I have mentioned this channel for 2 years in my blog as I'm a big supporter. I wish to visit the cave and know holly but I can't do weekends as I had a heart attack in September and I care for my mother so have no support to cover me while I go. I hope the cave opens during the week some day. Just saying thanks to neil and the gang. Excelsior all. Such great work from the team. Hello to Holly:-)
Great episode. Vintage Computing for me is more about connecting with people who have the same passion, sharing knowledge, learning and discovering new machines/games/software from the past and of course the new produced titles. So many things connected to this hobby. The last thing i personally do is gaming :)
Games do not age. Gamers do. Take a person who has never experienced any gaming and start them with say an Atari 2600 and work their way up and they are going to experience the same things we did. A good game is a good game and they are going to like and dislike many of the games we did back in the day. For example, Goldeneye is a good game. Just because developers came along later and refined the FPS control style or improved graphical fidelity doesn't invalidate the original. The gamer just grew older, impatient, and/or comfortable in their new QoL ways of doing things. None of that is the games fault... Gaming is an art form. Do people judge The Beatles or Pink Floyd because they recorded their music in analog???
Battle Of The Solar System and a prototype game called Tank Battle were also on that system. He actually fixed F15 5 years ago, rather than this week. It's also got a pretty nice frame rate compared to computer games of that era.
"Working on the hobby is the hobby" -- Absolutely it is. I spend most of my play time recapping PSUs, designing PCBs, sketching plans for a fully electrified and climate-controlled shed, building shelves and racks, etc. At the moment, I'm designing my own little service provider with POTS, v.90 56k, ISDN, ADSL, cable TV, and cable modem service. If all I had to do was turn something on and play Willy Beamish for an hour, I dunno what I would do with myself. Games are just an excuse to play with the hardware.
I've been MIA for a couple of episodes and not caught up yet, but mention of flight sims reminded me that I saw a video of a brand new flight sim for the Atari XL/XE called F-16 Falcon Strike and I don't know if that's got a mention yet, but seems somewhat significant to have something new for combat flight sim on the platform that Microprose first released F15 Strike Eagle. :-)
Nintendo really can be their own worst enemies. It's really sad how Japan is falling behind in tech generally due to lack of risk taking and adherence to ancient principles.
If its current gen stuff, I can understand it being a priority for Nintendo, but when it's end of life, no longer supported hardware or software that you can not purchase - where is the harm? Especially the price older games sell for.
I think on the question of Xbox emulation and backwards compatibility... My understanding is that the "compatible" games only work because they rely on downloading a patch that is downloaded the first time a prior generation game is inserted. I think unless they can run an old game on the console and then extract/rip out the patches, they won't get preserved for future emulation efforts. A white room universal patching system might be needed or as Neil said... Why not just emulate the old system to begin with.
I think the online fighting games are brilliant as it gives you that arcade vibe but some of these games are ridiculous open worlds it's just hours of your life down the toilet.
Nintendo is high up on my hate list. I will never buy anything from them ever again because of the way they go about with their "legal team", and I am ignoring their legacy.
