Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is the first game that my once topof-the-line computer can't run. Not on performance mode, not on the lowest settings, not at a stuttering 15 frames per second. The game's demands are apparently too great-the fronds of its jungle palms too multifaceted, the pores on its Hollywood Nazi faces too multitudinous-to display with my aging graphics card.
《夺宝奇兵：古老之圈》是我曾经那台高配电脑无法运行的第一款游戏。无论是在性能模式下，还是在最低画质设置下，甚至在每秒15帧的卡顿情况下都无法运行。这款游戏的配置要求显然过高。例如，丛林中棕榈树的叶子细节过多，好莱坞风格纳粹角色的脸部毛孔也过于密集，导致我的老旧显卡无法显示相关内容。
2 Video games are technological objects. Dedicated gamers tune into flashy news conferences and read the enthusiast tech blogs to learn anything we can about the newest console, the most powerful graphics card, the next sophisticated upgrade to the Unreal engine.We get excited about real-time rendering and ray-tracing and pixel depth.
2 电子游戏是科技产物。忠实的游戏玩家会关注花哨的新闻发布会，阅读技术爱好者的博客，只为了解一切关于最新的游戏机、最强大的显卡，以及虚拟引擎下一次复杂升级的信息。我们会为实时渲染、光线追踪和像素深度等技术而兴奋不已。
3 Yet all of this fancy technology is often tuned toward recreating the past.Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is meant to evoke images captured by a movie camera decades ago. Capture early film, with its grainy texture, a small strip of celluloid, exposed to light and shadow, is simulated with obsessive granularity and rendered by a powerful computer. It's a lot like putting an electric engine in a Model T.
3 然而，所有这些先进的技术却常常被用于重现过去。《夺宝奇兵：古老之圈》旨在唤起几十年前电影镜头捕捉到的画面。早期电影的那种颗粒十足的质感，以及暴露在光线和阴影下的小卷赛璐珞胶片效果，都被强大的计算机极致细腻地模拟和渲染出来。这就好比把一台电力引擎安装在一辆福特T型车上。
4 The gaming industry has always wanted to turn beloved franchises into playable experiences. It's easier to build from the shoulders of giants than it is to create something new. So developers take established franchises with readymade audiences. No matter how much we like to think we crave art that's new and unique, we often flock to the old and familiar, the creative experiences that bring us back to our childhoods when everything felt simpler.
4 游戏行业一直希望将深受喜爱的作品授权转化为可以游玩的体验。站在巨人的肩膀上进行创作，总比创造全新的东西要容易。所以开发者们会选择那些已经拥有现成受众的成熟作品。无论我们多么坚信自己向往新颖独特的艺术，实际上，我们常常对旧日熟悉的东西趋之若鹜，那些创意体验会将我们带回到童年时光，那时一切都单纯质朴。
5 A key selling point to games like RoboCop: Rogue City, Star Wars Outlaws and Alien: Isolation is their ability to plausibly rekindle the experience of watching the films that made these franchises household names.
5 《机械战警：暴戾都市》《星球大战：亡命之徒》和《异形：隔离》等游戏的关键卖点在于，它们能精准复刻出这些电影作品家喻户晓的名场面和观看体验。
6 There's the graphite gray sheen of Robo-Cop's helmet and the way it picks up the light of a Detroit bodega's neon sign. There's Alien's chunky computer screens, splashing red text against a black background. And of course, there are the glowing red streaks of a "Star Wars" laser blaster. We come to these franchises as sites of memory where we get to feel lost in adolescent wonder,once again in awe of something magical.
6 且看那机械战警的头盔，流淌着石墨灰色的光泽，反映出底特律街头小酒店霓虹灯牌的光线；在《异形》里，笨重的计算机屏幕上，猩红的文字在漆黑背景下跳动闪烁；当然更有《星球大战》中激光枪喷射出的红色光束。我们重返这些经典力作的记忆场景，沉浸在年少时期的那份悸动里，再度为神奇的事物产生敬畏之情。
7 But the newest thing about these games is the hardware required to run them. Their fealty to classic aesthetics allows them to coast on what we expect to see, not on what we might be surprised by. They elicit the wonder of their source material without necessarily doing anything wondrous on their own.
7 但这些游戏的最新亮点在于运行它们所需的硬件。对经典美学的执着恪守，使其得以依靠我们所期望的元素轻松立足，而非凭借可能带来惊喜的创新。它们引发了人们对原作的惊叹，而不必自己做出任何新奇突破。
8 Even smaller-scale indie games can tap into nostalgic desires. Audience affection for early Nintendo games means there is a crowd eager to play Zeldalikes such as Tunic and Death's Door.The blocky, polygonal look of early PlayStation games exploded into the indie mainstream with critical successes like Mouthwashing and Crow Country.
