Nostalgia is a powerful emotion.

[WinstonF]

Nostalgia is a very powerful emotion.. Just saying
No I didn't win this auction!! But I was going to bid, as a 10-11 year old I was amazed by this game, I think it was the first game I ever played on the Amiga. I couldn't believe a computer could do such things, play such music, have such colour and graphics. So I was thinking about buying it, driven by the psychological grip on the mind that is nostalgia and the emotions it brings. But someone else's nostalgia was greater! £107.99 + £4.50 p&p!
Someone in Basingstoke hasn't had a bad return on investment.



https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sinbad-An...-/363119528439

[chip]

I would never pay for nostalgia

For this reason i use WinUAE since 2002 and all stuff i have is a huge number of files

[dreamkatcha]

The floppies might have died the first time you booted it up. Keep that in mind while you run the emulated version and it won't feel like such a loss.

[chip]

Think also that it's free !

[McLaren mp4]

The worst thing about nostalgia, I think, is that about 85% of the time it turns out to have been illusory.

[chip]

I must disagree

With "nostalgia emulation" i discovered a world even better than the real i lived in the past indeed

For example, demo scene was completely missing from my world when i owned the real machine

About games, the number of titles i tried with emulation is no comparable at all to what i saw on the real machine

So, nostalgia of nowadays is incredible better than the past real experience

[polomint]

I have just got hold of an A500

I used to have one around 1991, A500, ECS(upgraded from OCS), extra RAM, A590.

Now, I have this A500, and I want to make it just like the A500 I used to have.

It's going to cost me some money to upgrade, and I'm sure I see more improvements

Will I do it? Hell yes!

Do I have nostalgia about the A500? Yes, I like the keyboard, I like KS2.04, I like messing about with Devpac/SASC and watching how many times I crash Intuition (damn lol)

But, I am aiming for what I used to use and was happy with.

ACA500+ is causing me confusion though lmao

[chip]

Nice ...... enjoy your machine again

[McLaren mp4]

Originally Posted by chip

I must disagree

With "nostalgia emulation" i discovered a world even better than the real i lived in the past indeed

For example, demo scene was completely missing from my world when i owned the real machine

About games, the number of titles i tried with emulation is no comparable at all to what i saw on the real machine

So, nostalgia of nowadays is incredible better than the past real experience

That qualifies then as a form of 'nostalgia for the future'.

[stevsurv]

Originally Posted by WinstonF

Nostalgia is a very powerful emotion.. Just saying
No I didn't win this auction!! But I was going to bid, as a 10-11 year old I was amazed by this game, I think it was the first game I ever played on the Amiga. I couldn't believe a computer could do such things, play such music, have such colour and graphics. So I was thinking about buying it, driven by the psychological grip on the mind that is nostalgia and the emotions it brings. But someone else's nostalgia was greater! £107.99 + £4.50 p&p!
Someone in Basingstoke hasn't had a bad return on investment.



https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sinbad-An...-/363119528439

Expensive nostalgia!

[chip]

Exactly .... i really don't want to spend money for an hobby

[Foebane]

I followed the Amiga Demoscene on my A500, then A1200 back in the day, and I collected quite a lot of disks for both. Then I switched to PC in 1995 and lost track of those demos, but by then, as I found out through emulating them, they were demanding higher system requirements that I could in no way get with real hardware, and the scene was flourishing from the mid-to-late 1990s to today, even if those particular demos looked more like PC demos with their effects. So what I've done in the last few years is to experience these demos I missed from back then for the first time, and WinUAE has allowed me to do that with ease!

[Nishicorn]

I am not sure 'nostalgia' is an actual 'emotion' - more like the CAUSE of memories of good feelings that people then cling to, to get another whiff of those elusive 'atmosphere-aromas'.

I understand using emulators, it's great fun to make something play or work on a machine it was never designed to run. I have over 50 systems emulated as thoroughly as possible (for my limited skills, knowledge and energy).

