PlayStation 2 and Future Projects

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An Aiga Cassic gets a remake and we go inside DMA Design with Brian Watson ow our podcast is brought to you every Friday with our sponsor, our goodood mates at Bitmad Books. Now of course, World Cup fever is on right now. while you're watching the matches this month, definitely check out that incredible hardback volume, A Tale of twoo halfs. Now this huge book weighs in more than six hundred pages and celebrates the complete evolution of football video games.'s written Gaming historian Richard Moss, so I'm sure you've heard the podcast before and covers more than four hundred games. Everything from the early pixel retro cllassics legendary games like kickoff, sensible soccer, FIFA, Provolution soccers in there, and the management simulators, championship manager, football manager all in here as well. and of course full of that high quality artwork and analysis you expect from BitmapBooks. You can check it out and the rest of their retro gaming collection, get you copy at bitmapBooks dot com d Hello and welcome to the retetro ourour podcast episode number five threety seven, Your weekly dose of retro gaming and technology newews with me, Dan Wood Ravby Abberbt and me Joe Fox. And great to have for joining us for the podcast every week, of course, and lets you know what's been happening in the world of retro gaming and technology, a bit of a chat about all the big stories that have been making the headlines from over the last week, bringing you up to speed on it all, and of course, welcoming on veterans of the industry ono the podcast every week to tell us their story, some of the classic games they worked on and also going inside someome of the most legendary companies of all time. And actually this week, I don't come much bigger than DMA design. Oh no. you know, we've got an amazing guest on this week. It's Brian Watson and We talk about DMA and we kind of talk about the history of Lemmings, of course onene of the biggest games in the world that's been ported I think it was over thirty two systems. It's an incredible amount of systems that Lemms has gone on to. Well Brian did the AtariST port and it's very interesting because really talked about DMA and the Aari side of things. so u No, obviously they were or developing on amigas, but we heard a story of, you know, menace and lemings being reported on those like the technical challenges that they faced alsoso the Atari Lynx, which is a Quite an interesting story. It's interesting. I kind of forgot that Lemings to the Tribes came out the atariST So that was quite a quite a late game really? W wasn't it like late ninety three, early ninety four, So you know We're bringing out like a what, you know, we've got a AAA release today On the Atority at that stage, I mean, got the Falcons was out by then, wasn't it? And also the Lynx was a complete rework like a smaller screen interface that youre on a handheld. it's a total different title and that was a really, really nice version And we kind of talk about, you know, how that version led to him Joining Iiguana games got taken over by a claim. So started going into N sixty four titles stuff like Turak as well when we talk about The sound drivers and You know gettingting sound to work well on N sixty four with the cartridge limitations, but then also going ont to the Playstation two. and a classic title that I actually Absolutely loved which was arerea fifty one. Um, Wh that was like an on rail shooter, yeah, yeah.. Yeah, but it had like silicon graphics rendered backgrounds and then FMV in there as well. It' a really early one actually Theyed on a Tori Jagua hardware, which I wasn'tbody had that custom Jagua, but it never came out for the jack Yeah Joelves is light shoot. A you aware of that one? Area fifty one? Yeah, I really liked arerea fifty one. I've got it on PS one but I remember playing it in the arcade Um there's a I can't remember the name of the aliens in it But there's a when everybody mentions this game, there's a cheat code which was in the arcade machine where you had to like shoot certain things on the screen in the first screen and you'd actually get to play as the alien which nobody el seems to talk about, which is like really weird like for a light gun game to have like a cheat in it there. And then interestingly, there was an area fifty one too. on Cnil as well whichich you can never find because many of you try to look at it up, it always comes with the Area fifty one PS two game, which is a completely different game So I'm really looking forward to hearing this one because of I don't think've had anybody talk about that game before. Yeahom I grew up with. So's a forgotten cllassic by most people. Yeah, tos really get into you actually. And then also's going inside I mean, obviously we mentioned the World Cups on right now. I know next to nothing about what the Americans call soccer. I know even less about American football, But obviously it was a huge series wasn't it NFL quarterback, which was kind of be their kind of Madden competitor, wasn't it? Well ye, and actually amazingly we've talked about Madden on this podcast, probablyro important than. we've talked about Area fifty one Um But yeah, that that background and how u They ended up getting an exclusive license. NFL games on the An sixty four, which was Really interesting because ed progression and sports games as you know, you were mentioning the intro football games as well. that always drives technology. so it's interesting to cover the sports stuff as well Yeah, so Brian Watson, DMA design, Iguana, acclaim, all of that coming up on this week's interview. If you're listening on the audio podcast, you get that in part too. If you're watching on YouTube, that'll land as a separate video early next week. And actually if you want to see Brian in person if you enjoy You're here on this wee' show. He's going to be doing a few events,ver there' some that we're to be at as well Yeah, yeah, he's going to be doing a kickstart, which is my event, the big Amiga show, which is happening on the seventh and eighth But also he's of August is that Yes in August? Yes notot this next month. But alsoso he's going to be doing retro Messa Wh is u Pretty close after that as well actually. And we're all We after now. Yeah, which which is pretty crazy And even before that, I'm going to play Expo Glasgow which is on the eleventh and twelfth of July then I'll be going. Brighton develop which is on the fourteenth to the sixteenth. So I we here from Scotland down to Bryon But then well, kind of Midlands, Derby and then we'll be going off to Norway. so Yeah, it's quite up and down P playay Eone Backpool in October. We're going gonna be doing some talks there as well. So plenty of chances to come and check out the retetro hour live if you can't make it to the event. So of course we do try and record as many of the panels as we can. So hopefully bring them on the podcast in the future. But yeah, if you want to come to Rby's A Meiga Show, what's our website amigahow dot com. Is that right? Yeah That's the one. Yeahah. Yeahep. Come join us in Derby. I'm going to be hosting of the panels there as well, which It going to be interesting talk about the history of the ammga operating system Yeah, yeah, with the creator of Amigaos. but also retro retro messa. We've got a guest that Joe got very excited about it when he when he heurard. Yeah, it's u Yzo Kashiro and u Yeah, just just insane that we're going to have the opportunity to record with him and then put it out on the podcast and I said Joe, you've got to be on this interview. I know. I was like, oh Godd, that's nerve wracking I'm going to end up asking him. E everybody knows him in for streets of rage, obviously But he also did the u the Batman game on the Sega Master system. and story of four or Beyond Oasis as it's known the rest of the world for Sake of Megarive and I might freak out and just ask him about those cases. Cf That's why you're there, you know. No, we'll do Lis of Shoots of rage as well, of course Yeah're looking at our watch our J' in anour and a half panel. Come on. Yeah It shouldould be a good one. That's gonna be happening question for free. Yeah. That's happening in Norway. Sandyfieord a new venue this year as well, a bigger venue. So ye if you've been already. If you haven't been before, good excuse to come along, then check it out. And the weekend of august fifteenth and sixteenth retroeta. eno for tickets for that. I'll put these in the show notes as well. Now of course, first half of the podcast we' bit of a chat about the big stories. Now this one This is a Spanish video that I was trying to follow but actually you don't really need to know what's going on. Just watch it and be impressed Awesome, someone has got Minecraft running very well PlayStation two So I want Ravi's opinion on this because Ravi's the resident kind of like Minecraft guy He played Minecraft when it first came out I've never ever played Minecraft, but we've covered it the fact that it's kind of becoming feels very much like and retrododo sa this as well. And it was like, oh yeah, that's true Um Minecraft seems to be like the new doom. like will it run Minecraft You know, there's all runs on every it. Yeah. and we covered that u back Somebody got it running on Sega Saturn earlier this year or the back end of last year which is really impressive. But You know, they took a lot of kind of like technolog, you know, techn What's the word I'm looking for? Like a lot of liberties with it, you know, it wasn't quite Minecraft, like build and everything cannit book You could only build like so many blocks before the game, you know crashed and all so much draw distance and stuff like that But with this, so with it running on PS two. fromrom my understanding it's Minecraft Pcket edition which was came out in twenty thirteen So it was like, I'm assuming A smaller version of Minecraft like that. Yeah. so like Minecraft comes in many different forms. You had the Java one previously there's like lo's of versions. This one was made a pocket edition. It was made for mobile interfaces but also it was made for Stuff like the fire TV Yeah Fire OS. Oh the Hammazon Fire stakeyen. Yeah, Android. but also interested in the do you remember the Sony Eperor as well, which was like a weird kind of Sony gaming phone. I had like Eperia gaming on it as well. That ran it. So it's quite a lightweight like version of it. Okay, but but What they've previously done is this guy's managed to really optimize it, you see, he's called Opti Jung goes Tugos, which I think means games in Portuguese. But they've got it running. It's designed for low end devices prereviously seen people running it emulators. So PlayStation two emulator Um with little speed ups in there to kind of