Buy physical copies. If you can’t do that, download full installers w/no cloud launchers, and back up those mofos… and find no-CD / no-Steam / offline cracks. If that doesn’t work, torrent hacked versions as a last resort. Own your games goddammit, you paid for them.
Yeah, man, I still have games with gamebreaking bugs. Those were the days, when every other Spectrum game you got was not actually completable but they just cranked up the difficulty so nobody could beat level one and wouldn't notice.
Nah, just kidding, I loved buying Street Fighter 2 three times at full price to get all the characters and rebalances. We all loved it. I mean, you barely ever needed to buy more than three expansions to get the full game, not everything was like The Sims. My full physical copy of Diablo 2 fits perfectly inside its board game-sized box.
But seriously, though, do buy DRM-free copies of games whenever you can. GOG could use a pick-me-up to prove that it's a viable model, patches or no patches.
It’s easy to play retro games now and gloss over the challenges. With old stuff, we often have the best of both worlds – the challenges of the past can be overcome with modern features.
Save states help negate fake difficulty
Turbo/speedup and save editing help negate grinding, loading, and other time sinks
Digitization makes it easier to store and keep track of lots of game (no need to worry about someone losing a game you lent them!)
Modern storage capacities mean we can have as many save games as we want for free
Mods let us experience games (sometimes) even better than they were back in the day
Digital games are much more affordable now. Back in the day, if you wanted to play something other than your same handful of games, you’d have to borrow one from a friend, rent one, or pay at least 30 bucks or so for something that wasn’t trash. Or you want a brand new game? Might set you back $200 (both adjusted for inflation).
Yeah, the modern experience of retro games is super different in all sorts of ways.
All of that is 100% true. Conversely, a lot of stuff I was fine with in games at the time now seems unbearable. Old games that were great in context now aren't and games that nobody knew existed now hold up great and have become cult classics.
Which is why preservation isn't just about making the games playable, you also need some sort of record of how they were perceived at the time and why.
I'm overthinking some random meme about old game nostalgia, as usual, but none of this is wrong.
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