0:00

Coming to CuriosityStream, go on

0:02

an adventure. 66

0:04

million years in the making with Dino

0:07

Week. From new discoveries about the dinosaurs

0:09

we thought we knew, to

0:11

the mind-blowing species still being unearthed,

0:14

and the controversial discovery that could

0:16

rewrite history. Did dinosaurs

0:18

survive longer than imagined? Dino

0:22

Week on CuriosityStream. And with monthly,

0:24

annual, and bundled pricing plans, find

0:26

the one that works for you

0:29

at curiositystream.com. Coming

0:31

up on this week's show, forget the

0:33

Apple Watch, bring on the Sega Watch,

0:36

some big Atari 50 updates, and

0:38

we chat development from the Apple II

0:40

to the Nintendo DS with Ed Magnin.

0:53

And the Retro Hour podcast is brought

0:55

to you every single Friday with our

0:58

incredible mates at Bitmap Books. Now, if

1:00

you're thinking of Christmas presents for yourself,

1:02

have you seen Go Straight, the ultimate

1:05

guide to side-scrolling beat-'em-ups, celebrating the history

1:07

of that incredible genre going back over

1:09

40 years of bare-knuckle street

1:11

fighting action? So if you're a fan of beat-'em-up

1:14

games, you need to check it out on the

1:16

rest of their retro gaming collection at bitmapbooks.com. Hello,

1:21

and welcome to the Retro Hour podcast,

1:23

episode number 407, your

1:25

weekly dose of retro gaming and technology news

1:27

with me, Dan Wood. Me, Ravi Abbott. And

1:30

me, Joe Fox. And a great to have

1:32

you joining us for our weekly look at

1:34

what's been happening in the world of retro

1:36

gaming and technology, and of course, chatting to

1:38

a veteran of the industry in the second

1:40

half of the podcast. And it's actually quite

1:42

nice today to sit down. I've got my

1:44

big Christmas cozy jumper on at

1:46

the moment. Got the heating on in

1:48

this room as well. Nice little break from just going

1:50

out Christmas shopping and Christmas parties and all that that

1:52

goes on this time of year. And you guys are

1:54

sounding like you're both dying as well. Oh

1:57

yeah. Well, it was my birthday

1:59

yesterday. So I've had this rotten cold. I'm

2:01

sure you gave it to me virtually, Joe,

2:04

down this Zoom or whatever. Just coughing down

2:06

the mic. That's it. What software have you

2:08

been using? Yeah, I haven't got my antivirus

2:10

software and these updating, I think. But

2:13

yeah, so we went out, it's my birthday for a

2:15

few drinks. First one's in a while. And yeah, I'm

2:17

kind of paying the price of it today. Don't drink

2:19

if you've got the man flu, I think is the

2:21

lesson learned there, which I'm sure I will not, I'll

2:24

heat do over the next few weeks. But I mean,

2:26

it is great. I mean, this is actually our final

2:28

normal show of the year, isn't it? Because

2:30

our Christmas specials are coming up next

2:32

couple of Yeah, it's the one time

2:35

of the year that we actually get

2:37

a week off, which is amazing. And

2:39

that's usually over the new year's period.

2:41

But first we have our Christmas specials,

2:43

which we've actually prerecorded, but you know,

2:45

you guys are going to find

2:47

it really exciting because we're doing our Christmas quiz. And

2:50

I'm hosting this time, which I guarantee

2:53

chaos. Yeah, I haven't started editing it

2:55

yet, but I'm giving myself at least

2:57

a week to do that. Let's

3:00

talk a bit more about the quizzes here as well. And because

3:02

I mean, this is in our retro hour tradition, this will be

3:04

our seventh one is that we worked out where, you know, we

3:06

basically just have a bit of a giggle, ask

3:08

a load of questions, get a few teams together. We've all

3:11

got secret weapons this year as well. And this was, I

3:13

think it's the first time you and I, Joe, have actually

3:15

been rivals in the quiz. Yeah,

3:18

because you're always either quiz master or on

3:20

my team. Yeah, you kicked me off

3:22

this time, didn't you? Yeah, I didn't kick you off.

3:25

You brought your secret weapon on, you

3:27

brought slopes on, yeah, slopes games, game

3:30

room, DJ slopes, who, I

3:32

was about to say something down, but I don't want to

3:34

spoil it. But yeah, you

3:36

brought the Oracle on and, you know, like

3:38

special guests, obviously we had Paul and Ali

3:41

on. Yeah, Paul from a retro gamer magazine

3:43

and Ali as well, who does a huge

3:45

video game quiz. Yeah, and then I brought

3:47

my mate Jason on from down the street.

3:52

So Jason's one of my best friends, who's

3:54

a massive, massive, massive retro gamer, infused guest

3:56

as well, and you know, who I go

3:58

and do the cons with. you know, sell

4:00

games and stuff. He's the guy who's got

4:02

the almost complete pow Mega Drive

4:05

connection. But spoilers, there

4:07

was about four Mega Drive questions in the

4:09

whole thing. Paul Yeah,

4:11

I tried to tune the questions

4:13

up this year as well. So hopefully, you know,

4:15

the audience will find it as enjoyable as we

4:18

do. So it was always a good laugh, isn't

4:20

it? It's kind of like the pressure's off and

4:22

you're just kind of doing a quiz even though

4:24

you guys take it so seriously that the pressure's

4:26

got to be wrapped up for the host. Yeah.

4:29

Paul So you'll find out in the next couple

4:31

of weeks who's going to be crowned the retro

4:33

hour super quiz champion of 2023. And of course,

4:35

you can play along at home as well. And

4:37

that's coming out at two weeks today. But next

4:39

week, we're going to be doing our look back

4:42

on the year as well, because I think, you

4:44

know, 2023 has been a really interesting year, not

4:46

only in retro tech and gaming, but also the

4:48

amount of guests who've had on this podcast and

4:50

the variety as well. So we're going to be

4:52

doing our special look back at said next week,

4:54

and then the Christmas quiz will land on the

4:56

Friday before Christmas. But before that, we have got

4:58

a normal show to talk about this week and

5:00

we'll be bringing up to speed on what's been

5:03

happening in the world of retro gaming and technology

5:05

in a moment and an incredible interview that

5:07

you've done this week, Ravi. Ravi

5:09

Yeah, so I chatted with Ed Magnin

5:11

and Ed is such an awesome developer,

5:13

you know, he's been kind

5:16

of working from 1979 and he's

5:18

developed all the way till present

5:20

day. Some of

5:22

his stuff is really interesting. So

5:25

he's worked for companies like cinemaware,

5:28

micro pros, Virgin Games as well, all

5:30

huge companies. And he kind

5:33

of specializes in hardware and, you

5:35

know, programming and the porting he

5:37

like, he ran this amazing,

5:39

it was kind of an

5:42

online service. But you know, back

5:44

in the days, back in

5:46

1979, and it was called telephone software

5:48

connection. That's crazy. You know, people would

5:51

be downloading from this system and also

5:53

doing credit card payments back then. And

5:56

this was all done on early Apple machines.

5:59

So A lot of Ed's kind of

6:01

work in the early days was on the Apple and

6:03

Apple II, porting cinema

6:05

games like Rocket Ranger, Free

6:09

Stooges as well. So having that kind of

6:12

cinema-ware style going from the

6:14

Amiga that they developed it

6:16

onto, then into

6:19

the Apple, Apple IIGS. And then

6:21

later he was looking at Micro

6:23

Pros on titles like Pirates as

6:25

well, which is a huge

6:28

one. And also then he moved on

6:30

to Virgin Games. Moving

6:32

on to the Game Boy, Nintendo Entertainment

6:34

System as well, but doing really

6:37

good ports like Prince of Persia,

6:39

which was just a fabulous port

6:42

for the Game Boy. And then

6:44

later on he went on to Game

6:46

Boy Advance and Game Boy Color. And

6:48

we talk about the differences of working

6:51

with Nintendo, their approval process

6:54

and how that differed from working

6:57

with Apple and kind of on the

6:59

Apple II titles. Yeah, Nintendo's a process

7:01

very different to Home Micros, isn't it?

7:03

I love the fact you mentioned that

7:05

you've taken online credit card payments in

7:07

the late 70s. And I think my

7:10

mum trusted putting her bank card information into

7:12

a website until about two years ago. Oh,

7:14

he's very pioneering with the stuff that he

7:16

did. He even developed an app recently, which

7:18

is one of the funniest apps I've heard

7:20

about, which you can play background sounds, so

7:23

you can pretend that you're like on an

7:25

airplane or in a hospital or something when

7:27

you're ringing at work with an excuse. It's

7:29

a call in sick. And I thought that

7:31

was a genius idea as well. So

7:34

looking forward to this one, our special guest, Ed Magmin.

7:36

He's coming up on the show at around 35 minutes

7:38

from now. But before

7:40

we do that, we of course bring you

7:42

up to speed on what's been happening. Another

7:44

busy week in the world of retro, including

7:46

some very big updates for the wonderful Atari

7:48

50 Collection. Now, I don't think you guys

7:50

have played Atari 50 Collection yet, have you?

7:53

No, I just found so strange.

7:55

Like I was I wanted to

7:58

get it. I probably would. get

8:00

it because I think it's only about 25 quid now. But

8:03

I was disappointed that there's only a handful of Jaguar

8:05

games on there. Is that why you wanted it for

8:07

the Jaguar? I wanted it for more Jaguar games. Like

8:09

I think I would have been all over it if

8:12

Alien vs. Predator was on there but I think you

8:14

get Atari carts and a couple of

8:16

others but you get loads for 2600 games

8:18

and 5200 games and stuff like

8:21

that which as we've said before is probably

8:23

a little bit before most of our

8:25

times to be honest. But it is the gift

8:28

that keeps on giving and you have said to

8:30

me down that the presentation on Atari 50 is

8:32

fantastic. Yeah that's the thing I mean

8:34

it's obviously from Digital Eclipse who I believe Atari actually

8:36

bought them didn't they a while back to the part

8:39

of Atari now. But yeah I mean really what

8:41

it is I mean the reason I wanted it and actually got it

8:43

for Christmas last year actually is because

8:45

it's really more like a documentary as well

8:48

and you know it's more like preserving the artwork

8:50

and the stories behind the games. So really

8:52

it's kind of like an interactive documentary you hear

8:54

some of the developers talking about the development

8:56

process and then you can play the game itself.

8:59

So the big news is though that obviously

9:01

this came out around a year ago now

9:03

but this week Digital Eclipse have added 12

9:06

more classic Atari games as a

9:08

free holiday content update

9:10

pack which I didn't see this one coming I

9:13

thought you know it's incredible that they're basically a

9:15

year later just pumping out free content for it

9:17

you know it's not not playable DLC or anything

9:19

like that. Yeah no it's really

9:21

cool that and you know the majority

9:23

of them are 2600 games again but

9:27

you know completely free you don't have to pay

9:29

for it or anything like that it's out now

9:31

as well like you know it wasn't

9:33

like oh it's coming next week or anything they

9:35

just announced it's out it's there the update is

9:37

here kind of thing. It's good to

9:39

see because I've seen like you know a lot

9:41

of these old releases of like Atari classic packs

9:43

and stuff like that come out for systems and

9:45

then kind of just be left and not

9:48

updated and having this whole like

9:50

holiday content update is is quite

9:53

welcome. Yeah I mean you know

9:55

once you've been too long on the games list you know you can obviously find

9:57

it you know if you've got the update you'll know if not you can google

9:59

it pretty quickly. But yes a couple of

10:01

homebrew ones on there got adventure 2 for the

10:03

2600 there's one called a aqua venture as well

10:06

Which is a prototype? Save Mary

10:08

which is another prototype and these are prototypes that now

10:10

have been I think kind of circulating

10:12

on the web for a while But it's nice to

10:14

have them in a know somewhat official package And

10:16

then you got a bunch of other 2600 games and

10:18

there is one Atari Lynx game

10:20

as well called warbirds So

10:23

I do think it's a very nice update and you

10:25

mentioned then Joe, but you know, you'd like more Jaguar

10:27

content on there They have said though. This

10:29

is not all they're gonna be releasing more regular updates

10:32

for it as well Okay as we go forward so

10:34

it looks like you know Definitely is

10:36

worth you know, you pay once and you're getting

10:38

a load of games as I can make them

10:40

available Which I think are very cool.

