The Gamer's Quarter

[SuperWes]

Came across This today, which was probably spurred by this or vice versa. The multi-media era was a dark age for video games. FMV Games became a full-on genre for a while and people - dads really - bought into this big time as they pimped out their computers with CD-Roms, bought copies of Myst and Dragon's Lair for PC and were genuinely impressed with how technology was making their lives easier. "This is the future," they said, and seemingly everyone in gaming wanted a part of it.

I remember this era extremely vividly. I can't remember the Weezer concert I went to 2 years ago, but the CD-Rom era - that shit I've got down pat. Anyway, Sega and NEC both took advantage of the CD-Rom format and both had very different ideas of what a CD-Rom should be used for. The Turbografx often used the CD to increase the amount of content (hu-cards were relatively tiny) and improve the music, while the Genesis used it to do FMV games, add non-interactive cinemas in between game levels and add CD Quality music to games. In general, everyone had a lot of this extra space but no real ideas on how to use it. Despite this, developers had pegged CDs as the future and began abandoning traditional interaction as they experimented with storytelling and non-interactive cinematic presentation at the expense of gameplay.

In my estimation, this era climaxed with the release of Final Fantasy VII and quickly petered off. Say what you will about the game's quality, but it wasn't until its release that developers finally realized, "Hey, we need to include a game with this presentation," and started bookending FMV with solid gameplay.

My questions for you are:
Was this era a positive thing for gaming as a whole?
Was it worth putting up with all of the bad to get where we are today?
In what ways were/are we better off before/after the advent of CD-Media?
What do you remember most about this time period?
Am I wrong in my assertions?

The Good: 7th Guest, Myst
The Bad: Sewer Shark, Make your own Music Video Featuring Kriss Kross
The Undecided: Phantasmagoria, Voyeur, Willy Beamish
(feel free to make your own list)

-Wes
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[dhex]

i wasn't able to get a cd rom until i got a job, so i missed most of this, thankfully. i was still swapping 5 1/4 discs for a long, long time.
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[Shapermc]

I don't read the IC wiki ... yet. So I did not get it from that.

Anyways, I have some very fond Willy Beamish memories. I had it on floppy disk though, so I don't know why you include it on that list. I also love Dragon's Lair. But I have a weakness for Bluth stuff in general.

EDIT: You also forgot Mad Dog McRee, or what ever that was. It was somewhat fun.

[SuperWes]

[disneyland]

[Bai]

I lack the gaming history knowledge to comment on whether CD-media was a positive development or 'worth putting up with' in the long run. Lacking a comparative reference point and judging criteria is also a problem.

It is a safe assumption though, that if CD-media hadn't triumphed, another media form would have taken its place which tends to overshadow hypothetical discussions such as these.

I do argue, as Steven Poole does in "Triggerhappy", that Final Fantasy 7's release was an important turning point in videogame history. That one game, along with WipEout 2097 changed people's expectations of what videogames could achieve production-wise which, in turn, decided what kinds of games developers needed to create to get consumers' attention.

In retrospect, we perceive Myst and Dragon's Lair to be merely competent but the gaming press in those days praised them, proclaiming them as revolutionary which is far from the truth. The damage, nonetheless, was done. The tired opinion circulated by videogame journalists that new hardware is objectively good continues to influence and shape the industry till this day.

[dessgeega]

[Szczepaniak]

One of the finest examples of multimedia gaming for me, has to be Popful Mail ont he Sega CD.

Excellent cut scenes between each level, nicely animated with great voice acting, plus voice acting for all the major characters and before each boss fight. Not to mention some nice sound, and plenty of variety with the visuals. It may not have gone beyond the best the MD could do (though the amount of colour is excellent), but there was certainly a great deal of variety between each level.

In my opinion, I'd say that Popful Mail is the perfect example of good multimedia based gaming. They used the CD well.

The same also goes for Star Control 2. The basic game could fit on a floppy, but the voice acting on the CD version really made it IMO.

Also! Dess, have you tried changing the selected drive in Gens? Check under Options, then "Current CD drive". It's worth persevering with to get working. I have no idea about creating an ISO for virtual drives, so sadly cannot give advice on that. It might be worth asking someone with major tech knowledge, since I'm no expert.

[dessgeega]

[Szczepaniak]

Ahh! Don't tell anyone it was yarred!

Is it possible to change the selected drive via the options tab?

[disneyland]

In Gens: Options > Change CD Drive. Choose drive with CD loaded.

If that doesn't work, try mounting the physical Popful CD on your virtual drive, then select that drive from the Options again, as per above. Oddly enough, that usually works (and it finds the redbook tunes, whether .wav or mp3, in the same directory).

Alternate emulator: Kega Fusion. Really quite good. Perfect sound (even 32X -- the only emulator that nails the PSG sample channels).

Also of note: you do have your Sega CD/Mega CD bios files, ya? And pointing them in the right direction through the emulator -

[dhex]

[ApM]

My current favourite euphemism is "pegleg-and-eyepatched".