help because there was lots of problems with getting it running with the small amount of RAM on the Playsttation too. Um, but he seems to crack that which is which is pretty amazing. and it's running at a decent frame rate. and like you said, The Saturn version looks very reduced. This this looks pretty. retty complete actually. just in the draw distance that you've got on there. As I said, to me, it just looks like Mancraft Yeah, but You can see a lot further, there's a lot more blocks in there it's running a lot faster Um Yeah It's it's like as you're walking around, you're seeing moreore with the island. I I'd like to see what it's like with more more of sprites in there, but blockwise it's looking really good I think yeah, it's really impressive because yeah, it's running a solid thirty FPS. So it looks really smooth, doesn't it? He said the biggest challenge was obviously the Limited memory on thelaystation two, you' want to go thirty megabes of Ram playly with So the val the val to do a lot of I imagine really heavy optimization to get it working on it. looking at this, I mean You bear in mind that this is hardware from like a decade before Minecraft originally came out. And I remember trying to run Minecraft on like my Windows Vista PC. and I'd like a NvIidia I think eight hundred eighty. ard in there or something. I remember was struggling with it. I said everyone looked at Minecraft back then and thought it's reallyented graphics. It must be like a really basic kind of game, but actually it was more demanding than people realized I think wasn't it, especially in those initial stages. so Well also there's like loads of different architect versions. So on this one, you're seeing he's got the actual manenual which is Llike the mobile interface menu and he's going through it in that kind of way so it's not like a custom Playsttation one, but I guess it kind of works with it as well. I don't know if some of those experior controls actually help the interface of the Playsttation pad that might lean to it somehow as they have the same buttons, but u There's also a power PC version that came out ages ago. You know actual retroom. He's always using it benchmark is power of BC systems I can imagine the more you build this world up you know, the slower it's going to get like it as it gets more complex and you have more more stuff going on now. I'd like to see how water works in that. That's always a real test of powerower O Minecraft if you were pouring water and it's going everywhere and then The lagging starts Yeah, I think what Joe said, I mean, we mentioned this's been a load of other platforms, you know, I forgot there's even a Game boy kind of deake of it as well. But looking at this graphically, yeah, I mean, it doesn't look cut down or anything really, does it? lookooks like B's Lg of Minecraft to Yeah So I think yeah This could have, I mean, I'm looking at this and thinking, I remember that the word releasing. PS two games until didnn't they bring out like FI for twenty fourteen or something on the PS two Yeah, I think it's twenty fourteen. Yeah wasas it twenty fourteen? Yeah, I think it was twenty fourteen was the last one So there is definitely crossover, I guess there. the minecraft coming out and being out for a couple of years. But yeah, no it never never came to PS two. did it offfficially I'm trying to think now But it could have looked into this. It could I think Yeah. so yeah it could have got a bit more life out of the PS two commercially. but yeah, great fan project as well. So it is a work in progress. Load of people is a YouTube video you put up, which is currently on nearly fifty thousand viewers at the time' recording this. Load of comments, most of them in like Portuguese as well But people like begging him, you know, please finish the game, do more on it as well. We'll give you money for it. N'm not sure how that would work legally. But again, I hope it's kind of one of these things where you know they'll turn a blind eye to it because you know, they're not going to lose any money by people playing it on the PS two. But yeah, there is a download link really small file as well and anywways in around six megabytes So that is some crazy optimization. So if you want to get a hold of that, I'll link that up. You can try it out on your Playsttation too. just run onreal hardware, Minecraft on the PS two. veryer, very cool Now, um This was a Nice to see you as well, isn't it, new GTA kind ofames. Obviously E everyone's getting h for GTA six, which I think you guys did say last week You're kind of thinking it might not make it out this year. They can't delay it anymore. sureurely Yeah. But if it's meant to be up for the end of twenty twenty six. Yeah, in the meantime. I do delay it G land of the Free which is a GTA style game boy game coming out I which I think looks really cool. So obviously since you know GB Studio came out what two years ago, three years ago, whenever it was, We're seeing so many game Boy games get made but this one caught my eye because of because it's a GTA open world style game and graphically other than the fact that it's, you know, the the monochrome kind of like green and black graphics actual kind of like frame rate and like the pixel animation and stuff in it If it was colored, it'd look like an NES game. It would look like a, you know, a mega dririve game or a mayaybe a master system game, AS game to me But I think it looks wicked loads of vehicles in it, loads of cars, tanks, etcetera I played the GTA game for Game Boy Cullor. Gosh Whenateever that was, twenty three its time was was that That was the PSP one. That was. I'm talking GTA for the game just GT straight GTA for the game I' been playater It looks like the original GTA games, doesn't it? Not like we're not talking about the three D ones we're talking Yeahah It's the top down kind of like view. Yeah. But yeah, this is it's quite interesting. So it's based on an independent graphic novel and this is actually the second game this guy has done U so the developers made a game called Triple Threat Terror that came out last year And then this is the next one which kind of follows the graphic novel. but I've not heard of it before But what's cool about it is he is putting it out on Game Boy cartridge for sale. You know, it's not one of these games where it's like, it looks like a game boy game But it won't play on Game Boy or just play in emulation. This is coming out on Game Boy, full cartridge with fourull bucks and everything. Yeah, I think it's good. It's really reminding me of u Retro City Rampage or Hawaii shakedown Hawaii Vbank Entainment who we had on the podcast ages ago. Really good company. had that kind of fun U small, small style, but that was for like The W U and and the W and other other systems. this is a It's very very detailed for a Game Boy release and it shows how powerful Game Boy Studio is that you can actually greatreat worlds like this and ye know, I'm really impressed. What was that GTA style game for the Amiga? They came up really late in the Amiga's life? Ayb back. That was it. I came out in the game advanced, didn't it Yeah, was well it did and it ran quiet slowly on that, but in the end They had optimizations in that, but that had a A pseudo kind of fedie thing going on, it was less u less kind of cartoony than this, you know, it was an attempt to I did, I'd say like GTA too or that kind of area with the, you know, you look down in the buildings and they got those three D effectX going on And I think yeah, graphically it looks beautiful, doesn't? Really well done. And great they're going to be doing the physical release as well. He said he's expecting that at some point in twenty twenty seven, but there should be pre orders available for that soon. I'm sure there' be a digital download of it as well. So yeah, really cool to see that kind of game running on the original Game Boy. So yeah, I think looks really, really impressive. So look forward to keeping an eye on how that progresses over the next few months Now u'm which mentioned the Amiga there, An game that was awesome on the Ameiga. If you got a list kind of your favorite shootem ups? Ravy, will you assum of fun on the Amiga No blood money, blood money I played a bit and a few others, but Oh, what was that one Bat' she? Yeahah Oh yeah, he's a good one I remember it de looks Gallgher I I love that on the Amega. There's a public domain one called Insectoids as well Oviously. a lot of people love Zenon, don't they? Zen one and two. I mean, I probably did enjoy them back then. I think they're a little bit basic going back to them now though. u But obviously there is one that a lot of people regard as definitely one of the best on the Ameiga and that is Apidia I think I said that right which was a game that came out in nineteen ninety two Originally U Blue Bite software, then team seventeen D a release of it in the in ninety four as well. It was kind of a side scrolling oot them' kind of in the bin of something like Artite, wasn't? but you play as a beautiful, beautiful side scrolling game. I think one of the best looking ammiga titles out there presented really well with Chris Holsbeck's music. Um Solidid as well. I always find it really, really tough mayaybe there was too much going on on the screen at one point or it just had that really hard factor that Amega Titles had at the time. but It's getting a remake, which I think it thoroughly deserves. U amazing title. And that's coming to kind of modern systems. and I'm really interested to see Jo's take on this. if You know, because this is one of the best. I'm eager shoot them up. So what do you kind of think I've never heard of this game and I'm looking at the screenshots of it now Um And was it a British developed game by any chance? No Germ German, I think. Was it German? o because of Really, really, really reminds me of that kind of like graphical style, but then like grounds of it. like, yes, there's a few kind of like alien you know, kind of like, cyber looking Levels but obviously there's a lot of levels here where you're fighting like Be and praying mantises and stuff like that U And there's like ducks and moles and stuff in the background and it just looks so be kind of like British developed like code masters early nineties to me like. remindind me of honey Iice shrunt the kids whenever I used to play Stay era really, W it Yeah. Yeah, yeah. you actually you actually play as a wasper or bee, don't you? That's like what you want don you? Okay. That makes sense then But then you had like twwin bee as well and there was there were bees in other other other games. so yeah, I guess the B them is Look the big fe of the nineties Yes, I mean it is like you said, Rabby always founding a really difficult game, like kind of anything at the team seventeeenh stable really. So nothing I