Look, I don't wanna talk about the Activision thing. I'm pretty sure we all know what's going to happen anyway... strategically chosen heads will roll in an insincere gesture of accountability, but the man at the top of the trash heap will get to keep his, and the only lesson the industry will learn from this is "next time, don't get caught." (Yes, I've probably been watching too much JS Sterling. They're not wrong, though.)
I did want to talk about the PiTrex, though. It's an Australian peripheral that sticks into the side of your Vectrex, turning it into a vertical monitor for a Raspberry Pi. The single board computer, considerably more powerful than the Vectrex's internal processor, is capable of running vector arcade games, as well as original creations. Beyond that, it can play Vectrex games... on your Vectrex... using Vectrex emulation... which if I can be perfectly honest Veccin' freaks me out. It's distressingly like that movie Inception. Or possibly Human Centipede, I'm not sure.
 |
| It's a cartridge that emulates a game system... ON that game system! That's not what nature and Milton Bradley intended! |
Sure, it's not without precedent. There was an emulator for the Game Boy Advance that let you play classic black and white titles on the system, a boon for later machines like the Game Boy Micro without that legacy hardware included. But this... this is just next level weird. Games that ran perfectly well on the Vectrex from the day of its 1982 launch may not be compatible with this set up, depending on whether or not the Vectrex emulator included with the PiTrex can handle them.
On the plus side, it is very cheap at roughly twenty seven American dollars. Even with the added expense of the Raspberry Pi and a modestly sized SD card, it comes out to around forty bucks, and anyone who can afford a Vectrex can certainly afford that. Just try not to think too hard about whether you're playing the "real thing" when you fire up your system for a few games of Star Castle.
No comments:
Post a Comment