posted by jp. on Mar 19, 2012:
APE said:
You want them to not port games you already own, but want them to port games you already own?
Because that GD-ROM will last forever and everyone else in the world has played Shenmue/Shenmue II/JSR, correct? Nobody could possibly want to buy it without having to get a Dreamcast, VMU, cables, etc and then worry about using composite on their TV OH SHIT NOW WE NEED A VGA BOX FOR $40!!11
Or you spend $8 and get JSR on your 360.
You're absolutely right. I totally forgot that Alien Front Online and Ooga Booga are still playable online with my Dreamcast. How silly of me. This entire time I was under the misconception that once their servers went down those games were virtually unplayable since the information for what servers the games used was hard coded into them, so one couldn't setup alternate servers. And I guess I must have totally forgotten that Alien Front Online had multiplayer options beyond playing online, thus not rendering it absolutely useless since the entire game was built around the idea of multiplayer, much like Chromehounds.
Also, kind of dumb to try to point out the GD-ROM not lasting forever. Let's be realistic here, what's going to last longer: that GD-ROM or JSR's presence on whatever servers so you can still access it 10 years from now when the Xbox 1080 comes out? How about 20 years from now? 30? 40? Unless you're using the disc as a coaster or don't know how to store things, somehow I don't think the lifetime of the physical medium is going to play a major role. Not unless you get a hankering for JSR when you're like, 70, at which point the chance that it's still available on Xbox Live/PSN (or that these things even exist anymore) is likely slimmer than that of being able to track down a physical copy of the game.
As for the argument about people who never played the games:
1. Why didn't they support the DC when it was out? If not for folks like them, maybe Sega wouldn't have spiraled into the festering pit of suck they reside in now.
2. Let's not kid ourselves here. The majority of the people who buy this stuff are the ones who already owned them. I doubt there will be that many "newcomers" to JSR or Shenmue. This argument is only relevant when it's something like Radiant Silvergun which commands a high price, not something you can get for a few bucks on Amazon.
