Longplay (video games)
A longplay is a play-through of a computer or video game, created with the intent of completing it as fully as possible, mainly for the purposes of nostalgia, preservation, and possibly as a walkthrough. Unlike hectic speedruns, there is no time constraint aside from those imposed by bandwidth/filesize concerns. Indeed, a video of Dune II exists which lasts nine hours.[1]
The defining characteristic of a longplay is that few shortcuts, if any, are taken to finish the game. Dull moments may be ultimately edited out of the final video, and sidequests may be ignored, but in general every task necessary to reach the end is to be recorded, including cutscenes.[2]
The Something Awful "Let's Play..." videos present on many video hosting sites might loosely qualify as longplays, though their persistent commentaries make them unsuitable as a digital museum piece.
Creation
Games may be recorded in several ways, Screencast software, a feature built-in to an emulator, or via a Video capture device connected to a console or another computer.
External guides have mentioned these emulators for Amiga and Commodore 64 games.
WinUAE can directly save to avi[3], but it is best used for initial lossless recording prior to editing and reencoding with external tools.[4]
WinVice has proprietary History files which can reconstruct a gaming session with substantial filesize savings over traditional video codecs. The downside is that such files require the exact same version of WinVice to view them.[5]
References
- ^ "Example-Dune 2 Longplay". Recorded Amiga Games. Retrieved February 13.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help); Unknown parameter|accessyear=ignored (|access-date=suggested) (help) - ^ "C64-Longplays Guide". C64-Longplays. Retrieved February 13.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help); Unknown parameter|accessyear=ignored (|access-date=suggested) (help) - ^ "RAG Recording-Basic Way". Recorded Amiga Games. Retrieved February 13.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help); Unknown parameter|accessyear=ignored (|access-date=suggested) (help) - ^ "RAG Recording-Recommended Way". Recorded Amiga Games. Retrieved February 13.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help); Unknown parameter|accessyear=ignored (|access-date=suggested) (help) - ^ "C64-Longplays Tutorial". C64-Longplays. Retrieved February 13.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help); Unknown parameter|accessyear=ignored (|access-date=suggested) (help)