The End of the Show and Legacy

I'm Greg Richard. It is hot outside and now it's time to cool down. At PC Richard and Sun we have the largest selection of air conditioners all at the guaranteed lowest prices. Come see our knowledgeable salespeople to help get you the right air conditioner today Granger knows, when you're a procurement manager for an office park You're not managing one building, you're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and around corners Light's about to fail, filters ready to clog, HVac on its last leg. If you wait until something breaks, you're already behind Count O on Granger for quality products, easy reordering, and twenty four seven support Call one eight hundred Granger, click Granger. com or just stop by Granger For the ones who get it done. On this week's show, a new RPG comes to the Amiga Install windows on your N sixty four. And we go inside the world of nineties interternet culture with our guest Wi Rowan. Tro our podcast is brought to you every week with our goodood makes at Bit Mat books so we really appreciate them. sponsoring our podcast. and have you seen their brand new volume just dropped in the last week. Fatal Fury or as it was known in Japan, Garo Densetsu, the definitive guide to that incredible fighting game series, weighing in at more than four hundred sixty pages, all sorts in here as well. R concept art from SNK's archives, exclusive interviews with the developers and covers the entire series. fromom the early NoGo cllassics to the latest city of the worlds. you can get your copy right now at bitmatBooks. com And with our friends at Replay events who a bit later on this year I bring about the UK's longest running retro gaming event, The My Pay Expo returns to Blackpool at the O Olympia Exhibition Center at the top of the promenade on the weekend of Saturday and Sunday, the third and fourth of October. Expect it all there. G got the traders, the incredible arcades, the pinball area consoles and computers, gaming competitions and of course the talks, of which we will be hosting a few of them this year again. You can get your tickets right now at playxpoblackpool. com Welcome to the retetro Oour podcast episode numberum five three three, Your weekly dose of retro gaming and technology newews with me, Dan Wood Joe Fox And that is it. this week. It doesn't happen very often that there's only two of us on the podcast, does it? It's a no too? It frew me off so much that I was actually about to say Rabbyot.' Raby Aotast you know your own name. Yeah, which exactly. I got my own name right. Yeah.'ve We've had a week, to say the least, haven't we? It's been heatwave here as well, which I know it's really funny whenever you talk about it. I mean, I see all of our socials, you know, peopleople like, oh my god, it's like no I think it was thirty six degrees. It hit didn't it on Tuesday here in Nottingham and like all the comments online like, all, try coming over to Texas know it's a different kind of heat here in the UK Some ye, yeah, it's it's It's a different level of humidity. I would say. I've actually been away this week. Soaking up the sun. So soaking up the sun just in Norfolk with my family which has been really nice it was actually a little bit cooler up there, which was quite nice but it's hit Ravi hard. He's actually been poor this week askass him So we thought right we'll push recording back a little bit See if Rabby gets a bit better. So we're actually recording this at nine o'clock at night. On Thursday. I've got a late night tonight editing. Dan's got a late night Yeah But I got back late from the holiday as well and then yeah, Ravi bless him it is quite poorly. So it's just me Dan I'm afraid. Lid up for bed sweaty with his eye mask on at the moment. Yeah Yeah ye. Get well soon Ravi. But as I say the show must go on. So of course me you're going to chat about kind of what's been going on in retro over the last week, another busy week in terms of news. and of course on the podcast every week, we bring you a special guest on the show as well. Now today is an interview that Rabby and I recorded this morning when he's feeling a little bit better actually. This is where Wingham Rowan Now this is a name that really brought back a lot of memories for me because he used to host a television show backack in the mid to late nineties called Cyber Cafe. Right. And this was something that I used to watch with my dad. whichich when you hear about the kind of subjects that were covered on Cyber cafe, it might raise an eyebrow or too, but yeah, it wasn't it was a bit of okay, put it this way. it was the nineties. Okay. Yeah probably explains quite a lot about what they covered on that show. But if you're not familiar, he does have a website where there are several clips on there. I mean, if you go to ninetiesinternet. org You can read all about Cyber Cafe and it was a late night ITV show Which I tell you that, a lot of people probably I trying to get what kind of show it was. I mean with stuff like Eurorash was very big at the time. I remember the James Whale show that used to be on. It was basically ITV wanted a lot of these really cheap shows they could put on that will cause a bit of controversy and build up a bit of a cult following at night. Okay. And it kind of talks about how he went to them in nineteen ninety five to say wanted to do a technology based show, but they they originally were really pushing him to do a u A late Night television show all about reviewing Big box PC software. Okay, that seems very ahead of its time That feels like feels like YouTubers these days. Yeah. I' about yeah a bit of LGR or somethingw like that yeah. I mean, not very sexy if you're talking like know midnight on an ITV schedule, but He actually managed to convince them that there is this really exciting world of the interternet that's kind of bubbling under right now. And the difference was, I mean, there was a show on the BBC called the Net And that was all about kind of, you know, he just mentioned some examples of it, But you know, this person person is using a website to catalog all of the examples of Georgiaian pottery, you know, it would be stuff like that, veryy BBC, very just stit liced U then The stuff they're doing a cyber caafe It was more of a human story show A tech program So And it was quite controversial as well. I mean, that often get people on who would have opposing opinions. So for example, on one episode, which you can watch a clip of it on his website invitite someone on who is a spammer H job is to send our emails spam And then someone who know has had a massive phone bill from downloading it all is really, really angry at this guy. And he had, you know, Patrick Moore the famous astronomer, also the Games Mster. He came on, dismissed the web as full of crack pots. You know, you said they're completely pointless and then they bring people on who, you know, it wasn't all like outrage all the time that you get people on who were kind of early On nine entrepreneurs and people that were doing like groundbreaking stuff like there was a really famous live stream and probably the world's first Life vlogger Jenny Camp It was very famous back in the late nineties, which was a college girl who would basically have a webcam in her dorm room all the time and you know, she basically broadcast her live to the internet. and whether that involved her going out in a night out and bringing back a partner who would becomeing an unwilling partner on the screen. So he got Jenny on as well and you know, some of her biggest fans kind of didn't know she was going to be on and then met her in person as well. So it was a really cut edge show as well and used to do challenges on there. So he had a co host called Anna on there who hads challenges to her like to find certain things on the web during the show. So it was a really fun watch and Yeah, he reached out to me to tell me this website's up there with a With a bit of an archive on there because not everything's on there. it's just kind of a collection of clips. but yeah as soon as weing got in touch, I was like, yeah, love to do epset about that. becauseuse you know me, I kind of love talking about early internet culture anyway. Yeah. I mean, for me this is very up my street. So yeah, if you're not familiar with it, check out ninetiesinternet dot org commot H a little look at the show on there. Did you remember it? you're gonna hear some inside stories And even if I mean, we do have a big international audience, but I think you're going to enjoyed hearing some tales of kind of the early days of the web And you know, kind of when it was a bit of an underground kind of thing because he does mentioned that as it went on, I mean the show finished in the year two thousand. And by then, I mean, the web was kind of competing with TV Yeah So in that five years I mean it changed a lot from you know ITV being like, Oh we'll put this weird thing on the only net nerds are watch to becoming a mainstream thing. So yeah, really interesting chat. So Wingham Roan is going to be our special guest. He'll be on the audio podcast in part two and if you're watching on YouTube, you'll get that as a separate video on Monday. Patreons will get it all in the superc over the weekend Good time to become a patron of this podcast as well because Sunday night we're going to be hanging out, are' we We are We're going to be on the the hangout which started out many, many years ago as a ginormous it's not as boring as work nowh near as boring as work, but like a teams meeting don't make it s Yeah't make that sound sexy at. C It didn't sound very sexy, but it is sexy because I'm there. jokes aside. But we jump on with patrons. everyverybody is welcome. You can get involved and you know chat with us as well or you can just listen in But basically we just talk about what we've all been up to, not just us, the patrons as well. it's a big hangout show us what things' been buying whether that's modern or retro. we talk about anything, we talk about films We literally talk about anything. All mobile phones tend to come up quite mobile phones. I imagine I'm going to call it now because we went to see Mortal come back to, which we said last year our That we end up talking about that. and then we'll probably end up talking about terrible movie game films and stuff like that, but basically it's just hang out kind of like round the pub kind of thing, but I always really look forward to it Hopefully Rppy will be better and all three of us will be on. but that is this Sunday at eight PM UK time. Yeah. so we'd likead to get in by, for that all patrons are welcome. The retetro hour d. com. We just dropped new episode of our Patrons' exclusive podcast for Gold members and above The After hours. fifty one episodes of that out there now. Really good one actually, wasn't it? What did we do this time It was a really good one. What did we do? I we did our favourite games for failed conles and systems which was Ravi wasas it Ravvi's that? No, it wasn't Ravvi readdit off the Patreon of Discord times Yeah, one of our Discord. Keep them coming Be like you say, we've done fifty one of them now And we are running out of ideas a little bit. Yeah So it is useful when we get start, isn't it? Yeah? Well, we've got plenty of ideas, It's just whether they're good Yeah yeah. But that was up my street because you know me, I love my fail consoles. I mean I'm looking at my Philip CDIs literally opposite me right now. I've got a Jagua there I've got a three D O. so I mean, Id to whit it downer just four games. Yeah could have had them all night. Yeah. I was a little bit like, Oh, I don't really know what I'm going to talk about But it comes to gaming Browing up, I guess I was very mainstream, you know, I was Sega, Pice one and sixty four Gameedube like You know What can I do for failed systems? And Ravi said, Wh don't you do the Game boy, which I thought was hilarious. Yeah. I think that did all right actually, units. Yeah. Yeah But I got some good ones in there. I feel like I feel like I got some good ones in there. but maybe not quite as obscure as Dances, but But Rv had quite a few I'd never heard of as well. so yeah I think it was it was a good old round one. I think sometimes as well there Those kind of episodes are good to give you game suggestions are n they stuff like never heard of that. so yeah I enjoyed it. we can get sick an episode on that theme at some point. So ye probably. Yeah. Good time to join now our Patreon community and' out way in Discorde all week as well. All the details at the retro hour. comot First bit of the show though, we have a bit of a chat about what's been happening, the big stories that are making the headlines in the world of retro from over the last week. Now I imagine the answer to this is going to be a firm no H you ever played a Mega