Diminutive Diatribes: Hardware Laments and The Future of Old Games...

Guys, gonna be honest, I am just dead this weekend.  I've worked myself too hard, taken a huge exam on Saturday, and been going through a lot of stress and emotional whosits and whatsits.  So...sadly, no creator spotlight this week.  I did write up a little something for you all though, so enjoy.  Fingers crossed we get back to our regularly scheduled program next week.

Diminutive Diatribes: Hardware Laments and The Future of Old Games...

            It's fair to say that nostalgia is a big thing in video gaming.  The resurgence of the 16-bit and 8-bit pixel art style in video games, chiptunes, emulation, virtual console, everything points to the fact that we have an infatuation with games from our past.  And this can be for various reasons.  Sometimes it's purely rose tinted glasses, where a bad game felt good because we played it when we were younger and needed it as an outlet.  Sometimes it really was very polished, because with the limited memory of the 8 and 16-bit eras, you had to have a focused, polished game, because there were no patches and you wanted to build brand loyalty.  However, I've often asked the question, what happens to our old games as time goes on?

What happens to our old games when there is no one to play or love them?

            Now, since nostalgia is popular, software itself is not necessarily something to be afraid of losing.  Clone consoles of the NES or SNES are available, right now, to play original or reproduction copies of old games.  Software that was originally only built to run on DOS is being retooled by GOG so that even a Windows 7 machine can run Math Blaster or King's Quest.  We have an almost infinite number of roms for emulation software available, ostensibly, for free on the internet.  So, that part of old gaming will actually never die.  It will be around in some form or another for as long as our digital age lasts.  However, there are some things that...concern me.

They save as many games as they can, but even GOG can't do everything.

            Has anyone ever watched the Angry Video Game Nerd and seen him have to fiddle with the Atari 2600 or the Magnavox Odyssey or the Action Max?  Those games have hardware components that make them nearly impossible to play on a traditional LCD flat screen television.  The display is off and the games with them seldom work properly...you need an old CRT television, which is what the machines were originally designed to work on.  These games are, for all intents and purposes, doomed to fall prey to the march of progress, where sooner or later the components that are necessary for them to work will simply no longer exist.  CRTs will be phased out or replacement parts, like the cable box for the Odyssey, will no longer be made.  For me...that's kind of scary.  And not just because of old gaming either.

When the Angry Video Game Nerd reviewed Pong Consoles, the game was the machine...so if the machine was broken, you were flat out of luck.  That's what scares me about our modern games...

            In the modern era, hardware has become a big seller of games, not just on graphical prowess, but on the promise of a new experience.  The Wii, Playstation Move, and Microsoft's Kinect all act upon the idea of motion controls.  While we're in the present era, few people have given any thought to whether or not these games, good or bad, will ever be unplayable because we will be unable to find the component parts needed to make them work or properly emulate said component parts on another platform, like a PC.  However, this is a very real concern that people need to be aware of.

A huge misstep, in my opinion.

            With the axing of backwards compatibility in the Playstation 4 and Xbox One era of gaming, this leaves a number of games in limbo.  For example, many early games on the PS3 used the sixaxis motion controls of the proprietary Playstation controllers to create key features in their games, such as Ratchet and Clank Future's tornado weapon, which was controlled by tilting the controller, Lair's dragon flying which functioned in the same way, or a personal favorite of mine, Folklore, which used the tilting of the controller to rip souls out of enemies.  Tell me, what happens when the PS3 becomes an antique in say, 20 years, and all the sixaxis controllers are broken?  Folklore would be left in the dust bin, unplayable because we lack the proprietary software.

To pull out the soul, you must tilt it into the proper alignment with the sixaxis controller in Folklore.  What happens when there are no more sixaxis controllers?

            So, I want people to take a minute and think about all the hardware gimmicks being pushed down our throats.  We bemoan many of them but at the same time, if we have any games amongst those that we like, we could be out of luck when the hardware stops working.  Think about how difficult it is for an emulation program to run a rom.  It basically copies the hardware settings on a PC that existed for the said console and maps the controls to the keyboard or a USB controller.  Relatively simple.  However, how can you tell a PC to handle gyroscopic motion controls?  How can you tell a PC to recognize a slash or a swipe with the controller for Dragon Quest Swords?  How do you tell a PC to tilt this way or that in a game?  This is harder, because the only real way to simulate it, at present, is with hardware, either the proprietary hardware or a similar cloned version.  Even if we don't like some of the hardware tricks, like the 3DS's 3d...this may be the only generation which gets to experience them.  I'd say treasure the unique experiences and try to preserve them, because for lots of gaming, the future is hardware failure and abandonment, avoiding complete oblivion only through the graces of youtube and wikipedia.

Don't take it for granted.  When it's gone, it might never come back.

            I don't have an answer for this problem other than be aware and try to preserve so that if we ever need to make a clone console or whatever, we can, but I also don't want to end this on such a downer.  The idea that swathes of games could be lost to the future because they are tied to a special piece of hardware that no one makes anymore is terribly sad...however, some savy gamers are trying to find ways around it.

            Software is a versatile thing and many hackers and programmers try to work around issues that the hardware had.  This can be shown through the creation of clone consoles and the like, but also with certain special projects online.  The BS Legend of Zelda project is an excellent example of this.  The BS Legend of Zelda games were three titles, technically four but let's not get into that, released only in Japan for the Satellaview, an add-on to the Super Famicom.  The Satellaview was a great example of a hardware system that we couldn't carry into the future, because it relied on satellite broadcasts for the games to work.  Orchestral music, game data, and live voices would be transmitted via the satellites and arrive at your console.  However, when service for the Satellaview cancelled and the satellites stopped transmitting, many games on it were thought either lost to time or to the few savy collectors who made back ups on blank cartridges.  Some savy hackers, however, managed to find the code for the Legend of Zelda games on Satellaview and repair the missing code, putting in a soundtrack for the music and adding cues to make up for the voices.  It's now available, online, right here.  And BS Zelda wasn't the only one.  Other games, like the fantastic Radical Dreamers were also saved through the use of the internet.

On the left, we have the NES Zelda, on the right the BS Legend of Zelda from Satellaview.  So glad this was saved ^_^

            Hope isn't dead yet for old games that rely on hardware.  As we advance into the future, some hackers or programmers realize the value of certain control schemes and can create mods or whole programs to simulate them.  The Logitech USB controller, for example, has a special program which not only lets you customize controls for PC games, even ones without controllers support, but can also simulate mouse movement with the analogue sticks.  If that is possible, perhaps even motion control could one day be simulated in our USB controllers.  Perhaps...

A miracle worker.  I've even played point and click games on this...

            While the thought of Folklore vanishing forever makes me sad, hope isn't lost.  If enough people remember and like a game and there are those who like it enough to try and fix it for the future, like the BS Zelda crew, then even hardware failures might not be the death of certain games.  We can keep them alive.

            However, the future isn't written.  We don't know if any of these hypothetical hackers will make it so we can emulate motion controls or make clone consoles of the Wii or 360 years and years down the line...and even if they could, will they?  Will they care?  So, I say take pleasure in the new experiences offered by new hardware...cause they won't be here forever.  Remember them.  Treasure them.  And try to keep their legacy alive, because I don't want us, as gamers, to lose any part of our history.  It's all valuable, even the bad parts.

What he said.

            The future isn't hopeless.  It's waiting for us to create...so we should try and create one worth living in.  A future where hardware laments don't exist, and old games are just as new as the day they were released, 30-50 years previously.