Tag: River Raid

2430: I Made This

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It’s been a surprisingly productive day, both in terms of “things I wanted to do” and “things I had to do”. I got the bit of work I had to do done, and even had time to write a hefty piece on One Way Heroics’ mechanics over on MoeGamer and make a short video about Atari classic River Raid.

Here’s said video, if you’re curious.

I wanted to take a moment to talk about making this video, as its production involved the discovery of a really fine piece of free software: Hitfilm 4 Express.

Hitfilm 4 Express is a fully-featured non-linear video editor in the Final Cut mould, with a particular emphasis on compositing. It allows you to import media in a variety of formats — both still images and video sequences — and edit them together using an extremely professional-looking (and rather daunting!) collection of tools. Once your masterwork is complete, you can then export it to all the usual formats as well as upload it completely seamlessly to YouTube with minimal fuss.

I’m particularly enamoured with the YouTube connectivity as my past experience with making movies using my PC has been with Windows Movie Maker, which by default exports in a horrible format that YouTube then has to spend several hours converting and optimising after you upload it. This video, meanwhile, was ready to watch mere minutes after uploading, suggesting that Hitfilm 4 Express was smart enough to encode it in the appropriate format for YouTube automatically without me having to do anything else. It even kept it in 1080p/60fps format, which is arguably a bit wasteful for a video about an Atari 2600 and 8-Bit game, but eh; YouTube viewers are picky bastards and whinge if you don’t upload in the highest quality possible even if it is of practically no benefit to the source material whatsoever.

Anyway. I’ve barely scratched the surface of what Hitfilm 4 Express offers so far, but I’m in love. It’s a full, professional-grade package for free that can be further expanded by purchasing effects modules that plug into it — which is where they make their money. It’s free software that isn’t riddled with toolbars for your browser, pop-up adverts and nag screens — it’s simply an excellent package that did exactly what I wanted it to with minimal fuss, albeit a little bit of reading the manual.

On that note, probably time for bed. (If you’re wondering about the posting time, Andie is working nights at the moment which means both our sleep patterns are pretty screwed. I’m taking advantage of the quiet time to Get Things Done.)

#oneaday, Day 65: Step into my Game Room

This post makes me sad, because I can’t help thinking a lot of people on that thread are missing the point somewhat. I’m hugely excited for Game Room. I wasn’t at first, but since hearing that there are not only arcade treasures in there but also Atari 2600 and Intellivision games too, my interest has been steadily growing until now I’m at the stage where it’s just after midnight and moments ago, I switched on my Xbox just to see if they released things at midnight, or in the morning. (It’s in the morning, for those who were curious.)

The arguments made in the first post are ones that we’re hearing a lot – not just in the context of Game Room, but also in the context of digital distribution in general. The biggest concern people have with digital distribution is that one day, your content will be switched off and, despite having paid for it, you’ll no longer be able to use it. This is a fair concern, as no-one likes splashing the cash on things that they won’t be able to use at some point in the future – but when you think about it, in the world of tech, this is nothing unusual. Products come and go, specifications increase, chipsets change – and at some point it’s necessary to leave the old behind. Did people complain that the Amiga wasn’t backwards-compatible with the Commodore 64? Do music enthusiasts complain that it’s getting harder and harder to find a cassette deck to play those old albums that you only bought on cassette because they were cheaper?

Well, yes, they probably do, but that’s beside the point. What I guess I’m trying to say is this: isn’t the “built-in obsolescence” of digital distribution the same thing? I have a stack of PC games in a box here, some of which it isn’t possible to run any more. Okay, maybe with some tweaking and playing with software like DOSBox it’s possible to get it going – but to a (for want of a better word) “casual” user, they’re defunct and obsolete. The only difference with potentially-expiring digitally distributed products is that there’s no workaround like DOSBox. Once the content’s gone, it’s gone. And yes, that’s not a great thing, but it’s not something to be surprised about.

The other objection people have is that Game Room will charge you again to play titles you already own Xbox Live Arcade versions of – titles like Gauntlet, Smash TV and the like. The simple solution to this is, of course, to not buy them again – but there’s also the fact that the Arcade and Game Room versions are actually rather different beasts. The Arcade editions of the games are generally enhanced with leaderboards, online play and in some cases, new graphics. The Game Room versions are exactly as they were all those years ago. It may be that some people will be more than happy to buy a game again for the sake of having a completely authentic experience – others should simply avoid those games that they have already purchased.

I think the most exciting thing that a lot of people are missing, though, is that Game Room represents possibly the first fully-legal console-based multiplatform emulator out there. The constantly-rehashed argument from Game Room objectors is that “you can get all those games for free online”. Yes, sure you can, but via means of questionable legality. Downloading a ROM for an arcade title is, legally speaking, only allowed if you actually own another copy of the game in question. Of course, people ignore this rule all the time – especially for the sake of hard-to-find games – but I for one think that it will be pretty neat to have these games available legally and without having to do any command-line or front-end faffing like you have to do with emulators like MAME. Again, it’s a point in favour of the casual users, many of whom probably haven’t even heard of an “emulator”. Let’s not kid around, either – it’s also going to be nice to play some of these from the comfort of the sofa rather than the computer desk.

So I for one am firmly in favour of Game Room, particularly if the rumours of there being over a thousand games set for release in it over the next few years have any truth. Yes, it is a means for Microsoft to make money – but this is just the same as a whole lot of things on Xbox Live already are, much as a lot of things on PSN make money for Sony, and the Wii Shop Channel makes money for Nintendo.

What do you think? Are you going to be downloading Game Room and any games? Or are you going to be leaving the past in the past?