However, I have noticed that at least sometimes, emulation doesn't bring you the FULL experience. Something is always missing. Observing this effect has prompted me to try to achieve 'authenticity' as much as I can, about systems/platforms/things that are interesting enough to me.

For example, playing the same, atmospheric classic game from the radiant depths of the 1980s on a real C64 has a different 'feel' to it than playing it on an emulator. There's also the fact that the SID chip can't be emulated 100%, because each chip is unique, and there's something about the analog side of things that seems to capture some kind of mystique that can't quite be digitalized. I reckon' it'd be the same as trying to digitalize a human soul.

I have since also learned that emulator coders might be a tad lazy - they don't always seem to bother to emulate a sound chip's, let's say basic waveform, like square wave, completely and utterly as well as possible within the CPU power limitations, but they just go for a 'basic square wave', because who is gonna know the difference?


I noticed, that although real systems, like Commodore VIC-20, outputs a very specific kind of square wave, the emulator outputs a DULL, BASIC, exactly identical waveform that another emulator ALSO puts out for another (completely different) system! (Can't remember the other system, might've been C16 or something).

In reality, these two waveforms should DIFFER, because they differ when it comes to REAL systems.

In emulation, they don't. Both emulators output 100% identical, dull 'basic square wave' instead of respecting either machine's ACTUAL waveform shape and sound.

This is one small shock about using emulators vs. the real machines, and there are so many more, when you go down that particular rabbit hole.

Here are a few examples, waveforms captured from real systems by myself:

https://postimg.cc/gallery/0NpcnG2

I didn't bother including a screenshot of an emulator square wave, but you can try it yourself and see - it's always going to be different form these.

All these waveforms also SOUND different:

https://www.sendspace.com/file/yj36pe

..please don't come to me with some half-ársed explanation, like 'there's filtering happening when you record them' or whatnot, which seems to suffice for the narrowminded fool that doesn't want to let go of their 'emulation is perfect'-paradigm.

Besides, it wouldn't explain anything anyway, as I used the same equipment for audio capture for all systems.

By the way, even 'digital' systems, like the Yamaha OPL chips both sound and look different to emulation. The emulation is supposedly 'perfect', but not according to my eyes and ears:



I hope I have made my case about why it's always a different experience to use even a really well-made emulator, to using the real thing. A real, actual Amiga 500 on your table, is going to 'feel' different to use (especially in the long run, if you make graphics or something) than an emulator.

Before I got my real Amiga 1200 for graphics purposes, I was used to using an emulator to make graphics - it was fun to discover that Amigas already have a ready-made 'wide pixel' resolutions, like the good ol' 160x200 and even a nicely more modern system-fitting 160x240. (This is my go-to resolution now, I LOVE it, partially because of Nostalgy from the C64 side in the old days when I made graphics on the C64, but also because it demands less from the graphician, because there aren't as many pixels, so I can be more productive with less energy - and I always have low energy, so it's perfect. There's yet another reason for it - I can easily output 320x240 resolution on my old, bright CRT television, where it looks absolutely marvellous (it's a real VGA-signal, not from a processed TV-out - I use a VGA2SCART-cable together with Soft15Khz to modify the Hz and such so the TV actually accepts it, but it's not processed in any other way, so it's as 'real' and 'authentic' as possible).

But after I got my real Amiga 1200, I was happy to stumbled upon a way to use that resolution on the real Amiga (yay!) on a TFT monitor. So using the real Amiga with that 160x240 resolution is a big source of happiness for a nostalgic pixel graphician.

However, what surprised and almost shocked me the most to the level of astonishment, was how it felt to use the real Amiga. And although the 'esoteric feeling' of 'atmosphere' and whatnot is also a big factor, right now I am talking about the more tangible 'physical' feeling of moving the mouse cursor and creating the graphics.