10:42

So yeah Atari

10:44

seemed to be doing like, you know some

10:46

really cool stuff recently and Hopefully

10:49

next year we're gonna have a home

10:51

maybe really from Atari Yeah, which I think

10:53

is about time we spoke to someone from

10:55

yeah I think you're right the direction the

10:57

company's going in now to seem you

11:00

know Like really clued up now doesn't it in

11:02

terms of you know, tracking retro fans? So

11:05

yeah watch this space and

11:07

that is available now and speaking of

11:09

Atari actually has something else from the Atari

11:11

stable Because this is our mates at night

11:13

dive studios and you may have seen this

11:15

I've been there watching a few YouTube reviews

11:17

of this I've not played it or bought

11:19

in myself just yet, but definitely one on

11:21

the maybe Content-listed

11:23

therefore games that might download over the Christmas break

11:26

Turok three has had a rather nice

11:28

looking remaster. Yeah, so like you

11:30

say from night dive studios and Atari

11:33

Released earlier this week on

11:35

PC PlayStation Xbox and switch Which is

11:38

cool and makes sense because if it

11:40

was an n64 game a

11:42

really late n64 game came out in 2000

11:45

but the GameCube was 2001 so

11:47

pretty late into the 30 and 64 lifespan

11:51

I was a big fan of Turok, but I never played

11:53

number three I had number one and two and

11:55

played them to death and I had rage wars

11:57

as well, which was like the deathmatch of

12:00

like one they have like arena mode one they

12:02

released as well but I

12:04

never played torach free and I'm the same as you

12:06

I've watched quite a few reviews on this and

12:09

to be fair it's been nothing but praise you

12:12

know if night dive you know they usually

12:14

hit home runs with these things um

12:17

it's you know 4k native

12:19

resolution and 120 frames per

12:22

second on all consoles and

12:24

pc which is really nice to see obviously

12:26

touched up the graphics and everything there and but

12:29

one thing I like about that is the controls you

12:31

haven't gone too far with the graphic upgrades though it

12:33

looks quite similar to the original just like you said

12:35

kind of upscaled and looks you know through their own

12:37

modern displays yeah absolutely so you know and they did

12:39

number one and two as well back in like 2015

12:41

2016 they did you know those ones as well um

12:43

so I really need to

12:48

check this one out I think it's about I want to

12:50

say it's about 25 quid I think I saw it for

12:52

I've put it on my wish list on xbox um

12:55

but as always night dive they just they're just

12:57

pumping them out now aren't they you know yeah

13:00

every couple of weeks there's a new one um

13:03

and like I say they're always

13:05

home runs you know they've been really

13:07

really really solid games that they're putting out and

13:10

sometimes shedding a bit of life or light

13:12

onto games that might have been overlooked because

13:14

nobody ever really talks about torak free everybody

13:16

always always talks about torak one and torak

13:18

two um and torak free you know I

13:20

think make mostly scored like seven out of

13:23

ten eight out of ten you know 77

13:25

on metacritic so you know not the not

13:27

amazing but you know certainly not a bad

13:30

game I'm seeing a lot of reviewers

13:32

coming back to this all playing it for the first time

13:34

they're like actually this is probably the best of the three

13:36

you know you get two characters you can play as and

13:39

essentially two campaigns because they both get

13:41

different weapons and they both take

13:43

different routes on the levels and stuff like

13:45

that um and also the

13:47

campaign is only about three hours long

13:49

per character so nice and short

13:51

for people like for like me and Dan who've ever

13:54

got it's a series

13:56

that passed me by and uh I think this

13:58

might be a really good one to

14:00

experience it. Do you recommend it Joe?

14:02

I recommend it. Turok 1 is a

14:05

little bit dated because

14:08

Turok 1 there isn't as much of a story

14:10

and every level is very go collect this item

14:12

and then get to the end of the level.

14:15

Whereas Turok 2 and Turok 3, some people might

14:17

scream at me for this

14:21

but they're a little bit more half lifey.

14:23

There's a narrative to it and there's a

14:25

lot more weapons and gore and a lot

14:27

more variety in the enemies and stuff. So

14:30

dinosaurs and then humans and

14:32

then weird alien kind of dinosaur hybrids and

14:34

stuff. So I would recommend them. For

14:37

me as well, Turok was one of the

14:39

games that I remember. Just the promotional campaign

14:41

for that game was massive. Every time I

14:43

opened, even non-gaming magazines, you know, by like

14:45

the UK mags that have those adverts

14:49

in there with a dinosaur head. I

14:52

remember the screenshots were absolutely

14:54

everywhere. Yeah, so a really interesting

14:56

franchise and I think, yeah, like you said Joe, I've

14:58

not played the third game but it's interesting that apparently

15:00

kind of concludes the story that they set up in

15:02

the second game as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If

15:04

you've already played that one, it's worth, you know, just to get some

15:07

completion, download in that and like

15:09

you said available for all the modern systems now.

15:11

So I linked it up. Obviously Night Dive,

15:13

I think you're right, they just seem to be like the

15:15

go-to guys for like these fantastic remasters at the moment. Obviously

15:17

we had that, you know, Quake 1 and 2 that did

15:20

recently as well which were really well done. So look forward

15:22

to seeing more of what Night Dive will bring us in

15:24

2024. Now this

15:27

is very cool. I love it when we

15:29

get new games for Retro Systems and

15:32

this looks right up your street Joe.

15:34

And you run and gun a game,

15:36

sad to say, and you run and

15:38

gun a game for the, not only

15:40

the Dreamcast, also the PSP and the

15:42

Neo Geo. Yeah, Cyborg

15:45

Force which is looking

15:47

to release in mid

15:50

2024 and coming to

15:53

physical cartridges etc discs

15:56

which is really awesome. But yeah, very in the vein of

15:58

kind of like somewhere in the game. in

16:00

between Contra and and

16:02

Metal Slug I would say in

16:05

terms of gameplay. Cyborg Force

16:07

kind of in the name

16:09

it's post-apocalyptic future, nuclear war,

16:12

you know the world. We've heard

16:14

that once or twice before and

16:16

it's been developed by a company

16:19

called Neobite which I believe this

16:21

is their first ever commercial video

16:23

game that they've done. Historically

16:26

they've done they've like developed board games

16:29

but there's a few names behind this you know who

16:31

have been involved in other games and stuff like that

16:33

you know have come together to work for Neobite and

16:36

it's natively being made for

16:38

Neo Geo for the AES

16:40

and MVS but as

16:43

you say it's coming on Dreamcast, PSP

16:45

and PC as well as other emulation

16:47

devices and you know physical release as well.

16:50

Yeah looking at the pricing I

16:52

know Neo Geo. Yeah. They're always seen as expensive. This is

16:54

a £333 and you know they've got obviously

17:04

the custom cartridge there which is going to

17:06

cost a lot as well and they've got

17:08

the it's kind of like a VHS style

17:11

tape that they release it in and

17:13

they've got two region choices as well

17:16

even though the game is region free

17:19

they've got like a US version and a

17:21

Japanese version as well and 123

17:24

meg cartridge. Yeah I

17:26

think the fact that they're doing it

17:28

natively you know yeah

17:31

Neo Geo collecting is expensive

17:33

and that's all I'm gonna really say

17:35

on that. Yeah I often joke to

17:37

my wife because I like collecting for

17:39

the Sega Saturn. I always

17:42

say like oh god the Sega Saturn is

17:44

like the most expensive console to collect for

17:46

but no you kind of forget about the

17:48

Neo Geo and stuff where games are you

17:51

know they're like £300-£400-£500 and all

17:53

of the new releases that come

17:55

out for them are like €300-£333.

17:57

Yeah. like

18:00

that and it's very much for the hardcore isn't it

18:02

yeah absolutely but if you don't fancy that and you

18:04

do just want to buy the rom on a on

18:06

a stick um 37 and a half

18:08

37 you see that yeah yeah that's

18:11

good yeah so they've got the options you

18:13

know yeah so a little bit more affordable

18:15

but yeah it does look cool um

18:18

interestingly it's

18:20

only two player on the neo

18:22

geo so if you buy the

18:24

dream cast or psp version it's only

18:26

one player but if you get the

18:28

neo geo versions it's two player right and i

18:31

find that a bit of an odd choice personally

18:33

i also think that you know they're obviously going

18:35

for a limited market here like and yeah if

18:37

if they had a lot more of these they'd

18:40

probably be able to reduce the price but you

18:42

know they're going to be hitting

18:44

these at a very small print amount i can't

18:46

imagine they're going to be making thousands of these

18:48

i imagine they'll probably make a couple of hundreds

18:50

of neo geo ones but yeah the

18:52

two player thing kind of threw me off a

18:54

little bit because these games they

18:57

are historically fantastic two player games

18:59

yeah much more fun yeah

19:01

much much much more fun um so i

19:03

don't know if that's a kind of like

19:05

a a conscious choice

19:07

to try and make people buy the neo geo

19:10

one or if it's just they couldn't

19:12

get it to run to play i don't know i

19:14

mean graphically it doesn't look like it would challenge the

19:16

dream cast at all to be honest you know it's

19:18

very 16-bit looking so

19:21

uh interesting if that is their reasoning

19:23

then that's very ambitious isn't it yeah we're gonna

19:25

get people will definitely go out and buy a

19:27

neo geo and spend yeah yeah 150 euros on

19:29

a on a cart to play two player mode

19:31

and pay that for a neo geo yeah exactly

19:33

so i think you're right though yeah because i

19:35

mean we have a few neo geo collectors that

19:37

come on the patrons hang out regularly and they're

19:39

all used to paying those kind of

19:41

prices for neo geo i mean they're essentially arcades

19:43

aren't they really i think you have a neo

19:46

geo i've got a neo geo cd system which

19:48

i mean it's like it's really expensive never even

19:50

seen it you know dam's got so

19:52

many machines i'm like oh you've got a neo geo

19:55

yeah i mean it's one of those where

19:58

it's generally among the neo geo community into

20:00

you regard it as kind of the worst one to own in

20:02

terms of you know because you've got the loading times off the

20:04

CD and which I don't think is

20:06

too bad though because I mean I'm you know I'm

20:08

used to stuff like the you know the Mega CD

20:10

and the you know CD32 and stuff like that which

20:13

I don't mind yeah well exactly yeah I mean I

20:15

don't mind CD loading times if I'm honest but I

20:17

think people that are used to the games been kind

20:19

of from cartridge and instantly viable it does kind of

20:21

bug them a bit but yeah in terms of actually

20:23

an original Neo Geo machine the CD one's probably the

20:26

most affordable from what I've seen. I got

20:28

a really good deal on it about three years ago now

20:30

I got it from 80 pounds with controller

20:33

yeah off a friend so it was um yeah

20:35

and you can burn the disks as well you

20:37

know demo the images of the internet there's no

20:39

protection so yeah but I mean I imagine emulation

20:41

is probably the way to go for most people

20:43

if you haven't got the original hardware interesting platforms

20:45

are picked as well as the PSP and Dreamcast

20:48

it seems a bit random first I was like

20:50

is there something in common with these systems makes

20:52

that port easy but from what

20:54

I've seen it doesn't look like it just

20:56

you know I guess there's that kind of

20:58

built in market of Dreamcast titles you know

21:00

yeah recently coming out and PSP I can

21:02

imagine there's a you know some similar titles

21:04

and maybe maybe they might be able to

21:06

port across quite easily I'm not sure I

21:08

got PSP not long ago actually so it's

21:10

nice to see some new games coming out

21:12

on it so yeah we keep an eye

21:14

on that one so I'm gonna check out

21:16

when that's gonna be available I'll put the

21:18

link in the show notes now

21:21

you guys are sporting anything on your wrists

21:23

at the moment not

21:25

this I've got

21:27

a Casio G Shock

21:30

I think is it Casio I've got a G

21:33

Shock anyway one of those old-school ones you know

21:35

but I've got the new version not the ones

21:37

you could win at the funds there on the

21:40

I've got the new version it runs

21:42

off solar anyway but I think the only difference with

21:44

the new version is it's got a blue light instead

21:46

of a green one on it

21:49

well I've got my Apple watch on which

21:51

obviously you know nags me all throughout the

21:53

day like stand up do more exercise everything

21:55

you step counter my little nagging assistant on

21:57

my wrist and however I'm gonna say these

21:59

look pretty nice although again something else is

22:02

quite expensive. I think Jerry's been doing a

22:04

bit of lusting over things so

22:06

far out of that price range this

22:08

week. So these are Sega Mega Drive

22:10

watches that are going to cost an

22:12

eye watering $800 each. Yeah these

22:14

are, I've just written

22:16

this off, I'm

22:19

not a watch guy to be honest like my

22:22

dad's big into watches and stuff but I

22:24

literally have one watch which I wore on my wedding day

22:26

and it was like a 30 quid

22:28

like nice leather strap one. What's

22:31

the thing with watches now they're either, you know,

22:33

is there a smart watch I get the use

22:35

for them? Yeah they're either that or the more

22:37

like a fashion accessory these days aren't they? Yeah

22:39

absolutely and I've not got a smart watch my

22:42

wife does she has the Fitbit one and

22:44

to be fair she used to swear by it she doesn't

22:46

wear it so much. I'll tell you why I've got a

22:49

solar one because my smart one I was sick of charging

22:51

it all the time while losing a charge on it. There

22:53

you go look at that but yeah if

22:55

you fancy a new watch and you're

22:57

a big Mega Drive or Genesis fan,

23:00

watchmaker Anicorn launching

23:03

a range of $800

23:06

Sega Mega Drive Genesis

23:08

console based watches. They're

23:10

a weird design like so

23:13

I remember, you

23:15

might remember this when Batman the movie came out there

23:17

was these like little plastic ones you

23:19

get at Argos that had Batman on the

23:21

front like his face with the point here

23:23

and then you'd lift up Batman and it'd

23:26

have like a little LED. Yeah I do

23:28

remember those. Yeah it kind of reminds me

23:30

of the front of the Batman one but

23:32

the way that they've designed it like there's

23:34

the Japanese limited edition one. Yeah it's

23:36

got a little window where you can see the numbers

23:38

which I kind of find weird

23:40

on a watch anyway but it looks

23:43

a bit like a rumba to me. So

23:45

it's designed so think of

23:47

the Mega Drive model one

23:50

the circular bit where the cartridge goes that's

23:52

that's what it is it's designed over after

23:55

that it's a remake of that. Yeah but

23:57

do you see the kind of robot back

23:59

in. In

26:00

the case I'd be that's one reason I'm not like a

26:02

watch collector apart from not having $800 to

26:04

splash out on watches I'd be too nervous walking

26:07

around with that kind of money. I just like

26:09

a new car. Yeah I'd

26:13

be scraping it on walls and like yeah Dad

26:15

tickle Mzy, but yeah, if you are a watch collector and

26:17

you want something very unique and there's something very beautiful Actually,

26:19

and a Sega fan this could be right up your alley.

