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PC Gaming Suggestions for Console-like Fun?
jayminer writes "We are a relatively newly married young couple who enjoy spending our spare time at home. We don't own a console but have a gaming laptop with DVI output to play games on our TV. My wife is also a CS major so she's computer literate enough. She does not like strategy games, MMORG or any other role-playing game. Apart from "Find the Sausage" jokes, we need quality gaming advice, preferably games which we can play with a single laptop connected to a single large screen, with two gamepads, a console-like experience. What are your suggestions?"
Lego Star Wars 1&2 works very well and has a good co-op feature.
Yeah, no kidding. I recently snagged an XBox for $30 with a few games. You could also get a NEW PS2 console for $130 from BestBuy. Is it that hard?
Lego Star Wars 1&2 can be played on PC with either keyboard or controller and has a good co-op function. You can probably find a torrent of it easy enough.
Gametap.com. I like that. Go to walmart and buy a controller adapter for usb and you can both play games, old and new, arcade and console, from your laptop.
a head designer was the guy who coined the term mmorpg. it is in fact the first (graphical, sorry mudders) example of an mmorpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubSpace_(computer_game)
its like the original asteroids, without the asteroids, and instead a maze of a bunch of other ships (random people from around the world)
i think a lot of slashdotters messed with it 10 years ago, and forgot about it
however, i recently rediscovered it (its free now) and was surprised to find a lot of zones still heavily populated. each zone has a different variation on the basic ship types and their abilities. you can waste 5 minutes or half an hour on it, to great effect
nothing like meeting a guy in a tank from finland, dodging his mine, blowing him away, while a guy from china materializes out of cloak and shoots you in the back. its cheap and easy mmorpg fun without the massive time commitment something like WoW demands
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Ep1-3 and 4-6 are both excellent and are PC-available.
I think guitar hero has a PC port, if you're into rhythm games. (ba-dum-ching!)
Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
I would suggest emulators.
For arcade games, you can use MAME
http://mamedev.org/
Once you've got MAME, you need a set of current ROM files for it. You can find ROMs on BitTorrent or on any P2P application.
As MAME evolves, the ROM sets get replaced with new and better extractions, so you'll want a piece of software to manage them.
ClrMAMEPro is a tool that will use the data files from the latest version of MAME, and scan a big huge mess of old ROM files, extracting whatever is useful from them into a nice, neat set that works with the current version
http://www.clrmame.com/
To get yourself set up, download any new or old MAME ROMs you can find, then use ClrMAMEPro to make a proper and current set out of them and burn it to backup.
There are also emulators floating around out there for Playstation, Nintendo 64, NES and Super NES. I've gotten good performance out of Project 64, an emulator for Nintendo 64. MarioCart plays quite well.
When you're choosing GamePads, you should look for something wireless that has as many buttons as you can possibly find. You want to be able to map the controller you choose to every possible controller from history, so you're going to need something that is flexible.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
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EVERY system that's currently out will be hacked and emulated within the year.
/w a 46' tv sometime.
i've a dual core desktop im gonna try that
i'd say make a game folder and load it up with each system.
nintendo games - about 1200 roms/games available
snes - over 600 for sure
sega gensis - 500 easy
playstation 1-2-3 - each disc can be stored on the hard drive as an image that emulators will play
get 2-5 controllers (usb) and work with emulator programs that will support lots of controllers. gravis makes a ps2 looking controller (pc game pad pro does the job well)
i've also seen REAL controller hook ups for each system. playstation to usb adapters can get your favorite controller working on a computer.
don't listen to people saying to buy a game 1 at a time. save your money for hardware (unless its multiplayer your after and are using default servers)
3 games at 20 each or a 60 dollar 5.1 system for the big tv.....
bomberman 1 and 2 for super nintendo are fun for multiplayer
you can always use original controllers if you buy a few adapters from ebay/somewhere online.
No, this isn't a variant of the "find the sausage" joke.
Since no one else is looking like they want to actually answer the question...
Look into the worms series of games. I think there are 3-d versions nowadays, but even the old 2-d versions were hilarious. Sure, they're dumb, but can be very funny.
Since the post talks about what games the misses dislikes, I'll do my best with that even though no insight about what she does like was provided. Worms Armageddon is a seriously fun game anyone can play. It's an old game, and I want to say there is some hacked version that can run at higher resolutions than it was originally capable of handling, so I would suggest buying the game and looking into that. Also, I would recommend looking into emulators for NES, SNES, and so on. There is a ton of stuff out there for that which could provide a wide variety of games that are tons of fun to play (even if the graphics are far from top-notch).
Even though you can't go spit-screen on this one, if either or both of you likes racing games, GTR2 is a seriously good racing simulator, but keep in mind that the average person might find its realistic physics to be frustrating. The Logitech Momo force-feedback steering wheel works exceptionally well for this and other racing games.
If the misses also likes diablo-style games, Titan quest is a game my wife enjoyed. Again, you can't go split-screen here, but it could provide some good entertainment for both of you. Of course, if you have another PC in the house, you could play together over a LAN. ^_^
Trench wars basing is the most fun and addictive thing you can do in subspace/continuum.
As a player who has played in Trench Wars for about 10 years now, let me tell you, it kicks ass. I always go back to it when I get bored with other games. Basing is a fast-paced conflict between two teams of 8 players, for control of a flag room, and it can be really intense. Basing is a highly tactical, aggressive, challenging team sport. It is where all the skilled Trench Wars players eventually gravitate.
But there is also lots of other stuff to do in Trench Wars (play in pub zones, javs, duels, elim, TWD = squad-based matches refereed by bots, TWL = leagues refereed by humans).
Also there are volunteer staff members who constantly host events in special arenas. Turretwars, zombies/twtown, hockey, racing, mario, fishtank, and dozens and dozens of other ones.