Hardware: The 3DS and Wii's Virtual Console

Hardware covers the technology of game playing, whether PC, consoles or figurines on a board.

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News of the fact that Nintendo's 3DS will feature a Virtual Console (Handheld?) that will feature Game Boy and Game Boy Color games hit the headlines at the end of September, but I wasn't plugged in well enough at the time to notice it. However, finding out about it now, I'm glad to see that Nintendo might finally be doing something that I was hoping for.

As a largely retro-oriented gamer, I was quite pleased with the Wii's Virtual Console at first, although there are many problems that makes Nintendo's online implementation absolutely abysmal when compared to Sony and Microsoft. Still, despite Nintendo's generally poor implementation of its online service, I was still more than pleased to be able to play old classics on my Wii without having to dust off my ancient NES and somehow get it plugged into my new-tech setup. And yes, I was plenty willing to pay the premium (and essentially buy a number of games again) to enjoy some of these games.

However, as the life of the Wii's Virtual Console continued forth, and even though the number of supported systems expanded, the support for the Virtual Console started dropping away until now, where we get one game every month, if we're lucky. And a number of much hoped for games still have not shown up (Yoshi's Island and Earthbound, I'm looking at you!).

And then, when the DSi was announced and that it supported downloadable software as well, I got excited again, only briefly, because I thought that it meant that I might be able to get my hands on some old Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games on it and finally get to retire my old Game Boy Advance SP. Of course, when it turned out that there would be no Virtual Handheld (and that the DSi was also stuck with Nintendo's awful online implementation) I realized I had no reason whatsoever to purchase the DSi. My DS Lite handles the DS games and my GBA takes care of my older library. DSi dedicated games were few and far between and hardly interesting enough for me to cough up any more cash.

The announcement of the 3DS again brought up my hope and finally, with the news of the Virtual Handheld, sustained it. Should all my hoped for classic games make their way to the 3DS, then I will be able to retire my GBA and live with my DS Lite and 3DS, and, should GBA games also be supported, perhaps move on from the DS Lite as well. I still am wary of Nintendo's overall lack of sense when it comes to the online component, such as locking games to systems and not to accounts and the obtuse number system needed to play with people you know, but for a chance to play the late stage Game Boy Color games, The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Season/Ages, I might be able to overlook Nintendo's many flaws.

I'm cautiously looking forward to the 3DS. I hope it doesn't disappoint.

Reviewing Multiplayer Games

So, I have a few board games and card games that I've played and/or received recently and want to write about them, but I realized that I never really set up a framework for evaluating the quality of interaction, not just between the player and the system, but how the system engenders play between players. Multiplayer, insofar as games are concerned is a broad field and encompasses a number of different modes of play.

Competition, Cooperation, & Everything In-Between

One distinction that needs to be made is between cooperative and competitive play. Many games have one or the other, but many games also possess a combination of both. An example of purely cooperative play would be where a group of players work together to win against the game. One example would be a typical pen and paper roleplaying game like Dungeons and Dragons, where a group of players are largely working together to surmount obstacles in a story, weaved by the dungeonmaster. The dungeonmaster's role isn't competitive because she or he doesn't "win" if all the character's die. It's more of a very hands-on facilitator, like the role of the narrator in a game of Mafia. Likewise, a totally competitive game would be like a game of singles tennis, where two players test each other's physical skill against each other.

Team-based competitive play is the obvious example of cooperative and competitive interaction, like in the children's outdoor game, Capture the Flag. There are also more interesting cooperative/competitive hybrids, such as the dynamic found in The Legend of Zelda: The Four Swords, where players have to work together to complete dungeons, but each are ranked individually by score and so there's a tension between helping each other in order to win together and trying to outdo each other in order for individual glory. On the flipside of the coin, many board and card games, like Monopoly, encourage trading and cooperation but with the idea that eventually only one person will win, leaving alliances fragile and temporary and trade being a measure of who is really getting the better deal when working together.

There Is Art in Interaction

Any actor is aware that the creation of the artifice between two actors is art in itself, an expression between two role-players colliding in a single work. While I'm not necessarily focused on gaming-as-art (although it certainly can be, has been and will continue to be), that quality that emerges between two players of a game, an exchange between the players, when done well, can be moving, pleasing, and possibly enthralling. As such, when evaluating multiplayer games, I think it's somewhat important to focus on the quality of the interaction. If it's merely trying to top a high score on a leaderboard, like on Bejeweled Blitz for Facebook or topping distances in a hammer throw on the track and field sport, I don't really want to consider that any sort of actual multiplayer, but rather, social single-player gaming as there are no mechanics in the game that demand some interface between players.