26:22

I'll link that in the show notes as well Now

26:24

we've had a lot of new consoles come

26:27

out in other mini console Craz

26:29

kind of continues. Obviously. We saw retro games

26:31

limited announcing their roadmap for 2024 plenty new

26:34

systems on the way from them This one is a

26:36

little bit left of center though now first of all,

26:38

I had to kind of be reminded that Commodore

26:43

is still a thing. Obviously, this is not the

26:45

Commodore of old I mean, I know you've

26:47

done videos about this wherever Kind of

26:49

what happened to the the name and the amount

26:52

of companies and stuff. It's been through over the years

26:54

It's a complicated story, isn't it? Yeah,

26:56

it's been a kind of passed around a

26:58

lot and I think I think

27:00

there's probably four Companies

27:02

or free companies that are currently

27:05

Commodore So I know that

27:07

you've got a Commodore Italy, which we're talking

27:09

about at the moment. There was a Commodore

27:11

USA as well Individual

27:13

computers, I think have the brand Commodore

27:15

in Germany, I'm not

27:18

quite accurate with it. I can't keep up

27:20

with the amount of a Commodore Around

27:23

or have kind of used the brand recently.

27:25

Well, you mentioned about Vacuum cleaners

27:27

as well. I saw someone put this in a discord

27:29

a while back that there is a company that make

27:32

basically Commodore branded Rumba clones

27:35

Like, you know robot hovers with a Commodore

27:37

logo on top, which is quite interesting to

27:39

see but this company we're talking about here

27:41

This is the Italian Commodore company who

27:43

you might remember they made the headlines a couple of

27:45

years ago when they brought out the the pet phone

27:49

Yes, yes, they did they did some

27:51

Commodore theme phones Which is kind of

27:53

like an Android phone with an etching

27:55

of the logos on the back of thing I

27:58

think someone sound out and you're correct correct

28:00

me if I'm wrong here, but I've got a feeling it was just kind of an off

28:02

the shelf Chinese Android phone that they

28:04

kind of put their logo on from memory. Obviously

28:06

that was a few years ago now, but this company is

28:08

still kicking in. It's got on their website. They have quite

28:10

a few products available. I think again, these

28:13

are probably kind of OEM. Yeah,

28:15

I think they're referred to as Commodore

28:17

Industries, this company. Right. Yeah. Well, that

28:19

means they've got a lot of laptops

28:21

and stuff on their website, just standard Windows

28:23

machines. But interestingly, they've been at a

28:25

convention recently. These are an Italian company

28:28

and they've been going to a few

28:30

trade shows and stuff, including the Milan

28:32

Games Week event that was on recently,

28:35

and basically trying to, you know, revive Commodore and

28:37

get the brand back in the limelight as well.

28:39

And there's an interview on an Italian news

28:41

website where they're talking about the fact that the

28:44

guys behind this company, Luigi

28:47

Simonetti of Commodore Italy,

28:49

now wants to make a console. So

28:52

we could be getting a Commodore console in

28:54

the near future. Well, we've seen so many

28:56

Commodore consoles. I remember

28:58

Audi did one at one point in

29:00

Germany. There was a

29:02

C64 Audi release. There was

29:04

a, yeah, that Commodore USA did one. We've

29:07

also seen obviously Retro Games Limited. I've

29:10

done their Commodore branded C64 Mini. And

29:15

yeah, I guess it depends what they're

29:17

going to go for. Are they going to go for kind of

29:20

just a kind of like

29:22

little mini system, are

29:24

they going to go for slapping something

29:26

on an Android thing, or are they going

29:28

to go for a full kind of Amiga-style

29:30

system? Who knows? It's an

29:32

interesting interview, but it seems like

29:35

they're kind of aiming to hit that market,

29:37

especially doing this interview. And some

29:39

of their products, they've got like a

29:41

little C64 floppy drive USB key

29:44

that seems to be sold out at the moment.

29:46

And they've got a few little games that they've

29:48

kind of been

29:51

running as well. But none

29:53

of them really seem like

29:55

they're huge kind of retro

29:58

Commodore-style ones. I'm

30:00

not sure how they're going to approach this,

30:02

but I don't know. Do you think

30:04

just slapping the name Commodore on something

30:07

is going to bring enough people to it or

30:10

do you think they need to do more? They

30:12

say in this interview here basically the only information

30:14

we've got is their goal for the future is

30:16

to have a console. They're currently doing research and

30:18

developments and the aim is

30:20

to have a console with hardware inside

30:22

that makes the Amiga world compatible. So

30:26

it looks like whatever the planning is going

30:28

to be compatible with Amiga games. Yeah, I

30:30

didn't see that quote. Okay, interesting because I

30:32

know that Amiga kit also has that A600GS

30:34

that they're just developing so it's

30:36

good to see a world where there's so

30:38

many options I guess. Yeah, I mean that's

30:41

the thing. I'm looking at this and I'm

30:43

thinking, for me in my mind

30:45

Commodore and Amiga have been two

30:47

completely different things for at least the last 30

30:49

years now, haven't they? Yeah, yeah. And

30:51

that was that huge spit. I think it was a

30:53

two-lip computer and bought the Commodore branding

30:56

back in the days and then an S-Com

30:58

separated off for the Amiga branding. Yeah, very, very

31:00

messy in the late 90s and early 2000s as

31:02

a kind of where the brands both went in

31:04

separate ways. But that, I mean one thing that

31:06

I do like is it would be nice to

31:09

see a Commodore machine that can run Amiga games

31:11

again. Obviously we've got stuff like the A500 Mini

31:13

and they're bringing out the another Maxi that

31:15

everyone's kind of naming it next year

31:17

as well. So it'd be interesting to see

31:19

kind of where this fits in the market

31:21

but... Yeah, I think it's a good situation.

31:23

For years we didn't have any Commodore

31:26

or Amiga hardware, not

31:28

even something with just a logo slapped

31:30

on it. So you know, it's good

31:32

to have so many about and lots

31:35

of options, yeah. But let's

31:37

see what this becomes. Yeah, it was

31:39

always space in my console collection for a couple of

31:41

new editions. So... Yeah, I'm

31:43

still after that Commodore Rumba anyway. So yeah.

31:47

Not a like me would probably go for editing.

31:50

Ask Santa Ravi, be a good boy, you never know. Can

31:53

I please get a Commodore Rumba? A

31:55

what? So yeah, we'll keep an eye on

31:57

that. It could be some interesting news in 2020. from

32:00

the Commodore stable so I'll link that up

32:02

and of course the rest of the stories

32:04

we talk about you can find them all

32:06

every week on your podcast app or head

32:08

to our website at theretrohour.com. Now

32:11

we're going to get into this week's interview

32:13

talking about some incredible companies from back in

32:15

the day. I've got cinemaware, Microprose, Virgin as

32:17

well with Ed Magnin he's coming up in

32:19

just a moment. Before we do that

32:22

let's take a moment to give a

32:24

massive thank you to our wonderful friend

32:26

and ExpressVPN. Now we love ExpressVPN they've

32:28

been such a big supporter of this

32:30

podcast throughout 2023 haven't they?

32:32

Oh yeah definitely really good piece of

32:34

software I just love it. Well

32:37

it's the thing I mean obviously ExpressVPN

32:39

is our choice of

32:41

VPN and maybe right now you're kind of

32:43

looking at holiday presents Christmas presents

32:46

for your family there is one thing

32:48

that you'll find I mean I don't know about you guys if I

32:50

have to search for something or you know maybe looking for

32:52

stuff to buy the missus obviously that gets in

32:54

your history and you find you suddenly get ads

32:56

recommending it all over don't you? Your browser and

32:58

everything like that because it's usually recommending the thing

33:01

that you've already bought. And

33:04

then obviously you know if your missus comes in the room and

33:06

you're on and there's adverts popping up she kind of gets an

33:08

idea or maybe your kids you know if you've got kids you're

33:10

shopping for them online and I kind of give away what you're

33:12

doing so ExpressVPN is an app that you can have on your

33:14

computer you can have it on your phone as well and it

33:17

encrypts all of your online traffic so no matter what you do

33:19

it all stays completely private. So

33:21

a lot of people think you know I'll

33:23

do incognito mode that'll save you but incognito

33:25

mode does nothing except hide your history from

33:27

yourself. So if you haven't got ExpressVPN turned on

33:29

that's the thing you know your browsing history is

33:31

out there your ISP knows what you're doing all

33:33

these websites can track what you're doing too and

33:35

serve you adverts up as well and the good

33:37

thing about ExpressVPN is you can take it on

33:39

the road with you as well so you know

33:41

if you're at home if you're traveling if you're

33:43

at work. Yeah I find that really important because

33:45

you know if you're on holiday

33:48

or you're visiting family and friends and

33:50

stuff and you're staying in like hotels

33:52

and stuff with unsecure networks it's

33:54

really important to kind of protect

33:57

yourself and ExpressVPN is really

33:59

good for that. Yeah, that's the thing. I'm

34:01

going to Make it Airbnb this

34:03

weekend. I'm staying and you know We're gonna wait to

34:05

Buxton for a few days and I'm gonna be using

34:07

their Wi-Fi there as well Yeah, you know, did you

34:09

trust the people that run the Airbnb to respect your

34:11

privacy? You know get ExpressVPN on they can't

34:14

track anything So we've been using it for many

34:16

years now and I think especially been supporting this

34:18

podcast for about five years now So there's no

34:20

way we'd let anyone else see our browsing history

34:22

You know ExpressVPN encrypts it all and that we

34:25

want to give you an incredible Christmas offer now

34:27

Maybe you're looking for a VPN at the moment

34:29

so many advantages to having one use our link

34:31

You're gonna really help out the podcast and not

34:34

only sign up to one year plan will give

34:36

you three months extra for free So use our

34:38

link so they know that we sent you express

34:40

VPN dot-com slash

34:42

retro that's express VPN dot-com

34:44

slash retro and Thank

34:47

you so much for ExpressVPN for their continued support

34:49

of our show Now

34:52

don't about you lads obviously I've been self-employed

34:54

for a while you are as well Ravi

34:57

I'm gonna Christmas party this year. I have

34:59

next week Are we

35:01

going to Joe's for some kind of Christmas party?

35:03

I think I'm crashing over people Well,

35:07

I thought you know if we can't go

35:09

to a party Let's bring the party to

35:11

us and we do this every year the

35:13

retro hour virtual Christmas party Obviously we do

35:15

our patrons hangout every month, but there is

35:17

also something special about the December one, isn't

35:19

there? Yeah, absolutely We're

35:22

gonna be doing the the Christmas hangout

35:24

on Friday the 15th aren't we? Next

35:26

week. Yes, yeah Friday night. We're doing

35:28

and we've done the patrons hang out on a

35:31

Friday before It'll be a little bit more roundy. I think that

35:33

on uh This Sunday night doesn't

35:35

it? Obviously start the weekend like we said everyone's

35:37

in you know, full-on Christmas merriment You know just

35:39

kind of the week before Christmas. So, you know

35:41

Christmas jumpers are not compulsory but encouraged We do

35:44

like to see them. I like it's the one

35:46

with the most drinking on isn't it? And

35:51

you know a lot of people come on in costume and

35:54

Christmas backgrounds and all that and obviously we talk

35:56

about Christmas plans a lot of memories and stuff

35:58

too. It is all such a giggle So if you

36:00

haven't joined us for a hangout at all in 2023 This

36:03

is a very good time to jump on and

36:06

you'll get an invite to our virtual Christmas party

36:08

that is coming up next Friday Night a Friday

36:10

the 15th of December from 8 p.m. UK time.

36:12

So join us on patreon now You'll be invited

36:14

to that and of course there are plenty of

36:16

other perks for joining on patreon You often get

36:19

the podcast early you get it ad free every

36:21

week We do an extra 10 15

36:23

minutes of news stories on every episode just

36:25

for our patrons And if you join us

36:27

as a gold member or above you get

36:30

invited to check out our bonus

36:32

Podcast of which I think there are

36:35

38 episodes of this after we record

36:37

next week's yeah the after hours

36:39

They're at trial after hours. Well, we just kind

36:41

of let it higher down let loose We

36:45

kind of anything goes on the after hours, doesn't

36:47

it? You know, we usually have a theme

36:49

we do the retro years every couple of months

36:51

where we kind of review You know games and

36:53

tech from a particular year, you know We've

36:56

covered quite a few the 90s and 2000s a couple of the 80s That's

37:01

always really fun or often we kind of sometimes people want

37:03

to hear a little bit more about us So

37:05

we kind of give our opinions, you know top fives

37:07

of certain consoles and get some sometimes they recommend games

37:09

for us to play Yeah, yeah a little bit when

37:12

we do that we need to do we need to

37:14

do definitely We need to get some more patrons on

37:16

the news as well Bryce. We will get you on

37:18

don't worry So if you

37:20

want to check out the the bonus podcast a lot of

37:22

listening there for you know If you've got a couple of

37:24

weeks off over Christmas next week We're

37:27

gonna be doing our Christmas special of that as

37:29

well talking about Christmas memories and gaming and tech

37:31

that reminds us of Christmas has gone By so

37:33

you get an invite to that your own personal

37:35

RSS link a very good time to join

37:37

us on patreon and make sure that we

37:39

can continue The podcast into 2024 all the

37:41

details to sign up on our website right

37:43

now at the retro hour calm And

37:46

I just want to say to the patrons. Thanks so

37:48

much for supporting this throughout the year as well It's

37:51

been fantastic and we know it's a tough time

37:53

but you know, you've allowed us to

37:56

keep the show going and we really appreciate

37:58

it Yeah, we're gonna do it without you. Right

38:01

then of course you can check out all the new stories in the

38:03

show notes every week, you don't have to google around, they've saved you

38:05

the job. A little favour to ask as well, if you have got

38:07

a little bit of time over Christmas, we do appreciate that you know

38:09

people have a little bit of holidays, you can probably spend it with

38:11

a family, but if you get a couple of seconds, one thing that's

38:14

going to really help us as we go into 2024 is leave us

38:16

a little review if

38:18

you can on the platform that you're listening on, particularly

38:20

if you listen on Apple Podcasts, really helps us get

38:22

in front of new people, helps us get the charts

38:24

as well and warms our hearts to see lovely comments

38:26

from there as well doesn't it, so we'd really appreciate

38:28

it if you can just take a couple of seconds

38:30

to leave us a nice review and a five star,

38:33

a little rating on there that always really helps. Right

38:35

then so we'll see you for our Christmas

38:38

specials next Friday, kicking off with the best

38:40

of 2023 and then of course the Christmas

38:42

quiz, I can hear a few nerves

38:44

when I mention that, do you have any

38:47

spoilers? So yeah look forward to that and

38:49

enjoy the start of your Christmas season if

38:51

you are celebrating that this year and next

38:53

we're going to talk to this week's special

38:55

guest getting the Inside Story on companies like

38:57

CinemaWear and MicroProse Virgin as well with Ed

38:59

Magnin, he's next on the Retro Air Podcast.

