firehose

Submitted by: (via peanutismint)

The gaming industry used to be flooded with interesting peripherals. The era of the music game gave us piles of plastic instruments across two generations of consoles. PC gamers embraced racing wheels and flight sticks. Even NES gamers fell in love with the Advantage. The act of adding accessories to your system for specific games was well understood, and even casual gamers participated in the rush for interesting hardware.

Those days are gone, on both the consoles and PC. It’s rare to see even a flight stick these days, and peripheral-based music games have all but disappeared from the discussion. The options for peripherals are slim on all the latest systems: The PlayStation 4 offers a camera no one can find, and the Xbox One forces you to buy a camera that only sort of works for gaming. It’s a dire situation if you're searching for novel gaming experiences.

There was one system that represented the golden age of gaming peripherals, and the delightfully diverse collection of add-ons and plastic oddities released for that system helped to keep its library a fan favorite, even more than a decade after it was discontinued.

Of course I’m talking about the Dreamcast.

Looking towards the future

You have to start by putting the Dreamcast system into context historically. It was more powerful than its competitors when it was released, and the GD-ROM drive offered more storage for games. It was a system that looked towards the future.

Every Dreamcast was sold with a dial-up modem for online play at a time when online gaming was rare outside of the PC space. The system even came with an extra-long network cable to connect to your phone line in case your entertainment center was far from a jack. This was crazy, forward-looking stuff when the system launched in 1999.

Games were saved on the virtual memory unit, or VMU, a little memory card with an LCD screen that could show images, information and animations on a 48 by 32 resolution screen.

The VMU included a D-pad and four buttons on its face, allowing you to play very basic portable games that could interact with the system when it was re-connected. Each Dreamcast controller had two slots carved out of the back for VMUs or other accessories, or you could even connect two VMUs to each other without a system to swap data.

Sega successfully melded the memory card with a portable gaming platform and added a social element of data sharing and trading in a way no company has tried before or since. These are interesting ideas now, but they were bonkers in the late 90s.

The add-on hardware and peripheral list doesn’t stop there. Sega also released a VGA box to allow you to play on computer monitors or "modern" displays in 480p. Progressive scan! This was a big deal.

There was a broadband adapter attachment released in case you lived in an area where high-speed Internet was available, you simply disconnected the dial-up modem and snapped in the upgraded part.

An arcade in your home

You could buy a keyboard to play the amazing Typing of the Dead, which taught you that the best defense against zombies was your touch-typing skills. That series is still around, but it was a violent way to learn a valuable skill back in the day. There was even an adapter available if you wanted to use your own keyboard, because of course Sega thought of that.

The Dreamcast was also a great system for light gun games. Remove your VMU from your controller, plug it into a Sega-brand or third-party light gun peripheral, and get to work. You could play House of the Dead 2, Virtual Cop 2 was included in the Sega Smash Pack and Confidential Mission also supported the light gun.

Want force feedback on your light gun? Add one of the vibration packs to one of the slots in the back next to your VMU, and there you go. Because of course vibration was an accessory, and thus modular.

There were a variety of fight sticks that mimicked arcade controls, and the Dreamcast was a beast when it came to fighting games. The Dreamcast had some great 3D fighting games, but its 2D fighting game catalog was where the system really stood out. You could grab an arcade stick, slam in your VMU, and have a great night with friends.

It gets weirder. Do you want to talk to a little fish guy in a strange sort of virtual life experiment? There was a microphone peripheral that was packed in with Seaman, that allowed you to do just that. It was an absolutely off the wall title that was creepier than it was enjoyable, but of course Sega released hardware for it, because damned near every game received some form of custom hardware.

Do you like fishing games? The Dreamcast had some amazing fishing games, along with an official fishing controller, and the only people laughing at this fact are those who have haven’t tried using it. That set up was fun. It was also an early version of motion controls, since you had to make the casting motion in front of the television.

These games didn’t sell in great numbers, but we remember them fondly. Who doesn’t miss Samba de Amigo, complete with maraca controllers? There was an attempt to revive the franchise on the Wii, but it didn’t really take.

This is just talking about the hardware that was released in the United States, things get even stranger when you look at what was available in other regions, including webcams, dance pads, a midi cable that allowed you to use your own hardware to create music, and a custom controller for train simulators.

The Dreamcast stands alone when it comes to breadth of control options, and most controllers had both official and third-party offerings. If you liked a niche, genre game, odds are the Dreamcast supported it, and offered some form of plastic accessory for you to purchase to enhance the experience.

Frozen in time

The Dreamcast was discontinued by Sega in 2001, and this sort of rampant appeal to so many genres and weird experiences didn’t help the system’s chances at reaching a true mainstream audience. These days broadband adapters and high resolution graphics aren’t features or even worth noting; they’ve become part of the baseline experience in modern consoles. There's no need for your memory stick to have buttons and a screen when every system comes with a hard drive.

The Dreamcast turned your home into a beautiful arcade

Still, the Dreamcast was a heavenly system for those of us craving new experiences. Other systems before and after had their share of weird peripherals — sewing accessories, anyone? — but the Dreamcast offered so many games that were improved by the addition of new hardware.

The Dreamcast turned your home into a beautiful arcade with light gun games, music games, fishing games and great fighting games complete with hardware that made each title feel like an event. It was a system that allowed you to invite your friends to play and share each different experience; the system felt novel and fluid in a way that was rare at the time, and has become almost forgotten in conversations about classic hardware.

