Author: rob

The Future Of Retro Game Reporting

A Quick History

Video game news, reviews, articles , opinion pieces and magazines have existed just about as long as gaming has. In 1975, Popular Electronics wrote about Pong in an article titled TV Game Turns Home Set into Tennis Court. In 1980, Playboy even had a crack at it. Electronic Games, Video Games Magazine, Antic, Nintendo Power, Game Pro and many more magazines were wildly popular.

It didn’t take long for television to jump on the bandwagon. Early TV shows like Starcade, The Computer Chronicles(sometimes), Video Power, GamePro TV and High Score pioneered video based video game news, reviews and competition. They were followed later by X-Play, Attack Of The Show, and CNET TV.

This lead us to where we are now with anyone creating video game related podcasts, Youtube and Twitch channels. It can be argued that one of the first was PcEngineFX.Com where Aaron posted articles and videos about his appreciation for the TurboGrafx-16 and PC-FX.

There’s one thing in common with all of these examples. They weren’t focusing on retro gaming. Everything was still new and exciting.

I consider Retro Gaming Radio, The Retro League and Retronauts to be the most influential early retro video game podcasts.

Where We Were

Many of the above examples were created by people who were simply video game enthusiasts. In the 1990s, many of my friends, while reading Nintendo Power or Die Hard GameFan would dream of somehow working in the video game industry. Programming video games? Testing video games? Reviewing and reporting on video games? Most didn’t seem to care. As long as they could dedicate their lives to their childhood passion. Can you blame them? Some of those people, like Jeff Gerstmann, Glenn Rubenstein, Jeremy Parish, Chris Charla, Daemon Hatfield and more took the initiative and made it happen. So we had our peers, who grew up with games almost since they were invented, reporting and reviewing them.

Around the turn of the century, with the release of the Playstation 2, Gamecube and Xbox, was when many of that generation fell back in love with the games of the past. The 8 and 16 bit artist treasures that shaped them as human beings. Purchasing old Nintendo games in bulk was a cheap as it would ever be. Computer emulation was quickly advancing and widely available with emulators like Nesticle, Snes9x and Kega Fusion were becoming more and more accurate.

This nostalgia was infectious. Retro video game prices were climbing fast. Retro podcasts were popping up everywhere.

Those of us that were there, that lived it, would tell our nerdy stories. We would interview our programming heroes and get the real story behind many of the games we loved.

Where We Are Now

We are currently at a significant changing point in retro video game reporting. Everyone has a podcast. EVERYONE. The well researched and accurate podcasts and Youtube channels are being drowned out by the rest. The exact same problem exists in video games, music, books, etc. We are all the creators and publishers with little gatekeeping. Which is great until it isn’t. I’m sure AI will not help.

Everyone’s opinion deserves to be heard. But let’s not let that mute the facts of gaming history.

For example, If you look and this article and this article, they are surprised that when you die in Super Mario Bros, you can continue in the same world if you hold down A then press start. Though I haven’t comb every old magazine for this “cheat”, this was common knowledge to everyone on the school playground back then. With a quick search, I can find a GameFaq reference to this, written in 1999. On page 31 of the Official Nintendo Player’s Guide from 1987, they document it as well.

Credits: Official Nintendo Player’s Guide. Archive.org

This was a very popular book. You either owned it or your friend’s brother did and you read it any time you were at their house. With a simple search, these articles could have been written much differently. Possibly a focus on old strategy guides and how it may be becoming a lost art? These articles aren’t lying. They aren’t nefarious by any means. But they to paint a false picture of the past. It’s as if this is a new undiscovered secret. But in terms of “secrets” or “cheats”, this was known by pretty much everyone. Though this may sound petty, I do think it is important lost context.

Then there are all the younger Youtube channels that cover retro gaming. Again, most of them don’t deliver lies. And if they do, it does not seem intensional. But it’s as if I’m witnessing generation loss in realtime. Oral history told over and over, slightly different each time. A random person’s third hand account becoming dogma.

As for the context part, I almost don’t fault them. It’s not like there’s a card catalogue reference they could use to easily fact check themselves.

The Future

I don’t claim that my podcast adds anything but context. Remember when I told you everyone has a podcast? People like me, who lived through the birth of video gaming and the internet are getting pretty old. Soon, people my age will not be creating anymore. The only ones left to keep the retro video game stories alive will be people that weren’t there. And that’s ok. That’s what historians and enthusiasts are. There are great podcasts and Youtube channels that talk about old cars, movies, music, books, and really any topic that’s ever existed. None of them were there to experience it when it was first created. As The Simpsons in the image of this post stated “The children are the future, ya ya ya”.

