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The story of PS1 emulation in the late 90s is interesting - Steve Jobs actually announced an official Mac PS1 emulator on stage at MacWorld. Naturally, Sony weren’t happy. Then there was Bleem, a commercial PS1 emulator for PC and Bleemcast, which could run PS1 games on the Dreamcast. Absurd.
I knew about Bleem from ads in the magazines I was subscribed to as a teen but I didn’t know that about Jobs, Mac, and PS1 emulation, that’s wild!
Here’s a video about the story of Connectix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcD420hP3YM
Very cool. Shame sony bought them out.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I haven’t been motivated to actually play any vidya recently, but I love flipping through old video game magazines. Other than the obvious nostalgia rush, it’s also interesting to observe the general tenor of reporting and how people thought about games or systems in the moment. Like, I looked at the issue that was mentioned right below this one at time of commenting (Next Generation February 1998) and in their coverage of Space World '97 they were pretty skeptical about Nintendo going all-in on Pokémon:
U.S. gamers will be forgiven for raising an incredulous eyebrow at Yamauchi’s grim view of the videogame market and for asking, “What the hell are Pocket Monsters?” But Space World is a show for the Japanese market, and Yamauchi was addressing specific Japanese concerns. In Japan, Pocket Monsters on Game Boy is both the best-selling game of 1997 and the best-selling Game Boy cart of all time. It’s provided a much-needed boost for Nintendo in an otherwise tough year, although whether it will settle into a long-term stable market or succeed anywhere outside of Japan is doubtful.
I’m not at all blaming the reporter for not being a soothsayer, but imagine going back and telling them that this was gonna become the most profitable media franchise of all time!
In the same issue this emulation story is taken from (November 1998) they have an extensive preview of Sonic Adventure for Dreamcast which has a reminder of a very different console-PC paradigm:
The graphics are, quite simply, phenomenal: fast, high-res, and with a mind-boggling number of polygons on screen at once. Still, they look fundamentally “console” in nature: Those who think that Dreamcast might just produce PC-like graphics appear to have nothing to worry about.
If you’re interested in perusing these mags for yourself, definitely check out the recently-launched archive.gamehistory.org from the Video Game History Foundation. They developed a custom OCR solution for the magazines that works incredibly well, so if you wanna find every mention of Superman 64, knock yourself out!
