VR has given some of my classic games a new lease of life this week. More specifically [BigScreen](https://www.bigscreenvr.com/)
has opened up a fun new way to games with friends.

My girlfriend and I have been watching TV together in [Bigscreen](https://store.steampowered.com/app/457550/Bigscreen_Beta/)
most days recently as she's out of the country at the moment. With Bigscreen I can fire up some TV from my Plex server or 
YouTube, and we can sit and watch it together in various virtual environments such as grand cinemas, small home theatres or even 
out in the woods. It's a great way to still be able to relax in the evenings together and watch TV as if she's home.
If you've never experienced Bigscreen I can't recommend it enough, it's truly like living in the future. 

Anyway, so we were chatting away as the latest episode of Power Book IV: Force finished, and as I sat there staring at 
my computer screen in all its big giant virtual screen glory and I had an idea. Why not try and launch a game whilst 
Bigscreen is already running? So I found [Super Galaxy Squadron](https://store.steampowered.com/app/345860/Super_Galaxy_Squadron_EX_Turbo/) in my Steam library and
hit play.

Behold the awesome.

![SGS](/assets/images/blog/2022/02/19/00-sgs-cinema.jpeg)

All Bigscreen is doing when the Oculus is connected to the PC is mirroring the desktop to the VR headset and showing it
on whatever screen is available in the environment you've chosen. I was surprised how well this works. There was no 
noticeable lag at all playing Super Galaxy Squadron, and I was still sat next to my girlfriend chatting away, but she was
now watching the gameplay with me in real time rather than Power.

Pretty awesome.

So obviously I tried some more games. As I'm going through a bit of a Shmup renaissance at the moment I decided to fire 
up [Ikaruga](https://store.steampowered.com/app/253750/Ikaruga/) and see how that performed. 

![Ikaruga](/assets/images/blog/2022/02/19/01-ikaruga-oculus-home.jpeg)

It also plays perfectly and now my favourite way to play these games. The image above is the Ikaruga title screen
showing on the Bigscreen in the home environment. But you can play it any Bigscreen environment. Wanna sit down around
a camp fire with your friends and play it on a big screen in the woods? You can do that too.

![Ikaruga Woods](/assets/images/blog/2022/02/19/02-ikaruga-woods.jpeg)

So next I tried something a little more intensive. I fired up [Unreal Tournament 3](https://store.steampowered.com/app/13210/Unreal_Tournament_3_Black/). Which happened to be installed at the 
moment on my gaming PC as I introduced my lad to Unreal Tournament games last year. They are still so much fun and beat 
any modern multiplayer FPS for me.

![Unreal Tournament Title](/assets/images/blog/2022/02/19/03-ut-bigscreen.jpeg)

![Unreal Tournament Gameplay](/assets/images/blog/2022/02/19/04-ut-cinema.jpeg)

It's hard to see in those pictures but that's Unreal Tournament 3 on an enormous virtual cinema screen, complete with random
people sat in the audience. Performance was great again, and I won the couple of games I played easily. Still got it :)

There were some games in my library that were unplayable in Bigscreen. I tried [Tekken 7](https://store.steampowered.com/app/389730/TEKKEN_7/)
this morning and that lagged really badly. I also wanted to include the original Doom in this blog post. I re-installed 
[Doom 3: BFG edition](https://store.steampowered.com/app/208200/Doom_3_BFG_Edition/) so that I could load the original 
Doom from there, but it refused to show up on the Bigscreen screen at all. If you wanted to play these games on a large 
VR screen I suspect you could do using Steam VR, but I am only really talking about games that can be played 
comfortably in Bigscreen with friends here. I have previously played 
[Command and Conquer Remastered Collection](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1213210/Command__Conquer_Remastered_Collection/) 
using Steam VR on a big virtual theatre screen and quite enjoyed it.

So there you have it. More reasons why VR is cool and opening up entirely new ways to game together with friends or on 
your own. If you haven't tried VR yet, what are you waiting for? Click the links below and jump in with me!

CLASSIC GAMING IN VR!