Playing Old Computer Games On A New Computer
Posted by Owen Jones in Uncategorized, tags: cartoons, computer games, computers, entertainment, free, gaming, hobbies, humour, internet, kids, other, recreation, software, sport, UncategorizedLoads of individuals still like playing the crappy old games of 20-30 years ago. The reason has to be nostalgia because the games of today are superior in graphics, speed, playability and sound. Just the content might be worse.
Twenty to thirty years ago, there were cannon games for shooting down warplanes and blowing up tanks and of course they were being driven by individuals who got killed, but you never saw them. These days, these same shoot-em ups have blood, gore and body parts strewn everywhere.
Maybe it is more truthful, but does it teach anything? I don’t think it makes kids more mindful of the horrors of war, it merely numbs them to it a bit more. In the past, those old cannon games were roughly all about elevating the cannon and permitting for windage, movement and distance. But what is Kitten Cannon about?
There is no knack to the game. You only blast a kitten out of a cannon to its death and the one who shoots it the farthest is the winner. Why a kitten? Just to become gruesome, I suppose. Kids like gruesome and the game is addictive and so it is popular, but older players are the ones who are thinking back to their Super Mario and The Hobbit adventure games.
However, the majority of of these old games came on 5.25″ floppy, cartridge or cassette tape. A few were on 2.5″ diskettes. However, hardly anyone has the ability to load these formats anymore. Some have been altered to run on modern PC’s, but then you have to purchase the same old 20-30 year old game again and the graphics and sound are no better.
You used to be able to play the old games, say, 10-15 years ago by downloading or buying an emulator, because computers back then were (or could) still loading from the old storage devices mentioned previously. So, if you would like to play a boxful of old Commodore 64 or Atari 250 games that you just discovered in the attic, you will have to try to buy a 10-15 year old AT or something like that.
The only other alternative is to scour the Internet for compilation disks that enthusiasts have put together after copying and converting them for use on modern PC’s. The newer versions will almost certainly run faster and smoother than what you remember, although the music will still be just as repetitive.
It is up to you what you think about copyright law. I am pretty sure that most of the businesses that manufactured most of those games no longer exist, but it is likely that someone still owns the copyright although they may no longer worry whether it is infringed so long as you do not try to sell hundreds of CD’s of the games on eBay.
Perhaps the old games of 20-30 years ago were far happier than the modern variety. Computers were still new and exciting in the Eighties and Nineties and I don’t remember any blood and guts featuring in any of the games and I don’t think anyone thought of firing a kitten out of a cannon.
Owen Jones, the author of this piece writes on many subjects but is presently involved with cat cannon games. If you would like to read more, please go over to our web site entitled Kitten Cannon 3.
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