39:27

Here goes to the single furniture store when you can

39:29

go to the big sandy soap store. Celebrity

39:36

voice impersonation, not an endorsement. Why go

39:38

to a single furniture store when you

39:41

can go to Big Sandy Superstore?

39:44

Shop and compare America's top five mattress

39:46

brands, plus nectar and purple. and choose

39:49

from over 22,000 in-stock appliances from

39:51

the top brands at the guaranteed

39:53

lowest price. or furnish the room

39:55

of your dreams with a large

39:57

selection of American-built furniture. With financing

40:00

plans for just about anyone, there's

40:02

nowhere else quite like it. Big

40:04

Sandy Superstore. You're

40:07

listening to the Retro Hour Podcast and we're

40:09

here today with Ed Magnin and we're going

40:12

to be talking about so many different things,

40:14

kind of going from 1979 to the Game

40:19

Boy Advance and Nintendo DS as well.

40:21

So there's a whole great history there

40:23

of working at great companies like Cinemaware,

40:26

Microcrows as well and Virgin Games. How

40:28

are you doing there? Oh great,

40:30

great. I appreciate your call. Yeah,

40:32

yeah. It's great to have you on. Now we have

40:34

a question that we ask all of our guests and

40:37

this kind of takes them back a bit and this

40:39

is what was your first kind of video

40:41

game or computer experience that you

40:43

can remember? Well, I had done

40:45

the online business where we were... I

40:48

was on the Apple 2. I bought it as a

40:50

hobby when I was teaching and I

40:53

go to club meetings in Los Angeles.

40:56

There was like an Apple Club. Jobs

40:58

and Wozniak would fly down from

41:00

the Bay Area to come and

41:02

talk to us once in a

41:04

while and I was looking at what... Oh,

41:06

they showed off the Apple 3 that

41:09

was their epsilon, their one

41:12

big terrible machine. I got to see

41:14

them and then I looked at

41:17

the club when I go to this club meetings on

41:20

the weekend and once a month and I looked around

41:22

the room and people

41:24

were starting businesses and I said, well, I'm

41:26

as good or better than those guys are.

41:29

So I went around and tried to sell

41:31

some software to some companies and

41:33

they didn't offer me very much. So then I said, well, the

41:35

hell with that. I'll figure out how to do it myself and

41:38

I developed an online business

41:40

that people downloaded through Modems which

41:42

were only... If I say

41:44

there were 300 bauds, 56k, this is 0.3k. It

41:46

wasn't even

41:57

in the ballpark of any kind of dial-up

41:59

that we used. So how did it

42:01

work then? Because that was in like 1979 then.

42:05

Right, exactly. So what happened was I

42:07

went to the UCLA library and I

42:09

got some reference books on X25, X.25,

42:12

which was the network

42:14

that Telenet and TimeNet used

42:17

as dial-up networks. And

42:20

it had error checking in it.

42:23

So if you couldn't send it reliably, I'm not going

42:25

to send you an eight-minute download

42:27

and then have you complain that you didn't get

42:29

a good transfer. So

42:32

I had to know that I was sending it

42:34

reliably. So we sent blocks of data, like

42:36

packets of like 256 bytes

42:39

with a two-byte checksum. And

42:41

if the checksum matched, it continued

42:44

to go forward. And if it didn't match, it

42:46

repeated the last block. And

42:49

so we knew when we sent you the thing, it was

42:51

reliable. Now, then how do we get

42:53

your money? We charge your credit

42:55

card. And we say, okay, this game is $25 and

42:58

you give us your credit card. Now,

43:00

we establish an account for you earlier on it.

43:02

You leave your information and we set up an

43:04

account. And then we know how to get a

43:06

hold of you if it was

43:09

a problem. But basically, we're trusting you. And

43:11

then as far as submitting them for payment, they

43:13

weren't set up to let us do it electronically.

43:16

So we would print them out on

43:18

paper and take them to the bank. And

43:20

they said telephone order, where the signature would

43:22

go. So you

43:25

essentially had like a kind of

43:27

software delivery service, but you

43:29

also had submissions to it? We

43:32

did games from other people. We did a lot

43:34

of them ourselves. But we had about

43:36

– I don't

43:38

know. One of the brochures I have online, I think

43:40

had the number, but it was a little like maybe 60, 70 titles.

43:44

They weren't all games. There were some games.

43:47

And Apple came out with a mouse, which was kind

43:49

of funny. I think it was a one-button mouse. And

43:51

we had a mouse maze where you moved the mouse

43:53

around. So not only people had the mouse, but the

43:55

people that bought the mouse, we gave them a game

43:57

they could play on it. And – We

44:00

did a telegaming where you can play backgammon over the

44:02

phone, we did a chess one where you can play

44:05

chess over the phone with somebody else.

44:07

What it did was you bought

44:09

the game, the game sent enough of

44:11

itself to your friend, so he didn't even have to

44:13

buy it. But he could play

44:15

with you. Now, when he wanted to play with somebody

44:17

else, he needed his own copy to play with. And

44:20

then it would send enough of the screen and

44:22

everything so that when you made a move, it

44:24

would move it on his side too. That's

44:27

insane. You look at stuff now like the

44:29

App Store and how quick it is to

44:31

download something and connect with your card. Oh,

44:34

and believe me, I'm much happier

44:36

not doing that. I was

44:38

proud I invented a system that nobody

44:41

was even close to us. People filed

44:43

patents on things that were several years

44:45

late even. To shoot

44:47

down their patent, you just have to have prior art that's

44:50

a year and a day before them. I

44:55

worked with some of the top law

44:57

firms around the world, including Rose Law

45:00

in London. They

45:02

needed help fighting these people

45:04

and the British ones trailed by a

45:06

couple of years. So we

45:08

were still, after I'd gotten all the money

45:11

I could get for helping as an expert

45:13

witness the US cases, that I got hired

45:15

to help with the British cases and stuff.

45:19

It was an interesting thing, but I'm so glad now that

45:21

I don't worry about it. I know I did it and

45:23

I could download stuff and I figured out how to do

45:25

it. But now I'm glad that

45:27

Apple and the Windows Store and

45:30

Google Play and Amazon, that they

45:32

take care of that for me.

45:35

I used to run home on New Year's Eve because

45:37

the system was actually running on Apple IIs and

45:40

it didn't have a day-date calendar. It

45:42

had a time, we could set the time. But

45:45

at the end of the year, we had

45:47

to switch it to 2024. You had to

45:49

rush home on New Year's Eve to make

45:52

sure you change the year. That's

45:54

how you spend your midnight then. I spent

45:57

my midnight doing that. There

46:00

was a little bit of fraud, but we'd

46:02

catch the people because we wouldn't activate the

46:04

account for them unless we had a working

46:06

phone number. The guy would

46:08

leave his information. So

46:10

CBS News sent a crew out

46:12

to film. It

46:14

was the first story they did on personal computers.

46:16

Then they said Ed Magnaud quit

46:18

a teaching job in Southern

46:21

California to provide his own

46:23

computer games to other computer buffs around the

46:25

world. What amazed them

46:27

was, they said just do what you normally would

46:30

do. In the daytime I use

46:32

the computers because it costs too much for people

46:34

to phone us in the daytime. In the evening

46:36

when the rates went down, we leave all the

46:38

lines answering for customers.

46:41

I was in the other room watching television. So

46:43

I'm watching the CBS News in the other room

46:46

while people are placing orders. It

46:50

was clicking back and forth. People would

46:52

call up and they'd say they're Abraham Lincoln and stuff. Once

46:56

or twice it was embarrassing or it was

46:58

somebody famous. They

47:00

called up and they'd say, the guy calls

47:02

me back and goes, this is my money

47:05

goodness for you. I'm going to

47:07

welcome you to something. I thought it was a

47:09

fake. You thought they were a

47:11

prankster. Yeah. People like

47:13

Todd Rungrid was one of our customers.

47:19

I was wondering how much the

47:21

Apple II kind of expandability and

47:23

hardware helped with developing this

47:25

system and having add-ons

47:28

and extra boards. Not

47:30

really. First of all, we had

47:32

to get enough storage. Originally

47:35

we had just the normal floppies, like a two

47:38

drive system. It's answering the phone and it's got

47:40

to have the games it's selling and keep a

47:42

log of what people are buying so we can

47:44

print out the credit card slips

47:46

the next day. Later we

47:48

got an 8 inch drive. The

47:53

dual 8 inch drives use the top

47:55

and the bottom. It

47:58

gave us quite a bit more capacity. But

48:00

even that was wasn't enough and then

48:02

then we went to a cordless hard

48:04

drive And I had to take out a bank loan.

48:06

I think the drive costs like 20 grand For

48:11

a 20 megabyte hard drive We're

48:14

not talking about about gigabyte terabyte. This is

48:16

yeah, it was like, you know

48:18

What happened is that the initial when you put an Apple

48:20

to the first? The keep was 16

48:23

K the next 16 K caused you 300 bucks

48:26

Wow The next 16 K after

48:28

that cost about a hundred because the price is

48:30

going down more companies You know more people make

48:32

and then I think was like sixty five dollars, you

48:35

know for for another 16 K You

48:37

know it so over my lifetime I see

48:39

memory go way down at price and other

48:41

things and you you could buy

48:43

a computer each year You spend fifteen hundred

48:46

at three grand on a computer, but it's

48:48

a better computer each year than it was

48:50

the year before You know, yeah. Yeah, it's

48:52

really interesting with that culture as well because

48:54

you guys obviously a lot of developers had

48:56

Apple twos and and and you're all kind of

48:58

using that and In

49:01

Britain we had lots of different systems But

49:03

you ended up working with cinema wire as

49:05

well, which is a really big name over

49:07

here as well Yeah,

49:10

I had fun that the people that ran it were

49:12

a little weird and then and then they got taken

49:14

over years later They they bought

49:16

about a bankruptcy some guys from Brazil or something

49:18

They bought them and then they called

49:20

up and they said are you the ed magnum that did

49:22

this and do you have the source code? For this

49:24

game. Okay, you have to send it to us. We own the

49:26

company now Well,

49:33

I was wondering as well because they

49:35

used amigas for development right so what

49:38

Now that was an interesting thing was that cinema

49:41

where used amigas and The

49:44

advantage was that they made the game look

49:46

good on the Amiga and then they ported

49:48

it down to the other platforms If

49:51

I had the Commodore 64 you got

49:53

to the the EGA or

49:55

VGA PC It didn't look

49:57

like much anything but but you could put the box

49:59

out with the pictures from the Amiga and

50:01

say your screenshots may vary, you know, and

50:04

put a, what they did was they had a

50:06

box that had the game in it and then

50:08

they put a sticker on it for which version

50:10

it was, whether it was the Apple II GS

50:13

or Apple II or Commodore. And so they, they

50:15

were able to get away with that that way.

50:17

Now, when I worked at MicroProse,

50:19

they did the opposite. And by the way, I

50:21

was there, I was one of maybe

50:24

about their eighth or

50:26

ninth programmer they hired. I see

50:28

lunch with Sid Meier every day,

50:30

you know, did Civilization. Yeah. And

50:33

so he did a game and, and, Pirates.

50:36

And so they brought

50:38

up this guy from North Carolina, Randall

50:40

Masteller, and, and I went

50:42

down to Sid's office for a week and he explained

50:44

Pirates to us because he just finished it. He didn't

50:46

want to stop while he was working on it, tell

50:49

us anything. He was going to get completely done for

50:51

the, for the Commodore 64. And

50:53

that was my job to make an Apple

50:56

II and Apple II GS version. And

50:58

Randall Masteller went back to North Carolina and

51:00

made a PC version. And

51:02

Randall had a way of, he'd look at the Commodore

51:05

64 code, he had some macros

51:07

he typed. It kind of made it easy

51:09

to like retype it back in and get

51:11

it the way he needed. I

51:13

took a look at what, what Sid had done and I

51:15

got it going on the, on

51:18

the Apple II. Now it's interesting because the Apple II and

51:20

the Commodore 64 had the same chip.

51:23

They had 6502s. Yes. Yeah. But,

51:25

but that would, all similarities

51:27

stop there. And the

51:29

Apple II screen was weird. It was,

51:32

it was

51:34

40 characters across. And

51:36

if you put in a card

51:39

that made it 80 characters across, it was

51:41

weird because even the 40 character screen, when

51:43

you want to cross the top line and

51:45

then you went one more character, you were

51:48

down a third of the screen. And

51:51

also, I guess you're also going from

51:53

like color to black and white as

51:55

well, which is another switch

51:58

with the palette. Apple. If the

52:01

high res had had it

52:04

was purple, green, white

52:06

if they're both on. If you have a

52:08

purple pixel and a green pixel next to each other, they

52:10

turn white. And if you have neither of them,

52:12

you got black. And

52:14

so that was the high res. The low res

52:16

had about 12 colors, you know, it's supposed to

52:18

be 16, but it was some of

52:20

them were duplicates, some of the grays were duplicates of each

52:23

other and just with a different

52:25

number. But yeah, so

52:27

they had that kind of thing. And

52:29

then the basic was different. Somebody had published

52:32

a basic book back in those days. It

52:34

was like a dictionary of basic commands. And

52:38

it's like print. And then it would say, okay, on

52:41

the Commodore 64, you type this and on

52:43

the Apple II, you type this and on

52:45

the Radio Shack computer, you type

52:47

this. So the type of security, it was

52:49

like all these things. The

52:52

old days, was it load,

52:54

something, comma, eight, comma, one, you know, on

52:56

the Commodore 64, you know, types of weird.

