest in them.
Easier to jam a cart into a console and play right away, plus the physical aesthetic of carts is more appealing
I should mention the Atari 400/800 and C64 stuff that moves are the carts.
I tried floppies at a few shows and no takers (largely guessing because with them being magnetic media they likely wouldn't work)
I keep my 1987 Mac SE running, but magnetic media and the hassle of getting software loaded mostly prevents real use. Unlike a NES there is much less of a hardware/experience reason to avoid emulators. We almost never got boxed software and there are no "complete" sets so the collecting draw just isn't there.
I can't believe you haven't heard of this and don't already own one, but go check out the Floppy Emu by "Big Mess of Wires." It works on all flavors of the Apple II, various classic Macs (basically all until they dropped classic drive/disk support) and the Lisa. I've owned one to use with my II's for the last couple of years and can't recommend it enough--just download the software you want, stick it on an SD card, put it in the Floppy Emu and boot the system up.
Easier to jam a cart into a console and play right away, plus the physical aesthetic of carts is more appealing
I should mention the Atari 400/800 and C64 stuff that moves are the carts.
I tried floppies at a few shows and no takers (largely guessing because with them being magnetic media they likely wouldn't work)
Part of it is it sometimes being tough to find working media, but I also think that a lot of it comes down to the boxes, manuals, inserts, etc. being much more a part of having a computer game as part of your collection and finding complete and/or unabused copies of software comparatively more difficult. And the more popular the title, the tougher it seems to be to find complete/good condition copies. Personally, I only try to get my hands on physical copies of games that meant something to me growing up or that I'm particularly thrilled with after trying. Past that, it's far more convenient these days to just keep several entire libraries of software on CD/DVD, stuck in a binder, versus trying to hunt down physical copies of every last title.
- risk of non-functionality
- risk of needing to spend much more time doing the research
- risk of running out of space quicker for collecting (eg. PC big boxes)
- risk of getting box damage (particularly the bigger boxes)
I've dabbled in some PC big boxes myself. Mainly though for the art boxes as I'm not much of a PC gamer! I did own a C64 and C128 back then but never felt the itch to collect for these platforms.
Probably because old computers are basically junk
Yup, just toss em right in the garby.
I keep my 1987 Mac SE running, but magnetic media and the hassle of getting software loaded mostly prevents real use. Unlike a NES there is much less of a hardware/experience reason to avoid emulators. We almost never got boxed software and there are no "complete" sets so the collecting draw just isn't there.
I can't believe you haven't heard of this and don't already own one, but go check out the Floppy Emu by "Big Mess of Wires." It works on all flavors of the Apple II, various classic Macs (basically all until they dropped classic drive/disk support) and the Lisa. I've owned one to use with my II's for the last couple of years and can't recommend it enough--just download the software you want, stick it on an SD card, put it in the Floppy Emu and boot the system up.
Thanks for the link! I will definitely keep an eye on this.
I'm sure it will be a big help reviving my dad's old Macintosh, since it seems like a "soft" system mod in the sense that it just replaces the external floppy drive rather than needing to risk damaging the computer in some way (i.e. the C64 CF mods I recall seeing involved direct hardware modification)
I'm always looking for old computers and games but...yeah there is NOTHING out there. At least where I am. You'd think I'd be able to find more given how techy WA is but...maybe everyone is holding onto their stuff...
Thanks for the link! I will definitely keep an eye on this.
I'm sure it will be a big help reviving my dad's old Macintosh, since it seems like a "soft" system mod in the sense that it just replaces the external floppy drive rather than needing to risk damaging the computer in some way (i.e. the C64 CF mods I recall seeing involved direct hardware modification)
No problem! It definitely is. I'd recommend buying the "kit" version which comes with everything offered, including a case. The one thing you'll need to know is that it requires a firmware change/update in order to work on the various different systems, so if it comes set up for the Apple II, you just need to flash the Mac firmware onto it and it's ready to go--just attach the included adapter into the ribbon cable from the Floppy Emu, plug it into the disk port on the Mac and go to town. The only real limitation it has at the moment is that it doesn't allow for daisy chaining, so you're limited to emulating a single floppy (or hard, in some cases) drive at a time, although the guy who created it is potentially working on an add-on that would allow the units to daisy chain with additional units as well as real drives.
