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DosBox Games in Chrome

Over at NaClBox they are hosting a port of DOSBox to Google’s Native Client playground with one goal in mind: allowing you to play classic DOS games in Chrome. He currently has a limited number of titles set up in demo mode for you to try it out, including Alone in the Dark, the Secret of Monkey Island, and SimCity 2000. All of them play just like the originals, which tells me this VM implementation works great. I was able to play them on a 32 bit XP box, a 64 bit Windows 7 box, a 32 bit Xubuntu box, and just cause I could I then did it on my 64 bit box booting a Knoppix LiveDVD. Not that I recommend that, since all my settings evaporated when I took the disk back out, and Knoppix has its own DOSBox implementation bootable from the xStart GUI or command line menus anyways. I did not have a MAC box to test it on, but it claims to work on them as well.

I am unsure if the goal is to host a bunch of games at that site, but I suspect not. I believe he is trying to develop ports of open source projects like DOSBox for Chrome (the browser and the OS), and that belief is supported by the fact that his source code patch is available for download since this Tuesday so you can figure out how to compile and run your own. My project for this weekend is to see if I can get it built and working here. If I can, I have a few of my own favorite DOS games I look forward to playing again; Gibson’s Neuromancer, Zelazny’s 9 Princes in Amber, and Adam’s Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Thank Ghod I copied the original 5.25′ floppy’s to 3.5′ floppy’s in the early 90s, and then to CD in the late 90s, because I sure don’t have a working floppy drive of any flavor now. I even still have the original packaging on a few of them, although Leather Goddesses of Phobos looks a lot more sedate than my earlier self remembered.

How does this stuff work? The Google browser Chrome has some built in functionality called Native Client, which basically allows you to embed C or C++ code into your web app. This is currently in Beta, and one of the things that will determine whether it gets widely used or abandoned is how it will overcome the obvious security problems you generate by letting random remote people run programs on your machine. Java already solved that issue with the sandbox and restricted code subset approach to running C online, so there is a good chance Google will get there as well. While having DOSBox in the Chrome browser is an easy fix for windows and apple folks looking to run classic DOS programs in those environments, the real power of this port will be realized by people running those programs on their tablets and smart phones.

Something to Watch: Online

The streaming schedules for various Anime programs from Japan have been broken up by the disaster continuing to happen there, in no small part because all the TV channels have been doing emergency response information and disaster news coverage. Since all the contractual agreements with places like Crunchyroll stipulate that the programs air in Japan before streaming anywhere else, this is understandable. Even though the emergency is still ongoing some of the regular programing is returning to the airwaves, so new episodes of some of the programs are once more becoming available. NHK World is still doing full time disaster coverage, which you can watch online at that link. It is also available on Ustream for those in the Americas, over at Nico Nico Live across Asia, and on their own iPhone/iPad App. Once the emergency is over and they return to regular programing, I have 3 shows to recommend:

1) Imagine-Nation, a weekly edutainment program covering the Manga, Anime, and Gaming news out of Japan.

2) Digista which is running this season as Digista Teens, the high school version. This is all about learning how to create your own media to express yourself, with guidance from industry professionals, and most of the media being created is one flavor or another of animation. This one gives you insights and useful tips for building your own, so it is worth your time if you are considering creating something. Digista was a Japanese program for adults, but Digista Teens has expanded to become part of the Asia-Pacific Broadcast Union helping kids from multiple countries grow their skill sets. If this sounds kind of familiar, perhaps you read my Build Your Own blog entry a few days ago, when I gave the link to download some of the free animation software they are using for this project.

3) J-Melo, the weekly music program covering J-Rock, J-Pop, and all other music formats. They play both video tracks and run their own live concerts from the studio/club, this is a great place to learn about new bands and see some old favorites.

America’s Greatest Otaku Contest

There really is a competition focusing on America’s Greatest Otaku, and it could be you that brings home the prizes this time. The contest is being held by TokyoPOP, and it runs from Monday, February 7th (yes, that is tomorrow) until Friday, February 11th. Each day of that five day period will see a different contest being presented, each a day long and each giving you a shot at some great prizes. You can get the official rules here, and then log into the America’s Greatest Otaku site each day this week to enter each new contest as it comes up. The documentary series that all of this is in support of launches on Hulu on February 24th.

Early Gaming

On the first day of the new year I tend to think of the first days of other things. Remember back in 1982, when state of the art gaming brought you that marvel of the modern world, Pong? That was actually a crude digital descendant of the more elegant Brookhaven Lab’s Tennis for Two, built all the way back in 1958 by nuclear physicist William Higinbotham. It used a Donner Analog computer to drive the game, which was basically a series of potentiometers married to a patch panel; the potentiometers were assembled in sets as electronic slide rules, the patch panels allowed you to physically configure each electronic slide rule for specific types of calculations and then assemble sequences of the configured assemblies to simulate various real world processes or respond to real time input. The game controllers were two boxes with a button and a potentiometer on each, the potentiometer controlling the angle of the virtual tennis racket, and the button indicating the swing moment.

When Brookhaven National Laboratory was celebrating their 50th anniversary in 1997, they had the good sense to want to make this piece of gaming history part of the party, but the original device had only existed for a year. So another engineer who had joined Brookhaven a few decades later had to resurrect the game based on old film footage and a series of notebooks. He could not get a Donner analog computer at first, so parts of his reconstruction were digital circuits imitating the actions of the original.

The scary part is this wasn’t even the first video game; that honor goes to 1947’s Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device, which was the original analog computer version of arcade favorite Missile Command. I had thought Asteroids came before Missile Command, but that one didn’t get invented until 1962 at MIT under the name Spacewar, and was first built on a digital computer. I include part one of The History of Gaming from The Irate Gamer. He seems to think his topic begins with 1962’s Spacewar, but from that point forward he does manage to hit a few of the high points.

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Nintendo 3DS full support rollout

When Nintendo rolls out a new product, usually it has a smattering of in-house titles for it, with half of them playable, and half vaporware, depending on third party products to take up the slack. Not so this time, acording to Japanator; there will be 32 in-house games on display for the Nintendo 3DS, their portable 3D gaming platform. You won’t need special glasses to get the 3D effects, although as with most new optical systems there will be a brief learning curve while your eyes figure out the trick to viewing it. The percentages will be about normal though, with 15 playable games and another 17 game trailers. They are taking over Chiba City’s Makuhari Messe Hall 9, the same town featured in so many early William Gibson stories, and the same venue used for the Tokyo Game Show each September. I am not much of a gamer, but this is one system I am looking forward to. For a full list of which games are real and to see coverage of the actual event, go to Nintendo World 2011. The event will run January 8th, 9th, and 10th.