Gametap

Saw an ad for Gametap on TV tonight, but I had no idea what it was, since the ad was some shit about the alligators in Pitfall talking about teeth whitening. Then I was reading Computer Gaming World and saw an ad for it that actually made sense. It showed a bunch of screens for classic games, and said "A new world of video games has arrived" and that I could play them from my broadband connection.

This intrigued me (why couldn't the commercial have said that?), so I checked it out. It's a monthly fee service kind of thing, but you can play old school games on your PC. I watched the tour video, which explained there are "hundreds" of games at your fingertips, just load em up and play. I should have thought about that hundreds comment, but didn't, and instead started geeking out at the thought of playing some Mutant League Football, or Final Fantasy 2 (of 4, or 5, or whatever the hell it is in the continuity, it was fucking 2 on the SNES, goddammit), or Mega Man 3, or Eternal Champions, or...I could go on all night.

Imagine my chagrin when I took a look at the list of available titles. They've got some 32X games, quite a few Atari 2600 titles, two (2!) Dreamcast games, a shitload of Genesis games (including Eternal Champions, sweet), and some Windows and DOS games, but no Nintendo games.

At all.

How the hell can you have old-school games without Nintendo? I fucking grew up on Nintendo! I still remember my Dad giving me a stereo for my 5th birthday, and feeling extremely disappointed (I wasn't into music then). He asked me what I really wanted, and I told him I wanted a Nintendo. So he took the stereo back and bought me an NES. Hot shit, man, that Nintendo started it all for me. And here's Gametap, who had lured me in with a shitty commercial, an intriguing magazine ad, and a sexy video tour, only to kick me in the nuts by not including Nintendo games.

Now, in Gametap's defense, there are some possible explanations for this. 1) They're a new service, so perhaps they haven't gotten around to adding Nintendo games yet. If so, great, I'll partake of the gameage once they do. 2) Nintendo is being a bunch of dicks and not allowing their content to be distributed in this way. Perhaps because of the rumored feature with the Revolution having access to Nintendo's back catalogue. Again, if this is so, that's ok, because I can get my Nintendo fix with the Revolution.

So even without the Nintendo games, Gametap is still a very interesting idea. But given the extent of their PC titles (Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow is one of the games available) I would think they could also throw in some PS1 and PS2 games, hell, even Xbox games. And they've got Master System, Genesis, 32X, and Dreamcast games, where's the SegaCD love? Perhaps those are part of the "new titles added weekly" bit.

I'll be watching, Gametap. You're not getting my money yet, but you might.