244: Otaku Christmas

00:00SPEAKERSo I was thinking about buying a new mouse pad.

00:02SPEAKEROh wow, this is, this is, look, people don't realize this, but I know this is a big thing

00:06SPEAKERfor you.

00:07SPEAKERWait, you didn't have to get into that, okay.

00:09SPEAKERYes, I am using an Alienware branded funk pad.

00:13SPEAKERJust to be clear, that mouse pad is older than my almost 12 year old child.

00:17SPEAKEROh yeah.

00:18SPEAKER2006 probably?

00:19SPEAKERWe got them, we got them when we got all those Alienware machines again.

00:23SPEAKERLet's move on.

00:24SPEAKEROkay, so.

00:26SPEAKERSo I was thinking about buying a new mouse pad.

00:28SPEAKERYes.

00:29SPEAKERYeah.

00:30SPEAKERAnd then I made the mistake of going to Reddit.

00:31SPEAKEROh yeah, no, no.

00:32SPEAKERDid you go to mouse reviews or did you go to the, is there like some...

00:36SPEAKERMouse pad reviews.

00:37SPEAKERThere's a mouse pad subreddit?

00:39SPEAKERDude, there is, there is no limit to the subdivisions of communities that you can, like I, is there

00:44SPEAKERa term for this?

00:45SPEAKERI don't think, I don't think there is a category of product that you can seek to buy these

00:49SPEAKERdays where you can't find a community based around the category that goes into like endless

00:55SPEAKERabsurd minutiae about like, I'll put it this way, when I got there, okay, I was, I was

01:00SPEAKERgoing to just order like a steel series or whatever, like the thing everybody gets.

01:05SPEAKERIt's like a normal person.

01:06SPEAKERWhen you go to Amazon, you search for the category.

01:08SPEAKERYou pick the one at the top of the most popular list and you call it a day.

01:11SPEAKERAnd I didn't even seek the subreddit out.

01:13SPEAKERI just was Googling, you know, best mouse pad, best like low friction, whatever.

01:17SPEAKERAnd I'll put it this way.

01:19SPEAKERAll of the posts you find on there with roundups of the mouse pads to get are made by companies

01:24SPEAKERyou've never heard of.

01:25SPEAKEROh, oh yeah.

01:26SPEAKERNo, it is all like, oh, you have to, you have to get the x-ray pad Aqua control two it's

01:30SPEAKEReight 99 on all the express, but it'll take two months to get here.

01:34SPEAKERLike you got to get the one with the Amundsen fabric on it.

01:37SPEAKERSo I went through this when I was replacing mouse switches a few years ago and got into

01:41SPEAKERlike the mouse hacking world where people are like, Hey, you know, if you carve out

01:45SPEAKERthese internal struts with a dremel, you can reduce the weight of your mouse by like three

01:48SPEAKERgrams.

01:50SPEAKERAnd then I, then I, then that got me onto feet like, like skates.

01:53SPEAKERBut I just stopped at, at, Hey, and I just use a normal logitech cloth pad, right?

01:59SPEAKERThere's nothing, nothing tricky about it.

02:02SPEAKERSo what have you learned?

02:04SPEAKERYour fun pad is a hard pad.

02:05SPEAKERIt's an old school, kind of like a cutting board material almost.

02:09SPEAKERRight?

02:10SPEAKERYeah.

02:11SPEAKERYeah.

02:12SPEAKERI guess that's a good comparison.

02:13SPEAKERIt's it's, it's two sided.

02:14SPEAKERIt's got two textures.

02:15SPEAKEROne side is like pretty much perfectly smooth, close enough to perfectly smooth.

02:19SPEAKERThe other side is like, like noticeably course and rough.

02:22SPEAKERIt's got, it's got a, it's got a tumble to it.

02:25SPEAKERYou feel a little bump.

02:26SPEAKERWhich side do you use?

02:27SPEAKERAre you a smooth man or a not so much?

02:29SPEAKERI was using the textured side, the rough side for years and years.

02:32SPEAKERI think it might have been eating up the Teflon, the feet, I guess it's not Teflon anymore.

02:36SPEAKERWhat is the, what is the thing that all mouse feet are made out of now?

02:40SPEAKERIt's like PTFE or something, but it's a Teflon.

02:42SPEAKERIt's a Teflon analog.

02:43SPEAKEROh, it is.

02:44SPEAKEROkay.

02:45SPEAKERAnyway, I think, I think that was like slowly eating up the feet on the mouse.

02:48SPEAKERHuh?

02:49SPEAKERSo I switched to the smooth side, but it's not smooth enough.

02:51SPEAKERNo.

02:52SPEAKERYeah.

02:53SPEAKERWell, so I used to be a hard mouse pad guy like these things go through cycles.

02:56SPEAKERYou know, I used to be, if I had a funk pad, I have a funk pad in my garage, someplace

03:00SPEAKERprobably still.

03:01SPEAKEROkay.

03:02SPEAKERIf you want that, you're welcome to, I didn't use it for, I didn't use it for 20 years.

03:05SPEAKERSo it's not worn out.

03:06SPEAKERI think, I think I want something with more glide to it, honestly.

03:09SPEAKEROkay.

03:10SPEAKEROkay.

03:11SPEAKERSo I switched to a Logitech cloth mat when I switched to this G Pro, like, I don't know,

03:16SPEAKER2017, 2018, it's been a, it's been a good change.

03:19SPEAKERIt's quieter, the mouse just kind of moves.

03:22SPEAKERI don't have to think about it, you know, it's, it's lighter, it's faster, it's better,

03:27SPEAKERstronger.

03:28SPEAKERWhat are you going to do?

03:29SPEAKERAre you going to order some AliExpress mouse pad or are you going to just get something

03:30SPEAKERthat you pass by?

03:31SPEAKERI, I think what I'm going to do is continue not making a decision and just ignoring the

03:35SPEAKERproblem because this pad still works technically.

03:38SPEAKERCan I, can I make an alternate suggestion?

03:41SPEAKERWhat's that?

03:42SPEAKERWhy don't you buy one of each of the mouse pads, the $8.99 AliExpress, maybe buy two

03:49SPEAKERof them.

03:50SPEAKERThey're eight bucks.

03:51SPEAKERHang on.

03:52SPEAKERI see where you're going with this.

03:53SPEAKERAre you suggesting I just replicate one of these review threads that already exists on

03:55SPEAKERhere?

03:56SPEAKERI'm just saying this, this to me, this has the sweet sound of content to me.

04:03SPEAKERYour brain is as broken as mine is, well, let me just close by saying there are people

04:07SPEAKERon there doing tests of these mouse pads under varying barometric conditions.

04:12SPEAKERWell, I mean, if your humidity and air pressure are up, then that is definitely going to impact

04:16SPEAKERthe performance of your mouse pad, Brad.

04:17SPEAKERI don't, I don't know that I'm going to do humidity tests on a mouse pad.

04:21SPEAKERI'm sorry.

04:22SPEAKERI just, I expected more commitment from you.

04:24SPEAKERI have to be honest.

04:25SPEAKERI don't know what I'm going to do with these mouse pads.

04:54SPEAKERWelcome to Brad and Will Metatek Pod.

04:56SPEAKERI'm Will.

04:57SPEAKERI'm Brad.

04:58SPEAKERBrad.

04:59SPEAKERHello.

05:00SPEAKERIt's time once more to journey back.

05:02SPEAKERYes.

05:03SPEAKERDust off the trusty time machine here.

05:05SPEAKERAnd by time machine, I mean the RSS feed for this podcast.

05:09SPEAKERYep.

05:10SPEAKERWhich when we think about something like an old magazine issue review episode, I pull

05:15SPEAKERup and control F on the word magazine.

05:18SPEAKERWait, on your computer?

05:19SPEAKERYeah.

05:20SPEAKERReally?

05:21SPEAKERYou have a bunch of magazines downloaded on your computer?

05:22SPEAKERNo, no, no.

05:23SPEAKERThe RSS feed.

05:24SPEAKERI pull up.

05:25SPEAKERI pull up.

05:26SPEAKERWhen we talk about one of these episodes, I pull up the RSS feed and I'm like, what

05:28SPEAKERwas the last time we did a magazine issue at the best of my control effing ability.

05:33SPEAKERI think it was last November.

05:34SPEAKERSo we're coming up on a year now.

05:36SPEAKERYeah.

05:37SPEAKERThere you go.

05:38SPEAKERUm, well, so I was watching, uh, friends of the site.

05:41SPEAKERYou might be familiar with this website, giant bomb.

05:43SPEAKERThey're playing die.

05:44SPEAKERKatana right now.

05:45SPEAKERI've heard of it.

05:46SPEAKERYes.

05:47SPEAKERYeah.

05:48SPEAKERAnd I was watching that yesterday.

05:49SPEAKERAnd as a result of that, I started dealing through old gaming magazines, looking at

05:52SPEAKERdie Katana coverage because man, they are not having a good time playing that game.

05:58SPEAKERI don't think it seems, it seems like Jeff grub is broken as a result of this.

06:02SPEAKERI believe that at the same time, I, I feel like a bit of a reappraisal has been underway

06:07SPEAKERfor that game maybe a little bit, but also it's probably grading on a severe curve.

06:12SPEAKERSo I remember playing that game when it came out and trying to review it, I think for Ars

06:16SPEAKERTechnica yikes, and I played it every night for like five or six days and got maybe through

06:22SPEAKERthe first world and finally just sent a note back to the other guys was like, I'm not going

06:28SPEAKERto do this.

06:29SPEAKERThis is bad.

06:30SPEAKERLike this isn't my time is worth more than this.

06:33SPEAKERYou know, some, some reviewers would say that was enough to review the game.

06:36SPEAKERI mean, look, we were definitely of the, Hey, if this game, like we reviewed so few games

06:41SPEAKERthat it was, it was weird for us to review a game just to dump on it because it was bad.

06:46SPEAKERWe didn't, we didn't have a process for that really.

06:49SPEAKEROkay, sure.

06:50SPEAKERYeah.

06:51SPEAKERI've been in, I've kind of been in that situation where it's like, I mean, that's kind of how

06:53SPEAKERit was a giant bomb to a degree.

06:54SPEAKERIt was like, it was like, okay, we can't recover everything.

06:57SPEAKERSo what we review is going to be like a, an act of curation, basically.

07:01SPEAKERIt's like, like merely by choosing to review this game is sort of recommending it or at

07:06SPEAKERleast saying, Hey, this is notable in some way.

07:08SPEAKERYeah.

07:09SPEAKERAnd ours, our approach was like, we, we reviewed maybe one game a week, right.

07:12SPEAKERMaybe two on a big week.

07:14SPEAKERSo it was like, it was, it was very much a, Hey, if we, if we're talking about this, it's

07:17SPEAKERnoteworthy.

07:18SPEAKERAnd I guess like with my modern editorial sense, Daikatana feels noteworthy in that

07:23SPEAKERway, but also it was, it didn't know, like nobody needed us to tell them that Daikatana

07:28SPEAKERwas bad in 1998, 1999, whatever it was.

07:32SPEAKERI'll say real quick before I move on, I think the reappraisal of that game is of the fixed

07:36SPEAKERversion because people have like fan modded it into a better working state.

07:40SPEAKERI don't know if, I don't know if grub is using those mods or not, but there's like, there's

07:43SPEAKERlike mods that fix the companion AI and stuff like that.

07:46SPEAKERAnd that all seems pretty crucial.

07:47SPEAKERYeah.

07:48SPEAKERGrub is not, grub is in a, in a masochism trip and is not not doing that.

07:52SPEAKERI see.

07:53SPEAKERSo I see.

07:54SPEAKEROkay.

07:55SPEAKERSo the people saying like, ah, maybe it's not that bad or they're basically talking

07:57SPEAKERabout like the game.

07:58SPEAKERIt was meant to be not what shipped.

07:59SPEAKERLike the, so the thing I had always heard about Daikatana is that the first world is

08:03SPEAKERthe worst.

08:04SPEAKERRight.

08:05SPEAKERAnd then it opens up and gets better as you play more.

08:08SPEAKERAlways put your worst foot forward.

08:09SPEAKERYeah.

08:10SPEAKERIt was a weird choice.

08:11SPEAKERRight.

08:12SPEAKERBut, but yeah, so anyway, I don't know, I'm, I'm not, I, the best way for me to engage

08:17SPEAKERwith Daikatana content is to watch someone else suffer.

08:22SPEAKERBut the second best way for me to engage with Daikatana content was to read old next gen

08:25SPEAKERmagazines about Daikatana.

08:27SPEAKERThe year was 1997.

08:30SPEAKER1997, a fine vintage.

08:33SPEAKERThe month was December, which in magazine world was probably actually like August or

08:38SPEAKERSeptember was when they were writing this.

08:40SPEAKERSure.

08:41SPEAKERLike usually like a couple of months lead, like usually the magazines came out the month

08:45SPEAKERbefore that it actually was like the newsstand date was a month earlier than the actual date.

08:51SPEAKERRight.

08:52SPEAKERYeah.

08:53SPEAKERAnd would this have been the phone book issue for the year?

08:55SPEAKERThis would have been a big fat holiday issue.

08:57SPEAKERYeah.

08:58SPEAKERAnd well, so it's interesting and sure enough, it is a 200 page issue, not like the slightest

09:03SPEAKERbit holiday gift guide or sort of consumer focus.

09:07SPEAKERThere's like, I mean, we'll get into it.

09:09SPEAKERThere's there's articles and there are multiple articles in here about like making your own

09:12SPEAKERgames, about game development, about like nascent indie games.

09:15SPEAKERWell, so, so next gen was another imagined title, like maximum PC and PC gamer and later

09:21SPEAKERPSN.

09:22SPEAKERBut PSN was out by then I think Nintendo power was for a long time the official Dreamcast

09:28SPEAKERmagazine, the official Xbox magazines, both imagine or slash future drone jams.

09:34SPEAKERAnd PC accelerator was the other one around this time.

09:36SPEAKERSo this was, this was the holiday issues were big because people bought a bunch of ads for

09:42SPEAKERtheir games and the holiday issues, and then like they'd tell more ads than they had pages

09:46SPEAKERfor in the normal 96 page books.

09:48SPEAKERAnd they'd blow them up to like, like this was, this might've been the year that the

09:52SPEAKERPC gamer holiday issue was like 250 pages.

09:56SPEAKERBut it was, it was big and this next gen always kind of positioned itself as like an industry,

10:03SPEAKERlike a consumer industry bet, right?

10:06SPEAKERIt was very much.

10:07SPEAKERIt was very much supposed to be the earth positioned as the thinking person's video

10:11SPEAKERgame magazine.

10:12SPEAKERYeah.

10:13SPEAKERFor a long time, like Bill Gates was a known reader of next gen magazine.

10:17SPEAKERReally?

10:18SPEAKERYeah.

10:19SPEAKEROh, I didn't know he cared enough about video games to follow them outside of their business

10:22SPEAKERefforts.

10:23SPEAKERHe just wanted to know about the business efforts.

10:25SPEAKERYeah.

10:26SPEAKERFair.

10:27SPEAKERBut I mean, I guess that illustrates the point, like they, they, they talk a lot more about

10:30SPEAKERhardware launches and specs, game development practices, business trends.

10:34SPEAKERLike there's sections about marketing and how, how games are marketed and stuff like

10:39SPEAKERthat.

10:40SPEAKERYes.

10:41SPEAKERBut there's also a lengthy interview in here with a guy from core, the Tomb Raider makers

10:44SPEAKERwith a bunch of shots of a Lara Croft model.

10:46SPEAKERSo yeah.

10:47SPEAKERAnd some kind of sexist comments from that dude, but it's, it's definitely not like a

10:52SPEAKERlad mag vibe in that interview or anything necessarily.

10:55SPEAKERBut this was definitely lad mag time, right?

