Are the early VR games of the 90s effectively lost media at this point? I know some exist in the form of remakes based on gameplay footage, but what about the original binaries?
those were actually dos games but with custom cards for 3d acceleration and interfacing with the vr units
Yeah probably. Its crazy to think about but also rarely discussed. I remember VR games in arcades, or temporary installations that may have toured around the country... some of that stuff I can't even find on google anymore. It was wild shit, like one was $3 Clinton dollars for five fucking minutes- obviously my parents never coughed up the dough for that, so i only ever heard my friend explain what it was like. That shit will never be emulated or preserved even as data, like those insane room-sized sega arcade games. Even if you had a dump of the rom chip or hard drive how the fuck do you emulate it without the fucking helmet?What's funny is that it seemed like nobody ever figured out how to play quickly enough - people would hand over ten bucks, get killed because they didn't understand how to play, and then wander away mumbling "woah" whole the next person sat down for their turn. Really goofy. Similar to arcade games, most people get killed immediately because you don't have a feel for the game yet - but so expensive that I doubt anyone ever really got good at them. I wonder if some of those things had content at the end that nobody ever saw hahahha - lost media both in a practical sense, but also phenomenologically, not in anyone's living memeory
for me, it was the space shuttle 'rides' at malls which had a tv up front and showed various footage while the shuttle rocked around like you were there
>>12474318iirc the company that made most of those (virtuality or something) still exists kind of, they have like 2 working units that they rent out for parties and they've ported most/all of their games to the oculus rift
>>12474318There's Pac-Man VR which is dumped, but there's no emulator for it. I don't think the person who dumped the ROM donated the board to MAME or anything so it's probably going to stay that way for the foreseeable future.
>>12474453>$3 Clinton dollars for five fucking minutesIt was $20 dollars for 5 minues when I played the OP image as a kid
System Shock 1 supported vr. I always wondered why no one tried to force compatibility with modern headsets
My mom never let me play the vr arcade games because she was scared I would get head lice
>>12474453Excellent post
>>12474318I played that one in a VR studio on the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder way back in the 90s. Pretty fun, although the pterodactls swoop was difficult for me; I'd get the turnaround ok but I rarely aimed the height angle properly, probably blasted it once out of ever 4 swoops.I remember it being pricey but they gave you multiple rounds to play; and you were basically in a mini tournament every time with multiple rounds. I only played one round with my friend because he always fucks with shit and hit a switch on the unit which set it to a solo mode or something.
>>12474453They had an installation at my local mall one summer and I never had a go on it. They had big tvs up so we could watch the games, it was 1v1 fps 15 minute rounds and it was like $10, which for comparison to see a movie was $6 and a McDonalds meal was $4. I remember the way the body disintegrated when they got shot
