Saturday, July 31, 2010

 

Looks Like I'm Buying a New Video Game

I mean, sure, I have made a couple purchases since my dubious proclamation. I bought Ball through DSiWare because it's one of my favorite Game & Watches, and Mario Tennis for Wii Virtual Console because it's my favorite N64 game. I bought Sleep is Death and accidentally bought Team Fortress 2 instead of the limited-time free demo. (I refuse to count buying a copy of Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People for a friend of mine; although I didn't explicitly state it, the meaning was video games for myself.) And while I have to admit that all of these things "count", I feel like they came from different motives than what usually inspires me to buy a video game.

Well, I'm raising the white flag on this one, because Intellivision Lives! is coming to the DS after a long, long time in limbo.

I guess it's mostly an altruism purchase, but if anyone deserves it, these guys do. The DS Intellivision emulator has essentially been done for years now, but they've been spurned by publishers and refused access to DSiWare -- Nintendo will only allow original code on their service, no emulators. This is terrible, because the DS is probably the one system most justified in recreating the Intellivision. Overlays on the touch screen? Who could say no?

This is a project with limited appeal. It's obviously been a labor of love for these guys, and I'm sure they're not going to see a lot of money from it. I might not be crazy about Intellivision games (Astrosmash and Shark! Shark! are pretty all right), but I have a lot of respect for the people who've been working to preserve it for all these years. I don't think I could forgive myself if I passed on what may well turn out to be the definitive version of the game collection.

Plus I'm picturing a DS Lite with Intellivision Lives! in the DS slot and Activision Anthology in the GBA slot. RETROGASM.

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