catatp.fm Unofficial Accidental Tech Podcast transcripts (generated by computer, so expect errors).

2: The 7th Guest

The PS4 announcement, the Xbox 1, old LAN gaming, Transport Tycoon, early CD-ROM adventure games, dumping old games onto iOS, dial-up modems, and the annoyance of gaming occasionally on a modern console.

Episode Description:

The PS4 announcement, the Xbox 1, old LAN gaming, Transport Tycoon, early CD-ROM adventure games, dumping old games onto iOS, dial-up modems, and the annoyance of gaming occasionally on a modern console.

Transcribed using Whisper large_v2 (transcription) + WAV2VEC2_ASR_LARGE_LV60K_960H (alignment) + Pyannote (speaker diaritization).

Transcript start

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I have a wildly unrelated question for Mr. Syracusa.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey What the hell happened with this PlayStation 4 thing? Because I don’t really follow video games at all

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but oh my god the the internets went crazy over that. I guess it was like

⏹️ ▶️ John that crazy.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey They weren’t fairly

⏹️ ▶️ John crazy.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John understand why everyone is all cranky.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think everyone’s mind was blown about how little their mind was blown over

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey the course of two hours.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is exactly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John right.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t get it at all because like Like, they do this with every new

⏹️ ▶️ John console. And maybe people are getting more and more worked up about it. But they always do something like this. They always

⏹️ ▶️ John dole out the information. Like, Nintendo is the king of this. Remember with the Wii, they were like,

⏹️ ▶️ John we have a new console coming, and it’s called the Revolution. And they had a press conference about that, but they

⏹️ ▶️ John told you nothing. And then another time they said, it’s called the Revolution, and it’s the size of three

⏹️ ▶️ John DVD cases stacked on top of each other. And the control screen is very interesting. And

⏹️ ▶️ John they didn’t tell you anything else. And it’s like, it just, you know, the next press conference is like, okay, now, it was like so long before

⏹️ ▶️ John they finally showed you, okay, here’s the little box, but the control scheme is really neat. And it’s like, all right, well, what the hell is the control scheme? And then

⏹️ ▶️ John finally, here’s the new console, here’s the box, here’s what the name is, and here’s the controller. And it was like seven press conferences

⏹️ ▶️ John over the course of a year, slowly doling out information about the Wii, right? That’s how they do it, you know? This is the

⏹️ ▶️ John first press conference. I’m surprised they even showed a picture of the controller. I’m surprised they showed anything.

⏹️ ▶️ John The specs, we already knew what those all were from all the rumors and everything, and they more or less confirmed those, plus or

⏹️ ▶️ John minus a few details. Like, you know, in this internet age, we already know, like

⏹️ ▶️ John those sales articles, I think I tweeted one of them, you know, Durango versus Orbus. Those are the two code names

⏹️ ▶️ John of Microsoft and Sony’s consoles. It’s like, we have them down to the individual components that are gonna be on

⏹️ ▶️ John motherboards. You’re never gonna, they’re never gonna announce price until it’s practically for sale. So anyone

⏹️ ▶️ John expecting price is crazy. Oh, you gotta show me the box. Who cares? I mean, like,

⏹️ ▶️ John they showed the box to the PlayStation 3 And then that wasn’t the box that they shipped. They showed the controller to the

⏹️ ▶️ John PlayStation 3 and that wasn’t the controller they shipped. I don’t know why anyone is upset about

⏹️ ▶️ John any of this. As far as I’m concerned, this was like the first press release,

⏹️ ▶️ John the first press conference. They showed a bunch of stuff, probably about the same amount of stuff I expected

⏹️ ▶️ John them to show. Anyone who expected to see a price and a date, unless that date was like March,

⏹️ ▶️ John you were crazy. So I

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey don’t know what

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m upset about. So kidding aside, you were not disappointed by this?

⏹️ ▶️ John No, it’s exactly what I expected. I was disappointed by the controller, but I

⏹️ ▶️ John can’t say that I was unexpected. And I was pleasantly surprised about the RAM, which was double the rumored amount,

⏹️ ▶️ John assuming they actually stick with that. Sony says a lot of things. Until the product ships,

⏹️ ▶️ John who knows? So I’m still giving it a thumbs up. I’ll buy one, despite the controller.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco What’s interesting, too, is that the architecture they picked, they basically said it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco x86 CPUs from AMD and eight gigs of shared RAM with video and main RAM

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with some beefy AMD video card. That’s basically the modern version of the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Xbox One. And the Xbox One when it came out, because it had like a 733 megahertz Celeron-ish

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing. You were in your Xbox

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John One. No, but. No, I’m saying like.

⏹️ ▶️ John That thing was such a piece

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of crap. No, honestly, the Xbox One was a fantastic system.