I suppose, then, when a game's primary mode is multiplayer, I will have to consider the depth of the interaction. Different games have different degrees of multiplayer. For example, in the card game "War" (one of my most reviled games), the two players interact and are competing, but the decks are ultimately stacked and the players are merely turning over cards, iterating a routine and I would consider it poor multiplayer. I feel like good multiplayer keeps you engaged with the other player(s), whether indirectly or directly and the mechanics of the game force you to need to interact with them. So, for that reason, while I find multiplayer battle Tetris to be a lot of fun, its multiplayer aspect is a little limited since merely excelling at playing regular Tetris is what sends lines to your opponent. Super Puzzle Fighter II improves on this regard by providing mechanics to reduce an "attack" by the other player and the game isn't built on playing solo, but rather wiping out an opponent. Both games force you to play better solo because the other player adds a ticking time bomb to your solo game, but Puzzle Fighter requires that you be aware of what your opponent is doing more. Both might be fun, but Puzzle Fighter II has deeper multiplayer.

And, I guess that's how I'm going to be looking at multiplayer aspects of games, whether the game is both single and multiplayer or exclusively multiplayer. I'm not going to say that a game is better or worse by having shallow multiplayer or deep multiplayer--per se. I don't think a value attribution need apply, except insofar as how well the multiplayer succeeds in engaging the participants and how balanced it is. After all, multiplayer gaming is about sharing an entertaining experience--if the game has multiplayer hooks that force players to interact at deep levels, but is otherwise boring, it would be a failure as a game.

Hardware: The Desire for an HD PS2

Hardware covers the technology of game playing, whether PC, consoles or figurines on a board.

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If there's one thing that's true about me when it comes to gaming, it's that I love retro games. I have more virtual console games for my Wii than all the Wiiware and Wii-software titles combined and will probably get more virtual console games before I buy more regular Wii games. Likewise, I'm looking at PS1 releases and arcade ports more than new PS3 games and should I ever get an Xbox360, you know that Xbox Live Arcade is where I'm going to be spending most of my money. So, it should be no surprise that I want to play PS2 games.

In fact, I intentionally bought a PS3 when I learned that future iterations would lose backwards compatibility so that I wouldn't have to get a PS2 in order to play those PS2 games that I had previously purchased to play on my previous roommate's system. But, I'd learn to my dismay that the PS3 version I purchased (80GB software emulation) isn't fully compatible with the range of PS2 games, including several that I want to play. Which means that I'm going to have to get my hands on a PS2 to play them--legacy connectors, resolution and accessories as well.

That would not be cool.

But I also looked into getting a beat up used PS2 and pulling the BIOS off to use for an emulator like PCSX2 so I could play those games on my PC instead. The benefit of that would be that, on the PC, I would be able to take advantage of its superior processing power and graphics capabilities, which can then be leveraged into playing PS2 games at higher resolutions with new shaders and filters to make the experience even prettier than a TV-upscaled version played from the old box. The process of pulling the BIOS, however, is a little complicated and would probably not be all that fun to make work, although I could. Furthermore, I was glancing at the compatibility list on the PCSX2 site and it turns out that many of the same games that my PS3 has trouble with, PCSX2 also has problems emulating, nullifying the main advantage of emulating.

So, it looks like I will have to eventually pick up a PS2 if I want to play those old PS2 games, unless Sony changes their minds (as they are wont to do) and greater backwards compatibility shows up on the PS3. But, that got me thinking. See, a lot of households have now entered the HDTV era and own nicer, fancier sets capable of 720p, 1080i and 1080p, using component and HDMI hookups. The old PS2 is still stuck in the stone age, putting out SDTV visuals which then have to be stretched either by the TV or some other processor in between and end up looking like blurry fuzz on the TV.

But, what if a new PS2 was released? A new enhanced PS2 that has more firepower than the old and can connect audio and video via HDMI? A new enhanced PS2 that takes emulation tech to the next level, by not only perfectly emulating the entire library of PS2 games, but on top of that, adding all the features of PC PS2 emulators, like improved 1080p resolution, and newer graphics technology to add effects to the visuals, like filters and shaders. On top of that, make all the PS3 accessories compatible with the new HD PS2 and we're set! One set of controllers, two boxes, say hello to breathing new life into your old PS2 games!

See how a custom "storybook" shader works on ePSXe (PSX emulator) for FFVII

In that ideal world, I'd finally be able to play all my old games (and many more that I don't have) for the PS2, but also get to play them with the advantages of modern technology. That said, I think retro gamers like me aren't as common as those who will only play the newest and shiniest games, but, Sony, if you're listening at all to me--here's a way to further extend the life of your old platform.

Preferably, you'd just improve backwards compatibility for my PS3 and just add all these features in, but barring that, I'd buy an enhanced HD PS2.