Image used with permission by copyright holderA Finnish computer programmer has managed to run a playable version of id Software’s 1996 first person shooter, Quake, on an old, analog oscilloscope. The game is rendered on a laptop and then fed into a Huawei V-422 oscilloscope as an audio signal that was translated into two-dimensional, vector graphics.
Pekka Väänänen shared a technical explanation of how he pulled off the feat on his website. In essence, he leveraged the fact that the left and right audio channels can be mapped onto the oscilloscope’s X and Y axes. By carefully controlling the audio input, the oscilloscope can be used to display images. Väänänen cited previousdemonstrations of this oscilloscope hack as inspiration for his attempt to play a game live.
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With this basic technique available, the trick then lay in figuring out a way to render the game simply enough to be legible and have minimal lag when translated into audio. The result is ghostly and recognizable to anyone familiar with the seminal shooter, reminiscent of the scene in The Matrix when Neo sees the simulated world rendered in its raw code.
Oscilloscopes, developed in the early 20th century to measure and display the frequency of electrical signals, have an important place in the early history of video games. In 1958, physicist William Higinbotham developed a simple Tennis game, Tennis for Two, to be played on an early computer hooked up to an oscilloscope display by visitors to the Brookhaven National Laboratory where he worked. The game is considered by some to be the first video game with graphics.
Translating Quake to play on an oscilloscope is similar to a long-standing practice of hackers getting id Software’s previous, genre-defining shooter, Doom, to run on nearly anything with a processor. Recent examples have included a Canon printer and a Samsung smartwatch. This Quake project is doubly impressive for taking a more advanced game than Doom and rendering it playable on simpler hardware.
Volgarr the Viking 2 will take you back to your Ghosts ‘n Goblins days
Developer Digital Eclipse is working on a surprising project: Volgarr the Viking 2. The 2D retro sequel will launch on August 6 for PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
The news is an out of left field reveal. The first Volgarr the Viking game released in 2013 and was made as an ode to 1080s classics like Ghosts 'n Goblins. Despite being a small release, it sold over 1 million copies over the past decade. As revealed during today's Guerrilla Collective stream, the series is coming back with a new sequel by Digital Eclipse, the team behind this year's Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story.
3 Days of Play PS Plus games to try this weekend (June 7-9)
June 2024 is shaping up to be a pretty great month for PlayStation players. Not only are we coming off an entertaining State of Play showcase, but a new Days of Play initiative surrounding all the video game showcases this month is bringing a lot of new PS Plus additions with it. Many of those games hit PS Plus this week, and three in particular stand out to us.
For owners of Sony's oft-neglected PlayStation VR2, the first game is one of its rare exclusives that take full advantage of the headset's eye-tracking by seeing how often players blink. The next is a new PS Plus Essential game that's a revival of Sega's classic beat-'em-up series for the modern gaming era. Finally, the last title is an atmospheric and eerie fishing game that should entice fans of Lovecraftian horror.
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3 first-party Xbox Game Pass games to try this weekend (June 7-9)
Microsoft will hold an Xbox Games Showcase and Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Direct. this Sunday. These shows will provide a much better idea of what to expect from Xbox over the course of the next year or two. That's really needed right now, as Microsoft has struggled to keep online discussions around Xbox positive as it went multiplatform with some games, laid off thousands of developers, and outright shut down the developers of Hi-Fi Rush and Redfall. Based on leaks and my personal expectations for the showcase, there are three games you can play on Xbox Game Pass this weekend to prepare for the event.
The first is the latest first-person shooter in a long-running series by id Software that might be getting a medieval-set spinoff. After that, we have the fifth entry in a sci-fi Xbox series that still looks fantastic on Xbox Series X/S even though it came out in 2019. Finally, you can prepare for Avowed with the latest RPG from Obsidian Entertainment, a satirical sci-fi game where player choice is critical.
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