Emulation Vs Carts

Anyone who has any kind of interest in older games knows about emulation and where to get their favourite roms.  There are a number of purists who will tell you that carts are the only way to go but how do emulated games stack up to the actual thing?  I'm not here to talk about the legal side of things, that's another topic for another time, I'm just talking about how it feels to play the game on an emulator vs playing on actual hardware.

I for one am all for a little bit of emulation mainly because it's fucking convenient.  I have tons and tons of SNES and NES carts lying around my house but I don't have the space to have those consoles hooked up all the time, which is unfortunate.  Emulation is a good way for me to be able to play all the games from my retro collection without having to go through the effort of digging out the system and hooking that bastard up in order to play it.  Maybe I just want a go on something for 30 minutes or whatever, I don't want to have to go through a bunch of effort for a quick go on something.

However, I do feel like some of the experience is lost when playing on an emulator.  The first thing, at least for me, is comfort.  When I play on my original hardware I can lay back on my couch and just chill but when emulating I have to play at my computer which is significantly less comfortable.  Technical issues will also rear their ugly head when emulating which has led to many a stressful evening.  Sometimes a certain ROM or ISO just doesn't want to function on your emulator of choice and having to work shit out to get certain games to run is a massive pain in the hole.  It sometimes gets to the point where it would have just been faster to hook up my system rather than spend time googling around for configuration setups for specific games.

So while I feel that carts are infinitely better, emulation has a few perks that just makes life a hell of a lot easier.  For me as someone who speed runs, emulation makes streaming a fuckton easier and it makes practicing certain segments of certain games a lot faster and less annoying too.  That said, I'd much rather be chilling on my couch playing my retro games than destroying my ass on my shitty computer chair, but that's just me.  For people that don't have access to older games or for people that just want to keep their old collections easily accessible, emulation is pretty vital and as much as the big companies hate it, it's here to stay and that's a good thing.

£2000! A little update too

So after I finished last nights stream a bunch of donations came in and Identity Gaming has now raised over £2000 for the Alzheimer's Society!  HOORAY!

I just wanted to make a little post thanking everyone for their continued support and donations to this site.  As much as I enjoy talking about games on the internet and speed running things on twitch doing it for a good cause makes it all the better.  Also it's way more fun interacting with people than just sitting in my room and doing it alone so I just want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports this site and to the people who have donated to the charity.

However, there is still another £1000 to go on the current donation page and the goals will be getting bigger once that gets met so I'm counting on all of you to keep supporting me and helping the site and the cause grow even larger.

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Also a little update regarding the speed runs.  I decided a couple of months ago that I would do my speed runs on a weekly rotation.  I made this decision in order to avoid burnout on any one title because it is very easy to become sick to death of a certain game after playing it so much.  The problem is, even if I change the game every week I still manage to get a little burnt out by the weeks end and this is something I'd like to avoid.

For now I'm going to experiment with a new system where I put each game on a 5 run limit.  Usually in one stream I'll do 1 or 2 runs so it means a couple of days of each game which in turn means a little more variety in the stream.  Also, as another chance for you guys to donate for something you can pick the next game by donating with the title in the comment.

So once again, thanks for the donations and the support and let's keep raising money for Alzheimer's! 

Why AGDQ is so Awesome

At time of writing, Awesome Games Done Quick is on RIGHT NOW! So go watch it!

https://gamesdonequick.com/

But I want to take a quick moment as to why this event is so damn good. 

For those who may not know, Awesome Games Done Quick is an event that happens twice a year.  Speed Runners from all over gather together and Stream a large number of runs in an attempt to raise money for charity.  Awesome Games which happens in January raises money for Prevent Cancer Foundation and Summer Games raises money for Doctors Without Borders.

The event is awesome for a number of reasons so I thought I'd just share why I think it's such a great event.  First, raising money for these charities is an awesome thing to do.  The amount of planning and money spent on renting out/going to the venue must be pretty big.  Not to mention all the practice that these guys do for this event is staggering so it's really nice to see so much effort being put into such a great cause.  The donators even get to play their part in adding to the entertainment with various incentives, prizes and their comments being read live during the runs, it's awesome.

Another reason I think AGDQ is awesome is because it directly inspired this page.  I saw how much money these guys raised for charity and I thought that charity gaming might be worth doing.  Thanks to that, the Alzheimer's Society now has about £1800 more than it would than if this page didn't exist, which is awesome.  I owe a lot to the people who support me, but without the speed running community introducing me to the concept of gaming for charity, this small time effort of mine wouldn't exist.

There's one more reason that AGDQ is awesome and this is a more recent one.  Right now, gaming is going through a sort of tough time.  There are arguments all the fucking time about gaming being inclusive or gaming being misogynistic or whatever, you've heard me rant about that shit before.  What AGDQ proves, at least for me, is that all these people who complain about things like "gaming isn't inclusive" or "gamers are violent" are chatting complete bullshit.  Fire up the stream and you'll see all sorts of people at the event and everyone, providing they are bringing a run with them, are allowed to attend.  Doesn't matter if you're black, white, gay, straight, whatever, if you have a speed run that you are good at and it fits into their schedule, then you can go.

The same is true for the speed running community as a whole and gaming in general.  Doesn't matter who you are, where you're from or even how good you are, as long as you're here to play, you're welcome.  AGDQ is awesome because it illustrates this point so beautifully all while raising money for a worth while cause.

Twitch Done Fucked Up

Seriously, what the fuck.  Streaming should be so fucking simple, you just play a game live and people get to come and enjoy the experience with you, why did you have to go and fuck it all up?!

