Gametap - Your Thoughts? [Archive] - Retrogaming Roundtable

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dgdgagdae

06-24-2007, 02:06 PM

Is anyone else here enjoying GameTap? I gave it a shot to check out the old DOS games, and the experience has been mostly good. The game selection for some systems is sparse, but there's a decent representation from a lot of different systems, except Nintendo, of course. If you're into fighting games, which I'm not, I think you'll be in heaven. Also, all the King's Quest, Space Quest, and Quest for Glory games seem to be there. Even Willy Beamish. It was a pleasant surprise to find that the gold membership is only $9.99/month.

My Logitech dual-action game controller has been usable in every game I've tried, and the setup on most (if not all) is customizable, which is a bonus. I have had a couple of lockups on games. And playing one while another is downloading in the background is too choppy to be playable.

I own an Atari 2600, an Intellivision, and an NES. I also have emulators for Genesis, NES, Intellivision, Atari, SNES, and MAME. But I find myself coming back to GameTap for some of these games, because the interface is just so good. There are even bonus materials for most games, where you can read some history or other trivia.

I'm not advertising the service, I don't work for Time Warner, and this is not some kind of viral marketing. I'm just interested in what others think of it, and if anyone else was interested, wanted to let them know that at least one person is enjoying it.

Bratwurst

06-24-2007, 02:28 PM

I'm not advertising the service, I don't work for Time Warner, and this is not some kind of viral marketing. I'm just interested in what others think of it, and if anyone else was interested, wanted to let them know that at least one person is enjoying it.

:hmm:

PDorr3

06-24-2007, 02:28 PM

Honestly I havent even looked into gametap (monthly fee for gamefly is enough) but just the thought of playing any console games on my pc scares me (I hate playing with keyboards, and honestly I dont feel like shopping for a good pc controller).

I have been hearing alot more good talk about this service though, especialy their growing library of free games, so maybe in the future when I no longer use gamefly I will check it out.

dgdgagdae

06-24-2007, 03:08 PM

:hmm:

Arch your eyebrow if you must. I've read the threads of someone who liked a certain program on an unnamed network, so I can understand the suspicion. Sometimes, it's hard to say "Hey, this thing that costs money is pretty cool" without assumptions that somehow the person saying that is profiting.

On a side note, I preferred Gilmore Girls.

CreamSoda

06-24-2007, 03:16 PM

$9.99 a month? That isn't a bad price, I will have to check it out.

Kid Ice

06-24-2007, 03:21 PM

On a side note, I preferred Gilmore Girls.

Touche.

Actually I would like to hear some more on Gametap. I might give it a try this summer.

dgdgagdae

06-24-2007, 03:33 PM

$9.99 a month? That isn't a bad price, I will have to check it out.

I think I've become a fan of subscription based services. I subscribe to Zune Marketplace for my Zune, and while $15/month for that is a bit high, I really like the all-you-can-eat plan for music.

While I think that $10/month is the sweet spot for GameTap, I haven't decided if I'll continue with it. While I like it, I'm such a casual gamer I don't know yet if I'm getting my money's worth. I have so many entertainment options as it is.

Hwj_Chim

06-24-2007, 05:29 PM

Game tap is a good idea but I don't see it going very far. It is mostly for the casual gamer that does not want to mess with emulation,

Mobius

06-24-2007, 05:58 PM

I subscribed back when they were doing a $60/year deal and Sam and Max was just about to come out. I honestly don't find myself using it that much. I have a hard time getting involved in console games at my PC, and the PC games that I want to play don't run on my machine (it's pretty weak in the graphics department).

They're really building a nice service, but I'm finding that I don't play it enough to be worth it. I don't think I'll renew my subscription when it runs out.

MarioMania

06-24-2007, 06:13 PM

No Thanks..I still with my systems

DefaultGen

06-24-2007, 06:43 PM

.....

roushimsx

06-24-2007, 06:52 PM

Gametap is fucking sexcellent. I love it to pieces. I got an account when they rolled out Interstate 76 on the service and that made it worth it right there. I76 is notoriously bitchy to get running on modern PCs, but they tweaked it to work without a problem (well, other than a few video quirks that occasionally pop up), soundtrack and all! Later, they rolled out Interstate 82, which made the transition even smoother than I76 did (random crashing problems that used to happen in WinXP w/ I82 are gone, high resolution support, no problems with Fraps, etc).