I’m not surprised the Dreamcast wasn’t a bigger hit, the target market for many of these games and peripherals was relatively small, but the system represented a high water mark for those of us willing to invest in and enjoy new experiences. There has never been a system like it, and there likely will never be again.

The Elsag PMH-900, as described in a company brochure.

Elsag

With license plate reader (LPR) use rapidly expanding throughout the United States, it's no surprise that sometimes officers pull over motorists—at gunpoint—for mistakes made by the automated camera system.

The latest incident happened near the border of Kansas and Missouri. According to the Prairie Village Post, earlier this month lawyer Mark Molner was driving through a Kansas City suburb on his way home from his wife’s sonogram. All of a sudden, his BMW was blocked in front by a police car as another officer on a motorcycle pulled up behind him. (His pregnant wife witnessed the incident from a nearby parked car.)

According to what Molner told the Post, one of the officers then approached his car with his gun out.

The internet is fucked, and the US government is making it worse.

Political cowardice caused the FCC to lose its first battle for net neutrality regulation: the rules that keep the internet as you know it free and open. The idea of net neutrality is that all traffic is created equal — whether you’re a movie streaming from Netflix, or a WhatsApp message, or a Tweet, or a bulletin board message. But according to a report from the Wall Street Journal, instead of trying to correct the errors it made in open internet rules the first time around, the FCC will consider enacting new rules that directly destroy the principles of net neutrality. The proposal would allow profit hungry behemoths like Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon to become gatekeepers that give preferential treatment to companies that pay the most for special access to customers.

Cowardice and complicity plague the FCC

If cowardice caused the FCC to lose its first major net neutrality battle, complicity with the ISP industry is leading to its second major failure. The proposed rules would mark a complete capitulation to the monied internet interests, harming consumers in the short and long-term. The ISPs that control the "last mile" of the internet — the pipes that connect to your home — would love nothing more than to extract tolls from companies. Netflix’s surrender to Comcast will be the first of many deals that force companies to pay an ISP tax to compete.

The government is too afraid to say it, but the internet is a utility. The data that flows to your home is just like water and electricity: it’s not a luxury or an option in 2014. The FCC’s original Open Internet rules failed precisely because it was too timid to say that out loud, and instead erected rules on a sketchy legal sinkhole that was destined to fail. As WSJ reports, the FCC has once again decided against reclassifying broadband as a public utility. To declare the internet a public utility would go against the wishes of companies like Comcast and AT&T which don't want to be dumb pipes. It's more lucrative to be cunning.

Circulating a draft proposal among the FCC’s four commissioners is only the first step for Wheeler; the rules would need to come to a vote, and this stands to be one of the most divisive, partisan commission votes in recent memory. Commissioners Pai and O’Rielly — staunch Republicans — would be likely to vote in favor of a pro-business policy at net neutrality’s expense, while Democrats Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel could go the other way.

In other words, one of the most destructive technology policies in American history could ultimately be decided on a 3-2 vote.

Following the FCC's first net neutrality defeat, freshly-appointed chairman Tom Wheeler said he’ll "fight to preserve" the open internet, but didn’t specify how he'd do it. If the latest proposal passes, the only thing Wheeler will be preserving are the interests of companies that want to make the internet worse for all of us.

Chris Ziegler contributed to this editorial.

A deeply divided Supreme Court set limits Wednesday to how much monetary compensation child victims of online pornography may reap from those who viewed their images.

The 5-4 decision set aside a $3.4 million judgement awarded to a woman whose pictures of her being raped as a child were widely circulated online.

The court ruled that Doyle Randall Paroline, a Texas man who was prosecuted in the case, does not have to pay that large sum, which is the total amount of damages the victim's lawyers say she deserved.

Papers, Please and Gone Home took home awards at the 11th Annual Games for Change Festival today.

Lucas Pope's Papers, Please, a dystopian simulator, won the Most Innovative category, which honors games that excel in creativity and aspire to bring new ideas to games for change. It was a finalist alongside Robin Arnott's SoundSelf and 12 Hit Combo's Súbete al SITP. The game also won the Best Gameplay category, in which it was a finalist with Fullbright Company's Gone Home and Preloaded's Tyrant.

Thirteen, American Social History Project and Electric Funstuff's The Mission US: A Cheyenne Odyssey, a game where players take on the role of a Cheyenne boy in 1866, won the Most Impactful category. It was a finalist alongside Kognito's Start the Talk and Gigantic Mechanic's The Migrant Trail.

The Fullbright Company's Gone Home won the Game of the Year category.

The Games for Change Awards drew 140 game nominations, which were narrowed down to by a panel of experts in game development, media, education and philanthropy.

Full disclosure: News editor Brian Crecente acted as a judge for the Best Gameplay category.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Firaxis Games' turned-based strategy game that pits a human resistance against alien invaders, is headed to Android "soon," according to a recent tweet from the series' official Twitter account.

The game will be available through Google Play and the Amazon Appstore, according to the tweet. XCOM: Enemy Unknown arrived on iOS for iPad and iPhone last June where it's available for $19.99. You can check out the launch trailer for the game's first mobile incarnation below.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown is also available on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Mac and Windows PC. XCOM: Enemy Unknown - The Complete Edition, a version that includes its major add-on content, was released last month for Mac and PC for $49.99.

For on the game's original incarnation, be sure to read Polygon's XCOM: Enemy Unknown review and our feature on Jake Solomon, the Firaxis designer who resurrected the franchise.