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Pong old school5/11/2023 ![]() While the games don’t actually run off of VHS tapes in this incarnation, it looks like they do beside the displays is a VHS deck, and when you insert a cassette the machine reads the game information off of an IR sticker. This meant that players had to predict the trajectory of the ball, as well as keep track of where exactly their paddle was when the screen flicked off.įor Mason, the project was a chance to explore technologies like VHS and multi-screen play that went underutilized in games because of the industry crash. What made this version particularly unique was that the play area was spread across all 10 TVs the screens would follow the path of the ball, lighting up as it bounced around, while all the others remained dark or displayed static. The other game was much more familiar: Pong. One was a co-operative experience in which you had to move a wobbly cube through a series of puzzles one person controls the cube, while the other has to move bridges and platforms to help the blocky hero along. The other two games were much more arcade-oriented. “It gives you the illusion that there’s something more magical happening.” Mason describes this design process as “going back in and bringing some of that lost potential to the future.” Instead of going out and buying new games on tape, he imagined players would be able to record game data from a special TV channel onto a cassette and then play it on their console. He even dreamed up an elaborate backstory for the company and hardware (the fictional console is called the Cathode MK.1) and envisioned a form of digital distribution that could’ve been revolutionary at the time. ![]() It was like a piece of game history from an alternate timeline. ![]() Last week at OCAD University’s annual student showcase in downtown Toronto, Mason showed off a fleshed out version of his idea that allowed participants to play one of three different games across 10 old-school tube TVs simultaneously, the image bouncing from set to set. When he returned to school in September and started brainstorming his thesis project, those thoughts on defunct technology turned into a plan: he was going to design a VHS-based video game console that could have existed in the early 1980s, if it weren’t for that pesky video game crash in 1983. It was a process awash in memories, and for the rest of the summer the 28-year-old design student couldn’t stop thinking about VHS tapes. He purchased a new VCR and capture card just for the occasion, but the process took longer than he anticipated: he had to actually watch through each tape, from beginning to end, in order to make digital versions. Last summer, OCAD University student Ryan Mason spent much of his school holiday huddled in front of a television digitizing his parents’ old home movies.
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