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GOING STRAIGHT
Just for a little change, this month Emu Zone
thought it’d be interesting to take a look at the “legitimate” side
of emulation, and particularly the changes that have been brought
about in it as a result of the work of the unofficial emu community.
Emu fans have for many years been rightly dismissive of the games
industry’s attempts to commercialise emulation, citing anorexic
retro packs with a tiny handful of ancient games being sold for full
price, and recreations which are substantially inferior to that
available in the likes of MAME.
Very recently, though, the industry has started
to take these criticisms on board, with the release of rather more
respectable efforts like Midway Arcade Treasures - which collects
together 20 old coin-ops, largely from earlier retro packs but also
including previously-unpublished games like Joust 2 (though sadly
not the ultra-rare Marble Madness 2, an arcade Holy Grail which
isn’t emulated anywhere) - and the impressive Activision Anthology:
Remix Edition pack of VCS games which includes various prototypes,
alternate versions and oddities among its whopping roster of 75
titles, along with various other bells and whistles.
The latest and biggest commercial retro package
is the clunkily-monikered Atari: The 80 Classic Games from the
artist formerly known as Infogrames, a curious compilation which
gathers together 18 old Atari coin-ops (most of which have already
been published four or five times in retro collections), alongside
62 (presumably) titles from the VCS console, which marks the first
time as far as Emu Zone knows that any of Atari’s VCS titles have
been available in an official retro pack. It’s a somewhat
schizophrenic release – the arcade games are beautifully emulated,
with a slick front end, enhanced play modes and a variety of options
for MAME-style backdrops and screen surrounds which add greatly to
the experience.
The VCS titles, on the other hand, have to
suffer a bizarre and messy front end which makes getting into the
actual game quite a challenging task, and by some kind of
staggeringly inexplicable oversight (or more likely contractual
wrangle), YOU DON’T GET SPACE INVADERS OR PAC-MAN. (But don’t worry
– Math Grand Prix and Basic Programming are present and correct.)
There’s also a decent amount of bonus material, in the form of
trivia, high-resolution scans of historical memorabilia, and
half-an-hour of low-quality interview footage with Nolan Bushnell.
It’s taken the industry a long time, but the
pressure of unofficial emulation is finally starting to bring about
some decent official releases. Let’s hope it continues.
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