Awkward and Awesome VHS Tapes from the ‘80s and ‘90s | Tech Nibble

hello cave dwellers I don't know about you but I really have very little Nostalgia for VHS tapes and it's not because I wasn't there or I didn't enjoy them I loved the experience of going to the video rental store at the weekend and picking one or if we were feeling flush two videos to rent out I don't think our store let you rent out more than two at any one time and then heiring back on my BMX bike to watch them as quickly as possible I loved all that it's just that as soon as DVD came along forget about it I loved all of the benefits that that format bought and vhs's were consigned to the Dustbin for me and it's not really something we collect here at the Museum however a small pile this and a lot more has been accumulating here because when I see a VHS tape with something like virgin games ECE 91 as this one has on it I think well this is probably a small part of video game history this was probably looping in the background of um an expo at some point in this case ECE and it may never have been seen since so I thought I'd take to the time out this week to make this Tech nibble to capture all of these videos and I'm going to upload them in their entirety to archive.org or somewhere similar I'll put a link in the uh the video description when I figured that out and today in this video we're just going to skim through them and um I'll give you the the highlights of some of these wonderful and I've discovered some truly awful VHS tapes about video games about setting up computers and a whole lot more besides so let's pop this in the player and um see what we've [Music] got I should point out that this is not a tutorial on how best to capture video that's not an area of expertise I have but I'm happy to show you the kit that I'm using so what I've got on the table here are really primarily three pieces of kit that come into play the first is well there's a VHS player on top of the Telly it's one of those players which is duel DVD and VHS a later player and it only gives me composite output on the VHS it has s video but that only displays the DVDs now if I was doing this in a professional capacity then I would probably want a svhs player with SV uh coming out of the VHS and I would probably even go to the length of cleaning the tapes to make sure there was no mold or dirt on them so to stress again this is not a how-to this is just what I did to see what's on the tapes today the signal from the VHS player goes into this this is a lumun vis DVI it's an old piece of kit but it's proven useful many times over the years here in the cave and it takes the signal and it de interlaces it and then it scales it for me it then spits it out as DVI into my capture box which is a startech usb3 HD cap now that does accept composite directly into it but I found that it just would not lock onto the signal for any length of time directly from the VHS player and the lumagen just sorted out all of those problems and gave me a solid pict the startech device is USB 3 that plugs into this little mini PC here there's not much to say about that other than it's running Windows 10 and I'm using OBS as the capture software and then the only other thing I'm doing with this once I've captured it is I've got a filter which takes away any static and noise to give you a much more solid picture so just to give you a quick example here's some footage directly captured through that system and you can see it's a bit wobbly it's a bit noisy and no doubt we could have taken some steps to clean that up in cleaning the tape itself taking it apart soaking it in IPA all of that stuff that the professionals do but this is how it came through for me I then applied a third party D static and D noise filter on it which really cleaned it up nicely so then it looks like this and then as a next step I tried apply an AI upscaling to it and that didn't work so well especially in footage of some of the video games it just it just didn't know what to do with with the footage it didn't know how to intelligently upscale it and what to do with it um so we rolled back and we've just used the anti-static and anti-noise filter and that's what we'll be watching today we'd like to thank pcb.com for supporting our episode today they aren't just about pcbs although they do do a tremendous job of that they also offer CNC Machining sheet metal fabrication 3D printing and injection molding if you're creating then pcb.com can help you bring your project to life get an instant quote now over at pcb.com and we thank them for their support let's check our first video then and it's f19 by micropro and it has one of the worst voiceovers in VHS history really Don is this a game yes sir f19 stealth fighter sir oh no Don we're moving what do I do Don sir could I suggest that you p pull back on the stick sir sirie doie big fellow oh no I missed him never mind here comes another one Mr President that's a boing 747 sir sorry Don I thought I was in the Gulf for a moment there uh Mr President could you come back please sir anything you say done so this is a promo tape for micro's f-19 stealth fighter an excellent game from the peak of when micropro dominated the simulation scene and this plane is apparently being flown by President Ronald Reagan goody goody T shoes tell Nancy I'll be back for tea released in 1988 for Doss and 1990 for the Amiga and St this tape has written on it that it's an Atari St promotional