Talking About 3DFX Voodoo cards - This Week In Retro 111

magic people Voodoo People all this and more on this week in retro high resolution color Graphics just land of high technology the revolution in technology that made the information age possible those kids are not afraid of computers Amber New Moon sugar in the Apple food how much will you do settle in it's time for this week's this week in retro up-to-date news for out of date Tech g'day folks look who it is is that you Chris yeah it's me Chris from Australia something's slightly off I don't know if it's the webcam but something slightly off this week Chris um it's it's Dave of course joining us in a um in an authentic Australian hat oh yes certainly not understand that all Australians wear these yeah it's not something you've picked up very cheaply on eBay at the last minute no no no no no no and we're also joined today by Ian who uh hails from Germany hello Ian thanks for joining us hello everyone thanks for having me and um this is really nice because we've always made it our aim on this show to get World Views to get insights into different people's backgrounds around the world and different um pieces of computer history from different parts of the world and we've got Ian here with um with a German let's just check that he's not the German Chris you did actually grow up in Germany didn't you Ian oh yeah yeah yeah I really did I really did and uh a small Village near um Ramstein Air Base maybe that's something more International internationally known yeah the music group too and yeah and of course the accident in the 80s but yeah that was Rammstein no I don't I I can't place that on a map so Western South Southwestern so yeah so you grew up in West Germany before it was unified is that oh yes oh yes yes but I I have relatives I I still have relatives um in East Germany because my grandfather originally hailed from there and he came to our side of the of the wall after the war yeah excellent well there's all sorts of history that I'm sure we can dig into um on that side of things Dave just tell us about your week before we get into this week's story how's it been going well um before we do that foreign has just got a blank look on his face [Laughter] someone explained what just happened [Laughter] to understand what I said um yeah once I figured out that you meant to speak German I actually got a bit but it took me a while to I I first thought you were speaking English or something oh nice try nice try Dave what I said was to welcome Ian we'll do the entire show in German have you been practicing Neil nine nine nine times it is RPG week for me Chris is away Neil's an RPG fan Ian's an RPG fan I'm an RPG fan so I've been watching um I've been watching a video on dark air from Rose Tinto roast into Spectrum did a video on Dark Earth which is the game I meant to play and now I won't after watching his video um I've got our podcast to listen to or an Albion which is really quite linked to what we'll talk about later on out there we go Albion um dos game club um one of my favorite podcasts they do a really deep dive into again they'll do a podcast for two three hours and they've done Albion and they've also introduced interviewed a couple of developers from it as well uh I probably finished playing Dwarf Fortress um and I watched your burger bakey tea break all right tea Breakers would be 15 minutes wasn't you 15 minutes ago this went all around didn't it did start out and I feel sorry for some of the earlier guests it started out as a podcast that was supposed to be 15 minutes long a tea break the time it took to to have a cup of tea um so some of those early guests like the Oliver twins you know they got 15 minutes each and that was it and then fast forward a couple of years to Burger Becky and we spoke for over two and a half hours when we recorded it I edited it down to about two hours but yeah there was an awful lot in there and it was so long because I didn't feel like there was much I could cut out to be honest it was such a fascinating story that she had to tell anything I I thoroughly enjoyed it and and for people who don't know she was involved in so many important role-playing games Bard's Tale into playing all the rest of it um and all the way through watching that I was thinking to myself Neil is absolutely bursting to talk himself about things and you can't and if you if you watch it you may not notice it until you really think about it but Neil doesn't share his own experiences in it and I said there's two hours of of her talking about things you must have been sitting there this this must be a relief for you in this podcast because you can give your opinion yeah just get it all out yeah um no I I it's not about me the tea breaks I I just want people to have a chance to tell their stories um to the point where I try and craft my questions to be as short and as open as possible because nobody likes to hear the person questioning in Ramble On and and almost try and show off about their own experience or their own skills in the question um Ian just threw something on the floor what was that in that was expensive now it's nothing happened but it was my still sealed copy of alvia oh no throw away on the floor um yeah so I I tried not to make my questions too long and then um if you look very carefully when there's a retro tea break at me down in the bottom corner which is who you're not supposed to be watching at all often I will say something or I'll say yes or I'll say more go on and you won't hear that because I even cut that out of my audio track because I I don't want people to be annoyed or frustrated or interrupted by me and I just want people to to flow and speak so um that rule works really well I think in in Burger Becky um Rebecca heinemann to give her a proper name a nickname is Burger her own website is Burger Becky you can't you can't whatever that yeah it goes back to a story of her keeping um old old hamburgers in her office drawer pulling them out to eat when she got hungry anyway um yeah really enjoyed making it and you're right it is nice to come on onto this show and share my opinions where people expect to hear me share my opinions it's the right time in the right place for it um yeah my week's been pretty good this week though um I've been really enjoying the Nintendo play Choice 10 arcade which I picked up recently and I'm gonna make an episode on that this week I've been researching that today um and when I got it I put out an appeal to anyone who might be able to put me um in touch with someone who has a Sega Mega Tech arcade which is where the play Choice 10 is a Nintendo NES in an arcade machine rasaga megatech is a um say a mega drive or Genesis in an arcade machine and you put money in and it gives you time the more money you put in the more time you have to play on these absolutely ridiculous arcade uh only insane people would have put their money in them when you've got real arcade machines around them back in the day but in the context of the cave it's just nice to offer people a different way to play on these systems so I'm hoping to go and pick up a Sega Mega Tech 16 very soon it's down in Cornwall so it's going to be a bit of a drive but I'm looking forward to that yeah um Dave do you have any housekeeping this week if so I can queue up a jingle yes thank you jingle me up [Music] oh it is you Dave the Hat's come off yes and no longer Chris um I'd like to welcome four new patrons who have subscribed to us on patreon the last week so thank you very very much to Danny Jessica Mark and Carl thank you um patreon.com this week in Rachel if you'd like to join them but thank you very much uh and our submission which isn't really um an event