10:58SPEAKERJust to be clear, it was like maximum what maximum was the magazine that was driving

11:03SPEAKERa lot of innovation on the newsstand and, and like, and I don't just mean pictures of

11:08SPEAKERscantily clad women.

11:09SPEAKERI mean like magazine design stuff was being driven by maximum.

11:13SPEAKERThey were doing really well, right?

11:15SPEAKERThe the, the reason this issue is interesting is they have a couple of hardware stories

11:20SPEAKERthat are like tech trends stories.

11:23SPEAKEROne is the cover story, which by the way, this would just talk about the cover for a

11:27SPEAKERsecond.

11:28SPEAKERIt's a cover with a plug, a North American three prong plug and a power plug plugged

11:34SPEAKERinto it.

11:35SPEAKERAnd that's it.

11:36SPEAKERYeah.

11:37SPEAKERIt says next generation, the game machine of the year.

11:38SPEAKERAnd then I think there's a fold out probably that we don't get.

11:41SPEAKERSo it's on the last page of this PDF.

11:42SPEAKERI think that may have gotten, ah, moved around is what do you call that?

11:47SPEAKERIs that a gatefold?

11:48SPEAKERIt's a gatefold or a fold out.

11:49SPEAKERYeah.

11:50SPEAKERIs that where the, the inside or the front cover folds out?

11:52SPEAKERYeah.

11:53SPEAKERThey could do that a next gen.

11:54SPEAKERCause I don't think they had a disc, but maybe they did.

11:56SPEAKERNo, I don't believe they ever had a disc.

11:58SPEAKERThey did have extremely, I think we've talked about this many times.

12:01SPEAKERThey had extremely nice paper stock.

12:03SPEAKERIf you've never held a next generation magazine before, the cover was thicker than any magazine

12:07SPEAKERI have ever touched in my life.

12:08SPEAKERWell, so, Oh, no, they did have a disc.

12:10SPEAKERI don't know how they did the gatefold.

12:12SPEAKERThat was weird.

12:13SPEAKEROh, is that later?

12:14SPEAKERThis might be, they might've, they might've shipped two different versions of the magazine

12:17SPEAKERtoo.

12:18SPEAKERThey might've shipped a different newsstand.

12:19SPEAKERNo, no.

12:20SPEAKERThey on page four, there's a disc contents.

12:22SPEAKEROh, I didn't, I didn't realize Chris Charlo was EIC at this time.

12:26SPEAKERYeah.

12:27SPEAKERSo Charlo was EIC.

12:28SPEAKERHe's he went on it.

12:29SPEAKERHe's been at Microsoft forever now and is the Xbox guys to do indie games at Xbox these

12:34SPEAKERdays.

12:35SPEAKERWell, I have fitting actually was as we'll get into, there's some like fairly forward

12:39SPEAKERlooking stuff about the need for indie games in this, in this 1997 issue.

12:43SPEAKERVery much so, but, but the point about next gen was like EGM.

12:46SPEAKERIt was a cross-platform and game pro.

12:48SPEAKERIt was a cross-platform title.

12:50SPEAKERIt covered all the consoles, all the arcade stuff.

12:55SPEAKERIt covered future stuff.

12:56SPEAKERIt covered easy, easy hardware.

12:58SPEAKERYeah.

12:59SPEAKERAnd, and, and like next gen put online as like the fifth or sixth cup pillar of gaming

13:06SPEAKERbecause they felt like online was going to kind of be the be its own thing, which was,

13:09SPEAKERit turns out probably right.

13:11SPEAKERYeah.

13:12SPEAKERMaybe, maybe we'll save this for the end, but there's a straight up calendar of events

13:14SPEAKERat the end at the back of the issue.

13:17SPEAKERUh, literally like a month, here's, here's what's going up on the website every day this

13:21SPEAKERmonth.

13:22SPEAKEROh, well, this was it.

13:23SPEAKERThis was 97 would have been, this was before I started in the future, but they were investing

13:27SPEAKERin web because they were looking at like, they were looking at game coverage on stuff

13:31SPEAKERlike sugar shack and, and, and blues news and blue extreme and stuff like that.

13:36SPEAKERAnd, and, and early game spot, I guess at this point, and we're like, oh, we should

13:41SPEAKERbe doing this.

13:42SPEAKERSo anyway, you could show up on December 10th for otaku Christmas, for example.

13:46SPEAKERIs this when the magazine features went up on the website?

13:52SPEAKERMaybe.

13:53SPEAKERI don't know.

13:54SPEAKERImagine games.com be there.

13:55SPEAKEROh, this was, it was all on imagine games.com still.

13:58SPEAKERWow.

13:59SPEAKEROkay.

14:00SPEAKERSo they portal everything into one, into one, one big.

14:02SPEAKEROh, I see.

14:03SPEAKERYes.

14:04SPEAKERThat, that, I guess, I guess otaku Christmas is technically a Saturn world.com story.

14:07SPEAKERSo you might know, imagine games by its later name, the imagine games network or IGN.

14:14SPEAKERYep.

14:15SPEAKERI sure do.

14:16SPEAKERSo they spun that off and then we had to make our own websites again.

14:19SPEAKEROkay.

14:20SPEAKERIt's good to hear that.

14:21SPEAKERCause I had always understood IGN to stand for imagine games network.

14:23SPEAKERBut when you look that up these days, I think that's like kind of lost to history.

14:26SPEAKERYeah.

14:27SPEAKERIt's just like LG doesn't stand.

14:28SPEAKERIt stands for life's good and not lucky gold star anymore.

14:31SPEAKERRight.

14:32SPEAKERYeah.

14:33SPEAKERYes.

14:34SPEAKERAnyway.

14:35SPEAKERBut yeah, it's, it's a very stark cover.

14:36SPEAKERLike you said, it's just like literally a field of white with a small graphic and some

14:39SPEAKERtext on it.

14:40SPEAKERLike they, they got RT a little bit with their covers or, you know, they it's sort of like

14:44SPEAKERthe new Yorker or video game magazines a little bit.

14:46SPEAKERIt was very designy.

14:48SPEAKERThey were also the first magazine in like this space that I remember that wasn't like

14:52SPEAKERa design magazine or something to do a matte cover.

14:55SPEAKERYeah.

14:56SPEAKERThey did a matte wash on the cover and a thicker stock.

14:58SPEAKERAnd it felt, it felt like it felt like a, it felt like one of those magazines.

15:02SPEAKERYou see it like the nice newsstand that has like the design magazines anyway.

15:06SPEAKERSo where do you want to start?

15:08SPEAKERProbably, you should probably start with the cover story, which is like kind of the big

15:11SPEAKERdeal here, which is, I guess they did a yearly console shootout where they, you know, like

15:17SPEAKERthis kind of this is right there with the tone of the magazine we've been describing.

15:21SPEAKERIt was like a very soup to nuts appraisal of where the console is at in the market.

15:25SPEAKERYou know, it was like, Hey, what's, what are their marketing efforts like right now?

15:28SPEAKERLike how's the, what's the quality of the software they're delivering?

15:30SPEAKERLike how well are the specs on this console aging, et cetera, et cetera.

15:34SPEAKERWhat's the prognosis for the future.

15:36SPEAKERAnd we're going to score all these things.

15:37SPEAKERI don't actually know if they did this every year.

15:39SPEAKERSometimes one of the magazine tricks is that you'd say you do something every year, but

15:43SPEAKERthen you just maybe do it once and it doesn't work or it does work.

15:47SPEAKERCause there's definitely language in the intro of this, of this feature sort of like, like

15:52SPEAKERfor this year's annual console round up kind of, but the reason they get into that is,

15:56SPEAKERis the big deal here is they've included the PC in this feature for the first time.

16:00SPEAKERAnd they're straight up going like, why are we putting the PC in this console shootout?

16:04SPEAKERWell, because now the PC actually is the best way to play games.

16:07SPEAKERYeah. And it's, it's specifically because of 3d acceleration, right?

16:12SPEAKERBut this was the year that the 3d effects of voodoo kind of took off.

16:14SPEAKERThis is the year that we saw quake GL quake and, and a handful of other 3d games.

16:20SPEAKERBut this is, this is the first year that like games on the PC, weren't just for weirdos.

16:26SPEAKERIt seems like from their perspective.

16:27SPEAKERYeah.

16:28SPEAKERWell, I mean, they, they do get into actually, I think it might be in the indie games article

16:32SPEAKERand one of these features, they do get into the era of like Wolfenstein 3D, you know,

16:36SPEAKERthey're like, ah, this was like kind of the first salvo of like PC games that truly mattered

16:40SPEAKERor could compete or surpass console games.

16:44SPEAKEROr we're selling more than just like some Ziploc bags at computer shows.

16:48SPEAKERRight.

16:49SPEAKERYeah.

16:50SPEAKERAnd this was, it's also worth mentioning.

16:51SPEAKERThis is around the time like GT interactive is, is, is advertising for this magazine,

16:56SPEAKERthe quake publisher, the retail quake publisher, right.

17:00SPEAKERBut we hadn't seen like bass pro games and, and deer hunter and stuff like that hadn't

17:06SPEAKERcome out yet.

17:07SPEAKERSo like games hadn't reached Walmart yet for the PC.

17:10SPEAKERRight.

17:11SPEAKERAnyway.

17:12SPEAKERYeah.

17:13SPEAKERThey, they, the interesting, one of the things that struck me first is that at this point,

17:16SPEAKERthe oldest console that they talk about here, which is I think the Saturn was two and a

17:20SPEAKERhalf years old and they described this as mid cycle.

17:23SPEAKEROh yeah, no, we'll get into it later.

17:25SPEAKERThere are multiple references in this issue to the forthcoming Dreamcast, which doesn't

17:29SPEAKERhave the name yet.

17:30SPEAKERIt's still project drawl at this point, but there, there are very explicit signs that

17:35SPEAKERthe next, the, the, the Saturn followup is imminent in this issue.

17:38SPEAKERAnd the Saturn, like you said, is two years old at this point.

17:40SPEAKERLike it really struck me of like, man, these things just kind of like came out and came

17:45SPEAKERand went back then.

17:46SPEAKERYeah.

17:47SPEAKERI mean, also they were cheap, like the inflation has had a toll, right?

17:52SPEAKERYeah, sure.

17:53SPEAKERThe Saturn, the Saturn less so the Saturn famously, that was part of the reason it sank

17:56SPEAKERwas three 99 in 1995 was pretty rough and Sony ate their lunch by going a hundred dollars

18:03SPEAKERcheaper.

18:04SPEAKERBut by the time we're reading this issue, everything is $150, the N64, the Saturn and

18:11SPEAKERthe PlayStation are all a $150 MSRP according to magazine.

18:16SPEAKEROh God, you're right.

18:17SPEAKERYeah.

18:18SPEAKERI didn't even, I totally glossed over that fact.

18:19SPEAKERThat's wild because yeah, this is, this is also only like two years after the PlayStation

18:23SPEAKERcame out.

18:24SPEAKERYeah.

18:25SPEAKERIt was like a year and a half after PlayStation came out, right?

18:27SPEAKERYou're totally right.

18:28SPEAKERThat's another thing I have to like recalibrate my memory of because price drops are like

18:32SPEAKERbarely a thing these days, you know, we're, we're almost four years into the PS5 and it's

18:37SPEAKERstill the same price as when it came out.

18:39SPEAKERYeah.

18:40SPEAKERKind of, kind of more expensive in some ways.

18:41SPEAKERLike it's.

18:42SPEAKERWell, I mean, they were cheaper.

18:44SPEAKERThese were cheaper, easier to manufacture machines at the time.

18:47SPEAKEROf course.

18:48SPEAKEROf course.

18:49SPEAKERAnd also I think they were definitely doing with the exception probably of Nintendo, Sony

18:53SPEAKERand Sega were definitely playing a, Hey, can we loss lead some hardware in and then sell

18:57SPEAKERa whole bunch of $20 discs.

18:59SPEAKERYou're totally right.

19:00SPEAKERThis was, this was squarely before the era of, Hey, we're going to make actual profit

19:04SPEAKERon the consoles we're selling on the hardware and, and not, we're going to eat, eat cost

19:09SPEAKERon each one just to sell games.

19:11SPEAKERAnd just to be clear, $149 in December of 1997 is $290 today.

19:17SPEAKEROh, okay.

19:18SPEAKERAll right.

19:19SPEAKERSo like we're not that far off what the price is.

19:23SPEAKERYeah.

19:24SPEAKERCause you know, like $250 for the series S is still considered sort of like the budget

19:27SPEAKERoffering.

19:28SPEAKERYeah.

19:29SPEAKERSo anyway, they, they, like I said, they rated these consoles surprisingly, I mean, they

19:33SPEAKERkind of gush about the PlayStation, but then they still give it a final score of three

19:37SPEAKERand a half stars, which is the same.

19:39SPEAKERThey give to the N64, which they view as not quite DOA, but like not in, not, not in good

19:46SPEAKERshape.

19:47SPEAKERYeah.

19:48SPEAKERLike it's interesting.

19:49SPEAKERCause one of the things that I, that I had forgotten too, is that it, this period of

19:52SPEAKERtime when APIs were new and people were writing directly to metal a lot of times and stuff

19:56SPEAKERlike that, like there was an expectation that they were going to, people were going to figure

20:01SPEAKERout more about how the consoles worked over time.

20:04SPEAKERAnd you juice more hardware out, more, more software features out of the hardware.

20:08SPEAKERLike the intro to this thing is actually really perceptive.

20:11SPEAKERLike they make that exact point of like, Hey, the hardware specs are less sexy on these

20:15SPEAKERthan, than when they, than when these consoles shipped, but the games are going to get better

20:18SPEAKERfrom here because everybody has learned with consoles now and we're going to get more interesting

20:23SPEAKERand better looking games in the back half of, of these things.

20:26SPEAKERWell, and they also make the point that the, like, this is the time at which people start

20:32SPEAKERstop playing around with the new graphical whizbangs and kind of dig in and actual may

20:38SPEAKERactually make games right back half of that console cycle back in the old days was, Hey,

20:43SPEAKERwe're going to, we, now we understand how this machine works and it's not just a nightmare,

20:46SPEAKERjust getting it up and running and shipped.

20:48SPEAKERNow we can actually make work on the game some and, and innovate to do things you haven't

20:54SPEAKERseen before.

20:55SPEAKERAnd as a corollary to all that in this intro where like literally where they are declaring

20:58SPEAKERthe PC, like the best thing to play games on now they, they caution like pretty strongly,

21:05SPEAKERlike, Hey, a lot of the games are probably going to suck.

21:08SPEAKERThere's going to be a big flood of games that look amazing and play like shit on the PC.

21:12SPEAKERNow the three effects cards are out there.

21:14SPEAKERYeah, they literally, so along with each of these writeups on each of the consoles, they

21:18SPEAKERpick 10 games that they're it's like, they, they, they call them biggest games of the

21:23SPEAKERseason, which is a like that to me is a mixture of, Hey, here's the stuff we think is going

21:28SPEAKERto sell and have impact and the stuff we're going to be excited about, but maybe not the

21:31SPEAKERbest.

21:32SPEAKERYeah.

21:33SPEAKERSo like on the Nintendo side, it's like golden eye, which was already out or out by the time

21:39SPEAKERyou read this issue, it's hard to tell a Zelda 64, which still didn't have a name, right?

21:45SPEAKERF zero 64 Yoshi's story, 64 Diddy Kong Conker's quest, which didn't ship for a long time after

21:53SPEAKERthis.

21:54SPEAKERYeah.

21:55SPEAKERThat was late.

21:56SPEAKERThat was late.

21:57SPEAKERAlso like Conker's quest never came out.

21:58SPEAKERI think that morphed into Conker's bad fur day.

22:01SPEAKEROkay.