did spend a hell of a lot of time on. but I remember looking at it thinking, ye it was a beautiful looking game. And I'm interested because it's coming out on all the modern platforms PC, PS five Xbox Switch as well.' to be doing their physical editions and digital coming out on the twenty fifth of August. There's a trailer available for it now. if you're watching the video,ll put that up on screen. But I think they've done this really well. Its originally one I heard're remaking this because the original did have such a unique kind of look, didn't that? I was a bit worried that it was going to kind of be that really polished kind of modern three D kind of look, but actually they've done some really nice kind of pixel out, haven't they? So I think it works really good. just higher as That's what it looks to me like. There's a mode that you can switch between. so you can go back to classic mode for Pe that want to play that classic way or you can switched to the new mode and it just looks a bit like K but not done in a kind of You know, they usually put a gloss and a shine on everything. I think this just looks like bit higher resolution bit faster. It's in in games. I've not heard of them before, but they've got a Physical release, they've got a special box release coming as well and it looks like it's coming all the systems and then they've got u CedD soundtrack as well So yeah, this is this is really cool We mentioned that CD soundtack. I mean, Chris Hillsback did the music for the original actually brought it out as a CD album In ninet nine five, wasn't it? Factor five that was the Come night Well, he's actually done a new soundtrack for this version as well, which is on the trial. I have listened this. Therea w Oh Katie does this sound It the first classic change ye. and just jummed them up a bit and not lost the original composition. I think this is really cool and I think it's going to be good hitting the switch audience and yeah you know, pretty much a new one because I think it's been trapped in a little little amaga niche and it deserves to might a bit more I was going gonna say did it ever come out anything else Apparently they're working on a Anatori ST released back in the day. but I got cancellled apparently. PC engine or turbographics or something maybe, but I don't know. Yeah. Oh apparently there's also yet sounds one of those games that u as kind of bit like you mentioned stuck on the ammiga. They've tried to get on the platform. So apparently there was a Torry ST version of it in deevelopment that got cancellled Then they did they werere trying to do a version for Windows in two thousand two. n got the first level out there, which was apparently a tech demo in two thousand seven for the Game Boy Advance didn't get finished. So I think yeah, like you said, Ravby, you know for people that love shooting mo up games that didn't own an ammga. back then I see this game getting a bit more of a wider audience, I think. L looks like they've done a really good job as well. reallyally love what they've done with the graphics and the soundtrack as well. so yeah if you're a shootem M fan, maybe you're not all that familiar with,'s definitely worth a look. A PDF special edition coming out at the end of August, as I mentioned, preordder is available for that soon. Want to keep an eye on. U Obviously connecting modern controllers to retro systems might be something that you're interested in this kind of the the old controllers kind of age and get a bit more but less responsive rather over time. And obviously there are certain systems where the controllers are not really that basic. So for example, if you're going to plug in like an Xbox controller into your dream cast You're gonna to lose a bit of a functionality like you know, the VMU, for example Well someone's actually come up with a rather ingenious solution. So This is a T for the Dream cast, which is On the surface level, it just looks like, o okay, yeah, you plug it into your dream cast and then it's got a USB port on there Apparently it will run any USB. controller through it, which is great. Like as you said, like Yeah control is less responsive or people we expect. I mean dream cast control is up particularly expensive but if you want a nice Xbox controller or something or you know, an eight bit doe controller or something Great, but obviously with the dreamcast you use your lose your VMU functionality if you were to just have a adapter, but this adapter. And that also serves as a memory card, doesn't it as well as a little secondary screen on some games. Yeah So what this does is it basically has a it's running JoyPad OS on it. open source firmware. which basically allows it to have a VMU on it. It's got like a little tiny LED screen on there access the PMU. U, which is really interesting. to be fair, kind of loses its functionality of like using the VMU as like, you know, your health bar in a game or guess you got to look at your console then it's not like in your hand. Yeah Yeah. but from using as a memory card point of view, so you can use your own a different controller and the dreamcast, I think that's really handy U So yeah, I can imagine this doing really well to be fair Yeah I thinker's cool, smart idea. We've seen loads of input that they've put in The dream cast through the controller port recently we were talking about video being pushed through there all sorts. So this seems quite cool. powered by itself, I'd kind of expect one of these things to be have an external power supply that you'd have to stick somewhere. It looks really smart by Todd Gle, Todd's Nerdcave. I don't know if we've had Todd on the podcast, it would be how to talk on actually because I see a lot of cool stuff coming out from him But also Joy Pad OS is really cool. Good to see this firmware out there. I was looking up some of the other support that it has like USB devices and stuff Some pretty weird stuff on the Casio Lupi Um, the, uh, new one DVD player, you know, the rotary controller for that. so maybe you might be able to do some mad hooking up of controllers to to dream cast games that never had them before But have been other kind of similar projects to this. A lot of people in the you look at the thread on X where He posted this originally where Todd posted it. A lot of people are saying how does this differ from things like there's USB for maple which is a dream Cass USB adapter Megaball eighty five made that, which allows you to use Other controllers, mice and keyboards as well. but That doesn't give you the proper VMU, you know on a screen apparently does it via Um a USB splitter and a hub, but it's not like kind of all in one like this, like this displays it on the actual unit. To describe it, it kind of reminds me a bit of like a Maybe like a phone charger I it looks a bit like, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. It looks like a little iPhone phone ch to me. Yeahah definitely. with the screen on the back. Yeah. So yeah, it looks pretty cool. I think Yeah, it's u Like you said, Joe, Dream Cass controllers are not particularly to find, but I think there are definitely limitations on them like we have. We spoke about some games actually will support The party controllers and use to analog sticks, for example. you know trying to play like games that need analog sticks. I try to play quQake arena on the Dream C. She's not one analog stick. J just just feel really weird. Well see that used to using two now. And so I think, you know, it could be maybe quite nice to plug in a I'm on a controller into that. so I'm trying to look any word of like availability that you guys have seen. he's just kind of shown this off so far.m much sure whether he's going to be selling them or whether this is just kind of a work in progress. haven't really see much about that I just went on his X profile to have a look and I feel really old because of I Literally couldn't navigate it at all. I don't use. I don't have access to it so Yeah, so well, we're not sure is I gu guess the thing. is he just sells some stuff on his website looking at it. There is like a Dreamcast virtual stand on there as well. Looks like a lot of this stuff is threely printed. He looks really into his kind of three day stuff as well. So yeah, retrofrog. n that's his website.' stuff like a Dream Cost controll or cable on there as well. By the time the podcast comes out, it looks like he just sell most of the stuff that he makes I imagine it will be something that he put up there before long, but yeah, maybe just kind of a work in progress at the moment. But I'm sure there will be an audience for it. So if you want to check out that website. I'll link that in this week's show nototes Now I do love seeing stories like this of Massive collections all computers. gettinget rescued. I was feel a little bit jealous orever, you're probably the same I feel like I want have a, you know, a weekend wandering around and kind of seeing what I can find in these But this is a massive Computer History Museum Retro haul from an abandoned German warehouse. Yeah, so this happened quite a while ago, but they've just produced a blog on it. So it was it's taken this long to get it all kind of sorted. So it was july twenty sixth, two thousand six an email was received A from u a tax advisor in Germany. too the compomputer History Museum in Martainview, California u, and it said You know, We've found this warehouse that's just absolutely full of stuff. So it became a massive effort because this was in the rurw region. of Germany. so You can imagine now the computer history museums Other side of the world like How are they logistically go through this and find this. they've put out about their trip to Germany, some of the artifacts that they've discovered in there, which are pretty amazing that you can go through. Now this is a lot of like early main frrame stuff and really only computers like paper tape programs IBM systems free seventy u models, you know, really like stuff that's been there since, you know, over the war and previously they've got old adding machines, I've got Tons of stuff in there, It goes from the nineteen thirties through to the eighties, yes,. Yeah, it's got some Soviet computer systems in there as well, Huge hard drives But massive Bulgarian hard drives and terminals and they've kind of gone through all of this for this history systems and mainframes and they managed to pick out some of the best items thenen they've got the challenge of ship in them across the world as well. So it's really interesting to hear about that story. At one point there was a World War II bomb Oh ye, it was found that had to get diffused have all sorts of stuff in this collection and I think this is great that they've actually gone out and u put this effort What one thing that they've done is they've built an