⏹️ ▶️ John It was not a fantastic system. It was a cobbled together terrible PC.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s what it was. I really beg to differ. I would say, because it was, effectively it was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a 700 megahertz Pentium something with a GeForce 3. That’s basically what it was. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, they were both custom parts, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John that was. I

⏹️ ▶️ John know, and if you open it up, it looked like it.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I know. It

⏹️ ▶️ John looked like someone had taken a PC and put it in the Will It Blend machine and then jammed it into an ugly black box and said,

⏹️ ▶️ John here you go.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But one thing that helped them a lot was that making games was just DirectX. and it was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco easy to program for, which many consoles are very hard to program for, or at least to extract a lot of good performance

⏹️ ▶️ Marco out of. And it had so many advantages. It’s interesting

⏹️ ▶️ Marco now that, and the Xbox went away from that architecture for the 360, and the PlayStation,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the PS2 and the PS3 were both ridiculously hyped for whatever weird CPUs they had,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco which were always very hard to program for, especially, is it the PS3 with the Emotion

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Engine, or is that the PS2? A three is cell

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey yes,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey even I knew that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco and I don’t know

⏹️ ▶️ Marco everyone complains about both of those Especially the cell is being very hard to program for efficiently at

⏹️ ▶️ Marco least

⏹️ ▶️ John and Think about the ps2 though is it cost about as much as the GPU in the original Xbox like the entire

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco machine Oh, yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John that’s the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing is like I can’t see this whatever this ps4 is I can’t see that being inexpensive at launch

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean the ps3 launched it was at 500 Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re gonna be expensive

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco It’s going to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco be probably

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John in that ballpark.

⏹️ ▶️ John The reason everyone’s going x86 this generation is because x86 has finally got the

⏹️ ▶️ John power usage under control. Because the Xbox One was before Intel had gotten their chips

⏹️ ▶️ John down in power. It was before the core architecture, before Apple adopted

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it and everything like that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But it was also before the stupid Pentium 4 NetBurst architecture that was so wasteful.

⏹️ ▶️ John I know, but it was still nothing compared to the power-sipping little

⏹️ ▶️ John washing machine CPU that’s in the PlayStation 1 and 2 consoles used incredibly cheap, wimpy things.

⏹️ ▶️ John So that’s why the Xbox was so huge. That’s why it was so hot. And so everyone was PowerPC in the

⏹️ ▶️ John next generation because x86 still hadn’t caught up. And that was the sweet spot. It was PowerPC

⏹️ ▶️ John and ATI. And then finally now, we’re in the modern age. The x86 stacks isn’t that bad.

⏹️ ▶️ John You can get a reasonably low-powered x86 CPU. But really, the reason

⏹️ ▶️ John everyone went with the commodity PC parts this time around is because neither player, Microsoft

⏹️ ▶️ John or Sony, had the kind of money to invest in all custom stuff. Like, Sony

⏹️ ▶️ John can’t afford to do the cell again. Whether you like the cell or don’t like it, it costs them a tremendous

⏹️ ▶️ John amount of money to develop this crazy-ass new thing all on their own. They could not put that kind

⏹️ ▶️ John of investment. They didn’t want to. And Microsoft also didn’t want to pay for IBM to make them their own

⏹️ ▶️ John crazy CPU, GPU like they did with the Xbox and everything. They said, we are

⏹️ ▶️ John both not in a position to do that this time. We have to go with commodity parts. There’s not enough of an upside for us to

⏹️ ▶️ John do custom. So they both go with commodity parts.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now wait, forgive my ignorance on this. I don’t know anything about what the next Xbox is rumored or planned to have.

⏹️ ▶️ John AMD CPU and Nvidia. Is it NVIDIA? Who’s doing the GPU? Whoever’s

⏹️ ▶️ John doing the GPU is the same for both of

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco them. It’s AMD. Both AMD then.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Formerly ATI. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s the same company. But yeah, they’re the same. I mean, they were close to the same

⏹️ ▶️ John in the PS, you know, the Xbox 360 doesn’t have a cell processor, but they both had

⏹️ ▶️ John GPUs from ATI, and they both had PowerPC cores inside their CPUs, and the cell did all sorts of other

⏹️ ▶️ John crazy stuff and had an Nvidia GPU in there, and everything like that. But yeah, the architectures

⏹️ ▶️ John are different. You should, I’ll send you that article that I tweeted a couple days ago. It’s short enough, you can read through the

⏹️ ▶️ John differences and what they decided to do. It looked like the difference was gonna be that Microsoft was going to have double

⏹️ ▶️ John the RAM of the Sony box. Right,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco but now Sony’s matched

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that.

⏹️ ▶️ John But it was slower RAM. And everyone looked at the Microsoft box and said, OK, well, why would you put that much RAM in a game

⏹️ ▶️ John console? It’s too much and too slow for you to use. And to make up for the slowness

⏹️ ▶️ John of the RAM, the next Xbox has a dedicated embedded SRAM, like 32

⏹️ ▶️ John megabytes of it. Wow. Kind of like how the GameCube did. To

⏹️ ▶️ John have one really super fast region that you can use for cache or enough for RAM buffers and other data that you need

⏹️ ▶️ John close by, and then an enormous pool of much slower RAM. And the theory behind that is that the Microsoft

⏹️ ▶️ John box was going to be like a DVR and a media center, and games wouldn’t even

⏹️ ▶️ John have access to all that RAM. So it would be like 8 gigs, but games would get like 5 gigs of that or something, and the rest of it would be

⏹️ ▶️ John dedicated to just doing media center type activities, which would run at the

⏹️ ▶️ John same time as your games. Whereas the Sony one was supposedly coming with 4 gigs of super duper, 4 gigs of GDDR5,

⏹️ ▶️ John Which is stuff at the time video cards that would be unified pool all of its really fast You don’t need a special

⏹️ ▶️ John cache close to it, but there’s not enough left over for you to be doing dedicated You know media center DVR

