TORONTO (djc) — I went to a buddy’s house recently to have a few drinks and play some Xbox. But he had a surprise for me; “Dave, check this out,” he said, booting up the Xbox and displaying a truly salivating site: The menu offered the choice of playing every Nintendo, Super Nintendo or Sega Master System game. The ice cream on the cake was the fact that 20 Xbox games had been installed on a 40 gig hard drive. What the hell?
For those unaware of the latest hacker craze, today’s Xbox can be souped up with a modchip. This cornerstone of Xbox liberation bypasses the hardware’s BIOS, allowing installation of Linux-type software. So you can turn the Xbox into a PC — play and copy DVDs, download MP3s, use Word. A sidekick emulator opens the door to anything. What truly excited me was the prospect of diving into old-school video games; the ones that raised me, the ones that started it all.
Sure, that night I dabbled with NBA2K3 and other Xbox gems. Who can resist the graphics-heavy smooth-flowing modern heavyweights? Despite my proclivity to power Shaq through the key, my mind was tumbling over the potential possibilities I never dreamed would return: Castlevania, Blades of Steel, NBA Jam, the whole Mega Man family, the original F-Zero. And when the word “MarioKart” hit my lobes, I knew I had to abandon the frilly fun of 2K3. There were more important days to relive.
My buddy grinned as he watched me happily playing the old-schoolers and snickered when I discovered Paperboy in the tiny-font list. My heart was beating through my throat as I stuttered, “Is th-this f-for real?”
Later that night, watching five twenty-somethings giggle over Tetris moves, I began to question today’s video games. I love kick-ass graphics and exciting story lines as much as anyone (2001 was my Halo year), but here I was in a buddy’s house, 20 Xbox games at our fingertips, and we were playing Tetris and other classics. We embraced Family Feud, R.B.I. Baseball, and we gave in to Street Fighter, if only to relive those days of fireballs, dragon punches and 12-hit combos. We had some nutty fighting games available on the Xbox hardrive, but we went the emulator route — old-school suddenly became new school.
That’s the way it should be. This modchip-emulator boom is giving Microsoft a supreme purple nurple — quick, name five Marioland characters. Hackers call it “unleashing” the Xbox, which in simple terms, means bringing out the inner PC. Tech execs call it illegal piracy but civil-liberties group counter by claiming buyers have the right to tinker with their products once they’ve bought them. I’m betting any Nintendo lover would agree.
A dozen times a year, my buddies recall the glory days of video games, when they stood in line to buy Mortal Kombat, when the Power Glove sparked schoolyard controversy. Even that gamer-quest flick The Wizard became a favourite amongst EG Monthly subscribers. So the renaissance of the classics is nigh and I can feel the passion returning. I spoke with a game console hacker who estimated that 30 per cent of today’s Xboxes are reverse engineered to fit the old-schoolers. And forget 40 gigs, because 120 gig hard drives are the hot items. In Canada, these whopper hard drives cost around $100, and modchips range from $60 to $100 over the Net. To hurdle the installation challenge, a modifier, who knows his way around soldering, will upgrade an Xbox for $150.
While I’m not a piracy whore — I’ve never been keen on MP3s — this feels like a whole different ballgame. Maybe it’s the Contra days coming back full throttle, electrifying that part of the brain that almost forgot about the invincibility code. I credit the memories for the pleasure jolts during classic gaming: The cheap always-score wraparound in NHL ’94; the catchy Super Mario Brothers soundtrack; the hand-steady skill of California Games; Altered Beast, Rad Racer, Zelda, Bomberman…just the names can make me widen my eyes and lower my jaw. A single versus battle in MarioKart shuttles me back to the late 1980s.
No matter how slick the new games become (even virtual reality won’t sway me), my hands will still itch for the simple A-B buttons. It’s similar to a relationship with an old can-opener. The metal is rusted and dull and it doesn’t look so great and you may even have a shiny new can-opener, but you consistently go back to the old one. I might be a dupe for old-schoolers because they’re most fun to play, or maybe I’m a sucker for nostalgia, for remembering the time I downed my first can of Zoodles. The old games are like that — a throwback to an era of Grade 6 sleepovers, Game Genies and verbal battles over who was better: Ken or Ryu.