external building which are controlled just for this project and collection. so it's so big that they have to get a building and I just can't imagine the shipping costs of taking that across and then you know preserving it as mud Well this is it's basically an aircraft hanger Size warehouse isn't it My guess is there's warehouses like this all over the place. that's my dream at least, you know Yeah. It's a little two minute video, isn't?s from the nineteen thirties and it's last u two thousand six. That's pretty impressive, isn't it to kind of have it O Captain Situ. And I can imagine in rural places and And you know, we're always getting these stories of like, arcades found in the back of Barns fl like them. It's just amazing to see what what's still out there Wh knows? it could have been a massive collector or it could have been Oh yeah, well like I looked into it a little bit more here. you know while we're talking. It was a university professor apparently who is the the head of electronics and data from university basically he was still around when they discovered it back in two thousand six but he passed away a few years later. So They're still not really sure kind of why he did it, but yeah, essentially looks like this university professor kind of loved O computers and just kind of kept them all in this huge warehouse. What a guy. Yeah. Yeah so yeah, definitely some one of a kind things in here as well, even looking at the u software in there as well. They said they've got stuff like you know, paper tape, punch cards Mag tyape, magnetic strips, cartridges, floppy discs as well Imagine it's going to take years. I mean, this dates from the thirties to the nineteen eighties just going through. All of those tapes and discks and everything to see what's on there That's going to be an effort in itself, but yeah, great that they've G a hold of this and hopefully they can preserve some of that as well. because yeah I think you know, there's an entire museum's worth just there, I think, isn't there So yeah, really impressed. He know what they' to discover, you Yeah. one hundred percent. So I'm try to get a look at that. I said it's a little two minute preview at the moment and a lot of blog. Hopefully we'll be hearing more about that as they start to go through it all. Nad that they discovered it twenty years ago they're any kind of going through it now. proves how massive it is So yeah really cool find U Ij youoy went in the cinema this week, didn't you? You got a bit brave, you want to see what I've heard as one of the scariest movies around right now Well, yeah, it was this it was last week at the point of recording this, but we are recording a week ahead at the moment. the M is going on you Jar is Dan going on his jollies and Ravi going away for work and stuff Yeah, I went to see obsession W u I won't talk I won't spoil it. I won't talk too much about it. but I've been a question is it as scary as everybody says? I've been looking on Reddit threads? Howone's that the scariest film've seen in decades I mean, I'm I'm a big horror fan. You guys know this my I have many many what am I looking for hobbies, if you will. I love retro gaming, I love music I love cinema I love film and recently I' been going to see a lot of films at the cinema. but yeah, I went to see obsession and Yeah, um All I will say is at the moment I would let the dust settle, but at the moment it's like in top ten films of all time for me. L Oh wow. Yeah, it was really, really, really good, really, really deep. Very sary, very sad. You were telling me the budget as well which ye it's pretty amazing to hear about, you know. Yeah. so not that I'm here to talk about obsession. I was going to say, we're not doing it in the hour, but we does leave it. do have a story to cover it relates to retro gaming but the film I only had a budget of seven hundred fifty thousand dollars. And at the point of recording this it's just about to hit three hundred million dollars worldwide and it's only been at cinemas for four weeks. it's currently the ninth highest grossing horror film of all time. currently like the highest grossing film of all time for its budget like you know, like how many times it's multiplied itself U which is just insane on such a small budget and it doesn't feel independent. the director the guys direct as any young guys funny enough started out on YouTube as a skit kind of doing skits and stuff I am Corory Barkery's name is has done an absolutely amazing job of just everything in it cinematography, the lighting 's just insanely good. justust everything about it is fantastic The marketing has been fantastic as well. But one thing I noticed that I didn't really see anybody talking about And maybe it's just because of You know, I saw this because of the circles I'm in or whatever is they did actually do a retro video game exclusively through Discord. So once you' sure how that works, you log into Discord and then you download it And it can If you don't play it in browser it's weird. I've played it through And I've kind read it. I played it earlier today. I really enjoyed it. Was it like a pon click then is it? Is it look? So it's obviously a piece of like media, you know like a trailer for the film kind of thing promotional material, but it's about twenty minutes. I managed to do it twice, maybe half an hour If you know what you're doing it's only like five minutes, but it's basically It's very PS one inspired, The graphics of it U And it's like you're in a room and you have to escape the room. I don't want to spoil the film or anything like that but you you're sat down, but you can like look around and you can look above and everything and then you pick up items and you inspect them. And like, you know you have to like unlock them and stuff like that. and basically it's a puzzle game but it's in that kind of like you know, um What's the word point and click kind of genre? Yeah. U but for the graphics They've done it like it reminds me of like silent Hill for the PS one. like graphically, it's kind of like s all pixelated and everything and I think that's a really interesting choice that they did that because the film isn't likeike that. It's not set in the eighties or the nineties or anything. it's a modern film It's set in like twenty twenty six. It's not like You know, there's nothing retro about it other than it's, I guess it's a horror film and it' which is very, very good. So I thought it was a really interesting marketing Like that they've done that. like it's cool, really cool that they've done like a little escape room kind of game And then you want like like an exclusive trailer for the film Um But it was just weird that they've done it as a retro game style. The retro games are cool now. I told you we would become cool eventually, Joe Yeah, I that was because it's really cool, like. I just thought, you know what I'm going to talk about? I was going to put it in the patreon bit, but I absolutely loved the film. I thought it was a cool piece of marketing So let's talk about it in the main news. But if you haven't seen the film you can go to cinema to go see it and you're into scary films or horror films, go see it. Re really, really good film. U or if you just want to check out the bit of marketing on Discord. you can go play it like for free. You have to use a computer or a lot of people say it doesn't work on mobile. Yeah, doesn't work on mobile. have to have to use it on their computer and as you pointed out You have to use it doesn't take you to the app. you have to wr log in Yep and then you can play it but fun if you want to feel a little bit of nostalgia for a modern horror film for twenty minutes Yeah, so it's available for for free Obsession quest So I want to check out I'll link up the disiscord link in the show notes, along with all the other stories are it up for you every week. it's nice like that. You don'd have to Google around. Instead I put them in the show notes or on your podcast app or you can head to our website the retro hour. com tos your YouTube video description. they're all in there as well so you can read bit more about all the stories that we talk about. We' have got a patron for this podcast as well. Patrons' hangout is coming up now What was our favorite weekend the month, isn't it? last weekend of the month? That's when we basically Send the link out. All our patrons are welcome, We just geek out for a couple of hours normally Sunday night, eight PM UK time. Last Sunday of the month. So that's coming up on well this weekend,' it the twenty eighth U So yeah, I mean, all kinds of stuff on the vatron saying, I'd be like a we also say it to virtual ussers group Yeah, and We find ourselves talking about video games but not always talking about technology as well, what people have been up to. We've got quite a few patrons at the moment that have been visiting Arcade Cub as well. So we're going to get a little review of some of the arcades I'm going to try and Check out some pimball cafes on my travels as well. so hopefully be able to talk about that and come with some photos and stuff. It's really cool like Patrons are community around the show. they help support the show. they they They chat to us on discord, they come along to events and stuff. It's just really fantastic. you know, ten years. It's amazing to think we've been You know communicating with people for For so long and we've got that kind of great connection. It's really nice Yeah, great bunch that we've got on our patrons hangouts and we're welcoming new people all the time as well. So you know, we often talk about I sometimes think people I think o it's a bit of a, you know, a friendship group that it's like a close community. It's not that at all, is it? We welcome you people all the time. sometometimes we have developers in there, we have gus of who have been on the podcast pop in there as well. Yeah. you know, it's great Well hundred percent. if you'd like to join this's hang out and there are plenty of the perks for being a patron you get an ad a free episode of the podcast every week with a few extra new stories. Another two or three of them every episode. we're gonna do some of them for the patrons in a minute. all the details to join the community. And of course main reasonons to do it just to support the podcast. Make sure you're in cover hll of course, keeps the lights on as well. All the details are at the retrohour dot com d Okay well, thank you for checking out the news. We'll have more for you of course next Friday And next inside the world of DMA desesign with our special guest Brian Watson is next on the retetro H podcast Corevadazzona Is that a word? In the twenty twenty six Kyiaportage Turbo hybrid, it might as well be, because it can be one road trip. It's all about turbocharged power and hybrid efficiency working together. So