52:59

You couldn't just load and get you stuck a floppy and

53:01

then you had to type this thing and you got to

53:03

go, oh, by the way, too, in those days, the

53:06

market in the UK was for

53:08

tape cassettes. Yes, yes,

53:10

yeah. And so we made

53:12

a game on the on the disk and then we

53:14

had to load it to a tape cassette. And

53:18

we got like, let's see,

53:20

in pounds, I think it

53:22

was like, maybe like 10

53:24

pounds for the cassette and

53:27

15 pounds for the, you

53:30

know, for the disk or something. So nobody

53:32

bought this. Nobody bought this. They bought the

53:34

room tape and made me copy to a

53:36

floppy themselves. Yeah. And also piracy

53:38

on the tapes with a rife as well. We

53:42

spent all this extra trouble making the thing.

53:45

And then when we were done, everybody

53:47

was buying it wrong. And I said, well, that's, I

53:49

said, I don't want to fix that problem. Change the

53:51

prices. Flip the two prices.

53:53

People will buy the, they'll buy the disk,

53:55

which are actually easier to make and

53:58

safer for us. And

54:00

I guess you were also going to different sizes

54:03

then as well and With

54:06

size limitations and story. Oh, yeah. Yeah all

54:08

of that stuff and okay, then what do

54:11

you do? The original purpose

54:13

I was teasing submitted in music I said

54:15

I said the original purpose of music and

54:17

games was to mask along disk looked like

54:21

We did a helicopter one was it? I want to

54:23

want to says I hope I helped get

54:25

it going but I never did the whole game I think but

54:27

but it was like we were flopping We

54:30

could page flip between two screens to make it

54:32

look like the helicopters like it like its blade

54:34

was moving and while that

54:36

was going on and we were loading now normally

54:38

you could not load on the Apple 2 and

54:42

Display something at the same time. They wouldn't let

54:44

your program and do that so I had to

54:46

write an assembly language to get More

54:48

basic control of it and

54:50

I could I could have a thing that

54:52

was doing loading and Walt was loading was

54:55

Flipping the two pages, you know, so so

54:57

we keep the animation running So there were

54:59

times when we told you okay you finish

55:01

you finish level one Now you got to

55:03

turn the floppy over and then wait wait

55:05

two minutes while loads have a thermometer on

55:07

the screen Well,

55:10

also there was like some tricks with custom

55:12

fonts as well, I think We

55:16

were able to get I actually

55:18

had a I Had

55:21

a was was the composite

55:24

monitor normal one and

55:26

on a composite monitor we

55:28

could get pixels that we could get

55:30

like a like a three and

55:32

a half wide picks we could get like

55:34

more characters across the screen and and

55:38

have them do it a certain way, but then

55:40

when we got it didn't work right

55:42

on a On

55:44

the one that was the build-in of the empty nothing

55:46

that you see the RGB RGB RGB

55:50

monitor it would not the font

55:52

was totally unreadable So

55:54

we warn people on the box

55:56

requires composite monitor, you know, okay

56:01

Oh, there was a bug

56:03

too in the Apple. There are a lot of bugs in

56:05

hardware and you see Apple didn't have to fix them. Somebody

56:07

didn't give everybody a new computer. On the Apple 2, if

56:10

you made a box that was 320 by 200, and

56:15

you got over to, so 0 to

56:18

319, if you put a pixel in column

56:20

319, you didn't see it. So

56:23

you went over to 318 and put the

56:25

pixel there, and now it was two pixels

56:27

wide. If

56:30

you wanted one pixel wide, you had to go to 317. And

56:34

you see, I showed Apple that. I called them

56:36

up and I showed them the thing was, how

56:38

come you're finding all this stuff? Nobody else is

56:40

finding. When I was doing stuff on the

56:42

2GS, I was finding all these bugs for

56:44

things with crack, and they said, well, you're the only one

56:47

finding this. I said, what's everybody else doing? Oh, you're the

56:49

only one using an Apple 2GS. Everybody else is programming on

56:51

the Mac. But yeah, I was going to say, what

56:54

were the kind of differences of working on the Mac

56:56

and then the 2GS? Now,

56:58

when I did the 2GS, they

57:01

didn't get me a Mac. So I was doing it on a piece

57:03

on an Apple 2GS, and I

57:05

had a hard drive that was like a lunchbox. And I think that

57:07

would be a bit of 20, instead of being

57:09

20,000 by that, maybe it was like a couple

57:11

of thousand, you know, to have it like a

57:13

lunchbox thing. And I had a I had a

57:15

multiplex switch that I put on it. And

57:18

I got another Apple 2GS. I told the company to

57:20

buy me a second one, because it took 40 minutes

57:23

to compile the program. Oh, wow.

57:25

So what happened was I

57:28

would start it compiling on one side of

57:30

my desk, and one of the left side of the desk, one

57:32

of the right side. So I'm sort of filing on the left,

57:35

and have the hard drive working with that one.

57:38

And then I go over to the other computer

57:40

and look at the code while it was compiling,

57:42

and I catch mistakes myself before.

57:45

And so then I'd abort the compile and

57:47

switch it to that side. And then

57:50

you think, so I was constantly doing

57:52

that. And I had a program where it took

57:54

me a long time to compile the code. I had a

57:56

friend that did a graphics thing, it took him a long

57:58

time to compile the graphics. It

58:00

was all the way you built the thing up

58:02

and how much you had to compile and all

58:04

that. But yeah, it was a pain, all that

58:07

stuff. I

58:09

think the 2GS, we tried to use C on it. In

58:13

the early games, people using a high-level

58:15

language like C, what

58:18

happened was they used Basic because Basic

58:20

is an interpreted language and people that

58:23

were hobbyists can buy like

58:25

a Timex Sinclair or whatever and type in

58:27

Basic commands. What happens is with Basic, you

58:29

type in something and you hit a carriage

58:31

return and then it processes that line. If

58:35

it has a line number in front of it, it becomes

58:37

line 10, let's say, and then you put line 20. If

58:40

you put line 15, it puts line

58:42

15 between 10 and 20 automatically. If

58:44

you don't put a line number and you say, print,

58:47

quote, hello, end quote, it would just print the

58:49

word hello on your screen because

58:51

it's not the firm processing

58:53

that is doing it immediately. So it's a

58:56

difference when you're programming, you're writing instructions and

58:58

then you say, okay, now run. Then it

59:00

runs, it's not running at the minute you're

59:03

doing it. So people have trouble that aren't

59:05

programmers understanding that, but it's a

59:07

big distinction. So we

59:10

were doing that kind of stuff and we were getting

59:12

stuff that we'd build out there. So

59:15

C was a compiled language

59:18

instead. The

59:20

problem with the early platforms was even though there

59:22

was a C developed for almost all of them,

59:24

at one time or another, the

59:26

runtime package for C was so big

59:29

that it wasn't worth using it. And

59:33

when we got to cartridges, when

59:35

you got to Nintendo and you started getting cartridges

59:37

with later Atari and everything else, you

59:40

had to pay to put that that runtime

59:42

on the cartridge. Oh, wow. I didn't

59:44

know that. Yeah. Yeah. And so that's

59:46

another problem. Okay. Now another thing, the

59:48

big thing, if nobody gets anything else

59:50

out of this talk today, the

59:54

one thing to keep in mind is

59:56

that programming a cartridge

59:59

game. a Game Boy. The Apple

1:00:02

was on tape and floppies and stuff.

1:00:05

But when you go to cartridges, when you go to Nintendo

1:00:07

and you're making the original one, the

1:00:09

Nintendo 64, the NES, yeah.

1:00:15

When you do that, you're

1:00:18

making cartridge. And some of those cartridges

1:00:20

were $40 games. They had

1:00:22

a $20 cartridge in

1:00:25

them. And some of them had a less

1:00:27

expensive cartridge. So you end up having these

1:00:29

things that you can't make a mistake. It

1:00:31

isn't like you could do an upgrade at

1:00:34

five minutes later. Yeah, that's what I was

1:00:36

going to say. So, you know, cinemaware, like

1:00:38

the titles were really, well, cinematic,

1:00:40

and that was kind of part of it. And

1:00:42

they were quite iconic as well. When

1:00:45

you finally did it and released

1:00:47

it, what was the kind of

1:00:49

code checking like and the kind

1:00:51

of requirements before release?

1:00:55

Well, I didn't send any,

1:00:57

I didn't do any of the ones

1:00:59

that the other guys had bought the company

1:01:01

that did the Nintendo and Super Nintendo cinemaware

1:01:03

titles. We did that. Yeah, I'm

1:01:05

on about the Apple ones a bit. Yeah,

1:01:07

Megan and I did Apple IIGS. I

1:01:10

don't think we bothered with the Apple II ones, as I

1:01:12

recall. And we did PC ones and stuff. And

1:01:15

yeah, so cinemaware

1:01:17

had their own testing room and everything.

1:01:19

By the way, they didn't have the

1:01:22

micropros. You'll be interested in this. Micropros

1:01:24

had a room with UK power supplies.

1:01:27

Oh, wow. Yeah. And probably PAL monitors.

1:01:31

So they had outlets on the wall with a different

1:01:33

color thing. And those were 220, 50

1:01:38

cycles instead of 110, 60 cycles. And by the

1:01:40

way, when you go to do a PAL, PAL

1:01:44

is the standard for Europe for

1:01:46

those things. When you

1:01:49

go to do a PAL game, you

1:01:51

have less vertical blank. A

1:01:53

lot of times we have to hide things on a

1:01:55

Nintendo and the vertical blank try to try to do

1:01:57

stuff with it. The vertical blank is...

1:02:00

when you used to have a cheap one that nobody's old enough

1:02:02

to have a TV that used to scroll and you'd see those

1:02:04

black lines on them. But if

1:02:07

you see an old

1:02:09

movie, each frame of

1:02:11

a movie is kind of like if it gets

1:02:14

out of sync and starts scrolling and you see

1:02:16

the black lines going up your screen, you know,

1:02:18

the old frames lining up. Well, that black line

1:02:20

is the vertical blank and you could send stuff

1:02:22

in there. You had a couple of

1:02:24

milliseconds or whatever you could send something. I mean,

1:02:27

you had, there's

1:02:29

also a horizontal blank over on

1:02:31

the side, you know, before it gets

1:02:33

where the carriage returns before it gets back to the

1:02:35

left of the screen again. But, yeah, so

1:02:37

we had to do a lot of stuff in that period.

1:02:40

But also, some of the era

1:02:42

ones were even more fighting

1:02:46

to get more, to have

1:02:48

the less time to do stuff in the

1:02:50

blank there and stuff. And

1:02:53

then having the frame rate, the right thing. And

1:02:55

then I think for

1:02:57

some reason, the cow,

1:02:59

I think, is also in Australia or something.

1:03:02

But you see that, well, the UK speaks the

1:03:04

same language as we do. But it

1:03:07

wasn't just a language thing. And then

1:03:09

Nintendo had country of origin

1:03:12

stuff where you buy an

1:03:14

8-bit cartridge and then you want to

1:03:16

play it on a, like we buy a

1:03:19

Japanese game before it was on U.S., you

1:03:21

know, to see the early versions, early releases,

1:03:23

go to a Japanese market. And

1:03:26

so in California, we buy games, like before they

1:03:28

were officially released to the U.S. and we'd look

1:03:30

at them. But we had to have an adapter.

1:03:32

And later we found out we just had to

1:03:34

bend some pins on the end of the cartridge

1:03:36

so that we could plug

1:03:38

it into American unit and look at it. Well,

1:03:42

I remember you

1:03:44

said that you did some stuff with Virgin Games as

1:03:46

well. I was wondering what it

1:03:48

was like when Prince of Persia came out

1:03:50

originally. Do you remember that? Because, you

1:03:53

know, the impact of that game and how

1:03:55

popular it was, it's kind of hard to

1:03:57

think about nowadays. fun

1:04:00

with it. And of course, when we

1:04:02

did it, it was all, let's see, the

1:04:04

Game Boy was all black and white. So

1:04:08

it created some challenges. And

1:04:10

then you want a ghost. And

1:04:12

you we don't have enough enough room to

1:04:14

put all the thing and nobody, this is

1:04:16

a kind of a secret in the industry,

1:04:19

nobody ever wanted to buy larger than the

1:04:21

minimum size cartridge. Okay,

1:04:24

because if you paid $2

1:04:26

for the next size cartridge extra, you

1:04:28

got to add $5 to the price tag. And then

1:04:31

they felt they priced themselves out of the market. Yeah.

1:04:34

So in other words, it's a $45 game now

1:04:36

a $45 game. Well, maybe they're not gonna be

1:04:39

able to sell them. And also,

1:04:41

everybody tried to sell the games the first day, I

1:04:43

think it was US gold is

1:04:45

new events of the British company, they,

1:04:47

they were the reps for micro pros.

1:04:50

And we'd set over a game to them. And

1:04:52

they would, they'd sell them all

1:04:54

the first day, and then they wouldn't want any

1:04:56

more. Nobody

1:04:59

wants to have a warehouse full

1:05:01

of games they can't sell that

1:05:03

are on cartridge. $20. So if

1:05:07

it takes months to order and we'd order games

1:05:09

from, okay, so you make a game in the

1:05:12

US and you have to jump through a US

1:05:14

hoop of sending it to Nintendo in Seattle. And

1:05:17

when they approve it, then you have to jump through the

1:05:19

Japanese hoop that the Japanese companies jump through and get it

1:05:21

approved in Japan, then they manufacture it.

1:05:24

And they would put it on a slow ship to you unless

1:05:26

you pay extra to have an air freight. And then of course,

1:05:28

you're paying her. That's why they say Christmas in July, to save

1:05:31

money, you got to have your game done by July 1 or

1:05:34

something to get it out by Christmas, you know.