8 即使是规模较小的独立游戏也能唤醒人们的怀旧之情。玩家对早期任天堂游戏的喜爱表明，有很多人喜欢玩像《丘尼卡传说》和《死亡之门》那种类似《塞尔达传说》的游戏。像早期PlayStation平台游戏那样方块状、多边形的画风，随着《缄默祸运》和《乌鸦之国》等作品的巨大成功，而成为独立游戏的主流。
9 Nostalgia is the act of yearning for something, some hard-to-pin-down feeling, from a previous point in time that has been lost, and perhaps was never here to begin with.
9 怀旧是一种渴望某种事物的行为，一种难以言喻的感觉.它来自某个早已消逝，或是从一开始就不存在的时间点。
10 As children, many of us would study the box art of our most anticipated games, gazing at the lovingly depicted images of heroes triumphing over their adversaries. We would then pop the cartridge into our Atari or our Nintendo (or our Nintendo 64, or our PlayStation 2)only to experience a sharp disconnect.
10 小时候，我们很多人会细细端详印在期待已久的游戏包装盒上的精美图案，凝神欣赏那些精心绘制的主角战胜对手的画面，而后把游戏卡带插入雅达利、任天堂（或者任天堂64，又或者PlayStation 2）主机，却只体验到极大的落差感。
11 Our beautifully detailed heroes our Double Dragons, our fraternal Contras--were fattened and minimized to a handful of pixels. Their textured human faces, complete with war paint and a five-o'clock shadow, were mercilessly AH rendered into a few similarly shaded squares.
11 那些绘制精美的主角们——双截龙组合和魂斗罗兄弟，都被扁平化处理，缩略成了寥寥几个像素。他们那涂有战斗妆、带着胡茬、质感清晰的脸庞，也被无情简化为几个色调相近的正方形阴影。
12 Back then we desired to see those figures come to the exact form of life in our imaginations. We wanted to play that version of those games, and we still do. The version that lives in our heads,in perfect verisimilitude.
12 那时，我们渴望看到那些角色以我们想象中的样子真切地鲜活起来。我们想玩那样的游戏，而且现在依然如此——想玩那个存在于我们脑海中完美逼真的版本。
13 In looking so longingly at the past,however, we neglect our future. Our visual technology is at the point where it can depict almost anything. Why limit ourselves to ancient desires?
13 然而，当我们如此留恋过去时，却忽略了未来。我们的视觉技术已经发展到几乎可以描绘任何事物的程度。为什么要把自己局限于对过去的渴望之中呢？
14 In the big-budget space, burdened by ballooning production costs, experimentation is limited to a list of prepackaged visual aesthetics: military first-person shooter, science fiction action-adventure, cute and cartoony platformer, racing simulator and so on.
14 在大制作游戏领域，由于制作成本不断攀升带来的压力，创新尝试只局限于一系列预设好的视觉美学风格：例如第一人称军事射击游戏、科幻动作冒险游戏、可爱卡通风格的平台游戏、赛车模拟游戏等
15 But we can celebrate the indie games that have made the refreshing choice of exploring visual possibilities beyond what's expected. Memory of a Broken Dimension uses glitch textures laid on top of pitch-black spaces as a way to light the contours of the world's abstract shapes. Mundaun does an incredible job evoking folk horror by building its 3-D dioramic worlds from sketchy, hand-drawn artwork.
15 但我们应该为那些做出了令人耳目一新的选择，去探索超出预期的视觉可能性的独立游戏喝彩。《破碎维度的记忆）使用故障纹理叠加在漆黑的空间之上，勾勒出世界抽象形状的轮廓。《蒙道恩》则通过手绘素描构建3D立体场景，出色地营造出了民俗恐怖氛围。
16 As consumers, we are often pulled to nostalgia. It's undeniably satisfying to feel like we're chopping Nazi necks as Indy, swinging through a skyscraperfilled metropolis as Spider-Man or pulverizing goons as Batman.
16 作为消费者，我们总难抗拒怀旧的魅力。化身印第安纳·琼斯手刃纳粹，或化身蜘蛛侠在高楼林立的大都市中荡来荡去，或化身蝙蝠侠横扫暴徒，那种畅快淋漓的代入感无疑令人备感满足。
17 We want to see our childhood dreams inscribed onto these digital objects. It's all that we as 10-, 15- and 20-year-olds could have ever wanted.The industry's relationship with the past makes it seem like we'll never have to grow up. But perhaps it's time we did.■
17 我们希望儿时的梦想刻录在这些数字产品之上。这正是我们在10岁、15岁甚至20岁时梦寐以求的一切。游戏行业对经典旧作的依赖让我们感觉仿佛永远不必长大。但也许我们是时候要长大了。
（译者单位：山东华宇工学院）