you get the thrill of quick acceleration and the satisfaction of fuel efficiency. Book a test drive and keep the adventure going Kia, movement that inspires Call eight hundred three three three four Kamp for details. Always drive safely vada ona? Is that a word? In the twenty twenty six Kyasportage Turbo hybrid, it might as well be, because it can be one road trip. It's all about turbocharged power and hybrid efficiency working together. so you get the thrill of quick acceleration and the satisfaction of fuel efficiency. Book a test drive and keep the adventure going Kia, Mvement that inspires. Call eight hundred three three threety four KIAa for details. Always drive safely orgevada Za? Is that a word? In the twenty twenty six Kyiaportage Turbo hybrid, it might as well be, because it can be one road trip. It's all about turbocharged power and hybrid efficiency working together. So you get the thrill of quick acceleration and the satisfaction of fuel efficiency. Book a test drive and keep the adventure going Kia. Mvement that inspires. Call eight hundred three three threety four Kia for details. alwaysways drive safely Have you ever considered surrounding your house with a moat to keep it safe Would you hire a professional wrestler as a bodyguard for your car? Okay, maybe you wouldn't go that far But if you'd go to great lengths to avoid dealing with your insurance company You might have insoranoia And if you have insuranoia, you should have NJM insurance They go to great lengths to do what's best for their policyholders Start relieving your insure anoia today. at njM. com You're with the Retro hour podcast and we're joined today by Brian Watson And we're going to be talking about a really nice company that we love DMA designs, but the Atari kind of side of it because there were some Atari releases. It wasn't all just ammiga and we're going to talk about the differences and the roots of that great company, but also Iquuona Etainment and how they got took over by a claim and then Mving into different systems like the N sixty four later on with some really interesting projects The Brian works on. I particularly liked arerea fifty one. I thought that was a really good one we can get into Yeah. so first of all, we've got a question we ask all of our guests, Brian And that's what was your first computer experience, like the first memory you had. Oh it's really I remember it quite vividly. There was one day, I was probably in third year of high school and third year Maybe second year Um, And they the one day in the computer in math class they brought in this thing and they had us like look at it and see what it did. And I'm like, oh, that's really interesting And so later on that day, they were doing the math class and I became a member of the math class for a little while just so I could fiddle around with this thing. and it was just A machine on a cart, it had a vacuum fluorescent display It had a punch card reader and a keyboard of some kind and I was absolutely fascinated. It was probably the easy, simple version of hello world, you know, print your name and so on And from that moment, I was really fascinated by it It'sny isn't it? we got dedicated information, technology classes compputers always got thrown in with the math teher didn't? was the same at my school, I remember. It was always up to them to do it. So when did you get you first? Home computer then, and what's kind of the swry there? That would have been around about eighty two. Around about nineteen eighty two was when I got my first computer, but prior to that, Yeah I had a number of friends. They had Z X eights, Z X eighty ones Around the time we got the spectrum, so I got my Dragon thirty two around that time Um, So there was a lot of us just kind of playing around with each other's computers just because we could. And of course, like I joined the computer club at my school, which was formed Probably the following year after I'd first fiddled with this machine U And I joined the compomuter Cub, met a ton of people and of course, getting the chance to fiddle around with their computers as well. But it was mostly around the same kind of thing, peoplee typing in programs from the magazines and figuring out how they worked, all that sort of thing Were you the only dragon thirty two users? Yes or were there The only one What made you choose a dragon? Why that machine? It was probably the keyboard because it had a better keyboard on it and advertising. and I suppose everybody else was getting the spectrum and so on. I want it to be a bit different U But yeah, you know, in retrospect, yeah, I should have gone for a spect on something like that, but It was fine And what was your kind of learning process on the Dragon len I think is very similar to a lot of people. you know, it started off with just, you know typing things in from the manual that you get with it trying to figure out how those programs work fixing the ones that don't actually work right And then I got into the idea of typing magazines in from typing programs in from the magazines And that was where a lot of the learning really came in. And then at some point, My brother acquired a book for me from John Menz' And it was a six hundred nine assembly language programming book And that had me completely absolutely transfixed from the very start My very first is a funny anecdote that I'll say my very first program I ever wrote on the Dragon thirty twoo in assembly was to clear the screen Right? And if you know anything about the Dragon thirty two, the screen is five hundred and twelve bytes lo And my program was one thousand five hundred and thirty eight bytes long just to clear the screen. And then I disvered I discovered looping.. As there any experiments they've done? Exactly, exactly Well, you mentioned that you got the Dragon thirty two and you maybe should have got a spectrum. I mean you did upgrade to another machine that maybe wasn't one that most people chose. Hard you got your hands on a Sinclair QL? Yes, that was my upgrade from the Dragon thirty two and yeah it was It was okay. It was definitely a great improvement over what was there But of course it had a lot of restrictions and it was still a very Ver much a supposed sixteen bit system but based on eight bit technology effectively What kind of stuff are you doing on that? I know there wasn't many any games on the QL? didn't didn't do any games on the QL, but I did u I did a CPM emulator on it that did actually get published U and I did some other things like fiddling around with fonts,, having u You know, creating a printer driver where you could actually download bitmap fonts and things like that. It was mostly experimenting rather than commercial products though. It was meant to be like a home office machine, wasn't it? I?, the having those micro drives on there probably Yeah and killed any m.. I had a terrible keyboard. It was a really awful keyboard. It was expensive. It was three hundred and ninety nine pounds at the time You know U BBC microes far better hardware there you're en love typing that BBC Micro keyboard lovely Ws of ye ye So how did you meet Dave Jones then? A lot of that came up through being college up in Dundee. I had been doing an HND program and I switched to the a degree program And it was when I switched ont to the degree program that I really met the guys and we would hang out, you know, obviously we were computer Greekery We'd hang out. they told me about the Kingsby tech cllub And then I started going up there And that was when, you know, I remember one of the first few times Dave already had his ammiga. He had just bought it just a couple of months prior U And he was doing demos already. He was writing his own little demos But it was great. It was a lot of older people there, a lot of young people there older people doing more businessy type stuff and us of course playing the games, but they were always really impressed when we did the little demos that weren't someomebody else's game, something that we have kind of thrown together that we werere quite impressed with that Sounds like a little of activity. Yeah Yeah it was really good. Yeah So You went off to summer camp Ccelling in America. with an ST enhanced. A one point, yeah Yeah, and somehow you would Also working on menace for the ST? That wasn't for while I was there that was for that was I took the ST to the States the year after I did medace was a little bit later on. Yeah. So Menace was definitely done. That was u wasas it menace? wasas it eighty eight, eighty nine, something like that because I was trying to think about the timing of it all and can't remember exactly when, but I do I do remember Dave asking me and when he asked me to do, it must have been like eighty seven sometimes early eighty eight. And I remember it was a pretty close the beginning of the school year, the university year because I just got my grant and that's what I went and did with it. I went down to buy Sor EST ask me. Everyone spends their grants straight right down I Yeah, so say you went out and you were Were you doing any kind of remote work there for DMA or No No not at that point. At some point later on we managed to figure out something where I was in Boston for a while U but no, when I was doing the summer camp thing, that was eighty eight, eighty nine and ninety in the summers that I did that one Is that right Yeah, eighty eight it came out menace. Yeah, yeah that's right. Yeah my first game wast Yeah something Yeah it was. yeah. Yeah. So what's the story? So you went to America, You're teaching summer camp programming to kids. I mean, Yeah How did you under that? Any memories of that? that sounds c. That was that was one of these things. I was I think it was in when would have been sometime in Ey eight. Yes, it was sometime in ' eighty eight. U had I had thought, well, you know, it'd be really nice to go over to America and do like one of the summer programs at Berkeley or or one of those places and so on. And of course I was so naive at the time. I didn't know how much all that would have cost And then when I started to look into it, it was all this stuff you had to get T full test, test of English is a foreign language All of that nonsense and like, oh, this is too much of a pain And one of just one of the people at the student S services said, Hey Have you ever thought about going to work in a summer camp I'm like, Oh, what's that all about And she told me and we went through it, and I'm like, Yeahah, that sounds fun. And I went through the whole entire process U There's an organization called UunC. I will put a plug for them. University's North America Club Anybody who's at university or college and there's a summer of they their bored, they should go off and do that. It' highighly recommended they basically covered everything D't get paid very much