2 posts tagged “retro”
A while ago I posted about the little G3 iMac and the PowerBook G3 I bought and how I thought they were great, which I am sure you remember and, given that I am typing this on the PowerBook, I think it's safe to say I haven't changed my mind just yet. So, when I was recently left to my own devices for a week, I thought I'd investigate this passion for so-called "obsolete" computer stuff. Or, more precisely, Macintosh stuff.
There is a very good reason I stayed away from the PC side of things - they are not in any way inspiring. I can recall my first 396SX machine, but I don't wish to relive that experience. No way am I going back to voluntarily creating DOS batch files just to get a game to work, or having to manually edit Config.sys or Autoexec.bat files in order to get Windows to work, no matter how cool I thought "Catacomb: The Abyss" or "The Rocketeer" were. Besides, I can happily run them on my Vaio as it's still fundamentally x86 architecture.
So, what's so appealing about old Mac stuff? Well, from a purely personal perspective, it goes back to the time I was going to get a computer for studying and doing my GCSE in Computer Studies on. Pocket money, birthday and christmas money and a generous father meant I had about £1500 saved up and I tried out a Macintosh Classic and an LC with 13" colour monitor. Compared to the 12MHz 286-based RM Nimbus harddisc-less machines at school (and they were good for the time, so how old do I feel?), both the Macs felt light years ahead in what they could do, but I couldn't afford the LC, the screen, software and a printer, and my dad wasn't keen on me spending hours in front of a 9" black and white screen. In the end, I was cajoled into buying the 386 and, whilst it did the job, I always felt a bit let down.
Having been a teenage computer geek, I obviously read Personal Computer World regularly (it used to be interesting and covered Mac and Unix as well as DOS - windows was only at 3.0/3.1 at that point) and I harboured a desire to work on machines such as NeXT, Sun and, the Holy Grail - a Silicon Graphics workstation. Unix, with a friendly GUI-led operating system that had multimedia, 3d and digital audio support in 1992? That was the stuff of dreams. In fact, a review of the Iris Indigo stated that whilst the Indigo cost nearly £15,000, as opposed to an average of £1,000 for a 386/486 PC, it was definitely worth the money as it was far more productive than trying to do the work on 10 or more PCs.
Later in life, whilst working as a software developer, I worked on SGI machines and they were truly as good as I'd hoped they would be. I bought myself an SGI Indigo on eBay for £150 (MIPS R4400 processor upgrade at 150MHz, with 192Mb of RAM and the Elan graphics, with 21" inch monitor) some time ago and I loved it.
Given that it was made in 1993, my dad (who is now 66 and who has zero experience of video editing) was able to find his way around and tinker with some video clips within ten minutes. I would personally say that the only systems worth using are a Mac running OSX (with Classic supported), a NeXT machine or an SGI machine running IRIX. Anything else is compromised.
Eventually, I bought myself a swanky new Powermac G4 (I was a early adopter of the G4) running OS9, then later OS X. It was everything I hoped it would be - usable, stable, reliable and a joy to work on. To put it in perspective, I later ran my own business and the Mac G4 was the preferred choice for video editing despite the fact it was sat next to a hugely expensive dual Xeon workstation with 4GB of memory. It just worked better and gave less hassle. Not only that, but I could probably sell the G4 setup for £200 today, despite it's age, whereas the windows machine is essentially worthless. Look on eBay for a used Powermac G5 (a machine that is some 4 or more years old now) and compare that to the cost of a Dell running a four year old Pentium. The price difference is down to the fact that Macs are usable for far longer (their obsolescence is far longer in coming). Windows bloats and bloats and you spend so much time fighting bad OS coding and built-to-a-price hardware, whereas the expensive (comparitively) Apple machines are still good as a workhorse years down the line. If you're more concerned about getting something done than about having the latest new toy, then buy a Mac. You won't ever regret it.
