retro

To Play or Not to Play Diablo 2

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I have played a lot of Diablo 2 but for unknown reasons, I can’t stop thinking about the rerelease. In an effort to convince myself not to get it I have outlined a list of arguments and then, in completely self-defeating fashion, counter arguments, aka reasons why I should just get the damn game.

Why I shouldn’t play Diablo 2: It’s old

Diablo 3 is a better game and makes its predecessor feel dated and less awesome.

Why that argument doesn’t hold up: I didn’t like 3

Pretending for a minute I don’t routinely enjoy older games, I can entertain this position specifically aimed at Diablo style click-heavy ARPGs. OK, I am done entertaining. I played Diablo 3 close to launch and did not have a great time. Some of my negative feelings stemmed from the digital key reader my friend needed in order to even play the game, some were based on tired old arguments about aesthetics, and the rest comes from a legitimate feeling that the game simply wasn’t up to snuff. →  You fool. Don’t you understand? No one wishes to read on…

Retro Games, Presentation, and Gatekeeping

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For those of you who are white collar workers, imagine the following scenario. It’s happened to me more than once in real life, and perhaps it’s happened to you too …

A new bit of jargon recently crept into your industry. For now, let’s just make up a word, like … “scropely.” 

Everyone starts to use it, slowly at first, but it quickly builds momentum. At first you think you understand what scropely means, but then a few people use it in a new and seemingly contradictory way. Now you’re back to square one.

At some point you’re in a large meeting. The new jargon is being tossed around freely – everyone is talking about how something is or isn’t scropely. At some point it’s your turn to talk, and you bravely (or foolishly) state:

“I’m not sure about you folks, but I honestly don’t know what it means for something to be scropely.”

You fear that you will be mocked, but the opposite is true. →  Get lame or get out.

Waiting for Arc the Lad – PlayStation RPG Memories

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Currently playing: The Sexy Brutale

In the early months of 1995 my friends and I poured over every drop of PlayStation information we came across, whether it be a magazine ad with Polygon Man telling us the system was more powerful than god, Sony suggesting we were UR NOT E, or the giant cardboard cutout of whip wielding Sofia at the local Palmer Video that still managed to be half an hour away. The older consoles were looking less appealing by the day (thanks, Vectorman), especially when compared to generation-defining beauty such as the widely advertised Battle Arena Toshinden (Sofia wore leather, you see, which really pops when rendered in cardboard).

By the midpoint of the 90s my friends and I were all 13 and desired a higher caliber of digital entertainment regardless of platform – the RPG. The first one previewed for the upcoming PlayStation console was called Arc the Lad and we all eagerly anticipated the game and expected it would be available soon after the system, at this point having no concept of localization, publishers, and all the messy stuff at the rotten core of the game industry. →  Welcome to read zone!

The Quest to Make Everything Playable

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I have been on a long, expensive, two pronged quest to (1) make all games playable with original hardware (2) on my modern television. The two huge caveats are that it may all stop working at some point when the HDMI standard is replaced by something good, and “all games” actually means a lot of games, not “all games” as you would reasonably infer by my choice of the words “all games.” I covered some of my journey setting up old consoles for my OLED months back, so it is time to discuss the game portion. I will spoil it for you now – the answer is piracy.

Just joking, obviously I have cartridges and CD/DVDs for anything I have in ROM or ISO form because I deeply respect copyright law. It feels like just having the games should account for the majority of this whole project, but ripping or finding them in dark corners of the internet is the easier and cheaper part of the process. →  Europa Universalis IV: Articles of War

What to Do with my Apple II

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Currently playing: Nier Automata

I have an old Apple II. I got it years ago at an antique store, for much less than the seller could have asked. The only problem is that it was just the Apple II, without any disk drives, and no software. That means I could do absolutely nothing with it.

Eventually, some family members got me a (single) disk drive and a copy of Apple DOS for Christmas. I eagerly plugged it all up, only to have it go up in smoke. Turns out that when the power supply gets old enough, it can’t really handle the extra power draw from the floppy drive(s). I don’t think I’ll ever forget the sight of blue smoke (or the smell of it) coming from inside the box.

So now I have a broken Apple II. It’s been sitting in my basement, on a cheap Ikea end table that is entirely too short to sit next to. I recently had to move it to make room for some exercise equipment, and that’s when I realized that I had to decide what I was going to do with it. →  Game is dead. Game remains dead. And we have killed it.