dririve online How you got? No but this looks interesting. So this is the The mega add on which will be bringing the Mega dririve back online you know, with modern devices, with Wiifi U Sar This is a kickstarter at launch I think this week about a week ago. so This is going to be a Wi Fi device that will plug into your Ever dririve, I believe which will bring your take a drive online for multiplayer gaming. So it won't be like the Mga mododem or the Sega channel that came out in the nineties, which weren't for playing online they were for. and v rightly the Sega channel, which was the American one was for downloading games onto the cartridge at like certain times of the week It was like a TV guide, it would be like, come on at this time and you can play this game and download it and then the Mga mododem in Japan feel like that was to get like. It was a bit like teletext. and it got you kind of like real time like, you know results and horse racing results and stuff like that And then there was an expand service in the mid to late nineties that did have multiplayer connectivity like multiplayer gaming on it, I don't know much about EXand Apparently, this is different. M. So this is the mega addm. which, like I say, has already been successful U it only needed thirteen hundred pounds, one thousand three hundred pounds. It's goal and at the point of recording it's on two thousand pounds. from nineteen backers with thirty two days to go Plenty of time to get involved here. Plenty of time. So it's a custom device, Mga Wiifi add on which is going to bring yourmega Drive online for multiplayer gaming Now I was like my first thought was like, wow, play streets of Rge two online kind of thing. By the looks of things it's for custom games that you would put onto your your mega onto like your drive. They've got to be made just for this Adam. Yes. So the example it gives is a a moded version of Battle City, which I think didn't come out in the UK But it's the tank battle game, which ye yeah Yeah from Lamco, it came out in loads of systems where you can shoot through the walls and everything and it's the top down view. And it uses an example of two people playing the mega WiFi playing that game against each other. So it's going to be games, modudded games etc. so it would be a modded version of Streets of Rge two you'd have to play. which would then be compible compatible with the Mga WiFi add on. So I like the idea of it. It just feels like it's gonna to be very niche. Yeah. Soike I say at the moment,'s only got nineteen backers. It might pick up, which would be really cool Hopefully all of those nineteen people are moderns. Yeah, exactly. So unless, you know It sells A lot more. I can't imagine there's going to be a huge market for people to make games for this U but it's fifty euros or forty four pounds if you just want the kind of like the I think it's a N' not too sure because it's not in English Right It says there there was the recipe. It says so I So I think for forty four pounds, some of this is in English and some of it's in Spanish by looks of things forty four pounds, you get the What' it called the schematics is schematics Yeah to make your own And then I think if you want one sent out, which has got all the kit already kind of made with the cables and everything like that it's eighty euros sosenty quit U get a kit, but obviously got to make it yourself. Yeah again. Yeah, yeah yeah. So and obviously you need your own ever drive to put the ROMs to dump the games onto So I think the concept is very interesting. I just don't know if there's a huge s going to be a huge market for it and you know I like to think I'm usually quite a positive guy. I don't sit here trash talk, anything and I'm by far not trash talking this, I hope it picks up. I do actually hope this becomes bigger than what it is. it's just at the moment There's only nineteen people on there As you said Hopefully they're all moders and're all they're all gonna to make games on it. becausecause straight away I would thought to myself like My mate Jason, who's a big Mgarive guy Oh that'd be hilarious to play Mga dririve online with him, you know, on actual mega dririve hardware. U, you know, just I guess for the novelty of it because you could argue, well'll just go play, you know streets of rage four online or whatever kind of thing which obviously is't Mega Drive game but if you want that experience I'm I like the look of it of it by the looks of things. quality of it in the pictures and stuff, it's like a free D printed madeade one, the moould is a little bit H questionable. but Well some people have kind of criticized it because it looks like and this has been a few of the articles I've read, he used it looks like Chat GBT to write the The kickstter campaign text but I mean, Yeah if he English isn't his first language, I wouldn't criticize him for that. you know, if it is basically a translation of Spanish and people think it's a bit low ever though. There is a bit of a backlash you can say I in a lot of the retro gaming world there always has been. So I mean, I don't kind of I don't give him mugs down for that But I think yeah, the biggest concern yeah for me is I think It could be interesting, like you said, if there is a bigger market, I think for for homeomebrew developers as well. So basically the idea of this is that There's a whole new toolkit there as well. So if you're making new Mega Drive games you could basically build onnline multiplayer or leaderbards or DLC directly into new games using this, which would be quite cool. But but again, I mean, it's it's going to require a bit more than a handful of people to own one of these to make it worthwhile, isn't it? I would like to think, you know, if more of them do get out there I'm looking at that I'd want to play something too or bt or combat or street fighter online or street array Yeah. So I mean, that will be the big selling point for me. I understand maybe why it isn't possible Yeah because I mean, obviously you can do itli retetro arch and stuff like that with net plays if you want to use emulation Um, but I think yeah, that the know how hard it would be for them to basically hack these games to support it. It would be if it could be an easy job then the MAB will see some of that but. I know I'm just such an idiot that I just fought straight away. You buy this and just you just put more combat to it and you're on line. Magically works. Magically works. I only fought that for about ten seconds and then I was like, wait, hang on. Yeah, I mean, it is interesting and I think It would be cool if this just kind pick ups. There is definitely, I mean, even though you can do it via software emulation Definitely a novelty about onnecting a thirty year old conle to the internet and playing it online, I think. so it will be all thirty five plus whatever it is in there. knockking a for God. Yeah. so yeah, that implies. So yeah, I think if you do want to support this, it is going to need support, I think to O obviously it's over the line already, but I think for stuff to get made for this, it is going to need a few more people to get involved and the price isn't bad. I think that is reasonable, particularly if you've got skills to build your own So that is running on Kickstarts. He's still got over a month left. so I'll that link that in This weeks show notutes if you want to get involved in that Now let's talk about the Amiga. I'm going to get you involved in an Amiga story Rviian here. This one might be a bit more up your street than I though to be honest, because I'm not an RPG fan. in the slightest you know, I played some of the more recent Zelda games, the N sixty four Zelda games as well. But we're talking kind of a real old school kind of Zelda style for this game, which is in development right now and I believe there is a demo that you can try out a work in progress. This is a new JRPG style game, a bit like the old schoolool Zeldaas called the Adventure Of noode Yeah, you are very, very right. So there is a demo of this out at the moment for Aiga. I don't know what Amiga. you'll have to help me out in that part.. So you need an AGA Amiga with four megabytes of fast ram. so that would be an Amiga twelve hundred or a CD thirty two with an expansion O obviously an imigr emulator or an five hundred mini I imagine would run it fine. and then says you need a joystick or a game pad portfolio with two buttons to blow this So it is very, very basically looks like The suuper Nintendo version of Zelda Zelda are linked to the past You know, it's that classic top down. veryer bright, very colourful Japanese RPG, JRPG as they call it style of gameplay Um, I think it looks quite interesting. like and I don't mean this in a negative way. I actually think I actually like it in a kind of like the aesthetic choice of it kindind of reminds me of like there was a program called RPG Maker that I used to play around with in the early two thousands where you would make your own RPG. Yeah yeah using pre madeade assets and sprites and you'd kind of drop them in and stuff really reminds me of that. Yeah So highly devoted developed flash games that you'd get on like new ground in the early two thousands U I kind of like that look of it and I was impressed with the scrolling in the game. I was expecting when you're kind of like walking around as the character node in the town and then in the fields and stuff. I was expecting it to just be one screen at a time and you wouldn't see like smooth scrolling. mean because it' got some lovely scrolling J. It's got some good scrolling. it's got some good scrolling in there And then in the demo there is one cave you can go into and there is a bus in there. and you can do some fighting. So it is very traditional, you know, swing your sword you know, not much more to it than that at the moment by the looks of things And the story is basically very reminiscent of a classic JRPG you players node. the local crystal mine local crystal mine There's monsters coming from it plaguing, you know, the local towns and stuff. So you need to go investigate what's going on I'm sure as the game comes out it will basically there'll be a bigger purpose to divide the monsters so there a bigger a bigger threat that you've got to go and sort out I do like the look of it. What I thought was quite interesting was I don't know if you watched the demo Dan, but the soundtrack to the game. I don't know why, but I quite liked it. I quite liked it, but it was getting a mixed opinion in the comments. some people hate it. I think it's quite coolough. It reminded me of like an old school kind of like Ge track Yeah, UK grime track for some reason. It's not very Zelderesque is they're all like whispery kind of yeah ye. It's not very whimsical I was expecting to somebody to start like dropping bars over it, you know, but I was kind of like doesn't really seem to suit the game but quite like it. And there was something very kind of like eerie about it, you know, when when The guy was going around the cave and and he was fighting a boss. And I was like this is an interesting choice I Got some nice bace on it R the headles, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. it felt very UK amaga from the games you've showown me, you know, agony and stuff like. It really reminded me of that But yeah, I quite like the look of this. No news on when the game will be coming out at the moment or when we'll get Any news, any further news on price or how it would be released or anything like that. but demo seems to be pretty, you know There's a good wedge there. It's not like a two minute, there's like a twenty minute video they've put out here. So you know quite a good play at the moment if you want to get hands on it And it is one of those where it's bascially four guys or five guys actually were involved in this and I had some food that the other the week As in America Yeah, this is yeah, just a small creer working on this. So if you go on the edge page, it's one of those kind of name your own prices And then I imagine you'll get access to new versions of it as they develop it and even say, you know let them know if you want to become a beta tester forcoming parts and you know to help them with before it comes out to the public as well. Judging by the comments as well. I mean a lot of people happy about this. I mean, as I said, RPGs weren't really my genre. I mean, I can't really think of any that played properly from that era, you know, kind of pre three D Yeah, but I was looking like as to whether there were any on the Amiga and a few people are saying, you know, there was a a couple on there. For example, there was a perahelum U I came at nineteen ninety three. I don' remember seening the title Amber Moon There was another one that was on there. These are tires are kind of kind of familiar with. I