All of you who have flash carts, do you play more? Less?

[bytestorm]

Hey all!
I am in a peculiar situation.. I had to move to another country a couple of weeks ago and sold all my consoles and games.... I had been collecting for over 15 years and had most home systems and arcade games.

But now it's all sold and I am starting fresh in Japan. I wanted to keep the systems to a minimum but still ended up wanting to buy 4 consoles... famicom, super famicom, neo geo, ps1.

None of them are especially expensive nor hard to find, BUT many games are getting really expensive and difficult to find CIB.

And since my space is VERY limited in our standard japanese apartment, I started to check about the availible flashcards.. and there are indeed a lot of nice ones to get.. but.. always when I sat down with an emulator och softmodded my wii and put all the systems I could find in there.. but I always ended up just testing game after game and never finish anything. . So I am actually a bit worried that it will all loose it's magic if I get the flashcarts for these systems. .. except ps1.

Did you play more or less after getting your power pack, ever drive n8  , sd2snes etc etc??

Should I get the flash carts to save space and money or should I get the CiB games I *really* need and end up spending a lot more than I probably should?

How did you do? Do you play more now when you got it?

Please let me know

[Retrospectives]

Absolutely more. In general. As for FC, about the same, but for other systems such as the Master System which had a lot of games that weren't released in Japan I get the chance to play them and if I really likes them I will buy them and use a pin-adapter. But when it comes to FC, I usually just use it to test out homebrews, hacks and other things just to mess around with. I do not play that much games nowadays I'm afraid, but that's not due to a flashcart or not. I'm simply too busy  

[fcgamer]

I have an everdrive but I rarely use it at all, probably only clocked thirty minutes on the thing.  I prefer just using the real games themselves, it seems more special to me.

[bytestorm]

I sometimes wonder why but I really really feel that I want to have the originals.. with their boxes and manuals that I always belive I will read and look at BUT NEVER DO ... that's the reason I always collected the originals before :/... but i really never read them damn manuals anyway ..

I i get an ever drive,
Perhaps i should really limit myself to 1 title per evening instead to really experience the quality of it. Even though it's hard/bad?

[fcgamer]

You now live in Japan.  I live in Taiwan and decided to get original carts, if I lived in Japan the decision would have been even more cut and dry.  Maybe just get loose carts?

[mfm]

Indeed, how can you compare CIB to flashcarts?

If you just want to play the boxes and manuals are just a hassle, get loose carts.

[P]

I'm also collecting boxes and manuals so I have little interest in loose carts, therefore the flashcarts can't really compensate for my collection. But it's still neat to have all my games with me on one cart (for example when going to a friend) plus all the hacks and homebrew.
Just like Retrospective, I probably play more than I would if I didn't have a flashcart, but I also don't have as much time to play nowdays so I play less than I used to. But it isn't the flashcart's fault.

But I know what you mean with having too many games on it. When internet started being a thing and I discovered emulators, I got hold on a large collection of ROMs from a friend. I had so many games that I only play each game little bit before I hurried to the next one.

But if that is really a problem, then just don't put in too many games in there. Start with only putting the old games you used to have, you are going to be tempted to put in games you never owned in there eventually though, but it shouldn't be a big problem.

[Jedi Master Baiter]

A flashcart is always a nice thing to have, especially for save games--you can always back them up. I tend to use mine for dev purposes mostly, even though that wasn't the intention.

It's also a great way to play translations or romhacks (as P pointed out).

[P]

Yeah there are many other good things with flashcarts besides having many games in one cart. Nowdays I don't trust the batteries in my Famicom carts so when I play games that uses battery RAM, I rather play them on my Everdrive even though I have the original CIB.

[Retrospectives]

I guess it's rather personal when it comes to what type of player you are. If you just casually want to play a couple of games, then throw in a bunch of games, but even that might be a bit overwhelming for certain people I suppose. One thing I think is fair to say is that if you promptly has to use a flash device due to lack of space in your apartment, then well...I think a pretty good suggestion is to really dig into a game. Really read up about it's history, background and put that only game on the eeprom or whatever flash storage the device is using and then forbid yourself to play anything else until you have beaten that game.