for us to discuss but it did really make me smile and the subreddit did like it civil 66 posted that they're finally reunited with a babe they've got a BBC model B it's in lovely condition and even the ROM patch beside the keyboard hasn't been poked out um so no skill code has erected in there was a an add-on port on the front of the BBC micro and it was kind of it was perforated so you could push it out and they went into schools and of course the first thing every school kid did was shove their fingers into it and break it so it's unusual to find one that hasn't happened so I hope that you've checked the PSU caps before you turned on the BBC and it didn't blow up that's a good question for Ian actually Ian was there a standard school computer that schools had in Germany when you were growing up most of us had a c64s from Commodore at least in my region and only a few of us had Amigas Amiga 500s I had one in um later I mean I got my first computer uh when I was like 10 years old sure 9 10 and um the Amiga 500 was then two years later and they would have been in your classrooms as well oh um no in our classrooms I only know um PCS pieces and we only got them when I was like uh leaving school already as nearly like the 10th grade ninth uh 10th grade so when I started school there was no um not really much computers in schools yet but at home um I think uh it's fair to say it's quite well known just how much Germany loved its Amigas and its Commodore 64 was a big following for those machines uh well Ian was a love for the Atari St in Germany uh where your catalogs where you bought your games there was also a line for Atari St so I I never I never even seen one back then so but maybe in other regions of Germany it's just I mean there was no internet so we were quite a isolated communities back in the day you know there you go Dave does that does that help you Dave yes the mega ft was popular in in Germany the the St was popular but also the last thing in housekeeping this week is I have booked two more guests um we're trying to get an international flavor a year so no British people allowed uh we've got two Americans booked in and I've got another one that I'm trying to book in at the moment so look forward to to those and the only clue they'll give you for next week's guest is farts who sorry what was that farts oh I think I can guess you know who it is so yeah I I hope you can I can't okay should we go into our first story yes we should okay okay the early 90s was a golden age for computer role-playing games the genre itself is ancient you can find P edit five which was known as the dungeon back in 1975 on Plato uh that's as far as I can see it's the earliest one um you could probably see it's closest to a roguelike game although it's clear that acala Beth and Ultima roots are there too they all started from us from that kind of place um before they see these went kind of a different way than roguelike games so they've been around nearly as long as tabletop role-playing games which is a bit of a surprise for me I thought the computer ones would come much later but they didn't chainmail is probably the first um role-playing game arguably because it's it's it's it's a tabletop game but it evolved into d d chainmail's what what became renamed to DND and the first role-playing game that I played on the computer was The Bard's Tale or tales of the undone it was known of at the time which Burger Becky worked on um for me I love storytelling I love a narrative I I mentioned the fighting fantasy books before and I love RPGs fantasy novels um computer RPGs and text Adventures but early ones lacked a lot the storytelling so that's for for me that's why I liked and the bar steel because that that had the storytelling there okay not in great debt but I had this storytelling but we were actually kind of starve for them in the UK compared to the US and I'm not sure why we're computer scene is more of a kids thing here than the us and we're RPGs for an older audience I'm not sure but I've done a bit of a ram hole and even looking at Arms into amstrad CPC games which is the the first computer that I had also the one that Neil had um there's hardly any uh there's hardly any RPGs on it and most of the ones that are there are in French a few more appear after the bar still appeared um but Ian what was the first role-playing game that you played kind of curious if you know this one it was um on c64 and it was called Mars Saga and um it was ported to the computer to the PC under a different name it which was called minds of Titan there but masaka is the old c64 version and it's quite it's a role-playing game on Mars you create your characters you you have a storyline and it's I loved it it has one of the most you have it I just but I forgot mine in the in the other house so that's great you have it that's so amazing yeah did you play it do you know the music Dave no I I've hardly I've not played it much I've loaded it up and I've played it a little bit but you know the music them it's it's yeah it's the Commodore 64 version I've got yes exactly it's it's a bit in the style of of the barge deal um except it's that kind of um it's very much sustainable steel um but yeah I played it briefly but I'm waiting until I get a working C60 board to play it properly that is a small anecdote I I really have to tell now because it's something translation from German to English also and I was mostly growing up by my grandparents and I played this game on a friends on a cousin's house and when I when I got home and told my grandmother um yeah I played computer today I was five or six years old and I said uh I played my Saga yeah and in Germany the word masaka is like your masakra in in English so my grandmother immediately called my friend's house and saw told his mother about Bruno games the older friend of me played with little old me right because we played masaka yeah that was I I always remember that day Dave when you pulled that off the shelf and spoke about it there Dave you spoke about it as if you didn't play it back in the day it's more of a more purchase so what is it that prompted you to buy that game um I'm reading about it I like the box art as well oh but reading about it but knowing it it's an it's an ee game it's bad steel style is well spoken about well reviewed I saw it on eBay and I thought I want that so I've played it briefly on an emulator for maybe five or ten minutes but I'll wait until I get a proper C6 everyone running up and do it properly nice and it's developed um I'm just reading up on it here it's developed by Westwood Associates yes nice link back to Westwood yeah yeah wish we'd went on to do eye of the beholder so this is what they did before they deny the holder uh either holder then Dune two um Command and Conquer lots of great games oh come on so that was your first role-playing game Neil what was yours well um I don't remember playing any RPG specifically on the amstrad CPC um I'm sure there were some about but as you said you looked into it and you couldn't see many in fact I was probably more likely to see letters coming through the door trying to get me to play RPGs by them by mail um and then on the CPC I remember those coming through but nothing on my amstrad so my first RPG was probably something like Eye of the Beholder or do you remember dracon on the Amiga which had this kind of interesting mix of 3D Landscapes it was almost like they'd combined the flight Sim with Sprite based characters but it gave you these vast Landscapes with rivers and bridges and castles that you could walk around and explore um which I quite like the sense of scale in that game and it was an alternative to the more traditional top-down ultimate style