Although I had no problem with the emulator side of things (I even used it with the CRT TV), it took me by a complete surprise, just how _SMOOTH_ everything feels on the real Amiga. I don't know what causes it, or why it is like that, and I could theorize about it for 32 minutes straight, but the unexpected fact is, making graphics on a real Amiga really does feel measurably SMOOTHER for some reason.

Emulation is a wonderful thing - it opens doors and access to systems no one individual could ever own all of, and lets people see and somewhat feel, simulate and experiment what it might've been like to use a system they never owned, and so on. When my Amiga 4000 died a long time ago after I had just gotten a PC, the emulation was a lifesaver. I could never have lived without C64 and Amiga emulation back then, it really helped me go through the mourning process and all.

There are many problems with emulation, though - some emulations are and never will be finished, not everything works with an emulator sometimes, etc. Atari Lynx and Nintend? 64 are good examples of systems that will probably never see good emulators. Another problem is that modern equipment is so different, that it will be forced to be a different experience.

Is an old Amiga classic going to look the same on some TFT display, with scaled graphics, as it did on the old, bright CRT TV from the early 1990s or even 1980s?

Some emulators also do not let the user make enough decisions to 'authentize' the experience further. They're forced to 2 x resolutions or they just won't let you use customized resolutions on your real CRT television, etc. To this day, I can't get Atari ST emulation to work in LORES FULLSCREEN on my CRT television, it always forces something that prevents this.

There are emulators that do this correctly, like MAME (and such), and WinUAE, that lets you pick and choose whatever resolution your graphics card can muster (thank goodness for GPUs that let you do 256x224 and such!)

Emulator coders often have this 'houlier-than-thou'-attitude, where they feel they're better than the user, so they won't take any requests, they won't respect the user's wishes to customize, and they don't support an authentic resolution on a CRT television, because it never occurred to them that someone might actually be able to use a proper VGA2SCART cable with Soft15KHz and GPU that allows very low resolutions.

In any case, as they say in the old saying, a carefully crafted tool will radiate a wonderful feel and become a faithful servant of the user for the rest of their lives (unless it breaks, of course), a tool coldly 'manufactured' by robots (or uncaring, cold people) may become a monster that turns against its user and never work properly.

Emulation is a lifesaver in many situations, but a real system is just always something quirkier and different - it has the 'feel' of something more real, it always 'radiates' the visionary authors' vision, excitement and enthusiasm, and as emulator-creators are a bit lazy, real system will always give you that little bit more that you just can't get from emulation.

So you are NOT getting your 'full Nostalgia fix' from Emulation alone. Or you might, but you won't get the full experience or full feel of how it actually is to use a real system.

Emulators are wonderful, almost magical things to me, and I couldn't live without them - I love being able to play some obscure arcade hit from a faraway country I would never even see or know about otherwise. I love having all these systems at my fingertips so easily, having access to all this old software and these games, etc.

But there's something special about an 'authentic' system, that can even inspire you in ways emulation just can't. Making music on a real OPL(#)-chip is an exciting experience, doing it on emulation just feels dull and boring.

Maybe it's just me, but I love being able to use real systems. I also love using emulators. There's just something missing from emulators. There are many, many things and it could be argued for all eternity, but I think in a big way, it boils down to one major factor;

A real system will always feel better than emulation.

Always.

[chip]

You are right, there are many reasons to prefer emulation to real thing

1) Emulation is free

2) You don't need space for the setup of the real thing

3) Real thing is probably going to work anymore after a little of use

And probably some other reasons i just can't find in this moment

[crazyc]

Each to his own I guess. I get enjoyment from playing the old games I used to play, but I also get enjoyment from the fact I am playing it on the real hardware, not an emulator. And even that distinction is now a grey area with Vampires etc around. I think its great that there are lots of options, but am happy with my current setup of real hardware (and pending Checkmate case!).

I like to tinker with the hardware etc and again, that is where I get part of my personal enjoyment from with this hobby.