If you really liked the game, then keep it on the drive. Then just repeat the same procedure with another game. At least that's how I would do it if I was limited of space and only had the option to get a flash device. Or, I do it nowadays too when I ocasionally play games. I really try to get as much value out of the game as possible by not only playing it, but also researching the history about it. Makes it feel at least more genuine than slabbing a hundreds of files into a flash card which might tend to be kind of "generic" and boring just by resetting and try a new game if you didn't like the first, third or tenth game that you tried out. 

Just a suggestion. You play of course how you want to play. For the sake of Famicom in particular, the library of games are so huge that I personally feel that a lot of people are missing out many great titles just by the sheer fact that there are so many of them and that it is so easy to pick nowadays.

[bytestorm]

Thanks all for the inputs .
And yeah to the last post, it's probably good as you say to just put 1 game at the time on there until I beat it... i do have space for a few titles but since I choose 4 systems to collect, the space will decrease fast...

It's weird at the same time.. i mean. .. i really want the physical games with boxes and all but I never look at them nor read the manuals. .. ..
I should be perfectly satisfied with flash carts..

Next step will be to decide if I need the super everdrive for famicom or the sd2snes.. some titles that I really want is not supported like Yoshis island etc..

[Raverrevolution]

Let me tell you something, last night I started playing Samurai Pizza Cats, a newer translated rom and I took a step back and thought to myself at how damn great it is to be able to understand what's being said in the game without having to take apart my actual cart and solder in a chip.

There seems to always be a new hack or translation to a game looming around.  The Everdrive N8 is the absolute best for this.  Besides Punch Out gold the N8 has to be one of my best Famicom purchases I've ever made.

[bytestorm]

Let me tell you something, last night I started playing Samurai Pizza Cats, a newer translated rom and I took a step back and thought to myself at how damn great it is to be able to understand what's being said in the game without having to take apart my actual cart and solder in a chip.

There seems to always be a new hack or translation to a game looming around.  The Everdrive N8 is the absolute best for this.  Besides Punch Out gold the N8 has to be one of my best Famicom purchases I've ever made.

Cool that you mentioned that game! It's actually quite good! played it with my friend in Sweden a couple of months ago

For my famicom it's just too many titles that I want so I really need to order the ever drive

[jensma]

I've had a flashcard for the SNES and played less. So I won't get a card for my famicom

[L___E___T]

  



Big reply here - hope you don't mind a lengthy one or the way I use line spacing to write...  



I found myself in a similar position.  When I first 'collected', I had a clone with a multicart, then a NES with a nostalgic bunch of games, and then eventually a Famicom with a few CIBs.

It bugged me not being able to read all the manuals fully but I Iiked playing the games in isolation and trying to beat them.  

But, with CIB collecting, space nor money don't go as far, so I bought a Powerpak, which had just been announced and made available, I jumped at it - .NSF playback FTW!

However, it couldn't play all games and I did find myself just cycling through a whole bunch to see if they worked and mostly playing a game for a few mins before moving on to the next.

Same thing happened with the Everdrive, though I have never regretted getting it at all for the sheer convenience of being able to play new translations and hacks right away.

So some point later I started getting CIBs again, but only wanted minty fresh CIBs which were then even more expensive and I was reticent to play them for fear of spoiling.

I had a think and realised after I read someone here collected loose games because they "just wanted to play the games" and this struck a chord with me...

I saw that I would be able to play real games on real hardware, and would be less inclined to just reset and play something else, plus could amass a great library more quickly.

So that's why I collect loose games now, at my own pace.  I also like repros for this reason, for special translations or hacks I want to have as part of the library.  

If there is an expensive or rare game I can't buy yet, I can still play it on the Everdrive, and play hacks I like and of course NES games like Kick Master too.

I still have some mint and brand new 'masterpiece' CIBs like Rockman 2, SMB3, Akumajou Densetsu, Metal Storm etc. but I don't play those, I insist on having the loose carts as well.

I like this because I can and do actually play them and enjoy them for playing - it seems unfair to buy something and just file it away from the world, as an investment.

My nephew enjoys playing through these loose games, and I don't have to worry about him being rough with them, I get to see him enjoy a huge library of games that I couldn't as a boy.

You can't really do that with CIBs unless you accept they'll get depreciated, and the Everdrive isn't the same with it's menu, you lose the joy of the label artwork, the colour carts etc.

So I always recommend people looking to collect getting a few loose carts, then a few more, maybe even a CIB, then an Everdrive, and then sticking with loose carts.  

Unless they're rich!  then they can just buy buy buy whatever they want and never look back!