For me, I still have all my gaming stuff, but I purchased cartridge dumpers and made game (and some save) backups of nearly all my cartridge based games so I could have them on my Raspberry Pi and Steam Deck - Atari 2600, NES, Super NES, N64, Game Boy, etc.
To be honest, while I do own the original hardware and game copies, I still prefer to play my dumps on emulators because of things like save states, rewind, HD resolution on legacy polygonal systems, cheat codes, better controls (Kaboom! (Atari 2600) is more responsive on Steam Deck via RetroArch than it is on original hardware on an HDTV), and overall convenience, such as portability for the Steam Deck, or a front end that allows me to easily pick a game on my Raspberry Pi.
Of course, there are some instances where I may still need to resort to original hardware, like afaik the only way to play WarioWare: Twisted (GBA) without using a control patch is either on an original GBA using an original Game Pak, or by using the VBA GX homebrew emulator for the Wii (which desyncs and drifts very quickly). There are also some games with unusual controls or features that are very tricky to map correctly on an emulator, such as the majority of the Wii and Wii U library, any PS2 game that took advantage of the pressure buttons, the unholy 3rd gen keypad controller Trinity (ColecoVision, Intellivision, and Atari 5200), games with extensive use of a microphone or a proprietary controller (Hey You, Pikachu! (N64), Caution! Seaman (Dreamcast), some DS games, etc.), just to name a few. There’s also some systems that may never get dumped or have an emulator made, such as the VTech and LeapFrog learning systems.
I could go on, but I’ve made by point, I emulate whenever possible, but I still make an effort to obtain my games legitimately so I can dump them and emulate them
Are cartridge dumpers tough to get? I never thought of trying to dump my items before I sold them. You should make a post about the dumpes & using them, I don’t hear about them much.
For me, I still have all my gaming stuff, but I purchased cartridge dumpers and made game (and some save) backups of nearly all my cartridge based games so I could have them on my Raspberry Pi and Steam Deck - Atari 2600, NES, Super NES, N64, Game Boy, etc. To be honest, while I do own the original hardware and game copies, I still prefer to play my dumps on emulators because of things like save states, rewind, HD resolution on legacy polygonal systems, cheat codes, better controls (Kaboom! (Atari 2600) is more responsive on Steam Deck via RetroArch than it is on original hardware on an HDTV), and overall convenience, such as portability for the Steam Deck, or a front end that allows me to easily pick a game on my Raspberry Pi.
Of course, there are some instances where I may still need to resort to original hardware, like afaik the only way to play WarioWare: Twisted (GBA) without using a control patch is either on an original GBA using an original Game Pak, or by using the VBA GX homebrew emulator for the Wii (which desyncs and drifts very quickly). There are also some games with unusual controls or features that are very tricky to map correctly on an emulator, such as the majority of the Wii and Wii U library, any PS2 game that took advantage of the pressure buttons, the unholy 3rd gen keypad controller Trinity (ColecoVision, Intellivision, and Atari 5200), games with extensive use of a microphone or a proprietary controller (Hey You, Pikachu! (N64), Caution! Seaman (Dreamcast), some DS games, etc.), just to name a few. There’s also some systems that may never get dumped or have an emulator made, such as the VTech and LeapFrog learning systems.
I could go on, but I’ve made by point, I emulate whenever possible, but I still make an effort to obtain my games legitimately so I can dump them and emulate them
Are cartridge dumpers tough to get? I never thought of trying to dump my items before I sold them. You should make a post about the dumpes & using them, I don’t hear about them much.