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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?"
Just buy a console.
If you are wanting to play on your television opposed to a monitor, you probably have a pretty nice TV. Chances are your laptop cannot run at a resolution where you would even enjoy this experience.
The 360 and the Wii cost less than the original NES did if you count in inflation. Do some research in game libraries and pick one. Well worth the investment.
In terms of games, Guitar Hero is addicting.
Get a couple of USB dance pads and try out Stepmania, a free DDR clone.
Or get a Wii. Tons of simple flash games through the browser. Fun and simple.
Get some old-school console emulators and play some of the great classics.
I'm sure that what constitutes a "classic" will vary here on /., but I prefer some of the older Super NES games... Tetris Attack is awesome.
You didn't hear that from me, though...
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"Not only do I have a girlfriend, but we're MARRIED, and she wants to play video games with me! Oh, did I mention she loves Linux?"
Don't mean to be presumptuous, but I would recommend you spend your spare time outside of your house exploring the world. You will have plenty of time to stay in the house if/when you decide to have children.
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The best game to play is "HIDE the sausage"!
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
In all seriousness, the total hardware cost of two gamepads, a TV out connector and a laptop graphics card needed to run the latest games will more than likely overrun the cost of just buying a PS2 or a Wii, Your spouse's tastes scream console gaming. No strategy games or RPGs? What does that leave? FPSes? Good luck finding a co-op FPS title.
For Co-op play, console is King. There are a myriad of two player titles out there to cater for all tastes, and co-op is something that even gets included in some one player titles, owing to its popularity.
PCs are not designed for what you're looking for. Consoles are, and they are cheaper, faster, easier and offer a better selection of titles. Just buy the damn Wii.
May the Maths Be with you!
Coming soon too we have LEGO Raiders of the Lost Ark and such. It's amazing how fun that game is, especially with a competent second player.
However, play it with a five year old, my god, you'll go insane. It's like playing Contra all over again.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
The issue with most PC Games even Multi-Player is they expect one person for PC, so they are normally networked for multi-player.
Get 2 USB Keypads, and a Copy of VMWare. Install 2 OS the VMWare and copy of each game on it. setup the virtual network correctly and Link one USB Keypad to each VM. Now Resize the VM Windows so you have Split Screen. And there 2 of you can play games at once (even 2 different ones if you feel like it) on your laptop all for the price of getting a console.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Jesus, if you've got to resort to games this early on in marriage, that's not a good sign.
Sexual deviance, man! That's what you need to try; your "find the sausage" game sounds like a good start. You're married, it's ok to do that now!
throw new NoSignatureException();
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!)
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This is Slashdot, so I'm going to guess "all of it".
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For the console-like fun experience, you need a stick, a sharpening tool, and one of your eyes.
Nintendo-Hard, look it up.
(I kid, I kid).
Here's a site showing the best atari games ever complete with the awesome box covers. So real gems in there, many you probably never heard of. Get an emulator and enjoy the nostalgia.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
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I recommend members of the general public relax and be cool. You're more likely to be hit by an asteroid than sued for sharing SNES roms.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
This is a dated reference, but try to find some copies of the different versions of You Don't Know Jack. This is great for a young couple and really keeps the conversation and interaction going while you are playing... And the innuendo doesn't hurt either.
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. ^_^
I play it with my 5 year old, he skips all the damn coins... drives me nuts. We're somewhere like 60% but the kids scratched it so there's 2 levels we can't play at all. Just got to the lego city, that was a disapointment... They've bought all the characters, most of the good power ups, only the 2x multiplier though... They keep spending the money on stuff they won't use. I think my favorite setup is the ewok with the explosive catapult and invincibility... Just walk up and kill everything. My son drives me crazy playing explosive robots. It's funny though, he gets mad at his 3 year old brother for slowing HIM down.
We just bought defender used. It's ok. The kids can't handle the mission instructions (get the people, bring them somewhere safe, if an alien gets them get them back) but it doesn't matter because they love to just fly around and shoot at stuff, even if it's each other.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
My boyfriend and I have had a lot of fun with Cortex Command. It's a really entertainingly adolescent wargame that supports splitscreen play and joystick controllers.
It's not actually finished but its active mod community makes it not matter - if one of you skims the forums now and then, you'll find all kinds of giggle-inducingly overpowered toys to play with. It's ultraviolent but it's on the border between 'obscene' and 'slapstick'...
egypt urnash minimal art.
I've got a second hand Dreamcast at home for 50 euro's (roughly 75 US$) with a bunch of games. Consoles of around this generation (N64, PS, GC) onwards have all the types of games you'd want for a fraction of the cost of modern consoles.
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Am waiting for Lego The Breakfast Club now...
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
You Don't Know Jack ;)
This game is the BEST multiplayer experience you will find on a PC without playing a console game through a ROM. You won't find any other multiplayer experience that both of you can play on the same screen.
In fact, almost ANY trivia game will fit this bill, but You Don't Know Jack is just the most fun of them all. Brings a whole new meaning to "screwing your wife".
Chippy
Most MythTV distributions include a MAME emulator, as well as a SNES emulator, and support for several others you can optionally download, install and configure in their menus.
The nice thing about this is, it gives you a good excuse to dedicate an entire PC to your TV set, since it works as a very capable DVR, gives you a set-top web browser, and other goodies.
The downside? At least from all the knoppmyth distros I've used, I've always had some hassle getting MAME working well with it. (EG. You can purchase wireless gamepad type controllers from Logitech that use USB dongles and are detected just fine in Linux. But you'll have to do some creative stuff with the xmame config file so you have all their buttons assigned in a sensible manner. If you don't assign one to simulate dropping coins in, for example, you'll never be able to get a new game to start from your controller.)
Which isn't very reassuring if the ROM in question is Asteroids...
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
There's always Rapid Onset, Vital Passage, or Sudden Thrust.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Pressing a button to put in a quarter is my favorite part.
When I think of the number of times my weekly allowance was ALMOST enough money to beat Double Dragon... now it's "Hahahah, fuck you Willy. Click, click, click, click..."
Petty I know. But very satisfying.
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That's debatable, and I'm not saying you're wrong. The GG...GP asked a specific question though, and that was whether you could do it _without_ breaking the law.
Mr. Period: Nine is the one that's right by ten!
Nine: One day I will kill him. Then, I will be Ten.
If you want to actually follow the law, you won't get out the door in the morning. It's almost inevitable that you will break some law today - fail to fix a minor building code violation in your house, use a pesticide or disinfectant in a manner contrary to its labeling, break a minor traffic law...there are so many laws that no one can hope to be compliant with them all.
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you can technically do it without breaking the law, it's just expensive and requires a high level of expertise to construct the ripping mechanism.
at that point it'd be easier just picking up some old hardware too. Obviously by ripping your NES carts you'd miss out on the enthralling experience of blowing on the connector to get the damn thing to boot.
Collector's Edition