Review: Connectix Virtual Game Station

By: Kirk Hiner

Genre: Emulation

Format: CD

Developer: Connectix

Publisher: Connectix

Minimum Requirements: Factory original G3, Mac OS 8.0, 10MB RAM, 3.5MB hard disk space, CD ROM

Network Feature: No

3Dfx Support: Rave

Retail Price: $49

Availability: Limited

This is the last thing I need. I mean, I'm a busy man. I have a fiancee. I have a job. I have a novel to finish editing and get out to the publishers. I have reviews and columns to write each month. I have meals to cook and CDs to hear and DVDs to watch and showers to take and posters to hang and envelopes to seal and doors to open and brakes to pump. I don't have time for this. The last thing I need right now is more games to play. Yet with the acquisition of one tiny software package, I suddenly have hundreds of PlayStation games at my disposal.

I'm doomed. Within months I'm going to be broke and alone, abandoned by those who love me for the simple matter that I abandoned them for the Connectix Virtual Game Station.

CVGS has been out for some time now...sort of. Most Mac gamers know that soon after its heralded release at MacWorld San Francisco in January of 1998, those tightwads at Sony managed to halt the title's production. However, the packages that got out before the injunction are still allowed to be sold. As a result, most catalog resellers still have inventory, and the MicroCenter near me in Cleveland had at least ten copies on the shelf in late November. So it's out there. And if you see it, buy it.

Well, unless you'd rather have the real thing, of course. CVGS retails for right around $50. That's half the going price for an actual Sony PlayStation. So should iMac and G3 or G4 owners pick up CVGS or just go ahead and get an actual PlayStation? Well, let's see...

I'm impressed at how easy CVGS was to get started. It installs just like any other game, and even verifies that you have the proper ATI drivers. If not, it notifies you during the installation so that you can install the drivers included on the CD. After restarting the Mac, CVGS is ready to go. Perhaps the single best feature of the emulator is the ability to recognize PlayStation discs. When one is placed in the Mac, CVGS automatically launches and starts the game.

Setting up the joystick and/or keyboard is just as simple. You're provided with a graphic of a PlayStation joystick with boxes assigned to each of the buttons. Clicking on the box activates it, then you select the corresponding button on either the keyboard or gamepad. Two people can play at once, using either a gamepad/keyboard configuration, or gamepad/gamepad with each gamepad being plugged into a separate USB port. The instruction manual suggests that this may involve unplugging the keyboard, but hey...that's the beauty of USB, right?

The preference menu offers a couple other options as well, such as the ability to adjust the volume of PlayStation games separately from the system volume, and to assign Memory Cards, which is a major improvement over the PlayStation itself. Rather than purchasing dozens of memory cards to save games, you simply create them on the hard drive. For those who rent a lot of games and have to keep coming back to them, this is a huge convenience.

Apparently, whereas PlayStation games usually play in 16-bit color, many of the movies are in 24-bit. CVGS gives you the option of viewing the movies in 16-bit color so that the monitor doesn't have to go through the mode switch. This doesn't harm the monitor, of course, but the screen will go blank for a moment while the monitor resets itself.

Okay, this is all well and good...but how do the games play? It is emulation, after all, and emulation is never as good as the real thing. Well, I must confess to liking imitation crab meat more than actual crab, but that's neither here nor there. The fact is that CVGS does a great job of running most PlayStation games...most of the time.

When running CVGS on Tieraney's 333MHz iMac, I experienced quite a few problems with the movies stuttering. The games would play just fine, but I couldn't get the movies to play properly. None of the normal tricks would work, such as shutting off virtual memory and allocating more RAM to the application. However, I didn't have as many instances on my 450MHz G4. Quite often, the movies are just as enjoyable as the gameplay, so I'd like to see this issue addressed in future versions.

Another odd quirk involved the loading of the game. CVGS seemed to hang on some loads, and would get the game started if reset command was selected. That's not a major problem, but it is somewhat of an inconvenience.

And then there's compatibility. My access to PlayStation games is somewhat limited right now, so I wasn't able to do as much testing as I would've liked. I can report that Alien Trilogy, Tomb Raider, Jeopardy, Tetris Plus, and Duke Nukem: Time to Kill all worked just fine. The only game I tested that didn't work was Army Men 3D. For a list of games that Connectix recommends for use with CVGS, visit www.virtualgamestation.com.

Despite its capabilities, I'm afraid that the Connectix Virtual Game Station will have a limited audience. People who want PlayStation games are most likely just going to buy a PlayStation. And with the wealth of great games coming out for the Macintosh right now, most Mac users don't need to look to emulators to get the good stuff. However, if you've got a Mac with a G3 or G4 and you just can't wait for our own version of Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation or Driver, then CVGS is the way to go. Just be sure to rent the games before purchasing them to verify that they work.

That's it for this review. I'm off to the store, as I just noticed that one of the supported games is called Skeleton Warriors. And if it has skeletons in it, the entertainment value will far exceed the money invested. It's just one of life's guarantees.

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December 02, 2008