In very cool, very retro news, a photographer named Bastiaan Ekeler made a zoom lens for his Gameboy Camera. It’s a very impressive modification, letting him take full-frame shots of objects as far away as the Moon. There’s something incredibly charming about seeing such a well-done and modern modification for such an old device, especially for the results of a low-resolution four-shade black-and-white image. It’s a great fusion of the old and the new, and I’d like to think it breathed new life into the camera for him.
It also has me thinking about the peripherals of older game systems. Our emulators are getting better and better. It’s easy now to play games from the Atari era up through the Playstation 2. And that’s great! But there’s a whole class of games that are being left out. Those that depend on hardware peripherals designed for the original system.
I want to think about this more, do some research, and write it into its own post. But how do we really play Track & Field for the Nintendo Entertainment System without a Power Pad? How do we play Duck Hunt or Time Crisis without functioning light guns? Will Sega Bass Fishing really be fun without the rod/reel controller? Can you imagine Dance Dance Revolution without the dance pad?
What are we going to do to preserve the full gameplay of those games? Is there a way to make DIY equivalents of those accessories (relatively) easily available? I don’t know yet, but it’s got me thinking.
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