Glued To The Box

Asides from finally having a hands-on at the Wii (courtesy of esteban), last night's yamcha had us talking about old PC games back in the good old '90s, when games really had an impact on us in more ways than one (nowadays good memorable games are few and far between...our Playstation forlornly cries out to us in loneliness as Wii've moved on to the Nintendo DS. When Wii need our Mortal Kombat/Street Fighter/Prince of Persia/Devil May Cry kick then you will see the light of day k?). So after talking about games we used to play the mood for DOS game-hunting was reawakened.

Wii always cursed our decision for not backing up all our old stuff onto 3.5" floppies (our first PC was a 386 with both 5.25" and 3.5" floppy drives and...can't remember now, some 10MB hard disk space?), instead leaving our games in both formats. Now when Wii look at the diskbox with the games Wii have no heart to throw them away, all they do now is take up shelf space and cause us loads of heartache.

Wii remembers our first hunt for old DOS games was in Glasgow three and a half years back (our first taste of 100MB/s internet speeds), and whatmore from this French Abandonware website. Unfortunately even then computer speeds and Windows weren't that friendly to DOS games anymore. Some of the simpler ones, e.g. Golden Axe and Prince of Persia 1 had no problem but others like Populous 1 and 2 were so speeded up that it was impossible to play unless you had a program like MoSlo. Another problem was sound. Like the Sony MP3 Walkman adverts put, Wii live in music (oh especially when Wii had a Soundblaster card installed). The Gods main menu sang, Mortal Kombatants shouted, the Prince of Persia screamed as he felled to his (many) deaths, the multitude of explosions and commentations in Dune 2 ("Construction Complete")...and background music. Wii remembers how, for some games, Wii would put our tape recorder by the speakers, push the door nearly shut, and record intros or background music or summat. Then the tapes will be in our Walkman, following us wherever Wii go.

But of course, Wii've played the games countless times enough to actually be able to play the music in our head. But these things go hand-in-hand for the full blast of nostalgic experience. Okay, maybe just for us because Wii had it all from the start. If Wii never had music initially when playing all those games Wii probably wouldn't miss it so much.

But Wii digress (slightly).

The thing is, some old DOS games seemeth 'lost' to us because, while it's available online for download (yay thanks Lost Treasures France and Underdogs and countless others) it's also either too fast, has compatibility issues, has no music, or has (shudder) EMS/XMS problems. And when that happens and when Wii play it, part of our soul dies along as part of the game dies. Is our childhood fated to fade away forever? C'mon, this is PC stuff (albeit Prehistorik Cavemen-era PC stuff) but in our current tech-savvy world surely there are means of reviving, or making some space for DOS games to remain alive?

Enter the DOSBox (current version 0.65). This heavensent program emulates DOS (with working sound, read, WORKING SOUND) such that MoSLo and VMDSound can now take a rest. Better yet for us, DOSBox emulates games as if it's running on old PC processors, so Wii actually managed to play Mortal Kombat I as if Wii played it on our 386!!! For most people, some games will be so painfully SLOW but what's that compared to being transported some 15 years or more back into the past to a part of your childhood that you love?

While Wii can't claim to have played many DOS titles (even then Wii enjoy replaying what Wii have, it whiles a good time away) but at least now Wii can revisit them without pain anymore. Now if you'll excuse us, Wii've got 12 tribes of Lemmings to guide, Populations to lead into Armageddon, a Persian Prince to navigate out of mazes, so that he can play BattleChess 4000 with us, all while being Alone In The Dark...

Oh, if someone, anyone has a copy of The Secret of Monkey Island 2, tell us! This is another big hole in our soul!