2 May
2010
2 May
'10
4:05 p.m.
Curt @ Atari Museum wrote:
Of a modern console - I still think the Dreamcast was
the best for its
time, Sega pulled the plug too early - it was a wonderful machine, great
(and fun!) games, tons of expansion and peripherals.
Oh, that brings back memories... playing Sonic with my brother on rainy
Saturdays...
*thump* <<--- brother punching Phil in the arm
"You dirty cheat!"
"All's fair in love, war and gaming!"
I've got most of the PlayStation kit that's been released -- my
brother's old SCPH-7502 PlayStation, a PS2 Slim (swaptrick FTW) and a
release-model 60GB "fat" PS3 (brother calls it "Satan's George Foreman
Grill"). I tend to stick to PC gaming though -- Steam runs quite nicely
under WINE, and thus Half Life 2 (which I have still yet to complete),
Portal and all the other shiny Valve games.
Portable gaming -- I've got a GP2X (it runs MAME!), and a Gameboy
Colour. Interesting story behind the GBC -- Gamestation offered my
brother a fiver for it, I offered him a tenner (he obviously took me up
on this offer!), then I built up an adapter for my EPROM emulator to
'fake' a ROM cart. Ended up porting most of the GBDK libraries up to a
newer version of the SDCC compiler. Never did anything interesting with
it though...
Brother has (or had):
- Sega MegaDrive II
- PlayStation (SCPH-7502, the one with the Mk3 CD drive that didn't
burn itself out after nine months)
- Playstation2 (Gen4 slotloader)
- A ton of Gameboys -- everything from the GBC right the way up to
the new DS
- Dreamcast
- Gamecube
- Wii
- Xbox 360 (traded in the Wii to get the first one)
- Another Wii
- Another Gamecube
- Xbox #2 (Elite version, all-black, curiously enough this one hasn't
burned itself out yet)
.. and the Uber-PC he had me build a month or so ago. Which he uses for
internet browsing. Couldn't even get him to play Defcon or Multiwinia
against me :(
I really can't say I'm much of a gamer -- more a tinkerer. The PS3
spends most of its life playing DVDs and BluRays (beats having a
separate DVD player kicking around), and the PC gets used for... work.
HDL synthesis, CAD, software design and development... I've even done
some "slightly nefarious" stuff with CUDA -- breaking PDF passwords...
(ahem).
Thing is, I can't stand any of the modern "games". Sonic 1 and 2 were
nice, but I don't think there's really been anything "new" or
"groundbreaking" since about 2001. Introversion have been pushing the
boundaries a bit -- Uplink was a good bit of fun (especially if you
pissed off the "copy protection"), Defcon is well worth a go if you're a
Wargames fan ("Let's play.. GLOBALTHERMONUCLEARWAR").
All that aside, I do happen to enjoy the occasional game of Ratchet and
Clank :)
--
Phil.
classiccmp at philpem.me.uk
http://www.philpem.me.uk/