I read about this on various other sites this weekend and I was trying it out this morning. It's a Halo "demake" to make the game look like it was made for the Atari 2600. Controls are simple with the arrow keys moving Master Chief and the space bar making him fire his gun. You have to find the gun first and it's one screen up from the stop. I played this for a little bit and it's pretty fun, reminds me of Berserk or Frenzy except you can only shoot left and right. If you have some time to kill it's worth checking out.
HALO 2600
Showing posts with label Atari. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Atari. Show all posts
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Monday, July 19, 2010
Standing the Test of Time
The Second Look I just posted about Mario 64 had me thinking about something that's been on my mind for awhile now. I strongly believe that newer games just do not stand the test of time. With 3D graphics and polygons being introduced into gaming we've become jaded by what makes a game fun. One of the first things anyone notices about a game is the way it looks and this can skew people's opinions of a game. If it isn't all nice and shiny people will ignore it in favor of the new hotness with all the graphical bells and whistles. I'm guilty of this as well one of the first thing that hit me when I played Halo 3 for the first time was it didn't look that great and I thought that the big flagship title for the 360 should of been the best looking game on the system but it was still a fun game to play even though it looked like a first Xbox game. It's rare lately to play a game that just seems like a classic something you'll remember 20 years from now fondly and could still pick up and play all the way through.
With that being said I think gaming peaked in the 16-bit era. The Super Nintendo was dominating with the Genesis in a very close second and you had the underdog Turbo Graphx 16 trying to keep up and the PC leading it's own followers down a different path that would lead most of the innovation we see in console games today. All the different systems had different games with exclusives that stayed exclusives and actually gave you a reason to own all the gaming machines that were out then. While a lot of these games had good graphics for the time they had to have interesting art styles to separate them from the other. You can look at a Mario game and tell it's not Sonic. Final Fantasy did not look like Dragon Quest and so on. Today the endless streams of military shooters all look the same or you're in space shooting the same guys with the same laser and while these games can be fun they just don't stand apart except in name.
I strongly believe that when you discuss truly "classic" games you need to stick to the 16 bit or earlier era. Mention Gears of War 2 me and yeah I loved playing that game it was a ton of fun but is it a classic? No it's not something will come along and do Gears of War better then the Gears franchise will be forgotten not just by me but everyone. Even my beloved God of War I don't think is a classic. Another game by the same group of people that does the fighting and camera better with some slight tweaks to the game play can make God of War seem unplayable and broken. But a game like Super Mario World? It's just classic almost platforming perfection. The controls are responsive the game is beautiful even by today's standards it still holds up. The first two Sonic games do too, they're just fun to play with very very interesting zones, remember the first time you played the Casino Zone? Yeah I do and I'll never forget it but ask me about a part in Halo 3 and I may not be sure and need to go look online to refresh my memory.
Another thing from the past that I miss is that games were just different. Even though Mario and Sonic were both platformers they were completely different games. Today with the saturation of FPS games they all look the same shooting miscellaneous middle eastern guys with you're m-16 with a holographic site on it. With not a whole lot if anything at all different with them in a brown and grey world why use these advanced graphics engines to make bright bold colors when they do brown so well? I know these wars are in the desert but even the games that are in space are all grey and metal looking. Even as fantastic as Killzone 2 looked it was all brown and grey. DOOM took place in space and then Hell but it had some color to it bright colors we need to bring this back.
Most modern games you play them and forget I do have a few that have stood out to me and could very well be considered a classic, Demon's Souls is one and you can read why a few articles back. Another one that came out that I really really and I mean really enjoyed was Borderlands it did something different with the current FPS model and even though it took place in a desert waste land it was still colorful and looked amazing. Lately I've been more into the indie 2D games that are around, Cave Story, La-Mulana and all that kind of stuff. I remember more about Cave Story than I do most of the games I played last year.
I'm not saying I don't like new games because I do. A lot of them are fantastic but the overall "me too" system of copying is getting old and I don't see it going away anytime soon. Games need to be like the old school and not try to imitate but innovate and really do we need so many sequels so fast? Make us wait from a bit before we get the next game, but that's for another time.
With that being said I think gaming peaked in the 16-bit era. The Super Nintendo was dominating with the Genesis in a very close second and you had the underdog Turbo Graphx 16 trying to keep up and the PC leading it's own followers down a different path that would lead most of the innovation we see in console games today. All the different systems had different games with exclusives that stayed exclusives and actually gave you a reason to own all the gaming machines that were out then. While a lot of these games had good graphics for the time they had to have interesting art styles to separate them from the other. You can look at a Mario game and tell it's not Sonic. Final Fantasy did not look like Dragon Quest and so on. Today the endless streams of military shooters all look the same or you're in space shooting the same guys with the same laser and while these games can be fun they just don't stand apart except in name.
I strongly believe that when you discuss truly "classic" games you need to stick to the 16 bit or earlier era. Mention Gears of War 2 me and yeah I loved playing that game it was a ton of fun but is it a classic? No it's not something will come along and do Gears of War better then the Gears franchise will be forgotten not just by me but everyone. Even my beloved God of War I don't think is a classic. Another game by the same group of people that does the fighting and camera better with some slight tweaks to the game play can make God of War seem unplayable and broken. But a game like Super Mario World? It's just classic almost platforming perfection. The controls are responsive the game is beautiful even by today's standards it still holds up. The first two Sonic games do too, they're just fun to play with very very interesting zones, remember the first time you played the Casino Zone? Yeah I do and I'll never forget it but ask me about a part in Halo 3 and I may not be sure and need to go look online to refresh my memory.