think there' was a port of Estaldue Valley to the PPC ammigas like a decade or so ago. But yeah, I think it's definitely a genre that isn't represented very much on the Amiga Darkstone another one U But yeah, I think, you know, even like if you talk about the Japanese consoles, a lot of them didn't even come out over here, did they? becauseuse it was just a genre then they didn't really think was popular in the West Yeah, you've got quite a few on the snaz in the Mega Drive And you think, oh, there's a good handful of RPGs, action RPGs, kind of thing on the super in Tando and a mega dririve but for the UK, but then you go to North America and you get a handful more that didn't come out here, Th then you go to Japan, there's absolutely tons of them that didn't come out here. Um, I mean, it's in the name JRPG as people call it, but Yeah, definitely I mean, I've not heard any I mean I'm not a meia guy, but I've not heard of any of those games you just listed off of and Sty Dew Valley but obviously that's a modern more modern game Yeah. Well, I think yeah about then they assumed we'd all just wanted like platform games and racing games. Soally they didn't think that we had the attention span to play these games because they are probably didn't ye just to be fair. a lot of e numbers when I was a kid. a lot of smarties. But yeah, it looks really cool. So again, I love the fact that they're kind of putting it out there as a and in development game as well so people can kind of give them feedback and kind of see the game develop too. So if you always wanted a decent RPG, JRPG on the Amiga is available to try out right now, the adventure of Node. So I'll link that up in this week's show notes Now that's go Nintendo newews and N sixty four. now this is a a version of N sixty four Elden Ring that apparently is in a new game Are you a big Elden Ring Dark Souls guy down? No, I'm not againess. So why we need Rvy for this kind this kind of thing? I was more arcades and racers and ye on this kind of role playing and fantasy thing again.id didn't hold my attention long enough. Well there you go. Lucky for you, I am. Yeah. So I really enjoyed Elden Ring. I love Love love, love Dark souls. Elden Ring I thought was really cool. Re enjoyed that when it came out four or five years ago But this is a game called Pandemonium which is in development, which is a out and ring you know, version style game for the N sixty four whichich was we're seeing a lot of these at the moment was made for a game jam which was a two month game jam, I think it was And it's by a YouTuber called booxing Brwin I think his name is, but He's got a really cool video. I'm going to go check his chann out because I've never I've never heard of him played, you know, watched his channel or anything like that before, but This video looks really cool of him kind of talking through this game and there's lots of like references throughout the video for other famous N sixty four games, you know, constant Easter eggs and quotes of Ocarina of time and Majora's mask and stuff like that, which You know, must be the games he grew up with or inspired him to make this. So At the moment it is At a glance, if you're familiar with Dark Souls in Elden Ring, it's obviously an N sixty four game U and I wouldn't even sit here and say it's obviously a really good looking at sixty four game or anything Very classically N sixty four looking although it doesn't have the crazy fog O the smear fision Mage as we know a lot of modern modelers and developers and stuff have managed to overcome this day and age, but basically At the moment, we've got one bus arena. So if you're not familiar with the Dark Souls or Elding Ring games, basically Dan They are. you know, action RPG games, but they're kind of driven by massive boss fights where You will be your tiny little guy who you've created to eer like a knnight or a wizard kind of like build And you will have to fight these ginormous bosses such as dragons, giant worms of tentacles, or sometimes just a mass another knight who's a massive knight with a giant axe or sword Basically, the games are incredibly difficult captured that essence with this demo which is currently playable and basically you're a little knight and you are in a giant kind of like phone room also incredibly reminiscent of Elder Ring and park souls. And you have to fight this huge knight with a huge golden sword And it plays very, very similar to dark Souls in Elden Ring, you roll out the way, you block have to time your hits very carefully, otherwise He will hit you and devastating damage It looks pretty scary, I've got to say. It does look pretty scary and you know, they've even got the whole Going through the fug of warar, it's called in the Souls Games, where you meet a boss, you walk through the fug And then the boss battle will start and you'll have your little life bar and then they'll have their absolutely huge life bar and you have to fight them and roll that the way, etcetera. really think about your timing U But interestingly game is will work on N sixty four. You know, if you put a lot of optimization. Yeah Yeah, with a lot of optimization and stuff, but it will work on your N sixty four Everdrive or Aries I think it's called Aries Emulator But I think this looks really cool It looks as though he's going to carry on developing it. I would love to see This is a full game Well apparently he's going turn into one. he mentionions that the the boss and the characters and actually the lore of the game is kind of custom made for a separate N sixty four game the work not called Pixel sixty four. So it looks like it is going to get turned into a full game. Oh don't you just a bit of a taste for kind of what's coming. So obviously they needed to get this out within, you know the game jam deadline Yeah We're pulling this off. What did you say two two months Yeah, I think it' two months say then he pulled it up. Yeah that quickly ye Yeah, so's really good. I love a good game gem anyway and it's Yeahah, just so much coming out. It's usually dreamcast stuff Yeah Well I and done sixty fourth stuff recently U I'd never even heard of a game jam. I think until about a year ago and now they're just like coming up over time But yeah this this looks really, really cool Yeah, I was good to get some new games for cllassic consoles. and I think having that limit as well it kind of does push people to really put a load of effort into doesn't it having a competitive development of it as well. So yeah, looks really cool. You can grab that right now on GitHub. I will link that in the show notes U this is really funny I love seeing things that get recovered. thingsings that we thought were maybe lost forever. Now if you did happen to attend E three The massive gaming event back in the year two thousand. You may have spotted a giant statue of Lovable Spyro the dragon that was still missing until now He's being founded. This this I saw I saw a glimpse of this about a week ago So this is the basasically, it's a spire of the dragon ube Cheers by the size of a truck pretty big. He's not I thought he was like a small little statue. And he was from, like you say, E free two thousand So Fourth Sarrow game which I think was Spyro entered the Dragonfly, I think it was But anyway He's been he was spotted in an abandoned shop in America, I forget which area it was by a Redditor who basically put it out on reeddit and then it blew up, it's gone on to X and everything basically I think the story goes, he was just in the area And he saw him like gathering dust like in the window. of this like abandoned shop which is just like full of trash, like the shops falling apart randomly it looks like I don't actually know if it is, but he's got like a chain around his neck The Spyro of the Dragon And he's just there covered in dust So basically he tracked down the owner of the shop and went back a few days later and found that it was an elderly man who had actually bought The shop in twenty twenty one I forgotten he even owned the property All right. so who then turned around while they were chating and said Do you want it? Do you want the weird purple lizard thing? That's what you literally described it as. had no idea what it was. No no idea what it was U so so this guy is his name on his handle is Momoa Rge. O Reddit, Yeah, on Reddit And he just said, Yeahah, I'll have him. So you know W got a trailer, brought the trailer and managed to I don't know how Maybe it doesn't weigh that much, maybe it's hollow managed to get him onto the trailer and then dririve him home by the looks of. I've just seen that going down there the motorway Well, what of you should say that? they posted a video of it going down the road with him with him strapped the trailer and he's massive. Like I say, he's probably as long and as tall as a truck twelve foot apparently. that's how big he is. Yeah. It's absolutely massive I'm going to assume he's hollow because from the video where they've got him strapped on the back of the trug He is wobbling a little bit as they're driving along. No med to cement or anything there. No, but they said, you know, they're going to clean him up and everything, but he looks to be in fine condions. Do't there's anything wrong with him He doesn't have his wings by looks of things. which I've just noticed from there because of People have found pictures of it from E three two thousand where it's like stood on like a big podium with've all like the game consoles you know, with the, you know, testers, you know, the with the CRT TV's and stuff around the bottom of the podium. to go and play the demos of the game. They they've been separate parts maybe they fitted on. Yeah yeah, it looks that way. so that's a shame. but yeah, other than his wings being missing, he looks like he just needs good bath really because he's washing down, but it's just so random. like I'm sure there's more to it. U But yeah, the guy who owned the they own the shop he has. He had no idea what it was or why it was there U I'm not too sure what state it was on. I'm wondering whether it was the same state where Efreree was held that year But it doesn't say anywhere in this article, unfortunately. P dig into the Reddit thread for Yeah details. Yeah, you probably have to. Yeah it was Ye of the Dragon So spr a year of the dragon not enter the Dragonfly or whatever I thought it was row Ye year of the Dragon which came out around that time U, But yeah, I'd love to know more about it like If building was like, you know Wh Who made Spyro? I'm trying to think In somen the acquisite so I can't remember who it was ad I'd love to know if it was like a storage facility for them. or if they just sold it to somebody and then they left it in the shop. Or if it was an old video game shop, I just don't know Well, we told that story a couple of years ago, didn't we when there was that Sega R three hundred sixty arcade unit that was found in like a farm I discarded. stuff just randomly finds its way into weird places And there was a video I did on my YouTube channel I a decade ago now it was a really rare late MGa prototypes are basically Commodore were working on external CD RM drive that would allow the Mmiga twelve hundred to play CD thirty two games Yeah. He only made a couple of prototypes, and one of them got found in a barn in Licester So yeah and they'reort of displaining out the computer Museum in Licester, but yeah, kind of the story of how these things make their way there over the decades. reallyally bizarre and yeah iger mystery than crop circles, I think. so very odd but yeah, cool. it's been found though. and yeah, I mean I think it's awesome that that guy has got that. I hope he's got a very understanding partner or mother Imagine turning up with that to your house. How do your wife react if you turn it with a twelve foot spiral U she would kill me. I turn up with like a game, just one game and she's like, Wh I gott to put that Yeah So yeah very cool though. So yeah, what a talking point though when you mates come around having that in the corner of the living room. So I'm glad Spyro was rescued. So yeah, that's very cool. I want to check out more about that story. And the Reddit thread, I'll link that in the show notes as well Now I'm going to get a bit nerdy on you on this next one, Joe because you. I do like it when people manage to get operating systems arere not designed to run on Conoles up and running I've actually been messing around trying to get Linux working on her A Sega Dream cast recently For no other reason than I can Yeah There's a story recently about people installing an early version of MacOS ten. that we covered on the podcast on a Nintendo W. And I did actually see that running at BCF East and I was out there Last month in New Jersey. Sean F Aion retetro had one on on display on his table, which was like