Menu

The Friday Five: 5 Retro Gaming Technical Frustrations

The Friday Five: 5 Retro Gaming Technical Frustrations

Welcome to another edition of The Friday Five! Every Friday I cover a topic related to basketball gaming, either as a list of five items, or a Top 5 countdown. The topics for these lists and countdowns include everything from fun facts and recollections to commentary and critique. This week’s Five is a list of five technical frustrations that one might encounter when retro gaming.

I love retro gaming! As I’ve said before, when I think back, I was probably born to be a retro gamer. The first console I ever played was one that came out before I was even born, and part of the 1983 video game crash. It’s not that I don’t enjoy playing new games and all the technological advances the medium has made, but my early forays into gaming have undoubtedly influenced my ability to overlook dated aspects if I still enjoy the gameplay. Some games hold up better than others – especially basketball and other sports titles – but bottom line, I can still have a blast with the classics.

Of course, over the years, that hasn’t always been easy to do. This is particularly true of older PC basketball games following upgrades to a new system. At the end of the day, retro gaming (basketball or otherwise) is still something of a niche interest within the hobby, with technical frustrations arising because it’s not kept in mind when new hardware and operating systems are being developed. Fortunately, there are usually workarounds, though they can be intimidating if you’re not technically savvy. I’ve been able to find ways to get all of my old games running for my retro gaming and content creation purposes, but there have definitely been some technical frustrations.

1. Unsupported Copy Protection

Bryant Reeves in NBA Live 2000

Here’s a confession that I’m slightly embarrassed about as someone who works in IT. Right up until September 2021, I was still running Windows 7 on my main desktop. I originally held off upgrading to Windows 10 because early adopters don’t always have the best experience, and I wanted to make sure that they’d ironed out as many bugs as possible. I was also wary about some of the changes that made retro gaming more difficult. The main obstacle was the removal of support for SafeDisc, a form of copy protection that several games used in the early 2000s. Without support for that driver, Windows couldn’t authenticate discs, thus preventing games from running.

Under Windows 7 and 8.1, the secdrv.sys driver could be re-enabled. To that end, I created a batch file we could all use to simplify that process. The driver is completely absent in Windows 10 however, and while there are ways that it can be added, it’s more messing around than I’d recommend. Fortunately, there are some fixed exes that will bypass the now-unsupported copy protection. Or, if you know what you’re doing, you can set up a virtual machine running an older version of Windows. The reason the driver is unsupported is because of a potential security risk, but like many technical frustrations with retro gaming, that doesn’t help gamers when we’re feeling nostalgic.

2. Controller Limitations & Incompatibility

Retro Gaming Technical Frustrations: Controllers in NBA Live 2001 PC

So, let’s say you’ve set up NBA Live 2000, 2001, 2003, or 2004 in Windows 10 with the aforementioned fixes. The game fires up; so far, so good. You go to configure your fancy modern dual analog controller, only to find out that the game doesn’t recognise the rear shoulder buttons/triggers. This is because old games use DInput for devices, whereas newer controllers utilise XInput. Software solutions that remap controllers or emulate DInput can be used, but there’s a simpler fix. I have a Logitech F710 Wireless controller with a switch that toggles between DInput and XInput. When I’m playing an old game, getting it to work is done with a flick of that switch.

There are the occasional game-specific conflicts as well. I’ve found that NBA Live 2001 PC recognises my Logitech gaming mouse and keyboard as gamepads, so I need to swap them for a standard mouse and keyboard in order for the controller to work in gameplay. Oddly, NBA Live 2001 also detects my laptop’s keyboard and touchpad as gamepads, so in short the game has some issues with modern devices. DOSBox also has limitations when working with pads/joysticks that have more than two buttons, but that’s an authentic limitation of DOS. Fortunately DOSBox has a key mapper as a workaround, but it can still be frustrating for the less technically knowledgeable.

