SERVICE REVIEW: GameTap

Software Sells the.........um.......Software

A little while ago, my kids and I signed up for a month-long free trial of GameTap, the downloadable, broadband-only gaming service from Turner Broadcasting. FYI, the standard trial is 2 weeks, but there are codes for a full month floating around out there.

It’s a well-worn axiom in the gaming industry that the software sells the hardware, which probably explains the miserable failure of the Sega Saturn in the mid-90s, as well as why Microsoft signed development deals with highly-respected Japanese designers like Hironobu Sakaguchi, Yoshiki Okamoto and Tetsuya Mizuguchi to design games for the Xbox 360.

So how about GameTap's software? Well, GameTap certainly has a lot of games. They launched with more than 300 of them, and they are adding more on the fly.

One of the first things you notice, probably because it is so prevalent in GameTap’s advertising, is the wide selection of classic arcade titles.

You can play beloved favorites like Pac-Man (Mr. & Ms. - EDIT: actually, just his, not hers (no Ms. Pac-Man. sorry for the misinformation), Galaga and Dig Dug, but then, you can also just buy Namco Arcade Museum.

You can play Defender, Robotron 2084 and Burger Time, but then, you can also just buy Midway Arcade Treasures.

You can play Asteroids, Battlezone and Tempest, but then, you can also buy Atari Anthology.

You can play Zaxxon, but then, you can also....... no wait. Actually, I haven’t been able to find Sega’s amazing isometric pioneer anywhere but GameTap, so that was, in the words of a certain fabulously fleshy employee of Quahog’s Happy-Go-Lucky Toy Company, freakin’ sweet.

However, as much as I love Zaxxon, it would also be nice to see some of my other favorites like Star Wars, Tron, Track & Field, Time Pilot and Dragon’s Lair.

I really enjoyed sharing so many of my old school favorites with my kids. The only problem was that while I would have been content to continue playing for a while, they didn’t buy into the whole replay value thing. After once or twice at most, they wanted to move on to other games.

Speaking of moving on, there are many other systems represented in addition to arcade. Home consoles, portable game systems and computers (Windows & DOS) are all present and accounted for, but some of them sent pretty meager delegations to the big party.

For example, while there were a few Intellivision titles (eight, to be precise), where were the sports games that made Intellivision a serious challenger to Atari’s dominance of the market back in the day? Baseball, football, basketball, hockey; these were the games that left my thumb horribly (or should I say wonderfully?) disfigured from using the controller so much. And don’t try to tell me about Skiing. Want to know why George Plimpton never compared Intellivision Skiing to Atari Skiing? Because they both suck.

But at least Intellivision provides one hit game in Astrosmash, which is an overflowing horn of plenty when compared to Dreamcast, which only has three measly titles. The good news was that one of them, Toy Commander, looked like a good one for my kids. The bad news was that it was one of several that crashed my system. But back to those three games. Come on, GameTap. You can’t tease me with a tab for Dreamcast, then withhold goodies like Jet Grind Radio or Samba de Amigo. It just ain’t fair.

Clearly, there’s a reason that GameTap has twice as many games from notorious console flop the 32X as it does for the immensely-popular-until-the-PS2-showed-up Dreamcast. Deals have to be made. Royalties have to be paid. I understand that. But why should that be my problem as a potential subscriber?

And I haven’t even mentioned all of the classic Nintendo games from the last 25 years (OK, now I have). Later this year or early next, Nintendo will be joining the next-gen console wars with the launch of the Revolution, and one of the cornerstones of their strategy is that you will have the ability to download any Nintendo game ever made. So you can see why they wouldn’t want to hop aboard the GameTap bandwagon.

On the PC side, GameTap has a bunch of classic games, like Myst, Tomb Raider, DOS classic Zork, and the more recent Splinter Cell and Beyond Good & Evil. But it is also missing a whole lot of ‘em, such as LucasArts adventure classics Maniac Mansion, Secret of Monkey Island, Indiana Jones & the Fate of Atlantis, Sam & Max Hit the Road, Day of the Tentacle and Grim Fandango, and Dan Bunten/Dani Bunten Berry’s multiplayer trailblazer M.U.L.E.

My overarching point is that GameTap promises you the whole world of gaming, and while they deliver a lot, they’re missing a couple continents.

Fun Delayed is Fun Denied

While the older games load very quickly, newer, larger titles take a looooooooooong time to load. So while it’s fun to browse through the GameTap interface looking for something fun for the kids to play, the satisfaction of finding a good one is tempered by the fact that you may have to wait a good while to play. Are your kids cool with delayed gratification? Didn’t think so.

