Good, old, games

[Phytotron]

Yeah, half the reason I want it is for playing Gamecube games over component video. (There's a component cable for Gamecubes, but it's like $200+, which is just stupid.)

Ours is also the old backwards-compatible one, but we don't have any gamecube stuff to use with it. Typically, a game will upgrade the system if it needs to. From what I've seen so far, that seems to work well.

Wait, what games upgrading in what way? You mean Wii games and like firmware updates or something? (Sorry, just not catching how it relates to the first sentence.)

[Lucifer]

Yeah, half the reason I want it is for playing Gamecube games over component video. (There's a component cable for Gamecubes, but it's like $200+, which is just stupid.)

Ours is also the old backwards-compatible one, but we don't have any gamecube stuff to use with it. Typically, a game will upgrade the system if it needs to. From what I've seen so far, that seems to work well.

Wait, what games upgrading in what way? You mean Wii games and like firmware updates or something? (Sorry, just not catching how it relates to the first sentence.)

I don't know enough about how the wii is setup to give the kind of answer I'd like to give.

There are software updates for the underlying OS the wii needs for some games, depending on the OS revision you have. Formerly, you could connect it to the internet and it'd automatically update when new updates were available. That service has been disconnected, as far as I know. Which means, you can't update older Wiis.

Meanwhile, game developers target specific OS revisions for obvious reasons. We do it here, too, and you're well familiar with the issues involved. It's no different for console systems, really.

So, apparently there's a fallback mechanism for when the Wii has reached it's end-of-life that allows games that target a newer revision than you have to go ahead and update the system with what the game needs.

I have no idea how the specifics are handled. I assume there's a flash drive inside the wii and it just copies some libraries over to it.

[Phytotron]

Ah. Hmm, I've never read anything about that before. Just now read a few Wikipedia pages. This one on the system software: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii_system_software which only mentions discontinued Channels, but apparently the Wii Shop Channel (where you get Virtual Console games—that's what I meant earlier by "Virtual Console support") is still accessible from the Wii. Doesn't say anything about the IOS updates being discontinued altogether. Hmm.

Well, even if/when they do discontinue that, presumably making some Wii games unplayable, it's still the better option for Gamecube games. And from what I understand the Wii U has a sort of Wii virtual machine that will play all the Wii stuff. Just kickin' the can down the road.

[dinobro]

It's probably a bit newer than a lot of games mentioned in this thread, but Origin was(still is?) giving Syndicate for free.
It's a 1993 game that I used to waste so many hours on. Definetely worth a try if you haven't yet!

[Phytotron]

I actually have an original 1993 CD-ROM of Syndicate for Mac. It was part of some EA 10-pack with a few other Bullfrog games, Looking Glass games, and a few others. (Theme Park, Powermonger, Populous II; Chuck Yeager's Air Combat, The Labyrinth of Time; PGA Tour Golf II, Power Poker, Around the World in 80 Days, Eagle Eye Mysteries in London.) I must have picked it up on clearance or something, heh.

I never really played Syndicate, though; can't remember why. Think I heard it doesn't really hold up these days.