22:03SPEAKERThe edgy one.

22:04SPEAKERBut like on the PC side, the games that they're talking about, I'm scrolling desperately here.

22:09SPEAKERSorry.

22:10SPEAKERPC battle zone blade runner.

22:12SPEAKERWow.

22:13SPEAKERThe adventure came, I guess.

22:14SPEAKERThat's a point click game.

22:16SPEAKERDaikatana.

22:17SPEAKERThat's why that's how I came to this episode.

22:19SPEAKERThis issue actually is I was searching Daikatana on archive.org and yeah, Duke Nukem forever.

22:25SPEAKERThat was the game that didn't ship for another 10 years.

22:28SPEAKERAlmost hot.

22:29SPEAKERA 12.

22:30SPEAKERIt wasn't in 2009 that that came out.

22:31SPEAKERIt was late.

22:32SPEAKERI think it was 09.

22:33SPEAKERYeah.

22:34SPEAKERMaybe.

22:35SPEAKERYeah.

22:36SPEAKERHeavy, heavy gear.

22:37SPEAKERG police.

22:38SPEAKERThe bundle pack in game that came with every 3d accelerator you bought in 1997 or 98.

22:42SPEAKERThat's a bad game.

22:43SPEAKERYes.

22:44SPEAKERBut the, you know, Jedi Knight, quake two, Starcraft and Tomb Raider two are the other

22:48SPEAKERgames here.

22:49SPEAKERThose are all like pretty certified.

22:50SPEAKERDude.

22:51SPEAKERI'm going to tell you.

22:52SPEAKERHeavy gear also rips.

22:53SPEAKEROkay.

22:54SPEAKERI've never played heavy gear.

22:55SPEAKERHeavy gear was like a mech game that you didn't have to manage heat.

22:57SPEAKERIt was like an arcade fast mech game.

22:59SPEAKERIt was real good.

23:00SPEAKERAnyway.

23:01SPEAKERThat's fine too.

23:02SPEAKERI've, I've, I've heard that just, just to wrap up here real quick, like I, like I said,

23:08SPEAKERthey do component scores here for like, like the PlayStation gets a three for demonstrated

23:13SPEAKERhardware power, for example, three and a half for current software library.

23:16SPEAKERAnyway, PlayStation and N64, both three and a half stars, the Saturn is basically just

23:21SPEAKERtreated as more abundant at this point, like they basically just say, Hey, this thing's

23:26SPEAKERon the way out.

23:27SPEAKERLike the writeup begins a Sega is at a critical point is, is how they start this Saturn, Saturn

23:34SPEAKERgets a two stars overall.

23:36SPEAKERAnd it's interesting because Saturn, the Saturn, like the story on the Saturn is that it was

23:41SPEAKER2d hardware originally to be a 2d hardware, and then they jammed some 3d stuff in it at

23:46SPEAKERthe last minute.

23:47SPEAKERRight?

23:48SPEAKERYeah.

23:49SPEAKERThey mentioned that in here, Saturn was never really cut out for its competition originally

23:50SPEAKERplanned as the ultimate 2d system, a replacement for the aging Genesis 3d support was added

23:54SPEAKERat high cost after the company learned of Sony's plans who was bad at 3d at the time

24:00SPEAKER3d was emerging and it launched at a way too high price.

24:04SPEAKERIt was doomed from the beginning.

24:06SPEAKERYeah.

24:07SPEAKERIt's, it's, it's, it's interesting how like they didn't exactly know how to cover 3d at

24:13SPEAKERthis point.

24:14SPEAKERIt seems like, yeah, like it's hard to remember now, but, but like going from a, Hey, this

24:20SPEAKERis a picture.

24:22SPEAKERThis is a 2d picture that we can represent on the screen and we'll, we'll flash those

24:25SPEAKERat 60 frames a second to, Hey, in this voodoo graphics, right?

24:30SPEAKERRight up like in the PC, right up, they're talking about different 3d accelerator companies

24:34SPEAKERand it's like 3d effects, rendition, Nvidia, I think there's an AI section in here.

24:41SPEAKERI think so.

24:42SPEAKERPower VR.

24:43SPEAKERNo, they don't talk about ATI at all, because ATI was still making basically rage twos at

24:46SPEAKERthat point and rage pro hadn't come out and wasn't very good anyway.

24:50SPEAKERBut in the, in the, in the 3d effects section, they talk about, they talk about APIs, right?

24:56SPEAKERThey talk, they talk about glide and OpenGL and direct 3d coming, coming, they talk about

25:03SPEAKERmipmapping and Z buffering and perspective, correct, correct, correct texture filtering,

25:07SPEAKERwhich none of the consoles had at this point.

25:09SPEAKERRight.

25:10SPEAKERThis PlayStation was just garage shading.

25:11SPEAKERI thought.

25:12SPEAKEROh, did the N64 have it?

25:14SPEAKERMaybe.

25:15SPEAKERI'm not sure.

25:16SPEAKEROh, N64 might have.

25:17SPEAKERBut, but like, like these are, I would describe these as base level 3d features to have a

25:24SPEAKER3d console.

25:25SPEAKEROh yeah.

25:26SPEAKERThe best part about this is they have a little tease at the end about the voodoo 2, which

25:31SPEAKERis expected sometime in the next year, maybe as soon as the end of quarter one.

25:35SPEAKERAnd it says, imagine playing quake at the frame rate of your monitors refresh rate.

25:41SPEAKERImagine that.

25:42SPEAKERImagine that.

25:43SPEAKERSo, so like at this point, this, this whole thing about the PC, like the thing that they've

25:50SPEAKERseen that's really good, isn't a tomb Raider port or the G police or virtual erasing.

25:58SPEAKERIt's it's quake.

26:01SPEAKERThis is GL quake is made this, this, the winner for this year.

26:04SPEAKERSure.

26:05SPEAKERAnd quake two was just about to come out at the time of this publishing.

26:08SPEAKERYeah.

26:09SPEAKERQuake two, like it literally came out between the time this, this issue was written and

26:13SPEAKERwhen the magazine probably was like the newsstand date.

26:18SPEAKERYeah.

26:19SPEAKERI have to mention, excuse me, at the, at the end of this whole piece, they're like, but

26:23SPEAKERwait, welcome to the next level.

26:25SPEAKERHere's the Dreamcast.

26:26SPEAKERAlthough again, not called the Dreamcast at this point, it was still Dural, which was

26:30SPEAKERjust a working title, which I was like, wait, well, Dreamcast was project Katana.

26:35SPEAKERAnd then sure enough, I went and looked and at some point they changed the working title

26:39SPEAKERfrom Dural to Katana before it came to Dreamcast anyway, they got all the specs here.

26:43SPEAKERLike, like you were saying, you know, like the Saturn is barely over two years old here.

26:47SPEAKERThey have all of the hard specs for the Dreamcast, granted the Saturn was like stillborn.

26:52SPEAKERSo they had to follow it up quickly.

26:54SPEAKERDo you think that Sega was dumping this information out?

26:56SPEAKERI think I'm pretty sure there's a reference in here to this coming from a development

27:00SPEAKERmanual, like a, like a dev kit manual.

27:03SPEAKERThere's a news story that says, Hey, dev kits are out now.

27:06SPEAKERYes.

27:07SPEAKERThat's I was going to refer to that.

27:08SPEAKERI'll zoom earlier.

27:09SPEAKERThis is on page 24 of the PDF.

27:11SPEAKERI don't know what age of magazines I don't list a page number in my six it's magazines

27:16SPEAKERoff by two.

27:17SPEAKERFor some reason.

27:18SPEAKERI don't know why.

27:19SPEAKERAnyway, this is a little news hit about a Dreamcast development kits going out to developers

27:24SPEAKERdevelopers work on power VR accelerated PCs.

27:27SPEAKEROh, and a wade development kits.

27:29SPEAKERI'm sorry.

27:30SPEAKERThey're still on PCs at this point, but there's like an interesting line in here.

27:33SPEAKERSega has informed these developers that if they develop with a Pentium 2 200 in mind,

27:37SPEAKERthen the game will work on Doral because the system uses a Microsoft OS developers can

27:41SPEAKERstart work early on a Pentium 2 based PC accelerated with a power VR card, which is kind of interesting.

27:47SPEAKERThis is like the first example of a console, like following PC hardware, like pretty closely

27:51SPEAKERall the different CPU architecture.

27:55SPEAKERThe yeah, it's well, and it's also interesting because presumably Sega was just torching

28:00SPEAKERtheir existing Saturn sales because they knew that they weren't losing anything right, right?

28:05SPEAKERLike who cares if we're out here talking about the successor, nobody's buying it anyway.

28:09SPEAKERLike it's there's an interesting glimpse into how people talk up talked about this stuff.

28:14SPEAKERBecause like if you look at the specs for their PC on their PC column in the in that

28:19SPEAKERsame article, they, they don't use the right names for the CPU's, right?

28:25SPEAKERLike they list three systems configurations and the minimum is a Pentium 2 Pro 233, which

28:33SPEAKERis not, there was a Pentium 2's and there were Pentium Pros, but there's no Pentium

28:36SPEAKER2 Pro.

28:37SPEAKERI was going to say, there is no such thing.

28:38SPEAKERThe intermediate is a Pentium 2 Pro 266 and the ultimate is a Pentium 2 Pro 300.

28:43SPEAKERSo they don't talk about like K6s, which K6 200 was the entry level at that point.

28:47SPEAKERI think if I recall right it's it's it's like, and, and there was no variation in sound cards

28:55SPEAKERand graphics cards because like there were only a limited number of vendors, limited

29:02SPEAKERnumber of chips that were worth having at that point.

29:04SPEAKERI think like, Hey, just build this for a Pentium 200 for the Dural stuff is fascinating though.

29:11SPEAKERYeah.

29:12SPEAKERLike what a, what a, I mean, at the same time on the other side, you had Nintendo saying,

29:16SPEAKERHey, if you want to make a Nintendo game, you got to buy this half million dollar SGI

29:20SPEAKERworkstation so you can test it.

29:22SPEAKERRight.

29:23SPEAKERWhich is like, it's a hard to understand, hard to, hard to imagine why Nintendo had

29:28SPEAKERproblems that generation when the Sega, Sega and Sony are just like, yo, here's a PC, two

29:33SPEAKERgrand.

29:34SPEAKERYeah.

29:35SPEAKERWeird.

29:36SPEAKERActually, there's a new story about that that we'll get to in a second here, but yeah, the

29:38SPEAKERDreamcast was two, two Hitachi 32 bit risk chips just for comparison.

29:44SPEAKERIf you're like you were developing on a Pentium two 200, but SH 25, I believe is the name

29:49SPEAKERof that CPU.

29:50SPEAKERThat's what they say in the tech specs here.

29:53SPEAKER28 megahertz or the CPU is in the Dreamcast.

29:57SPEAKERSo real quick, before we move on from console news here, there's also a news hit here about

30:03SPEAKERNintendo dropping the prices of cartridges.

30:05SPEAKERYeah.

30:06SPEAKERI remember, I remember this, like you got your N64 in what, like 2006 is when it came

30:13SPEAKERout.

30:14SPEAKERSorry.

30:15SPEAKER1996.

30:16SPEAKERExcuse me.

30:17SPEAKERYeah.

30:18SPEAKERLike it was hot.

30:19SPEAKERIt was hard to find in, in Christmas.

30:21SPEAKERI remember getting them just after Christmas in 97 and like the cartridges were 80 bucks

30:26SPEAKERfor wave racers and Mario 64.

30:28SPEAKERIt was really phenomenally expensive.

30:30SPEAKERYeah.

30:31SPEAKERYeah.

30:32SPEAKERSo this, this, they have dropped the price here.

30:33SPEAKERThe new average price for N64 software will be from 49 to $59 a retail.

30:37SPEAKERThis constitutes roughly a 15% price cut.

30:40SPEAKERYou can do the math there.

30:41SPEAKERThere's just an amazing quote from Peter Main here.

30:45SPEAKERBusiness is booming.

30:46SPEAKERNew prices not only show our competitive edge, but also our, our, our way of saying thanks

30:50SPEAKERto consumers for helping Nintendo claim nearly 53% of the total US video game industry.

30:57SPEAKERGame loom is still real hot here.

30:59SPEAKERRight?

31:00SPEAKERI was going to say, I was going to say there's so much marketing spin in that quote.

31:02SPEAKERI cannot believe it.

31:03SPEAKERLike there's no way the N64 accounts for an appreciable portion of that 53% and also the

31:10SPEAKERidea of a corporation dropping prices out of the goodness of its heart.

31:15SPEAKERWell so come on, man, did Nintendo manufacture all the cartridges or Nintendo 64 games?

31:22SPEAKERI know they did on the earlier consoles.

31:24SPEAKERI can't say for sure that on the N64 it was the case, but I have to assume it was because

31:28SPEAKERyes, that was absolutely the thing that was one of the big things on the NES where they

31:32SPEAKERwere like gouging.

31:33SPEAKERThey're not gouging.

31:34SPEAKERI mean, they were, they were getting even more from third parties by requiring the third

31:37SPEAKERparties to let them make the cartridges.

31:40SPEAKERIt's the old Stanley Kubrick trick of writing the movie, directing the movie and renting

31:46SPEAKERprops to the movie production.

31:48SPEAKERYeah.

31:49SPEAKEROr maybe the Apple thing.

31:50SPEAKERI don't know.

31:51SPEAKERJust like, you know, control every control, every step of the chain.

31:53SPEAKERYeah.

31:54SPEAKERAnyway.

31:55SPEAKERYeah.

31:56SPEAKERLike this clearly, clearly more of a move to like try to fight.

31:58SPEAKERI mean, they say that you're literally like Sony's selling games for $20 now you can't

32:03SPEAKERkeep doing this.

32:04SPEAKERIt's interesting because this is kind of the beginning of the, of the Nintendo, Hey, we're

32:09SPEAKERa first party only platform kind of because like they, they have a quote from Capcom president

32:15SPEAKERBill Gardner who says it was unreasonable to look at N64 from a third party publishers

32:20SPEAKERstandpoint previously.

32:22SPEAKERNow there is room for everyone to make money and to bring more great games to the system.

32:26SPEAKERAnd sure enough, resident evil two for the N64 happened not terribly long after this.

32:31SPEAKERWell, somewhat long after, but anyway.

32:34SPEAKERAt the same time, they also call out Sony selling greatest hits discs for 20 bucks,

32:39SPEAKERwhich was like, I remember, I remember buying a lot of games, not necessarily for the PlayStation,

32:46SPEAKERbut for other platforms on that $20, Hey, I'll wait, I'll wait a year.

32:50SPEAKERThis is the thing I care about, but not that much.

32:52SPEAKERI'll grab it when it's 20 bucks.

32:53SPEAKERI was like, I got eco and shadows of the Colossus, those in those, the next generation heck of

32:59SPEAKERa deal.

33:00SPEAKERYeah.

33:01SPEAKERSo the next thing is on this, on this future console stuff, no mention of PlayStation two.

33:06SPEAKEROh, you're right.

33:08SPEAKERBut actually, I'm sorry.

33:09SPEAKERI flagged this elsewhere.

33:10SPEAKERLet me see if I can find a little hit someplace else.

33:12SPEAKERRight.

33:13SPEAKERIt is on page 19 of the magazine.

33:17SPEAKERIt's literally the tiniest sidebar in this entire issue.

33:21SPEAKERIt's on a page.

33:22SPEAKERWe'll probably talk about this in a little bit.

33:23SPEAKERIt's on a page about holographic storage, which if you followed, if you followed hardware

33:27SPEAKERin the late nineties, you definitely remember reading about the promise of holographic storage,

33:32SPEAKERbut there's a little sidebar PlayStation two speculation.

33:37SPEAKERThat's pretty good.

33:38SPEAKERReally straight up.