I still remember the day my mates Dad came home with an A500 (we were only used to the C64) and it had these cool smaller disks and loaded so much more quickly and ran such cool games.....
I still enjoy that nostalgic memory and its the reason I got back into the amiga and picked up my first a1200 quite a few years ago.

[trixster]

Nostalgia is why I will consider spending £££ on 80s and 90s kit but won’t consider spending £££ on stuff like Vampire. And before someone triggers and I get stoned, that comment is not me having a go at vampire.

[dreadnought]

A real, actual Amiga 500 on your table, is going to 'feel' different to use (especially in the long run, if you make graphics or something) than an emulator.

Not necessarily. It's a feeling, something in the mind, so it's entirely subjective. If it works for you, fine, but somebody else can get the same feeling from an emulator. It's not something you can make a rule about and your "NOT"s and "always"s are invalid.

When I see posts like these I always wish I could put an author in front of a blind-test OG hardware vs emulation setup and see what happens. I'm pretty sure results could be quite surprising - to the poster

[Paul_s]

Originally Posted by Nishicorn

I am not sure 'nostalgia' is an actual 'emotion' - more like the CAUSE of memories of good feelings that people then cling to, to get another whiff of those elusive 'atmosphere-aromas'.

I understand using emulators, it's great fun to make something play or work on a machine it was never designed to run. I have over 50 systems emulated as thoroughly as possible (for my limited skills, knowledge and energy).

However, I have noticed that at least sometimes, emulation doesn't bring you the FULL experience. Something is always missing. Observing this effect has prompted me to try to achieve 'authenticity' as much as I can, about systems/platforms/things that are interesting enough to me.

For example, playing the same, atmospheric classic game from the radiant depths of the 1980s on a real C64 has a different 'feel' to it than playing it on an emulator. There's also the fact that the SID chip can't be emulated 100%, because each chip is unique, and there's something about the analog side of things that seems to capture some kind of mystique that can't quite be digitalized. I reckon' it'd be the same as trying to digitalize a human soul.

I have since also learned that emulator coders might be a tad lazy - they don't always seem to bother to emulate a sound chip's, let's say basic waveform, like square wave, completely and utterly as well as possible within the CPU power limitations, but they just go for a 'basic square wave', because who is gonna know the difference?


I noticed, that although real systems, like Commodore VIC-20, outputs a very specific kind of square wave, the emulator outputs a DULL, BASIC, exactly identical waveform that another emulator ALSO puts out for another (completely different) system! (Can't remember the other system, might've been C16 or something).

In reality, these two waveforms should DIFFER, because they differ when it comes to REAL systems.

In emulation, they don't. Both emulators output 100% identical, dull 'basic square wave' instead of respecting either machine's ACTUAL waveform shape and sound.

This is one small shock about using emulators vs. the real machines, and there are so many more, when you go down that particular rabbit hole.

Here are a few examples, waveforms captured from real systems by myself:

https://postimg.cc/gallery/0NpcnG2

I didn't bother including a screenshot of an emulator square wave, but you can try it yourself and see - it's always going to be different form these.

All these waveforms also SOUND different:

https://www.sendspace.com/file/yj36pe

..please don't come to me with some half-ársed explanation, like 'there's filtering happening when you record them' or whatnot, which seems to suffice for the narrowminded fool that doesn't want to let go of their 'emulation is perfect'-paradigm.

Besides, it wouldn't explain anything anyway, as I used the same equipment for audio capture for all systems.

By the way, even 'digital' systems, like the Yamaha OPL chips both sound and look different to emulation. The emulation is supposedly 'perfect', but not according to my eyes and ears:



I hope I have made my case about why it's always a different experience to use even a really well-made emulator, to using the real thing. A real, actual Amiga 500 on your table, is going to 'feel' different to use (especially in the long run, if you make graphics or something) than an emulator.

