It a tricky moral area. On one hand original copyright laws say most of those games should be freeware by now, but of course that is not the world we live in. Most console classics aren't sold anywhere other than used, which benefits no developer or publisher at all, so one might say "fuck it."

I tend to have weird personal rules about such things. I bought FF7 on the Playstation Network and then played the emulated version on PC.

It even sold more copies than Omikron-TheNormadSoul.
I cannot understand it, but it´s ultra-funny!

I don't know why people still question moral standard for 10 years+ games when it's no longer available everywhere. Seriously, why we blame ourselves when companies actually act like dick and holding us from playing games no longer available in stores both physical and digital.

Seriously, do we keep begging from companies like acti or lucasart who keep refusing to release games we demanded?

to be honest, I had more fun playing Daikatana then I did playing Omikron.... long times since I played them, but that's what sticks to mind.

But these games weren't even released for the PC, and i doubt they're interested in porting them after all these years. The japanese division of Squenix doesn't give a fuck about PCs, which is why the new Final Fantasy games are never released for the PC (except for the MMOs, obviously). Japanese publishers in general have never been that interested on the PC market.

FFVII was released on Steam because a PC version already existed.
There are many classics on PSN/Wiiware/eShop/XBLA. Most RPGs made by Squenix for the PS1 are available through PSN (even Xenogears, Chrono Cross, Parasite Eve and Vagrant Story). Some old games will never be sold anymore, but there's quite a decent amount of classics that you can buy on consoles and the PC. Most Nintendo games before the GC are available through Nintendo's digital services (Earthbound is the only one that comes to mind that wasn't available for a very long time and that's the most expensive SNES game on the market, but now you can buy it for the Wii U). Most Sega classics are also available on pretty much every platform.

Sometimes they just don't have the rights to sell these games. Stop blaming companies for everything. Our copyright laws are ridiculous.

Then I don't care for getting 20 years old games. I don't have the money to get a used games that cost hundreds of dollars.

Yeah, I said "most" because I knew about the Nintendo stuff on Wii and the classics on PSN. I'm not really sure how limited all that is, I only see some release news in passive. There's such a wealth of console games though I would assume most is still applicable.

If I had a PS3, which I still want someday, I would probably buy quite a number of classics and then play them emulated on PC.

And i'm not saying that you should care, i'm just saying that sometimes gaming companies aren't the ones to blame.

It certainly doesn't cover every game ever released, but there's a decent amount of classics that you can get from digital services. Wii's Virtual Console features 407 titles in NA according to this link: [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Virtual_Console_games_for_Wii_(North_America]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Virtual_Console_games_for_Wii_(North_America[/url])

Not bad, if you ask me.
I hate emulators. I'd much rather have the original experience and play the game as intended. Emulators are never accurate, the games don't run the same way they do on the original hardware. Not even SNES emulators are perfect.

Read this:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/08/accuracy-takes-power-one-mans-3ghz-quest-to-build-a-perfect-snes-emulator/

I do understand why most people prefer emulators, though.

Have you ever seen those Everdrive cartridges? They're flashcarts for old consoles that run games from SD cards. Now that's something i'd use, especially to play rom hacks and japanese games translated by fans.

Yeah I've read that kind of stuff before. I'm just not someone who notices, and I appreciate the graphical improvements on 3D games.

Deathtrap Dungeon!
Seeing people raging on the steam forums about the flood of old games is quite amusing.

I haven't used PSN or XBLA, so I can't say anythign about them, but Nintendo's download shop is seriously one of the worst I've seen. First of all you don't have any account system, it's all DRM-tied to the hardware. If your Nintendo breaks down you can send it in to Nintendo to transfer your games to another machine, but that's just stupid.

They only sell regional versions, which sucks if you live in a PAL region where all old games run at 50Hz instead of 60Hz and a squashed down due to the higher PAL resolution. I speak English and any TV built during the last 20 years can display NTSC signal, so just let me download the US version and I'll be fine. Games that heven't been released in a region will not be sold there, unless on a special occasion and only for a premium price.

The original documentation is completely missing entirely, instead we get some crappy HTML manual that just explains the controls. Back in the old games manuals were really fun to read, they were often the only way to know some moves or to know the story of the games. This was before tutorials and cutscenes were common place. In some games like The Legend of Zelda the manual was required to play because it contained the map. I bet many young games would have much less trouble getting into the first Zelda game if they actually had any clue where to go. (this also served as a kind of copy-protection)

Then there is the constant trickle releasing. It made sense when the store was first introduced, but then they started the same thing all over again for the other consoles. This would be like if Apple decided to start releasing songs one by one all over again for the iPhone and iPad instead of giving you access to all the songs that can already be bought for the iPod. Also, because of the lack of an account system you would have to buy all your songs all over again.

Really, I'd rather tell people to buy games on Steam than at Nintendo's download stores, and I fully hate Steam. At least with Steam you can install the client on any PC you want, you don't have to send in your PC to Valve.