Were old video games actually any good?

This is the funniest article I’ve read in a LONG time, it had me in stitches for 10 minutes when I should have been doing my Chinese homework. I found it on a random Swat alumn’s blog, continuing in the tradition that Swarthmore students pioneered.

The thing is, just think about how hard it would be to play old games if we didn’t have emulators. Most of us can’t play these old games and laugh at them anymore, because unlike the staff of a gaming magazine, we don’t have every piece of the history of gaming at our disposal. Unless you’re uber-careful with your equipment, your old gaming consoles are probably dead or dying, and what use will all of your game cartridges be without the machine that plays them? Sure, Space Invaders and other really popular games have survived to some degree in commercial form, but the more obscure games become completely unavailable as it becomes more difficult to find the old, proprietary hardware needed to play them. Perhaps I’m preaching to the choir if you got here from the SCDC‘s website, but we need the freedom to format-shift our old games to our new computers, so that all of this wonderful (and not-so-wonderful) creativity and entertainment isn’t lost forever.