dungeon crawling which was quite nice um yeah so probably one of those two I would guess so by the time I got the barge tail I played quite a few text Adventures I guess they were really easy to port to the CPC compared to other games so they got ports whereas other games maybe they didn't feel the market was there for it and then I moved on to the Atari St and of course maybe the best St game ever dungeon master um everyone must have played dungeon master but I'm sure and a few years later and Ultima 6 on the day that on the St was a disc swapping chore Neil reminded me a while back about the whole decompression thing which I totally forgotten about you bought the game you opened the box you took the discs out and you had to do this laborious exercise where you created other discs that decompressed the information on the discs that you got and but the dish swapping was a pain and an early nailed you you've already note here how do you start the dish swapping well yeah the decompression method was a bit it was a bit like installed into hard disk but you were simply installing from floppy disks to other floppy disk which is a bit weird um but yeah I discovered that if you turn the music off and you had two disk drives this was on the Amiga version I could play most of the game on those two discs it was only if the music changed it would then ask me to put another disk in to load another another song so I could get that disc swapping down by just turning the music off but that wasn't a great thing to do because the music's a lovely part of Ultima yeah so yeah it wasn't great in 1993 and early 1993 I got a PC and of course it had a hard disk and that was RPG Heaven not only did I have access to games that work from the hard disk but had access to all sorts of role-playing games which just didn't really exist on the HD and certainly not in the CPC and that was when a real real golden age started um and just off the top of my head and I noted down some games I could think of betrayal croned or Daggerfall Wizardry seven ultimate one uh underworld one and two ultimate six seven eight dungeon hack either Beholder series might in Magic Albion dungeon master two there's just loads of them and there's only more of them as you go through the 90s a combination of better graphical power Better Sound and sometimes even speech but I think mostly hard disks are what gave us a golden age but today's story is about a game I've not played and there's a good reason I've not played it and now the game itself is an Amiga game but it's actually from Valiant software they're a German company that started off from the Atari St demo scene so it's really an Atari St gaming Spirit um games like no it is it is chambers of shielding lethal XS no second prize they're all great games and some real pushing of the hardware from Valley in there sadly they went bust in 1994 and that resulted in the cancellation of the the Atari St Falcon and PC ports of amberman and only the German Amiga version of Amber Moon actually made it to the shops and is that what is that what Ian was holding up earlier of Amber moon is that the Amiga version Oh yes of course yeah yeah the only one that exists that's sealed as new Ian no um that's uh kind of spiritual successor of Amber moon right Amber moon is a sequel to Amber star which was sort of an unofficial sequel to their the first role-playing game dragonfly and the game is uh here you go Ian's got them all he's a fan yeah I definitely am yeah the game is a role-playing game Dungeon Crawler with multiple Dungeons and an overhead map so while in Dungeon Masters just one dungeon you know the idea with with this game is there's several and you can you can go between them uh battles are tactical and turn based and unlike the previous two games so unlike Amber star and dragonfly um Amber moon was free movement rather than flip tiles that you get they're kind of dungeon master style movement it's flip tiles um I've frequently seen it being said to be the best Amiga role-playing game and I've not played it yet so I'll find out eventually when I get an Amiga working uh Ian is not quite is it the best Amiga game I kind of um it's hard to compare because Ultima 6 is also available on Amiga right Ultima 6 is and Amber Moon I mean it's it's definitely for me it's it's it's the same it's it's the same uh yeah that's good as good as okay okay that's and that's hybrids you had to at least in the past go to the Amiga to play um but what's fascinating for me is that as a rewrite and what the rewrite brings the table it gets a game from a niche platform and no offense to the Amiga but in 1993 the Amigo wasn't what you bought if you wanted to play role-playing games you bought a PC um to the mainstream to make it easier to get your hands on it and it also brings enhancements so it's a Trilogy of games that either it's a Trilogy if you include dragonflight or the sequel that was never written uh that came out after I left the St that they were they were for the St I mean the the lead platform on um Amber Moon Awards the SD but because the St games Market really folded so badly they switched to being the Amiga being the the main platform for it and that's why you got the Amiga release and the other one is it is ishar uh ishar is a French Trilogy from summer rolls that came out around the same time on the stpc in Amiga and there we are one two have you got the third one yes he has yes I just want to start saying the names of random games to see if Ian will just reach down and pick them up again we would have to go to another room yeah I have I I have HR one two and three I've not played them either because they came out they came out I mean by the time I switched and I missed them and I'm going to play those but in my head for some reason in my head I've got ishar and I've got Amber moon in same kind of place in my head one's a German Trilogy one's a French trilogy anyway um but this isn't the first time that someone has come out with a a remake uh a faithful remake of an old game to make it more accessible um and the first the most famous I can think of is Ultima because we've had the several Ultima projects uh where you can play ultimate four Ultima five ultimate six and the most famous one is is Ultima seven uh the exalt project which made it because because Ultima was made to run well on a 486 the time you got to paint him it didn't run properly as well so there was a even in the 90s I think there was a um there was a morning going on and they come out with Excel which allows you to play the the game in uh in a modern engine um yeah because of Ultima one of my uh my several retro PCS I spilled specifically for Ultima 7 because I really wanted to have the perfect PC for that and it's uh 486 with 33 megahertz and uh it has to have either either a video card too because even on a Visa local bus video card the lighting effects in the game Run too fast it's incredible it really needs that one PC to be perfect so yeah one snapshot in time it's not very good there's absolutely nothing in the game to say this is the this is how the timing should work this is how a cycle should work in the game it just goes as fast as your CPU will go and I'm sure it could have been very easily coded the same happens in Wing Commander There's Something About This these origin games where they just go right just go as fast as you can and I remember I had a 4633 perfect like you've described as soon as you went to something like a 66 dx266 it was going too quick and you had to use programs like mostlo uh a memory resident program that would just burn your CPU burn up clock Cycles to make it slower so it would run but um I think Ian's gone down a wonderful route of making sure he's