A couple of months ago my brother and I discovered a 2 player gaming interface called Parsec Gaming which claimed to allow almost any 2 player game to be played online. Well we had to try this as we live miles apart, and both like to play games, old and new. We had a bit of a false start with setting things up properly, but once we did Parsec just blew us away.
Old Arcade games played on MAME can be linked via Parsec, which adds a virtual joystick to the host which is controlled by the guests PC controller. You have to set it up in MAME (or retroarch)as the second joystick, but once done there is a world of fun to be had with older arcade games. But it didn’t stop there, we found that almost every emulator could also be set up fairly easily to work with Parsec, so Megadrive, SNES, Master System, Playstation etcetera would also work and with a good connection the lag is virtually undetectable.
Lately we have been trying some of the 2 player fighting games, and split screen racing games available for the PC, and found almost everything we tried would work just like we were in the same room. We use an online chat to talk as we play, and have had hours of fun. If you have friends you would like to play games with online but are too far away then Parsec is the answer. Just take a look at our online sessions to see how well it works, in the video below I am the guest, my brother hosts and we just play games like when we were kids in our parents front room (yes we even got the Atari VCS to work using Stella to turn the clock right back). Youtube Video Here
