While the haphazard way the machine was constructed was a mess most of the failings of the machine were due to Sega America they literally had no clue about anything. I lost count of the truly appaling decisions made by Bernie Stolar, I will never undersand how Sega Japan didn't step in and hand him a P45.

"We want to keep the Megadrive going, keep giving us expansion!" - Bernie was desperate to keep milking the Megadrive despite developers telling him the hardware was way too old and customers were getting confused and annoyed.

"No one is interested in playing Japanese RPG games" - Bernie said this when he said no to translating Grandia. Final Fantasy VII became one of the biggest selling games on the Playstation.

"Saturn is finished, we need to put all effort into the Dreamcast" - Bernie while massive amounts of the machines were still sitting in retailers ensuring retailers had no confidence in future Sega hardware.

Bernie was the typical CEO. Ignore what people tell you as you are right and customers will buy what you tell them to buy.

I bought a Genesis from Toys 'R Us sitting on the shelf in 03 or 04, funnily enough you wouldn't have been able to find a Saturn or Dreamcast if you'd tried by then.

And the reason the Dreamcast became so well thought of after its early death is because we all realized that the PS2 wasn't really better after all (as hardware it was horribly inferior in fact). The games published for the PS2 made the PS2 great, but if the Dreamcast had still been around and viable don't tell me we wouldn't have been play Shadows of the Colossus on it, because we would have been. The good games that did come out for it proved its potential. I'd happily agree it never lived up to its potential but not because it was "overrated".

Nope, not equating it to piracy, just stating the obvious. Morally speaking I don't have any hang-ups with regard to 20-30+ year old arcade ROMs.

I have a Dreamcast. Really loved many games other people hated, like Blue Stinger, Illbleed...

Morally speaking ?
Ok, a retail board Monopoly or Scrabble game has been around for more than 30 years. Will you steal it at Best Buy ?

If you're looking for a viable comparison then not "steal" but "scan and copy".

I'm not very sympathetic to people whinging about IP rights being trampled for things you can't buy.

In the USA at least, there would be less ROM piracy if distribution of ROM dumping devices and the spreading of knowledge to make them wasn't probhibited. Tens of millions of cartridges out there and they are all worthless because only hard core digital electronics geeks can transfer them to new hardware.

Fine, sell us the ROM image that we have been obstructed from making from our own property. NOPE! Their rights are more important than ours and they don't feel like it.

This is unjust. :(

Not only that, it's getting damned hard to find working hardware for your games. Did a game finally crap out? Try finding a working copy for sale now, you used to be able to buy them by the dozens for 3 bucks each but no more.

I'd love a Sega Master System, I've never found one for sale for a reasonable price.

A lot of people who download ROMs did buy the games at one point, they just lack the ability to play them. These games are part of our culture as much as giant penis vases were part of Greek culture. As it dies it seems only the pirates and "criminals" care about preserving it. Remember, A New Hope was blued out and nearly destroyed before Lucas bothered to ever pull it out of a vault. The source code to Adventure was happily dug up off of someone's old backup after it was thought lost for 30 years (he didn't even know it was there, lucky for us he bothered to hook up some outdated hardware to a modern machine and took a look). The Boneyard died because no one who knew how to reboot it was left at Humongous after GT bought them. Entire game engines have gone missing because no one wanted anyone to "steal" their stuff (even though it was outdated by at least 5 years and nearly worthless for anything but cultural interest or indie work). Lost code wheels make the rare, working C64 game unplayable.

Yeah, I guess I just don't care if people do this. Occasionally some company has stored their shit in a cold room, but I've even read where they lost their cold room (didn't know it was there) and whoever owned their building by then found it years later. How much has been lost? Video gaming as a business is not dying and someone downloading a ROM to play on his MAME box is not going to kill it.

And technically when if you copied someone's manuscript and then sold it as your own book it would be copyright infringement, but the original author would still say "asshole stole my book!"

I get very tired of people who act like stealing is a word immune to adaptation to modern technology and abilities. Yes, of course, you are just making an illegal copy when you pirate. We all know that. Adapting the words stealing and theft to new avenues of getting things without paying for them though is perfectly acceptable. No one is using a legal term in a court of law here, we are speaking in casual terms on casual forums.

I look at people who download all their games and never pay the creators, developers or investors anything at all for their work as thieves. If I was in a court of law I would be charging them with copyright infringement though, naturally.

In any event, ROMs and old games with no current publisher or legal avenue of purchase... well, that's different. Who would you be denying a sale? No one but used game sellers who had nothing to do with making the game. I don't see an issue there. Old console ROMs are more complicated now though because of Wii's virtual console, there is now a method to obtain these games legally from their publishers... that's why I stopped using ROMs, even though I don't own a Wii and never will.

I didn't point at the word used, I meant the analogy. The idea of "1 download = 1 lost sale" promoted by the industry to shake their stick at piracy rates is ungrounded.

How many coin-op arcades still exist out there that have those 20-30 year old games in operation? That's what I thought.

the funny thing is: Microsoft was talking this year about how they want to bring game room to its true potential and that they aren't done with retro games just yet

Fast forward to September and of course we do not hear anything about this

It's safe to say they do not care anymore at all

All I can see from them right now is: BUY GEARS 3 BUY GEARS 3 BUY GEARS 3 BUY GEARS 3 BUY GEARS 3 BUY GEARS 3 BUY GEARS 3 BUY GEARS 3 BUY GEARS 3 BUY GEARS 3

BUY GEARS 3 BUY GEARS 3 BUY GEARS 3 BUY GEARS 3 BUY GEARS 3 BUY GEARS 3 BUY GEARS 3

Holy thread necro batman!

And MS has been pushing all kinds of great and slightly weird games lately. Yes, Gears is getting top billing but I'm pretty sure that has a lot to do with Epic as well as MS (after all, MS still has Halo even if Gears 3 never came out).

Here's a couple of oddballs for ya:
Cute Things Dying Violently
Crimson Alliance (well, the way the game is sold is unique).
Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor
Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet
Skulls of the Shogun

I don't know man

Nothing microsoft is putting out is really catching my interest

Sttel Battalion: HA looks kind of interesting but im betting it will be screwed up because of its "Kinect only" controls