It's no different than consoles, when you think about it. You can't play a 1986 Nintendo game on their brand new 1990 console. The lines are more blurred on PC as there is always some backwards compatibility with what came just before and the evolution is constant, so it's up to you where to draw the lines.
The space argument is an important one, PCs are massive. The big towers take a stupid amount of space (while being mostly empty). There are cases that visually takes less space, like horizontal desktop cases sitting under your display, or custom solutions, but then the price goes up very quickly. It's just another rabbit hole.
That's the problem. I have a mid-size tower for my main PC and it's nicely slotted into a section of my living room media center. There's a very compact, slim profile micro ATX PC is in the bedroom that I use for GroovyMAME and recently DOSBox and AM2R. I have it flush against my shelving unit taking up minimal space and being as unassuming as possible. The giant 90s tower isn't doable right now! Oh, if only I had a dedicated room for movies and games...
Moving back to the states early next year after a couple busy years in korea. Pretty excited to get back to re-making my game room. I use a lot of very cool consumer CRTs here which I've really began to enjoy even better than all the PVMs. In any case, looks like a lot of things have happened in the last couple years retro-wise. I'm still very much into my Wii and VC at 240p which seems as the best thing going. Glad to see folks are leaning away from the heavy laggy PC emulation scene. Kinda crappy things are getting so expensive.
While you gain in crispness, perfect geometry and manual controls with the PVMs/BVMs, you lose in phosphor bloom, greater brightness and saturation and more organic-looking backgrounds/sprites. You have to really crank up the settings on a pro CRT to match a consumer set's picture vibrancy, which ends up shortening its lifespan. My BVM is the dullest-looking of all my CRTs, although it's only really obvious in A/B comparisons and the occasional exception where I think some games running on it don't look so hot.
I was watching a Pat CUPodcast video about how retro game prices have plateaued, citing a glut of $200 Earthbounds at conventions and other overpriced online listings with hardly anyone biting... which may trigger an end to the bubble and prices starting to decrease. I figured it would happen eventually although I didn't think it would start so soon. Fairly recent and popular developments like the Everdrives, FPGA and emulator clone consoles, NES Classic, etc., may also be a contributing factor.
