Feeling nostalgic for old video games? Now you can play them again

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/may/05/old-video-games-make-comeback-grim-fandango

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All right. Confession time. My favourite game release so far this year isn’t one of those new, shiny PS4 games with super-slick graphics and enormous open worlds. It’s not a Kickstarted iPad game with an intriguing physics mechanic. It’s not even one of those exciting Twine interactive fictions, taking advantage of the new tools available for non-coders to make games. No, my favourite game released thus far in 2015 was made in 1998. It’s called Grim Fandango and, as well as being an absolute masterpiece and comic delight, it’s a welcome sign of the games industry’s growing commitment to finding ways to port old games on to new platforms and to begin to create a canon of videogame classics.

Grim Fandango is a simply brilliant piece of work. You play Manny Calavera, a lowly functionary in the office of the afterlife – Manny wasn’t a good enough soul in his time on earth to earn a luxury travel package to the Ninth Underworld so he’s working as a travel agent in the Department of Death. And that’s when the dame walks into his office; a dead dame, naturally, but a dame in trouble. Mercedes has been swindled out of her luxury express train journey and Manny determines to put it right. Half Aztec mythology, half noirish thriller, Grim Fandango (working title, The Long Siesta) is one of the most bonkers, creative, hilarious, touching and unexpected games ever made. If you described it as The Maltese Falcon meets Casablanca set in Mesoamerican heaven, you wouldn’t be far off. Comparing it to the sea of Identikit military first-person shooters and simulation games now on the market, its playful joy is even more astonishing. The creator, Tim Schafer, has funded a string of new games through Kickstarter, largely due to fond fan memories of this game.

But the crazy thing is that all they could be for years were memories. I played Grim Fandango on my Gateway Tower PC, purchased in 1997. Now, I can still find ways to watch videotapes I bought in 1997, or audio cassettes, or even vinyl records I bought – anyone fancy a bop to Chumbawumba’s Tubthumping? And even if I can’t play my original version, most of the TV or radio programmes or songs I bought have been made available as digital downloads now. But computing technology moves fast and often doesn’t prioritise backward-compatibility. Unless I happened to keep an early 2000s computer in good working order, Grim Fandango was gone. Old video games: they get knocked down, but – until very recently – they didn’t get back up again.

Now, there have always been some brave men and women, spending their time carefully archiving games for future generations. The Cineteca di Bologna in Italy stores more than 4,300 videogame titles in pristine conditions, with carefully conserved consoles for scholars, researchers and fans to play them on. The National Videogame Archive, based in Bradford, is trying to do much the same thing. And there have always been rather complex technological ways to use emulators – virtual computers working on your more modern machine – to play the classics. But then, if you had to go to Bologna or Bradford – or learn how to hack into your television – to watch a print of any movie more than 15 or 20 years old, it’s hard to imagine that most of us would ever have seen The Maltese Falcon or Casablanca. And the potential for informed experimentation and building on past success must always be incredibly limited for a medium without a memory. So this is a trend worth celebrating. It’s not just Grim Fandango. Last year the richly imagined 1999 real-time strategy game Homeworld was made available on the digital platform Steam to a rapturous welcome from a new generation of critics. The 1990s Broken Sword series has found a new home on the iPad. The classic 1995 James Bond game Goldeneye has now been both remastered and “reimagined”. The list goes on.

The work that goes into preserving these games and making them available is a gift. Give yourself a treat. Play Grim Fandango: Mesoamerican noir heaven is as good today as it’s always been.