The faint remnants of The Matrix Online still radiate somewhere in the ether. I’m not saying it’s possible to jack in, but… well, do some Googling and you may or may not find a website dedicated to emulating this beloved, doomed MMO long after its funeral. You may or may not uncover a hyperlink that downloads a preserved version of the game client and a crack designed to jailbreak it from Sony’s rigor mortis grasp. You may or may not be asked to fabricate login credentials, and you may or may not watch your computer seize up as it attempts to render assets that have been left to atrophy since 2009. But if you follow the white rabbit far enough – if you take the red pill and slink past the mouldering firewalls like the brave pirates of the Nebuchadnezzar once did – you will eventually find those abandoned greyscale buildings, that queasy smog-stained sky, and a deep, permeating sense of loss. The Matrix Online shambles on, creaky but undeterred.
It will not take long for you to understand that The Matrix Online has grown shrivelled and desiccated in its afterlife. The game was released in 2005, and Sega pulled the plug just four years later. The Matrix Online’s emulation project – the only way to play the game in 2022 – was pieced together by a hacker named Rajko through reams of server code he scraped together as the game entered its hospice period. Rajko has toiled for 12 years as the MMO’s personal curator, and as I write the emulation resembles more of a zombie than a messiah. A huge swathe of content is missing, and will likely never be recovered. The project is not capable of providing combat, quests, character progression, or many of the gameplay elements that a nation of redpills once enjoyed.
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Denne historien er fra March 2022-utgaven av PC Gamer.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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A New Dawn - The rise, fall and rise again of PC Gaming in Japan
The so-called 'Paso Kon' market (ie katakana's transliteration of 'Pasonaru Computa') in Japan was originally spearheaded in the 1980s by NEC's PC-8800 and, later, its PC-9800.
MARVEL: ULTIMATE ALLIANCE
Enter the multiverse of modness.
SLIDES RULE
Redeeming a hated puzzle mechanic with SLIDER
GODS AND MONSTERS
AGE OF MYTHOLOGY: RETOLD modernises a classic RTS with care
PHANTOM BLADE ZERO
Less Sekiro, more Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty
STARR-MAKING ROLE
Final Fantasy XVI's BEN STARR talks becoming a meme and dating summons
THIEF GOLD
Learning to forgive myself for knocking out every single guard.
HANDHELD GAMING PCs
In lieu of more powerful processors, handhelds are getting weirder
FAR FAR AWAY
STAR WARS OUTLAWS succeeds at the little things, but not much else shines
FINDING IMMORTALITY
Twenty-five years on, PLANESCAPE: TORMENT is still one of the most talked-about RPGs of all time. This is the story of how it was created as a ‘stay-busy’ project by a small team at Black Isle Studios