had enough money by the end of the summer to go do a little bit of traveling But it was the rest of the summer it was a lot of fun too. Really a lot of fun. Yeah, what an experience that must have been. Oh yeah ye. hundred percent. So after that, then, did you come back and rejoin the MA? What kind of happened there So the so yeah, I had been I wish I'd thought about this. So it was ' eighty seven and eighty eight when I joined the masters the degree program U, and then it was the summer of ' eighty eight was the first time I went to the states. I came back and I finished I was working on the degree as well U the same thing in ' eighty nine and then in ' ninety, just when we all got finished up with a degree in ' ninety I had the plan originally to through in the states all the way through maybe a year and a half the summer camp because it was it was more than just a summer camp. It was an outdoor educational camp called Nature's Classroom and Um It was a lot of fun. So yeah, I was going to plan on staying there for six months. And then, you know, every once in a while, I would call up Dave and those guys just find out what was going on And Dave said, yeah, you know, things are really moving. with Lennings, do you want to come back and work full time for the company U and I s Yeahah, yeah you know, maybe I'm not really want to come back yet, but maybe And he gave me an offer of something like eight thousand pounds. I'm like, No, it's all right. No, I'll just say And see you later, you know But then he came back with a higher offer later on. It was I can't remember exactly how much but ten or eleven thousand pounds or something like that when I started And that was enough to kind of pull me back. And then as soon as I got back, I got straight into STLing What was it like the first time you saw a Leming Zon and you came in and saw this creation that they' built was pretty good. It was again, it was just after I came back from the states probably in ' eighty nine just yeah, just when I'd come back and Mike had just done the deep in animation. Dave had been doing the programming. Mike's got more of a better memory on me on that stuff. Dave was doing the programming of the demo. So I just sat down, I can remember really vividly and that Neethergate building sitting there in the corers Namiga fifteen hundred or something like that. B fifteen hundred U and I just started playing it and of course, you know, it's really cute watching the little characters and so on. f course I really screwed it up, did the buildilder thing and I really screwed it up And Dave said, Oh just hit the nuke button. I'm like, o what does that do? Oh try it then N and of course they all exploded and I just just cracked up Almost fell off my chair I was laughing so hard. It was That is still satisfying to be so It was like oh yeah, we've definitely got a game in that one, you know. Yeah So they could see that there were these, you know Huge potential with Lemings as well. and it got ported to everything in the end of the day. But what was it like focusing on that ST port and trying to make it as close to the Amiga port as possible. Well, that was really it. That was the big challenge with the ST was trying to get it to the same point where it could even come close to the Amiga' performance. So it was yeah, that that was definitely quite the challenge. You know, Mike had done some early stuff trying to kind of simulate the ammiga blitter. and of course that was never going to work. It was it was always going to be way too slow Um, but then, you know, that's what the big task was making sure that you could get everything rendered quickly enough and get that leming count up before it dropped frame rate That was the r a special em Any special tricks that you did to get it worked out? it was brute force. So there was no hardware tricks. I wasn't aware of any of the hardware scrolling tricks that were available that people had triigured out at the time If I had, I would have used those, of course Um so really nothing else. it was it was just sheer brute force What did you think of other ports then like the Aorn port? Oh o the Archimedies port, that was great. I really enjoyed that. That was probably one of the first ones You know, obviously I've played the game, but I've never played the full commercial version of the game until the Acedes version. and of course me and my friends would get together at my place and we'd sit and try and figure out the puzzles. Of course I knew a lot of the solutions, but there were some of them I just couldn't remember and you know so going through the entire game from beginning to end, that was a lot of fun I really enjoyed the Dark Midies version. which was very, very nice. I thought it was great U but it does have a bug U I discovered as I was testing the second last level As soon as the door opens, the limit comes out, the level is over because there was a bug there that basically that was checking for the number of active learnings and the number of remaining lemings, but because he was dropping He was considered one less remain so were no remaining lemings but he wasn't yet considered as active And so It was considered game over And it was a single single instruction fix and I don't't know if they did it in the production code. I don't know if I don't think it went out with the fix. So my understanding is there's a hat something I didn't play the Archimedes version until probably about ten years ago. Be we used Archmeds at school obviously, but I didn't realize quite what a capable system it was until years later when I got my hands on one and then ye tried the Lembings version on then was yeah blown away by how good it was. But my skills aren't quite that good on Lemings to actually make it to that far. So yeah I didn't spot that book. Yeah, the Archimedes is a great little machine. I remember one of the first bits of programming I did on it was U It was just to try and do the menace scrolling landscape, very simple. Yeah. Of course, I'd done it on the ST. know how it was done on the Aega It was super easy on Amega U and of course the Our commedities who are doing it again, just brute force However The pan thing was so fast could do the whole screen update and about half the time the blitter could on the omega It was that fast And it was that moment I fell in love with the arm processor. It was just this was something completely new and It was way way beyond anything that I'd seen so far It's a bit of a shame in hinds. I mean, obviously understand that Education was Acorn's main market, but it's a bit of a shame they didn't put it more into the home because ye I could have got some great games I think But obviously back then we all, you know, mainly owned amigas or RRESTs. I mean, I remember the rivalry in the playground. There's one kid at my school had an ARST. Everyone else had Amiga five hundreds. Was it much of kind of an ammiga and ST rivalry within DMA? Was there any kind of or you're all basically ammiga guys and No they was kind of doing. I wouldn't say there was any kind of active rivalry between the two because I think everybody else knew what I thought about the ST So there was really not much of an argument about it Were you not a big fan of it there?ah. I think I'm a hardware purist. I'm not a hardware guy, but I love fiddling around with hardware. I like going down to that low level All of that sort of stuff And so when something like the SD comes along and it's as bog standard a piece of hardware you could get It's kind of disappointing And then you see the Aiga and it's just like it is a world of difference between the two So yah, the ST, it's It's okay. It's a six eight thousand processor. It's got the it's running maybe ten percent faster than the Amega processor That's All it's got is technical advantage It's screen layouts crap. you know, it's splitter is non existent The way that you hardware scroll is non existent on the machine There's no expansion port You know that The ROM port doesn't even have a write line on it. so you can't even do readwrite hardware through the ROM port. It was just and there was that thing with Leming this too as well where the music would play. And then the sound effect would go And it would have to pause the music for that second and then go back to the Oh yeah, for the speech. I didn't I didn't think I had that pausing. I thought I'd done it off interrupt driven I think it just came in and then it was it was a bit juddery in a bit. Yeah. Yeah, but I remember I remember you know, obviously being being aware of that. and I'm pretty sure I did it as hard hardware interrupt for that one So maybe I'm not sure. I'd have to look back at it Well, another system that you worked on, which was I'd say it's pretty much kind of a rewrite for a really smaller screen and really small form factor was the Attari Lynx and That was a great version. What was it like when When you first soar links you need Well I' not, you know got a proach I not a six five two processor fact You know, but my God that machine. Oh, it was so, so such a dream to program even though I was something to do in six five hundred two. It was just, it had the hardware sprites, it had like easy downloading from cartridge. It was easy to get data in and out. It had a blitter of sorts things like that. it was just a marvelous little machine really well put together. And the development environment was I've never seen anything like it and the only things I've seen since were really the PlayStation two super duper deicates It was'm not sure if you're familiar with a handy development environment It was basically a box and it plugged into the Amiga U at Omeiga three thousand, but it had a full entire bus capture on the device so you could figure out what on earth was going on wherever So it's like and that was built into the unit from the get go which was really nice Makes sense it was an Amiga development system work. obviously RJ Michael and Dave Nele who designed the Amiga did the links afterwards, didn't? So definitely have that kind of DNA in there. I mean, ye, I remember seeing the links when I was a kid and like After I saw the links, I didn't understand why anybody would want a Game Boy Because it just looks so many, you know, full colorraphics, you know, why do you think it wasn't as successful as it could have been? You you think it was down to Atari? The price of It might have been a little bit a ahead of its time. I think like the display technologies just weren't quite there. It was one of the first color displays that we were seeing Um, you know, it was I think more of an issue like that that it was just It was it was too expensive It was Yeah You know, the screen display, it was great, but it was a bit washed out The batteries didn't last very long So there was a few things hours wasn't it? Yeah, So