⏹️ ▶️ John whatever functionality, but now that Sony has come out with eight I don’t know if they just changed

⏹️ ▶️ John their mind and went with eight But that’s it’s got eight gigs of GDDR5 assuming. That’s what’s in there

⏹️ ▶️ John I still haven’t seen the beginning the presentation, but I just saw the number on it Oh, and by the

⏹️ ▶️ John way, the PlayStation 1 supposedly has more GPU cores as well. So it was a more interesting

⏹️ ▶️ John fight with the rumored specs. Now that the real specs are out, assuming that the rumored Xbox specs

⏹️ ▶️ John are correct, the Sony one is just more powerful in all ways. Has faster RAM,

⏹️ ▶️ John the same amount, more GPU cores, and then the Xbox one is,

⏹️ ▶️ John I guess it’ll have its crazy-ass Kinect stuff on it too, but I don’t know. They are looking

⏹️ ▶️ John very similar this generation

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s very and and then you also throw in is this valve box thing gonna happen

⏹️ ▶️ John you know That is just a PC. I mean

⏹️ ▶️ Marco well, but I don’t it the funny thing is like you know now. We’re gonna have two possibly three

⏹️ ▶️ Marco consoles that are extremely similar to PC hardware

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John All with not like running

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what I’m saying like the ps4 is not like PC hardware PC don’t have the 8

⏹️ ▶️ John gigabytes of GDDR5 RAM. They have memory for the computer and a CPU for the

⏹️ ▶️ John computer, and then they have a GPU, and then there’s RAM on the video card.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Two separate

⏹️ ▶️ John pools of very wildly different memory. One of it’s really close to the dedicated GPU, you know, and

⏹️ ▶️ John this is a very different arrangement than having a unified super fast RAM for the entire thing.

⏹️ ▶️ John There’s dedicated

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco video encode

⏹️ ▶️ John decode hardware on the thing for it, so they can do, you know, like real-time

⏹️ ▶️ John screen capture video of your play… Like, the PS4 is not going to look like that Steamboxing. Steamboxing is literally

⏹️ ▶️ John going to be a PC. There’s going to be RAM, there’s going to be VRAM, there’s going to be a GPU, there’s going to be a CPU. That is

⏹️ ▶️ John very different architecturally from the PS4. And that’s even before you start getting into all the little dedicated chips

⏹️ ▶️ John for all the dedicated functionality. And even before you get into how much closer you can get to the

⏹️ ▶️ John Metal on the PlayStation when writing games for it. So I expect PS4

⏹️ ▶️ John games to look as good as the Steambox games out of the gate. Assuming, assuming

⏹️ ▶️ John anyone ever makes, I mean, who is that company? They’re like that piston something company is making that Steambox thing. I don’t know.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco what Valve’s

⏹️ ▶️ John plan is, but like they should, they should just either make their own hardware or pick one

⏹️ ▶️ John hardware vendor and make one single thing and not be like, Oh, it’s a free for all anyone can make a gaming PC. That looks a beauty.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, they can, but they all stink.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, Marco to go back quite a while, actually, what, what is it that you liked so much about the Xbox

⏹️ ▶️ Casey One. And I ask because the friends of mine that I have that adored the Xbox

⏹️ ▶️ Casey One, it seemed to me they adored it more for the hacky, moddy things you could do with

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it than they did for the actual stock Xbox. Does that question

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco make sense?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh yeah, and I bought mine actually pre-hacked because I didn’t want to mess with it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I bought a modded Xbox in like 2004. I think it came out in 2001 or something, so it was well into the well into

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the console’s lifespan. And it was very nice.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I bought it mainly as a 16-bit emulator for my

⏹️ ▶️ Marco TV and some media center functions, like that originally XBMC,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco running all that. It was fantastic for that. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a gaming console, what I liked about the Xbox One was that they really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco went all out on the hardware and they really had a few very good innovations.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco One of the biggest ones were those breakaway controller cords, you remember

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John those?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John yeah, yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ John You know what was better than breakaway controller cords, Marco?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Wireless. No cords.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, yeah, eventually.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s called innovation. Well, yeah, but. You and your breakaway controller cords.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco At the time, everything still had wires, and so if you’re going to have a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John bunch of wires. Thank

⏹️ ▶️ John you, but the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Wavebird. If you’re gonna have a bunch of wires, that’s a very good way to do it. And they also had

⏹️ ▶️ Marco an auto-switching Ethernet port on the back. It was the first console, as far as I know, ever to have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ethernet at all. And to have it built in on every console was awesome. And it was auto-switching so that you could

⏹️ ▶️ Marco use a straight-through or a crossover cable between two Xboxes, and it would just make it work. Which

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on Gigabit, I think all Gigabit ports have that, but that was only 100 megabit, and so it was optional at that time, and they put that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in as a little trick. And they had all sorts of neat little things with the software, the management interface,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Stuff like that, that was very ahead of its time. And in addition

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to being a pretty powerful system, graphics wise. So overall,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really enjoyed the X-ray, even though I didn’t own one until relatively late in its lifespan, I thought it was a fantastic

⏹️ ▶️ Marco system.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And yeah. You know what’s weird is, and this is totally dating me, well, except maybe to John, who probably

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was well ahead of me on this, but I, and Marco, I bet you’ve done this too. When you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey talk about an Ethernet connection on a console, I don’t know why, but the first thing that jumps