Their Dreamcast and Saturn emulators are excellent, too. Color me impressed at one of their first DC games added being Toy Commander (good choice!) and two of their earliest Saturn games being Panzer Dragoon and Panzer Dragoon Zwei.

It's not perfect; the inability to use mods or fan patches with the games (due to the encrypted content delivery system) means that you'll be playing the incomplete version of Uplink and you won't have the luxury of exploiting the wide fanbase of Operation Flashpoint addons while the inability to transfer saves between games means you won't be able to play the same character through the Baldur's Gate series or the Quest For Glory series....but those are fairly minor complains in light of the sheer wealth of quality software for an extremely affordable price (especially with the first month being 99 cents).

Hopefully some of the licensing issues get hammered out so that the service can expand to more regions. I know a lot of people who can't legitimately sign up to the service because of legal red tape licensing hell... though if you sign up with a US credit card while accessing the registration page via a US proxy, you'll be able to play. The client doesn't check your IP (last I checked) to verify your location :)

Some really great stuff has been getting ninja added recently. Psychonauts and Rogue Trooper were just recently added, you get Tomb Raider Legends and Anniversary, Project Snowblind is being added this week, etc etc etc. It's just a killer deal, man.

For anyone that needs a good gamepad to use with the service, I've been using a Saitek P2500 (http://www.saitekusa.com/USA/prod/P2500.htm) for a couple of years now. The dpad is wonderfully comfortable and comparable to the Saturn dpad (no "nintendo thumb" from playing hours of fighting games, as is typically the case with Playstation-style controllers), it has six face buttons that work great for the Sega-centric selection of console games, and the analog sticks are easy to move smoothly and accurately while retaining enough tension to not slip out from center without you wanting 'em to. If you don't need the rumble functionality, I'd recommend looking at the P880, which is the same pad but $10 cheaper for not having rumble. I believe the 880 has been phased out by Saitek directly, so you MAY get boned by having to dig up a P990...which has annoying lights and stuff all over it :(

edit - OH, and the GameTap exclusive stuff is neat. The entire Sam & Max first season (and future episodes) included with your subscription? I'd buy that for a dollar! Despite my initial negative feelings towards the new direction of the Sam & Max games (different voice acting, art style, etc), I wound up fucking loving them. The writing is just absolutely brilliant and hilarious. Plus it's got the first four Metal Slug games with MS4 being added this week and Metal Slug 5 being added in July. Then we'll just have to cross our fingers and hope they'll get the license for Metal Slug 6 (which shouldn't be too hard to drop in since they've already got a fairly good quality DC emulator that they're actively working on improving).

agbulls

06-24-2007, 06:57 PM

Well, I would officially call that our first rousing endorsement from a veteran DP guy. Very cool, maybe I'll consider downloading the free version.

dgdgagdae

06-24-2007, 07:14 PM

For anyone that needs a good gamepad to use with the service, I've been using a Saitek P2500 (http://www.saitekusa.com/USA/prod/P2500.htm) for a couple of years now. The dpad is wonderfully comfortable and comparable to the Saturn dpad (no "nintendo thumb" from playing hours of fighting games, as is typically the case with Playstation-style controllers), it has six face buttons that work great for the Sega-centric selection of console games, and the analog sticks are easy to move smoothly and accurately while retaining enough tension to not slip out from center without you wanting 'em to. If you don't need the rumble functionality, I'd recommend looking at the P880, which is the same pad but $10 cheaper for not having rumble. I believe the 880 has been phased out by Saitek directly, so you MAY get boned by having to dig up a P990...which has annoying lights and stuff all over it :(

I've noticed a few games in GameTap (Crazy Taxi and Descent3, maybe?) have an option for "Rumble" in the in-game setup screens. Does the controller rumble actually work when playing via GameTap's emulators with the Saitek P2500?

