Interesting story. Met up with a high school buddy that I hadn't seen in a decade. He and I roomied for awhile back in college--I was with him in 1994 when he found an outlet electronic store that was selling Atari 7800's with 50 games all in their original boxes for $60 (guy said they had been in a warehouse in Mexico). Stayed up with him all night shucking said game boxes into the garbage so we could play games we hadn't seen in a decade.
Lament #1- I didn't buy one for myself. At the time I just figured I'd use his machine--save my money for beer and pizza! What a moron I was!
Lament #2- Thinking about that trash bag full of boxes, inserts, plastic wrap...
What morons we were!
Anyway, back to the real story. we started getting caught up on old times, shooting the breeze. Conversation drifted back to the old days, the 7800, the arcade we used to go to on the weekends to play the old classics, and the time I tried to convince him that we could split the cost of a brand new 32X and how it would be SO cool to have that awesome 32-bit experience RIGHT IN OUR LIVING ROOM! And how sage he was for realizing what a horrible waste of money it would have been.
Sorry--back on topic. So I happened to mention the word emulation and all I got back from him was a blank look on his face. Now I just naturally assumed that anyone who was as big of a videogame freak as myself would have knowledge of that magical word--he knew NOTHING at all.
So I burn a couple of discs and truck over to his house. Plop down in front of his porn-stuffed 533 celeron POS and start to show him the ropes. Started with an NES emu--Super Mario Bros. As I was playing it he kept saying over and over "Man, that looks like the real thing!" I kept saying over and over "John, it IS the real thing!!" I exit out of the game itself and tell him the basics on how emulation works. Then I bring up the directory where 400 NES ROMS are stored...he finally gets it. The look on his face was priceless!
Guide him through the natural progression...Genesis, SNES, Gameboy (his favorite system back then), N64 at a blazing 10 FPS on his computer. The emu walkthrough culminating in (you guessed it) MAME. When he saw the Simpsons Arcade game dance across his screen, he was speechless. Stunned silence as Homer and Marge 69'd their way across the screen.
I left him there greedily sorting through 1200 MB of gaming goodness on his hard drive. All I could think about on the way home was how much I miss 1997 and how I wish I was discovering emulation again for the first time.
But hey, spread a little joy. He will soon find out that playing on the computer is nice, but it is missing something. Something real...like an arcade cabinet in his basement!
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