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to mind is me when I’m like 10, playing like Descent One and like

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wolf 3, no, not Wolf 3D, but Duke Nukem 3D and like Doom on

⏹️ ▶️ Casey serial no modem cables strung together in like my dad’s office or whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So my friends would bring their freaking tower

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco computers in there and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey their 800 pound 15 inch monitors over and we would have like a predecessor to a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey LAN party. And that was how I spent my Friday or Saturday evenings when I was like 10,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey playing these games against my friends locally. And then we thought we were really hot shit

⏹️ ▶️ Casey when we would figure out how to do it over dial-up, which by the way, was so unreliable and so slow

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that it never frigging worked anyway. But I mean, did you guys also do that sort of ridiculously

⏹️ ▶️ Casey nerdy crap when you were

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco young? Oh

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, I mean, almost every weekend in high school. And even like the summers in college, My friends and I would do this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco when we were all home. Almost every weekend in high school, though, we would haul our computers

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and our CRT monitors to whoever’s house had the hub

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at the time. And different people got hubs at different times. This was before wireless

⏹️ ▶️ Marco also. So we would just have very long network cables, like duct tape to the ceiling and running down the stairs and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything. We would spend like six hours setting. We would start

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the game at midnight.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey It

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would just be so long just setting it up, trying to get all the computers to see each other on the network properly.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was a disaster. And people would have their big CRT sitting on this rickety coffee

⏹️ ▶️ Marco table, like just everyone crammed into the basement. Oh my God. But we had a blast. It was tons of fun.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And now we could all just do that with laptops or iPads and have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just as much fun. But there really is something about local multiplayer.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just, I love that. And for certain game types, like we would almost always play RTSs.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And especially for that game type, I mean, it’s such a fantastic setup. And it’s so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco much better than playing online. It’s so much better than split

⏹️ ▶️ Marco screen all in one TV from a console. It’s fantastic. And now the hardware

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is awesome. We all have enough money to afford laptops now. And laptops are all good enough to play games now.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And now we all live in different places and have kids and stuff, and we’re all too busy to ever do any of this stuff again.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it’s kind of sad. John, how much, I presume you were an expert in all of these

⏹️ ▶️ Casey things, but did you get involved in all this?

⏹️ ▶️ John Only in college really because I didn’t have like networking in my house until I went off to college.

⏹️ ▶️ John But AppleTalk was awesome for this because AppleTalk, the discovery protocol on AppleTalk,

⏹️ ▶️ John like when you’re on AppleTalk network, you can see everyone else who’s also on the network. So that simplified setup greatly. You just had

⏹️ ▶️ John to plug all the things together with AppleTalk cables. Everyone could see everyone else and like games like Marathon and stuff supported

⏹️ ▶️ John AppleTalk. You just fire it up, you’d all see each other, you’d join up and play. It was like really easy. Especially

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, like college computer labs where all the Macs were there and they’re all connected with AppleTalk. You just

⏹️ ▶️ John load Marathon and all of them and you’ve got, you know, instant LAN party in the computer lab.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John then

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the problem there though is that you need two things that don’t exist. Friends with Macs in the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco 90s and games

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John for Macs.

⏹️ ▶️ John No, in colleges, the labs are always filled with Macs. And we had Marathon, which

⏹️ ▶️ John is all you really needed. I did play I did play a Doom

⏹️ ▶️ John on the Mac over a modem I believe but I think that was after I had come back from college and played against

⏹️ ▶️ John somebody They had old crappy ports again, but they were here of

⏹️ ▶️ John a V a ra of our Abra However, how you want to pronounce it? That was a great game

⏹️ ▶️ John with Apple talk networking It was a non texture mapped but just like flat shaded polygons

⏹️ ▶️ John like kind of like a a mech game where your direction of travel and the direction that your head

⏹️ ▶️ John carrying the guns were pointing were independent of each other. Too complicated for modern gamers, certainly too complicated

⏹️ ▶️ John for a console, but very interesting to play over the network, especially

⏹️ ▶️ John at colleges. Because so with a college, you had an AppleTalk network, but you also had

⏹️ ▶️ John an ethernet connection to the internet, which was just amazing coming from dial-up. So you could play people in

⏹️ ▶️ John far off places over your ethernet connection. That was like magic. I remember doing that on

⏹️ ▶️ John the, you can only do it on the lab computers, because back in your dorm, you just had a modem and it was

⏹️ ▶️ John a non-starter. You could play online games over ethernet over the internet.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, once we got to college, it was way easier because you were on a network of computers where you had labs.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, in high school, when you were just hauling your computer around, and of course, before LCD monitors

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and good laptops, that was, and wireless, it was so much more involved.