33:39SPEAKERThey straight up have got, I mean, it's not, it's not hard specs.

33:41SPEAKERIt's more ranges, but they've got like pretty decent info about the PlayStation two specs

33:47SPEAKERhere.

33:48SPEAKERAnd it's kind of, it's just kind of shocking to me, maybe it's because it's rumors that

33:50SPEAKERthey didn't want to go too hard on it, but like they've got info about the next PlayStation

33:55SPEAKERhere and they didn't stick it in that future console feature feature story.

33:58SPEAKERThey just put it in this new size section in a tiny box.

34:01SPEAKERSo I will tell you why that happens is usually you, you lay out the features early because

34:07SPEAKERthey're done early.

34:08SPEAKEROkay.

34:09SPEAKERAnd once they're laid out, you're not going to add stuff in if you, if it's not real,

34:11SPEAKERreal important.

34:12SPEAKERSure.

34:13SPEAKERThe news section is generally the last thing that gets done.

34:15SPEAKERAnd this one, like looking at the way this page is, they got a late, the late tip here

34:21SPEAKERfrom some developer who'd gotten a dev kit and, and we're like, well, there's a sidebar

34:26SPEAKERon page 17.

34:27SPEAKERWe can just jam it in here.

34:29SPEAKERAnd that's what they did.

34:30SPEAKERYeah.

34:31SPEAKERI mean, there's even a big empty space below it as if they didn't have enough to fill the

34:34SPEAKERwhole space or whatever.

34:35SPEAKERThey, there probably weren't dev kits at this point.

34:36SPEAKERI would guess this was like still in R and D briefings probably.

34:40SPEAKERYeah.

34:41SPEAKERCause it was still like three years out from launching.

34:43SPEAKERAlso no mention of Microsoft in this is nobody had any idea that Microsoft was going to do

34:47SPEAKERanything at this point.

34:48SPEAKERYup.

34:49SPEAKERYup.

34:50SPEAKERSo should we talk about underground games, which way to the underground is this feature

34:56SPEAKERon page 76 of the issue?

34:58SPEAKERIt's like a London underground map.

35:00SPEAKERYeah.

35:01SPEAKERAlthough next gen was entirely US based, right?

35:05SPEAKERThey were in Brisbane or they might've been in a San, in Burlingame at this point still.

35:10SPEAKERAnd also all American for them.

35:12SPEAKERWell, like there were a couple of British writers there.

35:14SPEAKERYeah.

35:15SPEAKERYeah.

35:16SPEAKERI mean, it's on the one hand is easy to like laugh and roll your eyes at the term underground

35:19SPEAKERgames, but on the other hand, like the, the gist or like the spirit of this article is

35:23SPEAKERlike a hundred percent.

35:24SPEAKERCorrect.

35:25SPEAKERWell, we didn't have like indie wasn't, I don't know that I'd heard anybody say, I guess

35:30SPEAKERI'd heard about indie rock by then probably for a while.

35:33SPEAKERSure.

35:34SPEAKERI mean, 97, like this is way past like grunge happening and stuff.

35:37SPEAKERLike I was.

35:38SPEAKERBut like, it was kind of like grunge and like that all fit into like college radio, college

35:44SPEAKERrock to me.

35:45SPEAKERRight?

35:46SPEAKERLike stuff you hear on the college radio station.

35:48SPEAKERI don't know that I had heard, like, I don't know that we talked about indie I'd be interested

35:54SPEAKERto see what the first, like, Hey, here's, here's the publisher.

35:57SPEAKERHere's the idea of doing this without commercial support from a publisher or large entity.

36:01SPEAKERYeah.

36:02SPEAKERI mean, I think, I mean, if we want to get technical, I probably heard of the term indie

36:05SPEAKERrock.

36:06SPEAKERLike after I got to college and like 97, 98 and like met people who were listening to

36:09SPEAKERlike archers of loaf and super shock and stuff like that.

36:12SPEAKERYeah.

36:13SPEAKERBut this article starts the explosion of independent music and films has meant more than just a

36:17SPEAKERnew business model.

36:18SPEAKERIt's been the long overdue invitation for creative minds to crash the corporate party.

36:23SPEAKERSo it was the game industry ready for a new guest list.

36:25SPEAKERAnd if so, who's on it, but anyway, like the point is like a lot of, a lot of indie film

36:29SPEAKERand music was happening was big in the late nineties, which obviously is their springboard

36:33SPEAKERhere for like, Hey, what games need some kind of like outsider arts, small development scene

36:37SPEAKERas well.

36:38SPEAKERYeah.

36:39SPEAKERAnd, and you know what, when I think about it, it was clerks and, and rest for dogs and

36:42SPEAKERstuff like that was where I first heard it.

36:44SPEAKERRight.

36:45SPEAKERSo, so yeah, they talk about this and they, they call it, they talk about an independent

36:52SPEAKERspirit.

36:53SPEAKERThey talk about a low fi production.

36:54SPEAKERThey talk about all the kind of Harvard harbingers of, of the early indie stuff.

37:01SPEAKERAnd then they asked why the game industry failed to produce an independent movement

37:03SPEAKERwithout saying, Hey, yeah, to make a game on the N64, you have to have a half million

37:07SPEAKERdollar dev kit.

37:09SPEAKERWhich I think is really funny because maybe they didn't realize that at this point.

37:13SPEAKERYeah.

37:14SPEAKERWell, they do, they do present like the kind of like, what are, what are the, what are

37:18SPEAKERthe hurdles here?

37:21SPEAKERNeed for financial return, steep entry costs, consumers like mainstream games is one they

37:27SPEAKERhave here, which definitely not wrong at this time.

37:31SPEAKERLet's see here.

37:34SPEAKERIndustry is too young.

37:37SPEAKERGames just aren't art.

37:38SPEAKERWell, these are not their arguments.

37:39SPEAKEROf course, these are like, what are, what are some of the common complaints or obstacles

37:42SPEAKERto, to a smaller game like indie scene forming.

37:46SPEAKERWell, and like the cost of production is really high, right?

37:51SPEAKERLike just like there weren't free 3d editors at this point.

37:55SPEAKEROh, right.

37:56SPEAKERLike you, if you want it, you'd need admire max or something that costs thousands of dollars

38:01SPEAKERto make a 3d game at this point.

38:03SPEAKERYeah.

38:04SPEAKERIt's, it's weird.

38:05SPEAKERThey didn't roll this into this feature to me, but if you go back to page 30, 29, maybe

38:09SPEAKERthis is like a regular, like a regular column, I guess that they were saving this for toolbox,

38:14SPEAKERthe products that build your favorite games.

38:16SPEAKERI'm sorry.

38:17SPEAKERActually there are two of these.

38:18SPEAKERI'm mixing this one up, but I'll just go ahead and talk about this one.

38:20SPEAKERThere's a different section with some other development tools.

38:23SPEAKERThis is where they're, they're talking about some new, some new game dev tools torch.

38:27SPEAKERYeah.

38:28SPEAKERThis, this was a VRML renderer.

38:29SPEAKERI don't think anybody ever made anything with this.

38:31SPEAKERYeah.

38:32SPEAKERIt's let's see at its heart torch is simply a very fast VRML engine with some game oriented

38:36SPEAKERtweaks.

38:37SPEAKERThis was an attempt to like make VRML work as, as a game engine.

38:41SPEAKERYeah.

38:42SPEAKERTo like, I mean, we didn't have a whole lot of game engines at this point either quake

38:46SPEAKERwas something you could license and I guess unreal, you could license point by no unreal

38:52SPEAKERcame out in 98.

38:53SPEAKERSo like big unreal licensing was still two, three years away.

38:56SPEAKERYeah, but it wasn't, it wasn't like there were 20 engines on the market.

39:00SPEAKERThis was, this was, Hey, here's a thing that will handle collision and rendering for you.

39:04SPEAKERAnd then you can attach game nodes to each of the objects kind of was what it sounded

39:08SPEAKERlike.

39:09SPEAKERThey very much make that point in that, in that, in that underground games article, they

39:13SPEAKERtalk about it very much from the perspective of you're going to have to write your own

39:15SPEAKERengine.

39:16SPEAKERLike, what do you need to make a game?

39:17SPEAKERWell, you need to know how to code an engine, which obviously pretty big obstacle.

39:23SPEAKERThat limited a lot of accessibility turns out VRML virtual reality, markup language,

39:29SPEAKERright?

39:30SPEAKERAnd what those for people who don't remember, it was like an early attempt to get 3d graphics

39:33SPEAKERinto your web browser.

39:34SPEAKERYep.

39:35SPEAKEROr just, just have a, have a shared, it was, this was early metaverse stuff.

39:40SPEAKERThis was an idea that you could have a shared markup language that would describe 3d spaces,

39:45SPEAKERnot just flat text.

39:46SPEAKERYeah.

39:47SPEAKERIt didn't go anywhere.

39:48SPEAKERIt turns out my favorite quote in this is at the end, they talk about shortcomings.

39:54SPEAKERThey like in the conclusion, they're saying despite all these shortcomings, new fires

39:58SPEAKERcreated a fast and flexible engine with torch and a carefully thought out and relatively

40:02SPEAKERspeaking easy to use design tool set with catalyst.

40:05SPEAKERBest of all, it's cheap as hell, $2,000 for a one seat license.

40:11SPEAKERPractically giving it away.

40:12SPEAKERWell, but I mean, compared to quake where like you had an upfront cost of a couple hundred

40:16SPEAKERgrand and royalty payments, it is very cheap, but like for one guy sitting alone in his

40:23SPEAKERbasement who wanted to make a game that spoke to him kind of expensive.

40:27SPEAKERRight.

40:28SPEAKERExactly what they're arguing for in that underground games piece is small, either single individual

40:34SPEAKERpeople or small teams making games that speak to them that like come from the heart.

40:38SPEAKERLike they interview Kenji Eno in here, for example, you know, like as, as somebody who

40:43SPEAKERis like making games their way.

40:46SPEAKERWho's Kenji Eno, you know, just for people who don't know.

40:48SPEAKERHe made, he made D is the game that comes to mind for me.

40:52SPEAKERI've never had, warp was his company.

40:53SPEAKERHe's passed away a number of years ago, unfortunately.

40:57SPEAKERMaybe zero is another one.

40:58SPEAKERHe was big on the three O and I may be on the dream cast.

41:01SPEAKERHe was kind of like a like Oh, tourist, I guess I would say like, almost like a Kojima

41:06SPEAKERor David Lynch type of figure of making, making very unusual games that clearly are coming

41:11SPEAKERfrom like a, like a specific creed of impulse.

41:15SPEAKERLike a predecessor to like a suit of suit of the kind of, yes, sure, sure.

41:20SPEAKERThey talked to Dave Taylor in here, crack.com.

41:22SPEAKEROh yeah.

41:23SPEAKERAbuse.

41:24SPEAKERRemember that.

41:25SPEAKERYep.

41:26SPEAKERIt's an amazing game.

41:27SPEAKERI've never actually played that.

41:28SPEAKERI don't think.

41:29SPEAKEROh, it's great.

41:30SPEAKERGod, it's got 360 degree, like mouse aiming, you know, like you just, it's a, it's an abuse.

41:34SPEAKERIf you have not played it, it's a two D's side scrolling shooter, like Contra ish from

41:38SPEAKERthe PC from the nineties, but you use your mind, you can aim 360 degrees around your

41:44SPEAKERcharacter.

41:45SPEAKERIt's awesome.

41:46SPEAKERBut anyway, he also, Dave Taylor famously worked for ID software for quite a while as

41:50SPEAKERwell in like the doom two era.

41:52SPEAKERBut crack.com is, is portrayed here as another like grassroots, like garage developer.

41:56SPEAKERYeah.

41:57SPEAKERI mean, there was a lot of, like, that's the way like God games was kind of portrayed too

42:03SPEAKERas like, Hey, we're a, we're an unpublish or publisher crack.com crack.com made fun

42:11SPEAKERstuff.

42:12SPEAKERYeah.

42:13SPEAKERI think it's interesting that they put it in this category because they were like, Hey,

42:16SPEAKERthis is seven people made quake.

42:17SPEAKERRight?

42:18SPEAKERRight.

42:19SPEAKERI mean, obviously by this time it is like the biggest thing out there in PC games, but

42:22SPEAKERyes, they were famously just some knuckleheads that got together.

42:27SPEAKERMist is listed here.

42:28SPEAKERI mean, that makes sense.

42:30SPEAKERYeah.

42:31SPEAKERI actually watched a is it ours that does the war stories series on YouTube.

42:35SPEAKERHave you seen those?

42:36SPEAKERI think so.

42:37SPEAKERYeah.

42:38SPEAKEROh, they're so good.

42:39SPEAKERI just started watching them recently.

42:40SPEAKERI'm pretty sure it's ours.

42:41SPEAKERTechnica.

42:42SPEAKERI forgive me if it's somebody else, but the only ones I've watched are with oh God, why

42:46SPEAKERam I blanking on the other founder of Naughty Dog besides Jason Rubin Andy I cannot remember

42:53SPEAKERhis name anyway.

42:54SPEAKERHe was the programmer.

42:55SPEAKEROh, okay.

42:56SPEAKERIt's, it's mostly about crash bandicoot, but like he goes into like 30 minutes of extreme

42:59SPEAKERtechnical detail about how they made crash bandicoot work on the PlayStation.

43:03SPEAKERIt's incredible.

43:04SPEAKERBut I watched another one with Rand Miller about mist recently which is also fantastic

43:09SPEAKERbecause he also goes into like the hypercard roots of cyan.

43:12SPEAKEROh, right.

43:13SPEAKERYeah.

43:14SPEAKERLike mist was their first game in color.

43:15SPEAKERLike all of, all of, all of cyan's previous games before mist were like black and white

43:20SPEAKERhypercard games and like mist, you can see how mist just kind of grew out of that with

43:23SPEAKERbetter technology.

43:24SPEAKERAnd he talks about the 3d rendering they used and all kinds of stuff.

43:27SPEAKERAnyway, those videos are great, but Andy Gavin, you're talking about from Naughty Dog.

43:31SPEAKERYes.

43:32SPEAKERBut yeah, mist, mist is portrayed here as a, and I think it probably was just a few

43:37SPEAKERpeople, right?

43:38SPEAKERBut it's mist demonstrated the potential of games as an artistic medium is how they put

43:42SPEAKERit here.

43:43SPEAKERAnd it's interesting because one of the things they didn't quite get to, they, they danced

43:46SPEAKERall around this in this article is the idea that Indies will serve niches that are smaller

43:52SPEAKERthan mainstream publishers might want to do, might want to deal with as like, I don't think

43:57SPEAKERthey'd quite gotten to the point that like one day there wouldn't be a mainstream triple

44:00SPEAKERA RTS, right?

44:02SPEAKERRight.

44:03SPEAKERAnd, and as a result, they wouldn't get to the idea that, Oh, right.

44:08SPEAKERIs this if small six person team can make an RTS that hits the, it's the right buttons

44:13SPEAKERfor RTS fans, then there'll be a huge market for that.

44:16SPEAKERYeah.

44:17SPEAKERYeah.

44:18SPEAKERIt's weird.

44:19SPEAKERYeah.

44:20SPEAKERIt's a, it's a pretty, pretty prescient article and I'm pretty forward looking.

44:23SPEAKERIt pretty much hit the nail on the head with this one.

44:26SPEAKERWhat else we got?

44:27SPEAKERYou want to see here?

44:28SPEAKERI saw a couple of, can we talk, can we, can we do a brief digression into an ad?

44:32SPEAKERSure.

44:33SPEAKERSo on page one 28 or one 30 is the Phillips scuba.

44:41SPEAKERIt's a head-mounted display that you had like a full ensconcing of your ears and it looks

44:48SPEAKERlike a neoprene interface for your face and you just plug your console into it.