Affordable GOG Game Recommendations Part 2

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Currently playing: Don't Starve Together

More GOG recommendations, continued from Part 1 here.

More Strategy games

Knights & Merchants: The Peasants’ Rebellion – If you’re into sims, this sure is a sim. When I had the time to play the original release (which had no fast-forward) I reviewed it. I find myself mostly agreeing with my earlier self; it’s an interesting game if you’re into the idea of building a supply chain from scratch, sort of like a peaceful, less dangerous cousin of Dwarf Fortress. I’d probably recommend the more recent Banished over this one, if only for the clunky combat K&M requires you to engage in – but if you want to build a medieval ant farm and then leverage it to crush your enemies, this might be your game.

Seven Kingdoms 2 – This is a deep, relatively slow-paced RTS that was largely ignored at release. I’ve never actually met another real-life person that played this, so if you claim to have played it I will assume that you are a robot but have good taste in games so you’re cool. →  Ridge Reader V

Affordable GOG Game Recommendations Part 1

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Since videolamer has begun the process of following in Buzzfeed’s esteemed footsteps, it’s only natural that we reach for the low-hanging fruit of picking out games we played and telling you to play them. GOG (www.gog.com), briefly branded as Good Old Games, is stacked with tons of games created by incredibly talented developers years ago, most of whom will never see any of the money you spend because the rights have been sold and resold dozens of times over. But at least if you spend money on these 20-year-old games, it will assuage the slight twinge of guilt you might have felt if you pirated them.

Many of these games are more than 20 years old. Some run in DOS/DOSBox, but many have fan patches available. Check the corresponding GOG forum first – there is typically a stickied topic for mods/patches. All of these games are $9.99 or under on GOG, and many go on sale frequently.

Role-playing games

Dark Sun: Shattered Lands – I personally have been meaning to get back to this game for years, having not played it for at least 15. →  Screw Jesus, this article’s the real deal

Connecting Old Consoles to New TVs: Now with Fewer Details

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My old Pioneer plasma that now lives in a closet covered in a blanket had a lot of video inputs. Component and VGA inputs were casualties of my recent upgrade to OLED. Time marches on, unless you still want to play old game consoles or accidentally slip and fall and become frozen in a crevasse. Then, assuming you fall into the former and not the frozen category, you need to decide if composite video is sufficient for your fully-thawed, unconventional, yet not uncouth tastes.

For me, composite would not do, partly because I realized my new TV was capable of it only after I finished the project I will be explaining in excruciating detail. This fact aside, in order to get the best picture out of the old games I always plan to play but rarely do, I learned I would need to embark on a potentially never-ending-always-spending project. And now you can, too!

First, a quick technology primer written by a layman for other people who reworked their major’s required credits to not require college level electronics. →  SaGa 3: Shadow or Write

Review – Retro Game Challenge

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Retro Game Challenge is rather difficult to describe to the uninitiated, despite the fact that the overall concept is deliberately simple. Its creation is the result of Game Center CX, a popular Japanese TV program in which comedian Shinya Arino is forced to play old Famicom games until he either beats them, or the day ends. Coupled with a variety of other game-related features and the interaction between Arino and his crew, the show is said to be incredibly funny (while also being a nostalgic look at the ever loved Famicom era).

Its popularity spawned a game with its own clever concept: a virtual version of Arino decides to trap you in the 1980’s, where the kid version of you is forced to complete challenges in a variety of games with the help of kid Arino. The twist is that none of them are “real” Famicom games, but instead are new retro styled games meant to parody and champion a variety of classic titles from the era. →  Ratchet & Read

Rerouting the ‘Tap

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Sorry to be a bit late in posting, but there is some important news in Gametap land. The service is being acquired by European company Metaboli, which offers a Gametap style service exclusive to Europe. The deal lays it down like so: both services will keep their names in their respective regions, and Gametap will still be maintained in Atlanta, but Time Warner will step down by year’s end and Metaboli will be in complete control of business decisions and management.

We have known since August that Time Warner has been looking to sell Gametap, so this does not come as a surprise. The question now is whether this will cause any major changes, for good or bad. For instance, price changes have been on the minds of many people on the ‘tap forums. Gametap’s system is fairly simple – it offers a few free games via web browser and the official client, while a $10 monthly fee nets you all the games. →  Just read it.