QuickTime turns 20 years old; you now feel ancient 

December 2nd marks the anniversary of QuickTime, originally released by Apple in 1991. It might not’ve been the first video codec, but it was one of the most popular and widely distributed. Back when such add-ons were popular (and before it became bloatware), QuickTime powered every adventure game and multimedia presentation under the sun. And to an extent, that’s why a lot of them don’t work on modern computers anymore. As a telling example, the first program to use and to include QuickTime was the 1991 CD-ROM From Alice to Ocean, an interactive photojournal from writer Robyn Davidson’s travels across Australia.

Unfortunately, in an age when HTML5 and other comparatively open, low-maintenance codecs are the norm, QuickTime is still lingering around. Given the alternatives, QuickTime is slowly becoming the new RealPlayer. Apple loves proprietary formats, but somebody ought to put poor QuickTime out of its misery.

That said, let’s take a moment to appreciate all the great things QuickTime enabled 20 years ago. If you ever played a CD-ROM game or application with video, good money says that it used QuickTime.

Thanks to The Register for the info!

Happy 18th, Myst! 

Congratulations, Myst, you’re now legal!

Given that it has become something of a punchline for boring and uneventful games, it’s difficult to grapple with the impact Myst had on the industry. Myst wasn’t it the first CD-ROM game, nor the first point-and-click adventure game (even from that year – Return to Zork and The Journeyman Project beat it to the punch). By far, though, it was the prettiest, the most immersive, and the most technically stable given all the music and video flying around.

The realism and lifelike presentation of  Myst gave it a stupefying edge over everything else on the market. Best of all, you could have it in your own home. Rolling Stone declared Myst to be “a breakthrough” and “as close to virtual reality as we’ve come.” The Village Voice went as far as calling it “one of those works that irrevocably changes the parameters of an artform, multimedia’s equivalent of Don Quixote or Sgt. Pepper’s.”

Myst is the game that got people thinking in terms of “worlds” instead of “stages.” Many people blame it for the death of the adventure genre, kicking off a deluge of abstract and uninteresting puzzle games that removed the essential human character from a format that depended so heavily on interaction. But Myst also taught the game industry not to be afraid of unconventional storytelling and open-endedness. It was okay to make an experience, even if people considered it more of a slide show than a game.

Oh, and Myst is the reason computers can play CDs and DVDs. The game moved millions of units and, along with it, countless CD-ROM drives. Developers got the hint, and the CD-ROM became a viable option. It’s rare that a single game can define and justify an entire medium.

It may not be the greatest adventure game, but it is probably the most important. Myst gently but unquestionable curved the direction of future video games, which is largely the reason why fodder for this blog exists.

Happy 15th, PlayStation! 

Hard to believe that fifteen years ago today, the original PlayStation was released in America. The PlayStation was one of those great water cooler moments for gaming, with a ubiquitous format that everyone played, shared, and experienced together. Though much of the charm is purely childhood association and nostalgia, who can imagine their get-togethers and unfortunate slumber parties being the same without the communal spirit of that magical disc machine, without having to swap memory cards to get to the same part of Final Fantasy VII, only to discover that your friend embarrassingly named Cloud something like “BUTT”?

But more importantly, what would the face of gaming be like without the… mystery? Starting with the advent of online modes and an oversaturation of high-profile media blitzes, game consoles started to lose a bit of allure and mystique that came from popping a game in. But the PlayStation was special. Maybe it was that cacophony of synths and humming bells that chimed up every time it booted, or the simultaneously inviting-and-foreboding PlayStation logo that would drop off into nothingness before an opening cutscene cued.

Whatever the source of its magic, the PlayStation just carried this transcendent air, that the games were somehow operating on a level above you, that the system was this untouchable device that could make dreams unfold. No matter how small and restricted a game would be, the world around it felt like it might expand infinitely in every direction, and somehow, some secret always seemed just on the verge of materializing.

Maybe the Nintendo 64 turned on faster, with cleaner graphics and better games. The crazy thing is that 15 years on, for all the outdated tech and emulators, putting in a PlayStation game is still a little foreboding, mysterious, and exciting. In an era where games are exposed by betas and previews months in advance, that’s irreplaceable.

Try, try again: how the CD-ROM (eventually) caught on 

Denise Caruso, a writer for the 1990s trade journal Digital Media, uploaded an archive of the magazine’s articles. One particularly fascinating issue from 1991 featured a few lengthy pieces about the CD-ROM, storage mediums, and the future of the “new breed of interactive developers” who used them. This is invaluable information that practically explains why developers made interactive movies and flocked to the new device. What follows is a summary of that information so you don’t have to comb through it. With, of course, added commentary and additional sources. Read more »

A brief personal history 

I love old, weird games. That’s probably obvious, and that’s why I started this blog. Writing about the netherworlds of classic gaming is as much a fun, educational project as it is a personal one, so I feel obliged to give a bit of personal background for my obsession, my experience, and the unconventional childhood that let me down this bizarre and obscure road. Read more »