got the exact right hardware for the exact experience without playing with any of those things yeah so Neil can you think of any games you'd like to see Rewritten this way to open them up to other people um well it's always nice to see old franchises opened up to other people um looking at um Amber moon it's got a nice selection of dungeon crawling of of top down it looks like it's got elements of all kinds of different role-playing games I haven't actually played it myself this isn't one I've played and um the way you talk about it and the way that Ian talks about it with such enthusiasm really makes me want to go and pick it up and give it a go but maybe I should just wait for this new open sourced version it's ready now it is ready now okay well there you go um do I need to get hold of the original game to get rip the assets out nope just just okay we won't go into the legalities of that I will just try it out um but yeah any old games to be remade we recently saw the attempted remake well not attempted completed remake of Colossal Cave in 3D with VR which attempted to bring the original text adventure to um the modern day masses um it's hard to say if that's doing well because it's been out for a month now and it has 25 just 25 reviews on Steam so for a game that had such fanfare it feels like you're getting much attention yeah it feels like it should have a bit more attention so I'm not sure it's a bit pricey I think it's listed at something like 40 30 or 40 pounds isn't it in Steam so um maybe it's time for a steam sale to give that a kick up the backside um so if I had to pick one I'd pick probably um and maybe a lesser known RPG um that I'd like to see in the modern day with uh Dave's Dave's seen what I've made a note of and he's picked up the box um so I'd like to see an RTX 3D VR all singing all dancing version of Auto dual which was published by origin because I found with VR I feel sick when I walk around um that's still a problem for me you can teleport around but that kind of breaks the illusion a little bit so if you do auto dual which is an RPG in a car oh yeah problems are solved you can sit in the seat of the car drive around you know RPG from a car in VR so Auto job that's my choice fair enough yeah um Dave's uh put a note in here for me to hand off to Ian now and I think it's a little bit unfair because it says Ian you're an RPG fan tell us everything about Amber Moon yeah I think a lot of stuff was already told I mean I um I actually played Ambassador and Amber Moon not too long ago because back in the day I I never had my Amiga anymore when when these games came out I was on the PC already but I picked them up over the years and I played them actually in the Years 2009 2010 so I was the adult already understanding more of it and they are great games that's um I started with Amber star and what I also really loved in these games are the um I think it's Parts tail like riddles that you have in here always with a tree without really like riddles where you have to answer solve a riddle and type in really type in the answer and yeah it's dungeon crawling it's it's great combat and um it's it it's really it's really cool and especially also the music and Amber Moon the music and Amber moon this is definitely the best um role-playing music in in of of Amiga in my opinion well that probably ties in nicely with the demo scene Heritage of the group that made it you know yeah to get awesome music out of the Amiga um how does the music compare on the Atari day for oh it wasn't released was it no the the the the the sensible Atari ST owners had moved on to the PC by then rather than Clinging On to an outdated decrepit old system Dave I know that you had oh sorry Ian Ian was holding something up there to show us I was just unboxing and the the dragonflight here and uh I don't know if you have this one but it's also it's a limited edition of the of the first game from Valium and uh if you watch this manual like this I mean they don't do that anymore today right and do you see the Ian's holding up a ring bound manual with um some nice art of is that the different characters or the enemies yeah that's um the enemies skeleton beasts pal rounds it's also a lot of inspired by Ultima if you look through it with the with the monsters and everything Orange from Ultima yeah exactly uh yeah it's it's odd it's it's it's really great yeah what was the name of the book that came in Ultima that had all the beasties in there there was a name for it best story there you go there was all that there was different there was different names across different ultimas as well um but yeah that that's part of the experience of the ultimate games is is having the books there to play through and it was one of the few games that I didn't pilot um you had all the floor and fauna in the book as well in the Regents and all of that yeah yeah but Dave you've had a chance to speak to the developers of this new um remake haven't you yeah so that there's one developer um Peter core um a pineacore I'm not sure quite sure how pronounce it um and he's told me he's not too precious about how I pronounce it so I'm not going to offend him uh he's got a Discord and I've spoken to him about it um he has told me that the project is is complete and playable so you can play his Port of Amber Moon which is called ambermoon.net though that's not the website it's complete he's also done Amber Moon Advanced so he started to enhance and add extra content to the original amberman so if you play Amber moon no if you play his version you get to get extra content in it so he's ported across you can play it in PC Mac and Linux among other things you can probably probably play it on other platforms but he says those three work uh it's ready to play um he has also um just just just now and um it's not been noted anywhere else but he has now produced a manual for it so as part of a way to help support the costs he's now selling him selling a manual for Amber Moon Advanced you can buy it uh from from him direct you can buy it in Amazon as well or you will be able to buy an Amazon very very soon it's listed there but not showing as in stock it's not very expensive I think it was about 12 or 13 euros some of the money goes to him but most of it goes to the cost of producing the manual and the manual is is kind of it's an essential thing to have if you're playing the game and it's much nicer to have the manual in your hand than it is to have to look at PDF thing so if you're intending playing playing his game buy the manual help him out or sign up to his patreon to help him here is going to do the the sequel the the trilogy that the last game the trilogy which he he was able to tell me that thalian had decided to call that Amber worlds so Amber worlds will be the third part he is going to do it it's a project he does in his spare time he works and he says that at times he was working 100 hours a week on this in addition to his other job um his wife wasn't too happy with him at a time we're spending on it although she is now supportive he tells me um he's got uh two of the original developers Eric Simon and Julie hornman uh on his Discord so that they've obviously got their their blessing for the project and they went on to do Albion which is the box that the Ian's got sealed there and I mentioned at the start of the of the show dos game club because their podcast was talking about Albion and they interviewed Eric and Judy this month uh well actually they interviewed last month but they released this month so there's a bit of a crossover there because Albion is what they did afterwards after Thalia went but they couldn't I I thought Amber um Albion is supposed to be a sequel to the Amber