Edit: Interestingly, the P990, which looks to be the current pad available like this, doesn't have rumble. Too bad. Maybe I'll try the Xbox 360 wireless adapter for the PC and use my 360 controller.

roushimsx

06-24-2007, 07:25 PM

Game tap is a good idea but I don't see it going very far. It is mostly for the casual gamer that does not want to mess with emulation,

It's not just that. It also is for the hardcore gamer that doesn't want to mess with tracking down warez of critically acclaimed games and trying to get 'em running on their PC. The aforementioned Interstate 76 is a biggie, but there's also the windows version of X-Com, Beyond Good & Evil, Psychonauts, Worms Armageddon, Civilization 3, Age of Wonders II, Warlords: Battlecry, Vietcong, Baldur's Gate I + II, Planescape Torment, Commander & Conquer and Red Alert, Dark Reign I & II, and so damn much more. Hell, that's just a few of the good PC games on there.

It's an all-you-can-eat buffet of gaming, and the biggest drawback is that it's easy to become overwhelmed by the sheer volume of games to play. As a bonus, they actually do read everything you throw in the suggestion box. Frequently, they'll post updates on the dev blog discussing changes to the program that were brought up in submitted suggestions (including the addition of some new titles). It doesn't cater just to casual gamers, it caters to anyone who wants to get the most bang for their buck.

Well, I would officially call that our first rousing endorsement from a veteran DP guy. Very cool, maybe I'll consider downloading the free version.

Good call on giving the free version a shot. Their lineup on there is pretty decent (until Jun 27th you get Tomb Raider Legend and Scrapland along with a solid Neo Geo lineup and some retro arcade classics like New Zealand Story and Qix) and gives a good idea of how the service is.

...and yea, I was pretty surprised that I would up being as taken with the service as I am. The initial weak lineup of software and the whole idea of subscribing just didn't sit well with me, but the library has bulked up, the Gametap software has been improved considerably, and the download speeds are a hell of a lot better than what they once were.

roushimsx

06-24-2007, 09:09 PM

I've noticed a few games in GameTap (Crazy Taxi and Descent3, maybe?) have an option for "Rumble" in the in-game setup screens. Does the controller rumble actually work when playing via GameTap's emulators with the Saitek P2500?

I just checked Crazy Taxi and the "rumble" feature is disabled :(

Some other drawbacks that I thought of while I was out at dinner:
Multiplayer in PC games may be disabled (such as Interstate 76). Not sure of any that have it enabled, honestly. This is counter balanced by having multiplayer for a bunch of arcade games (classic stuff and Neo Geo, mainly), but it's something to know before you head in.
I know that there were some Vista problems a few months ago; I'm not sure how much better it is now. It's something they're actively working on (along with the MacOSX version for Intel-based Macs), but if you're a Vista user, it's something to know before going in (yet another reason why I'm sticking with XP for the time being). Vista 64 bit barely works with anything, but what else is new?
High Dreamcast and Saturn emulation requirements. If you're into emulation, this won't come as much of a shock to you, but if you're unfamiliar with the hurdles of getting the systems emulated before, it might come as a bit of a shock ("my PC can run World of Warcraft and that looks 100x better than any Saturn game!").
Streaming data has caused some performance problems for some users in the past (I know more than one person on the GameTappers forum has complained about it). Basically, GameTap streams data to your PC as you need it rather than everything all at once. Once it's cached then you're good to go, but until then you may experience problems (either if the server is running slow or, more likely, your downstream just isn't fast enough). The work around is to just queue up the games you want to play and let the client sit overnight as it nabs everything.