⏹️ ▶️ John I never would have taken my computer to any place. my precious beautiful computers, I’m gonna

⏹️ ▶️ John carry them in a car, and like in a box, and check, no, I would

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco never have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco done that. Well, for me, though, like, you know, you always had Macs, right? Yeah. So by definition, you were

⏹️ ▶️ Marco never building your own computer. For me, like, I had this weird half-hacked-together

⏹️ ▶️ Marco tower that I had assembled myself.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco no part of it really felt particularly like nice or fragile. It always

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was just kinda like this. That’s why you liked

⏹️ ▶️ John the Xbox, look like it was built like a Frankenstein monster.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know the Xbox is huge lol. No, I really like it and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I even had a full tower case, not a mid tower, a full tower because I wanted…

⏹️ ▶️ John And I had friends with those cases too. I went over to their houses and played their PC games with them. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John no good.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I still miss RTSs with local multiplayer.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you know, you know what I miss and I actually did play some like I played Starcraft and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Command and Conquer red alert some but you know what I miss is the days

⏹️ ▶️ Casey back in the day Marco when you and I would Play transport tycoon together.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Oh, yeah on your OS 2

⏹️ ▶️ Marco laptop

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wasn’t it was it really OS 2? I know I definitely ran OS 2

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I think we would have to boot to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco DOS to play transport tycoon

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey But the great thing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is Transport Tycoon, which is a game that nobody had ever heard of as far as I knew, it apparently has enough of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a cult following that now there’s this huge open source thing called OpenTTD

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe. You can get a modern engine

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for Transport Tycoon that uses all the old assets, all the old art and everything. It’s open source,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s for Mac and Linux and Windows. I’d somebody I think once tried to port it to the App Store

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it got pulled out of the store for probably a GPL violation or something who knows and But you can get this now

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So like I was playing transport tycoon again a few years ago on my MacBook on the train like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco building up a whole new

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John it was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was awesome and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and did you know like I believe was transport tycoon if it wasn’t transporting in his roller coaster tycoon

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know all that was there 99% of that was assembly

⏹️ ▶️ John Wow, I did not know that. That’s how you

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey made games back in the

⏹️ ▶️ John DOS era.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yeah, you kind of had to.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But that just melts my head.

⏹️ ▶️ John Half of the Mac operating system was assembled for the first most of its early life. It’s the only way that you could

⏹️ ▶️ John do it to get any good performance out of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. That stuns me, because when I was in school, I, like John, was a computer engineer

⏹️ ▶️ Casey not a computer scientist, and so because of that, we had to take a bunch of EE courses,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and one of the ones that I believe was classified as EE was microprocessor, I don’t remember

⏹️ ▶️ Casey exactly what it was called, but basically it was writing assembly for a Motorola HC11. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was one of the like six people I talked to that actually really, really loved that course

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I really did enjoy writing in assembly, but holy crap, I would not want to do that at

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that level. That just sounds painful.

⏹️ ▶️ John I could enjoy it. I really liked my assembly courses and I really got into it and I could see how

⏹️ ▶️ John I would be perfectly happy doing that. But by the time I was taking that course, I knew it wasn’t, you know.

⏹️ ▶️ John If that was the mainstream way to program, I’d be perfectly happy. But with the way it is now,

⏹️ ▶️ John no one is writing entire large programs in assembly anymore.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, but Perl makes about as much sense. It’s about as readable. So I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey couldn’t help myself.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Going back to Transport Tycoon, I have lots of ideas for little

⏹️ ▶️ Marco games I would make if I knew how to make games and had time to do so and chose to do that with that time,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco none of which are true, but one of the things that I’ve always wanted to do is,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, take what I love so much about Transport Tycoon is building the train networks.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t really care about the other parts of the game. I just, I like building these complicated train

⏹️ ▶️ Marco networks with tracks laid out in such a way that the maximum throughput of trains can go through and not get all gummed up

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and everything and and I think I bet you could extract that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just that element of it into a simpler game for iOS that’s that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco modern and and just simpler and fun and I and I know there’s a there’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco train yard which is not really the same thing that although it’s very good but as far

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as I know that doesn’t exist yet and I don’t really know even what the details of that would be like how exactly that what exactly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the gameplay would be how that would work I would I imagine it’d be some kind of puzzle-like game where

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re trying to design these tracks and put the signals in the right places where they would do the right thing and everything, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all to maximize throughput and minimize traffic.

⏹️ ▶️ John Once you envision that program in your head, don’t you immediately envision the program that you would write to solve that game?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Well, no, I think—

⏹️ ▶️ John You just make an algorithm and stick it on the game and have it maximize throughput?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it might be NP-complete to solve what I’m imagining.

⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s like one of the it’s one of those that you ever see them where they do the the automator Things for like Mario

⏹️ ▶️ John games and stuff where you try to make an algorithm that will successfully get you through the level

⏹️ ▶️ John But they’re like limitations to how you’re doing it like it has to be real-time You can only do it in like the scanning

⏹️ ▶️ John interval so you can’t really be smart So you have to come up with like the the dumbest algorithm, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John That can execute on this this limited CPU during the interval between the frames that successfully

⏹️ ▶️ John gets you through the level

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s really nerdy, my goodness. That’s impressive. Now, did you ever play Transport

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tycoon, John? Do you even know what we’re talking about?

⏹️ ▶️ John No, but I know those Tycoon games. But you don’t. That’s the thing. I’m not

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey fan of those.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco But you don’t. It’s not like the others, John. Right. Most people think that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Transport Tycoon is like Railroad Tycoon or Roller Coaster Tycoon, and it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not. I think it was made by totally different people. It’s much more like SimCity. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco closer to that. I also don’t like SimCity. Okay, well, you probably wouldn’t like this.