44:53SPEAKEROh yeah.

44:54SPEAKEROkay.

44:55SPEAKERI saw this and I just assumed it was another crappy early attempt at a VR headset.

44:58SPEAKERI did not realize this is literally just a display for your existing consoles.

45:02SPEAKERThis is literally, Hey, you want an 80 inch display for your, for your Nintendo 64.

45:07SPEAKERBoom.

45:08SPEAKERWe can do that.

45:09SPEAKERThat'll look great right in front of your face.

45:10SPEAKERI mean it, it, this looks, I, I, I never ever saw one of these.

45:15SPEAKERLike I think this was gone before I was in a place to see this kind of stuff.

45:19SPEAKERIt was, it was a weird time.

45:20SPEAKERThe ad says Phillips Magnavox, did they merge?

45:23SPEAKERPhillips Magnavox was the same company for a long time.

45:26SPEAKERWas it?

45:27SPEAKERYeah.

45:28SPEAKERHang on.

45:29SPEAKERI feel like Phillips bought Magnavox at some point.

45:30SPEAKERI need to Google Phillips scuba and see if you can, is it like possible to get your hands

45:34SPEAKERon one of these these days?

45:36SPEAKERI kind of doubt it.

45:37SPEAKERMaybe this is the way to play.

45:38SPEAKERLike I'm curious if there, there must be LCDs in it, right?

45:41SPEAKERI was gonna say, what else could it be?

45:44SPEAKERRight.

45:45SPEAKERUh, the first review that comes up, Chrome is throwing a big red flashing dangerous site

45:50SPEAKERsecurity error.

45:51SPEAKERI don't know about clicking through to this one.

45:56SPEAKERThere's a parts only eBay listing for $70.

45:58SPEAKERHuh?

45:59SPEAKERAnd it says it's conditioned for parts are not working.

46:02SPEAKEROh boy.

46:03SPEAKEROkay.

46:04SPEAKERProbably not many units sold of this thing.

46:06SPEAKERThis is the kind of thing to look for at the electronics flea market.

46:08SPEAKERIf you ever see one of these, grab it.

46:10SPEAKEROh man.

46:11SPEAKERYeah.

46:12SPEAKERSteve sent us photos of the flea market last week.

46:14SPEAKERThey were a bunch of Sun microsystems hardware there.

46:18SPEAKERI'm sad.

46:19SPEAKERI did not see that stuff anyway.

46:20SPEAKEROh, well then I, then he, then the follow up on how you get that stuff booting was enough

46:26SPEAKERto make me not ever want to fool with Sun Microsystems hardware.

46:29SPEAKERI would not be insane enough to actually buy a Sun workstation, but I would think about

46:33SPEAKERit.

46:34SPEAKERUm, can we talk about the Vectrex column by Stephen Kent?

46:37SPEAKERSure.

46:38SPEAKERThis is, this is, we're going one layer deeper.

46:41SPEAKERThis is like the inception of this podcast.

46:42SPEAKEROh, you mean, oh, you mean the virtual boy of the eighties.

46:45SPEAKERYeah.

46:46SPEAKERThis is their look back at old hardware and old things in the games industry.

46:50SPEAKERAnd the thing that's interesting about this is it cracks.

46:53SPEAKERI've always heard the myth that the Vectrex existed because, um, general consumer electronics,

46:59SPEAKERthe got a deal on those vector monitors from some medical company.

47:03SPEAKERInteresting.

47:04SPEAKERI had not heard that.

47:05SPEAKERWhich is not true.

47:06SPEAKERAccording to Stephen Kent, who was writing a history book on video games.

47:11SPEAKERSure.

47:12SPEAKERVectrex remains one of the weirdest things ever to me.

47:14SPEAKERYeah.

47:15SPEAKERI mean, you know, like the vector games were somewhat big in arcades, uh, up to this point.

47:20SPEAKERYeah.

47:21SPEAKERI mean, Star Wars, that Star Wars vector game remained a mainstay for a long time.

47:25SPEAKERYeah.

47:26SPEAKERThat's that's the main one I think.

47:27SPEAKERYeah.

47:28SPEAKERYou could, you could definitely see, I mean, this was 82 that the Vectrex came out and

47:31SPEAKERyou could definitely see somebody just, just thought, Hey, we should make a home thing

47:35SPEAKERlike those arcade things.

47:36SPEAKERYeah.

47:37SPEAKERUm, it was 200 bucks.

47:38SPEAKERI didn't realize it was that expensive.

47:39SPEAKERYeah.

47:40SPEAKERThat's a lot in the eighties.

47:41SPEAKERYeah.

47:42SPEAKERWell, it came with its own screen to be fair.

47:43SPEAKERThat's true.

47:44SPEAKERNot just a console.

47:46SPEAKERI like the, um, I like the pitch, which is, Hey, uh, the kids and the parents like this

47:54SPEAKERbecause it didn't hog the TV.

47:57SPEAKERSo the kids can plug this in someplace else in the room and play their games while they're

48:01SPEAKERnot taking over the TV, which is like, that's a, that's a good selling point.

48:05SPEAKERI can see it.

48:06SPEAKERMan, was the Vectrex really put out by Milton Bradley?

48:09SPEAKERThey bought GCE.

48:10SPEAKEROkay.

48:11SPEAKERGod.

48:12SPEAKERRemember Milton Bradley?

48:13SPEAKERYeah.

48:14SPEAKERMilton Bradley.

48:15SPEAKERYeah.

48:16SPEAKERSo Simon is why they bought the Vectrex.

48:17SPEAKERCause they were like, ah, can be computers a worked out well for them.

48:22SPEAKERI'm sure Simon's pretty good, man.

48:24SPEAKERMy kid has a, they may have, they make a small size Simon now that like they sell at target

48:28SPEAKERin the dollar bin.

48:29SPEAKERMy kid has really.

48:30SPEAKERYeah.

48:31SPEAKEROh, that's man.

48:32SPEAKERThat's, it's heartwarming to know that the Simon name is still out there.

48:35SPEAKERSimon.

48:36SPEAKERDid you have a Merlin?

48:37SPEAKERMerlin was the one I had.

48:38SPEAKERNo, I never had any of those.

48:39SPEAKERMerlin was fun.

48:40SPEAKERYou were probably a little bit too young for that.

48:41SPEAKERSo I think by the time, by the time you would have been old enough to play with those, they

48:44SPEAKERwould have been not interesting.

48:46SPEAKERYeah.

48:47SPEAKERGame boy related reasons.

48:48SPEAKERI mean, I was four or five when the 2,600 showed up.

48:53SPEAKERYeah.

48:54SPEAKERSo it was, yeah.

48:55SPEAKERAt that point, anything that was not a legit video game was like, whatever, man.

48:59SPEAKERI feel like I went to a friend's six or seventh birthday and he had a 2,600 and pitfall and

49:03SPEAKERI was like, this is the greatest thing.

49:05SPEAKERLook, the game just keeps going.

49:07SPEAKERThis is incredible.

49:08SPEAKERYeah.

49:09SPEAKERAnyway.

49:10SPEAKERLet's see any other, what else we got?

49:13SPEAKERA couple of other quick hits in the news section here, there's this article entitled the future

49:17SPEAKERof data storage.

49:19SPEAKERYeah.

49:20SPEAKERThe future.

49:21SPEAKERGuess what that future was purported to be.

49:23SPEAKERWell, I mean, the problem is that clearly we're about to hit our data storage limits

49:27SPEAKERhere in 1997.

49:28SPEAKERThere's like three different references in here as data storage capacity nears its limits.

49:34SPEAKERLook, their high-end PC in the PC section had a nine gigabyte ultra SCSI hard drive.

49:40SPEAKERIt's going to be hard to ever get past the nine gigabyte barrier.

49:43SPEAKERIf we're going to make it just like, just like warp, you can't make it to 10 gigabytes.

49:47SPEAKERNo, that's impossible ever.

49:49SPEAKERTraditional storage is rapidly approaching a point where further leaps in data capacity

49:53SPEAKERwill no longer be possible.

49:55SPEAKERNo longer be possible.

49:57SPEAKERDo you know what I'm holding my left hand?

50:00SPEAKERIt's a 256 gigabyte thumb drive.

50:04SPEAKERI bought it for $8 from the internet.

50:07SPEAKERAnd after 35 years of consistent increases in storage capacity, new technology has pushed

50:12SPEAKERthe bottom.

50:13SPEAKERI don't, I don't, I have no idea what their basis is for claiming that storage just can't

50:17SPEAKERget bigger after this.

50:18SPEAKEROkay.

50:19SPEAKERSo I'm going to tell you how this happens.

50:21SPEAKERYou a press release goes out that says revolutionary new technology in development at IBM's Almaden

50:28SPEAKERresearch center.

50:29SPEAKERAnd then they say, we're reaching the capacity of standard platter drives, which I mean,

50:34SPEAKERin fairness, there's always a capacity limits burgeoning.

50:38SPEAKERAnd then somebody figures out a way behind and pass them, right?

50:40SPEAKERRight.

50:41SPEAKERLike the bits used to be laid out flat on the disc and then we put them vertical and

50:44SPEAKERthen we kind of layer them on top of each other, which turns out to have some other

50:46SPEAKERproblems.

50:47SPEAKERAnd then we just stopped using disks entirely and started using flash memory.

50:53SPEAKERYou know, this is a, this is a path not traveled is the way I would look at this.

50:57SPEAKERYeah.

50:58SPEAKERI guess we're burying the lead here.

50:59SPEAKERIt's holographic storage.

51:00SPEAKERRemember that this was a real, this is, this is like that.

51:03SPEAKERThe ultimate nineties tech slash games, journalism chestnut.

51:08SPEAKEROh, next gen holographic store.

51:10SPEAKERIt's like those cubes from Star Trek.

51:12SPEAKERYep.

51:13SPEAKERYep.

51:14SPEAKERYour PlayStation two games are going to ship on cubes.

51:16SPEAKERAnd that would have been so cool.

51:17SPEAKERThink of how much faster they would have been than crappy DVDs.

51:19SPEAKERYeah.

51:20SPEAKERI mean, this, this does say it doesn't give any numbers, but it does say that these things,

51:24SPEAKERthe speed, speed of data access was one of the advantages of this medium that never came

51:28SPEAKERabout.

51:29SPEAKERWell, yeah, cause you can, you can flip a mirror around a lot faster than you can spin

51:32SPEAKERa piece of carbonite buried in like the eighth paragraph of the story.

51:36SPEAKERCurrently scientists can store up to 48 megabytes per cubic centimeter, 48 megabytes per cubic

51:42SPEAKERcentimeter does not seem well, okay.

51:45SPEAKERWhat's 2.5, four centimeters in an inch.

51:49SPEAKERSo cubics, if you, if you make a circle with your index finger in your thumb, a cubic centimeter

51:55SPEAKERis like the smallest you can make that hole.

51:58SPEAKERIf your fingers on top of your thumb, I, I, yeah.

52:01SPEAKERAnd it's, and it's a cube, not just obviously a plane.

52:03SPEAKERYeah.

52:04SPEAKERThat doesn't seem like great data density.

52:06SPEAKERThis says they were shooting for 10 gigabytes per cubic centimeter, but I'm guessing this

52:10SPEAKERproject was probably dropped long before they got there.

52:13SPEAKEROr maybe this is what we're using.

52:15SPEAKERMaybe this is a secret of high end data storage, maybe, maybe the secret skunk works program

52:19SPEAKERinside of IBM is still going, but I mean, so the cool thing was they had, they did this

52:23SPEAKERjust like you do holograms photography where they have two light sources hitting at different

52:28SPEAKERangles and like the incidents, like basically if you aim the, you're reading laser in it

52:33SPEAKERfrom a different angle, you get different data out, which is kind of a trip.

52:38SPEAKERYeah.

52:39SPEAKERI, yeah, I look, we're always limited by the laws of physics.

52:43SPEAKERNext gen.

52:44SPEAKERYep.

52:45SPEAKERThat's what they say.

52:46SPEAKERAnother, the other story here, a very sad story.

52:48SPEAKERThis was right around the time that Goopay Yokoi of Nintendo or formerly of Nintendo

52:52SPEAKERat this time passed away.

52:54SPEAKERInventor of the Game Boy, Game and Watch.

52:59SPEAKERGame and Watch, Metroid.

53:01SPEAKERThe D-pad arguably.

53:02SPEAKEROh, did he do the, was he behind that?

53:05SPEAKERWell, he was on, he was, he came up with Game and Watch.

53:08SPEAKEROh my God.

53:09SPEAKERI should know this.

53:10SPEAKERDoes Game and Watch predate the Famicom?

53:11SPEAKERI guess it does.

53:12SPEAKERGame and Watch is the first thing that had a game pad.

53:14SPEAKERYeah.

53:15SPEAKERYeah.

53:16SPEAKERGod.

53:17SPEAKERYeah.

53:18SPEAKERI mean, contributions to the medium of video games.

53:22SPEAKERMy understanding is the Game Boy was like looked down upon tremendously inside of Nintendo

53:27SPEAKERuntil it came out.

53:28SPEAKERReally?

53:29SPEAKERLike it was like the people who were not working on the Game Boy kind of treated it like a

53:33SPEAKERjoke.

53:34SPEAKERI mean, the, the one color thing would have been hard in that, like in that, if you think

53:39SPEAKERabout what that era was like saying, Hey, you can have video games that are just like

53:43SPEAKERthe ones on your TV and then they're kind of a crappy green color.

53:46SPEAKERYeah.

53:47SPEAKERWell, what is, what is the actual palette?

53:48SPEAKERIs it four shades of gray?

53:49SPEAKERI can't remember.

53:50SPEAKERI honestly, I didn't have one.

53:53SPEAKERI think that might be right.

53:54SPEAKERI could be, I could be totally wrong though.

53:55SPEAKERIt is a limited, limited palette of different grays.

54:00SPEAKERYeah.

54:01SPEAKERAnyway.

54:02SPEAKERWhy did, why did they not like it?

54:03SPEAKERWas it just because it was portable?

54:05SPEAKERYeah.

54:06SPEAKERI think the, the idea of a tiny little thing that barely could run anything was maybe just

54:11SPEAKERseen as kind of seen as a toy or something was my understanding kind of, and then it

54:14SPEAKERcame out and of course became their biggest thing ever.

54:16SPEAKERAnd then it was like, Oh, who's laughing now?

54:18SPEAKERYeah.

54:19SPEAKEROh, and then, then follow that up with another single color palette device.

54:23SPEAKERYeah.

54:24SPEAKERHe also, I mean, this is kind of shitty.

54:27SPEAKERThe only picture of a product he worked on that they put in the story was the virtual

54:31SPEAKERboy, which was like probably Nintendo's biggest failure ever.

54:35SPEAKERWell, the virtual boy was fresh.

54:37SPEAKERI mean, this is 1997.

54:38SPEAKERThe virtual boy had just come out two years before.

54:40SPEAKERYeah.

54:41SPEAKERYeah.

54:42SPEAKERSo, and then Nintendo ran them off because of the virtual boys, presumably.

54:45SPEAKERYeah.

54:46SPEAKERYes.

54:47SPEAKERSo he may have left on his own, but, but probably safe to assume the abject failure of that

54:51SPEAKERthing had something to do with his departure.

54:54SPEAKERI don't have any, I don't have any like home brewed 3DSs around, but did you see that virtual

55:00SPEAKERboy emulator for 3DS that came out a while back?

55:03SPEAKERNo.

55:04SPEAKERIt uses, I mean.

55:05SPEAKERIt uses the 3D screen?

55:06SPEAKERYes.

55:07SPEAKERIt uses the 3D of the 3DS to replicate the 3D of the virtual boy.

55:10SPEAKERSomebody made a virtual boy emulator for like steam VR.