surreal to see And this one though I think could be mayaybe the most bizarre one yet. Now this is someone called Throaty Mumbo. who's made a video And he's managed to get Windows C E version two eleven rununning on an unmodded Nintendo sixty four Now again is one of these where There's no real reason that you'd want to do this apart from. Yeah Deliciously nerdy but really is looking into The architecture of the N sixty four now It's alsoious very well known that the N sixty four runs on the MIPS CPU architecture, obviously Nintendo work with The legendary Silicon graphics on the and sixty four back in the day and you know, I think u there has been talk over the years it may be. They overvegg the power of the N sixty four a little bit in the early days There's a lot of talk that it was basically a silicon graphics workstation shrunk down into a little box at Fitness TTV. and I remember Nintendo kind of showing off some early demos that were on quarter of a million pound workstations hidden behind the curt. Yeah. a lot of stories about that. But it does run like you know, a descendant of the architecture that you would find a cut down version that was in those machines. now It turns out there were back in the nineties A certain range of laptops and pocket PCs like in the video it shows an IBM workpad but also ran on these MIPS processors And right. Windows C E briefly had Mip support So he basically thought, well, I wonder if I can get this it was an embedded version of Windows. So Windows CE you generally find on like, you know, pocket PCs or maybe I think, you know, it often ran on like, you know cash machines or automated tills, that kind of thing, an embedded version of it. But it does have a fully functional desktop in there as well. So what he's done is he's basically looaded on some custom software from Homebrew using an EBidDrive cartridge and then, um connected that to a PC push some Roms down there that he he's made himself and then u Yeah basically, took the M sixty four completely apart, removed the RF shielding He got a bit annoyed having to kind of you know, change the SD card regularly. So if you watch his video, he then sold us some wires directly to the the reset button so you can auto reset the machine during testing from the PC. So it is proper like you know, this guy has gone full on hacker doing this and then there are some kind of Classic Windows C platform buildilder SDK tools that work on Windows NT four point zero that actually manage to get running using wine. It's a video you've got to watch really. and it is interesting to see kind of the effort that he went to because It was like some ever drive kind of firmware. debugging issue that he ran into and the stock Microsoft kernel that he did wouldn't work properly had to code his own. So he basically went all out to get this running and spent two four weeks on this And there is a really funny bit in the video where he just gets really annoyed at it and decides to stack it off and play a game of glover So but eventually just figure it out and the final build of it is yeah one hundred percent pure stock Windows CE binaries and kernel code running on a Unmodified N sixty four. And there's even a real time clock built in there as well. So because he he's got an ever dririve X seven in there as well. So it can actually pull the live date and time directly from the cartridge's internal battery clock, which I think is very cool. So it's just weird though C an N sixty four with the You know that the desktop interface is actually re nameaming. remember the my computer icon Yeah versions of windows. Is re up to that to MI N sixty four which is I love how. it's like, why would you do that? Do this? Like what's the point? And it's just like You can run a clock on it. Yeah, exactly yeah. Look look at that. it can keep the time. Yeah But yeah, I think it is it is very cool. You actually just managed to get a version of Tetris right on here from nineteen ninety seven. A lot of stuff he runs fails, donon't get me wrong. It's definitely nothing you could have used in your small business or your home office back in the day. but yeah, running windows on your N sixty four So you wouldn't have necessarily needed a separate PC if somebody had got this running Thtydd years ago It wasn't run the fastest I got on it, but yeah it looks very, very cool. I love stuff like this. read everything nerdy. Yeah. So definitely worth watch that video reallyally entertaining. So I'll link that in the show notes as well. Now Patrons got a few extra new stories, but one more for everybody else and and while we're on the subject of homeome Brew for Nintendo Systems. This is actually something that might be quite useful though because If you have got a a Nintendo Switch that you subscribe to the the online service which It a bad I think it works about thirty five qu a year, which you do get quite a lot for your money on the switch and a lot of different virtual consoles on there, includluding recently they launched Gameboy advanceced games on there in the last year or two Obviously playing them with the The switch controllers, it's all remapped, so it is possible, but there will be people that want that kind of feel of the original Game boy advance So someone has took it upon themselves to do that Yeah, this is quite interesting. So I don't know if you remember it, but whenever I speak to like people in person about this cable Nobody ever seems to remember. I feel like it was something was like localized just between me and my friends, but the Nintendo Game Boy Advance link cable which wasn't the link cable, it was the cable that linked to your game cube Right. So you could get a it was a cable that plugged into the top of your gameplay advance It was pretty chunky, you know, it was like two inches wide P plugged into the top of yourame advents and then it would plug into your gamecube And it was only compatible with a handful of games Um And it' a really bizarre Like concept, but basically and It was compatible with Windwakers Elder Wind Waker. So you would play wind Waker, but then you could have a mate over who would pluged a game by advance into the slot two and they could play as I say now I say players Tingle. Tingle was a character in those older games but you were basically a little Green shadow that moved around on the floor and you could just drop bombs to help fight enemies. but you controlled it with the gameboy addvance And on the game with addvanced screen you could see a map of what was happening on screen A bit like a WU game pad kind of prototype then. Very much so, which is funny enough on retetro Dodo, how they kind of describe it saying it was very ahead of its time Also you could play Final Fantasy crystal Chronicles with it. It was the only way you could play that on multiplayer. So if you wanted to play on more than one player which is what me and my friends used it for. So we would have been Meggan Nintendo Geeks, but I had the game Crystal Chronicles And we had a big sleep over we these big sleepovers when I was about twelve, thirteen Norma makes to bring their Game Boy A advances over with their Game Boy Advance Gamecube cables and you would plug it into the top of the gameboy advance, into the game tube. And it was your controller for the game And all your stats, like your health and everything displayed on your gameway advanced screen And it was the only way you could play ive multiplayer for that game And then they also did it for Zelda Fsords Venture. which was quite interesting. So once again it was your controller But what you could do on force orord adventure is if you separateated. so if you walked away from each other So say I went into a house. What would happen is that would then appear on my gameboy advanced screen and you would Basically you could move away from each other, but if you moveved away appear on the gameway advanced screen. reallyally ahead of its time for like early two thousands. And I didn't ever see anyone do that. So yeah I think you might have been quite unique in terms of people I've known these systems over the years. Really, really interesting device. but what this model has done with it, So the reason I'm talking about it now is Robert Dale Smith, he's called who's posted this on X. Basically he's created a cable. kind of like a throughree device plugs into the switch. So he's got the original cable that I'm on about from the early two thousands But them Daisy chains into a custom made cable. which has got what are the small raspry pies called? I forget what they're called Oh the ones that yeah, the u is it the Pica Yeah, that's it. Yeah. It looks like, I don't know whether it is, but it looks like it's a raspberry Pi Pico. So it plugs into that then plugs into another cable that plugs into the swwitch And Batter looks at things. The Switch just detects it as a controller As a USB controller? just lets you use your gameboy advance as a controller, but he uses that original Gameoy advced to GameCube controller. And it's day ye Yeah, so it's daily chained into one of the game cube Uh like extanders and then it staysy chained into a USB. controller using the raspberry Pi Piico b looks of things U I'm not sure if there's any more wizardry going on there with the software. U because there must be some sort of software in there because of displaying on the gameboy advanced screen is these little eyes that move around. I you get the Switch logo as well that psly there's got there's got to be some custom firmware, some custom software, whatever it's called. Pico there there must be to make this work. but It's ideal for playing game boy advanced games on the swwitch, but also A lot of the switch games I play with my daughter so Merry Party Merarycark only use two buttons anyway they only use, you know, like the D you can, you know, you can drive with the D pad or with the, you know, the stick or whatever So I imagine these would work on a lot of first party Nintendo games anyway, a lot of the Mario games because they're not that complicated of games anyway Yeah and the switch just sees as a controller or it doesn't like anything special. Yeah. So you've got your A and B button and you start select your D pad and then your LenR and You know, That's only two buttons less than what when you You know, when you have one of the switch controllers in your hand and you turn it on its side to play like a multiplayer So I can see this working on a lot of games anyway just for having enough buttons and stuff It's just interesting to see like a weird niche cable Yeah, being brought into twenty twenty six from like two thousand one. Yeah, I'm looking down the thread on X. So just kind to go into a bit more detail on how it works. So he said, yeah, there is two way communication So the switch is kind of talking back via the PicCo adapter in the middle But he says, yeah, the way it's written is there is a small multi boot ROM that's loaded into the GBA. And then then the Pico as well, which basically the Pico sends and receivive messages to both systems. So then really the swwitch just sees as aSB controller But yeah, I think It is obviously if you do play those GBA games online. He does mention that he' surprisingly Responsive. That was kind of my concern whether there be any lag there Yeah But apparently, yeah, according to this throughad he reckons that yeah, it's Re quite quick. so Yeah, I think that it's a great little project. He's actually released this as a There's an open source project that he's got that you can check out on GitHub. So if you want to read more about that JoyPad OS which is a universal controller firmware callore for adapters and custom controllers well. So yeah, it's really cool work and I think Yeah, if you have kind of got a GBO just kind of kicking around in a drawer and want a new use for it. It doesn't look too complicated to build Maybe even I could do this jair. Maybe you could. I won't. I can't even find my original cables. What I'm told you soldering used to be you were doing a while ago. I thought that was yours resolution wasn't it? Yeah? Yeah,, do I'm pretty good at changing batteries on game Boy games. I love, you know? I've not tried a game gear yet, but you know I'll work my way up to it 're going to get to make me a cable. I've got a cbooy advant see. veryer cool work not. you wantanna check that out. Nice little mod. I'll link that and of course all the rest of the stories. You'd have to Google around. I sa say for the job every week Ill put them all in the show notes. You'll find that on your podcast app, video description, you can click directly through on the website the retrohour. com So thank you so much for checking out the news this week. We'll have more stories, of course for you next Friday Next to going inside the world of nineties Internet culture with Cyber cafe host, Wingham