Reality called

It's a funny thing looking back at the past: More often than not, one will recall a new innovation/technology that was supposed to change the world..... only to do the exact opposite. Indeed it's funny to see how things were marketed as revolutionary when in, the present, we have other things that do the exact same thing only better.

That being said, I remember Virtuality. Based upon the then new technology of Virtual Reality, it was a product of the early-to-mid nineties that was built on the promise of taking the immerse nature of games to a whole new level.
How it worked is that people step into a confined playing space, don headsets and grab a controller. Once the game kicks in, the player's movements correspond to the game characters: Thus it is possible to move and look around in a rendered environment.



I remember this product being hyped as being the next advancement in gaming technology and the promise of a full immerse experience in a full created world (not to those words but still....). As a result, these began appearing in arcade parlors complete with screens to pull in a crowd - of course, these weren't cheap to play but they certainly garnered a lot of interest in the 16-bit era.

The only games I remember were two: Zone Hunter and Dactyl Nightmare.



This was Zone Hunter: You control two giant space marines going through a futuristic environment blowing up anything dumb enough to stand in your way.
This might of looked mind-blowing twenty years but two decades is a long time. Whilst I never played it, I have however spoken to people who have and from I could gather, this game doesn't really deliver on the promises made by the hype. The main problem is that the player character can only move in one direction: Forward! Thus one can't go anywhere else or admire the scenery - and, gameplay wise, one can't duck behind cover: No they're just continually marching and getting shot.

Here's another video on Zone Hunter, whilst demonstrating the Virtual Reality in action:



Still, this is a far cry from Gears of War - another game involving Space Marines blowing shit up. Side by side, one wonders how we ever got by without the necessity of cover.

The other game I recall was Dactyl Nightmare. This was the more well known of the two as it was heavily featured in many a promo video. Here, players could fight each other in an open environment whilst being harassed by a giant pterodactyl who could pick up players and drop them, thus subjecting them to terminal velocity.



Compared to Zone Hunter, this game was going for a one-on-one/deathmatch approach with a horror theme. But again, through a modern eye some baffling design choices come to light. Why is the gaming map so limited in size? Where is it all out in the open? What are you supposed to do when the pterodactyl picks you up?

Looking back, it seems that Virtuality promised a lot but didn't really deliver. Granted a fully rendered gaming environment was a bold step for it's time but what good is it if the player is restricted about where they can go? The deathmatch nature did indeed predate Doom but what good was it when it's played in an open environment?
Indeed a lot of the promise Virtuality has been achieved by the enemy of the arcade parlor: console gaming. Twenty years later, what Virtuality promised has been surpassed in ways that are mind-boggling. Fully rendered worlds are now commonplace and immersion has been accomplished in ways without the use of a headset. Indeed, when one considers the hype that went into Virtuality, one has to wonder what the fuss was all about.

Ultimately, Virtuality seems more a product of the arcade parlors: Sucking people in and then stacking the odds against them just for the purpose of making them cough up money just to keep playing. And it seems the general public thought so too. Because by the time I got to play Virtuality, it was the mid nineties and Zone Hunter and Dactyl Nightmare had been replaced with Doom. And what do you know, it was good fun. So there is an irony that the game that worked best for the Virtual Reality Headset was game made for a home computer.

In researching this post, I recently learned that, surprisingly, the technology for Virtual Reality is still in use - only it's for simulations and training scenarios like Flight training and medical procedures. But it is interesting to see this technology succeed in areas whereas it failed as a gaming machine.

I guess there's no substitute for a wide-screen TV.