Moon uh games however they couldn't use the they couldn't use that name uh for legal reasons um protocol also ported settlers a famous uh Amiga game to the PCS another German game and it's from Blue bite who did Albion Ian um when you set the title um that was planned Amber walls I just remembered something you also um I mean you also know that back in the day they combined so much uh fantasy with science fiction elements I mean Amber Moon did this too um later on you you fly into space and actually it plays on the moon of the world and then you have Modern Magic with science fiction and even the first ultimas also had spaceships in it and fantasy I think it was a great concept which sadly they sometimes later stopped doing in the sequels links to the show notes go and have a look download it play it enjoy it um and uh perhaps buy the manual to help support it but thank you very much for speaking to me protocol we are sponsored this week by pixel addict magazine pixelated magazine is a monthly um retro themed magazine not just about games it has the whole the whole range of things in there um it's a great read it's available in your news agent maybe um it's a real worldwide uh you can also go to their their website which is at pixel.addict.media where you can subscribe where you can buy PDF copies or you can order physical copies to be delivered to you I've been reading an article this week I've been sitting down reading an article about someone creating a metal uh pet computer case now pet as in Corridor pet because those old cases often take a battering every time I've seen our pet they've been smashed up so someone has made uh what looks to be a fantastic one so part one of the article is in this week in this month's magazine part two is in the next issue so I'm looking forward to reading part two of that to see how it all comes out Neil yeah I'm looking forward to you sending down your photocopy that as you do every month of the magazine to me so that I can have a read I'm looking forward to reading that no seriously the the Commodore pet looks lovely you can see it in all its silver Glory hopefully um hopefully waiting for a powder coating do you know if they're planning on doing that I don't I don't know I I I I I know it's for talking about the folded metal um but um he said he wanted to be simple but it will change that later he says perhaps and then three dots so he's left it left is hanging Mike's left is hanging for part two and also um it was nice to see some feedback from Ian pickles at dawn who writes for the magazine and is very involved in it who I believe told us that a recent show one of you guys one of one of our listeners went up to his stand and said well I better buy this because I heard you on um this week in retro so you know there you go we're doing our job guys we're holding up our end of the bargain so thank you very much to the team at pixel addict for sponsoring us on our podcast Lord sugar has been in the news this week making bold claims and let's be clear from the off sugar is the Tycoon character in the UK version of The Apprentice which is currently airing so obviously he's pushing for some publicity at the moment publicity of any nature it's pretty clear to see what's going on here but he does prompt a good discussion Point um here's his claim that he made in a newspaper this week he says we we being amstrad made quality products not like this apple rubbish where you have to change it every time they bring out a new number my stuff lasted forever right just let that sink in my stuff lasted forever so Lord Sugar's bold claim amstrad products were not only um you know awesome he says and lasted forever uh but he he's saying that they are better than Apples because of that um I've got some amstrad cpcs that might disagree with that statement he also boasts that amstrad created the first video conferencing phone in the emailer range I'm pretty sure I've heard him say that claim um perhaps a year to the day ago when the last series of The Apprentice came out I'm sure I've heard him banging on about how the amstrad emailer was the first and how um you know he was doing it with copper lines and if it came out you know when Broadband was around which uh highlights a little bit of a lack of Alan Sugar's knowledge because Broadband did run on copper lines um he claims that uh it would have been even better and even bigger than anything Apple had ever done but uh there we go as fond as I am of the amstrad and the CPC being the first computer I have always considered the amstrad range to be budget um perhaps not quite as budget as the Sinclair computers but um budget nonetheless uh computers and consumer electronics I wouldn't call them Pioneers I would call them yeah budget Electronics makers um I know Dave you're shaking your head there are you are you thinking of something in particular that was pioneering from amstrad the pcw range it was a really it was for what you got it was tremendous it was a pcw was there uh kind of reimagining of the CPC range but for business so it it was just a mono screen it's a green screen um disk drives three inch of course um and it was a really powerful business machine that could do CPM um for a really low price I guess though yeah it's back to what you're saying about the budget or value but I I I I felt that while the hi-fi's were junk and Tech mode has done a recent video on the hi-fi's that shows that the junk Hi-Fi is junk their computer range was actually really good I guess it's it's an easy trap to fall into to to consider budget to be um to lack Innovation you know uh trying to create something on a budget can actually drive Innovation and I guess in the case of the pcw it did that it wasn't trying to be the fastest the flashiest have the most colors it was trying to serve a purpose at a price and it came out with something that not many or nobody else was doing at the time so um yeah I think you make a good point I I think that's completely valid Dave um so but yeah um it is it is easy to to dismiss um that perhaps and this is question time now perhaps was amstrad a true Contender to Apple in its in its Heyday and we've got to remember that the landscape in the late 80s and early 90s was very different to how it is today to where Apple sit today and to wear amstrad well um um what are they called now and something else now they're dealing property um amps prop maybe amps prop Roland goes to them house shopping um but uh yeah Amsterdam had success with their 8-bit micros their low-cost PCS luggables don't forget those high fives as Dave mentioned and in 1989 some of if not the first set top boxes with the launch of um Sky's satellite TV service here in the UK um sorry not when I say the first I mean the first Sky satellite TV boxes that were of course set-top boxes before that before you pick me up on that um amstrad were there and on the up and apple weren't doing too badly uh in 1989 sales of their Macintosh range were up 35 sales of its higher end computers the top end Macs were reportedly quite poor so you know it wasn't it wasn't boom time for um for Apple then and then as we go into the 90s Apple would lose its early successes um its early advantages with those successes with low-cost PCS to the likes of Dell and other computers that came along and drove uh budget PCS and Apple's fortunes would decline to near bankruptcy in the 90s so if anything amstrad were the more solvent of the two companies through this period but again that's not an indication of the quality of product which brings us back to Alan Sugar's original port a point of amstrad products were better than Apples because they last I haven't started with sellout for 127 million pounds and and um as