1:05:36

So was there a difference when

1:05:38

you so you moved from the Apple one

1:05:40

to the Game Boy, and then you had

1:05:42

obviously you're talking about approval, you had that

1:05:44

Nintendo seal of approval as well? Was that?

1:05:47

Yeah, any kind of requirements or did they

1:05:49

end up sending any games back and you

1:05:51

had to change a lot of them back

1:05:53

to other developers? I

1:05:55

said they would fix it. And okay, I

1:05:57

have the perfect record of sending

1:06:00

10 submissions to Nintendo and

1:06:03

getting 10 of them approved the first time. That's

1:06:05

great. And when I was an

1:06:07

employee, they just benefited from my being good. And

1:06:10

when I went off and became a contractor and

1:06:12

came back to them and said, I'll do this,

1:06:15

I would add an extra couple of grand in

1:06:17

my contract for the first approval. It

1:06:20

would save them weeks. Yeah, I

1:06:22

can imagine that could delay a whole

1:06:24

game process and a game release. Okay,

1:06:27

that was a game. Magic Johnson

1:06:29

Super Slam Dunk that was on

1:06:33

the Super Nintendo. And

1:06:36

Virgin Games had a contract

1:06:38

with Magic Johnson and the contract, it

1:06:41

was so long in development that

1:06:43

Magic Johnson came out, he

1:06:46

got AIDS or HIV or whatever.

1:06:48

They didn't know what it was at the time.

1:06:50

They thought, anyway, so then he was,

1:06:53

he wasn't sure, but he was back playing again.

1:06:57

And it took that long for the

1:06:59

whole approval. Wow. Yeah, while the game

1:07:02

was being made and everything. Okay, now

1:07:05

what happened was the game, the basketball game,

1:07:08

they had Chick her in the voice of

1:07:10

the Lakers. He had a lot of colorful

1:07:12

expressions and it takes

1:07:14

like five vertical blanks even just to

1:07:17

get the expression. So you're

1:07:19

talking about 60 frames a second. So a 12th

1:07:21

of a second, just to get the phrase loaded

1:07:23

in and everybody says cue speech. By

1:07:25

the way, cue isn't even an American

1:07:28

English word. We use it for computers.

1:07:30

You guys cue up for a bus. We

1:07:33

love curing. We

1:07:36

get in line, we line up for something.

1:07:38

But yeah, everybody says you cue the speech.

1:07:40

You put in order the things you're going

1:07:42

to say. Well, the problem was when the

1:07:44

play was over, Chick her in

1:07:46

was talking for two minutes. He had more stuff to say

1:07:48

than he hadn't said yet. Well,

1:07:51

yeah, that said that's another thing as well,

1:07:53

sound. But what I did was I said,

1:07:55

you don't want to cue the speech. You

1:07:58

want to prioritize the speech. So. So

1:08:00

we got play by play speech.

1:08:02

And what you want to do is you

1:08:04

want to say certain things are mandatory

1:08:06

to say that the end of the play thing. Okay.

1:08:09

In football, somebody gets sacked the quarterback and

1:08:11

somebody tackles a guy and he doesn't get

1:08:13

a chance to pass it. He's, Oh, wow.

1:08:16

Big socks or something like, you know, where

1:08:18

did that guy come from? So you have

1:08:20

something you say to end the play, but

1:08:24

you have something else you were loading and you'd

1:08:26

say he's back to pass because the quarterback would

1:08:28

go back and then he would pick somebody off

1:08:30

in the distance to throw at you. So he's

1:08:32

back to pass. Well, he gets tackled before you

1:08:34

get to say that. So you abort that you

1:08:36

don't bother loading it. Cause it's just going to

1:08:38

slow you down. You skip when

1:08:41

I, when I worked with the deaf and you're trying

1:08:43

to keep up with sign language, every once in a while you have

1:08:45

to drop a sentence. Yeah. There's

1:08:48

enough for a dentist. Maybe, maybe the

1:08:50

person you're helping will, you'll be able to

1:08:52

squeeze two thoughts into the next sentence, you

1:08:54

know, especially with like size limitations. But yeah,

1:08:57

exactly. And the speed limitations, how much you

1:08:59

can get in them. So

1:09:01

talking of speed as well, like, um, you

1:09:03

know, in, in Prince of Persia is

1:09:05

such a good port on the Gameboy. Um,

1:09:08

that whole game was about like realism

1:09:11

platforming, but also the kind of rotoscope

1:09:13

graphics. Um, how did you

1:09:15

go about kind of making sure that

1:09:17

it runs smoothly and, uh, it

1:09:20

well, as a platform or with such big sprites

1:09:23

as well. That was very tricky. But

1:09:25

just before we get to that, I want, I want

1:09:27

people to understand that, that the, when

1:09:29

you make a cartridge game, you can't

1:09:32

make any mistakes. Yeah. There's

1:09:34

no firmware updates that you can do later.

1:09:37

I used to go to a store and I'd

1:09:39

buy NHL 2k or something and I drive home

1:09:41

and there's five updates to

1:09:43

download when I get home. You

1:09:46

get those kids that buy a console nowadays

1:09:48

at Christmas and then they're sitting there for

1:09:51

two hours, updating it before they can play

1:09:53

on it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. New versions of

1:09:55

X code and new version of it was a

1:09:58

direct X and all that baloney. So

1:10:00

we go through, but so the,

1:10:03

I was used to getting things right the first

1:10:05

time, you know, and not having, since

1:10:08

I thought they should give me a bonus if

1:10:10

I got a game out and

1:10:12

it got out on time and Nintendo didn't have to reject

1:10:14

it and I didn't have to fix it and take three

1:10:16

more weeks or a month or whatever. So

1:10:19

then I also thought that if your game lasted

1:10:21

six months or a year without having an update

1:10:24

that you had to do now, if you didn't have an update,

1:10:26

if there was a serious problem, maybe

1:10:28

you would make another cartridge, but you wouldn't

1:10:31

tell everybody. But if somebody called up to

1:10:33

complain to customer service, then they

1:10:35

say, oh, you know what? We do have

1:10:37

a newer one. If you'll return yours, we'll

1:10:39

send you the new one. Oh, smarts, yeah.

1:10:41

Yeah, so things like that. Somebody beat, I

1:10:44

did Caesar's Palace on the Game Boy. Yes,

1:10:47

yes. Somebody beat the mass in

1:10:49

the casino. Well, I

1:10:51

was going to say about that as

1:10:53

well. You know, the, you had it,

1:10:55

it was a mouse controller, a cursor,

1:10:58

and controlling that on the Game Boy.

1:11:01

It worked really well, actually, with that guy, or

1:11:03

that must have been quite tough to implement as

1:11:05

well. You don't see that that often. I

1:11:07

know it. Having that move around and move from thing

1:11:10

to thing and see what you're over and then you

1:11:12

click on it. Now,

1:11:14

I had fun doing a similar game myself.

1:11:16

By the way, I tried to get the

1:11:18

Caesar's license to do it

1:11:20

on the, we did a magnet casino game that's

1:11:22

on all the, you know, on the, iOS

1:11:25

and stuff. All the new

1:11:27

platforms. Okay, so we did that and I wanted

1:11:29

to get the Caesar's license from it. So I

1:11:31

called up the same guys there 20 years later

1:11:34

that worked with me. Caesar's.

1:11:37

I tried to get the license. He

1:11:39

said, I'm sorry. We're not allowed to

1:11:41

sell anything that might encourage people to

1:11:43

gamble. Oh, wow.

1:11:45

And that was, that came

1:11:47

out on the Game Boy as well. You

1:11:50

know, a kid's, a kid's system as well,

1:11:52

pretty well. And I said, well, okay. I

1:11:54

drive from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. You

1:11:56

know, it's about three or four hours, whatever.

1:11:58

I said, I see. see a million

1:12:00

Caesars ads all the way up there.

1:12:02

You know, look carefully, we're

1:12:05

selling the casino, we're selling Ann

1:12:07

Margaret, you know, now Celine Dion

1:12:09

and now somebody else, maybe Taylor

1:12:11

Swift or something. They're selling

1:12:13

that, they're not selling gambling, you

1:12:15

know. And so

1:12:17

it's like, we don't want to encourage people, we

1:12:19

don't want compulsive gamblers, you know. So

1:12:23

that was the thing. So I couldn't get the license for that, but we

1:12:26

did that on there. And then I think

1:12:28

I was in Los Angeles and

1:12:30

oh, it was on the, oh, the one we did for

1:12:32

the DS, the Nintendo DS,

1:12:34

that one has the arrow thing for

1:12:36

the, where you're touching a table

1:12:38

and you're picking the seat, you want to sit

1:12:41

on the table. And then it has speech recognition.

1:12:45

I was in Los Angeles for E3 and

1:12:48

Sharp Electronics was there and they'd done

1:12:50

the speech recognition for Nintendo and they

1:12:52

wanted me to see it. Well, the

1:12:54

guy that was in charge of developer

1:12:56

relations wasn't very nice to me ever.

1:12:59

So I said he

1:13:01

should change his title to publisher relations because he didn't care

1:13:03

about people like me, he cared about the people that

1:13:05

bought the cartridges, you know. But

1:13:07

and we're the ones who would recommend you need a

1:13:09

larger cartridge, you know, but they wouldn't, you know. So

1:13:12

anyway, we go ahead and so I heard

1:13:14

this speech recognition work beautifully. And

1:13:16

so I said to the two guys in

1:13:19

Japanese that were showing it, I speak Japanese,

1:13:21

I said, I love this. Can

1:13:23

you make sure I get it? They said, well, absolutely

1:13:25

make sure. And then the guy from the, by the

1:13:27

way, are you following, is it Steve Okimoto? I said,

1:13:30

are you following him? He says, I don't

1:13:32

speak a word in Japanese. I'm

1:13:34

sure that most have got used

1:13:36

in, I think, Nintendogs or

1:13:39

one of the kind of. Yeah, they had a much

1:13:41

easier way to control the voice. Now

1:13:44

the trouble was I had to learn, it

1:13:46

used an unusual way doing text to speech

1:13:48

because, I mean, I'm doing the speech recognition.

1:13:50

It used a text to speech. You put

1:13:53

in text what you wanted

1:13:55

them to recognize as speech. Okay.

1:13:58

So I had a misspelled read. let W

1:14:02

let to get the different pronunciations

1:14:07

So that when somebody said that now what we did was Uh,

1:14:10

it was also context sensitive once you chose

1:14:12

the game you were at If

1:14:14

you're a blackjack and you say double down it was

1:14:16

listening for that. It wasn't listening for you for

1:14:19

you to say you read 17 or something,

1:14:21

you know, whatever on the It's

1:14:24

new once you chose a game then it could

1:14:26

load the phrases it should listen

1:14:28

to for that for that one But

1:14:30

yeah, we're doing this kind of stuff

1:14:32

and trying to try to keep things

1:14:35

Going and you know, we've just been oh

1:14:37

the other thing too is besides Not

1:14:40

wanting to make a mistake in a game. They want

1:14:42

you to upgrade your games at least once a year

1:14:45

Uh, if you if you let it go two or three years, they'll kick

1:14:47

you out of the store Yeah, and

1:14:49

I think you know,

1:14:51

um kind of going from eight bit titles as

1:14:54

well to handheld titles Do you think that was

1:14:56

kind of like a second lease of life

1:14:58

for a lot of developers because they use similar

1:15:00

techniques They use similar ideas, but you know in

1:15:02

a in a kind of different form Well,

1:15:05

i'll tell you what it did for me I had a

1:15:08

history of being like two years at one

1:15:10

company and two years at the next you finish one game

1:15:12

And you did it in a ridiculous amount of time and you

1:15:15

rushed it you got it ready and then and

1:15:17

then they said you know Here's 25 dollars take your

1:15:19

wife out to sizzler, you know It's

1:15:23

like Okay, never mind So

1:15:26

then you do it maybe another year you hang around

1:15:28

and you do even a better job the next year

1:15:30

I did caesar's palace in prince of persia in

1:15:32

14 months back to back. Wow

1:15:34

Yeah, because it would be worth something

1:15:37

And they took me out to say goodbye when

1:15:39

i'd given him my notice And

1:15:41

they made me an offer and I

1:15:43

said steve i'm making more than that now I said, you know, I

1:15:45

didn't think you were gonna make me an offer He was going

1:15:47

to the uk to meet with the the other

1:15:50

people at virgin, you know I

1:15:52

said that and so I was saying goodbye to him that

1:15:54

week and something next week I said,

1:15:56

you know, i'll make it more than that now. It's at

1:15:58

least if you can make me off or make

1:16:01

me get your math right. Yeah, I

1:16:03

think a lot of programmers got to kind of

1:16:05

raw render the deal. Yeah, we love making games.

1:16:09

Now, the one thing we never got to do

1:16:11

is you look at these book authors signing their

1:16:13

books in the bookstore. So, they

1:16:15

know now there aren't anymore bookstores. Yeah,

1:16:17

I was also- You never

1:16:19

got that kind of recognition with it. It's

1:16:22

fun. But, you know, I used

1:16:24

to have fun with my daughter. She's older now,

1:16:26

but when she was in school, I'd go to

1:16:28

her. And I was in the school career fair,

1:16:30

and they got the guy from the Army and

1:16:32

the Navy and the drug store,

1:16:34

and everybody that's

1:16:37

sheriff's salesman. And I'm there

1:16:39

to talk about games. And

1:16:41

this one teacher, he had this chewing

1:16:43

gum policy, and just throw out your

1:16:45

gum, and don't- I hate it because

1:16:47

he gets under the chair, and he had to give

1:16:49

the speech to these kids that weren't even his students.

