Now that MAME and various other emulators can be used in browsers, the plethora of video-game-play videos out there strike me as a bit of a bandwidth waste.
e.g. The HD stream of this video is 64 MB. The install files for the Amiga version of Turican 2 are about 1 MB.
How awesome would it be if there was a site where you could record an emulator play-session that would be played back for other people using emulation rather than captured video/sound? Not only would such a site use far less bandwidth, it could have some killer features like, "TAKE CONTROL". i.e. Say you're watching somebody's play-through of an an old game. When you get the urge to actually play that game, it's just a single click away!
That's a very neat idea for a service, and it could definitely be viable for some games, but I don't think it could be a solution for most of them. Why? Copyright reasons. The companies behind a lot of mainstream video games see videos with music from their games as more acceptable than links to actually play said games online. So if you want to offer music from say; Zelda or Final Fantasy or Mario or Sonic or whatever else, then something like this is a non starter.
I remember meeting Chris Huelsbeck on one of those videogame trade shows in Cologne, Germany. He was a really humble and friendly guy, who'd chat with anyone. I was lucky to buy one of his first CDs, which featured most of the Turrican tracks.
Also, thanks to the Factor 5 programmers who wrote the Amiga version !! Insanely talented, I still look up to them these days.
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[ 1.4 ms ] story [ 27.5 ms ] threadI've played it end to end so many times I can't count.
e.g. The HD stream of this video is 64 MB. The install files for the Amiga version of Turican 2 are about 1 MB.
How awesome would it be if there was a site where you could record an emulator play-session that would be played back for other people using emulation rather than captured video/sound? Not only would such a site use far less bandwidth, it could have some killer features like, "TAKE CONTROL". i.e. Say you're watching somebody's play-through of an an old game. When you get the urge to actually play that game, it's just a single click away!
There's definitely an opportunity here.
A technical opportunity, not a business opportunity.
Bandwidth is cheaper than developer's time.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Huelsbeck