Thanks for the link! I will definitely keep an eye on this.
I'm sure it will be a big help reviving my dad's old Macintosh, since it seems like a "soft" system mod in the sense that it just replaces the external floppy drive rather than needing to risk damaging the computer in some way (i.e. the C64 CF mods I recall seeing involved direct hardware modification)
No problem! It definitely is. I'd recommend buying the "kit" version which comes with everything offered, including a case. The one thing you'll need to know is that it requires a firmware change/update in order to work on the various different systems, so if it comes set up for the Apple II, you just need to flash the Mac firmware onto it and it's ready to go--just attach the included adapter into the ribbon cable from the Floppy Emu, plug it into the disk port on the Mac and go to town. The only real limitation it has at the moment is that it doesn't allow for daisy chaining, so you're limited to emulating a single floppy (or hard, in some cases) drive at a time, although the guy who created it is potentially working on an add-on that would allow the units to daisy chain with additional units as well as real drives.
No need to daisy-chain in my case.
Just need to have the thing:
(a) as a boot drive so I can make sure the system works at all
(b) as a backup drive -- to back up all of the floppies that might still function (though I imagine there may be some alternative ways to do this with a PC)
I've been thinking a lot about vintage PC gaming recently and I was wondering why people generally just ignore the stuff before DOS, Windows 95/98, and Macintosh. I see vast collections of big box PC games out there, but it's mostly made up of stuff from the advent of 3d rendering for gaming.
There are some really beautiful and vast libraries in the vintage PC scene, such a unique history to many of the systems and their "scenes", and the amount of different platforms give a lot of variety for any collector to practically froth at the mouth.
Do you like giant libraries? Try Commodore 64/128, Commodore Amiga, ZX Spectrum, and Amstrad.
Do you like familiarity? Try Atari ST, Atari 8-Bit, Apple II, and Windows 3.X.
Do you like actual gaming machines? Try MSX, PC-88, PC-98, FM-7, FM Towns, Sharp X1, Sharp X86000, and PC-FX.
All of those are just to name a few of the many platforms that exist. There are so many games and pieces history being mostly ignored by the majority of collectors, and I think it's a real shame. There's even more significant libraries like Dragon 32/64, Acorn Electric, TI-99, TRS-80, Commodore VIC-20, and ZX-81. Then you have various other tiny libraries.
Lastly, to add upon all of that, there's the aspect of collecting physical hardware and upgrades. So much technical know-how and accessories. It's really quite interesting and it's a real shame to see so little love for it within the game collecting community.
I collect PC games and I'm focusing on them even more than console collecting right now. People collect for all versions of PC, but my theory is that DOS games are most sought after (even when the initial release wasn't DOS) because most people have memories of DOS and collect for nostalgic reasons. This is similar to how NES games are worth more than Famicom games, and why NTSC is more expensive than PAL. I personally only collect the Apple / C64 / Amiga release if the game isn't available on DOS.
One thing I enjoy about PC collecting is that games are similar to current console collector's editions. Ultima stands out as the first by including trinkets, cloth maps, and lore books, and many other series followed in its footsteps. PC games also display incredibly well and have a very rich and interesting history.
He also has the MSX and Sharp X68000, along with several games for each.
I keep my 1987 Mac SE running, but magnetic media and the hassle of getting software loaded mostly prevents real use. Unlike a NES there is much less of a hardware/experience reason to avoid emulators. We almost never got boxed software and there are no "complete" sets so the collecting draw just isn't there.
I can't believe you haven't heard of this and don't already own one, but go check out the Floppy Emu by "Big Mess of Wires." It works on all flavors of the Apple II, various classic Macs (basically all until they dropped classic drive/disk support) and the Lisa. I've owned one to use with my II's for the last couple of years and can't recommend it enough--just download the software you want, stick it on an SD card, put it in the Floppy Emu and boot the system up.
But thats still a step removed from using the original hardware, making emulators more attractive. Right now I have a SCSI Zip drive for the ancient Mac and a USB Zip drive for modern machines so at least I am only a decade wrong in tech