Oh look, a LIGHT-UP membrane keyboard.

We’ve had another one of those trapped-on-the-hill-in-the-house-by-copious-amounts-of-snow-and-ice events this week, which can be fun when it’s day one and it’s just snow…

…but becomes an everyone-in-the-house-simultaneously-becomes-cranky-with-cabin-fever crisis on day three, when everything’s coated with ice and you can’t. go. anywhere.

Fortunately, a friend of mine drew my attention to something that’s kept me at least a little bit happy today. That something is an Android app, for phones or tablets, called VPACAPP. The VPAC in VPACAPP refers to the Phillips Videopac game console, which was the name given in the European market to that big, silver, membrane-keyboard monster of low-res game-playing beauty with which I grew up, the Odyssey2.

I think I’ve mentioned the Odyssey2 a time or two. Maybe.

Anyway, this app brings the fun of the Odyssey2 (or, if you’re on the other side of the Atlantic, the Videopac) to your Android phone or tablet! And my response is… what the hell took so long? The Odyssey2 had a flat, membrane keyboard (as did the Videopac). Making a tablet or phone or DS game out of any Odyssey2 title seems like the biggest no-brainer in the world – every phone, tablet and the touchscreen on the DS is now ready to serve double duty as a light-up version of that flat keyboard. And yet no one twigged to this until recently?

The app includes – with the permission of Phillips, apparently (thanks for reminding them of the copyright notice!) – most of the commercially-released, non-homebrew titles in the Odyssey2/Videopac library. Most of the favorites are there – the sports titles, both K.C. Munchkin games (under their Euro titles “Muncher” and “Crazy Chase”, Pick Axe Pete – the really obvious ones that longtime O2/VP fans will remember. Missing: anything Voice-specific (Type & Tell, the Voice educational games), all of the Master Strategy board game/video game combos (don’t really blame them – how would they do that?), homebrews (this does hurt the available library a bit).

Is it playable?

Kinda.

The on-screen controls need a little bit of work. Fortunately, you can switch control schemes, analogous to switching the restrictor plate behind the joystick of an arcade machine. My other major gripe is that the emulator assumes that you’ll be holding your device in a “landscape” configuration – in other words, it assumes you’re playing on a phone – with no option to reorient to a “portrait” configuration (which seems like it’d be ideal – you could have both the game’s video output and the keyboard on screen at the same time, rather than relegating the keyboard to an overlay that has to be pushed out of the way).

Is it a completely satisfying game experience? Not yet. With a bit of work, it could get a hell of a lot more play than the rest of the emulators on my Android tablet (and I have quite a few on there).

I’m just happy someone’s working on it. 😀 You can get VPACAPP here.