55:13SPEAKERThat was pretty good.

55:14SPEAKERInteresting.

55:15SPEAKERI mean, it's still a virtual boy at the end of the day, but it's cool though.

55:19SPEAKERI mean like virtual, you know, good or bad, just being able to preserve that stuff so

55:23SPEAKERpeople can see it is super important.

55:25SPEAKERYeah.

55:26SPEAKERAnd like, I remember doing the demo at Hills or Kmart or something when I was a kid and

55:30SPEAKERwas like, that is really cool.

55:31SPEAKERIt's not worth, I can't remember how much the virtual boy costs.

55:33SPEAKERI remember thinking, wow, that is really expensive.

55:35SPEAKERI would rather buy three normal games.

55:38SPEAKERHow much did that cost actually?

55:40SPEAKERI don't know.

55:41SPEAKERVirtual boy MSRP.

55:42SPEAKERI'm going to guess like, Oh, I was going to guess 149, 179.

55:46SPEAKERYeah.

55:47SPEAKER$179 in 1997 month, 1995 when he was basically a thousand dollars in today money.

55:54SPEAKERThree 370, 370 as of last year.

55:56SPEAKERYeah.

55:57SPEAKERThat's a lot.

55:58SPEAKERWhat did they ship?

55:59SPEAKERLike three games for that thing I think.

56:00SPEAKERI think they, I think there were 20 total.

56:02SPEAKEROh God.

56:03SPEAKERWere there?

56:04SPEAKERMaybe you're right.

56:05SPEAKERI thought there were like almost none.

56:08SPEAKERI can tell you.

56:09SPEAKEROh yeah.

56:10SPEAKER22 games.

56:11SPEAKERYeah.

56:12SPEAKERThat's a thing.

56:13SPEAKERAll right.

56:14SPEAKERYes.

56:15SPEAKERAnyway, tragic, tragic loss for everything that he contributed to video games.

56:20SPEAKERHe died in a car accident for kind of a freak accident.

56:25SPEAKERLike, I don't know if we need to get into it.

56:27SPEAKERDon't get out of your car after you have an accident on a freeway or something.

56:30SPEAKERThat's the lesson.

56:31SPEAKERAnd involved in a fender bender pullover and got out and then was struck by another oncoming

56:35SPEAKERcar.

56:36SPEAKERSucks.

56:37SPEAKERLet's see here, do you want to talk about the professional gaming league?

56:44SPEAKEROh, the PGL.

56:45SPEAKERYes.

56:46SPEAKERI assume it's professional gaming league.

56:49SPEAKERI don't actually see in front of it.

56:50SPEAKERI just, I only see the acronym here.

56:53SPEAKERWhat else would it stand for?

56:55SPEAKERThat's it.

56:56SPEAKERProfessional gaming league.

56:57SPEAKERYeah.

56:58SPEAKEROr maybe it's professional gamers league.

56:59SPEAKERI can't remember, but it was, the idea was it is gamers actually.

57:03SPEAKERYes.

57:04SPEAKERIt was, it's funny because this is just around the time that gamers was like Mountain Dew

57:08SPEAKERand some ad agency were coming up with the way to describe people who played video games

57:12SPEAKERon the internet.

57:13SPEAKEROh yeah.

57:14SPEAKERThis was, this was not long before Thresh's gamers.com would launch.

57:18SPEAKERYeah.

57:19SPEAKERWell, and it was after, but it was after like 10 and heat and M player, which were these

57:25SPEAKERkind of pre or early internet kind of matchmaking services that would let you like, like, for

57:32SPEAKERexample, if you wanted to run like a, like a, like a quake league in 1997, you would

57:40SPEAKERgo set up a team on a website someplace, and then they would match you with other teams

57:44SPEAKERand eventually you'd get into a league where it was more people, more or less your skill

57:47SPEAKERlevel.

57:48SPEAKERSo you wouldn't get right.

57:49SPEAKERKind of like, kind of like if you would play, if you're playing like a, in a softball team

57:53SPEAKERfor your, for your place of work.

57:55SPEAKERRight?

57:56SPEAKERYeah.

57:57SPEAKERTEN.

57:58SPEAKERIs that the entertainment network?

57:59SPEAKERThat was the entertainment network, which started as a place where you could play spades

58:02SPEAKERand hearts with your friends on the internets.

58:04SPEAKERNo.

58:05SPEAKERWas that Sierra online?

58:07SPEAKERThere were a bunch of them.

58:08SPEAKER10 Sierra online ended up buying 10.

58:10SPEAKERThat was what, that was what you used to play half-life multiplayer, half-life one multiplayer.

58:14SPEAKERThat would make sense.

58:15SPEAKERYou could also play quake through that.

58:17SPEAKERLike it would, it would hook into, I think quake used game spy.

58:20SPEAKERIs that right?

58:21SPEAKEROh wait, I actually, I'm sorry.

58:22SPEAKERIs that the total entertainment network?

58:24SPEAKERIt might be the total entertainment network.

58:27SPEAKERLaunched in September, 1996.

58:29SPEAKERYeah, that seems right.

58:32SPEAKERSucceededbypogo.com.

58:33SPEAKEREverybody loves pogo.

58:34SPEAKERDidn't that get bought by EA eventually?

58:36SPEAKERThat might be right.

58:38SPEAKERSkimming this article as we speak.

58:40SPEAKERBut it looks like it was acquired by venture capital eventually.

58:45SPEAKERWell, so the point though was that if you like, there, there were ways that you could

58:50SPEAKERclimb these ladders, right.

58:52SPEAKERAnd on the individual networks, but you couldn't, there was no, like, once you got to the top

58:57SPEAKERof your ladder on 10 or, or, or, or cases ladder, one of these services, then you were

59:03SPEAKERjust like the best in your pond.

59:05SPEAKERThe idea here is that they would take pros like Thresh and put them on teams and pit

59:10SPEAKERthem against each other.

59:11SPEAKERAnd you'd have like games that were one-on-one games or two on two, three on three.

59:15SPEAKERAnd they started out with, I think quake and, and red alert.

59:20SPEAKERIs that right?

59:21SPEAKERYeah.

59:22SPEAKERGamers can compete in quake and red alert matches.

59:23SPEAKEROkay.

59:24SPEAKEROkay.

59:25SPEAKERSo the idea of this gamers could play in quake and red alert matches for a total of more

59:30SPEAKERthan a quarter of a million dollars in cash and prizes, but that was across multiple events

59:34SPEAKERand across the entire season.

59:36SPEAKERSo it was like, I think a 10 or 12,000 per game basically was the most somebody could

59:42SPEAKERtake home.

59:43SPEAKERBut it was, this was the first time I remember hearing about this, like a, like an e-sports

59:47SPEAKERtype thing before they called it e-sports.

59:50SPEAKEREven us way before ahead of its time, it was just called professional gaming.

59:55SPEAKERThat's right.

59:56SPEAKERAlso written by Christian Svensson, which I think is really funny.

59:59SPEAKERI forgot he worked for next gen back in the day.

1:00:01SPEAKERYes.

1:00:02SPEAKERDo you know where he's at now?

1:00:03SPEAKERHe's at Sony.

1:00:04SPEAKEROh, Sony.

1:00:05SPEAKEROkay.

1:00:06SPEAKERWasn't he at Capcom for a long time also?

1:00:07SPEAKERI believe so.

1:00:08SPEAKERYeah.

1:00:09SPEAKEROkay.

1:00:10SPEAKERI don't know him.

1:00:11SPEAKERI don't think I overlapped with Christian at all, but he was around.

1:00:13SPEAKERInside baseball here, but I've heard the name for years working in video game publishers

1:00:18SPEAKERand so forth.

1:00:19SPEAKERAnyway, one of those people that has been in games for a very long time.

1:00:22SPEAKERYeah.

1:00:23SPEAKERYes.

1:00:24SPEAKERI mean, technically half the masthead of this magazine of this issue is made up of people

1:00:28SPEAKERlike that.

1:00:29SPEAKERYep.

1:00:30SPEAKERThat you still hear about working at major publishers and stuff now.

1:00:34SPEAKERWhat else have we not covered here?

1:00:35SPEAKERCan we talk about this Half-Life ad on page 153, I think?

1:00:40SPEAKERSure.

1:00:41SPEAKER154?

1:00:42SPEAKERYes.

1:00:43SPEAKER154.

1:00:44SPEAKERIt's a weird ad, right?

1:00:47SPEAKERLike it's the Half-Life, this is prior to the release of Half-Life 1, nobody knows what

1:00:51SPEAKERHalf-Life is.

1:00:52SPEAKERI think the demo might've been out by now.

1:00:53SPEAKEROh, you know what?

1:00:54SPEAKERThat did not occur to me when you flagged this earlier.

1:00:57SPEAKERThis was like a full year before Half-Life actually came out.

1:00:59SPEAKERYeah.

1:01:00SPEAKERCause it came out in like fall of '98.

1:01:02SPEAKERYeah.

1:01:03SPEAKERNovember '98, I believe.

1:01:05SPEAKERYeah.

1:01:06SPEAKERSo it's a spread ad and the one described as a screenshot, but on top of it is what

1:01:12SPEAKERlooks like a model wearing one of those Ninja suits with the crossbow from the game.

1:01:17SPEAKERYeah.

1:01:18SPEAKERAnd like big old kind of night vision goggles looking head contraption.

1:01:23SPEAKERSo like props to Valve for not making her real sexy, cause that would have been a weird

1:01:26SPEAKERthing to do.

1:01:27SPEAKERYeah.

1:01:28SPEAKEROr Sierra even.

1:01:29SPEAKERI wonder if Sierra put those ads together.

1:01:31SPEAKERI'm sure this is, well, it has a Valve logo on it.

1:01:33SPEAKERIt does say play the demo at Sierra.com/halflife.

1:01:36SPEAKERYeah.

1:01:37SPEAKERThe Sierra logos at the bottom, they were, they published Half-Life, so.

1:01:41SPEAKEROkay.

1:01:42SPEAKERBut yeah, it's a, it's a weird, like putting the human player on top of the screenshot

1:01:47SPEAKERis a real, that is a choice, man.

1:01:49SPEAKERYeah.

1:01:50SPEAKERYes.

1:01:51SPEAKERIt was before Gordon Freeman would become iconic.

1:01:53SPEAKERYeah.

1:01:54SPEAKERWho the hell is Gordon?

1:01:55SPEAKERSo they didn't even put him in the course.

1:01:57SPEAKERMaybe, I don't know, maybe they even have a design for Gordon at this point.

1:02:00SPEAKERNo, no, there was a demo out by this, that day zero was out by now.

1:02:03SPEAKERYou're right.

1:02:04SPEAKERYou're right.

1:02:05SPEAKERPlay the demo.

1:02:06SPEAKERYes.

1:02:07SPEAKERI completely forgot.

1:02:08SPEAKERThere was that early demo of Half-Life.

1:02:09SPEAKERYeah.

1:02:10SPEAKERYou got it.

1:02:11SPEAKERIf you bought a specific video card, I think.

1:02:12SPEAKERRight.

1:02:13SPEAKEROkay.

1:02:14SPEAKERIt was their way of tricking people into buying video cards so that there'd be a video.

1:02:15SPEAKEREverybody'd have 3d accelerators.

1:02:16SPEAKERWhen Half-Life came out.

1:02:17SPEAKERDay zero.

1:02:18SPEAKERIs that what you said?

1:02:19SPEAKERI think it's called day zero.

1:02:20SPEAKERIf you look that up, I probably played that somehow when it came out, but I have no memory

1:02:23SPEAKERof it.

1:02:25SPEAKERIt was very easy to pirate if I recall.

1:02:27SPEAKERYeah.

1:02:28SPEAKERMay have been day one.

1:02:29SPEAKERNot surprising.

1:02:30SPEAKERDay one.

1:02:31SPEAKERI believe it's day one.

1:02:32SPEAKERIs what I'm seeing here.

1:02:34SPEAKEROkay.

1:02:35SPEAKERAll right.

1:02:36SPEAKERYeah.

1:02:37SPEAKERDo you want to, let's see, any other ads we've got?

1:02:38SPEAKERYou mentioned this weird Crash Bandicoot ad.

1:02:40SPEAKERYeah.

1:02:41SPEAKERThere's a Crash Bandicoot ad.

1:02:42SPEAKERHold on.

1:02:43SPEAKERI don't have the page number for it, but it leaps.

1:02:45SPEAKERIt kind of grabs you.

1:02:47SPEAKERThere's two.

1:02:48SPEAKERIt's on page 26-ish, roughly page 26 Crash Bandicoot 2.

1:02:52SPEAKERAnd it's like, it's like a bunch of really ripped bodybuilder looking guys.

1:02:58SPEAKERAnd then on a lineup for some reason, like a, like a police lineup.

1:03:01SPEAKERLike these, these are like full on muscle beach looking world competitive bodybuilder

1:03:07SPEAKERtypes.

1:03:08SPEAKERThey're like characters.

1:03:09SPEAKERThey're, they're so, they're so over the top.

1:03:11SPEAKERThey're almost like caricatures.

1:03:12SPEAKERYeah.

1:03:13SPEAKERAnd then there's Crash who also is orange, just like the bodybuilders, I think.

1:03:18SPEAKERI don't understand why this ad is here, but like, okay.

1:03:21SPEAKER90s video game advertising, man.

1:03:24SPEAKERIt was a weird time for everyone, but especially video games.

1:03:27SPEAKERYes.

1:03:28SPEAKERAlso, I'm just going to say it again.

1:03:29SPEAKERI'm just going to keep harping on this.

1:03:30SPEAKERGo watch that Andy Gavin Crash Bandicoot video.

1:03:32SPEAKERIt is absolutely fascinating if you want to see some early PlayStation development behind

1:03:36SPEAKERthe scenes.

1:03:37SPEAKERI am.

1:03:38SPEAKERI am.

1:03:39SPEAKERI am into that.

1:03:40SPEAKERLet's see.

1:03:41SPEAKERCan you talk about the next game from the makers, from the Motor Toon design team?

1:03:47SPEAKERYeah.

1:03:48SPEAKERLike I didn't.

1:03:49SPEAKERSo there's a preview for Gran Turismo in here.

1:03:50SPEAKERThe first one.

1:03:51SPEAKERYou mean an alpha.

1:03:52SPEAKERIt's in the alpha section.

1:03:53SPEAKERThat's how you know it's a preview.

1:03:55SPEAKERAnd that was way before the term alpha was in wide use in the bigger gaming community.

1:03:59SPEAKERSince it's become just, oh yeah, absolutely.

1:04:03SPEAKERI feel like that became a thing.

1:04:05SPEAKERPeople knew about that after Q test alpha came out in like 95.

1:04:09SPEAKERI think they were, what I mean is when marketing got a hold of those terms and started pitching

1:04:13SPEAKERlike, Hey, pre-order the game and you can play in the beta.

1:04:16SPEAKERAnd then, and then a couple of years after that, they were like, Hey, how can we make

1:04:19SPEAKERit sound even more exclusive and bleeding edge than beta?

1:04:21SPEAKERWhat if we call it an alpha?

1:04:24SPEAKERAnd for what it's worth, I think that this is probably around the time that alpha, like,

1:04:28SPEAKERyou know, in the old days, alpha meant, Hey, we have features in and we're going to make

1:04:32SPEAKERthings work right now and balance.

1:04:35SPEAKERAnd now alpha just means, Hey, it's going to crash.

1:04:38SPEAKERRight.

1:04:39SPEAKERRight.

1:04:40SPEAKERSo like we've got alpha now just means like, we've got some Polish left to do before launch.

1:04:43SPEAKERYeah.

1:04:44SPEAKERSo anyway.

1:04:45SPEAKERYeah.

1:04:46SPEAKERAnyway, in the alphas section, a game called Gran Turismo, which they just repeatedly go

1:04:51SPEAKERout of their way to mention is coming from the Motor Toon team.