Rowan is our special guest next on the retro O podcast. I Greg Richard, It is hot outside and now it's time to cool down. At PC Richard and Sunon, we have the largest selection of air conditioners all at the guaranteed lowest prices. Come see our knowledgeable salespeople to help get you the right air conditioner today. Granger knows, when you're a procurement manager for an office park You're not managing one building, you're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and around corners Light's about to fail, filters ready to clog, HVac on its last leg. If you wait until something breaks, you're already behind Count on Granger for quality products, easy reordering, and twenty four seven support Call one eight hundred Granger, clickranger. com or just stop by Granger. For the ones who get it done You're with the Retro Hour podcast and it's time to welcome on this week's very special guest now today. We' be heading back to a really exciting time. the internet T in the mid nineties when it was still very strange and mysterious and not something most of us had at home back then. But I guess this week is actually a British broadcaster, writer and producer who created and hosted a late night internet show called Cyber Cafe. Now I was mentioning to Wingam, we' welcome one in just a moment. I to sit down and watch this with my dad back in the day and it was one of the earliest British TV shows really to seriously explore what people were doing online because it wasn't a dry technology programm talking about modems and protocols. I think it's fair to say that Cyber Cafe looked at the human side of the early internet and stuff like online romance, the weird communities that were out there, even stuff like digital identity, fringe culture, the moral panic that was often around the time as well, and really what led to the world that we have today really. So A lot of TVX experat then were stopping in the interternet was a bit of a fad, but Wingham was already documenting the people's stories and the subcultures on cybercafes. Let's welcome on our guest this week, Wingham Rowan.'s it going? Very well, Good to see you good to see you, Rbie Yeah. I appreciate coming on and doing some reminiscing about the early days of the net withers, which I think you did mention when we're chatting an email that it's thirty years this year, isn't it? that it started, Yeah, which Ver. It was an interesting time. Less than two percent of Brits were online. We were about eighteen months behind America in terms of internet take upp in ninety five, ninety six and I happen to find out that the ITD network was looking to build a late night schedule. they wanted to go to twenty four seven broadcasting. So they needed new shows, cheap shows and that could just be churnned out. they originally thought one of these shows might be software reviews And I got talking to some people at the Network centre there I used to be a children C Lague presenter. And I just said no, there's something called the interternet. It's a bit weird. It may not last, but There's some really exciting human stuff happening there, because wed transmitted late at night, it wasn't a smax it was sex and pretty ph up right. So yeah, we had a blast for five yet. We absolutely were in there. It's a time capsule of how Brits discovered everything that online could offer before there were algorithms at b All the ways it's all intermediated now, it was just this unleashing of excitement and conection Well, I mean, we do have an international audience as well who some of them may not have seen the show back in the day, which if you want to catch up on some clips, you've got a really good resource ninetiesinternet. org, which I'll link in the show notes. And obviously, we'll get more into the story of Cyber caafe in just a moment, but I'm interested kind of in your history then Wingham, I mean, you mentioned the TV presenting there. Before we get into a lot, mean let's wind it all the way back. I mean, do you remember What kind of first got you interested in teechnology, then, were you much of like a computer fan or game? I have to be honest,, and I realize I'm going to sink in the estimation of yourselves. No, I'm very excited about so human journalism. And that was the perspective I brouought to it and sold to the ITV network center, I should explain for your international audience, ITV is the main commercial broadcaster in Britain. It's a big rival to the BBC, which everyone knows about and I was just rousing the internet in its very earliest days in that Culkyerve chatrooms AOL uses Net You realized people falling in love peopleeople were having very imaginative sex fessions and we can get into the mechanics of one handed typing, as indeed we did in Tyber Cfe on several occasions. And the idea was do a show about this world of connections and excitement and You know, the fact that people who were turned on by being adults, they dressing up in diapers and nappies and being treated as babies as a sexual thing, were findinding each other at last Terribly exciting and we always adopted a rule. We just explain enough about Mems board rates and downloads could understand what they were up to, you know, understand the mechanics of how they were doing what they were doing, but it was really about Oh my God, I've never met someone else before who likes dressing up as a baby and gets off on it actually. Well How did you get access to the machine then? Because the first time you used the internet, Everybody has an experience where it was like, I've on someone else's computer or you know if you were working in journalism, it might have been in the press office, there might have been the internet computer. Do you remember the first time you got access? It was very simple. My then boyfriend now husband was at medical school in Newcastle in the north of England And we were living there at the time, I was producing a TV show for the local station and he just came back and said There's something that we're all talking about at Mot schoolool it' to do with the way you can talk to people around the world on computers come and have a look and you just sneaked me into the computer room my e. babbled and I quickly just thought, yeah, There's journalism potential here. somethingomething's happening under all this. And you guys might remember a very worthy BBC show from the mid nineties c. the net Yes. and it really was I mean, it was good. It was, you know it was but it was very BBC. It was sort of, you know, these enthusiasts are using connected computing to compare bird migration patterns or develop their love of lighthouse architecture. And it was very nice and great. We are put now thinking, wow there's people doing a lot more exciting things than lighthouse architecture here. Let's get and delve into that world. And two questions were, would it last and would these people come on television about it, which at the time was a much bigger deal than it is back. I'm interested to know your television history then as well, how you link these these ideas together and what your history is there. I'm a complete academic failure. I grew up in a little village in rural Somerset and spent all my time when I should have been studying writing letters to newspapers and TV companies saying, Hey, I've got an idea for a show. I've got an idea for a feature. And I managed to kind of claw my way into television's what's called a runner here. boy who makes the tea, fetches the tapes from the library, all those sort of things And I was working at Yorkshire teelevision doing that when suddenly a ten minute slot For the network, children's programs opened up. They needed something until ten minutes And I badering people to say, canan I do some on screen reporting? And I just got a series almost overnight called Ron's Report, which was aboutort talented, exciting, unusual children and their life times And that ran for a few years. I got far too bigheaded about it Being on television was really something in the eighties. I was born nineteen sixties. so this was all happening in the early eighties and I should have got an agent. I should have yeah. planned a career, but instead I just thought, Hey, why am I messing around in ten minute kids programs every week. I want to be a mainstream And went out so you know had the dink ball and inforced learning, but I wasn't as good as that as I was. and then clk my way back up through the producing these raucous studio shouting match shows. So you may also remember Jerry Stringer's show from the US where he would get people who absolutely loathed each other in the same studio This was so successful. and the British pioneer of this format was called Central Wek' on Central teelevision, Fridays at ten thirty PM afternos at ten And I was one of the launch producers of that. and I absolutely learned. Yeah, if you can get to take one example, someone who operates a beur shop getet them in the audience to explain why they should be allowed to operate their shops legally and next to them unbeknown to either of them is someone who goes around gumming up the locks of their shops and putting bricks through their windows. ide. and it's all life So I came to the internet with that background Conflict, excitement, people with doing unusual things rather than Oh, intellectual fasin they sake phhilosophy thing developing here were we were based in Nottingham and ITV that was Clton television as well. So was there any kind of connection there? Be I remember stuff like supermarkets wheite being Yeah filled around here. We Central Wekend which came out of central television, which covered Nottingham and the West Midlands, the East Midlands and the West Midlands Britain in the in that period came out of their studios in Birmingham tended to use the Nottingham Studios for game shows and big lavish productions, but the live some loathsome Tory MP from London who has no idea what he thinks he's coming up for some sort of dignified I Any questions, style, discussion of current affairs, let's get a bunch of gobby women from one of those really tough council estates in Birmingham tank them up in the hospitality episode. We bght them over in a coach, we'd them on loads of drunk We let them into the studio and you've got some MP who's going to make some great pronouncement about fiscal policy And they're just screaming at him and hurling at at him And you know, it lasted for a few years before. political part, he needed your offices. he realized, hang on. This is why are're sending in there?? This is the total bad it. We can't win so What' st done now And I bought it to Well, I mean, late night television back then, I remember, you know, TV programs like, you know, the James Wale shows to watchight. And it was, you know, late night ITV, then it was, you know some really groundbreaking programs back there. So I mean, you kind of touched on, they were looking for some, as you mentioned, you know cheap programs to kind of fill late night television. So you kind of touched on it a little bit, but I mean, I'm interested here a bit more about kind of how you pitch that to to ITB because you mentioned there was some kind of forall that it could have been a software review show. How did it kind of morph then into thoseoc? So I think they were looking for about six new half hour weekly shows. Network center level, they kind of built themselves little compartments. They wanted an agony show, you know, someomebody comes in and talks about it problems they're having with their biseosexuality or something each week. They wanted a sort of raucous Zoo or Mat show and they got one and it's where Graham Norton emerged, although he seems to play it that you see these d. And then they They thought they wanted to do something on computing to attract the young male audience. And the best they could come up with was, hey, you know, we go into Tandy or radio shhack and there's all these boxes of software There were some early games Let's get people in to review them. Surely someone's buying this stuff and they can talk about it. And that was kind of when I entered the conversation and I was producing game shows or angular intlevision at that point No, I just came in and said, look Srinkr software isn't where ion is somebody is going to seize on all this chatter going on on the internet as a source of stories. And if we don't do it, the BBC will wise up to just how worthy the ness is And they they will launch a sound show about all this material. So I' let's get in there and do it. I have to convinced them. The that was serious. you know, you were maybe too young to remember, but in the nineteen eighties, citizens banned radio hit America and hit America and then Britain. for a while you couldn't go into a Tandy or radio shockoutly besieged by hardware that allows you to talk to other citizens and users