Thursday, February 14, 2013

Retro 2013: Russian Spectrums and Nomad Souls



Thinking of the imminent PS4 launch I happened to be looking back at "Omikron - The Nomad Soul" on the Dreamcast, which I only just realised was Heavy Rain developer Quantic Dream's first game. They are rumoured to be announcing something at the launch.

Probably not a sequel to this, but it was a really atmospheric game. From the intro you see above, it broke the 4th wall from the start and asked you to give them your soul just to begin playing. And you thought having to sign up to an EA/Ubisoft account was bad?

While looking I ended up finding some videos from the ZX Spectrum (Timex Sinclair in America) which was one of the very first home computers. It was a games driven device but once you had one, you could start programming your own stuff too and 'poke' around to see the innards of games.

In Russia and Eastern Europe the Spectrum obsession never really died and people would retro-fit all kinds of crazy stuff to run on them, so we get things like this:


Just a demo of what is possible, not the full game. The reason I've posted it though is the music, also the music on the Spectrum 128k version of Wolfenstein 3D is equally awesome.



2 comments:

umopapisdnpuaq said...

Omikron did get a quick mention but it seemed like Sony have made the Nomad Soul a key feature of the console. People will be able to inhabit the lives of others and take control of them for some time.

People can finally rent themselves out to finish hard bits of games. Need 2 Tram Takedowns? Just pass control over to me for 10 minutes, or watch me doing a live demonstration and then review the footage yourself afterwards.

Sony were very games heavy and there look to be a lot of game specific things they've incorporated. The controller itself having a 'Share' button that lets you tivo-style upload a video from the rolling-record of whatever you've just been playing.

Think Halo Theatre mode for the whole console!

How will Microsoft face up to this first salvo?

Chronic said...

Spectrum 128k version of Wolfesntein 3D, holy crap and I thought companies like Valve were ambitious.

Speaking of Valve, one of the things I DIDNT see in the PS4 press conference was any mention of Gordon, Alyx, or the G-Man. I was kind, of just maybe hoping, a little part of me at least, that Sony paid Valve ONE BILLION DOLLARS to make Half Life 3 a PS4/Steam exclusive and just give a giant middle finger to Microsoft and their draconian, locked down, locked out, Windows 8/Xbox 720 combo platform from hell.

But nah. November 16th 2014 will be the 10th anniversary of Half Life 2. Anyone want to speculate on the odds of Half Life 3 coming out before that date? Im a betting man, and at this point Im not even sure I would bet on Valve actually coming through by then...