Podcasts like The Retro Hour do an amazing job of letting the people that actually wrote the video games tell their story. Youtube channel Userlandia makes great videos debunking old computer and gaming myths.

Cranky old men like myself need to pass the torch. It will happen weather we like it or not. So we need to set up the next generation for success.

First, all interviews, references, etc should be cataloged and backed up on a place like Archive.org. Then, it should be cataloged and easily searchable via a user interface and an API. Ultimately, all the mobygames of the world should link to it.

This will be a heck of a lot of work. This is not just cataloging and linking interviews to video games. But PDFs, gamefaqs, etc.

With a tool like this, facts can be delivered to the next generation to retro video game creators.

2024-12-02
An Analogue Pocket XL Is the Video Game Console I’m Wishing For.

I own almost every console from the second generation to the current generation. Strange consoles like the FM Towns and Wonderswan are the few I’m missing. The Analogue Pocket and the Value Steam Deck are my two most play consoles. Both are perfect for play retro games. Both are well made and have very impressive custom operating systems. I sincerely hope Analogue takes some notes from Valve and releases an Analogue Pocket XL.

To my knowledge, in 2009, the Nintendo DSi XL is the first handheld console marketed as having a larger screen as a new feature. It could be debated that the Gameboy Light and the Neo Geo Pocket Color had it beat by a few years. But a light and the existence of color were the selling features of those consoles.

The Nintendo DSi XL is when i bought my first DS. It is when it felt large enough to be usable to me. I also waited for the New 3DS XL to launch before purchasing my first 3DS. The larger screens made the games feel that much bigger, in a still manageable hand held size.

The Steam Deck is fantastic at emulating all the way to the Playstation 3 era of games. Depending on the game, you may be able to upscale, add wide screen mode, and other tweaks that would not exist on original hardware. For most people, using EmuDeck or Batocera on the Steam Deck is more than enough. However, with all software emulation, input and screen latency exists. On power systems like the Steam Deck or Xbox Series X, it will hardly be noticeable unless you are playing a souls-like game or a platformer that requires perfect timing. Even simply games like Super Mario Brothers or Devil’s Crush could feel “off”. It could make you feel like you are a far worse player than you actually are. Processor intensive solutions like run ahead can help. But see what’s happening here? All you want to do is play a game. But now you are doing tech support.

Enter FPGA. In short, an FPGA chip can alter itself, via code, to work just like original hardware. This is not software emulation. Many wouldn’t even label it as emulation because it is a hardware solution. An open source FGPA solution, MisterFPGA can play games all the way up to the Nintendo 64. MisterFPGA could still have USB latency, but SNAC and Blisster mitigate it to almost nothing.

The Analogue Pocket uses an FPGA chip along with the OpenFGPA standard. To keep it the size of an original gameboy, it uses a smaller FGPA chip than the MisterFGPA uses. The Pocket and only run games as powerful as the Neo Geo and Sega CD. It cannot run Playstation or Nintendo 64 games. In fact, it even struggles to run some CD systems because the FPGA also has to emulate separate microprocessing unit to stream the BIN/CUE CD images.

The Steam Deck has the perfect form factor to a powerful CPU, heat dissipation, a large screen, and a larger battery to keep it all running for about two hours.

If Analogue released an FPGA device with the same general layout as the Steam Deck, it would be the perfect emulation system. It would be able to emulate all 32 bit systems, have a long enough battery life, a larger screen, and built in analog sticks for those 32 bit games. It would likely be able to be docked and played on a TV with bluetooth wireless.

Please, Analogue, make this happen. Take my money! Would you purchase a Pocket XL? Are there other features you’d like to see in it?

2024-12-02
Brave moves the Playstation 6 or next Xbox could take

Recently, Sony mentioned that the Playstation 5 is in the later part of its life cycle. Obviously many are speculating what the next generation console specs will be. I thought it would be fun to list some bold moves that either company could take. Keep in mind, I don’t necessarily think any of these ideas are likely or a good business move.

Move away from the x86/amd64 architecture.

Credit: Wikipedia

The Playstation 1 and 2 were MIPS CPUS. The Playstation 3 was a PowerPC CPU with many cell “synergistic processing elements”. The original Xbox was a Pentium III. Then they moved to the PowerPC architecture for the 360. Other than Nintendo, modern consoles have used the AMD64 architecture. This has been great for backwards compatibility.