⏹️ ▶️ John this yeah I mean like I understand why people are into them I see the appeal but I like I played them just does not my cup

⏹️ ▶️ John of tea

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean the gist of the game is it is very it looks a lot like SimCity and there are a bunch

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of cities on the map but you don’t build the cities you you are a transportation network and you build

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the trains and the planes and the roads that connect the cities and you get business from

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that and so you spend most of your time like laying out track

⏹️ ▶️ John and like pipe dream does that count I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know I don’t I I

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know. Do you remember Pipe Dream? I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco think so. No,

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t. You have a bunch of pieces that are all square and a piece can have a straight line from top to bottom, a straight line

⏹️ ▶️ John from left to right. Those are the pipes.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh, I think, yeah. It could be

⏹️ ▶️ John an elbow. And you had to lay out the pieces as they came. You didn’t get to pick and choose. It was like, here’s your next

⏹️ ▶️ John piece, find someplace good for it. And then eventually water would start flowing and the goal was to get your pipe

⏹️ ▶️ John set up for a really long run of

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco water. That’s right.

⏹️ ▶️ John You meet some limit. The best thing about Pipe Dream is that, I think at least one,

⏹️ ▶️ John possibly multiple games have added basically Pipe Dream as their version of like hacking.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like when you’re in

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco some game and you open the

⏹️ ▶️ John door lock and they put you into the hacking mini game. And the hacking mini game is basically Pipe Dream,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, with like wires and special effects and stuff like that. But you’re like, wait a second, this hacking game is Pipe Dream, which, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John has nothing to do with actual hacking. And it’s not even like, they just have to have some sort of

⏹️ ▶️ John activity that regular people who don’t know anything about computers will accept as, okay, I guess this is hacking, and

⏹️ ▶️ John they use Pipe Dream, which I like Pipe Dream, I thought the game was fun.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think they even had a version of that in The 7th Guest.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s very popular, like they disguise it as much as possible, but eventually you realize, wait a

⏹️ ▶️ John second, this is just like Pipe Dream, cleverly disguised.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So A, I’m definitely going to release this as another Actionable Tech Podcast episode. B,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wonder if anybody is going to know what I just said about The 7th Guest, like if anybody even remembers

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what that is.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I remember

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco what it was.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I actually loved Eleventh Hour. Do you know what that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco is?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do. That’s the sequel, but I never played

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey it. Yes,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey indeed. See, I never played Seventh Guest, coincidentally, but I really enjoyed Eleventh Hour.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, the Seventh Guest is one of those CD-ROM games

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey where— Wasn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it one of the first? It was one of the first CD-ROM games, I think. It certainly was one of the first I’d ever seen. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was like you were in this haunted mansion, and you had to solve puzzles. It

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was just like a big puzzle-solving game and so it’s tons of these little mini games and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco trying to figure out some murder mystery I forget the exact story but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was one of those games where like because it was on a CD-ROM most of the time in the game was spent

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like watching these little FMV sequences these little videos because games couldn’t have videos up until that point

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there was not enough storage space and on cartridges so they were they would waste the whole CD with like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco videos and CD audio raw and and so you just spend the whole time

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like watching video clips and clicking between them and that was the game

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it did have some pretty hard puzzles in it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I remember that it was because it was right to my memory which is terrible it was right around

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the time that like missed had come out as well

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I think it was PC and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey missed

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but missed was way more popular but the seventh guess I think predated it and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey and I remember like this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like mist seems so primitive after seeing the seventh guest because it wasn’t full motion it was like a slideshow that you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco were clicking between and missed

⏹️ ▶️ Casey what was hyper card

⏹️ ▶️ John missed rather this video

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco what was it just a lot less

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of it

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it was

⏹️ ▶️ John a quick time so it was tiny video

⏹️ ▶️ Marco okay we’ll see like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John this like the seventh

⏹️ ▶️ Marco guest every every move you made would be animated the whole way

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and and with I think with mist like if you click to move you know to go into a room, like it would just clip

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you’d be there, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, well they did a crossfade, but yeah, full motion video was-

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I love that you remember

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that there was a crossfade.

⏹️ ▶️ John It was a plague on CD, on optical media games because there was

⏹️ ▶️ John so many- remember there was a vampire game with Shannon Doherty in it, I think that was the low point.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And there were a whole lot of like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John make

⏹️ ▶️ Marco your own music video games, there was like a criss cross one for the Sega CD. Really? God, that’s awful.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Really,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John all

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey those

⏹️ ▶️ John were those seven guests was a good game, but in general full motion video on CD-rom Those were all terrible games,

⏹️ ▶️ John especially

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like when CD-roms first came out Yes, they could hold video, but they couldn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hold or play back very good quality video So you were seeing like you were sitting

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there sitting through Really low quality really tiny if

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey you’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco lucky exactly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so One of the thing one of the other CD games that was CD-ROM games that I really loved at the time

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Although I think it was a couple years later was Wing Commander 3. Did you guys ever play that? They had Mark Hamill in it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey John. You must have played this.

⏹️ ▶️ John I know what you’re talking about I was not a Wing Commander fan

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I this is the only one of the series I ever played that but I really loved it and that had a lot of full Motion video and it was split

⏹️ ▶️ Casey across like four CD-ROMs, which was unheard of at the time but a couple things about

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Seventh Guest and Myst. Firstly, John, I’m surprised that you aren’t in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey love with Myst strictly because it was originally done in HyperCard. John Greenewald

⏹️ ▶️ John I liked it. I liked that you could cheat by holding down Command and Option. Steven

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Connelly I did not know that. What would that let you do?