Before I got my real Amiga 1200 for graphics purposes, I was used to using an emulator to make graphics - it was fun to discover that Amigas already have a ready-made 'wide pixel' resolutions, like the good ol' 160x200 and even a nicely more modern system-fitting 160x240. (This is my go-to resolution now, I LOVE it, partially because of Nostalgy from the C64 side in the old days when I made graphics on the C64, but also because it demands less from the graphician, because there aren't as many pixels, so I can be more productive with less energy - and I always have low energy, so it's perfect. There's yet another reason for it - I can easily output 320x240 resolution on my old, bright CRT television, where it looks absolutely marvellous (it's a real VGA-signal, not from a processed TV-out - I use a VGA2SCART-cable together with Soft15Khz to modify the Hz and such so the TV actually accepts it, but it's not processed in any other way, so it's as 'real' and 'authentic' as possible).

But after I got my real Amiga 1200, I was happy to stumbled upon a way to use that resolution on the real Amiga (yay!) on a TFT monitor. So using the real Amiga with that 160x240 resolution is a big source of happiness for a nostalgic pixel graphician.

However, what surprised and almost shocked me the most to the level of astonishment, was how it felt to use the real Amiga. And although the 'esoteric feeling' of 'atmosphere' and whatnot is also a big factor, right now I am talking about the more tangible 'physical' feeling of moving the mouse cursor and creating the graphics.

Although I had no problem with the emulator side of things (I even used it with the CRT TV), it took me by a complete surprise, just how _SMOOTH_ everything feels on the real Amiga. I don't know what causes it, or why it is like that, and I could theorize about it for 32 minutes straight, but the unexpected fact is, making graphics on a real Amiga really does feel measurably SMOOTHER for some reason.

Emulation is a wonderful thing - it opens doors and access to systems no one individual could ever own all of, and lets people see and somewhat feel, simulate and experiment what it might've been like to use a system they never owned, and so on. When my Amiga 4000 died a long time ago after I had just gotten a PC, the emulation was a lifesaver. I could never have lived without C64 and Amiga emulation back then, it really helped me go through the mourning process and all.

There are many problems with emulation, though - some emulations are and never will be finished, not everything works with an emulator sometimes, etc. Atari Lynx and Nintend? 64 are good examples of systems that will probably never see good emulators. Another problem is that modern equipment is so different, that it will be forced to be a different experience.

Is an old Amiga classic going to look the same on some TFT display, with scaled graphics, as it did on the old, bright CRT TV from the early 1990s or even 1980s?

Some emulators also do not let the user make enough decisions to 'authentize' the experience further. They're forced to 2 x resolutions or they just won't let you use customized resolutions on your real CRT television, etc. To this day, I can't get Atari ST emulation to work in LORES FULLSCREEN on my CRT television, it always forces something that prevents this.

There are emulators that do this correctly, like MAME (and such), and WinUAE, that lets you pick and choose whatever resolution your graphics card can muster (thank goodness for GPUs that let you do 256x224 and such!)

Emulator coders often have this 'houlier-than-thou'-attitude, where they feel they're better than the user, so they won't take any requests, they won't respect the user's wishes to customize, and they don't support an authentic resolution on a CRT television, because it never occurred to them that someone might actually be able to use a proper VGA2SCART cable with Soft15KHz and GPU that allows very low resolutions.

In any case, as they say in the old saying, a carefully crafted tool will radiate a wonderful feel and become a faithful servant of the user for the rest of their lives (unless it breaks, of course), a tool coldly 'manufactured' by robots (or uncaring, cold people) may become a monster that turns against its user and never work properly.

Emulation is a lifesaver in many situations, but a real system is just always something quirkier and different - it has the 'feel' of something more real, it always 'radiates' the visionary authors' vision, excitement and enthusiasm, and as emulator-creators are a bit lazy, real system will always give you that little bit more that you just can't get from emulation.