1:16:52

They were just assigned to that room that day so I

1:16:54

could give a talk to them because they asked to hear

1:16:56

about games. And so then when he's

1:16:58

all done, I said, are you done? And the

1:17:00

guy says, yeah. I said, well, if you

1:17:03

like chewing gum, this is a career for you. Well,

1:17:07

then we use the crap of get you gum or not. You'll

1:17:10

be happy. Anyway, so

1:17:12

then it backfired on me because my daughter

1:17:14

later had it for a physics class. He

1:17:17

said, I remember you. I

1:17:21

was also wondering, like, you know, so

1:17:23

there was a lot of- when you went on to the Game Boy Advance,

1:17:25

you know, you did quite a lot of titles on

1:17:28

there and also the Game Boy Color. Like,

1:17:30

how similar was the hardware to the SNES?

1:17:32

Like, you know, developing on the SNES and

1:17:35

then going on to the Game Boy Advance?

1:17:37

You know, it's funny because the same people

1:17:39

kind of were involved, I guess. So

1:17:42

you got people, like, Shigero Miyamoto

1:17:44

doing- driving the art, and there was

1:17:47

a guy- I can't remember

1:17:49

his last name. Anyway, there

1:17:51

was a guy that drove the hardware at

1:17:54

Nintendo. And so they're

1:17:56

kind of taking the

1:17:58

8-bit SNES. I think

1:18:00

it's NES over to over to

1:18:02

the 16 bit to for the super graphics.

1:18:29

And it was the chip they use to draw the

1:18:31

stuff in Jurassic Park and everything. And

1:18:33

those those used to cost like 75

1:18:36

grand for the computer, and another

1:18:38

75 grand for the software. And

1:18:40

Nintendo was putting one in the in

1:18:43

this in the n64. So I had

1:18:45

an emulation. I had an emulator for the

1:18:47

n64. At first,

1:18:49

I was using a silicon graphics computer,

1:18:52

and I got like one frame

1:18:55

a second. Okay,

1:18:57

and when they gave me the hardware to

1:18:59

plug in, I got 60 frames

1:19:02

a second. So

1:19:04

I said, Why did they take whatever's on that board

1:19:07

and put it in the silicon

1:19:09

graphics for for everybody, you know,

1:19:11

the idea was that silicon graphics

1:19:14

sold in this chip, because

1:19:16

there weren't that many people to spend 75,000 for

1:19:18

a computer and 75,000 for the software,

1:19:23

but they can sell millions

1:19:25

of them that Nintendo would pay them so much

1:19:27

per chip set to go into the into

1:19:30

a console was funny. And

1:19:32

that was groundbreaking as well. That was a

1:19:34

real change for Nintendo.

1:19:36

And it also when they started working

1:19:38

with silicon graphics, they did things like

1:19:41

Donkey Kong country that were that

1:19:43

were a hybrid, they didn't have everything ready to

1:19:45

go for the n64. So they made like a

1:19:49

3d game with with that kind of pre

1:19:52

rendered wasn't it? And

1:19:54

you spread. Yeah. Yeah,

1:19:56

that was the thing. Yeah. So so

1:19:58

all of that, so yeah. So

1:20:00

going to hand out now the other thing that

1:20:02

I love personally about going to handheld was

1:20:06

once I was on handheld I could go to

1:20:08

any trade show and walk up

1:20:10

to somebody and show him my game Yeah,

1:20:13

yeah, I don't need to have a reserved back

1:20:15

room and bring in a special PlayStation

1:20:18

that's got the right chip in it So it'll

1:20:20

play my game that didn't go through the store

1:20:23

You know and all that stuff and after carry stuff

1:20:25

around and have them tell me they were too busy

1:20:27

and they made all their appointments You walk up to

1:20:29

somebody on the floor and if he's a gamer, he's

1:20:31

gonna look at your game And if

1:20:33

it's a good game, he's gonna get his boss And

1:20:36

and also it's standardized as well. You didn't

1:20:38

have that problem if you know composite and

1:20:41

RGB and They

1:20:43

got different power than you do and things don't

1:20:45

work. Yeah. Yeah all of that stuff. It'll

1:20:48

just runs off batteries Yeah,

1:20:50

yeah, yeah, and it was like a

1:20:52

thing and yeah, I just it

1:20:54

was a whole different thing Like I

1:20:56

say, I think a lot of Nintendo

1:20:59

is a nice company and I don't mean it to be in my

1:21:01

head But I think a lot of what they did

1:21:03

up to the n64 Was

1:21:06

making bad hardware look better than

1:21:08

it was supposed to Yeah,

1:21:10

they definitely pushed it. Yeah, they got tricks

1:21:13

now where they got their lunch given to

1:21:15

them was when the Sega

1:21:17

Genesis came along And

1:21:19

they had Sonic spinning did just the

1:21:21

idea of having Sonic and

1:21:23

having spin Just flashing those sprites

1:21:25

really fast made it look like he was spinning

1:21:27

in a circle and it was like that

1:21:31

Everybody thought oh my god that the computer

1:21:33

and that must be so much faster than

1:21:35

the than the other one You know,

1:21:37

yeah, and that kind of triggered the

1:21:39

whole console wars, which I guess led them

1:21:41

to you know, the n64 as well so

1:21:45

might be a kind of positive

1:21:48

Competition, you know now Nintendo Fought

1:21:51

floppy disks or any kind

1:21:53

of medium like that for

1:21:56

forever really They

1:21:58

didn't want to do it because they could control cartridges.

1:22:01

Yeah, yeah. And but

1:22:03

there were people that made them that made counterfeits

1:22:06

of those anyway, you know, and but

1:22:08

there was devices like the disc doctor

1:22:10

wasn't Yeah,

1:22:12

piracy. One of them

1:22:15

was the revolution or something was one. There

1:22:17

was one for the GS

1:22:20

for the for the GS. And

1:22:23

it allowed us it was actually better when

1:22:25

I got the cartridge or prototype from Nintendo.

1:22:28

It had this thing where you plugged it in the

1:22:30

back where the cartridge went, and it

1:22:32

stuck out like 10 inches. It's like you're carrying

1:22:34

this thing that sticks away out like a ruler.

1:22:37

And the one that I had one of those revolution

1:22:40

things, whatever it was, I could

1:22:42

just plug it in. It looked like an ordinary

1:22:44

cartridge plugged into it. Now, we actually had a

1:22:47

purpose for it, in that we

1:22:49

weren't using it to steal other people's programs. We

1:22:51

were using it to put our own on the

1:22:53

console. So but Nintendo stopped him

1:22:55

from selling them in the US. So

1:22:57

then I bought him I had a biome trouble that's

1:22:59

near you guys off of this, a

1:23:02

Gurs Jersey or so

1:23:04

that's a kind of

1:23:06

island in France. Where

1:23:11

it's a no man's land like pirates live there. So

1:23:17

then I asked him to send him to

1:23:19

me I didn't get him I kept waiting like weeks and

1:23:22

you've ever sent him again. It's

1:23:25

an odd place in computer history Jersey as

1:23:27

well because I think Jersey and the Isle

1:23:29

of Wight they had like Apple twos as

1:23:31

well. So there was a kind

1:23:34

of maybe something going on there. So

1:23:38

we had a legal

1:23:40

purpose really of using those

1:23:42

for our own work, not

1:23:44

for copying other people's games. Would

1:23:47

they also charge quite highly for like development

1:23:49

systems as well Nintendo? Would they be? In

1:23:54

the early days maybe a Super Nintendo was like

1:23:56

15 to 30 grand. Wow.

1:24:01

Okay, and you could go buy a Super Nintendo for

1:24:03

180 bucks or something. Yeah.

1:24:07

So then there

1:24:09

was a company up in Oregon,

1:24:12

but anyway, they had their own development

1:24:15

system. They basically took

1:24:17

a cartridge from a game

1:24:19

and they put, they got into the

1:24:22

motherboard hardwired so they get the return

1:24:24

line and their emulator plugged

1:24:26

into a production

1:24:29

Super Nintendo. And

1:24:31

the advantage of that was we had a game

1:24:33

that crashed on one particular model. We had a

1:24:36

tester that took a game home and it crashed

1:24:38

when he took it home. Nobody,

1:24:40

it didn't crash for anybody else. And so they said,

1:24:42

oh, we'll just chalk it up. It's a bad thing.

1:24:44

Don't worry about it. I said, no, no, no, we

1:24:46

need to get that guy's Super Nintendo. We didn't get

1:24:48

it in there. I said, that's an

1:24:51

offer of another Super Nintendo and a couple of

1:24:53

games. Well, I

1:24:56

think you also teach as well, don't you?

1:24:58

You do video game programming.

1:25:01

I did. I kind of cut back a little

1:25:03

bit recently. I'm 73. So

1:25:05

my wife retired about five years ago and

1:25:08

I have more fun making games. I haven't figured

1:25:10

out a reason to retire yet, but I take

1:25:13

off more time if I want to go somewhere for a

1:25:15

weekend and long weekend or whatever. I don't care. But

1:25:18

I was teaching first for SMU.

1:25:20

They moved me from California here

1:25:23

to Dallas in 2003 and

1:25:25

it was a premium graduate school for

1:25:28

game development, the Guild Hall with

1:25:30

SMU. And I did that for

1:25:33

a short time, like nine months.

1:25:36

And my boss was an idiot. He

1:25:38

had a degree in fluid mechanics, a

1:25:40

PhD, and he was telling me

1:25:42

how to do my games and telling me that he

1:25:44

was going to get tenure for all the people that

1:25:46

taught there and then later he's giving somebody a tour

1:25:48

and he says, oh, no, we're never going to get

1:25:50

tenure for these people because the field changes

1:25:52

too rapidly or something like that. Anyway, it was like

1:25:54

he just told me a week ago the opposite. And

1:25:58

so I didn't know. much use

1:26:00

for them and he started telling me how to teach my

1:26:02

classes and that's that's a good tip. I

1:26:04

was kind of wondering what what

1:26:06

tips do you give like

1:26:09

developers and stuff that they can you know take

1:26:11

some tips from the early days and kind of

1:26:13

apply them to game

1:26:15

creation nowadays? I don't know

1:26:17

you need to understand the hardware really well

1:26:19

and you know I had some basics when

1:26:21

I was teaching students to do stuff I'd

1:26:23

make them learn binary and hex

1:26:25

I don't care about octal but because

1:26:28

a lot of your hex dumps and stuff you'd look at

1:26:30

a game and it would be in hex you

1:26:33

know from zero to nine and eight eight

1:26:35

f for the digits you know and and

1:26:38

if you don't know enough about hex if you

1:26:40

see 55 say you're expecting

1:26:42

55 and you see aa you

1:26:45

don't know that that's doubles that

1:26:47

aa is like 10 10 instead of

1:26:49

five five you know anyways so kind

1:26:51

of teaching you

1:26:54

know deep understanding of a system and

1:26:57

low level stuff you know yeah and

1:26:59

then also how to speed up things

1:27:01

and how to optimize how to avoid

1:27:03

doing things more than once how

1:27:06

to how to make a random number generator on

1:27:08

a platform that doesn't have one and

1:27:10

sometimes you can hook into something like the

1:27:13

vertical blank where you've

1:27:15

got something counting and you

1:27:17

need a certain number of random things to

1:27:20

happen before before you do the

1:27:22

first thing in a game otherwise every game would

1:27:24

start the exact same way if it if it

1:27:26

doesn't have any human interaction and you just plug

1:27:28

the cartridge in and it doesn't have

1:27:30

a good random number routine in it or

1:27:32

something it'll do the same move this is first

1:27:34

move every time but on the way

1:27:36

into a game if you're making a guy go through a

1:27:38

menu and choose something while he's

1:27:40

doing that you're seeding the number you're messing

1:27:42

up the number generator and stuff and you're

1:27:44

able to to do it because

1:27:47

it's kind of like one way to make

1:27:49

it random is to be blindfolded and grab

1:27:51

a spinning wheel you know you

1:27:53

have the wheel spinning and you grab it on and

1:27:55

wherever you grab but you see you can't see where

1:27:57

it is you see so something like the random number

1:28:00

generator is running as only

1:28:03

not just running

1:28:06

off of the side, where it is, the horizontal

1:28:08

position or where it is on a scan line,

1:28:12

there's a number you can read. If

1:28:15

you read that at whatever time you

1:28:17

need to, it's going to give you something like

1:28:20

a random number, like a number that you

1:28:22

can quickly, you know. Anyway,

1:28:24

there's all those kinds of tricks. Well,

1:28:27

also you've kind of designed some games

1:28:29

yourself as well and you've released them

1:28:32

on modern platforms and

1:28:34

stuff like the Android Store and

1:28:36

Google as well. And our

1:28:38

listeners can check them out at edmagnan.com as

1:28:40

well. Can you tell us about some

1:28:42

of these titles and some of the

1:28:45

kind of differences that you've applied to these

1:28:47

games? Well, you know, I used

1:28:49

to do things natively. So the Apple came out

1:28:51

with stuff and they had their own stuff and

1:28:53

then later they had Swift was their own programming

1:28:55

language. They had all these other things, which are great.

1:28:58

I would do a game

1:29:01

natively on a Mac for the Apple

1:29:03

and then I'd have a friend that would do

1:29:06

it for the Android. I

1:29:09

watched what he was doing and he went into

1:29:11

Unity, which is a game engine, and he would

1:29:14

look at what I was doing and put that in there. He

1:29:16

said, hey, the source don't do. You

1:29:19

know, he can look at that and see what I was doing and why

1:29:21

it was doing it. So

1:29:23

then once he got it into there,

1:29:25

then we could release it later on

1:29:27

the PC or on other platforms of

1:29:30

modern. Kind of a cross-platform port. So

1:29:32

now we're doing Unity the first time.

1:29:35

And then we

1:29:38

think we maybe a month and a half to

1:29:40

make a good game and then we, they're kind

1:29:42

of casual games, but we go and we

1:29:44

put it on Monday and Tuesday, we

1:29:47

put it on the handhelds,

1:29:49

on the phone and the Android. And

1:29:53

then on Wednesday, maybe we put it on the Apple TV

1:29:55

and then on Thursday, we're trying to get on the PC

1:29:57

and the Xbox. So

1:30:00

then we – so we do like to soft release each of

1:30:02

the platforms as we do them. We just got to send it

1:30:04

off to the store. We don't make a big deal about it.