Nothing too bad, but some good stuff to know before diving in. :)

Oh, and Tachyon: The Fringe is on there and it rocks. I know Freespace gets tons of love, but I'll take the flight model of Tachyon over it any day of the week.

roushimsx

06-25-2007, 08:48 PM

Oh crap.

some of y'all might recognize the poster of this thread (http://www.gametap.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=8559#8559)

tl;dr - Coming soon to gametap: Thief 1 & 2, Wing Commander IV, Legacy of Kain series, Hitman series (all four), Bloodrayne series (both), and god knows what else is in the sack. Legacy of Kain is another one of those games that's finicky with WinXP and if Wing Commander IV is in the pipe, that can only mean good things for the rest of the series that hasn't yet shown up :)

MegaDrive20XX

06-25-2007, 09:07 PM

I played it once and was very happy to see "Golden Axe: Revenge of Death Adder" :)

Yet the downside I had, is when you want to quit...you have to call them and it's like an act of congress to get out of the damn service..."Are you sure? are you REALLY sure you wanna quit? okay,...but are you sure?"...YES! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!! STOP BUGGING ME!!

Gentlegamer

06-25-2007, 09:30 PM

How do the PC games that require hard drive installation work?

roushimsx

06-25-2007, 09:39 PM

How do the PC games that require hard drive installation work?

They're basically preinstalled when you download them.

All you have to do is click the "download game" button (if you haven't downloaded it before) and then the "play" button whenever it's done downloading. You can download up to four games at once (three going in the background, one in the foreground) and you can have as many downloaded as you want (or have hard drive space for, really). There's a short delay between clicking the "play" button and when the "Start Play" button becomes active...i think it's just verifying the integrity of the cache ...not sure. Never asked :(

dgdgagdae

06-25-2007, 09:41 PM

dgdgagdae

06-25-2007, 09:43 PM

Gentlegamer

06-25-2007, 09:44 PM

They're basically preinstalled when you download them. So they're "installed" on some kind of virtual drive that your subscription gives you access to?

roushimsx

06-25-2007, 11:59 PM

So they're "installed" on some kind of virtual drive that your subscription gives you access to?

Not quite. The difference being that there's no virtual drive being created, the games are reworked into the GameTap framework (which leads to the down points above about the inability to use mods/fan patches/etc) and everything is self contained within your .\GameTap\games\ directory... you just access 'em through the GameTap interface.

For instance, here's my .\games\ directory and the contents of one of those subdirectories:
http://images.roushimsx.com/Gametap_02.jpghttp://images.roushimsx.com/Gametap_01.jpg

The only installation that you need to worry about is hitting the "download game" button. Here's an example: let's say I want to play Far Cry. I find it in the interface (or you could just use the search function):

http://images.roushimsx.com/Gametap_03a.jpg

Hit the ol' download button...
http://images.roushimsx.com/Gametap_03b.jpg

and relax while it comes down the pipe.
http://images.roushimsx.com/Gametap_03c.jpg

As you can see, it's showing me a Tomb Raider trailer right there. I kind of cheated on the order of these screenshots because Fraps didn't want to play nice while alt+print scrn did, because I hit "download in background" and went back to snap the first shot over again. You can see the three circles in the lower left, with the first one slowly filling up in the first screenshot. That's where the three background downloading tasks are.

You can freely play other stuff while you're downloading or you can even watch GameTapTV channels. Generally if I'm downloading a large game like this, I'll go off and play something else...

http://images.roushimsx.com/Gametap_03d.jpg

hbkprm

06-26-2007, 03:30 PM

one of these days ill try gametap

jsiucho

07-12-2007, 11:20 PM

Tried it today,, not bad at all. 84 Neo Geo games , but hopefully will see more Saturn and DC games.

JS

Kid Ice

07-13-2007, 12:28 AM

From my experience I won't bother with it again. It took me a while to get the lite player working correctly. Some of the free games take forever to get started....too bad because it's a pretty sweet list of games.

TheRedEye

07-13-2007, 11:56 AM

I work in the content department of GameTap and have a pretty large role in scheduling out our games, if anyone has questions.

TheRedEye

07-13-2007, 06:54 PM

I'd still like to know which version of VCS Quadrun Gametap has on their site:

http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=89191

The easy answer is "the one that Atari sent to us," so I would imagine it's the version featured on their proprietary compilations. I can see about getting you a one-month trial account on Monday if you're really curious!