So, what does this have to do with my original point? Well, aside from an urge to pick up a Mac Classic (or, ideally, a Colour Classic II) for the sake of nostalgia, my love of my old Powerbook G3 means that I'm not likely to be playing Quake 4 anytime soon (ok, I have a PS3 and a PSP, but I was talking about computers!), so I looked into the world of abandonware games. My word, there's a ton of cool things you can play on your old Mac and, because in those days we thought the Megadrive (Sega Genesis to our US friends) was graphically amazing, it means gameplay had to be more engrossing and plots had to mean something. With that in mind, I've explored the universe of Cosmic Osmo (this is the first game any child of mine will play!), along with Broken Sword, Monkey Island 1 and 2, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Day of the Tentacle and Sam and Max.
If you noticed a pattern, then you're right - they are all graphical point and click adventures, a genre which is sadly underwhelming nowadays, but in the days when these were made, they were the nearest you'd get to playing a film and enjoying it.
I've posted a few clips to give you an idea of what you are missing - if in doubt, you don't need to buy an old Mac (although I would), you can run them under either ScummVM, or you could download a Mac emulator from the trusty old interweb.
Personal favourites of mine are:
Sam and Max (I love the cartoons, too, as I get the humour)
Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis - a great sequel to The Last Crusade and very funny in parts.
Day Of the Tentacle (again, it's funny as hell and looks great)
The final choice is Broken Sword - great scripting, great graphics, the sound is fantastic and you really get sucked in. I believe I've played Broken sword on every platform it's been released on. The second one is good, too, although the later sequel on the XBox was a bit poor.
So, have a look, enjoy and realise that whilst new games are lovely, sometimes you can't beat something a decade old for sheer enjoyment. And if anyone has an old Mac Classic/Classic II or Colour Classic they want to donate to aloving home, please let me know!
Today I picked up a copy of Segas' Megadrive Collection for the PSP, which could well be the best £15 I ever spent. It is, in a nutshell, a collection of 27 of the best games made for the little black box stuffed into your PSP for your hand-held delight. Today, I have played Sonic The Hedgehog until my thumb ached and, whilst trying some of the games that had passed me by the first time around, I loaded up Comix Zone and got the surprise of my life.
Comix Zone would, in all honesty, be worth the price of admission alone - it is simply amazing. You play the part of Sketch Turner, a groovy young comic book artist whose latest opus is struck by lightning, allowing the villain of the piece to escape and to trap you inside your own comic. You have to fight your way out in order to prevent the villain becoming fully real and dooming the world to be over-run by mutants. So far, so cliched.
The bit that took my breath away was the presentation - what could have been a fairly by-the-numbers scrolling beat 'em up is graphically amazing (especially considering when it was first made), with Sketch fighting his way from panel to panel in a comic book page. You see the villains' hand come into the screen and actually draw the bad guys and it is a truly unique and highly immersive experience. Add to this some solid gameplay and a learning curve that is just right and you are onto a winner. I would say that if you grew up with games in the age of the Amiga, ST, SNES and Megadrive then you have to buy this collection - Sonic, Sonic 2, Strider 3, Comix Zone, good conversions of Golden Axes 1, 2 and 3, Altered Beast...the list goes on. If you are of the younger persuasion you may find that the need for pixel-perfect timing is unforgiving and the learning curve is vertical - us older gamers are long used to timing jumps, kicks, punches, etc. to take account of the collision-detection faced in bitmap-based games. Those used to the Tomb Raiders of the world may find it all a bit frustrating at first. Don't be put off, however, as the satisfaction of getting it right makes it so much more worthwhile - these games are from an era where there were no tutorial levels, no fuzzy-logic physics and when gamers had to spend hour upon hour repeating a level to master it. Such games seem to be a thing of the past with the need to write games all players can complete outweighing the desire of the Old Skool who would prefer more of a challenge without the need for 150 near-identical levels. The last 3D game to get it right was Mario 64, as far as I am aware, but there are no real duffers here and the genre is ideally suited to the hand-held screen. Train journeys or rainy afternoons on family holidays need never be boring again. An essential purchase for every PSP owner that is a cut above the usual collection of garbage provided in these Retro compilations.