video specifically so this is going to be 1990 onwards the game itself was designed by none other than Sid Meer of pirates Fame and many other games rro Tycoon all of those other great games that he made is the successor to an earlier game project stealth it was created before the world knew what the new stealth fighter look like and they based the design of the plane on a model kit released in ' 86 by makers testers unsurprisingly the toy maker didn't have the inside scoop on US military Skunk Works and it barely resembled the real stealth plane that materialized the f17a Nighthawk that didn't for a second stop us from enjoying the game though hi you boys it's uncle Ronnie enemy at 9:00 boogie in my sight brownie in my pants missile notice through Dam it's just like the movies the video's conclusion is that this flight Sim is totally realistic yeah just like that impression here it's all gone dark and I'm late for my tea this f19 stealth fighter is out of sight uh don can you hear me I can't even play fetch with Lucky the dog the next tape we'll look at contains no less than 14 games it really crams them in there it's labeled virgin games ECE 1 now ECE is the European Computer Entertainment show and in 1991 it was famously a bit of a flop two weeks before the show they uh stopped selling tickets they cancelled all the tickets they um renaged on Promises of prize tickets for people and they even advertised that the show had been closed however it still went ahead behind closed doors with just a select number of Publications invited along Nintendo and Sega didn't even bother going that year and um well let's see what we missed out on on this tape virgin games were founded way back in 1983 and they went on to buy the budget label mastertronic in '87 rebranding to Virgin Master tronic and that's why on the video there is a segment of their Tronics budget range on the show real including Double Dragon 2 that's a game that I had for my Amiga and for some reason it crashed every time I loaded it and it was a legitimate copy as well I I don't know why that never worked for me there's a Home Port of the arcade game Ninja Warriors which was on three screens in the arcade so that took some work to Crunch it down into one and there was the pretty poor football game World Cup soccer Italia 90 of course 1990 was a World Cup year it was a great World Cup in Italy but terrible football game the game comes complete with a ref will award fre kicks penalties Corners goal kicks and throwin play a clean game or you could find the refs awarded you a red card and sent you off new releases on the video however include snooker simulation Jimmy White's willwin snooker from a time before virtual pool now virtual pool was important in this genre because as far as I'm aware that's the game that introduced the ability to use the mouse to look around and to draw back the queue and you could really whack the mouse forward to hit balls in that game before all that happened in a game like Jimmy whes you lined up the shot using a toolbar at the top of the screen it all looked a little bit painful in the modern day but it was a brilliant game when it came out as was I think every game Archer mlan ever made recreates every aspect of the game of snooker inaccurately hit balls bounce out of accurately modeled Pockets put swerve or spin on the CQ Ball but remember to use plenty of chalk coming in September it says and there's Jimmy himself blowing the chalk off of his queue amazingly this game was also planned for the Atari Links but that Port was canned as the handheld flopped rolling Ronny now this was one of many distinctly average Platformers of the era all of them screaming look we can do Sonic 2 but I'm afraid a roller skating clown running errands just didn't hit the same way that the Hedgehog did way through nine levels of Parklands city streets office complexes and even the underground sewers to his final destination on the other side of town collect enough cash running errands for the inhabitants of this weird and wonderful game to earn enough money for a bus ticket to the next part of this bomy Caper shuttle was a hardcore simulation of NASA's Space Shuttle and this would see release in 1992 certainly wasn't the first shuttle game the Apple 2 had rendevu a space flight simulation that was 10 years earlier and even the Atari 2600 had a shuttle simulator in 1983 it's a machine that really captured our imaginations I've never actually played this game and I must I owned the later Microsoft space simulator that came out in '94 but shuttle always intrigued me shuttle features breathtaking 3D Graphics realistic control panel operations training missions multiple help levels from novice to veteran scientific and star war missions and multiple launch and Landing sites shule coming in September for the IBM PC Amiga and Atari St from Virgin games also on the tape is the real time strategy game Realms and then text Adventures are represented by the magnetic Scrolls collection this really was the death throws of the Texas Adventure genre when they had to sex it up with multiple windows and artwork to try and appeal to Gamers and while it wasn't a fashionable genre in the '90s there were still some gems to be found how sneaky can you get in the Guild of Thieves the answer is very to stand an Earthly of qualifying for entry into this famed Guild all three games have now been enhanced to run out Wonderland's magnetic Windows game