⏹️ ▶️ John John Greenewald So when you make a HyperCard stack, you can make little regions that are clickable or whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ John And when you’re developing a HyperCard, you want to know what those regions are. So you could hold down Command and

⏹️ ▶️ John Option, and it would put dotted lines around the clickable regions.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey And early

⏹️ ▶️ John early versions of mist they had not I guess found a way to disable that or whatever So it really took the mystery

⏹️ ▶️ John out of the game if you could hold down command an option and see what the global regions were In any of the miss screen, that’s awesome

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then also a real-time follow-up because I don’t want to have an episode without it from Wikipedia Mist

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was commercially successful on release along with the seventh guest It was widely regarded as a killer application that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey accelerated the sales of CD-ROM drives,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco which was first. I’m curious

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is? It’s Seventh Guest by a few months.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s it. Yeah, and this is of course just whatever my friends had, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I saw the Seventh Guest a few years before I ever saw Myst. But again, that’s just because my friend had

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it and I guess nobody bought Myst for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey a while.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, the best part was I remember vividly for these games loading

⏹️ ▶️ Casey them into, what do you call it? Not a carousel, but it was like a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John cartridge that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you… A caddy? Yeah, yeah, yeah. CD into a caddy and the caddy into the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey external CD-ROM drive and that’s how I played it. And oh my god, that was so terrible.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it was probably SCSI.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was indeed. You’re

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John absolutely right.

⏹️ ▶️ John So what you PC weenies missed out on was that before Myst were two games called The Manhole

⏹️ ▶️ John and Cosmic Osmo, which were-

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco The Manhole?

⏹️ ▶️ John The Manhole, yep.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Is that not for children?

⏹️ ▶️ John And Cosmic Osmo, which were absolutely 100% precursors to Myst, but they were black

⏹️ ▶️ John and white, they did not come on CD-ROM, Cosmic Gospel came on like six floppy disks or something,

⏹️ ▶️ John six 800k floppy disks, but it was the same exact thing. A hypercard stack with static screens

⏹️ ▶️ John that you could click on to make things happen, to solve puzzles, much more casual puzzles, much more kid-oriented,

⏹️ ▶️ John lighter weight type things, all black and white graphics, but it was the same type deal, click, go from one place to the

⏹️ ▶️ John other. Myst was simply 640x483 rendered color version

⏹️ ▶️ John of that plus full motion video, but if you had played those first two games it was a natural progression.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well also apparently it was by the same guys who did Myst,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John which I’d never heard of. Yes,

⏹️ ▶️ John the Cyan, those guys. Cosmo is a very important

⏹️ ▶️ John piece of work along with like Fool’s Errand in the pantheon of gaming and

⏹️ ▶️ John Mac gaming.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Do you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John think you could still make

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco game like Myst today or do you think everybody would just want it to be a free 3D world where you can move

⏹️ ▶️ Marco wherever you wanted?

⏹️ ▶️ John Well that’s what the Myst games are like now. I mean they

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco went- Oh they still make them?

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, they did Myst, and then Riven was just like Myst, but much nicer and better.

⏹️ ▶️ John Then they did the one, Myst III Exile, where you could, like QuickTime VR, you could change your viewpoint

⏹️ ▶️ John and look around in real time. So it was like you were in a series of bubbles,

⏹️ ▶️ John QuickTime VR things, you could look around in it,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco and they still made it between

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you. Like those

⏹️ ▶️ John real estate walkthroughs? Yeah, but only much nicer, and motion sickness inducing in me. Then they did

⏹️ ▶️ John Real Myst, which was like, take Myst I, now we can do that in real time. And then they did Uru, which was

⏹️ ▶️ John the online thing where you could walk around and complete 3D. But yeah, we’re far past

⏹️ ▶️ John the point of static screens. Although I believe Riven is coming out for the iPad, and I think that will actually be

⏹️ ▶️ John a good application. For people wondering, Riven is the best game, if you can only play one of them, play Riven.

⏹️ ▶️ John Even with the static screens, I think on the iPad, it’ll still work

⏹️ ▶️ John well.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, actually, that kind of game probably… There’s so many game ports that people are dumping onto iOS

⏹️ ▶️ Marco now because they think they can make a quick buck off their old catalog.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Such

⏹️ ▶️ Casey as the 7th Guest.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s for iPad now? I didn’t realize that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yes sir.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Wow, I actually might try that just to see. I’m sure the game is not nearly as good as I remember.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey $4.99?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It never is. But like Sega’s dumping so much

⏹️ ▶️ Marco crap on there. There’s so many old console and old PC games that are just being dumped

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on iOS. Most of them are just terrible because controlling things is so different on iOS.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I imagine a game like Myst and Riven would probably be really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John easily portable. That’s a perfect

⏹️ ▶️ John fit because you just tap. It’s random access. It’s even better than doing it with a mouse because you don’t have the mouse cursor mucking things up and you have

⏹️ ▶️ John random access. But they really needed to bring is Myth, M-Y-T-H.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Wasn’t that like an RTS with fantasy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John people or Renaissance?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yep. But it was no resources. At the beginning of the round you have a certain number of points

⏹️ ▶️ John you distribute to whatever units you want to select and that’s it. no mining, no producing

⏹️ ▶️ John new troops, no nothing. So it was a tactics game, really. But it’s perfect for the iPad because it was

⏹️ ▶️ John all about swiping around the battlefield, rotating, skewing, selecting multiple

⏹️ ▶️ John people. You can imagine tracing your hands around them. Maybe they’d have a little bit of difficulty because there were formation keys, like all the number

⏹️ ▶️ John keys for which formation you wanted. And then you would click and drag to align your formation. But I feel like with

⏹️ ▶️ John a series of gestures, you could pull that off. And it would be awesome. I played Myth like crazy. And that would

⏹️ ▶️ John be awesome on the iPad.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I definitely feel like the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco RTS type games, or games that have RTS-like controls, are really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so far under-explored on the iPad. I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John think they could be awesome.

