There are people who are young. There are people who are old. Then there are people who are really old. Then there are people who are really really old. I’m not sure if I’m young or old, but before I get started, let me say that I’m not insinuating that I’m really old.

Even if I’m not old, the item I found out today makes me feel old: the Commodore 64 computer was announced 19 years ago this week. Jeez. That means I was like 5 when it was announced. I don’t remember when I got one, but I do remember my parents getting me one for Christmas. I recall that that year I told them (or Santa, either one) I wanted one, and then a few weeks before Christmas changed my mind – I had heard about these things called “video cameras”. Wow, make your own TV shows? Kickass! So I asked for one, knowing nothing about the truth about Santa Claus or the concept of prior notice in the Christmas shopping season, to say nothing of cost (remember, this was back when the simplest camcorders cost like $2000). I remember thinking that my prior obsession, the Commodore 64, was rather lame in comparison to what I had in mind now, and how bad that would suck if I got that instead. Yeah, I was a spoiled brat.

Then Christmas morning came and I opened my biggest present to reveal a Commodore 64 computer. I instantly forgot about that video camera concept and fell in love with the box of this thing. Then I opened it up, had my dad hook it up to the TV (since I had no idea how) and started messing with it. There was no turning back. I sat there and played some of the games my folks bought for me, including Fort Apocalypse, which my dad and I played endlessly over the years with our crappy joysticks.

It was a different time to be sure. The C64 hooked up to a television set, not a monitor. Granted, Commodore did make a monitor for it, which was basically a small TV. I still have the monitor – and it still puts out a kickass pucture (probably related to the fact that I didn’t use it for many years). Programming languages were built into the system, and programs were printed out as listings in magazines. For a science fair project one year I wrote a program which played Tic-Tac-Toe – and won every time. I got a honorable mention. The conditions at the cafeteria were such that the disk drive refused to work after that.

Now I see projects to run Linux and X-Windows on the Dreamcast, along with efforts to get Linux to run on things like the PSX, PS2 and X-Box. There’s actually a small amount of “hype” surrouding the notion that the PSX could be turned into a “low cost, low powered” computer. How bizarre – it’s like we’ve come full circle. Toy machines like early game consoles gave birth to toy computers like the C64 and Apple ][. These computers gave way to “real” computers like the PC and Macintosh, whose barrier to entry costwise in the games market led to the rise of consoles. But now consoles show signs of convergence, like the DC browsing the web and the use of keyboards and mice to play games. It’s almost like what people really want (or seem to want) is a computer with all the functionality, but that plays games and hooks up to a TV, which is exactly what they had back in the day of the C64. In light of all of this, perhaps Microsoft’s XBox has more of a chance – if it becomes the new PCJr. and that’s what people really want, then they win.

I figured I was a damn genius. “Hey, I know, I’ll just email myself my saved game files from my VMU memory card! Then I can erase them from my VMU! Why didn’t SEGA tell us about this? Why don’t more people do this? Why not? Oh, it’s probably because I’m so much smarter than everyone else!”

Well I did this and I did get it to work. However, I discovered that the real reason people usually don’t do this has nothing to do with people being unintelligent, not does it have anything to do with SEGA being greedy jerks and wanting to keep people buying memory cards. No, the reason people generally don’t do this is because IT’S MIND-NUMBINGLY TEDIOUS!!!

To start, something I discovered just prior to doing this whole bit was the fact that the DC’s browser only knows how to interpret emails it sent. Basically, I used the DC’s browser to attach a file to an email message. I then forwarded that message back to the account I checked with my DC and it worked. However, if I conjured up a new email on my PC with the same file, it wouldn’t work – it would display the attached file as text (gibberish, basically). What this means is that I have to keep these exact emails on my system. There is a rather bizarre method of making the files such that they can be downloaded from a web page, but it’s even more bizarre and tedious.

This wouldn’t be such a big deal, except for the fact that it’s kinda spooky that I could lose my saved games if my email file got corrupted in Outlook. For redundancy’s sake, I sent a CC: to a hotmail account. And even all of this wouldn’t be a big deal, except for the fact that the emailing process doesn’t always work. After ramming my head into a wall several times, I basically discovered that the Web Browser’s email system is HTML based off of the disc, and after sending out a few emails, the files become corrupt. When they show up on my end, they’re screwed up. The only way to fix it is to reboot the browser. Lame. It took me 2.5 hours to back up approximately 1MB spread out over 2 cards.

So then I formatted one of my cards with GT2 running under bleemcast!, and I’m wondering – a standard PSX card has 15 “blocks” – does a VMU formatted as a PSX card also have 15 “blocks”, or does it have more? I dunno – but what is cool is that in the Dreamcast BIOS it shows the VMU as having no blocks free and with a giant “b!” over the card.

But alas, not all is good in bleemland – they announced that Metal Gear Solid, in the opinon of many the single best PSX game of all time, will be the next bleempak. However, they’re not 100% sure if they can afford to put it out without further retailer support. bleem has turned their website into a fighting force, with contact links to all of the major retailers out there and links to the DOJ to report Sony for antitrust. Do your part and go to www.bleem.com and send lots of nice emails to the retailers and the feds to let them know you want bleemcast! in their stores.

Oh, and PSXEmu.com uncovered a flash movie on the bleem site which would indicate that Tekken 3 might be bleempak #3. What a cool time to be alive.

Oops. It would appear I never actually finished my post/rant from May 29th, but I was going to summarize (at length) that it looks like what many figured was impossible has happened – that Microsoft, “this year’s Sony”, may have fumbled the ball by doing a by-the-numbers job of console development, and Nintendo, “this year’s Travolta”, may be the comeback kid. I personally think this would rock, since I’m a complete Nintendo whore.

At any rate, I finally got Gran Turismo 2 so I can play with bleemcast!. Just for a sense of perspective, I popped it into my PS2 and turned any enhancements off. I played it and gawked at it’s assified graphics. I’m one of the rare few who never owned a PSX. I opted for a N64 (believing at the time that you had to have one or the other, not both). After playing stuff like Soul Calibur and Shenmue on the Dreamcast (and SSX on the PS2) N64 graphics look rather lowsy, so when I see what the PSX looks like it’s hard to believe that people settled for this. Then I smack myself and remember how great I thought Mega Man 2 or Super Mario Bros. 3 looked like on the NES, or the fact that The Legend of Zelda looks like hammered ass but is still hella fun to play.

So, back to GT2. After playing it for shock value on the PS2 I fired it up on bleemcast!. You have to go a bit to see something in 3-D, but when I saw the car, I was pretty impressed. When I played the game, I was also pretty impressed, but I saw what pretty much all the reviewers agree upon – it takes GT2 and makes it a great game that looks great as well, but you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Several glitches are in this game, and not bugs – just things that the PSX can’t handle. The models of the cars have “seams” in them in places at times, and I’m sure with the low PSX resolution, no one cared. Now with 640×480 graphics, it’s pretty glaring. Plus, there’s this thing my friend Jimmy pointed out, which I now know as “frame interpolation” – basically, when you have a smaller resolution (and a smaller framerate) when you do things like scripted camera movements or motion of models, the positions in space which look correct to the eye. When you then have increased resolution or framerate, these movements look “jerky” to the eye. A game engine like Quake 3 Arena uses frame interpolation, basically fillin in the gaps. If you have an extra frame between positions A and B, make that position (A+B)/2, halfway in between. Since this would have to be done with the game’s executable code, it doesn’t exist in GT2 since the designers never intended the game to be on any other platform. It’s also outside the realm of what bleemcast!‘s scope is.

This makes me wonder – we all know Sony hates emulation, but what do the game designers think? Polyphony Digital, the developer behind the Sony-published GT2 must like it on one hand since it sells more games this way (side story: my first attempt to buy GT2 at Babbage’s – which won’t sell bleemcast! BTW – was foiled by the fact that this Babbage’s was out of GT2, “because of all the bleem people”). But on the other hand, they’re basically being told “your game looked like shit – here, we fixed it”. For that matter, anything they wanted to “hide”, like flaws or limitations of the original hardware, are plain for all to see.

The achilles heel of bleemcast! is in how it handles memory cards. According to bleem!, LLC, there’s no choice in the matter – I’m not sure if that’s entirely true, but in any event bleemcast! requires a dedicated memory card, to be formatted by the game itself. Meaning you either have to buy a new memory card or sacrifice one of your exisitng ones. Since I don’t see myself being able to buy a new card anytime soon, I figured I might could consolodate my cards (2) into one. However, there’s too much I want to keep, so I did some research. As it turns out, with the latest web browser, PlanetWeb 2.6, you can email game saves. I emailed one to my PC and tried to make it downloadable from my personal web server to no avail. I had read that merely emailing them back didn’t work – that the files were changed somehow. After messing with this for a few hours I tried to do this anyway, and it worked. So, I’m going to be backing up my VMU saves to my PC – I don’t know why this isn’t better documented, unless Sega just wants to sell more memory cards. The only place this doesn’t wotk is with certian games, like Soul Calibur, Phantasy Star Online or other Sega branded games, as these saves have flags which keep the web browser and BIOS refuse to copy them or email them. With PSO I can understand, but why Typing of the Dead?

Oh, and none of this would be necessary if GT2 didn’t have like 500 locked cars, making a memory card a neccesary evil.

Funny thing is, there’s like a dozen Dreamcast racing games that look ten times better. Most of them amount to “make car go fast now”. Something about GT2 just felt different. Then I looked at the Reference Manual and realized how much crap has gone into this one. That makes it pretty cool that GT3 is coming out soon – it’s like the ultimate car simulator evolving (like how whatever id’s FPS of the moment is is the ultimate FPS evolving). I plan on playing this one a lot, but I can’t even begin to convey the irony of possessing so many Dreamcast titles, but playing a PSX game to its extent on it. Oh well, so I’m weird.

Oh well, I’m off but before I go, be sure to download and play Bejeweled on your PalmOS enabled device