I don't know when these changes happened exactly, but that's not really the point.  The point is that these changes did happen and Twitch has become all google-fied (read: total bullshit) and I wouldn't be surprised if the changes made to the twitch service would make people consider moving to other streaming platforms which aren't so focused on fucking you over.

The first change I came across this morning was the change to the Video on Demand thing.  How I understand it is that past broadcasts are going to be saved for 14 days and then deleted.  This part is kind of fair, I guess, since there must be just insane amounts of completely unviewed video just clogging up space.  They then go on to say that if you don't want your shit to be deleted you can save them in a highlight, which I guess is also fair since highlights receive a lot more views than just the raw stream footage.

OH BUT WAIT! THE HIGHLIGHTS CAN ONLY BE TWO HOURS LONG!

What the fuck is this crap, really?!  Why only two hours?!  This doesn't really affect me (right now) since most of the highlights that I make are an hour or less with the longest being the Silent Hill speed runs.  But there are PLENTY of members of the speed running community and other communities being fucked over by this limit.  Just to give you an idea, one of the biggest streamers on the goddamn site (Cosmo) runs The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker and that's a 4 and a half hour run.  That  means, that if he wanted to save his run to twitch, he'd have to do it in 3 fucking parts and that's just a pain in the ass.

Even worse for runners who play games like Final Fantasy where the runs can be up to 6 hours or so.  Making highlights for those runs now involves so much busywork that I can't help but feel sorry for them.

But that's not the only thing, oh no, there have been changes to their policy on audio now.  They use some kind of automated software that detects third party content and then mutes that part of the video.  This is complete bullshit because 1) I'm pretty sure that stuff falls under fair use or some crap and 2) IT DOESN'T FUCKING WORK

Here is the new Silent Hill time I got last night

http://www.twitch.tv/taurinensis/c/4833834

Nearly HALF THE FUCKING VIDEO has been silenced when it mostly contains ambient noises, Harry's footsteps and my talking.  I'm pretty sure Konami don't own the rights on my fucking voice.  My guess is that it got muted because at the very start part of the Silent Hill theme was playing but even if that was the case, why did TWENTY SIX FUCKING MINUTES of video get muted for that shit?!  Why not the whole video?  It's not like the audio is much different in the second half of the game.

What's even worse is that I can prove this bullshit doesn't work with this

http://www.twitch.tv/taurinensis/c/4580959

Here is a video of an older time I got a while ago.  Notice how NONE OF IT IS FUCKING MUTED but IT'S THE SAME FUCKING GAME!  So much for your fucking audio policy because you suck at enforcing it.

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So between fucking over speed runners and people who play long game and fucking over everyone else with this audio bullshit, I wouldn't be surprised if people start moving to a new service.  Unless things are solved I imagine twitches days could be numbered.

Speed Run Races! A surprisingly fun past time

If you have been paying any attention to the stream, you may have noticed that a great deal of my free time has been taken up by speed running various games.  However only very recently have I taken up racing these games and I've found it to be rather enjoyable so today I thought I'd just share my first experiences with racing.

The site used for racing is called Speed Runs Live and through the magic of an IRC chat room players from all over come together to discuss games and perform speed run races.  Now going in I was extremely apprehensive because the majority of video game communities are complete trash.

Take DotA for example, if you suck at that game, people rage at you and throw all manner of insults which doesn't exactly do much to make you want to learn how to play and get good.  Even when you play the Vs Bot mode, which is designed for new players to learn the game, people STILL rage at you, it's a load of shit.

Now with speed running it's something different.  Now mainly I've been speed running Hotline Miami and They Bleed Pixels, and while I don't hold any records I've gotten pretty good at those games.  However, the game I started to race with was Megaman X, a game I started running a week ago.

Now I suck at Megaman X, it's a tough game to run and there is so much going on and so much to remember that I find it rather difficult.  So I hop on Speed Runs Live with my buddy, set up a race and start racing. 

Now I'm getting SMASHED, and people are more than welcome to come and see the suckage happen live on my twitch channel but none of the aforementioned shit slinging went down.  In fact, the opposite, people don't care if you suck, it's just not a big deal.  If you suck, then people will help you out, give you tips and offer advice.  I had people from the IRC in my chat room laughing along with me and telling me not to give up when I fucked up a skip and lost a bunch of time.  Racing Megaman X, despite my suckage was a truly enjoyable experience.

So to anyone out there looking to get into speed running but are afraid of "not being good enough" or whatever, it doesn't matter.  Just pick a game, get some splits and join the fun and the community will be there to help you and enhance the fun rather than berate you for your lack of skill or knowledge of the game.

Seriously, come race me at Megaman X sometime, you're guaranteed to win.

Awesome Games Done Quick 2014

Get hype!! One of the greatest gaming marathons of the year is starting real soon!

That's right, Awesome Games Done Quick is back and it starts TODAY, from 12pm EST if I understand the information on the website correctly so make sure to go and watch the stream and support all the speed running goodness at this link.

http://gamesdonequick.com/

If you don't know what this AGDQ is, it's a HUGE marathon of games being speed run by various people from the Speed Demos Archive and Speed Runs Live community in order to raise money for the prevent cancer foundation.

It's a great cause and all the runners at the event are extremely skilled.  WAY more skilled than any of the speed runs that I've ever put out, so if you enjoy watching me then I suggest you go and watch them and see how it's really done.

They have a huge goal this year and I hope they can go above and beyond so I hope anyone who happens to come across this page in time will go and check them out and maybe consider a donation to them. 

If it wasn't for these guys, Identity Gaming wouldn't exist since it was this event that basically acted as the inspiration for this site.  So stop reading this post and go and watch some damn runs already!