1:04:54SPEAKERI've never heard of Motor Toon before, Brad.

1:04:57SPEAKERMotor Toon Grand Prix is the only one I know of.

1:04:59SPEAKERI don't know if there are even others actually.

1:05:00SPEAKERAnd I also don't know if they came out here, I think at least Grand Prix did.

1:05:05SPEAKERAnd I, and I also, I don't think I've ever played it.

1:05:07SPEAKERI couldn't tell you if it's exactly a Mario Kart analog or if it's maybe a little bit

1:05:11SPEAKERdifferent, but it's, it's a silly racing game.

1:05:14SPEAKERThey describe it as more popular in Japan than in the U S and beneath the deceptively

1:05:19SPEAKERcute, even goofy surface lies, crisp control and graphic excellence.

1:05:23SPEAKERYeah.

1:05:24SPEAKERLook, you know, they, they proved themselves with a goofy game and then here 25 years of

1:05:30SPEAKERthe most obsessive automobile video game development ever, ever.

1:05:35SPEAKERThat's funny because the GT team is like seven people at this point.

1:05:40SPEAKERYeah.

1:05:41SPEAKERAt this time, there's a picture of them and they're all, it's a small enough team to sit

1:05:44SPEAKERaround one side of a table.

1:05:46SPEAKERYeah.

1:05:47SPEAKERI, I went to the, were they, were they Polyphony Digital at this point?

1:05:51SPEAKERI'm not sure if they had a name at this point.

1:05:53SPEAKERThey were the Motor Toon team.

1:05:54SPEAKERI think developer SCEI.

1:05:58SPEAKERSomewhere around, I don't know, in the 2003 to five range, I went to the Polyphony Digital

1:06:05SPEAKERoffice in Japan.

1:06:07SPEAKEROh, cool.

1:06:08SPEAKERTheir parking garage or it's not a garage, but their parking lot is on their roof.

1:06:12SPEAKEROkay.

1:06:13SPEAKERLike take a car elevator up there to park your car.

1:06:16SPEAKERReally?

1:06:17SPEAKEROh yeah.

1:06:18SPEAKEROh, that's cool.

1:06:19SPEAKERI assume.

1:06:20SPEAKERI don't, I didn't, well, I'm guessing actually, but I didn't see, I certainly didn't see enough

1:06:22SPEAKERroom for like corkscrew, like, you know.

1:06:25SPEAKERLook maybe it's like a Fast and the Furious situation where you have to go on the building

1:06:28SPEAKERnext door and just jump down to drift your way across like do a sick, sick drift off

1:06:34SPEAKERthe edge and then land in your space.

1:06:36SPEAKERIt may shock you to hear there were a lot of like very nice and exotic and interesting

1:06:41SPEAKERcars, weird like muscle cars, racing cars.

1:06:45SPEAKERAnyway.

1:06:46SPEAKERI'm not super surprised.

1:06:48SPEAKERYeah.

1:06:49SPEAKERIt's kind of funny though, to see like Gran Turismo was just a game that was being worked

1:06:53SPEAKERon here and not the phenomenon it would become.

1:06:55SPEAKERLike that's, that's the thing that struck me is it's the only time I've ever seen Gran

1:06:59SPEAKERTurismo presented in, in media as not a highly anticipated cause like by the time the second

1:07:06SPEAKERone came out, it had established itself as like, Hey, we're, we're, we're, it's, we're

1:07:11SPEAKERlike racing sim, we like, we're, we're going to mount some microphones all over the chassis

1:07:16SPEAKERand in the engine compartment and inside the cockpit so that we get a perfect sound modeling

1:07:22SPEAKERof each of these 87 cars or whatever we put in the game.

1:07:25SPEAKERYeah.

1:07:26SPEAKERYeah.

1:07:27SPEAKERThe cartoon appears like six times in this preview.

1:07:30SPEAKERSo they, they have not quite established all of their cred yet.

1:07:33SPEAKERI like the quote from the developer, which is I want the game to become an OS for racing

1:07:38SPEAKERgames like windows 95 is for computers.

1:07:40SPEAKERHoly shit.

1:07:41SPEAKERI missed that.

1:07:42SPEAKERThat's incredible.

1:07:43SPEAKERAmazing.

1:07:44SPEAKERI was going to say, this was probably the thing that people bought the analog controller

1:07:48SPEAKERfor, right?

1:07:49SPEAKERFor the PlayStation.

1:07:50SPEAKERYes.

1:07:51SPEAKERI'd have to go look at the dates.

1:07:52SPEAKERLike Ape Escape is the first thing that comes to mind for me when the dual analog came out,

1:07:57SPEAKERwhich was separate from the dual shock, the first, the dual analog did not have or seed

1:08:01SPEAKERfeedback.

1:08:03SPEAKERWas it the case that they bundled Ape Escape with a dual analog?

1:08:06SPEAKERThat might be why I associate those so closely.

1:08:08SPEAKERI can't remember, but yes, this was, I believe Gran Turismo or maybe two.

1:08:13SPEAKEROne of those was two of the PS one game as well.

1:08:15SPEAKEROh God.

1:08:16SPEAKERYeah.

1:08:17SPEAKERThe first like four or three or actually, gosh, hang on.

1:08:20SPEAKERI'm not the foremost authority on the Gran Turismo games.

1:08:23SPEAKERLet me check myself.

1:08:24SPEAKERNo, no.

1:08:25SPEAKERGT3 was a PS two game.

1:08:27SPEAKERThat's right.

1:08:28SPEAKEROkay.

1:08:29SPEAKERSo they did two for the first one.

1:08:30SPEAKERYes.

1:08:31SPEAKERSorry.

1:08:32SPEAKERThat makes sense.

1:08:33SPEAKERGran Turismo 3 A spec because they did that PS two bundle with that game that sold a bajillion

1:08:37SPEAKERunits.

1:08:38SPEAKERAnyway.

1:08:39SPEAKERYes.

1:08:40SPEAKERYes.

1:08:41SPEAKEREarly, big early dual analog game.

1:08:42SPEAKERI believe.

1:08:43SPEAKERWho knew it would spawn a successful movie franchise too.

1:08:46SPEAKERYeah.

1:08:47SPEAKERGod.

1:08:48SPEAKERRight.

1:08:49SPEAKERAre they making another one?

1:08:50SPEAKERI don't have any idea.

1:08:51SPEAKERProbably.

1:08:52SPEAKERProbably.

1:08:53SPEAKERI mean, I feel like people went to see it.

1:08:54SPEAKERIt was like $2 million.

1:08:55SPEAKERIt costs less than it made.

1:08:57SPEAKERSo success.

1:08:58SPEAKERYep.

1:08:59SPEAKERThere you go.

1:09:00SPEAKERLet's see.

1:09:01SPEAKERWhat else?

1:09:02SPEAKERYou want to talk about a little sequel from a scrappy upstart in the bay?

1:09:07SPEAKERSure.

1:09:09SPEAKERThis was a review.

1:09:10SPEAKERThis is from the, what is it called?

1:09:12SPEAKERFinish section?

1:09:13SPEAKERWhat do they call it?

1:09:14SPEAKERRating.

1:09:15SPEAKERRating.

1:09:16SPEAKERRating appears to be the name of their reviews.

1:09:18SPEAKEROh, no.

1:09:19SPEAKERFinals.

1:09:20SPEAKERFinals.

1:09:21SPEAKERThere you go.

1:09:22SPEAKERFinals is the name of their...

1:09:23SPEAKERI was going to be talking about Star Wars Dark Forces II Jedi Knight, would you?

1:09:26SPEAKERI'm going to go ahead and tell you 500 Force Power is a fantastic headline though.

1:09:30SPEAKERIt's not bad.

1:09:31SPEAKERFive stars?

1:09:32SPEAKERFive stars.

1:09:33SPEAKERIt was a good ass game.

1:09:35SPEAKERI, listen, I don't want to come off the wrong way.

1:09:37SPEAKERI have nothing against this game, but I've just, I've just never, I didn't really play

1:09:41SPEAKERit in its day to be fair.

1:09:42SPEAKERI was too busy, like just all quake all the time, but five stars, like that's, it's surprising

1:09:48SPEAKERto me.

1:09:49SPEAKERI would, I would have expected four.

1:09:50SPEAKERI'm going to tell you, this captures the entire experience of, of playing Jedi Knight Dark

1:09:57SPEAKERForces II, which is, hey, I'm going through some tunnels.

1:10:01SPEAKERI'm holding up a lightsaber in front of some stormtroopers and I'm looking at the ground

1:10:05SPEAKERafter chopping some dude's arm off.

1:10:07SPEAKERThat's fair.

1:10:08SPEAKERI get it.

1:10:09SPEAKERThose, those were the three looks.

1:10:10SPEAKERWhen you put it that way, I guess I get it.

1:10:13SPEAKERYeah.

1:10:14SPEAKERYou can chop the dude's arm off.

1:10:15SPEAKERLike they do basically just lead with the multiplayer support in this review.

1:10:18SPEAKERAnd now that you mentioned it and they'd kind of barely ever get into the story.

1:10:23SPEAKERWell, and the multiplayer sport was, was insane because like you could give a stormtrooper

1:10:29SPEAKERa lightsaber and just get in there and like you, like they let you play as any of the

1:10:33SPEAKERcharacters in the game, including like Ugnaughts and stuff.

1:10:35SPEAKERI think I remember right.

1:10:38SPEAKERWith lightsabers?

1:10:39SPEAKERWith lightsabers.

1:10:40SPEAKEROkay.

1:10:41SPEAKERYeah.

1:10:42SPEAKERIt was wild.

1:10:43SPEAKERLike Pablo Hidalgo had not yet taken the mantle of keeper of the, of the, of the lore.

1:10:49SPEAKERIt would not have said there are no Ugnaught Jedi.

1:10:52SPEAKERSo that you know of.

1:10:54SPEAKERYeah.

1:10:55SPEAKERIt was pretty good.

1:10:56SPEAKERNow, you know, like looking at this, just kind of pound for pound, I mean 32 player

1:11:00SPEAKERmatches capture the flag and other modes out of the box.

1:11:05SPEAKERLike that's, that's pretty robust for a multiplayer game in this time.

1:11:08SPEAKERWell, and like the thing that was nice about this was it had deathmatch rules, right?

1:11:12SPEAKERSo you could play like you, there were some, I feel like there were different modes like

1:11:15SPEAKERcapture the flag and stuff like that, but you could also just like one-on-one somebody

1:11:20SPEAKERin Bespin if you wanted on a modem, which was cool.

1:11:23SPEAKERThat was a thing that none of the other star Wars games would do.

1:11:26SPEAKERYeah.

1:11:27SPEAKERLet's see some other quick review hits.

1:11:30SPEAKERIf you're curious four stars for Castlevania symphony of the night.

1:11:33SPEAKERThe last thing about the Jedi night before you go on to some of the symphony of the night,

1:11:38SPEAKERa game I've never played, but look, we've talked about this before.

1:11:41SPEAKEROh man.

1:11:42SPEAKERUh, Jedi night had the structure where you had like a series of increasing boss fights,

1:11:48SPEAKERlike which sounds weird to treat it as a, Hey, this is a thing.

1:11:52SPEAKERBut they presented it as like it had, it didn't need story stories to structure stuff that

1:11:57SPEAKERwe hadn't really seen on PC shooters up until that point.

1:12:00SPEAKEROh, do you mean almost Mega Man style in a way?

1:12:02SPEAKERNot, not necessarily that you chose your boss, but like, or more of, more of like a Rose

1:12:07SPEAKERgallery of like, here are the people you need to go get.

1:12:09SPEAKERUh, kind of, yeah, it was like, Hey, this, this gang has like eight people in it and

1:12:15SPEAKERyou've got to go down and hunt each one down.

1:12:17SPEAKERAnd I think the story was pretty linear, but, but it made a, like it introduced them.

1:12:22SPEAKERIt would foreshadow that you were going to fight this particular guy.

1:12:25SPEAKERYou'd get to see what he was good at.

1:12:27SPEAKERAnd then you'd have to fight him at the end of the end of the mission.

1:12:29SPEAKERThat's, that is a, that is a good and underused setup.

1:12:31SPEAKERYeah.

1:12:32SPEAKERWell, it was kind of bonkers for like 1997, 98, whenever this game came out, it was, it

1:12:37SPEAKERwas a novel.

1:12:38SPEAKERAnyway, but, but yeah, so this Castlevania is good, I guess, I don't know.

1:12:43SPEAKERFour stars symphony of the nights, the Metroidvania term had not been coined at this point, but

1:12:47SPEAKERyou know,

1:12:48SPEAKERThat's why they just called it a Metroid alike.

1:12:49SPEAKERYeah.

1:12:50SPEAKERYou should, you should play that game.

1:12:51SPEAKERI, yeah.

1:12:52SPEAKERI mean, it's hard to go back to those games at this point.

1:12:55SPEAKERWhat?

1:12:56SPEAKERI don't know about that.

1:12:57SPEAKERToo hard.

1:12:58SPEAKERI think, I think that game is, I think that game is timeless.

1:13:02SPEAKERI don't doubt that, but.

1:13:04SPEAKERFour stars for total annihilation.

1:13:06SPEAKERThat's a good game.

1:13:07SPEAKERI never played a ton of TA, but I knew people who really liked it.

1:13:11SPEAKERThe thing about it was it had a buttload of units and you could scroll all the way in

1:13:15SPEAKERand all the way out.

1:13:16SPEAKERYeah.

1:13:17SPEAKERThe super, super high scroll height, ceiling, whatever.

1:13:20SPEAKERChris Taylor looked deep into the Microsoft Intellimouse and was like, yo, I get this

1:13:26SPEAKERwheel.

1:13:27SPEAKERGot this wheel.

1:13:28SPEAKERI got to use it.

1:13:29SPEAKERYeah.

1:13:30SPEAKERI'm going to use all, every bit of the wheel.

1:13:31SPEAKERNHL 98, EA banger for the PlayStation four stars.

1:13:38SPEAKERIt was back when hockey games were good.

1:13:41SPEAKERThere's a Macintosh review section that features Quake and TIE fighter.

1:13:45SPEAKERYep.

1:13:46SPEAKERThose were released in 1995, I believe for the personal computer.

1:13:53SPEAKERThey said that the TIE fighter was all of the content from the expansions and everything

1:13:57SPEAKERfor TIE fighter, TIE fighter, for what it's worth.

1:14:00SPEAKERThere's a preview of some X-wing versus TIE fighter DLC or add on packs earlier in this

1:14:07SPEAKERgame.

1:14:08SPEAKERBut the, the, the, the TIE fighter, they say, Hey, they had to put other stuff in, God,

1:14:15SPEAKERthis is make this release.

1:14:16SPEAKERYeah.

1:14:17SPEAKERThis is making me realize this was the era of original macro.

1:14:22SPEAKERIt's not even Mac OS, like just the Macintosh operating system.

1:14:25SPEAKERYeah, no, it's, it's, it is system eight era or something.

1:14:28SPEAKERSystem seven, system eight, maybe system nine by then I've, I've read and watched enough

1:14:33SPEAKERYouTube videos about development on that version of that operating system to know what a goddamn

1:14:39SPEAKERfucking nightmare it must've been to make these games for it.

1:14:42SPEAKERIt was bad.

1:14:43SPEAKERI also, the quake port doesn't talk about 3d acceleration because I don't think you

1:14:46SPEAKERcould 3d.

1:14:47SPEAKERI guess you could, I don't think cause they have range pros were there.

1:14:51SPEAKERYeah.

1:14:52SPEAKERG3, G4, are you sure that they released quick Q3 tests?

1:14:58SPEAKEROh no.

1:14:59SPEAKERCause it wasn't 3d accelerated.

