Many gamers look back with nostalgic memories of the game systems they once had, the games they once played, and the time when they first got hooked into the hobby. I remember playing Sega Genesis in my basement and at friends’ houses – games like Jurassic Park, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Batman. Then many people go through a stage of gaming withdrawal, let’s call it the Dark Ages – it was sad, boring, except without all of the great jousting. Then everyone rediscovers the hobby, through a friend, wandering into a store, or pulling their dusty old systems out of the closet. Personally I started playing PC games again, and then moved to consoles when I got tired of not being able to play a new game without having to buy a new graphics card. On a side note, there is an interesting system that my dad owns which very few people have ever heard of, the Intellivision. As a true collector, he has the system, the voice synthesizer, the keyboard, the Intellivision II, and almost every game made for the system – of course I haven’t seen any of it out of their boxes in years. When you see “The Empire Strikes Back” on Intellivision it definitely makes you thankful for the graphical leap in the last few console generations. Flying your Rebel snowspeeder (the orange triangle) across the wastelands of Hoth to fight the attacking AT-AT (the grey rectangle) really shows how much video game graphics have advanced.
Last issue I talked about the story in a videogame, the thing that captivates you and drives you through the game. I purposely talked about that first – well that’s a lie, I normally write these articles the night they are due, so I write about the first thing I think of, but it worked out well anyway – because I believe that no amount of amazing graphics will ever make me play a game with a horrible story. If the game can’t keep me interested, doesn’t make me want to explore, find the next hidden secret, defeat the next villain, then what is the point. A game without a story is like a Ferrari without an engine, it looks great, but does that really matter when you can’t drive it? Of course, there are some exceptions; whole genres are based around the action and game play, without any need of a story. Things like fighting games come to mind – they are about the action, the story is just window dressing.
But, back to graphics. Pick up a game made in the late 90’s early 2000’s and you will truly be amazed at the evolution in graphics. Things like plants have gone from flat images to entire fields of grass, with each blade’s path calculated as it blows in the simulated wind. Character models have gone from freaky alien looking things, with about four polygons per face, to amazingly detailed high definition people, with fully detailed clothing and millions of polygons to accentuate every facial feature. It is a lot of fun to rediscover, or discover for the first time, some of these old games. That brings me to the subject of abandonware, a great find for anyone who wants free stuff without DRM – which is pretty much everybody in the world. Named along the same standards as hardware, software, and firmware, abandonware refers to software and other products which a company has stopped supporting and released to the public. Many abandonware products are outdated software and games which the company no longer cares to maintain the copyright on, as a result they are free to download and play. A word of warning, many old games were designed to run on DOS, so you will need an emulator like DOSBox, and a bit of code to get them started. Though sometimes even that small nuisance can be avoided, as it seems some developers have realized that people are still interested in their classic games. Some of these developers have created the code necessary to run the programs on Xp and Vista – in many cases if it works on Vista it will work on Windows 7. Also, if you have any of the old disks lying around try reinstalling the game, Age of Empires 2 failed horribly on my PC when it was running Vista, but runs perfectly now that I am running Windows 7, so try it out.
So, this is my spiel for this issue – remember the games that got you interested in this hobby, that graphics are great and will keep progressing, but that they are not the most important thing in a game. Do some searches online for abandonware and you will be amazed at some of the amazing games that are still out there, with amazing stories and characters waiting to be rediscovered. Keep on Gaming.
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