I said Alan sugar is primarily concerned with property these days which is why you will often see him on Twitter telling people to stop working from home and get back into the offices without mentioning that he owns those offices uh for Apple of course the turning point was the iPod and the iPhone and the huge success that that gave them so it really isn't fair to try and make any kind of comparison with the apple of today and the amstrad that moved in technology circles back then but Dave was amstrad the UK's apple back in those times back in the 80s and early 90s and did they make better products well better is a really difficult word to quantify but I say yes they did make better products on Apple um I I'm not a fan of Apple dropping the Apple 2 line in favor of the Mac um the the the the deliberately um made the the 2gs not compete with the Mac I I'm not a fan of the Mac I thought what amstrad did with I'm trying to high-fighter rubbish and I don't want to defend them at all watch techno's video um but what they did with the CPC the PC and the pcw was fantastic they they brought a quality machine at a low price it it it it didn't cut any Corners that shouldn't have been cut these days budget of value is usually usually is it is a euphemism for regret you buy and then you wish you'd bought the proper thing in the first place I don't think people bought a CPC and got less than what they paid for I think they got what they paid for same the pcw and their PC range was how can we do it but do it acceptably um for a decent price although they did have some sharp practices about making sure they tied you into their their infrastructure infrastructure um compared to apple though it's just I just don't I can't think of them doing the same thing at the same time and apple were just doing a different thing to what what amstrad were doing so there's no real there's no really a equivalence between the two of them yeah I think that's a fair comment um Ian let's come over to you in Germany uh it was I I know amstrad would sometimes operated under the Snyder brand was there anything under the amstrad brand over there or not at all not quite a stuff and like you you already said it um it was really a low budget and it was not it was not good compared to um to Technics or Panasonic techniques Panasonic and so for computers I heard that amstrad exists I in the 80s 90s that was totally not my area and about Apple Macintosh I heard much later that they were really powerful computers and yeah that's that went past me mostly sure so you didn't really you didn't see um never mind Schneider you didn't really see much in the way of Apple Computers over there not even that here are not totally not my first contact with Apple Computers was much later when I was even a youth young young adult then there were Apple Macintosh computers people told me they were more powerful than pentiums and so on and I thought oh really are they but uh yeah maybe they people I don't even know this today I'm I'm a PC guy I'm I really build PCS and I that's what I do well something that's sort of come in the other direction is you know amstrad's went over a branded to Schneider's over there something I got recently was that was a Schneider Euro PC which is an IBM PC under the Schneider brand um which somebody Ray candy bought over to the cape for me so I'm looking forward to playing on on that um Dave you were bobbing up and down there did you have something yeah I I I I need to see I need to confess that the reason why I don't think too kindly of Max is that my school throughout all the BBC makers and replace them with apple Max so right I can never forgive it for that yeah well I'm not sure where we sit here with this I think well I'm not buying it I'm not buying Alan Sugar's claim that um he clearly it's a talking point it's a very different type of product like you say it's like comparing a Casio watch to a um help me out here a higher brand of watch I don't want to say Rolex because I'm not going to compare a tag watch maybe something like that where am I going with this um but while we're on the subject of Technology tycoons uh another link that was shared on the subreddit uh was a tour of Jack trammo's house did you see this um so it was it was a video that was taken about six months after his death so it's getting back some time now um but it had all of his possessions all of his photos on the walls and things like that and it was a tour of his house now if you think somehow that Jack tramwell failed um as the companies that you worked for Went to went under um this house how can anyone think he's failed what did he create Neil So if you think the uh introduction of the uh thank you is a badge of failure then um yeah take a look at this tour of his house and it says um something very different I mean there is a lot of marble in this house there is a huge swimming pool out the back there is um there are there are things that are not particularly to my taste like the kitchen it looks like a a Dalmatian has been spread all over the walls it's a it's a very uh some very odd design choices um I I would say exuberant flush um yeah a lot of marble and a very very big house so if you want to see how he lived in his final days um he wasn't short of a few Bob it's uh yeah retro Tycoon cribs would you see it's a Mug's eye full of a of a tycoon's crib I can see Alan sugar living very happily in that house so the link to that will be in the show notes if you want to go and take a tour and also let us know your thoughts on our subreddit reddit.com this week in retro where you can uh take part in the question of the week which we'll be talking about later you can comment and you can also submit stories for us to talk about and um follow up on the stories that we talk about with all of those links in the mid to late 90s a 3D Revolution was going on in games kicked off by the likes of Doom ultimate underworld and then Quake Juke 3D blood descent Etc by then there was a push for Hardware acceleration and while several different cards and function sets apis Etc competed the first winner the first one to get wide acceptance was the legendary 3D FX voodoo now we've talked about the voodoo before um Ian is holding up a monster 3D one which that's that is that Voodoo one yeah that's for the one four megabytes the first time it's been monster the most original one I think the most known brand of the month of the uruania the monster so that was the first one actually I've I've only got I've got two Voodoo cards it's only I've got uh a four megabyte and a six megabyte Voodoo one six megabytes are we but unusual um but they came out with several different cards um the first one though was the legendary Voodoo it only unlocked this massive leap in performance in games like unreal and Quake but I had a short life but it was a bit special the voodoo was a bit special because graphics on a voodoo using their feature set they looked unique you can recognize when you see when you see the panning shot and it's a panning shot an old and unreal when you see it coming in you see the reflection and so on that's the that's proper Voodoo um but they kept going and um the end of 96 was the first Voodoo so the very end of 1986 the first video came out and by the end of 2000 they had gone um they stopped producing cards uh most of their four thousand and five thousand CDs were not released although the 4500 and what Ian has the other five thousand five hundred yeah they were released they were already did make it out and that's the that's that's the last one isn't it it's the last official one yeah yeah that's the last official Wonder 5500 PCI or ATP and what's interesting to say about these is that they had a