Taking a Tablet PC to Retro Role-Playing Nirvana

After stumbling upon the fan-made high resolution mods for the Infinity Engine series and early Fallout titles, Ars Technica tells us just how entertaining these role-playing games can be on a modern tablet PC.

Like many thirty-something gamers, I don’t have the free time to sequester myself in a room and click away at a >100-hour RPG; most of my gaming opportunities occur in travel situations, or if I’m sitting around on the couch in the family room, keeping one eye on my daughter and stopping frequently to chat with my wife. This being the case, my first attempt at enjoying my old-school RPG collection involved my Macbook Air and a copy of VMware. Under virtualization, the experience was passable but not great; and besides, it felt too much like work (I spend my entire workday on this machine).

I had long been interested in the idea of playing these games on a touchscreen tablet, because the point-and-click interfaces seem well-suited to this type of interaction. These RPGs are largely mouse-driven and offer fairly large click targets character models, corpses, furniture, locations that are easy to tap with stylus or a finger. This being the case, I had toyed with the idea of getting one of the new or upcoming Windows XP netbooks with a touchscreen, but I was concerned about performance issues Atom isn’t the speediest platform out there.

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Ultimately, XPTE, the Infinity Engine games, the widescreen mod and fixpacks, and the Q1-UP itself all combine to make an even more perfect portable RPG console than I had ever imagined when I intially hit on the idea. The screen is gorgeous, the RPGs look great on it, the performance is silky smooth, and the battery life is tremendous. This is a console that I’ll be reaching for time and again, and taking with me on trips so that I can cleave kobolds and gather loot during those long hours when I’m stranded in the airport.