ARM CPUs are all the rage now. Microsoft have been pushing their Windows 11 for Snapdragon pretty hard lately. The benchmarks have been great as well. Though unlikely, it is not out of the question for the next Xbox to be based on ARM. If Microsoft will have a portable version of their next console, ARM could make it more energy efficient. However, they would lose the backwards compatibility from this generation.

True backwards compatibility

Credit: xbox.com

Before the PS5 was announced, it was much speculated that it would be backwards compatible all the way back to the original Playstation. That would have been amazing. I am still disappointed that it didn’t actually happen. Xbox’s backwards comes close to being great. But then they stopped adding games.

It’s possible to emulate the PS3 on the SteamDeck. The next generation of consoles will be magnitudes more powerful than the current SteamDeck. There is just no excuse for the lack of backwards compatibility.

In the Xbox Series, Microsoft should have a default emulator. So if a game isn’t officially supported, it would run as it did on the original system. Upscaling and other features would be nice. But I’d be happy if it simply just played the game.

The PS6 could have “simple” emulation for PS1 through PS3. Because it will be likely that it will still be on an AMD64 stack, the PS4 and PS5 backwards compatibility should be easy.

These corporations argue that most people don’t use the backwards compatibility. That may be true. But of the ones that do, it’s really missed when it’s not there. I played PS1 and PS2 games on my PS3.

Backwards compatibility would give hackers one less reason to poke around in the system. If you can already play your old games on it, less of a reason to hack it to install emulators. I could understand if the architecture of the system was strange. But these systems are basically normal AMD PCs. Which brings me to the next idea.

PC mode

Credit: Microsoft.com

As previously stated, these consoles are basically PCs. Xbox works on a light Windows kernel. Just have PC mode.

It could be argued that this would result in less Windows licenses sold and Microsoft losing revenue. But this could be the DVD effect with the Playstation 2. Many university students could use it as an “everything machine”. They could do homework, watch blurays, stream movies, play games, and more. No need to purchase a computer and an xbox. And if they could only afford one video game console, this could be a reason to purchase an Xbox over a Playstation.

Sony could bring back Linux as an option. They offered it for the PS3 but eventually removed it. That resulted in a lawsuit and giving hackers a reason to start poking around. Linux mode would likely be less popular. But it would still open the possibility of Steam being installed.

Return to cartridge media

Credit: Wikipedia

Optical media like bluray are very cheap to press and have fairly large. The next generation “BDXL” can get up to 128GB. The problem is optical media is slow. This has been an issue since the 3do. Yes the TG16CD was first, but load times weren’t an issue.

SD cards have come down in price. 256GB can retail for as little as $30. Most games wouldn’t need nearly that much space. SD cards are much faster than optical media. Using an SD card type media would also allow physical media on a portable console. The latest SDUC standard allows for very large drive capacity. This has worked for Nintendo. Well, to a point. Nintendo uses very small cartridges which often still require the downloading of game assets.

Unfortunately, it is more likely there will be media “download” only consoles.

Gimmicky controllers

Credit: Wikipedia

With the exception of Nintendo, controllers have not changed much since the PS1’s dualshock. Consoles are starting to feel a bit stale. Let’s mix it up a little bit. Nintendo’s next console is rumored to have a scroll wheel. That seems fun. Or how about a screen instead of a touchpad? It could be useful to choose football patterns or maps. Literally, anything different.

TV direct streaming

Credit: Xbox.com

Having Playstation and Xbox apps in Samsung, LG, Sony and other brand name TVs would be outstanding. The Xbox and Playstation controllers would have to pair directly with the TV. Then games could be streamed from Xbox Cloud or Playstation Plus. But that isn’t a next gen console upgrade, is it?

What if your console could stream directly to the app? If your family is using your main TV, you could take your controller to a different room and stream locally to that TV. Sony’s Portal, Switch and Wii U’s GamePad try to solve that problem. Why require a separate device? Just use a TV app. Much like a SteamLink. Please Sony and Microsoft, just do this!

Conclusion

Have a favorite idea? Have an idea I didn’t lists? Please let me know in the comments!

This console generation feels stale and almost unnecessary. To be totally honest, most modern games don’t feel much different than PS3 and 360 games. Hopefully, most of the ray tracing and AI power in the next generation will be to make game development easier. That could result in less crunch time for game developers. Most games don’t need to look nicer than they currently do.

These consoles need to do something to differentiate themselves from each other. The PS5 and Xbox Series are pretty much the same. Their only real difference are the exclusives. As a result, Microsoft and Sony are purchasing and consolidation game studios, which isn’t good for anyone.

2024-11-25