environment and feing new graphics animation maps and help Windows Marble Madness makes an appearance which feels really out of place in 1991 given it appeared in the arcades back in ' 84 but it would take eight years to land on the Sega Master System Marble Madness rolls its way onto the Sega Master System early in 1992 wow all in all this video is a great snapshot into gaming in the UK in 1991 the games and the genres that virgin thought were relevant to us and the games and genres they thought would bring them revenue from Platformers to Sims to early firstperson Shooters like Corporation this was released in 1990 but it's being promoted here for the upcoming 1992 Sega Mega Drive Port there's also a movie tie-in in Terminator which looks a hell of a lot better than the later Terminator 2 game that we got on our home systems and oddly this game was due for release after the second movie so you could buy the Terminator game after Terminator 2 had been released in the cinemas but that wasn't so unusual uh for example 1987's Untouchables movie finally got released on the Super Nintendo in 1994 we just kind of accepted that that's how it was sometimes Terminator will be available early 1992 for the Sega Mega Drive and Master System our next video doesn't last long at all before we run into problems and I was almost grateful that this didn't work because this guy gives me the creeps well I've been and gone and done it now I finally joined the technological Revolution I've just bought my first computer all I've got to do now is set it up okay yeah well Dave Jackie you've just bought your first computer lately that's right yeah now how do you feel about the prospect of getting it home oh a bit nervous [Music] what horror was about to follow before this broke I could only imagine well I thought I could only imagine it but after a couple of rewinds and fast forward the tape's bumped past the bit where it got stuck and then we had to endure the rest of the tape PES yeah yeah I'm dead excited so you have no worries about setting it all up um I didn't say that John I've used the before but I've never actually um set one up well good luck old chat cheers you're John what's name no Jim Jim what's his name and we'll be seeing more of Allan later this video was aimed at anyone who bought a PC from Dixons or PC World or any of that same chain back in the mid90s very popular High Street stores here in the UK uh I did indeed buy my first computer or my first PC uh which was a Packard Bell from The High Street I think it was from Dixons I had Amigas and amstrad's before that that's that was my introduction to the world of PCS and then beyond that I would build my own but that's how I got started thankfully it didn't come with this video I guess some people may have found it helpful but they could have cut down on some of the sarcasm here and there are some really uh uncomfortable interactions for example this man who just happens to be passing the house appears in a window and sees someone setting up a computer and decides he'll just walk in oh sorry the uh door was open yes well I saw the computer boxes and I thought you might need a hand so you don't think I can put this together on my own well no stalky Steve then remains for the duration of the video and you bought one of these I'm impressed do you mind if I get on now and we learn about things such as how to get online so how do you get on the internet how do you find out about all this there's an icon marked worldwide web and that takes you through the whole process yeah it costs money though doesn't it yes I mean you pay a fixed sum to the internet service for each month and then you pay extra as more time is used see but then after that the world's your oyster so the service fees the only charge well no you pay for the phone call you're making and that can mount up even though it's charged at local rate that can mount up and then a chunk of the video is taken up in promoting a premium rate service which you can phone if you need more help in using and setting up your PC for example in this scenario they're unable to play Jeff Gram's Formula 1 gp2 because I think the path is broken on the shortcut on the desktop better phone the premium rate number fortunately we've got an expert with us who can help us sort out this problem Steve H what do you think's gone wrong you being an expert well I there could be lots of different reasons could be a a disc cash error on the motherboard or the scuzzy ports not synchronized with the Zip drive or you haven't got a clue have you and of course by the end of it everybody's an expert is it's a gradual process the more you use it the more confident you'll become so your phone call to PC Plus today could be where do I put my mouse but in a year's time your phone call could be where do I plug in my virtual reality helmet virtual reality on a Packard Bell that's the dream this next video was one of the worst in the collection and it is certainly a candidate for a deep clean anyway with a bit of post-processing we can try and figure out what's on this tape and it's movie based games on an Activision promotional tape [Music] in contrast to virgins video which had the Terminator game on there this contains three movie based games all released in exactly the same year as the Cinematic release they were all tied up to be released at precisely the right time and this all happened in 1986 the first game is Labyrinth by Lucas film