It has a wide range of different types of games to choose from. Apart from their ready-to-play collection, you can download new ROMs and play them in Happy Chick without any difficulty. Happy Chick is an easy to install emulator that doesn't need jailbroken iOS for installation. I have a strict rule against downloading any games I own physically, to preserve that uniqueness around the cartridges. Ultimately, I use it to play homebrews and ROM hacks, while also sampling official games I'm considering purchasing. It's been great to be able to be able to merge the worlds of emulation and original hardware, but it still retains some of those negative aspects of investment, dedication, distraction, etc. After saving for a while, I was able to buy my own GBA flash cartridge, so I now can play almost all of my ROMs on the original hardware. Obviously that's just my opinion, but it's one of the biggest reasons I don't emulate. I decided to take a week-long break while my cartridge shipped and replay the first hour instead of a full 30 hour adventure. I love buying cartridges and playing them on my systems, but when I had to emulate a game, it was always present in my mind that even if I 100% completed the game, I'd have to start over with a cartridge, and I might not be ready for a new playthrough. That's the biggest sticker for me: collecting. However, there would've always been that thought of "When you eventually buy it on cartridge, you won't have this progress". It's fundamentally the same game, and I wouldn't have abused the save states or anything like that. I played it all the way through, and I loved it! Would I have enjoyed it the same way if I had emulated it instead? I think I probably would have. I hunted it down on eBay and I bought myself an original copy. After I played about an hour of Final Fantasy I+II: Dawn of Souls for the Gameboy Advance, I decided I loved the game but couldn't invest the time into it as a ROM. I enjoyed the games, but it was always in the back of my head that I wanted to play them on official hardware. I used an emulator to play a large library of ROMs, hacks, and homebrews because that's the only way I could. While there is a certain charm to some games where looking for the encounter is part of the thrill of the gameplay, not all games are like that, and sometimes you just need a little burst of speed to get right to the gameplay.Īnd I'm not immune to any of these points I've mentioned. Whenever I play an RPG on my emulator, yes I use the turbo speed button, but that's because it cuts down my time wandering around looking for random encounters from 30 seconds to 2. Even with the convenience of those saves, these games are by no means easy! It's all the challenge of the original game, just with the modern convenience of saving my progress. That way, my actual "cheating" is marginalized, and I can enjoy the game without skipping the parts that are hard just because they're hard. However, I have to have some self-control to not abuse those save states, so I only save at the start of an act and at Star Posts. I use save states every time I play the 16-bit Sonic games, just to save my progress and not have to stress about playing it through in one go. I'm not saying these tools are inherently bad there are lots of good uses for them! It's mostly about being to have self-control and not abuse these tools. While this is a valid issue, and one that should be discussed, a majority of this post is written on emulation as an option, not a necessity, so I won't be writing much more on the rising price of retro gaming. The retro community shouldn't have any gatekeeping, especially not when it comes to money. Why do all this when they could just download a free emulator and free ROMs, and play it all right from their laptop? I'm glad options like emulators exist for those who just can't afford to buy consoles and/or cartridges. Maybe they want to play hundreds of games, but then they have to track down and pay for those cartridges, too. For some people, it's just not feasible to shell out big bucks for a console when they only want to play one or two games. The Gameboy Advance and Advance SP models have been steadily rising from the $50 mark, towards the $100 mark depending on the condition. Whether you like it or not, retro gaming is getting expensive. The biggest reason I've heard, and experienced myself, is money.
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