Snapshots #3: high definition, high emulation
While I’m still in the throes of digesting a four days Christmas food stuffing, waiting for the will to (re)start to write something meaningful on these pages I yield to the last dessert made up by variously assorted snapshots. In particular they cover PlayStation 2 emulation with PCSX2 and high definitions rips, two of the many things that where forcedly precluded to me before my new laptop fortuitous purchase due to the lack of adequate hardware equipment.
I was already aware of the complexity level achieved by the PCSX2 project “by hearsay”, but I must say that facing this brilliant piece of code by myself is a pretty different story. Especially when the aforementioned emulator lets you play with no particular problems (and at full speed in almost every occasion) to Maximo: Ghosts to Glory, the 3D spiritual heir of my beloved Ghosts’n Goblins saga which keeps the platform formulation while introducing the design of magaka Susumu Matsushita. Sooner or later I will buy the PS2 for my personal “museum”, meanwhile it’s a real pleasure to be able to enjoy Maximo right on the PC thanks to one of the most advanced emulators ever.
On my Core 2 Duo at 2,00 GHz (+GeForce 9600M GT) Maximo practically runs to the max, unfortunately the same thing can’t be said about Saint Seiya: Chapter Sanctuary. I wanted to try this Saint Seiya beat’em up since years ago, and when I realized that on a medium-low profile dual core it ran at the playability boundaries I was a little disappointed. Nevertheless this is another confirmation of the PCSX2 code maturity, being it able to faithfully depict the “Galactic Wars” between bronze, gold and whatever Seiya with their Pegasus, rising Dragons and everything coming from the most pathetic and treacly mythology of classic anime 
As of CPU, furthermore, an upgrade is already en route 
Let’s make this clear: I certainly don’t sicken high definition, it’s the commercial shit behind Blu-ray and those Sony losers (unable to get a thing right after the walkman and the PlayStation 2) to make me vomit. So said, no cinema lover was left unharmed in these years of transition from the old standards (PAL or NTSC, DVD, a few lines on screen and giant pixels) to the new ones of high definition and now the same thing can be said about myself. Ok, high definition is a very nice thing (particularly for 3D graphics like in Beowulf), and MAYBE even the Blu-ray format has some point (above all if it’s a disk burner). But surely I don’t willingly spend tens of euros to pay up for absurd DRM protections overprice. The P2P rips are better, and the majors can continue to take my big medium finger in their bottom
High definition is a nice thing, but the Blu-ray rips have a price even if they are free: the Watchmen one, for instance, “weighs” almost 8 Gigabytes. Being currently unable to keep the PC on at night as well, for me downloading such amounts of data takes weeks. Was in the end worth waiting so much to watch again a film I already watched three times at the theaters? I would say yes, and I would say that Watchmen becomes candidate to be the first Blu-ray disk that I will buy if and when I will decide to spend money on an external BD drive. P.S.The almost exclusive focus of the following screenshots on Dottor Manhattan is unintentional. Taking shots from a 1920×800 video stream is a real pain in the ass
Related posts
- CPU upgrade, from T6400 to X9100. Because 3 GHz are way better than 2 GHz…
- Sony’s firm faith in the Blu-ray format corpse
- PCSX2 0.9.6, PC emulates the PS2 way better than PlayStation 3
- New opening sequence for The Simpsons in high-definition
- The uncertain fate of Blu-ray between hope and pessimism
- NullDC 1.0.3, Dreamcast emulation returns on PC. Carrying NAOMI with it
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