My partner was head of operations for a small chain of board game cafes(/bars) in Toronto (Snakes and Lattes*). We have a few kicking around, but I just can't get quite as into it. Once in a while, though.
edit: Forgot they're in Arizona and Chicago, too. They started with one location on Bloor in Toronto and grew quickly. There's definitely a market for it.
The availability made many people realise that boardgames are not all chess or all monopoly or all ... There's so much variety that almost everyone will enjoy something.
Excellent read. Curation is a concept that I've grown fond of in recent years. Does anybody know of books that touch on the topic? Whether it's archival, organization, displaying, theming, etc. I love that good curation not only allows you to appreciate a collection, but lets you appreciate it even more deeply the more you appreciate the art of curation itself.
There is one point in which emulators are better than consoles in every way, except the nostalgic aspect, and some competitive aspects which only apply to serious competitions.
bsnes/higan can run every Super Nintendo game ever made in an accurate way, and can make use of shaders that can make the games look better.
Since the emulator is a process running in your computer you can use a software equalizer and make it sound better too.
I can use a cheap wireless controller that looks and feels just like a SNES controller.
As a result the experience for me is much better than with the console.
Dolphin can support resolutions that are higher than that the Gamecube and Wii did. You can run Super Mario Galaxy in 4k if you want.
And I do not know about other emulators but you get my point. Consoles were great but it can be cumbersome to set them up.
Agreed, but the ownership of the physical games has its own satisfaction. I'm in the process of selling about 300 retro console games mostly because when I play an old game I'm likely to emulate it on my phone than hook up the real thing. I'll miss having my collection, it's nice just to go through it from time to time. I took detailed photographs before selling, those will have to do now.
In the early 90s, games were a more offline social experience. You would buy some games and your friends would buy others and then play together or pass them around so everyone could have a wider variety of games to play.
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[ 56.6 ms ] story [ 1036 ms ] threadI remember even ten years ago, "barcades" would have things like an N64 setup with Mario Kart be the most popular thing in there.
These days retro-gaming/computing seems more popular than ever, to the point where it has adopted that title as short hand.
I play very casually at best (I've got 20x more poetry books than video games), but this is great. I'd love to see more of this.
Before the lockdowns, playing modern board games at local breweries was fast becoming a thing. I highly recommend it.
edit: Forgot they're in Arizona and Chicago, too. They started with one location on Bloor in Toronto and grew quickly. There's definitely a market for it.
bsnes/higan can run every Super Nintendo game ever made in an accurate way, and can make use of shaders that can make the games look better.
Since the emulator is a process running in your computer you can use a software equalizer and make it sound better too.
I can use a cheap wireless controller that looks and feels just like a SNES controller.
As a result the experience for me is much better than with the console.
Dolphin can support resolutions that are higher than that the Gamecube and Wii did. You can run Super Mario Galaxy in 4k if you want.
And I do not know about other emulators but you get my point. Consoles were great but it can be cumbersome to set them up.