I messed around with NES, SNES, and Genesis emulators a lot on my brothers computer growing up. He went off to college, and traded up from his dingy beige Dell desktop to a bulky 15.5″ Compaq laptop monstrosity. For some reason saving didn’t work, so I basically treated it like being able to rent any game I wanted. My favorites were Mario RPG, Final Zone, Seiken Densetsu 3, Comix Zone and Chrono Trigger.
I always would install emulators for 16 bit stuff on any computer I ever had, but recently started getting more into PS2 emulation. With so many of those games getting weirdly expensive, and also disc rot now being a thing, I figured it would be a good way to check up on games I saw in magazines or at Blockbuster, but my parents would never let me rent. I used to get really overwhelmed with what to play, but I recently came up with a new mindset that’s helped a lot.
Nowadays I look at my library on Launchbox as less of storefront or a checklist, and more like the racks of a video rental store. I’m not asking what I want to play for 60 hours, instead it’s more like what do I wanna mess around with for a weekend? There are so many games I’d never want to track down, but that I wanna play at least an hour of to see what the deal was. Was S.L.A.I, Steel Lancer Arena International the dark and grim mech epic I thought it was? Nope! It’s a weird arena shooter with a Pop Punk sound track. Who’d have thought!
The only system I don’t really emulate are portables, since I prefer to play on the hardware, but I plan on getting a Flashcart soonish. I still kinda collect DS games, but some of those are getting pricey, and after I grab Sands of Desctruction and a box for my copy of DQ V I’m calling it a day.