Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2013 September 2

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September 2

GOCG

There's a website called Good Old Games or GOG.com, which makes older (and some newer) computer games available for current computers. Are there any similar, reputable sites for console games? If not, are any underway? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Theskinnytypist (talk • contribs) 01:47, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Is MAME what you're looking for? RudolfRed (talk) 02:55, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

There are a decent number of fairly reputable emulators. However, unless they are able to play the game from the original media, they generally rely on ROMs, which are mostly illegal copies, in order to play copyrighted games (i.e. most non-homebrew games). Some add-ons like the Retrode will allow the original cartidges to be used, which is more likely to be legal (though there will still be some copying involved, so it may depend on jurisdiction). Generally, unless a games company chooses to rerelease a title for a later console (or for PC), then the original media is needed to play that game legitimately. MChesterMC (talk) 09:24, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

If you want relatively recent games, there are rental services like Gamefly, however there simply isn't a (legit, legal) way of running old console games on modern hardware.

Some of the simplest old hardware can be functionally recreated. You can get modern equipment that's mostly compatible with NES/SNES [1][2]. However, as hardware gets more complicated, it gets harder to recreate.

This is actually a serious issue for Digital_preservation#Video_game_preservation. We're entirely dependent on the creators of the game to release a new version. But only a tiny fraction of games get that treatment. (You can get a few games for the Wii Virtual Console, for example.)

The more video games become an important part of our culture, the more organizations like museums and historical societies worry about this issue. (When Super Mario enters the public domain a century from now, how will Penguin Classics repackage it to sell to college students? APL (talk) 13:57, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Airplane in Mr. Clean commercial

Is the airplane seen at about 0:06 in this commercial totally fictional out of an artist's mind, or is there a plane like it? The way the wing and engines are connected to the fuselage by a thin member makes be suppose it probably is fictional, but I thought I'd ask. 75.75.42.89 (talk) 13:03, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

As soon as I saw it I thought "Catalina", and found Consolidated PBY Catalina. Britmax (talk) 13:12, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Searching some rather geeky aviation forums, it seems to be this one, which was formerly used to drop water on fires in Spain and Portugal. Alansplodge (talk) 17:15, 2 September 2013 (UTC)