OLD-SCHOOL GAMING

Like many students, when junior Josh Nahrwold came to IU he found himself with a lot more free time than he had in high school; free time that most of his friends filled playing Sony PlayStation 2, Microsoft Xbox or Nintendo GameCube. This just wasn't his scene. So he went home and dug his old black and grey 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System out of his closet.\n"I came down here and everyone had PS2 or Xbox. I was like, 'Man I need something to play too,'" he says.\nNahrwold's friends have also taken advantage of his preserved console.\n"We have people over to hang out and they see the Nintendo and they get all excited," Nahrwold says. "They usually sit down and play it for a half hour or so. It's something most people don't have still."\nThe major appeal of the system for Nahrwold is its simplicity.\n"New games have like nine buttons," he says. "The Nintendo only has the A and B buttons, select and start, and the arrows."\nNahrwold has played the newer systems, even the latest updates of his favorite games, but he still prefers to go back to the classics of his childhood.\n"My brother bought 'Final Fantasy VII' or 'VIII' a few years ago, and it was good, but it was so intense as far as the time it takes to beat," he says. "It was crazy how many paths you could take. Deep down, I enjoy the simplicity of older games."\nRob Kolhouse, manager of Game Stop in the College Mall, says the demand for old games is particularly high in Bloomington.\n"Everyone who trades in their old stuff just comes back for it," he says. "And in Bloomington when someone buys something, it stays gone. Everyone is a collector here."\nIU students might not have much longer to track down older games though. Game Stop is currently in the process of selling off its remaining used NES, SNES and SEGA Genesis games. As of Feb. 22 they will no longer accept these games as trade-ins.\n"The demand is there, but the profit margins aren't," Kolhouse says. "We need to start making room for new things coming out this fall like the PlayStation Portable and Nintendo DS, even the PlayStation 3 and Xbox2."\nBut another generation of home consoles isn't going to stop old-school gamers like Nahrwold from enjoying their favorite classic games.\n"It reminds me of being a kid and playing games all day," Nahrwold says. "You can't get that feeling from the newer systems."\nPart of the reason the original NES has made such a lasting impression on people is because it was the origin of many of today's popular video game concepts. When original games were being produced from 1985-1994 it was most gamers' first taste of now-common genres such as platforming, role-playing and adventure.\n"Nintendo had all the new breakthrough games," sophomore Matt Gregoire says. "And there were hundreds coming out all the time."\nGregoire says even though NES games don't have the sharp looks of modern games, they make up for it in core classic gameplay.\n"Obviously the graphics are nothing compared to Xbox and PlayStation 2," he says. "But the games are so addicting and fun it doesn't matter."\nWith nearly 1,000 games released for the NES in the U.S., plus certain games only released in Europe or Japan, it can get quite pricey to track each one down. Rarer games like "Dragon Warrior IV" have even topped out at more than $100 on Ebay. Luckily, there's a solution, albeit an illegal one. It's called emulation.\nAn emulator is a program that tricks your PC into thinking it's an NES, SNES or even a Nintendo 64, enabling you to play games designed for these consoles. The emulators themselves, which can easily be found on peer-to-peer networks and numerous Web sites, are perfectly legal, but the games, or "read-only memorys" (ROMs), are not.\n"I don't really have a problem with it since I actually own some of the games," says freshman Brian Hixson, who in fact owns an NES with about 25 games and plays an emulator with many more. "I believe in playing the games on the actual systems, but it's hard to find all of them."\nAnother reason gamers turn to emulation is the added bonus of online play, a staple of the Xbox and PS2. If you know someone else's IP address and you have the same game it's easy to play an NES game on the computer with someone down the hall or even across the country.\nMost game developers have come out at one time or another to denounce emulation, but most efforts to stop it have been concentrated on pirates who profit from it by making bootleg copies.\nThe trend is so widespread that even at Game Stop it's not entirely ruled out.\n"At the store level I give it a thumbs down," Kolhouse says. "But on a personal level, I say if you can't find it, go for it"