Rebirth of IMSAI

From: Derek Peschel <dpeschel_at_u.washington.edu>
Date: Tue Mar 23 10:27:20 1999

Max wrote:
> >There are games for classic computers as well ;-)... There probably

> What's the benefit of a person playing PacMan on a classic computer? How
> would it be different from a modern one?

The classic machine may have different graphics than any modern machine.
These could be worse (which might make you think, "Eww, people played games
with those graphics?" -- but at least illustrates The Way It Actually Was).
They could actually be better, too. In the case of vector graphics, ther is
no modern substitute. In the case of the PERQ (which I assume is where you
got the PacMan example) the resolution is very high, though it's monochrome
IIRC. You may say, "But my PC has higher resolution than that!" That's
only true with PC hardware of the last few years, I suspect.

The game itself may also use the graphics in a creative way, so that even if
it's "just PacMan" it may have a certain appearance that would be hard to
reproduce on a modern machine, and makes the game an individual creation.
Good games on the black-and-white Macs have this quality (e.g., Dark Castle
with its sharp yet "cartoon-like" graphics).

Of course, if you really are lucky than the machine will be the one the game
was written for. Does an actual Pac-Man arcade unit count as a classic
computer? Even a historic port of PacMan (say, to the Atari 5200 -- the
2600 version might repel more visitors than it attracts) is interesting in
its own way.

And moving away from PacMan, I can think of a large number of games that
only exist on classic machines. So playing them on the original hardware
may be your only option.

I'm surprised you didn't ask the other question -- How can PacMan on a
modern machine be any different than the original version? It can't be much
better (it either adds minor features which don't add to the gameplay, or it
is a faithful reproduction -- if it's very different, then it's not PacMan
anymore). It may be worse (because it doesn't have the code that the
original uses).

-- Derek
Received on Tue Mar 23 1999 - 10:27:20 GMT