1:30:07

But anybody that sees it, it's there to buy it. And then

1:30:09

we put out a press release on the – after

1:30:12

we've got the last one done and try

1:30:14

to get it out there. And

1:30:16

I love that because you're kind of – you're

1:30:18

still in development, but you're also kind of just

1:30:20

doing it for fun and you're doing it on

1:30:23

a new platform and seeing kind of

1:30:25

what people take to. Yeah,

1:30:28

and I don't get the program as much as

1:30:30

I used to, but I get to help

1:30:33

with the building. So I'm usually

1:30:35

building the Apple, the

1:30:39

iOS, the Apple TV,

1:30:41

and now we can do Mac

1:30:43

because if you've got the new

1:30:45

Mac, the M1 or M2

1:30:48

chip, it'll play

1:30:50

the iPad version of the

1:30:52

game on your Mac. Yeah, I'm

1:30:54

running on an M1 at the moment. I absolutely

1:30:56

love that chip set. Yeah, but

1:30:59

you see the controls are all

1:31:01

different. See, the iPad version was depending on

1:31:03

you touching the screen, you know, completely to

1:31:05

the screen, you know, but then

1:31:07

we get over to the Mac

1:31:09

and you're not going to – you know, you're not

1:31:12

going to lift your – you tilt your Mac to

1:31:14

play the game. So we're using

1:31:16

mouse and keyboard and other things. So

1:31:19

yeah, it's kind of fun, you figure out the things. You

1:31:21

try to figure out what's going to – and see, now,

1:31:24

we get to do it because it's like indie publishing.

1:31:26

We're dealing directly with the stores ourselves.

1:31:29

There's no middleman. If

1:31:31

we do well, we get a percentage. If

1:31:34

we guess wrong, it's something that nobody

1:31:37

understood or whatever. But we did

1:31:39

some things that I'm really proud of. Some of them

1:31:41

were kind of funny. We had one – I

1:31:43

don't even know – I think it's available on one or two platforms.

1:31:47

We have one called Call-In-Sick, and

1:31:50

I went to a movie with my wife and I came out

1:31:52

and this guy is calling me a fellow

1:31:55

podcaster. He says,

1:31:58

oh my God, I said, I just played this. I

1:32:00

need some more information. I want to talk about it. So

1:32:04

what it does is it has some background tracks. And

1:32:07

it was like, okay, you

1:32:10

call up and you say, hey, I'm sorry, I'm stuck in

1:32:12

traffic. It's got a horn flanking. That's

1:32:16

such a smart idea. It's a

1:32:19

kind of great excuse to get out of

1:32:21

work. So

1:32:23

we did this and we put it

1:32:25

on all the platforms that we could.

1:32:28

And then I wanted

1:32:30

to do it and I tried to get, you know, with

1:32:32

all this thing, when you're setting up a call like this

1:32:34

and getting the sound to sound

1:32:36

right and patching it into this and

1:32:38

patching it. So I tried to

1:32:40

do it where I was recording the sound

1:32:43

and mixing it with my voice live. And

1:32:46

that didn't work. I could not get the

1:32:49

various platforms to do that very well.

1:32:51

But then I remembered all

1:32:54

sound is numbers. Okay,

1:32:57

it's all digital numbers.

1:33:01

It's all sampled. Everything in your computer

1:33:03

has been sampled. Yeah. So

1:33:05

they're numbers. So if you have a tape

1:33:08

of the background sound of the traffic and

1:33:10

I have a tape of you and I have a record you talking,

1:33:13

I can go through at the same speed and

1:33:15

have the numbers together and then make

1:33:17

sure they didn't get so loud that they distorted it. I

1:33:20

absolutely love this. I'm just looking at it

1:33:22

at the moment. It's such a

1:33:24

fun idea. There's a hospital

1:33:26

one and it's like I'm in an emergency

1:33:28

room waiting to see the doctor. I can't

1:33:30

see how long I've been here. I will

1:33:32

try and call again. You know, that's

1:33:35

such a smart idea. Really pretty. Some

1:33:37

of the stores because it was deceptive.

1:33:40

Okay. Yeah, of course. It's deceptive. It's

1:33:42

a magic trick. I mean, I'm

1:33:45

trying to explain that to these guys. They got their

1:33:47

own rules and then you've been through a time where

1:33:49

people, you know, were maybe deceiving people

1:33:51

or whatever it was. So

1:33:53

that one had to go. The other one

1:33:55

I wanted to do was when the movie Lucy

1:33:58

came out. Yeah. Remember

1:34:00

how smarter brain was and kept growing, growing good

1:34:02

speed? Okay. So I talked to somebody, I said,

1:34:04

I want to, have you done this thing for,

1:34:06

for loose, the thing we wanted to

1:34:08

do, like brain meter. I said,

1:34:11

Oh, you still want that? I got mad at the

1:34:13

guy. And, um, so I said, no,

1:34:15

no, I had this other guy was recommending higher and

1:34:17

I ended up hiring a guy myself and,

1:34:19

and, uh, put him on that project. And

1:34:21

what we did was we hold the iPhone

1:34:23

up to your, up to your forehead. And

1:34:26

we measure your brain. We'll say, then I

1:34:29

hooked up to my forehead and

1:34:31

it shows that I'm like twice as twice

1:34:33

as smart as you. I

1:34:37

love that. It's where you

1:34:39

put your finger when you're doing

1:34:41

it. The other one was too, was my choice

1:34:43

or your choice. And you spin the wheel and

1:34:45

it's like, like, like you and your wife can't agree what

1:34:47

movie to go to or something. It's like, okay, wait a

1:34:49

minute. Let's spin. Okay. And

1:34:52

you always win because if your thumbs on, if

1:34:54

you're holding your thumb on one side

1:34:56

of the wheel, kind of rig it. Around

1:34:59

a random, it goes

1:35:01

around a random part time at the end, but stops

1:35:03

on the side you want to stop by. Oh,

1:35:06

that's absolutely amazing. It was deceptive too,

1:35:08

but you know, there's like a whole

1:35:11

category that it should, we're missing out

1:35:13

on things like metrics and stuff

1:35:15

that, you know, I love magic, but I

1:35:18

love that. And I think that's a, that's a kind of

1:35:20

great use of stuff. And how do you get that across?

1:35:22

They come up with more ways. Every time we fill out

1:35:24

a form to put something in the app store, does

1:35:27

it offend the Republic of Korea? Well, I don't

1:35:29

know. Yeah. I think it's on Google Play still,

1:35:32

but I'm sure Apple are a bit, a bit

1:35:34

straight with that. I do remember there was one

1:35:36

that I used to love, which was, you

1:35:39

download more RAM for your phone. It's

1:35:43

like, that's not going to work. But

1:35:46

yeah, all these things

1:35:48

are funny. You know, they try to

1:35:50

protect everybody from everything. And, uh, um,

1:35:53

yeah, I don't know. It's, uh, I

1:35:56

would recommend it. If anybody's interested, they should just get,

1:35:58

um, first off. got people that are hobbyists

1:36:00

are trying to make their own games, yet go ahead and

1:36:02

keep doing that. You get some

1:36:05

books, do it on your own. You can get Unity

1:36:07

is free if you haven't made enough money

1:36:09

out of it yet. They

1:36:14

have certain, you can read the requirements

1:36:17

online and you can use Unity to

1:36:19

make the game. You

1:36:21

can move it to different platforms fairly easily.

1:36:24

If you're going to do an iPhone one, you need

1:36:27

a Mac to build it on. If you're going to

1:36:29

do a Windows one, you need a PC. The

1:36:32

Android you can use either. I think

1:36:35

although we usually do it on the PC, but

1:36:37

yes, you build the thing and then

1:36:39

when you get it in Unity, when

1:36:41

it's time to put on a different platform, you

1:36:44

change the player settings. And now it's

1:36:46

in some ways like a different game because one

1:36:48

of them had a mouse. The other one does.

1:36:51

One of them has a tech. One of them

1:36:53

has accelerometer. The other one doesn't. By the way,

1:36:55

they then they don't tell you stuff. The Apple

1:36:57

TV had one controller and now

1:36:59

it has a different controller. The round thing on the

1:37:01

top, the touch area on it, instead

1:37:03

of being a postage stamp on it, it's now kind

1:37:05

of a round one up there. And it

1:37:08

no longer has an accelerometer. So we based some

1:37:10

of our games on using it like

1:37:13

a control, kind of like the

1:37:15

controller they had for the Wii, you know, where you're

1:37:17

you're leaning it one way or the other. Yeah. Yeah.

1:37:20

But people don't like that anyway. I

1:37:22

think I think also the phone, we used to

1:37:24

do the driving games with iPhone where

1:37:26

you held the accelerometer. And now I

1:37:29

think they'd rather have an invisible like

1:37:31

a like a thumb D-pad

1:37:33

on the screen, you know, like so. Yeah,

1:37:36

yeah, I got that instead. You know, it's

1:37:38

like, but but yeah, having a system

1:37:40

where you can get it on the different platforms, you

1:37:42

can visualize it, you know, it has to

1:37:44

be. That's me. Fun. That's me. Something you make a

1:37:47

difference at. You know, there's a lot

1:37:49

of people want to make a game. Very few people

1:37:51

have the patience to go all the

1:37:53

way through it. You know, that's that's that's

1:37:55

part of it. Also, working at home.

1:37:58

I've worked at home off and on. during my career and

1:38:00

I got in fights with companies where they wouldn't let me work

1:38:02

at home and the next company did. And then

1:38:04

the one after that made you come in. But

1:38:07

I've always done better work on my own. And

1:38:11

the guy I've worked with down in Houston, he's

1:38:13

like four or five

1:38:16

hours away by car, we do everything on

1:38:18

Skype. Maybe we used to

1:38:20

get together once a year in San Francisco. I'm not

1:38:22

sure what name was next San Francisco was unsafe anymore.

1:38:25

But yeah, we go to game

1:38:27

conferences and things like that. But it was like,

1:38:30

yeah, it's getting things that are

1:38:33

fun, the people that make

1:38:35

a difference. Sometimes you get feedback from people. I

1:38:38

got more feedback in the old days when I had that

1:38:40

online business because people knew it was me. Yeah,

1:38:43

yeah. And now it's just kind of... Everybody's

1:38:45

trying to sell them. You see, you got

1:38:47

a whole other problem and everybody wants to

1:38:50

help you sell your games. And I

1:38:52

don't know when I talk to them, they don't know any more about

1:38:54

that I do. And I don't know very much, you know, and I've

1:38:56

been doing. So I try to experiment.

1:38:58

I sent out, if you go to Magnum

1:39:01

Games on Twitter, you'll

1:39:03

see we're promoting the

1:39:07

warp tunnel challenge.

1:39:10

If you're racing in one of these

1:39:12

tunnels, the twists, and you're

1:39:14

trying to get through the thing without hitting the obstacles,

1:39:17

and then you go through one level, then he goes

1:39:19

to the next level, next level, and he randomly changes

1:39:21

and he change vehicles. But it's

1:39:23

kind of like the analogy.

1:39:26

Willie was the one that kind of designed it. I

1:39:28

said, oh, it's kind of like a forced scroll, you

1:39:31

know, that you're forcing. We're

1:39:33

forcing us to move forward in 3D. You don't get the

1:39:35

option to stop. Yeah. You

1:39:37

go to the right or left to avoid

1:39:39

obstacles, but you're still going with the same

1:39:41

forward speed. So that was kind

1:39:43

of fun. So we're trying to experiment. We put it

1:39:46

in Twitter and I haven't

1:39:48

used it for a while. And I saw

1:39:50

people picking on Elon Musk and everything. I said, okay,

1:39:52

fine. I'll... So I put it

1:39:54

on our site and I sent it out

1:39:56

and got to our 20,000 people to follow

1:39:58

us. And then what

1:40:00

you do is you pay them to promote it. One day

1:40:02

they send it to another 30,000 people. Yeah,

1:40:06

it's definitely a change from the

1:40:08

days when you were doing it

1:40:10

on the old modems and on

1:40:13

the old phone lines. I'm going

1:40:16

to have to end the interview here because we're running

1:40:18

out of time, Ed, but I've

1:40:20

really enjoyed talking to you. Same

1:40:22

here. I'm flattered, you know, with 73,

1:40:26

I did retro games before people knew

1:40:28

they were retro. Yeah, exactly. They

1:40:30

were cutting edge back then. Well,

1:40:34

thanks so much, Ed. Thank

1:40:37

you. Appreciate it. Be

1:40:46

a barbecue hero with delicious ultra-low

1:40:49

net carb hero bread buns and

1:40:51

tortillas Soft and fluffy high

1:40:53

in fiber and with zero grams of

1:40:55

sugar up to 10 grams of protein

1:40:57

Coming in at under 100 calories per

1:41:00

serving. Oh, and did I mention it

1:41:02

tastes like their mouth-watering traditional versions? I

1:41:04

mean what's not to love use code

1:41:06

Use a h10 for 10% off

1:41:08

your first hero bread purchase at hero co

1:41:11

That's a h10 for 10% off

1:41:14

at hero dot CEO Shopify

1:41:17

helps you sell at every stage of your

1:41:19

business. Like that, let's put it online and

1:41:21

see what happens stage. And the

1:41:23

site is live. That we opened a store and

1:41:25

need a fast checkout page. Thanks.

1:41:28

You're all set. That counted up and ship it around

1:41:30

the globe stage. This one's going to

1:41:32

Thailand. And

1:41:34

that, wait, did we just hit a

1:41:36

million orders stage? Whatever

1:41:38

your stage, businesses that grow, grow

1:41:41

with Shopify. Sign up for your

1:41:43

$1 a month trial at shopify.com/dressup23.