Falchion's Edge

Been feeling a little nostalgic recently, which has lead me to once again turn my attention on old console system Emulators for the Pc. One of my favourite old school arcade 2D fighting games was “Marvel Super Heroes“. I feel that it really had the correct mix of character balance and the fighting game concepts that are still in use today. The game may not have started the use of techniques such as Air Combos and multi-hit chain button combos, but I think they got it about just right with this one. All the rest after it just seemed overblown to me. It’s like they found out that long combos are fun, so everything had to be just combos and you can’t win any other way. Just made it stale again I guess…sure don’t make them like they used to.

Then again, I have been hearing some good stuff about the Guilty Gear series. Seems like it’s starting a 2D fighting game comeback, especially with the later entries in the series. This is good to hear. Being able to take something “old” and update it, modify it till it’s new and fresh again, just shows that innovation is still not dead and that a good simple concept can have long legs if the idea was solid in the first place.

Another good use for Emulators, is being able to sample those classic games that are widely regarded in the industry but not everyone was able to play it due to not having the correct hardware (such is the case will be when there are so many consoles, that some games are made only for one and never seen on the rest).
Case in point is “Crono Trigger“, said to be one of Squaresoft’s gaming masterpieces next to the Final Fantasy series (and even then not all in that series where good). Having only appeared for the Super NES back in the 90′s, quite a large number of gamers didn’t get the chance to play it, since they bought Sega Megadrives.

Personally, while I understand the companies need to hang on to their copyrights and such. I feel that they are really missing out by just letting such classics live on only in the memories of gamers. With PC technology now being able to play them almost as how they were, the companies could still turn in a pretty profit by adopting an Official emulation program and selling the classics via digital download, which is the distributing method of the future anyways.

Just like the other more “mainstream” media of movies and books, games deserved to be preserved and made accessible, even commercially, to the public for all to enjoy and to inspire for the future.