Reviving Old Computer GamesWritten by Daniel Punch
Remember good old days of gaming, when there were only 5 pixels in protagonist and your imagination could turn them into a heroic figure of Schwarzenegger proportions? When enemies and heroes were distinguished by colour and you only needed one button on joystick? Well times have changed and technology has moved on. Pulling my old Commodore 64 or Atari out of back of cupboard and setting them up often takes more time than nostalgic pang lasts. I’ve also noticed that some of my old disks are starting to age and become corrupted. Enter Internet.The wonderfully technologically gifted and giving Internet populace is out in force in their attempts to preserve older side of gaming. Remakes and Emulators for almost any old machine can be found around Internet. Emulators act as a layer between old software and new hardware allowing modern PCs to run programs that such hardware was never meant to see. Commodore 64, Amiga, NES, Master System, Arcade Machines and more have all been emulated and necessary programs placed online for download, usually for free. Emulation is not a new idea. I had a hardware emulator for VIC20 that plugged into back of my Commodore 64 and allowed use of older VIC20 cartridges with new hardware (I never actually owned a VIC20 or any programs for it but that’s another issue). Emulator popularity has been fading in and out for many years, only coming into many people’s attention with release of Bleem!, a Playstation emulator for PC that was released while PSOne still held a dominant share of video game market. Bleemcast (a Playstation emulator for Sega Dreamcast) soon followed causing one of more interesting video game legal battles as Sony fought to have emulator shut down. However, emulators have a strong following and very active user base. Emulators are easy to find and download. Simply search for system you want and add word emulator to end (e.g. “SNES Emulator”) and you’ll probably come up with a lot of hits. Be slightly wary as some emulator sites will either be false links or may contain pornographic ads. Setting emulators up to run is usually fairly straightforward and there’s a fair chance that you’ll be able to find some documentation and help. Some of newer systems require a BIOS image to be installed with emulator. This is to get around legal issues raised by Sony in Bleem! legal battles by requiring you to be in possession of a Playstation BIOS (and hence, presumably, a Playstation) in order to play games on your computer. Making a BIOS image to load into your computer will most likely be beyond your technical expertise, but a quick check of your console’s case will reveal file you need to get and then it’s as simple as searching internet for a BIOS image that matches BIOS you already own. Of interest are PC emulators now available. Windows no longer has very good support for older DOS-based games so there are a few emulators out there now to emulate DOS environment. DOSBox (http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/) is probably best known of crop. There are also game-specific emulators such as ScummVM (www.scummvm.org) or DOOM Legacy (http://legacy.newdoom.com/) that focus specifically on certain games and hence are able to improve experience for those particular titles.
| | The Future of Video GamesWritten by Daniel Punch
I’ve recently been thinking about where video games could be going in future. I’m hoping to work in game industry one day after I’ve finished university study and I’ve been wondering about it a lot. What do I want to see happen in future? Well I may not have too many answers right now, but I have come up with a few ideas that I think may come into ‘play’ in not too distant future.Firstly forget Virtual Reality, as we know it. They’ve tried VR goggles and they made a lot of people sick in doing so. It’s probably never going to work very well in its current form. They’re still around and you can still buy them but they really don’t seem to be taking off. It will probably take a lot to get people totally immersed and involved in a new form of game play. It’s threatening to lose touch with outside world and people around you aren’t going to appreciate it much either. The Sci-fi neural implants are also both a long way off and not likely to be accepted by a majority of general populace without some severe marketing and luck. I for one am not planning on going through brain surgery just to have a computer attached to my head. In fact I never want anyone to able to plug into my brain. A technology that was brought to my attention by a zealous presenter at local ‘Science and Technology Centre’ (a sort of science museum aimed at making science fun for children and juvenile adults such as yours truly) is that of ‘Augmented Reality’. Augmented Reality is essentially overlaying of virtual elements onto real world, such as a pair of transparent glasses that can display certain elements over top of what is actually there. I agree with presenter in that this could indeed have some awesome potential. Forget all socially beneficial applications such as workmen being able to view underground pipes before digging, think about it from a games point of view. This technology could provide gamers with ability to run around looking like complete idiots shooting at things that aren’t actually there and that no one else can see, kind of like in film ‘They Live!’ The upside to this is that it would be a lot of fun. A group of people from University of South Australia created ‘ARQuake’ project, http://wearables.unisa.edu.au/projects/ARQuake/www/, merging classic shooter Quake with this Augmented Reality technology. Again, this technology may not ever become overly popular, but it would be entertaining to play with. Technology has driven games industry for a long time with new games always trying to keep one step ahead of competition. It started way back at dawn of technology and it continues to this day. 2D graphics gave way to 3D and 3D is becoming ever better. Graphics are starting to lose ability to impress like they once did. The step between Quake 2 and 3 was amazing, but DOOM 3 while being visually very impressive isn’t leaps and bounds ahead of its competitors in same way new games used to be. 2D graphics encountered a similar problem; there comes a point where you just can’t do much more with graphics technology. It is this that turns graphics from striving for technological achievement to becoming art. It is my hope that we will start turning away from tech demos and return to game play and making great entertainment. Games such as Zelda: The Wind Waker or The Sims that strive to show greater depth of character through simplifying game enough to portray emotions will hopefully become more common (and more fun… but that’s just one person’s view…). Technology plays a certain part in conveying of emotions and story but it’s quite hard to focus on everything at once. When technology is easier and less essential to game sales we’ll hopefully see an increase in games that cast a lasting impression.
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