there was a few things there that it didn't have going for it. But it was a fantastic little machine Fantastic. Yeah Yeah definitely got a of a cult following there as well that's new homebw soon. So around this time, you moved on to Iguana Enterertainment and what's the story with you moveved from DMI to Iguana then what happened? Well, it was just that thing. I'd had enough. I was, you know, DM, don't get me wrong, the guys DMA are great. I just I'd had enough of living in Scotland U and I'd started to look around and I'd seen this thing about, I think it's MCV. was the compomuter Tade press magazine I saw something in there u from Iiguana Enterertainment and they were looking for people over in the state. So Um, I went down to u No well, there was another guy at DMA, Neil Glancy. I told him about it and he actually went down to Middlesbron and interviewed with them And he got offered a job straight away and I'm like, well, if Mil can do that, might as well give it a try and see what happens And I went down. Link's Lemings was my resume basically the didn't need to ask me about anything else. they were just playing Linkxs Lemmings and actually really enjoying themselves U And so yeah, shortly after that, they offered me the job U and I moved to Texas Dould't you think that Links version kind of helped them get more of the idea that you can work on a conert. Oh yeah. Oh yeah and yeah yeah. you know, and of course, they knew about all the other games that would worked on and and so on. So yeah And then ended up being myself Neil Glancy and Ian Dunlock that ended up going from DMA over to Iiguana got that taste of America before. so yeah. I knew I wanted to do I knew I wanted to live there. I knew I wanted to live there. I just didn't know how I was going to manage to do it I knew I wanted to well What was the first title that you were working on Pirates of Darkwater? Yeah, I was just doing some simple demo stuff When I joined DMA when I first got on there full time One of the things that I was doing was helping Mike out with little demos. He was working on the Ballistics and Tbographic sixteen at the time. So I was doing some of the demo stuff there And then when I went to Iguana, kind of did the same thing. The probleise was I was going over there to do S Mari Jaguar stuff But that never materialized and ended up going over to the consoles with the Jaguar being and gone by then at that It was dying. It was clear that it was dead Yeah, pretty much earlier on. I think as the idea was a claim we're going to do some stuff with it and contract Iguana to do it but then it died. so we went on to other things Well, I think a really interesting series You know, we've actually quite talked about like Maden and quite a lot of the football games on this podcast and that was American football not soccer but NFL quarterback was one that I caught her historical legacy and you know, as you worked on it, it It grew in graphics and it grew in gameplay throughout the console period, really? What was it like? Did you have to learn all the American football strategies and moves and stuff. Howpess a lot of people do that stuff No, I clearlyid I did avoid that part of it. h but quarterback club that was one of these things the claim we're in a bind And u Again, I don't exactly remember all the timing of this stuff Um, but something, but it came along It was probably September October of ninety four September october ninety four, that's when they were negotiating all the stuff. Pl Productions have been working on a version of NFL quarterback Club and it was a mess So, you know, basically a claim we're looking for somebody someone to putot It came out. it didn't matter what it was like. it just had to go out because They'd spent all this money on the license and they had to get something out. So you know, we managed to throw that first version together in about I think it was about four or five months It was a very, very short period of time because American football has a really short sales window. It's basically Um you know, like November through to maybe February because the Super Bowl's in January and that's pretty much it. And I think we got it out just before Christmas. I don't exactly remember the timing. But we got it out there just on time for them U But it wasn't it by no means was it the most stellar version of it. It was really just us trying to get it out the door. Um, and it came out okay. We were quite happy with it. you know, we Um the art guys did some really great stuff, make it look a bit nicer. But then of course it was the other versions that we had a year for to do them. So they were They tended to have a lot better work on them Well it progressed quite technically. and I' just looking at the systems, you know, startarting with Snaz and then going on to Genesis Sake of two X as well and then later in sixty four and then I figured had to Play sttation too as well. Yeah So it's a huge series if you think of that timeline and All those different powerful systems. Yeah. ye, definitely Definitely ye, it got over there. I worked on the Genesis and the thirty two X version and bits the pieces of the super Nintendo version, but that was all done by someone else, mostly It was much of a rivalry with Maden and a bit of a arms right going on. Well there were kind of wars, you know we were like, o, oh yeah, okay, you know, they've got EA behind them and we've got a claim Um Yeah, so there was a bit of the rivalry going on. it reached ahead in ninety eight or Yeah. So it would have been late ' ninety seven that we were working on this, but Someone at Electronic Arts made a terrible mistake. They forgot to renew their license with the NFL. So Alaim was able to get in there before them and get an exclusive license for that year. And that was the first year of the Nintendo sixty four version U And that was the first one that we did in you know with full three D players Um And that sold sold really well. sold million and a half units It was quite highly praised. I think The game logic was good wasn't as good as Mad and gameplay logic, but Visually, it worked out really well proud of some of the stuff that we did with that one. I was good to say as well you've got that whole open market of the N sixty four being huge and being the O official licensed one as well. didid that kind of change the direction of the company as well, just thinking focusing on and sixty four titles. Of the whole company, No, it was really clear it was Nintendo sixty four in PlayStation. was It was really clear at that time is where it was going. The Saturn was out But the saturn looked like it was it was missing the bart U So it was definitely a Nintendo and PlayStation world I prefer the Nintendo over the Playsttation Um, You know, Nintendo sixty four is just hands down my most favorite piece of hardware that was there of any of the consoles. My favorite. What did you like better about these It was elegant. It was really elegant. the whole thing if you take the machine apart, the board you know, there's a hard, of course, we had hardware hardware guys a clan or iguana you take the whole board apart, the traces are all nicely curved. And it's all for signal reflections and things like that. and It was a unified memory architecture U you know, there was a lot of bits and pieces you could do because you had control essentially over all of your memory bandwidth. There were certain rules to it, but you could do anything. And I much preferred that unified architecture rather than the Playstations split audio split VRAM thing. It was's just because that's a nightmare to manage. We did touch on the fact that you had a claim behind you then I mean When did you remember that when a claim took over Iiguana, then, what's kind of any memories of that era when you first found out that was happening? And did it change the company much? In the beginning, it didn't change too much. We were up on the old building in Far West Boulevard when we got purchased There was an infusion of cash. That was a big part of it. We moved to a nice new office U, you know, spent half a million on the network Um, You know, we had nice new desks, nice new individual offices, good conference rooms So a lot of money was spent on that office space. and that's when a claim was doing really well. They were kind of riding high. Um, and it was the same we were kind of cruising along with some some of the games had done really well But now we can scale up to, I think we got up to one hundred and fifty people at one point And that was the big scale up when that happened And there were huge names we were getting involved with as well. Turak as well obvious. Yeah is one particularly What was it like when you when you first saw that and the whole behind it and to be honest when I first start like ambitious it was like yeah okay, that could be really cool if you could pull it off And then Rob Cohen did a couple of demos, you were like, ooh, you might be able to pull this off U and then of course expanded out, they got the editor going and so on and so forth. And then Rob was highly focused on performance. They had a great team there. It was Rob Co in Steve Bromley Um Carl Wade, I think he was in that team as well and those were just some of the best engineers I've ever worked with. What memies have you got to the sequel as well? ' Stuck I was obviously? Very anticipated. I didn't work on it much. I Well actually I did the audio driver for it Um probablyrobably I think I'd oh yeah, I did the memory management system as well U That Yeah, so that was mainly, it was mostly backgrounds memory cards. Oh I had to do the memory cards I hated working on the memory cards, but nobody else wanted to do it. So I was like, alright, I'll get it done And then what's bad about working on that? just all the technical requirements, Sony had a very different order. that things had to be done had to be wored in a very specific way Nintendo had their way, it was a bit different And then Sega had a different w as well, So the hard thing was just getting it to unify and make it kind of all work within the one user interface with very few differences for each platform. So that was the tricky part Around this period, the the kind of dreamcast were starting to to make an appearance as well. and there were a few titles that were like like revolt as well that that Portter dver and stuff. What are your memories did a dreamcast and what did you think? I didn't too much with the dreamcast, but I do remember a lot of us going down to the Sega confferences to check it out And I was pretty impressed. It was a really nice piece of hardware as well. the graphics cheip, the power VR chip they had there It wasn't like anything else we had seen. The fill rates were really cool all that sort of stuff. But of course, the thing that