T w e n t y S i d e d

Let’s pretend you know me, already. It’s possible a handful of you do, at least a little; I’ve been around here before. Although not actively for quite a while. But all that will be taken care of in a different post. Probably. But as far as intros, the important thing is that I am approaching this from a Gen-X POV, because I’m Gen-X. I’m from that meaty part of Gen-X born right before the “greed is good” era when families still trended closer to two kids, down from the Baby Boom peak of three kids, but well before the drop reached the “less than one kid” point. So yeah. But anyway…RETROGAMING.

To borrow a phrase from the “Well There’s Your Problem” Podcast, first we must ask ourselves, “What is Retrogaming?”

Wikipedia, the dictionary we deserve, defines “Retrogaming” as “the playing and collecting of obsolete personal computers, consoles, and video games.” Further, there are a few key concepts introduced: this is usually done on original hardware, although porting (emulation) can be done on newer hardware; and “retrogaming” is usually done for the purposes of nostalgia, preservation, or authenticity. Exploration of these purposes combined with the methods reveals both that the end can define the means, and vice-versa. That is to say, what you WANT TO ACCOMPLISH can dictate what method you use, and WHAT METHOD YOU USE, obviously, affects what you accomplish. If “getting the most authentic experience possible” is the most important driver of your goals, then you MUST, as an example, use an actual (not a MINI) Sega Genesis or Mega Drive, on a classic Cathode-ray Tube television. Beyond this, you get into questions over what mods are permissible for the authentic experience, should you wear period-appropriate fabrics, which formula of a particular trademarked-name soft drink you’re allowed to drink…you can really go all out, if you wish. You can also fight over it online. This happens, believe it or not! (That’s a joke. Don’t @ me.) But having discussed possibilities, I will now answer the burning questions for myself:

While there is a “nostalgia” factor (I *am* Gen-X after all, and some preference for “originalism,” my most important drivers are completionism and a bizarre inclination to always do things the hardest way possible. By “originalism” I mean that, given the choice of a game that was originally released on the Famicom/NES, then remade for the Game Boy Advance/DS/PS1/etc; I will strongly favor the original release, unless there are FUNCTIONAL compelling reasons to NOT play the original version and choose a later adaptation/remake. THIS WILL COME UP SOON, I promise. And every time, there will be a story behind the question and the choice. My inclination to do things the hardest way possible means that I spent considerable time looking into connecting classic systems such as the NES and Genesis to HDMI inputs and ultimately discarded that idea. There are certain systems…the systems that technically had HD resolution capability, whether it was progressive scan or not, than can greatly benefit from aftermarket HD cables and even upscaling. My judgement on older systems was that you could spend a *lot* of money to get results almost entirely indistinguishable from the system’s built-in AV connection. I want to be clear, that’s my OPINION. I have no doubt some people can see a difference that is important to them. Moving on.

Emulation was always an acceptable choice for me for many console systems (oh, by the way, I’m focusing on console retrogaming for completely different reasons that I’ll discuss some other time), but I didn’t just install RetroArch on my computer, download cores, and call it good. I *could* have done that. But I didn’t. I have nothing against RetroArch…in fact it was an option I tried. My first “emulation system” attempt was using an older laptop. Not super powerful, but at the time I was only thinking about 8-bit emulation…you can do that on your watch these days. And indeed, 8-bit and 16-bit emulation worked fine. But then the old GameCube, which was actually connected with an aftermarket HDMI converter, went out. And that kicked off:

EMULATION ODDYSEE ONE: HOW TO EMULATE A NINTENDO GAMECUBE!!!!!!

So I needed to replace an original GameCube. I actually had two or three at one point, but I had sold one and given another to my son. Using some of the early HDMI adapters for GameCube carried some risk…a few of them were known to…wiggle a bit. Not a problem, you say? They wiggled just enough to short the power. BOOM! No more GameCube. I don’t know if that’s what happened to mine…it didn’t go out while I was playing it. It just didn’t start one day. There were a few GameCube games we all wanted included in our video game collection, so I added that to the emulation goals stack. The premiere GameCube emulator is called Dolphin, which was the name of the GameCube development platform. I had set up the laptop with RetroArch, and the Dolphin emulator is available directly through RetroArch. Simples. Copied over a legitimately sourced backup of one of our mandatory games, Skies of Arcadia Legends, and started it up. The result was instantly gratifying, as the opening animation and music is very familiar in my family. The gratification soon dissolved, as significant music stuttering issues and some significant video slowdown soon appeared. It was confined to vertical panning shots, and other scenes that featured any kind of significant vertical movement. Some quick internet browsing indicated that was endemic to the Dolphin emulator. Older versions dealt with the issue with frame-skipping settings, but the current version, which was more capable and faithful, didn’t feature the exact functionality that had made that choice possible. The problem COULD be overcome by throwing processing power at it; a current generation Ryzen 7 or i7 could muscle it’s way past the problem…at least to some degree. Considering I was finding tepid responses and discussion of the topic from people running much more powerful PCs than an old HP laptop, I quickly decided I wasn’t going to get the faithful gaming experience I wanted for the GameCube from emulation.