Captain Wrong

07-13-2007, 08:11 PM

roushimsx

07-13-2007, 10:02 PM

I work in the content department of GameTap and have a pretty large role in scheduling out our games, if anyone has questions.

- Is there any way to know what's been trimmed from the games prior to playing them? For instance, it was just pointed out to me the other day that the music from Worms 2 is missing.

- Are the conversions for non-WinNT-friendly Windows games handled in house or outsourced? I can't remember the name of the company that did the Interstate '76 conversion, but I wanted to find out more about them and googling for their name that briefly appeared in the credits (that FRAPS wouldn't take screenshots of :( ) didn't yield anything. :(

- Why are the Legacy of Kain games getting added in reverse order? :(

- Panzer Dragoon Saga! :(

But yea, I love me some GameTap (see previous page!). Playing through Rogue Trooper right now (finally!) and I'm trying to decide what the hell to play afterwards.

TheRedEye

07-13-2007, 10:10 PM

Two quick questions:

1) do you need to be connected to play games?

2) how's the Mac side of things?

(I have a MacBook Pro and I'd love to have this for gaming on the go if it works like I think it does.)

1. Yeah, you need to be connected to the internet to play GameTap games. This has something to do with DRM and preventing piracy. I'd love to get to the point where GameTap just "calls home" when your paid subscription is up to see if you're still subscribed and lets you play online in the meanwhile, but I don't think the tech is there to do that on top of everything else GameTap does.

2. The Mac can play everything in our catalog, with the exception of Saturn, Dreamcast, Windows and DOS games. This amounts to about 500 games, if I'm not mistaken. I haven't played with the Mac player personally, but my understanding is that the emulation is pretty damned flawless. Considering that amounts to 2600, Master System, Neo Geo, several arcade boards, Commodore 64, and even one NES game, that's pretty damned impressive, I think.

TheRedEye

07-13-2007, 10:16 PM

- Is there any way to know what's been trimmed from the games prior to playing them? For instance, it was just pointed out to me the other day that the music from Worms 2 is missing.

Honestly dude, I hadn't even heard about that one, but I'm guessing that it was a licensing issue. Don't know about the conversions either. I know that the bulk of encrypting is handled externally by one of our partners, though we do some of it in-house.

Why are the Legacy of Kain games getting added in reverse order? :(

That's not really true, Defiance is being released second (not first). The only game we're releasing out of order is Soul Reaver 2, and that was simply a tech issue; it hadn't passed our extensive QA process in time, so it was either hold the entire series back or release them out of order.

Panzer Dragoon Saga! :(

Yeah, that would be cool, wouldn't it?

roushimsx

07-13-2007, 10:52 PM

That's not really true, Defiance is being released second (not first). The only game we're releasing out of order is Soul Reaver 2, and that was simply a tech issue; it hadn't passed our extensive QA process in time, so it was either hold the entire series back or release them out of order.

So we're not likely to see Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain or Soul Reaver on GameTap?

TheRedEye

07-14-2007, 10:08 AM

So we're not likely to see Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain or Soul Reaver on GameTap?

GameTap does not currently support either of these games. Sorry to give you a sort of generic and vague marketing answer, but that's the best I can do.

I guess I can be a bit more specific: we do not have plans to support either title in the immediate future, and I don't recommend waiting for them to come out so that you can play them in order.

roushimsx

07-14-2007, 10:50 AM

I guess I can be a bit more specific:

I love how honest/open you (and a bunch of the other guys that post on the blog and forums) are about this stuff :)

Oh well, looks like I'll have to fiddle with my CD and see if I can magically make Blood Omen work. Last couple of times I tried, it would freeze up in the bar right when you gained control of your character. Tried all of the patches (official and unofficial), but perhaps I'll have better luck now that I've upgraded again. Hell, maybe I'll be able to run it in VirtualPC. Maybe.

Public notice: Rogue Trooper is pretty fucking awesome. Controls take a level or two to get the hang of, but soon you'll be hiding behind cover and lobbing grenades while your assault rifle turret mows down anyone stupid enough to come out of cover.