It’s natural as a gamer to not only want to always find unique gaming experiences going forward, but also to want to go back every now and then and relive the past. Until a few years ago, these kinds of looks into history were challenging from a technological standpoint, and even with emulation, it could be done but it had far from been perfected.
It’s a different ballgame now, completely.
Emulation has made the prospect of bringing back anything that’s retro very possible again, even to the point of emulating something that your system can, in theory, already do! DOSBox on a PC is that weird kind of parallel, since it’s emulating an old x86 processor on an … x86 processor?! Yes, a much faster one, like hundreds of times faster, but nonetheless, a similar architecture. That said, we know why it’s done, it’s done because older programs aren’t tolerant of 64-bit, or even 32-bit architecture, and not even close to being tolerant of the speed differences. Thus, we have an emulator that is no different than pushing a clock back 20 to 30 years, but yet doing it so perfectly.
Why my sudden interest in wanting to play some old DOS stuff? Two games came to mind, and I promptly went and got them to try out. The first was Stunts, a basic acrobatic racing game made in the early 90′s. The object was simple: build a stunt track, race it against the computer or against the clock, and don’t wreck. Of course, wrecking was pretty fun too, as much as cheesy VGA graphics would let it be. That said, plugging it back in was still fun and rewarding, still a blast to play, even with a keyboard! The next step is for me to plug in a PS2 controller and really have at it, maybe even with analog controls.
The second game was IndyCar Racing. I have extremely fond memories of this series being the first “complete” simulation for, at the time, CART racing. Tremendously realistic, and extremely advanced for its day. I remember being frustrated because my 486 had issues playing it sometimes. Trust us, that’s a non-issue now! But anyways, in giving it a very quick test, something became very clear to me: this game will take more of an adjustment period, and it’s that change in graphics as the reason why. We’ve grown so used to very easy-to-see tracks that in places like the Cleveland track, built from an old airfield complete with runway, it’s not clear to see where you should turn like it would be with a modern game. This is realism we’re talking here, but when you get used to super-perfect graphics, going back to pixelated, even if it’s still fun, is a change. Stunts is so dirt simple, it doesn’t suffer from this, but a racing game shooting to be realistic sadly does.
I’ve definitely not given up on IndyCar Racing, and can’t wait to give it some more time, but it’ll definitely need it. That said, I’ve been very pleased to go back and try these two classic games.
Editor’s Note: Both of these games are freely available on many abandonware sites, and I’ll be posting a huge Stunts track pack in the near future from another site.)
