ElbinoBunnyA little bit of a site update. I got sick, and then got busy, and then lost track of time. Here it is nearly a week since I last posted anything. I have decided therefore that I will be posting each day to keep my mind focused on keeping this site going. It has always been a dream of mine to host a gaming site, and I refuse to let it go by the wayside simply because I lose track of time.
It is my intention to publish a daily post of what I have been working on and what I am planning on working on each and every day. This daily post is more for my own purposes, to keep me focused on building the kind of site I wish to have. You could almost think of it as a public scrum to myself. It’s not necessary for anyone else to read; I won’t link to these daily posts from social media.
But these posts will give a reader, me included, some insight into the incremental thoughts that lead me to each planned iteration of every Bunny Gamer project. Each project will get me closer to delivering the kind of site that will help myself and gamers like me more easily find and play games. The original intent of the Bunny Gamer site is two-fold. To provide a database of game reviews that document the original platform, format, single and multi-player options, rules, and relative fun provided by each game in my collection. And to provide information on compatibility – how well does this game play on newer, various systems or how can I get this game to work on a newer or different kind of system.
When I first began seriously collecting games, DOS was the operating system that was compatible with the most games. Around five years later, it was Windows 98. Another ten years after that, it was Windows XP. It was at that point that I began to sort all of my games into a database and keep track of their stats. I figured the next Windows operating system would be the most compatible gaming operating system, with Windows XP being at least a fall-back. Now with Windows 10, and for most versions of Windows 7, there isn’t a lot of good compatibility for older games natively. I have been impressed, however, with the quality of Linux when it comes to playing games in recent years and Valve’s support through the Steam platform to ensure there are many games represented on Linux. The Wine program for Linux also provides an open, free software platform for potentially running any other game that might fall through the cracks.
The most impressive piece of game compatibility hardware I have used lately though is the Raspberry Pi. I set one up with a RetroPie install. Immediately after the initial install I was able to play NES, SNES, Genesis, Game Boy, Atari 2600, and Game Gear games. I attempted to play N64 games, but they were a little too laggy to play. I’m going to research further to see if it is possible to get the N64 games performing well enough to play. If I can get all of my games from prior to the end of the N64 era working on my Raspberry Pi, then it seems possible a single board computer could play around 30 years of gaming history, right from the television screen in my den.
What would really be impressive would be to get Wine working on the Raspberry Pi. I have been lurking in the Wine development forums and have been reading about some people trying to get help compiling the Wine source on the ARM architecture. I would imagine someone on the other end rolling their eyes if I were to send out such an email, but it’s got wheels turning in my head. My plan for tomorrow is to pull down the latest development snapshot of Wine on a fresh instance of Ubuntu Mate running on my Raspberry Pi. I will attempt to compile the source and see how many and what kind of errors I receive.