killed it was Windows CE Um, and Microsoft's attempts to basically get say got to pay for the development of Windows CE and that was a terrible move perform its own machine So what are the titles? I think it might have been the dreamcast version you worked on was South Park Chef Lack. Classic. I have any memories of that That was probably more Nintendo sixty four than the dream cast. I probably did some this. I would have probably worked on the audio driver for it to be honest, I think gotten pigeonholed as an audio guy because I kind of picked up the audio engine from someone else U and and they just that other program just didn't quite get it just didn't quite get how all the timing stuff should go together and so on And it was again one of those that I suppose I'll do it you know ended up doing the audio for decades after Well, what would the differences then? becausecause Obviously An sixty four. Yeah're limited with audio a bit and you know, trying to get as much out of there as possible with the cartridge size. Right, you know, and H it having CD audio and Ty soundtracks and stuff like that would kind of bit more to the Playsttation or something like that. Yeah Dad. What were the challenges? It was it was on which one in ten or sixty four It was definitely storage space. It was definitely getting things to fit in And we did a couple of things. It was u An audio compression that a claim had, it was called Rx And I'm not entirely sure who developed it, but one of the things about it was Um It was really fast to decode. It was you could decode it quickly, but it had a great compression ratio. It was one of those MP three type U algorithms, But it did a really great compression. The comple the complex thing, a lot of them was to do with the actual management code for the audioer you know, layering over the sound samples and things like that Um, so We pretty much with the games because the way that we've done some of that part, the management data pretty much unlimited in what we could do constructing the own effects from each of the individual components So it was quite I was like, looked at stuff like you know, Banjo Kazuri and So no speech and just noises and stuff like that kind of Just thinking that there might have been more of a limitation Yeah. but if you got over that stuff th. Yeah, was just it was a lot of it was memory and bandwidth And there's one There was one thing that I worked on, It was actually one of my favorite projects on the Nintendo sixty four was a virtual memory management system. so I was able to map the entire cartridge directly into physical memory But what was nice is U And so, you know, you hit an interest and it would do page fault, do all that stuff and bring the page in from cartridge and continue execution and so on But what was really nice about that was we also had some pages that were compressed. So when a page fall occurred DMA in, then it would decompress it on the fly and then off it would go. So that meant that we could have some Like audio data is very sparse. Audio control data is very sparse. So we could have a whole bunch of it and press down to next and nothing But then when we needed to access it, instead of opening a file, reading that, reading whatever, we could just direct access the location and memory and there was no complexity to that part of it So the virtual memory manager, that was one of my best projects, I would say. And that was one that just came out of an old college class. I thought, oh, that was interesting. wonder what it's like to do that And u They ended up being used in that for a acclaimed titles We were able to like tour like a good example is tour up too. The actual uncompressed version of the data was about thirty odd megabytes in size And we were able to compress that down into just over I think was just about sixteen megabytes. and So that made a huge difference. The programmers didn't have to do any weird crap. to get the data. It would just decompress for them. They didn't have to manage it all themselves. They didn't have to write the caches It was it just made life easier O title just blew my mind and I don't think that many people remember it nowadays, maybe it's an archae classic, but arerea fifty one. which had a really interesting development history because It was it was originally running on a modified jug Atari Jagua. And I was kind of wondering process of putting that and getting that to run on modern consoles, but also Did any of your Jaguar knowledge help? No. No, that was a complete rewrite from the get go. It wasn't really a conversion of any other game. It was a complete redo. Um so so yeah, the whole thing, it was built up from scratch That was a lot of like FMV sequence. Oh yes and Same thing. I was working on right. I was working on the audio driver. I was working on the video driver, I was working on the memory cards. ame same thing again, but yeah It was Well well the video drive is quite interesting as well because I think PlayStation version was fully full screen y you know, it ran. And then the Saturn had this big Black border around it What are the limitations with video on the S? It was'm not I don't really remember, I think Wn't all done at software on the Saturn because the PlaySation had the endeck hardware. the Saturn, it was all software, so it had to be wasn't it Bink? I think it was bink that we used That was a software dec compressor. was the problem I mean, hardware was moving on pretty rapidly at that time Bnd money first I saw the PlayStation too, and what you thought of that hardware first time I saw it. Oh, I remember exactly when I saw it. That was that was again when we were at Iguana. And I think it was right around the time of Tk two and off course, just before the PlayStation two came out. Sony invited us all to Tokyo. there was myself C Gi Tamas that was D Michael s on, about five of us had gone And I was like, why am I going? You know? they'm like, Ohh well, you'll be able to figure out something useful. I'm like al right, fine, I'll just go anyway Um, was my first round in the world trip. It was it was really cool. Um what We got there And it's essentially Sony uh took us to this This room course no network, no nothing in the room They put the machine in front of us. and a Linux box and said, H at it, go for it didn't give us any information whatsoever Great It was just as well I went because I set up the network because we needed a network to connect the PC's to the BS twos and so on and so forth. And so you know, I threw a network together really quickly. It wasn't difficultn't too difficult at the time U And I remember yeah, the guys playing around with it just trying to see, you know, throwing triangles. Heyish. o, no, it's the cat. U just try to throw triangles on the screen just to see how much it could do. Of course, they were really, really impressed with what it was able to do. And at one point, I think this was a week long trip. and I had to leave after about three or four days because that was An issue with rebolt, they were having some either memory card issues or you know, I think my virtual memory manager was was crashing, but that's actually because it was their bug. It just threw up a diagnostic message and they thought it was my fault So I that was the time I flew from Austin to Tokyo and then Tokyo to London And then London to Chicago and then Chicago back to Austin. So that was a really long trip By the time I'd gotten there, I' It was probably one of the most alcoholic trips I've ever taken because they They did send us business class, which was the first and only time I've blown business class Um, I a friend Matt Stubbington had said to me, it's like, Ohh well, you know, if you're going to go business class, you' got to get a vodka gimlet gotta ask them for a vodka gimblelet. I'm like, allright, fair enough. Of course I did. They gave me one. I asked for another one That was like kind of high flying for a while They let me go into the cockpit I got to see as we're flying over Kazakhstan and all that stuff. I could see the Silk rooad and And so on that was that was really, really cool. But the time I got to London, of course, I was pretty half cut And I had to get all the way from Heathrow down to Croydon. And at a through the London underground and things like that. And of course since it had'd been drinking, it stayed up TV was on the buses and things like that was watching. so I didn't get any sleep By the time I got to my bed in Croyden down and the whole bird was goingone like this. No I was like Okay, I think I need something, you know. So I've never gotten that drug again on a plate Yeah tackling the London underground like that doesn't sound funny though, it's not fun. It's not fun. But we're another light you work on later with the PS two. We talked about a quarterback club earlier, but there was a hobbit, which was Really interesting release actually because they notothing to do with the Peter Jackson movies at the time. it was quite separate, but It's a really nice game and you know a lot of people really enjoyed that one great little game. againgain, it was the audio driver, memory card, memory management You know, that sort of thing. Yeah. that's what I was doing on it. Yeah, the hobit was a great game And also Medal of Honor rising so much. That was another one brought in at the last minute type situation that Yeah they had it was Middle of honor Rising sun and they We're working an online component in it. They' no plan on doing anything online So they brought us in to work on the online component. And it so happened that there were people from Visual sciences, you know, Russell K and those guys, they were all over there as well They were doing something else on the game. so we had completely different things that we were trying to do, but was that was several months of really hard work and it worked. We managed to get it in was It was hugely cinematic as well and the sound was massively important in that game. I remember some of the scenes I was just like Mind blown when I first saw that and then saw that also coming on the GameCube as well, which was like wow This is on an Nintendo system. that was qu quite a shock as well. But it must have been cool getting back with the old guys. Oh yeah, that was good. Yeah. But yeah, that was that was a lot of stress. that one And you know, I learned some lessons. One, I don't want to work for EA. U And two, I don't want to work in Los Angeles ever Um and three Although we tell everybody throwing more programmers to a problem doesn't get it solved faster EA proves otherwise. Be that's what they did at the end of Rising Sun. They just threw engineers at it. And all they cared was that you produce less bugs than you fixed every day They didn't really care if you created more as long as the bug list count went down.