So my girlfriend...actually fiancee (still haven't gotten used to that), have been talking about having children for the last year and we are constantly discussing things we do and do not want to do as parents. I think every couple who have decided that they want to or are going to have children have had this talk. No matter what type of family upbringing you've had, be it good or bad, there will always be something you want to do differently from your parents for your children. I know its impossible to say "I'm not going to make the same mistakes my parents did" but you just might do the same thing or possibly even something worse. I read somewhere that taking care of a child is like taking care of a person on a huge dose of hallucinogenic mushrooms while you yourself are on a much lower dose of shrooms; you know your not going to make all the best decisions for that person but you know for damn sure they shouldn't be eating kitty litter. My point is no one will ever be the perfect parent and there will always be something that your kids will wish you had done differently. That being said as my fiancee and I discuss what type of upbringing we would like for our children we agree full heartily that they will grow up in a home where gaming is acceptable. You might be thinking “gaming?...acceptable?” Well I am thirty. I am the eight bit generation, I grew up in a completely different era. When I was young my parents used to say things like video games are a waste of time and video games will rot your brain. I constantly had to argue with my parents about gaming and the merits of gaming. Other then the CollecoVision and the original Nintendo I had to purchase all my systems myself. This was extremely difficult considering all I got was ten dollars a month allowance and an eight year old really cant be employed. When I was a kid being a hardcore gamer was socially unacceptable and you were considered a nerd for doing so. I wasn't considered a nerd at my school, I hung out with the popular/bad kids. My friends would harass me a bit because I was a good student but I never let on how much I loved gaming. Gaming was something I did in secret. I usually would try to game after dinner around dusk on schools nights and as much as I could on the weekends. When my friends did want to game it was always a sports title or fighting game. Anything that contained any type of whimsy other then Mortal Kombat was considered stupid to them. It wasn't until the Nintendo 64 came out that everyone at my school was talking about how awesome Shadows of the Empire was. I never thought in a million years the sporty kids would be playing a game like that. Luckily now gaming is the norm so for my kids to grow up in a household where mommy and daddy play video games wont be strange. My fiancee and I love to game. As I'm typing this she is playing Final Fantasy 8 on the PS3 (only $9.99 on PS Store). We consider ourselves to be gaming connoisseur and not only do we want to play games with our children, we want to educated them about games through the experience of playing. Like movies, music and books most video games are art and to us they are the most influential form of art. Video games are the only art in which you become one with the art. You are pulled into the game by becoming the player to experience it on a much deeper level which is why so many people love and fall in love with video games. Unfortunately as my fiancee and I got older and for one reason or another we had to say good bye to a lot of our childhood treasures. Our one apartment caught fire, we moved a few times, we needed money and had to sell them and some were donated to others in need who had absolutely nothing; So for the last year I started building a digital time capsule of sorts for my unborn Children. I call it the VGPD. The Video Game Preservation Device (its a stupid lame name I know) is nothing more then a computer loaded with emulators and over two terabytes of our favorite games and the games that defined each system. Its filled with pure gaming gold, has the capability to hook up a TV and I have been coming up with some custom case designs to give it some flair. I know emulating isn’t the same as playing on the real hardware but systems can break and emulation actually makes older games look a hell of a lot better. We've been having so much fun reminiscing about our favorite games that our friends have even got into the spirit by giving us lists of what they think should go on it as well. If anyone is interested I am more then willing to post the list of what systems and what games will be on the device along with the custom case photos when finished. I know a lot of you may frown upon the idea of such a device and what it does but we built it with only good intentions. We just want to be able to share something with our kids someday that’s very near and dear to our hearts; the games on this device played a role in making us the people we are today. I wanted to share this with assemblers because we figured you would appreciate it as much as us. If you have any suggestions as to what games need to be on the device please let me know. If you feel the need to bash me for building an emulation station then bring it on lol. I'm an adult, I'm thirty and I can take it. As always thanks for reading, 2ton20one
It's not that bad of an Idea. Though I think you should at least have the original systems with some of the more common games, for example have a NES with mario/duck hunt so they could play the light gun games and see what the actual system and games look like (Plus actual retro system on CRT TV do look better then an emulator hands down) But that is just my own thoughts.
I tried a similar idea with my kids although I used the real hardware and whilst my kids love all the nes/ snes classics I feel I've ruined their sense of what a good game is...my oldest is 13 and because he's been brought up with only "good" games so that now only AAA awesome games grab his interest. You should load up every rom for nes snes megadrive etc and let your child decide what's good and what's not, that's what I've done with my youngest (she's 5) and I love watching her play games that I'd consider rubbish and the joy she gets from finding something she loves to play....ducktales is her current favourite, I've never liked that game xD
Are you building a full PC with a big HDD? Is it going to support Saturn/PS2 emulation? I'd rather have something like this on a Google Chromecast-like form factor, connecting to the cloud (or even the LAN) for the library & bluetooth for controllers. You can't get enough power in a package that small for Saturn/PS2 (and probably DC) yet, but it should cover the systems that are in any sort of danger of being lost to the ages right now... I really think if people are going to hook up a full fledged computer to their TV, it should do more than emulate videogames; it should be a full fledged HTPC.
The pc has a 2tb hd, 8 gigs of ram, a geforce 8800 gt and the OS is Windows 7. It runs all the emulators I put on it perfectly so far. It has nes, snes, sega master, sega gen, sega 32x, sega cd, sega saturn, sega dreamcast, n64, pc engine/turboGraphx, ScumVM, DOSbox, PSX, PSX2 and I'm still not done. So far I have two wired Xbox 360 controllers for normal gaming anything requiring a light gun or mouse use's Wii-motes via a Bluetooth adapter and wireless sensor bar. I'm still looking at front ends but haven't decide on which to use as of yet. I'm more then likely going to throw my blueray player from my pc into this once I order my br burner and still need to purchase a wireless card and a dvi to hdmi adapter.
holy crap, you went all out, OP. i like what you're going for here (takes up a lot less space than OG hardware, and i have my gripes but emulation is good enough for most, especially those who weren't alive for the actual release, haha), i'd just like to co-sign the suggestion to let them explore the library & find their own favorites, i think that kinda thing is important.