1:15:00SPEAKERYeah.

1:15:01SPEAKERNo.

1:15:02SPEAKERQG Q3 required 3d acceleration.

1:15:03SPEAKERHe released Q3 tests earlier on max, but that was only on OS 10 derivatives or variants.

1:15:09SPEAKERI believe.

1:15:10SPEAKEROh, maybe.

1:15:11SPEAKERI don't know.

1:15:12SPEAKERWe should.

1:15:13SPEAKERI don't think quake three ever ran on original Mac.

1:15:14SPEAKERI keep wanting to call it Mac OS, even though that wasn't actually the name, right?

1:15:18SPEAKERIt's been a minute.

1:15:19SPEAKERI just, I remember reading enough plan files about how much they absolutely fucking despise

1:15:25SPEAKERthe original Macintosh OS.

1:15:27SPEAKERI can see that for what it's worth to jump back to tie fighter.

1:15:31SPEAKERThere's a tie fighter.

1:15:32SPEAKERWe redesigned slash total conversion that uses that X-wing Alliance, total conversion

1:15:37SPEAKERengine.

1:15:38SPEAKERInteresting.

1:15:39SPEAKERAnd they've like remade that game and it's all like lit and like ray traced and it looks

1:15:45SPEAKERpretty good.

1:15:46SPEAKERI should pull that up.

1:15:47SPEAKERThat also reminds me, I have not checked in on XWVM in quite a long time.

1:15:52SPEAKERWhat is XWVM?

1:15:53SPEAKERI don't know this for a fact, but I've always assumed what they are going for there is like

1:15:58SPEAKERX-wing virtual machine is kind of what is the riff that they're going for with the name.

1:16:03SPEAKERBecause what it is, is a fully brand new engine that just takes the data files from the missions

1:16:08SPEAKERand so forth from the original game.

1:16:10SPEAKERGotcha.

1:16:11SPEAKERIt's basically a new interpreter.

1:16:12SPEAKERIt's a new engine, but it's like super nice high-res modern lighting, modern everything.

1:16:17SPEAKERSo this tie fighter upgrade is based on X-wing Alliance upgrade, which is another like TC

1:16:25SPEAKERfor it's slash engine redo for X-wing Alliance.

1:16:29SPEAKERAnd you basically you've you've you open up the Palpatine configurator and you say, Hey,

1:16:34SPEAKERyou want to switch to the dark side and then point it to your tie fighter campaigns.

1:16:38SPEAKERAnd then you get the sick, you get the sick forearm tattoo then?

1:16:42SPEAKERYeah.

1:16:43SPEAKERWell, so, okay.

1:16:44SPEAKERNow there's a bug where if you do two things in the forearm tattoo might be overwritten

1:16:48SPEAKERand like they don't have a solve for that yet, but they're working on it.

1:16:52SPEAKEROkay.

1:16:53SPEAKERThat's cool.

1:16:54SPEAKERIt's pretty good.

1:16:55SPEAKERI played a little bit last night.

1:16:56SPEAKERSorry.

1:16:57SPEAKERThe other thing I'll mention about XWVM, you should look it up.

1:16:58SPEAKERThey, they added VR support at some point.

1:16:59SPEAKERI don't think it's still out as of now.

1:17:02SPEAKERI wonder if this is what became X-wing Alliance upgrade.

1:17:04SPEAKERThis sounds very similar.

1:17:05SPEAKERNo, cause that thing is a full from the ground up brand new engine, brand new everything.

1:17:10SPEAKERIt's not based on any pretty existing game.

1:17:12SPEAKERI think that's what, I think that's what this is too.

1:17:15SPEAKERI'm pretty sure these are completely separate XWVM has been in development for a very long

1:17:19SPEAKERtime.

1:17:20SPEAKEROkay.

1:17:21SPEAKERYeah.

1:17:22SPEAKERXWA is just a mod, not a, not a full redo.

1:17:23SPEAKERYeah.

1:17:24SPEAKERBut you should go look this up because they, they put out some videos of the VR support.

1:17:26SPEAKERIt looks kind of incredible, like just the virtual cockpits and everything.

1:17:31SPEAKERYeah.

1:17:32SPEAKERYeah.

1:17:33SPEAKERYou're full on.

1:17:34SPEAKERIt's a full on, like very high quality X-wing cockpit that you're just sitting in looking

1:17:36SPEAKERaround.

1:17:37SPEAKERNice.

1:17:38SPEAKERIt's like the lighting everywhere.

1:17:40SPEAKERThe thing that was weird for me was when I loaded it up, it like looks great in the cockpit.

1:17:44SPEAKERAnd then you switch back to the little three 20 by 200 cut scenes where the lips, just

1:17:49SPEAKERthe mouths just go up and down like a, like a eighties web comic.

1:17:53SPEAKERIt's quaint.

1:17:54SPEAKERIt's fine.

1:17:55SPEAKERI have to mention before we, before we wrap up here, they reviewed an arcade game.

1:18:00SPEAKERThey reviewed arcade games all the time.

1:18:01SPEAKERThis was game, game, did that too.

1:18:03SPEAKERDid they?

1:18:04SPEAKERYeah.

1:18:05SPEAKERSo that's like, well, to be fair, by the time I got into the game, arcades were not much

1:18:11SPEAKERof a thing or becoming not much of a thing.

1:18:13SPEAKEROr it was like some of the, something would get ported over from one of the other platforms.

1:18:17SPEAKERRight.

1:18:18SPEAKERYeah.

1:18:19SPEAKERBut I don't remember like EGM ever really reviewing arcade games.

1:18:21SPEAKERAnyway, they straight up gave three stars to Mortal Kombat 4, which seems about right.

1:18:25SPEAKERSeems generous to me.

1:18:27SPEAKERBad game.

1:18:28SPEAKERI can see a three.

1:18:29SPEAKERI mean, it's not great, but I can see it.

1:18:32SPEAKERYeah.

1:18:33SPEAKERAnyway, that's, that's just about everything.

1:18:35SPEAKERThere's a, there's not a ton in the letter section.

1:18:37SPEAKERI was going to say one thing that I do like is that there's a section in the back where

1:18:41SPEAKERit's like, Hey, we're, we're, we are a studio, Stormfront studios is looking for outstanding

1:18:46SPEAKERprogramming talent at every experience level.

1:18:48SPEAKERWe're north of San Francisco.

1:18:50SPEAKERWe're blah, blah, blah.

1:18:51SPEAKERAnd it's like, Hey, come send your resume to us and come work for us, which is kind

1:18:55SPEAKERof a surprising number of like, and there's a couple of others I think as well, quite

1:18:59SPEAKERa few.

1:19:00SPEAKERYeah.

1:19:01SPEAKERTiburon.

1:19:02SPEAKERNot biting you in the ass, bite back, work on monster hints, like Turok dinosaur hunter

1:19:08SPEAKERthat put you at top of the food chain.

1:19:10SPEAKEROkay.

1:19:11SPEAKERSo this is still Tiburon entertainment and Floyd Maitland, Florida soliciting for developers.

1:19:17SPEAKERIs that the same Tiburon that got bought by EA or is that different Tiburon?

1:19:21SPEAKERThey're the Madden studio to this day.

1:19:24SPEAKERBut I think they're already owned by EA at this point because I see a little EA logo

1:19:27SPEAKERat the bottom.

1:19:28SPEAKEROh yeah, sure enough.

1:19:29SPEAKERSlackers need not apply.

1:19:30SPEAKERThey became EA Tiburon at some point, which they're not, not here yet.

1:19:34SPEAKERAnyway.

1:19:35SPEAKERLet's see, there is a mention of the 3DO M2 cancellation in the letters section.

1:19:41SPEAKERM2 was the like very hyped follow up to the original 3DO that was DOA, never actually

1:19:50SPEAKERcame out.

1:19:51SPEAKERI think there are some dozens of numbers of units out there somehow.

1:19:54SPEAKERI don't know that I ever saw a 3DO like that.

1:19:57SPEAKEROriginal even.

1:19:58SPEAKERA friend of mine had a NFC one straight up the original Panasonic very first release

1:20:03SPEAKERof 3DO.

1:20:04SPEAKERSo I got to see quite a bit of 3DO when I was a kid, which was pretty wild.

1:20:09SPEAKERPretty exciting.

1:20:10SPEAKEREven in fact, that's that friend was all in on the M2.

1:20:15SPEAKERLike he had cast his lot with 3DO and was going to go down with the ship.

1:20:18SPEAKERNever forget.

1:20:20SPEAKERNever got to buy one.

1:20:22SPEAKERLet's see.

1:20:23SPEAKERThe only other thing I have from this issue is something we forgot to touch on with the

1:20:26SPEAKERunderground games, the indie games article.

1:20:29SPEAKERI think we just kind of swerved away from it before I remembered to mention here.

1:20:33SPEAKERThere's a couple of sidebars in here that are pretty interesting.

1:20:35SPEAKERThey talk about the net Yareze, which was that black PlayStation.

1:20:40SPEAKERYou ever seen a picture of a black PlayStation one?

1:20:42SPEAKERNo.

1:20:43SPEAKEROh yeah.

1:20:44SPEAKERThis is the one that you could do dev on, right?

1:20:46SPEAKERYes.

1:20:47SPEAKERSo, and I don't think it, I don't quote me on this.

1:20:49SPEAKERI was going to say, I don't think it came out outside of Japan, but maybe it did get

1:20:52SPEAKERa US release actually.

1:20:55SPEAKERThis says, well, maybe it was, yeah, I guess it was out in the US.

1:20:58SPEAKERThis says it was $800 at the time.

1:21:01SPEAKERThat's cheap for a dev kit.

1:21:02SPEAKERYeah.

1:21:03SPEAKERBut this thing points out this, the sidebar points out that if you wanted to release anything

1:21:09SPEAKERcommercially, you had to go through Sony and that kind of violates the spirit of this article

1:21:16SPEAKERwhere they're saying like, ah, you know, indie games need to like come from the hearts of

1:21:19SPEAKERthe people making them.

1:21:20SPEAKERAnd they straight up say any game that actually does get published through Sony will by that

1:21:25SPEAKERtime be so sanitized, it will probably not qualify for underground status anymore.

1:21:30SPEAKERGot to be underground, man.

1:21:31SPEAKERThat's right.

1:21:32SPEAKERCan't sell out.

1:21:33SPEAKERCannot sell out to the man.

1:21:34SPEAKERI was going, I was going to say like, I wondered where this fell in terms of like new grounds

1:21:39SPEAKERbecause like that was where a lot of this kind of stuff came from.

1:21:43SPEAKERLike there, there wasn't really a path from, Hey, I'm making weird stuff in flash.

1:21:47SPEAKERThat's a game to, I want to release games on console at this until this point.

1:21:52SPEAKERAnd they didn't really talk about that here, which I thought was kind of interesting.

1:21:54SPEAKERYeah.

1:21:55SPEAKERAnd I wondered if it was before, but new grounds came out in 1995, started in 1995.

1:21:59SPEAKEROh, that's way earlier than I would have thought.

1:22:01SPEAKERYeah.

1:22:02SPEAKERI don't, I don't think it got bigger until later.

1:22:06SPEAKERIt looks like from, yeah.

1:22:07SPEAKERAnyway.

1:22:08SPEAKERThat would make sense.

1:22:09SPEAKERThey also mentioned something I did not know existed.

1:22:11SPEAKERThere is a version of basic for the Sega Saturn here listed as well.

1:22:15SPEAKEROkay.

1:22:16SPEAKERSo you can make like a turtle drawer program for your Sega Saturn.

1:22:20SPEAKERThey make the sickest version of gorilla you've ever seen.

1:22:22SPEAKEROh, hell yeah.

1:22:23SPEAKERYou can make a snake all day long.

1:22:25SPEAKERAll right.

1:22:26SPEAKERA snake might be too fast for basic, man.

1:22:28SPEAKERDo you have any snakes you can fit on screen at the time?

1:22:31SPEAKERThe actual name of that, I looked it up earlier here.

1:22:33SPEAKERThey just listed a Sega Saturn basic game basic for Sega Saturn, I believe is the actual

1:22:38SPEAKERname of this.

1:22:39SPEAKERWas it a disc you put in?

1:22:41SPEAKERI don't know what it shipped on.

1:22:44SPEAKERI'm looking at a Sega retro.org.

1:22:48SPEAKERIt looks like it was a CD-ROM.

1:22:50SPEAKERI don't know how you typed into it.

1:22:55SPEAKERMaybe they assume there was some kind of keyboard add-on.

1:22:57SPEAKERI don't know.

1:22:58SPEAKEROh my God.

1:22:59SPEAKERWhat?

1:23:00SPEAKERSo the peripheral supported Saturn floppy drive.

1:23:01SPEAKERI had no idea there was a floppy drive for the Saturn.

1:23:03SPEAKERWell, there you go.

1:23:04SPEAKERIt's probably the only reason it existed.

1:23:06SPEAKERLearn something new every day.

1:23:07SPEAKERThat probably had a keyboard.

1:23:08SPEAKERYeah.

1:23:09SPEAKERAnd then the last thing I wanted to touch on is they have a whole page here devoted to,

1:23:15SPEAKERhere's how you might be able to get started making your own underground games.

1:23:17SPEAKERHere are some of the tools you might need.

1:23:19SPEAKEROoh.

1:23:20SPEAKERYeah.

1:23:21SPEAKERAnd this is a good illustration of the thing we talk about periodically, which is it used

1:23:25SPEAKERto be very expensive just to be able to program and make software.

1:23:29SPEAKEROh yeah.

1:23:30SPEAKERYeah.

1:23:31SPEAKERYeah.

1:23:32SPEAKERThe cornerstone for any affordable development should be Code Warrior Pro from MetroWorks

1:23:35SPEAKERavailable for PC and Macintosh at a cost of roughly $600.

1:23:40SPEAKERThe Code Warrior development environment provides a complete editing, compiling, and debugging

1:23:44SPEAKERenvironment for C and C++, Java, and Pascal.

1:23:47SPEAKERWow.

1:23:48SPEAKERThe Code Warrior compiler is fast, graphical interface, easy to learn, blah, blah, blah.

1:23:53SPEAKERThey go through the...

1:23:54SPEAKERBut think about that.

1:23:55SPEAKERThe budget development ID, development environment, and compiler at this time was 600 bucks in

1:24:02SPEAKERmid-90s money.

1:24:03SPEAKERYeah.

1:24:04SPEAKERI mean, Visual C++, Microsoft sold Visual C, Visual Java, and all those others and Visual

1:24:08SPEAKERStudio as a bundle for about the same price.

1:24:10SPEAKERRight.

1:24:11SPEAKERBut I think games were Code Warrior probably.

1:24:14SPEAKERRight.

1:24:15SPEAKERI think that's what it is all the time about how democratized programming has become these

1:24:18SPEAKERdays in terms of the free tools and compilers and so forth that are available out there.

1:24:21SPEAKER3D Studio Max, which is in the 3D section, cost two grand.

1:24:26SPEAKERYeah.

1:24:27SPEAKERYes.

1:24:28SPEAKERIt's crazy.

1:24:29SPEAKERAnd I believe that was the cheap option at that time because I knew people, most of them

1:24:35SPEAKERwere pirating these things, but I knew people that used other packages like Maya and Softimage

1:24:39SPEAKERat this time.

1:24:40SPEAKERAnd those things were like thousands of dollars ahead if I'm not mistaken.

1:24:43SPEAKERSo like 3D Studio Max, I think because Max is like the standard now.

1:24:46SPEAKERRight.

1:24:47SPEAKERPretty much.

1:24:48SPEAKERI mean, I know Maya is still big.

1:24:49SPEAKERMax, people use Max.

1:24:50SPEAKERThe thing is people mostly use a mixture of tools now at this point, but yeah, they'll