games and that was led by David Fox who I was lucky enough to interview a few years back it's in this game that David introduced the word wheel that's a way of carrying out actions by selecting words instead of typing the actions in a parer at the bottom of the screen it Bears more than a passing resemblance of their later game Maniac Mansion it's a little slow paced at times but it's nice to see the origins of their later Lucas Classics and of course it's always good to see [Music] Bowie Howard the Duck considered one of the worst films ever made and there for it of course has its own cult following this is just the way it is with terrible films like the movie the game reviewed badly it's a four-level quest to find your friends and then take down the overlord on some place called Volcano Island available across a range of micros including the Apple 2 c64 Z x spectrum and amstrad CPC it's a bit of a stinker and I don't think I'll be rushing out to try it thank goodness then for aliens an iconic film for all the right reasons and a wonderfully Moody game too I had this game on my amstrad CPC it scared the life out of me playing it late at night with the lights off but I must admit I never geared up in full Marine gear to play it like the kid in this video [Music] is pick of the bunch on this tape is definitely aliens for me let's see what's hiding on the next [Music] one [Music] for [Music] now this is a video of its time around 1985 86 i' I guess it's the Commodore pc20 owners video to help you get started and long time viewers will remember I have a pc20 which we've been tracing the PCB on because that was destroyed we've been recreating the system board and I can tell you now that that work has been completed and initial tests on our recreated board are good so you'll see a follow-up video soon and hopefully we'll have that up and running and when it is maybe this video will come in handy certainly a very British video starring Tim Brook Taylor he was a member of the comedy troop of the goodies very well known here in the UK and Joan Campbell who appeared in everything from the bill to bodger and Badger we still haven't mastered the technology of pouring boiling water over a tea bag yet it's a he combination of humor and chapter animation screens created by by someone let loose on the new titling machine at Commodore [Music] endless this is an hourlong Saga of a man unboxing his new computer one of the earlier examples of an unboxing committed to film and at times he makes me seem dynamic in my delivery yep here it is my companion this is more like it now where's my telly a great business a the video now where's my compion very busy are we sir things then take a Twist when Tim's future self appears on the screen to guide him through how to use the computer don't worry this will all seem like second nature to you soon but first let me tell you a little bit about how computers work he gets down the basics of MS DOS formatting discs and moving files around and then the fun really Peaks when we go printer shopping well there are really lots of printers but for the simple graphics and documents you require there are basically three choices now if you want very Posh letters and highgrade documents then this is the one for you it's a laser printer and gives you a really smart finish to both text and Graphics by the end of it I feel more than prepared to finish my pc20 series off thank goodness for commodore [Music] lock up your daughters Andrew Neil has been let out of his cage this is the Sunday Times guide to Windows and the windows in question is 3 .1 while Andrew simply introduces the video in his post of Sunday Times editor at the time it's the much loved Fred Harris who presents the rest of the video Fred was a staple of computer shows here in the UK you might compare him to Stuart of computer Chronicles in the US I guess he's of a similar ilk but can Stuart do [Music] this [Music] I think not in this Fred tells us how the inner workings of a computer are much like all of the instruments in a band to be honest I think he just wanted to use the budget to record some Jazzy tracks bringing us back on topic is Dave Smith from Microsoft who's done his best to dress for business but I can't help but feel he looks like he's a blind date contestant enabling people to get more done in less time so just in the same way for example that we're all used to seeing road signs all over the world be the same no matter which country we're in so Windows uses the same idea to make the computer much easier to use because Fred's involved it's actually a really informative tutorial on finding your way around the operating system here it is and you once the basics are down we play some more saxophone but it really begins to swing when you add the high powerered applications programs [Music] and we get to see exciting new windows applications such as Microsoft Excel so now that that's copy we actually don't need Excel anymore no that's right we can actually move get rid of Excel and get straight back to Word Perfect now to where we were within our letter then we play some more [Music] saxophone and to this day Andrew has been roaming free let's round off our video captures for today almost back where we started it's another tape from Virgin games and this one's titled floppy showreel February 1993 and it's got three games on [Music] it all right let's see what we can see see be back replay enemy unit is approaching enemy