and it just fadeed. I mean, I think truck drivers still use it, but they did as a a mainstream thing within of that Nine months and they were all sereriously worried that the internet would be the same. Yeahah, connected computing, everyone's chatting on it now, but there'll be something else this time next year. So the provvisor was, this doesn't work, If you can't find the material, you are going to be reviewing those boxes of software that are in tandy at the moment When the name the Cyber Cfe was chosen, I thought that was a really smart move because I didn't start I thought cyber cafes were quite cool and like the net and you know? know, I didn't like it. I wanted to call it cyber stories But okay Yeah, the thinking about Cybercash right as a concept was this is where the cool people go to hang out because in those days Very few people have the hardware to go online, You can pay to find the minute and you did it sitting up, you know, it wasn't on your phone and bad. this was way before myile phones So why not go to a cafe and have a coffee and do it and hang out with other keep cool people who were in the cyber era? So that was the thinking for ITV. Over the five years we were running, the cybercafes went from being cool, I think, to being a bit sad for people who didn't have their own home connection by the end of the nineties. Who did you think the audience was? Because if I think of other kind of late night ITV, I mentioned the James Whale show. Euro trrash was on a weekndemy. there were basically people coming back from the pub. Who was your audience? did you know? So we went out Typically at midnight, we shifted around during the five years. but It was clearly a mle audience and we knew that because when there was a big sporting event on DVCY Our audience was just five. We were right down, could go down by seventy percent. And the same if there was a big action movie G you see one. So it was male, it was surprisingly broad in its age range based on the people who emailed into us to say, I should be on your show. I don't know if that's just because other people more willing to go on TV and talk about what they were doing. But It was manual Cite. exist by today's standards and there is some stuff we covered that With hindsight, we should have covered in a slightly more rigorous way, I think It was the nineties I. It was andic Cybercama was a product of its time but yes, there's some stuff stuff that I think I blush it about and there I think it's really interesting as well because that late night slot enabled you to obviously do some of the U ruder stuff, but it also enabled you to engage with communities and stuff that might not have massively got exposure. stuff like the gay community in that, sae spaces online. And smaller groups. How important was that to the show? Oh hugely. and it affimated me. So one of the earliest communities we got into was alien abductees Keep an open mind. that was a group of people who Absolutely as far as I can tell genuinely believe they have been abducted by aliens that want to sort of probe the human body. And we plugged in through a woman who approached us is one of our rare email approaches and She had an it incident in a field somewhere in Lincolnshire. When you could say Oh she was unconscious, you know, she fellllow from bank to head and then had some sort of hallucination But she was absolutely convinced that something extraterrestrial happened her for about an hour. And what was fascinating was she'd never told anyone but she was She used the phrase, I was given the internet for Christmas, which is how people talked about it in the nineteen nineties And she went online and She went into the paranormal chatrooms and she found us convinced and they started having regular weekly online meet upps and we got her in and it has changed so way 's not for me to judge. she absolutely believes somethingomething happened to her that was out of this world people around her, herer family seem to by and large believe her That's the power of online community Did you think covering those kind of topics did was it sometimes hard to get people within the television industry and maybe slightly broader to kind of take it seriously. I remember hearing at the time that Patrick Moore dismissed the web as kind of Oh yeah territory. Yeah.. No, no, you told this was just full of cranks and people what they were talking about. I mean, we went looking for those people to be provocative. We had people who were just disgusted by We had a celebrity every week of varying sort of somewhere from the A list to the Z list And we tried to confront them with relevant sites. And my favourite, I think was Natalan Bruglio, who at the time was the big star of the Neighbours. so brought was an international phenomenon. and We confronted her which a site put up by one of these stage handands who worked on neighbours taken photos of the graffiti of the Chast in the character. for you restrooms and the backstage areas. and we were better. confronting her with all these rumors that presumably some of which she knew about about her fellow cast members and who I were sleeping with and what they were doing. I There it's not pulitzer prize winning journalism But it's It's exciting and provocative. and yes, there was no way to do this kind of journalist or very, very hard to do this kind of journalism before the web came along which We could justify it. was a kind of in premature of there is a communications revolution going on and we are exploring it. Yeah, we're exploring the racey bit of it. Three the internet, if the television program said, hey, I want to at Sa content about But noises Well how different farts sound as sent in as empty three files No . That acted you ludicrous, I was demeaning because it's part of this communications revolution, which is how we' very careful to position cybercaathe to give it that sort Not intellectual edge, but justification for existing. Yeah, we clearfullly went down all sorts of R health, some of them as I say, we probably shouldn' I wonder what the research was like. Did you have lots of people just like, Ohh, I found another one or you know noises ye. Yeah people weekly looking for something because I saw It's such a random mix. One of them was like, different church bells from around the world. I know, you know could we play on a website if we couldn't find enough rasty material at towards the end without getting repetitive. so we have to put in some some sort of yeah. U worthwhile stuff We had a team in an office Everyone else who worked on sort consumer shows down the corridor or local news was forever lurking around our office. Yeah, what have you found what you found can I go back and tell my mates about? and And we' pursued some quite big stories. You may have heard Jenny Cannam Yeah this remarkable young woman at college in Washington, D.C and she could twenty four what we would now call twenty four hour webcams in that bctroom was actually really technologically challenging to do then And then she was the first live streamer. She was wasn't Yeah. Her magic was for a period, she would go out. B C. Bying to God bringing back to her room And he would be the unknowing content creator for the evening. And this still have a huge audience to the point where it crashed all the serbs that you' got to find out and we persuaded her. to let us fly her over torin And we got, I think three of her biggest UK fans in to talk about, o the Jemmy Cam she' so sincere, it's so interesting. It's such a good lifestyle experiment D you notice? She wasn't at home last night Yeah, well, that's really odd She's Nivia always there. Well, that's ' she was on a plane to Britain. Here she is. And these magic moments when people met there they'd only known online was became a real recurring fie And that's what I mean by the human s And that was a really interesting one as well because everybody it got very cult like status. People started to learn who her flatmates were and you know, other people in the dormitories and Now you look at stuff like Twitch and people are doing live streaming all the time and this was on a God, I think it was like Less than fifteen frames per second one One frame per second tiny little window and it was was worldwide sensation. Yeah. Yeah. And the lack of visuals often surprises people. So we would I mean, I remember one story where we had a lad of about sixteen who was absolutely in love with a girl in America. And they talked every night for hours. if I talk, I mean, they typed backwards and forwards and knew everything about each other, but he'd never seen a phOo offer because you sent photos in the post those days, and it hadn't turned up. And we flew her over and we liaised with his parents, her parents, got him in to tell us all about his online girlfriend. And Lam said There she is And we have to get her to tell him some of his secrets that only she would know so he would understand this is actually her I mean that became an increasingly bigger part of the show, didn't the online romance aspect of it, which obviously today, I mean online dating is the way that everyone does it now, but I mean, did it kind of still feel a bit kind of Nich and cookie back then? Very much so. I remember one lad who came on who was in an internet relationship with his girlfriend and he just said, Well my friends at school think really sad ' got an internet girlfriend, running their real girlfriend U I remember another guy early twenties who came in to explain He been a virgin in real life. He'd had lots of online sex. and he thought the in real life version was just a bit of a disappointment. I didn't see why the millennia humans had been so excited about it. Yeah, we plummed. every aspect of online romance you can think of, including the bad guys, I remember one lad who emailed us boasting about having someone who had five internet girlfriends on the go. and he would talk to them all every night, each thought they were the only one And he shared his logs and we were able to track down the five. And I think we managed to fly three of them different parts of the U.S to hour recording. And we had him facing me talking about, o ye I'm a lad. I've got all these girlfriends around America and they don't know and they think I'm so hot Well, here's Jenny. who's go for number one Jonny, what do you think about that? And then, you know he gets thoroughly flustered. And then we br to herear Sally from Pennsylvania Si, what are you mking of all this? And yeah, he wasn't a sort of immature teen now he is of late twenties. so arguably he deserved what he got. we whpped on every angle. into that romance and there was some really moving stuff You know, in the days when there was no algorithms, no photones. veryery awesome People were just tight You would have chat room. Yeah, so people met that wasn't it? Yeahah. Yeah. And when you read the logs, were pouring their hearts out that really intimate story I kind of wonder if that initial Anonymity kindind of helped in that regard. you didn't have video, you couldn't see another person. It was just typing, and I guess until they had that meeting in person It might have been a bit easier to pour your heart out to someone who was doing text on the screen. Quite possibly. And it was in the days when you didn't have to think, is this a bot? I'm talking Yeah I mean dead There may have been an element of cot and paste. You never know if someone was storing what they typed to a previous online girlfriend and rehashing it for you. But and No, it was it was really profound. It was Inas, it was loving Um And I can see why a lot of people Oh, I'd rather have online franks than real ones. But it wasn't just you on the show. I mean, you did have a crew of people around. You remember Dan and Jeremy did their best and worst of the web? That's right Which was a really interesting st. It's really funny to think back. So I remember magazines did a similar thing back then didn't they? You'd read a computeer magazine. They had a little box out of, the best websites this week Yeah. and you have so many websites now that it's just going to take it for granted Yeah Yeah and these massively complex URLs as well. Yeah. That's right. And we used to put every guest's email address up on the screen. Yeah. and people would talk to them directly after the show Yeah, I mean, we we tried not to just rehash do straight rehash of comic stuff. We try to find websites where It was funny onnce you understood the original context, at one point, one of those kind of Catholic Um an living organizations helpfully put up a directory films you could go rent for a blockbuster with dirty bos in them. and it told you where You know, at sixteen point ten there is a woman stucking out of a shower becausecause the p could then spool through that and resume the plot therea. And