special anti-aliasing mode full scene unrealizing that really disappeared together with this card it was gone and it came back in the year 2009 for AMD cards or ATI and it came back in 2010 with Nvidia cards and even today or then you had to activate the special uh anti-aliasing mode via Nvidia inspector it doesn't work um just via drivers so it's it's really uh it's really great to see with this card some games with this unrealizing mode it looks totally different that's really video of course was the first SLI and they did SLI differently but Nvidia then bought them and that's why they had the SLI a story submitted by happy coding Xanax and it's talking about a prototype Voodoo that was never released the voodoo 5 6000 he submitted the article from Tom's Hardware where they were talking about getting to five thousand five hundred dollars Neil why is it why is Ian not holding up a box with a voodoo five six thousand yeah that's just because there are no box [Laughter] I could hold up two boxes of food or three three thousand Maybe [Laughter] there is an auction on for um this card it is now sitting at 12 600 for this prototype and the auction notes that it is fully functional that was close to release so it's not as if you're buying a card that can just go up the wall you can put it in you can use it although you may not get your entire money as well from it um the auction doesn't finish though until Monday the 13th of February around 3 P.M Universal Standard Time uh it is now 5 p.m this moment is now 5 p.m on the 6th of February um so they're still they're still almost a week to go before this finishes so I don't know what it'll finish at um now I personally feel that once you get beyond the kind of voodoo one there's not as much utility in having them because games went from using the Glide API to using um direct 3D and then the video card is only really doing what another car does but Ian I know that you have a bit of a a liking for Voodoo cars particularly the later ones so would you like a voodoo 5 6000 have you got have you got twenty thousand dollars sitting around it can be justified using the later ones well actually um I have prepared something and of course I would buy this card immediately but last year on uh April 1st I built myself a voodoo 5 set up here so I'm totally wow so no I'm I'm fine but it only works on April 1st of course so you got me out I was about to launch into all sorts of questions to them but how does that work I plan to run 3D Mark uh on April 1st this year so maybe you can join me then so yeah Dave I think I'm in the same uh sort of boat as you as far as I'm concerned 3dfx peaked with I would say the voodoo 2 not the voodoo one because probably just because of personal experience I had the voodoo one I had the Banshee which was had a 2D and 3D combined uh yeah it wasn't the first in fact Ian you told me that earlier before we started recording that you had the first generation of 2D 3D combined um 3D effects it was called woodo Rush yeah but it it by far didn't work as good as when you had separate cards so I had a lot of trouble with it actually back then some games just refused to run but they they ran with um with separate cards when you had the diamond monster here so later on I had the diamond I know I had uh this here this is actually my own from back in the day my uh 3D Blaster this Hulu 2 and yeah and then I had the voodoo five so that was my my history there it is one of those things that makes you feel a bit like a dinosaur or if you speak to a modern PC Gamer isn't it when you say well I had my 2D card but then I had to buy my 3D graphics cards again to go with it you know it's just assumed that it's just one thing you know Graphics card's a graphics card but uh we had to go through that weird period of having separate cards um so the the Banshee um like that like the rush was combined but slightly better um and then um you know people got Voodoo threes fine you know they were decent cards but the direct 3D era was coming in with the might of Microsoft behind it pushing that um API Nvidia caught up as as Dave spoke about um so I think if you were still using a voodoo card in the in the five or the four or the five era then um you know I wouldn't call you mad I would just say that you were extremely extremely loyal to the brand to still be using that um Ian there's still the thing I I said earlier um the anti-aliasing mode can't compared to the Nvidia cards of that area just a few weeks ago my my wife and I installed no one lives forever again that's uh that's the kind of Niche game great shooter game and we compared it on my FX FIFA's FX 5950 Ultra with the best anti-aliasing setting it looks nice it's okay but when you install this game and make it on the voodoo 5 you have this full scene anti-aliasing which um which makes anti-aliasing across the whole the whole picture not only etches and so and um that's like super sampling sparse crit super sampling my English isn't good enough to really explain the technical aspects here but I can tell you it would be something for the Cave the voodoo 5 test your your 3D games with the voodoo 5 and charge yourself the difference is not it is not only big it's day and night difference it's really it's really a different picture you have to see it best on the CRT and by the and by this point the voodoo 5 was running these games in direct 3D or was it still using gloves it doesn't matter that doesn't matter it can do the direct 3D and it that's small it's it opens it actually it's opengl or direct 3D and it does it better than every other card and in today's games you can activate it again since 2010 but not before only then can you act that's that's something not so much known but it's that's why these cards still sell for 700 600 on eBay and I do seem to remember that in that era of the four and the five redo cards they did carry a premium if you wanted to go down the voodoo route you were normally paying a little bit more than you would be for other people it could be I had a voodoo 5 HTTP card and yeah it was slower than the rest but it was better looking that's something that's overlooked wow that's something oh you beat me to it Dave well this isn't even the Prototype that went from 3dfx the Prototype I'd want is the one that they were doing in 2000 as well as the four thousand five thousand range they were doing the Specter range now they never came out with the Specter card but I might I imagine a specter card sounds even cooler than Voodoo I mean Voodoo sounds good but Specter what kind of car have you got Specter that's the one I won time now for our community question of the week so last week's question was um All About car games I seem to remember no it wasn't it was about Arcade cabinets so uh the question was if you could have one arcade cabinet in your living room what would it be and there's also an answer there from producer Duncan who says I would pick a full-scale Ridge Racer see it properly a full scale a Ridge Racer not strictly a cabinet but who cares I care Duncan because I set the question and um you you know it's not a cabinet he says who needs a sofa when you have a full-size MX-5 I mean he's gonna have a big Lounge he's gonna have to have a big Doorway to get that in and um well that's his choice so um let's get into the answers from our listeners Dave would you like to read the first one out yeah Paul icky hamski says I like this one so I should try not to laugh I've just read this question to my wife the answer to this is sadly none I've been warned and threatened with what would happen if she came home to see an arcade cabinet in our living room I can't repeat what she said oh po yeah um our second answer uh Ian do you want