It was at this point that I remembered a little tidbit I had read many years ago. And probably also from when my oldest kid had a Nintendo Wii. THE WII WILL PLAY GAMECUBE GAMES! AND I OWNED A WII! I don’t know why I owned a Wii. I don’t remember buying it. The only Wii in the family had departed a few years ago…like I said, it belonged to one of the kids. A little bit of research indicated that only the original Wii shipped with the ability to play GameCube games; subsequent models lacked the feature. I don’t know if it was ever conclusively proved, but allegedly the Wii is really just a dual-processor GameCube with some chip upgrades. I DO know that the GameCube “emulation” on the Wii is done at the hardware level, not through a software emulator; and the only game restrictions are those that require GameCube add-on features that the Wii didn’t support. I also know that the Dolphin emulator supports Wii games as well…because they’re built for the same architecture as the GameCube. The natural conclusion, therefore, is that later Wii’s lacked the ability to play GameCube games because Nintendo wanted to force people to re-buy the games through their online store. After all, this was working for Sony and Microsoft by this point. Regardless, and back on topic, I OWNED A WII. And it was a first generation Wii, which meant it played GameCube games. So let’s just go grab it and plug it in and make sure it works.

I didn’t have a Wii power cable. And I also just remembered where the Wii came from. I had bought a WiiU a few years back. A used first-gen black WiiU. I had bought it for surprisingly relevant reasons…you could play DS games on it. The dual-screen thing. That’s important for DS games. If you could PLAY DS games on it, then you could maybe run DS legitimately sourced backups on it. The project fizzled out before I ever reached a conclusion; the WiiU was sitting in a pile of stuff to get around to selling before we moved out. Of our current house. And state. ‘nother story for another time. THAT WiiU was bought through eBay, and it came with an original Wii. That’s where this Wii came from. ANYWAYS….I didn’t have a Wii power cable, just a WiiU power cable. They’re not the same. The GameCube power cable is different, too. Or rather, it’s IDENTICAL in specs, but has a VERY SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT SHAPE FOR WHAT I’M SURE ARE VERY VALID REASONS NINTENDO.

Thankfully, I do like a real pro. One power cable later, I realized I didn’t have a Wii video cable.

Oh, I had a NINTENDO video cable. It was the HDMI video cable that came with the WiiU. If you’re not aware, both the GameCube and Wii are capable of HD progressive video output…the GameCube can output 480p, but most GameCube games with HD video only play in 480i, and that’s only if you get the GameCube component cable adapter, rare to begin with and VERY RARE and EXPENSIVE now…thus the market for aftermarket HDMI adapters. The Wii can output 720P through it’s own component cable adapter, or once again AFTERMARKET HDMI adapter. For the record, if you’ve never experienced the GameCube’s HD output, it was AMAZING. I didn’t really want to hook up component…I had already disconnected everything that used component cables (turns out this was a mistake…we will be revisiting this subject) so I ordered an aftermarket Wii HDMI adapter. And it worked! I had a Wii connected to my HDMI switcher solely for the purpose of playing some old GameCube games! And Barnyard! Sure, the aftermarket HDMI adapter tended to overheat after a few hours. Of being plugged in, not played. And the HD quality was…marginal at best. But we’re just playing GameCube games, you’re not gonna get magic.

So I scratched off “GameCube” from the “need to be able to play these games in my retrogaming installation” list (I name things comprehensively. I’m old. I forget things. Go read another newspaper if you don’t like it) and moved on to the next two goals: original Xbox and Sega Saturn games. And a handful of hard-to-find Sony PlayStation games.

Paige Francis He/him