So you are NOT getting your 'full Nostalgia fix' from Emulation alone. Or you might, but you won't get the full experience or full feel of how it actually is to use a real system.

Emulators are wonderful, almost magical things to me, and I couldn't live without them - I love being able to play some obscure arcade hit from a faraway country I would never even see or know about otherwise. I love having all these systems at my fingertips so easily, having access to all this old software and these games, etc.

But there's something special about an 'authentic' system, that can even inspire you in ways emulation just can't. Making music on a real OPL(#)-chip is an exciting experience, doing it on emulation just feels dull and boring.

Maybe it's just me, but I love being able to use real systems. I also love using emulators. There's just something missing from emulators. There are many, many things and it could be argued for all eternity, but I think in a big way, it boils down to one major factor;

A real system will always feel better than emulation.

Always.

Emulation - close, but no cigar

[UberFreak]

For me its the original hardware or nothing, the feelings it brings back cannot be created with emulation.

[Weaselrama]

Right now, I'm using FS-UAE, emulating an A4000 68040 (I cut into the 060 config when I want RTG Demos) and OS3.9 w/ Boing Bags + newer libs and devices and my ideal is pushing (probably not the right word since it does this stuff with relative ease) the Amiga to do things it was never originally designed for but does really well at such as running AmigaAMP, web browsers (iBrowse and Arti's build of Netsurf), email, watching TV and Movies in FFPlay (I convert to 480p to avoid any stutter) and of course playing MODs in a variety of players and trackers. I currently have 3 different games going in Doom II, Quake, and Duke and I also enjoy vertical and horizontal shooters. I have access to my photo portfolio and I collect 16bit Amiga graphic art. This sort of Amiga config and use may not appeal to many Amigans but I get a lot of fun and enjoyment out of it.

I run AfA which gives me TT Fonts w/ anti-aliasing (including anti-aliased fonts in iBrowse) and the upgraded window-frames and my ideal is the look and feel of OS 4.1 which I've pulled off very well. I run at 1920 x 1080.

When I run my Amiga, I'm in my happy place. That's the nostalgia part for me and actually it's a powerful emotion and it doesn't seem to matter that I couldn't do 3/4 of this stuff on the Amiga I owned during the 90s from 1990 (or very early '91) onward. I run it with respect to the modern world (I've almost always got a browser going). There's just something about running the Amiga Workbench that elicits these feelings.

I kept telling myself, "Why would I spend $$$ on a real Amiga including the recapping and other maintainance when this works so well?"

Then Michal Bergseth of Amitopia caught my attention. I've been watching his vids on the FB Classic Amiga Software page and he can do all the things I do in FS-UAE with an A1200 and the Warp 1260 for which he has a demo. I do believe he also has some additional RAM expansion but don't quote me on that, perhaps it all comes from the 1260.

Folks, I would, if I could convince myself to save back the cash, *gladly* pay for what he has and run a real Amiga. He's convinced me I don't need to hunt down an A4000 just to clone my FS-UAE experience. My dilemma then, is parting with the cash for a setup I didn't have to spend any money on that never failed/fails to stir that feeling of nostalgia. I would have to also convince myself that the Warp 1260 isn't vaporware, that when ready they will really ship and not play weak, unprofessional games and provide crap service like Apollo. The only plus about a Vampire is that I don't have to rely on Warp to find an 060 for me and not charge me an arm and a leg. I'm just not a fan of Apollo's SOP and it has nothing to do with what we're not at liberty to discuss on EAB. I think Warp is the better option and technically superior.

This thread is sort of wide-open. What Price Nostalgia, is the general theme I think. I have a feeling that no matter how much I enjoy the Amiga in emulation, having a real Amiga in front of me, typing on its keyboard, would drastically elevate that nostalgic feeling, not to mention a certain pride in owning such a magnificent machine.

Make of all that what you will. Happy Amiga-ing...