The HD age dawned three years ago in the video game world and brought novel gaming concepts, breathtaking graphics and crystal clear sound. Video games had never seemed closer to reality. And then something happened: the technological prowess of the consoles was also harnessed to revive ancient classics of video gaming. That means that today’s Xbox, Playstation and Wii aren’t just showing off the latest in visual fireworks, but now also have been put to work on long-lost, but well-loved classic titles as well.
That includes a new iteration of the Prince of Persia game, designed to return the series to its roots. It’s been almost 20 years since the prince first stumbled his way through dank dungeons to rescue his beloved princess.
“In terms of the core gaming concept, nothing has changed to date. It’s still about rescuing women and getting through levels using acrobatic tricks,” said Jan-Erik Sjovall, an animation artist working Ubisoft’s Montreal offices.
Want to see if differences from the original Prince of Persia game are really just marginal? No need to dust off your old computer and floppy disks. Microsoft’s online Xbox shop offers a glimpse.
“Xbox live provides a graphically spruced-up version of the original game from 1989. It really is still as much fun as it was back then in front of the PC,” video game journalist Christoph Adrian said from Berlin.
The online shop system integrated into the Xbox 360 is a good source for classic games. Adrian cites the August release of Bionic Commando as a “perfect implementation” of a game originally published in 1988. With 130,000 units sold, it has been a tremendous success for its publisher, Capcom. The high sales seem to involve more than just a wave of nostalgia.
“Even 20 years out, Bionic Commando is still a damned good game,” Adrian said.
Old games in new clothes are particularly common on the Nintendo DS. Gaming masterpieces such as the arcade classic Metal Slug or the Final Fantasy series have been finding their way out of the archives and into the hands of the console players. Some titles, including Final Fantasy IV or Sim City, certainly benefit from the specific input options for the Nintendo DS, namely the touchscreen and stylus.
Sarah Giblin does not play modern video games.
She nevertheless is a big fan of the old arcade-style video classics: “Naturally I don’t have space for hundreds of arcade games in my apartment,” the 23-year-old singer says of her unusual hobby.
One alternative is collecting the individual circuit boards that formed the heart of those arcade games and inserting them into an arcade-game shell when they’re wanted.
Another opportunity to play old classics is MAME. It’s free software that lets fans play arcade games play on the PC, the Mac, or on cell phones. The MAME system has just one big disadvantage.
“It’s illegal to play arcade games downloaded from the Internet — unless you own the circuit boards,” said Giblin. Configuring the games on the PC is also no simple matter, even for a specialist like her.
“If you want to play a non-pirated classic, then look through some game collections,” she said. Original versions of Tetris and Pacman are available for the iPhone, for example.
Yet not every reanimated video game from the old days is good: “The ports can sometimes be anything but ideal,” says Christoph Adrian.
Games collections in particular are often of questionable quality.
“The companies often just try to repackage their old games as retro without making any changes,” Adrian said.
These loveless implementations can make for a nostalgic travel through memory lane to the early days of gaming, but the fun is often quite muted.
“We’ve gotten a bit spoiled after 30 years of video game history,” Adriad said.
A Chinese freighter that allegedly snapped an undersea cable linking Taiwan proper to Penghu County is suspected of being owned by a Chinese state-run company and had docked at the ports of Kaohsiung and Keelung for three months using different names. On Tuesday last week, the Togo-flagged freighter Hong Tai 58 (宏泰58號) and its Chinese crew were detained after the Taipei-Penghu No. 3 submarine cable was severed. When the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) first attempted to detain the ship on grounds of possible sabotage, its crew said the ship’s name was Hong Tai 168, although the Automatic Identification System (AIS)
An Akizuki-class destroyer last month made the first-ever solo transit of a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ship through the Taiwan Strait, Japanese government officials with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. The JS Akizuki carried out a north-to-south transit through the Taiwan Strait on Feb. 5 as it sailed to the South China Sea to participate in a joint exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces that day. The Japanese destroyer JS Sazanami in September last year made the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s first-ever transit through the Taiwan Strait, but it was joined by vessels from New Zealand and Australia,
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
COORDINATION, ASSURANCE: Separately, representatives reintroduced a bill that asks the state department to review guidelines on how the US engages with Taiwan US senators on Tuesday introduced the Taiwan travel and tourism coordination act, which they said would bolster bilateral travel and cooperation. The bill, proposed by US senators Marsha Blackburn and Brian Schatz, seeks to establish “robust security screenings for those traveling to the US from Asia, open new markets for American industry, and strengthen the economic partnership between the US and Taiwan,” they said in a statement. “Travel and tourism play a crucial role in a nation’s economic security,” but Taiwan faces “pressure and coercion from the Chinese Communist Party [CCP]” in this sector, the statement said. As Taiwan is a “vital trading
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