unit is destroyed it's the [Music] new virgin G an entrepreneurial Vision anticipating evolving markets not afraid to reach [Music] outy the first game on this tape is KGB it's an adventure game comrade and it's a very good one at that with really nice graphics and a plot set around the final days of the former Soviet Union there was a CD ROM version of this released a couple of years later and that added video clips into the game acted out by Donald southernland and it was released under the name conspiracy but it is enjoyable in its original floppy disc form without the rasmas of cdrom based multimedia my knowledge of KGB is essential to the success of my mission reach for the skies now we're talking the future of the war hangs in the balance the cree of Germany's ler and the aces of the ra have the locking horns for their most brucial confrontation yet the Battle of Britain a combat flight simulator for the atar St Amiga and MS DOS in 1993 the sun was starting to set on the Golden Era of gaming for 16bit micros but reach for the skies did everything it could to give you a good experience on a stock micro it didn't demand accelerators or any expensive add-ons and I for one really appreciated that it zipped along and it reviewed pretty well as a result you could even watch a replay of your mission and review your dog fighting in slow motion from various camera angles at the end of the sorty reach for the skies will not be won or lost on the result of a single Mission it's long-term performance that counts as a player you can choose your role in the conflict either pilot or controller you can also choose your nationality British or German the tape closes on a stone cold classic is June 2 by westw Studios and they would take the lessons they learned from making this realtime strategy game to go on and create the command and Conquer series he who controls the spice controls the universe the movie June came out in 1984 but that really didn't matter because this was a classic game in its own right and it created the template for RTS games that came after it when faced with a combat situation you can set your forces in motion and concent on other aspects of the game or you can choose to closely control individual units and manage them to their best capabilities it was named June 2 because an adventure game based on the movie was made then thought cancelled but then it turned out it wasn't cancelled so we ended up with two June games both very good in their own way and within their own genres but I think this June 2 is definitely my favorite well if you've made it this far into the video then you know how to set up your Packard Bell computer and get the most out of Microsoft Windows I've watched too many of these videos today um it's a it's an interesting style isn't it the way they've recorded these certainly a style I would say of the of the time but if you look at the Commodore pc20 video and then the PC World video there's 10 years between them and they are adopt the same kind of sarcastic humor that doesn't age very well um and they're obviously working to a budget although they have got some big or medium-size named actors involved in some of these videos it's really interesting to watch and um like I said earlier the videos in their entirety will be uploaded somewhere not quite sure yet but you when I figur it out you'll find the links down in the description below so you can go and watch all um what is it an hour an hour and a half of how to make the most out of Windows in in this example some of them are only 8 minutes long in total so do go and check them out and let me know your thoughts on them and if you've enjoyed it I will make another pile of VHS videos as of when they come in I'm definitely not throwing them out and I'll capture them and uh we can all enjoy them the virgin videos in particular I'm going to put them in my fake shop over there where I've already got some old wh Smith's promo videos so I'm going to add them to that playlist and then when people are browsing the games they'll hit the promotions about those very games that they're picking up off the shelves in that room right better get back to that meate Tech now that Parts have arrived and uh you'll see that restoration finished up next week or the week after just as soon as I can get that finished up and I'll see you in the next video as always if you'd like to come and visit head to retrocollect live.co.uk when you can see when the cave is open as well as the arcade archive and um you can come and well sit in the chair and I'll put the VHS tapes on for you if you really want and if you really enjoy what I do head to patreon.com slrmc Retro where you can become an official cave dweller thank you everyone take care and I'll see you next time [Music] bye-bye these are the names of all the wonderful official cave dwellers who support the channel and the museum and if you'd like to join them head to patreon.com slrmc Retro and yes if you're still there watching I too once had to make an IT support video here's what little remains of it from 2003 [Music] enjoy [Music]

Channel: RMC - The Cave

Views: 38,100

Keywords: nostalgia, computer history, tech history, retro gaming, capture vhs tape, deinterlace vhs, obs capture, vhs player, capture video tape, virgin games, fred harris, andrew neil, pc world, commodore pc 20

Id: G1EUg2KmZWM

Length: 32min 20sec (1940 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 24 2024