Another thing from the past that I miss is that games were just different. Even though Mario and Sonic were both platformers they were completely different games. Today with the saturation of FPS games they all look the same shooting miscellaneous middle eastern guys with you're m-16 with a holographic site on it. With not a whole lot if anything at all different with them in a brown and grey world why use these advanced graphics engines to make bright bold colors when they do brown so well? I know these wars are in the desert but even the games that are in space are all grey and metal looking. Even as fantastic as Killzone 2 looked it was all brown and grey. DOOM took place in space and then Hell but it had some color to it bright colors we need to bring this back.
Most modern games you play them and forget I do have a few that have stood out to me and could very well be considered a classic, Demon's Souls is one and you can read why a few articles back. Another one that came out that I really really and I mean really enjoyed was Borderlands it did something different with the current FPS model and even though it took place in a desert waste land it was still colorful and looked amazing. Lately I've been more into the indie 2D games that are around, Cave Story, La-Mulana and all that kind of stuff. I remember more about Cave Story than I do most of the games I played last year.
I'm not saying I don't like new games because I do. A lot of them are fantastic but the overall "me too" system of copying is getting old and I don't see it going away anytime soon. Games need to be like the old school and not try to imitate but innovate and really do we need so many sequels so fast? Make us wait from a bit before we get the next game, but that's for another time.
Friday, July 9, 2010
PC Gaming in a Console World
Like many people my age I started playing games on an Atari 2600. My dad and I would play the living hell out of Combat until the 2600 eventually died on us. As I got a little older I played in arcades until they just vanished from existence. Eventually the NES came into the house and that was it I was hooked. Well I had the Nintendo consoles of the time, NES to a SNES and so on. When I was around 16 I got my first PC. It was a Pentium 75hz with 4 megs of ram. I’d played various PC games before I owned one, Doom, the Sierra adventure games and some D&D stuff. After I got my hands on my own PC that was it, I still played consoles but my main gaming platform was the PC and I would only touch my console for console specific stuff. PC had these great FPS games and I just fell in love with the RTS games. Overall it was just a more complicated set of games at a time when just getting the game to run was a game in itself. Well that went on for a few years and I eventually let my PC get a little outdated and instead of upgrading I went with a Xbox 360 as my primary console, four of those later and I was with my PS3. One thing though I did own the original Xbox, PS1/2, Gamecube and all that crap but I rarely played them. Once the new console glimmer went away they sat for long times, eventually going on Ebay to sell for PC parts. Well with my choice to go to the console for this current generation of games I was met with frustration. The 360 we all know is just a cluster fuck and I like my PS3 but it can be a pain to deal with too. So about two years ago I made a decision to get back into PC gaming. I ordered the parts and slapped together a rig that could run modern games. I had some catching up to do. Of coarse I played Crysis and got into a series that’s one of my all time favorites, STALKER. I knew my choice was a wise one and I’m never looking back.
One thing I noticed when I came back into the PC fold was the amount of console to PC ports that were out there. I remember it wasn’t like it is now and the PC version was usually a crap port that had trouble running and when it did it ran like ass. But today most of these ports run fine sometimes look way better than the console version and can benefit from the mods people make. It’s great to see when a developer lets the fans make changes to their games, sometimes for the better. STALKER:SOC is a good example of this right now. I’m currently as of this writing trying out the LURK mod for it and it’s interesting playing a game I love with the same setting and story but the game play is a lot different. I just think that is the best thing about PC gaming, well that and the graphics not that graphics make a game but I like to see the best I can.
I know people say the PC market is dying and not worth putting the games out for the platform anymore but look at something like Steam. Valve has found a way to make buying games an addiction. I see a game on Steam for 5 bucks and I don’t usually care what it is or if I own it on disc already, being able to just play without a disc and not keep that stuff around is good enough reason for me.
The consoles are slowly catching up in terms of features and what they can output it’s almost as if you have a little PC sitting next to your TV. I think in the future we will not have a Sony or Microsoft gaming machines but just TV side PC’s that a lot of companies make that all play the same format of game. When digital distribution is the plan of the day and you don’t walk into a Gamestop or Best Buy to get a game is when I think this will take hold and the whole industry will be nothing but “PC” games.
One thing I noticed when I came back into the PC fold was the amount of console to PC ports that were out there. I remember it wasn’t like it is now and the PC version was usually a crap port that had trouble running and when it did it ran like ass. But today most of these ports run fine sometimes look way better than the console version and can benefit from the mods people make. It’s great to see when a developer lets the fans make changes to their games, sometimes for the better. STALKER:SOC is a good example of this right now. I’m currently as of this writing trying out the LURK mod for it and it’s interesting playing a game I love with the same setting and story but the game play is a lot different. I just think that is the best thing about PC gaming, well that and the graphics not that graphics make a game but I like to see the best I can.
I know people say the PC market is dying and not worth putting the games out for the platform anymore but look at something like Steam. Valve has found a way to make buying games an addiction. I see a game on Steam for 5 bucks and I don’t usually care what it is or if I own it on disc already, being able to just play without a disc and not keep that stuff around is good enough reason for me.
The consoles are slowly catching up in terms of features and what they can output it’s almost as if you have a little PC sitting next to your TV. I think in the future we will not have a Sony or Microsoft gaming machines but just TV side PC’s that a lot of companies make that all play the same format of game. When digital distribution is the plan of the day and you don’t walk into a Gamestop or Best Buy to get a game is when I think this will take hold and the whole industry will be nothing but “PC” games.
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