Long story short, expensive neogeo and tg-16 carts I totally get because the real hardware/software is outrageously expensive, but a $300 cart for the snes? or even stupider the genesis? Yeah that's dumb.
Yeah, I agree with this. But I still buy them anyway. Yeah I'm dumb.
**Actually, there's more than just playing the entire game library that makes these flash carts more worth the price.
A few quick examples I can think of are:
- Being able to play romhacks on original hardware. This is great for a lot of hacks that actually improve on the game, I'm not talking about having Super Pikachu Bros. type hacks, where they completely botch the game up and throw whatever they want in 'em.
I'm talking about the hacks that are tasteful to improving the QoL of the gameplay. One big example is Castlevania Simon's Quest. There are great hacks out there that make the cryptic engrish easier to figure out. Or a hack that speeds up the annoying transitions from Day to Night, or a hack that adds a World Map. There's a lot of these QoL hacks, like changing Link's voice in Minish Cap to Wind Waker's voices. Or swapping the tinny condensed Final Fantasy game music on the GBA ports of IV, V, and VI.
Sure, these are not authentic to the original releases. But they do add a bit of a fresh breath into the old favourites that gives you some more life out of them.
And that's just QoL hacks. I didn't even mention translation hacks that gives you a chance to play a lot of the titles that didn't get released on our region.
- Trying out Experimental hacks like SA-1 conversions for increasing the framerate of slow-down titles, or MSU audio for the SNES is a nice way to experience your favourite games with high quality music. This is really beneficial to the more moody games, like Super Metroid, or Link to the Past.
- New homebrew type games being developed today can be played on your original hardware. Case in point, I've been playing Micro Mages (released this year) on NES recently. Yeah, I ordered the physical copy of the game which hasn't arrived yet, but being able to play this on a flashcart in the meantime is a pretty great option. There are quite a few high quality homebrew titles out there.
- There are still a lot of "premium" games for every system that fetch a hefty price. Try finding titles like Earthbound, Final Fight Guy, Mega Man X3, Wild Guns, etc... for under $150. At that point, you can either spring for a cheap conversion cart, feeding that scummy market, or just buy a flashcart and get all the other benefits that come with it. At least with flashcarts its people actually figuring out the hardware, building from scratch, adding additional features like save states, high score saving for games that don't have it, fancy graphical interfaces, or gameplay statistics...rather than just a bunch of dirty conversionists with a soldering iron.
BUT -- all in all, I do agree, these flashcarts are getting ridiculous in price. I'm sure they could be cheaper, but demand is so high, and competition is practically non-existent that the creators can charge whatever and people will flock. It is what it is. I've been trying to see the silver lining for a lot of these devices so that I can keep my sanity.
In the end, I'm probably going to pass on the MegaSG. There's a real Sega CD ODE in the works that is more of what I'd be interested in.
Like pbj said, it makes no sense really to buy a device that is just doing emulation under-the-hood.