While you’re waiting for the shorter games, GameTap entertains you and your kids with little game-related shorts, called "A Day in the Extra Life." For example, they like to focus on the hidden lives of the extra Pac Men and Dig Dugs in the bottom left corner. The extra Pac Men sing a lovely duet on “Time Is On My Side” by the Stones (which my son was walked around the house singing for a few weeks), and the extra Dig Dug guys recount the exploits of one of their colleagues (the third extra man who suddenly appears at the end) at the office party. My kids cracked up at both. FYI, there are several others that also focus on "video game characters making the most of their downtime. Well, at least occupying their downtime".

Raves & Faves

Before our GameTap trial, my son already enjoyed playing Sonic Heroes and Sonic Adventure DX, so it was no surprise that he was all over the many Sonic games offered by GameTap. From the groundbreaking inaugural speed platformer that vaulted the Genesis over the NES for a time, to the many GameGear titles, he sampled every blue hedgehog-related game on GameTap.

There were also many Lego games, and both of my kids enjoyed the only two we tried (download times, remember?), Lego Friends and Lego Island 2.

EDIT: I just remembered; Lego Loco is another game that crashed my system. :(

Lego Friends features four young friends who have to prepare for their big music show, and you have to help them with their dance routine and stage show. But the best part of the game is the music mixer, where you piece together the drums, bass, guitar, keyboards, vocals, etc., to create a new song. Both of my kids enjoyed singing the song they created using the music mixer.

Lego Island looks like more of a traditional Lego game, with the trademark blocky gameplay. My son’s favorite part was that every time you ventured onto the railroad tracks, a Lego “superman” would swoop in to fly you to safety.

It behooves me to say that GameTap has parental controls, but we didn’t have the time to delve into them.

Glitches

Any hardcore PC gamer will tell you that they’d choose a keyboard/mouse combo over a controller any day, especially for first-person shooters and strategy games; something about fast, precise aiming and hotkeys. But for those of us who come down with carpal tunnel just from hearing the letters WASD, or for kids who have a tough time gaming that way (like mine), it’s nice to have the option of a USB controller, which GameTap so thoughtfully allows.

However, the controller just doesn’t work for some games. For Splinter Cell, my DualShock 2 controller isn’t recognized, and for Robotron 2084, a game that legally requires the player to use the right joystick/thumbstick to shoot, that functionality is sadly missing.

As I mentioned above, several games crash my system, and while it ain’t exactly bleeding edge Alienware, it does have 256MB nVIDIA GeForce 6800 graphics processor, which ain’t exactly chopped liver (er...at least it wasn’t last year).

In addition, the sound occasionally goes out when I’m playing or browsing through the games, and I have to reboot to bring the sound back.

Psst...Hey Buddy...Wanna Buy a ROM?

OK, show of hands, how many parents out there know what the hell I’m talking about? You, with the hands up, for shaaaaaame! (to be read in Grampa Simpson’s voice).

For those of you who don’t know what’s going on here, there are these things called emulators, see? And what they do is allow people to play just about any classic arcade or console game on their PCs. Pretty cool, ne c’est pas?

Well, cool and not so cool, because there’s a catch; emulators very much verboten. Well, actually, the emulators are perfectly legal. Only the game data-containing ROMs are illegal.

Now it’s not my place to preach to you ne’er do wells out there who are having your naughty good time. And I don’t consider myself holier than thou, thee, thy or thine. But it is my job to teach my kids about right and wrong, and I’m not a big fan of parental hypocrisy.

As you can see throughout this review, GameTap has some definite shortcomings, but if you’re a parent who’s absolutely jonesin’ for some old school gaming and you want to stay on the straight and narrow, you don’t have many legal options.

Oh, sure, you could drive around, searching for restaurants and bars that have a few old arcade cabinets collecting dust in the corner. Or you could head back to your favorite high school hangout to see if your initials are still at the top of the Frogger leader board. Strictly your call.

Oh, Waiter!

Did you ever order something at a restaurant that looked absolutely fabulous? A vertically-plated haute cuisine masterpiece that you couldn’t wait to bite into. But when you took a bite, something wasn’t quite right, like maybe it was a little underdone?

It’s always a risk when you send a dish back. The temperamental chef and harried line cooks are already behind schedule and in no mood for fussy customers. And you never know when they may be tempted to express their displeasure by burying a biohazard in the béchamel.

Good thing for you, GameTap has no such inclination or ability to lash out at you if you send their product back for them to put under the broiler for a little while longer.

Or to put it in non-culinary terms, GameTap is good and has a great deal of potential, but it still feels like a beta version to me. So while it may be well worth the price at some point in the future, at $15 per month, that’s simply too much for not enough.