of course it's huge resource for. I just why you go blockbuster, was the dirty bits, go back and get another of them But also I mean you had Anna Dansky as well who was you became your co host really in many ways. and Ss did the the sections on there where you set her a challenge, didnn't you like an online challenge? Any of those that kind of were memorable anything that sticking in your mind and what was kind be the idea behind that, then So the idea was she had a theme given to her at the top of the show, find The most unattractive moodists on the wayb find the range just parted tricks on the web and then we'd come back to it just before the break to say, yees, give us a tease what if you found. And then we'd come back to it at the end of the show to say, Ran, give us your top three mostost unattracted new discs on the internet. That was the part of the show where we had likes crawling all over it M J We were I remember the one that got escalated up and up and I think we ended up having to re record it it was something I find cartoon embarrassing cartoon characters or something and a whole bunch of Senior Disney animators at some point had some sort of dispute with Disney and in retaliation They had drawn these absolutely perfect images of the key Disney characters in the most bizarre sexual positions you can imagine And once you've seen them, frankly, it's very hard to unsee them. Thats how the mini mouse comes off on screen and We thought this was brilliant. so funny And the lias just went tover wrot. You know these are copyrighted characters. These weren't rough sketches. These were drawn by the people who draw the actual characters for a living. and so we ended up having Sometimes we had a lawyer with us just detailed No, That's not going happen And other times we just tell, yeah, youve got to referm this upstairs. You don't to face the wrath of Disney's legal to. Oh, no, no. I was wondering if there was any issues with like Piracy downloads or like you know links that you put out changing or viruses even because that was quite a gooding about that. whichich might be something we were rightously unthinking of, to be honest We recorded shows in batches of nine every nine weeks. So when something was toggable, we could get it to air within a week typically. put it straight ahe of the editing gue and anything we haveels had a shelf life would' keep the end of nine weeks uncle. So We I'm sure we did put out dead URLs we wanted to kind of have the what we call the screen architecture r up a URL for email addresses to distinguish, you know, is someone talking about their foot fetish But actually because it's got the character string while they're talking. This is about communications revolution. It's not just Yeah grituousous voilerism into this guideline It's interesting you mention you kind of film batches of episodes. you know nine seems a hell of a lot to do and in one day D that kind of? Did that hurt or help the show, do you think I think it hurt I mean it was f onong a sped budget. It was a very low budget show. Everything we did was completely modularized So each page of scripts just had this is the shirt to wear So that when it's all reassembled into show four of these nine You will be wearing the same shirt throughout. and we always to compare about we didn't want toQ and able to use it And I think that came across, you know a slight zoo format sometometimes chropped the ball and lost it and We just carried on I was think the camera mebers have been exhusted after that acc. A lot of camera movement didn't you? Yeah ye Yeah Yeah was veryy ninety style lot of zoom in. Yeah. in the first batch we did. someomeone had the bright idea of setting one of the cameras to black and white. cut out what's called color balancing Th those days with video cameras as your retro audience will know you had to mechanically balance the color between two cameras if you'recutting between them using that in sc of white scale because that actually takes up quite a bit of time We have this great idea to sayve cost in the edit suze by having one in black and white. And in the end it just was too jarring to randomly cut black and white for some shot. So you stopp doing I remember that I was woondered whether that was a stylistic decision but it was I think it was aic decision. yeah yeah. along with the decision to letterbox it. So you have the little sort of crawling cyber cafe kind of slightly hallucogenic effects across the bottom screen to create a clear frame because we use some of the main content picture sometimes get a bit blurred because it was down so fast We now like on TV, we have so many interactions, you know, people are saying tweet this and kind of you know, having live responses and back then a lot of TV was one way traffic, so you were just broadcasting now. But you guys got usesnet reactions. Yeah, yeah. how did that change the chair? Well, we were in and out at the chat rooms all the time People approached us through the chat rooms, they emailed us. We did start doing what are called twls where you know I would pop up after U Joe at seven PM on ITV say, Hey, are you using this new thing called the interternet? You've got an exciting story to tell? Eail us at. and And through all this We really plugged into some communities. and peopleople work often willing to open up it Quite extraordinary about their love lives, their're embarrassments. There was one guy who was on the point of marrying his internet girlfriend only to discover she was already married to another guy who she'd met online And he was devastated and I was really flattered that his best reaction was I want to on insber cae and warn other people on it that you know, check out the girlfriend who seemed too good to be true. She might be a serial Do you if in the nature of the internet as well about then really helped, you know people actually creating and personalizing their own sites, blogs and conities ideas and. And you didn't have algorithms. You know, you you weren't playing to the algorithm very little incentive to say anything outrageous beyond the same incentive that would apply if you were at a party in know rooms full of twenty people. So It was much more thoughtful and sincere. There certainly were people who believed, you know that we're all a race of mind controlled sex slaves. and we have them on. We had on people who belieite Christ had returned and was living in North London biding his time before revealing himself. and They were sincere. They were genuine. It wasn't this kind of attention economy. People would go in and out of the same chatrooms night after night and meet the same people It wasn't curated by any kind of mechanism. it was just who was talking and what they wanted to talk about. I feel it was a kind of time capsule, precious time ses and kind of collections of things people have gone out and actually built and spent time using was it tripod a kind of primitive webs Tripod an Aual f Yeah. we used to do our searches on Alta Vista because it was before Google. U. We had we used to spend a lot of time pointing a television camera at a computer monitor Because that was the fastest way to get websites onto videootape rather than sh there and you do it all through some Bluetooth or something It's interesting as well that kind of you know when you started that in ninety six, it kind of felt like, you know, obviously the wave of the internet really started in, you know, that kind of eighteen months before that. I remember we did an episode a couple of years ago with Eva Pasco. who, um She ran the Cyber Cfe Siberia in London. right o. Yeah. And she mentioned about how you know, David Bowie was in there regularly. Mick Jagger, Klie Menogue was even in there bit of a, you know, creative and celebrity hotspot because the internet was just Around that time it got considered quite cool I think you know, did that kind of help then? D did you notice that there was more interest? Yeah. so in the second half subcaap is running from sort of ninety seven onwards I began to think, wow, we're really onto something here. You know it's clear interternet usage is growing. You were beginning to get mentions of internet in mainstream TV. think There was a famous episode of Friends where Chandler says, Ohh, I found this on the internet and that just spiked awareness of So I thought we were on a roll. I thought, well, maybe they'll low us to prime time, Maybe they'll give us you know better budges. But anfry Wh all this attention was coming from, it was coming from people turning their TV sets off. And yeah, I went from having to justify the internet as being an actual thing to be urgently summoned to executive meetings to explain what the hell's going on. What is this online and without naming names of say some very important ITV executives trying to figure out how to replicate interaction of the internet on TV. So you may remember days when It was believed that all TV shows were going to go interactive. You choose how this episode of the Simpsons is going to end. And it didn't really fly because if you like the Spsons, you trust the screenwriters to come up with the funniest ending. know you're your default setting is, I just want the funniest endic They know that. So it didn't work for But you know quite a time I was hauled into meetings to kind of discuss this, you I can't remember what the big shows were at times summer murders, things like this. Could they go interactive I remember different massively failed ITV digital later on where they had some interactive aspects of it like who wants to be a millionaire? special where you could press different colourors and buttons. Yeah. And of course online shopping grew out of this QVC and channel fogout Yeah but nobody wants to do that on the TV interestingly. Browsing the wom on the television felt nice did it. Absolutely. And why would why would you watch some presenter talking about a teapot you could buy when you could just go to Amazon and buy it. So I think that was always going to be a short lived face, but The point I'm making is just there was this period in the late nineties when Let's call it the old media was trying to reverse engineer what was obviously the appeal of the new medium Yeah I think don't think television. gave up its dominant cultural position lightly. they fought about that I make an interesting an interesting point there because obviously as The internet became more mainstream and I' got some stats here. You mentioned, you know, two percent when you started the show U off UK households had interternet access that rose to nine percent. Whas nine percent in ninety eight and then twenty five percent by the year two thousand So obviously the internet was becoming much more mainstream. And it did like ITB ever kind of feel like It was competition because I mean, weve done episodes about stuff like, you know we talked to Dominic Diamond, who did games Master in the early nineties. And he said he had a real battle with Channel four because they didn't want kids playing video games, that wantn't them watching the TV. Yeah abbsolutely. And we had exactly the same a sense that o, this beast is raging out of control. It's no longer some funny little bunch who we can use to generate content very cheaply because they'll come in and just talk about what they're doing. And it became, hang on, there's something here. The ground is shifting under us We're losing the young audience, the television, which of course is the one advertiser's value. So for ITV, that's more of a problem than BBC. and I mean, I hoped at one point they'd see shows like ours as a way to callaw back that young audiage and go where they've gone We couldn't cover it fast enough. I remember doing some briefings for the guy who became Grain the producer of the Grain Norchire Gra Nortam is a British Cheshire host and explaining websites and where we found our content to him. And for a while Graham Norn show mind the Internet so funny. peripheral content But no, I think there was a definite sense around ITV, particularly Why are we promoting this You know, it's almost like having a show saying, donon't watch T It's weird now how, you know, the internet's so built into our lives and reality is kind of not really blurred, between them, you know, there was that big separation back then. Did you have any guesss that kind of felt off the wall back then, but now we seem pretty regular U We We had whoo were trying to make a genuinely believe then but was really controversial at the time. So I remember this one Cine with't we had lawyers all over us You remember crop circles, which were big in the nineties in the what they would the wheh they mass ornate patterns of flattened wheat would appear overnight As see. a spaceship had landed And we We had two lads who had built a website saying, Hey, we create this