3. Occasional Media Capture Frustrations

Pre-Game Festivities in Fox Sports NBA Basketball 2000

We’re a long way past the days of Unregistered Bandicam watermarks on highlight clips and other captured videos! There are enough readily available and affordable video capture solutions – including the full version of Bandicam – which are a vital investment for serious content creators. They’re easy to use with a variety of capture options, including full screen capture if the game mode setting isn’t working. I have encountered a couple of games that don’t work properly when capture software is running, though. In fact, I’m still troubleshooting getting capture to work with Fox Sports NBA Basketball 2000 when it’s maxed out using hardware acceleration.

If you’re capturing from an old console, you’ll need to invest in some more expensive equipment, such as the latest Elgato device. In order to get the best quality for your videos and screenshots, you’ll also need to pick up devices that upscale the visual output and connect to a capture card using HDMI. Speaking of HDMI, the use of HDCP will block video capture. If the console doesn’t allow you to disable HDCP – as is the case with some models of the PlayStation 3 – you’ll need a splitter that bypasses it. As with any other technical frustrations with retro gaming, you’ll just need to be patient, persistent, and willing to troubleshoot when things aren’t working properly.

4. Hardware Specs (But Not In The Usual Way)

Kevin Garnett Celebrates in NBA Live 99

The phones we carry around these days have more power than home PCs in the late 90s, so surely a modern gaming rig will run classic games without any problems, right? Not quite. As technology has advanced, hardware and architecture has changed to accommodate those improvements. Power is immaterial if there’s no backwards compatibility. Look at it this way: the PlayStation 5 with a disc drive is designed to play PS4 games, but not PS3, PS2, or PS1 titles. Likewise, it just wasn’t possible to develop those games to be compatible with all future consoles, as there was no way to account for all of the changes in technology that weren’t even being imagined yet.

PC games don’t have the same issues with incompatible disc formats, but they were all designed for contemporary hardware. In particular, there can be issues with newer video cards. Even if a game boots up fine, there might be issues with performance, or the game won’t be able to detect the card properly, meaning you need to change visual settings by externally editing the configuration file. This makes utilities like nGlide and dgVoodoo essential parts of a retro PC gamer’s toolkit, as these wrappers convert old graphics APIs to Direct3D 11/12. In simple terms, if your hardware is too new, there are ways to make it work with games that were designed for much older tech.

5. 16-Bit Software

Roster Player Dunks in NBA Live 98

This is one of the rarer technical frustrations with retro PC gaming if you’re not going further back than the mid 2000s, but it’s worth noting all the same. There’s no need to go into all the details of bits and computer architecture, as there’s plenty of resources out there if you’re interested. The pertinent detail to retro gaming is that Windows is 64-bit now, and while it can run 32-bit software, it doesn’t automatically support 16-bit applications. Unfortunately for retro gamers, some PC games from the late 90s are 16-bit, or are 32-bit but have 16-bit Windows installers. As you’ve no doubt gathered by now, there’s never a guarantee of future-proofing or backwards compatibility!

Thankfully, we do have some options here. As noted above, virtual machines can be set up to run older versions of Windows, as 32-bit Windows will run 16-bit software. Support for 16-bit software can be enabled, but it’s fiddly, and I wouldn’t recommend novices try it. If it’s just a 16-bit installer, files can be manually copied, though you may need to add data to the registry – Matt’s Game Fixes can help out here – and use a fixed exe to bypass any copy protection. Again, these technical frustrations needn’t stand in the way of retro gaming. It will take some work though, so it’s not just a matter of finding an old disc, popping it in, and heading straight for memory lane.

Are you a retro gamer, or do you have any interest in retro gaming? Have you ever encountered any of these technical frustrations, or other barriers when trying to get into old games? Have your say in the comments, and as always, feel free to take the discussion to the NLSC Forum! That’s all for this week, so thanks for checking in, have a great weekend, and please join me again next Friday for another Five.

Support The NLSC on Patreon!
Become a patron at Patreon!
Subscribe
Notify of

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments