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The Beauty That is GameTap

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the in-bed-with-the-man dept.

We've already discussed the Evils of GameTap, so it seemed only fair to talk about what makes GameTap so good. Gamers With Jobs' Julian Murdoch talks about how the GameTap system 'revolutionizes' the 90-minute gaming session ... all for the cost of a single console game. From the article: "The act of browsing in and of itself is a powerful, positive experience. I go to my local bookstore not just to buy books, but to drink black coffee and wander around the aisles, reading a page of that, a chapter of this. Gametap brings this experience to gaming, and it's uniquely suited for the ADD gamer with too much to do, and not enough time. Sure, I own a lot of Gametap's library already -- they sit out there on the shelves, their ROMs rest peacefully on servers 30 feet away in the furnace room. But I can't surf them. "

1 of 38 comments (clear)

  1. Gametap is a Good, Maybe Great Deal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Actually I signed up for Gametap 2 weeks ago and have found it to be a great deal so far. The price was $9.95 for the first month, with the second month free. While I have little interest in playing a lot of the older console games (sports games on the Atari 2600?), others such as Golden Axe I-III and Altered Beast have immense retro appeal. I doubt anyone can argue that Black Tiger, Crazy Taxi and Joust (to name a few) are 'crappy games no one bought the first time'.

    Of course the collection of mainly older Windows games are what people like me who have broadband and mainly play PC games would be interested in. Some of the highlights:
    - Planescape: Torment
    - Disciples II: Rise of the Elves (played the rest of the series but missed that one)
    - Serious Sam II
    - Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow
    - And the Sam and Max 'episode' released for Gametap is actually very polished and quite funny
    - Space Colony is IMO a real gem that I also missed the first time, not being a huge Sims fan
    - Kohan II: Kings of War. I've been waiting for this one to hit $10 in the bargain bin, and finally was able to play it along with all these other games for that price :)

    Would it hold my interest at $10/month for a year or more? Only if they continue to add quality games every month, and I haven't used it long enough to vouch for that. Also, it claims that there are ~790 games online, but I'm pretty sure most of these are games that are applet-style, or were counted twice for being available single player and via their head-to-head internet ranking service.