to take that one is this the The Ice Runner then yes yeah from Ice Runner origin yeah APB by Atari not the world's best arcade game but one packed with memories for me APB yeah APB had um did it have the two lights at the top that flashed it I think it also had a little stool so you could sit down and play and it had a wheel that had no force feedback or no resistance it was just one of those big wheels that you could really spin like super Sprint and games like that um yeah did did you guys play APB match or at all I played it because my brother my brother talked about it remember when I first got meme he said oh get me APB because we used to play that and I don't remember playing it but I have oh well the premise was you would um drive around in your car catch her the catch the criminal take them back to the PlayStation and then you would have to waggle the joystick to thrush all the police station not the Xbox the the police station um that's you getting me back for Sam and Max isn't it um Simon Max was good you would have to throttle the criminal well at this point an innocent citizen to get a confession out of them so that you could look them up so it's quite realistic then yeah Ian did you ever play APB no no what about Arcade in general were there any arcades in your area growing up in not really no not really I I always like to see them on on TV or something but but no we didn't have any gaming Halls that was not maybe on the base under American side of our community but not here know at least not for my age I was too young also I think yeah yeah okay I'll read the third answer right now this is from Richard shears he says oh an easy answer this week assuming we're allowed to ignore such conveniences as physical space well I think Duncan's already set the precedent on that he says Star Wars the sit-down arcade version naturally why I don't hear anyone ask he says it was the second arcade game I played the first being shoplifter it consumed more lunch money coins than any other sorry mum but the chips only cost 35 P oh Richard taking a pound from his mum for the chips I reckon and then putting the rest into Star Wars or shoplifter it's very popular and um oh he also says if I can indulge in a second answer if I had any friends that still lived near me then Gauntlet yes oh sorry good choice um but yeah let's just go back to Star Wars Dave because there was a little bit of um yoke news wasn't there yeah so I haven't got a jingle for yolk news sorry but um exciting though um I am I got a little bit of a little bit of a suggestion from someone last week and it was don't buy the the one-up machine which I'm not going to buy I I think I'd pretty much decided by the end of that I wasn't going to buy the one-up machine and it was um a suggestion to get uh a yoke the GRS flight yoke which is um Glenn's retro uh shop I think or lens retro something let's see if I can find out what it is Glenn's retro I wasn't prepared for this sorry I'll bring it on you I know you've been meant talking about it anyway I I can talk though so he's made this thing it's 200 so I don't know what it costs for me to get in the UK it looks identical to the arcade cabinet both the the one up cabinet and the real cabinet it's much better than the one at one it's made really as an upgrade for the the arcade one-up cabinet but it's got a USB connection so you could use it on a PC and I presume I could get it working on uh on a mystery of Star Wars ever comes to that so that would be the way I would do it I've had a look and um I've tried this emulator called eee which is one that stopped development in 2008 it's a vector emulator and the screen on it looks so much nicer on this AE than it does on me it really brings Vector games to life so I would say that I don't want a CRT for it I want a modern um really bright crisp um flat panel display for it in four three of course for it but it's the controls that matter I've tried a mouse I've tried the STV the SD version of Star Wars is the best one I found I tried an analog joystick on the PC on me it was rotten so that's what to get the is the Yoke to get for that that for my arcade cabinet if I build one it'll be that 200 dollar no doubt 300 pounds yolk so our question of the week for this week is uh it's gonna call back to um the tour of uh the house that we that we went on I want to know if you could go on a tour of any famous technology or even gaming person's house um who would it be and what would you expect to find in their house hmm you can you can answer that um over on our subreddit reddit.com this week in retro where it will be pinned at the top and you can also submit your stories for us to talk to whose house would you like to go on a tour of whose house like this oh Ian's got an answer go in here this is so easy to answer what's your answer Ian Richard gereador oh yeah it's Castle I mean I mean people pay ten thousand dollars for his uh shroud of the Avatar thing here to to come and visit him in his house and I had a dinner with him ideal answer there we go so who can top that Richard Gary and um yeah well what would you expect to find in his house I think a Museum of Artifacts um things from going into outer space hidden rooms all of that good stuff yeah fantastic moonstones yeah Ian thank you so much for taking the time to hang out with us today and share your thoughts um you can find out a lot more about Ian using the links in the show notes go and check out his YouTube channel and um we will see you all next week thank you very much for listening and watching everyone Take Care thank you everyone bye-bye [Music] this week in retro was presented by Neil from RMC the cave Chris from 005 edema and Dave it was produced by me Duncan styles podcast version of the show is available to your favorite podcaster including Apple podcast and Spotify and the video version is available on the this week in retro YouTube channel join our community subreddit at R this week in retro to suggest and vote on the stories we cover on the show if you watch this week in retro on YouTube please give us a like And subscribe to help us reach new viewers if you enjoy our show and would like to support it then please check out the link to our patreon page in the show notes or description thank you for listening and we'll see you next time for more up-to-date news for out of date Tech [Music]

Channel: This Week in Retro

Views: 4,468

Keywords: This Week in Retro Podcast, Retro Gaming Podcast, Retro Computing Podcast, Retrogaming Podcast, This Week in Retro, TWIR, RMC, 005 agima, 3dfx, amber moon

Id: ywGJiBP0CRY

Length: 67min 41sec (4061 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 11 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/Kleisterscheibe]

About the Atari ST in Germany: There was a big Fanbase for the ST/TT in Germany my Friends and me all switch from the C64 to the ST, fun thing beside this, all our Friends that had Atari 400/800 switch to the Amiga. The thing is that my Friends and I are not so much in Gaming on the ST we keep our C64 and Play there, all my Friend had also only Monochrome Monitors for the ST. The only Games I Remember are MIDI Maze and Spacola. But there are so much Software that came from Germany for the ST. GFA Basic, Omikron Basic, Twenty-Four, Cubase, Notator/Creator, Signum, Calamus and Tools like NVDI, Tempus and so on. And also many Hardware came from Germany, OverScan for the ST and TT, AT-Speed and so on. I learnd programming on the ST first Basic, later Modula 2 and then C, my Friends was also are in programming or Music making and some in Hardware. Ad the Time when the ST came out I was 17 and beside the Programming there was some other “tings” I interesting more than gaming.