crops know, hereere's how we do it with a plank and a rope in the middle of the night and we had A emond woman in about her fifties who was a professor of paranormal activity at one of the Scottish universities, who had to Reasonable epideemic at time proved that these crop circles could only come from some sort of alien being lounding and We got them on, neeither knew the other was going to be there and they had to kind of dust up that we loved. And they lies were all over it because of course Farmers who own the wheat are not thrilled by this at all. I had to read that statement from the National Farmers Union and make clear that we did not approve of anyone making cropsles It was I mean, now I think nobody Seriously think things crop circles are manifestation of our space. It's so obvious how you can make them. We're going to get comments snaring. Well, right s. But at the time It was, you know, debunking the The mythology around crop circles was a big thing. So yeah, the world just c I forgot how big they were as well. They like the news and stuff Yeah. Absolutely. And you get these vast beautiful structures. and that was before you could photograph with drones. you know, peopleeople had to shotter a helicopter to shot of them and They just appear overnight. And you can absolutely see why people would believe yeah, this was some sort of alien intelligence coming to visit us You also cover people who are You know, kind kind of the early days of the commercialization of the Wb Rubos in the way. there are some great clips on your website nineties interternet.otg obviously like as I mentioned,' be in the show thats people to check them out. There's one there about early commerce as well, peopleeople that are trying to start businesses on the web. And I mean, that was the days before, you know Even I remember people being really skeptical about even daring to put their credit card number into a website't Yeah. I mean, didid you speak to many people like that which I don't think. I mean my understanding is it was the death of Princess Diana that made online card payments acceptable because I think it was the World Bank of Scotland were poised to do a trial of online car payments. Diana died. they wanted a memorial sice in a hurry non for car payments and so many people donomated that I understand it, that's what m Calhone acceptable. So this was all pre that. I remember we did a story about the day that Argos started selling bananas in their pajamas in merch through a trial website and the only thing you could buy was these toys bananas in their pajamas, which will spin off from a TV show. But yes, we had some of the early spammers on to confront their victims. and that you That was serious because The person receiving it was pain But every minute they were online receiving your jumped aail And so that was quite inflammatory. other people try to monetize a whole range of things, you know, cute cat paintings and so on and You began to see that blossoming of entrepreneurship. It was very primitive by the standards of work going on today Also popa bads was there anything about Yeah popa bads on that? Yeah. Yeah, they got more and more annoying as time went on And they weren't targeted at the time, you know, it was I'd be bombarded with As of C captu, right? Well, I wondered, you know, going out there W you guys ever targeted by hackers or anything I meridian site No, not I know of them. We certainly had our share of people who didn't approve of us We had people who had a moral objection to the internet and would write letters to the ITE centre saying this show should not be on, but I think that group of people were pretty much post the entire ICD Ich sure, which was pretty ranking No, I don't think we were ever a chance peopleeople tryed to mislead us People tried to get us to cover dongy sites Um So there was one site which was was presented to us as sort you know about the joy of childhood or something and it turned out to be a rather fority set of content files of little girls be photographed and naked at the bes. It was Yeah, the bad the underside of the web was certainly there U I don't think we have ever got egg on our face completely over it possibly more by luck and judggement So obviously, Cyber Cafe was networked on ITV I heard L tryon to kind of move to Meridian only. What was kind of the story there then with the move I littleittle factor in the regulation of ITV and they ITV network center was under pressure from the then government to bump up its regional programming so instead of just serving the nation homogenously to say, you know, this is a show for The Yorkshire region or the Tun Tes North of Easter. of England region and I'm sure I'm not revealing any secrets at all now known. but what they did is They took the nighttime schedule carved it up So they would show cyber cafe in just the Meridian region, southeast of England On Tuesday, nights Then on Thursday nights, they'd repeat it in the rest of the country or they'd do it in sort of Scotland north of England and then on Friday night they'd show us in the Midlands and Wales and becausecause the first transmission was genuinely local We counted as part of their regional quota And then the repeats by other regions would just, Hey, that's just really great, another show that we just want to carry. And they were doing it with all the other shows So it was, I'm afraid, a gaming of being system. to try and make it look like I think he come to a more regional output than they actually were. Did that affect the show then? I mean, obviously even th no one' got a national audience, I mean, it must have been a bit disheartening. Yes.. We were under pressure to give every Story A Southeast of England. Agle. and whichich meant we could find someone in Dundee with an in Scotland with an amazing story to tell. and we wanted them on We don't have to find any connection any part of the southeast of England. So it led at its most blatant publishhingment this, but it led to, Hey, Ravi, you're a student in Southampton. Tell us about your website blah blah blah. And actually, you were at the University of Glasgow. You were born and bred in Carlisle. You've never beenou of the Midlands in your life before, but you were right at that moment a student in Southampton because we were recording in Southampton and you were a student There's so much internet going on in the Southeast. Wow. Yeah. Yeah of all the interesting people in the Southeast. So I'm not proud of it, but we were torn between this tension of You need the best possible content because an audience are satisfy and the bosses want numbers But you've got this kind of Please I mandate that you got to focus on this completely arbitrarily shaped Cor I been drry Yeah. Which you know, the internet, its name, it's international. So' all over the place. Yeah. Yeah. it must have been, yeah, kind of really putting a downer on thing. I mean, how did the show kind of wrap up then? So it went onntil around two thousand, Is that right? Well kind of downment there. What happen? There came a point They did one series without me. so right at the end There wass a kind of change of management at Maridian intelllevision, which made it. and I think they wanted to have one go at trying to prepare it for the mainstream So they brouought in to replace me as presenter, Richard Bacon, who you may remember as the bllue Peter producer a Blue Peter presenter who was, I think it's fair to say indulging in habits that don't become a blue Pa presenter and had fallen from disgrace. fall into disgraced book was perceived as therefore being kind of edgy and exciting or a young male audience in a way that me who was by this point. Preaching forty wasn't and that the one off show they one off, I think they did eight shows with them here It was just woundound up after much. No, I think the writing was on the wall Yeah, either we're going to be the dominant ITV show for the internet era or we're just going to count this because it's It's attracting people to do something we don't want them to do I think it's such unique show kind of brridging that area of two worlds. you know, come and discover this world. We'll show you everything crazy inside. and I think Maybe it couldn't be applied today with anything apart from maybe VR or something, I don't know it. I'm totally. was It was absolutely a product of its time. It It's a time capsule of the days which I still regard with great tenderness. It was the days when A whole bunch of people suddenly discovered, wow, I've got this new way of connecting with others. And yeah, you might do that through a shared love of Ehibitionism U but You could see how exciting. and innovating it whilst the people. You know, if you had spent your life trying to get it copies of a badly duplicated newsletter or adult babies And now suddenly you could go online at six o'clock every Saturday and talk to twenty of them and you could arrange meet upps and you could share your story and hear their stories It was incredibly powerful and because it didn't have algorithmic intermediation. because it wasn't commercialized in the way it is now. you know, you paid for your account at compompuse Serum You just chatted away and you paid for your time online It was very, very different. And when I talk to younger people today about what the internet was like in my nineteen nineties, there's a sense of Wow. I think we lost time Yeah, you know, when when it all when they B all started in about two thousand. millions poured into commercializing these interactions and extracting as much monetary value from people's online activities as was possible. We definitely lost for And I think when it got created as well, when it became search engines with suggestions and kind of choices that they made rather than going out and hunting and finding Absolutely our stuff. Yeah. seererendipity was a really big thing. And it was also there was a lot of wall gardens as they were called. So if I was a computerve user chatting to other foot fatishists. you Rbby might be in the AOL king about. It definitely was yeah. It didn't mean. I hate to add, I was only in m for room professionally. L for content What's on Yahoo? Yeah. All right, you are right though. it's kind of a lost skill now browsing the web, isn't it? We have a section of apps that we use every day, but that's about it. Yes, I think. Yeah. And also just reading stuff. You know, it doesn't hit you like a TikTok video in the first mighty nanoseconds to grab your attention. It's somebody unfolding their story being asked questions by other people in the channel coming back Tomorrow night to continue the dialogue's different. And you did it sitting up, you couldn't sort of sprawl around doing it. You had a keyboard. You'd have a laptop on your lap, you you had a boxy monitor It was just lines of Dream A screen Yeah, text rveling up Yeah which' why I think your show work well at that time of day. because I remember, you know, I was a teenager then I'd often sit up, you know, at midnight I would be on the internet while I do on my TV or on the wall and you know, browsing all kinds of websites at night. So I think yeah it was definitely a product of its time, but really exciting time. Yeah And fantastic lot back on as well. I mean I did mention the clips on your website. Is there any plans for like a full archive? If you got a full archive of any great I would love I haven't got all the recordings. I would love to see ITV launch it. you know, I think it captures an episode in social history that it' be there as a resource. peci should shows like Bette, but that content was well covered by the print media as well. You know, there was wired magazines had started various other avenues that were're looking at the technological aspects, but the racier social aspects. pretty much a niche through the nin. I think that would work great nowadays, but yeah Tenagers are looking back at that old nineties era and that kind of stuff. and this with you know, celebrities and stuff it over celebrities at the time. But yeah, and a lot of them either completely clueless or completely critical of this newfangled into that thing Yeah. so if anyone IUV iss listening can do it. Yeah get it, getet up on an archive. org or something like that Yeah. abbsolutely. G great to see them m all in full. Well Wiam, it's been great to hear some memories of cybercfe. what do you do these days, then Imine? What's of your job now? Well I hate my full time job now is something that I started as a sideline while I was doing cybercathe. So It may seem odd, but if you spend your day immersed in into that por can get a bit repetitive month after month after month and I was genuinely excited about the kind of social and economic potential This internet thing and very interested in what it was going to do economy and for people