⏹️ ▶️ John And they’re terrible on the console, because you don’t have a random access. You don’t have a mouse pointer,

⏹️ ▶️ John so it’s just like a nightmare. They’re good on the Mac or PC, terrible on the console,

⏹️ ▶️ John but the iPad should be great, because you have random access and ten fingers. You really need

⏹️ ▶️ John the iPad Pro for that. The big one? The 20-inch iPad Pro. You can use two hands to

⏹️ ▶️ John play Myth 3000 that bungee will come out with when I’m done with destiny

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But so we at least had all iPads I wouldn’t have to carry my full tower PC to my friend’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco house to play RTS

⏹️ ▶️ Casey On a random note, you know what else that just jumped into my head that I used to love playing back in the day was Battle chest you guys ever

⏹️ ▶️ Casey play that

⏹️ ▶️ John I saw

⏹️ ▶️ Casey God, I love that. It was it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John was just a stupid animation. That

⏹️ ▶️ John was exactly aimed for 10 year

⏹️ ▶️ Casey olds.

⏹️ ▶️ John They cut the guy’s head off.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh my god, that’s so awesome. This is so much better than regular chess.

⏹️ ▶️ John And it wasn’t even, was it 320x200? I don’t remember. I don’t either. It was 640x480. I don’t know.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco It

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey was

⏹️ ▶️ John the dividing line between disgusting PC games with pixels the size of bricks and

⏹️ ▶️ John real software that had reasonable size

⏹️ ▶️ Marco pixels. Very few games of that era were 640x480.

⏹️ ▶️ John Syndicate is the first one I remember seeing. I’m like, finally PC gaming has arrived.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, according to the screenshot in Wikipedia for Battle Chess, it was 320 by 200. But I get

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the feeling this has got to be shrunk

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco or something.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I remember, like, one of my favorite classic games is Scorched Earth, to the extent

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that when I was in college, I tried making a Scorched Earth clone about

⏹️ ▶️ Marco five different ways, and starting over five different times. That’s how I learned DirectX, that’s how I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco learned OpenGL. I started even trying that on iOS, and,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I love Scorched Earth so much, and in fact, my wife, who was then just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco my girlfriend, even made me a Scorched Earth pillow for one of the various anniversaries

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or Valentines, something or other, where she like stitched a Scorched Earth screenshot that she found, like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco she reproduced it with stitching on a pillow. It looks awesome, I still have it. But,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, that was a fantastic game, and I was happy to see like some games similar to it, like that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco tank game, whatever. I shoot on iOS in the early days. But,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh yeah, that game, that was like one of the very first games I had where I could run it at the full resolution that my

⏹️ ▶️ Marco video card supported, which was 640x480. And it just looked so much better than my friend’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco crappy 320x200 version on his little bit older PC.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco All those sharp lines and everything was so crisp on my 640x480 screen. That’s

⏹️ ▶️ John what us Mac gamers were lording over all you people. Yeah, you may have color

⏹️ ▶️ John Sharp sharp black and white graphics Now it really

⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t make it such a difference of the sharpness of the things you could do That’s what that’s why games like you know Fool’s

⏹️ ▶️ John errand were possible with those tiny sharp little graphics or even even things like Dark Castle where PC

⏹️ ▶️ John gamers when they saw a dark Castle were were impressed because it was something they couldn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John see on their systems Even though this was a black and white game, they did not turn their nose up on it. They were fascinated by it because it was,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, didn’t exist at all anywhere. Nothing had, you know, 72 DPI screen

⏹️ ▶️ John with tiny little characters with real sound. That’s the other thing that PC gamers would be impressed by, you know, because

⏹️ ▶️ John if you didn’t have a fancy sound card, you just had the PC

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco speaker and it would like

⏹️ ▶️ John bleep at you or whatever. You know, all the Macs came out of the box, 22 kilohertz audio. And, you know, they put like actual clips

⏹️ ▶️ John of sounds. I used to impress PC folks when they came over, I would just play like random clips from Ferris

⏹️ ▶️ John Bueller’s Day Off and stuff, just play them as like beep sounds. They’d be like, wow, your computer made that sound? Is there a CD

⏹️ ▶️ John in there? I was like, no, that’s just sound the computers make. They can make sounds.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, it’s funny because I don’t really give a crap about hardware in terms of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the intricacies of this GPU versus that or this processor versus that. But back in those days,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey man, I remember having arguments about what was it, like the Sound Blaster 16 versus the Sound

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Blaster Pro And like all these stupid, terrible arguments that when you’re 10

⏹️ ▶️ Casey years old and a complete frickin’ nerd, God, you took them so seriously.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco And-

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, also, like back then, it was a much rougher world with all this stuff. Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you would have some games just wouldn’t support your sound card, and that’d be it. And even just like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the point where you went from PC speaker to sound card, nobody had Macs, sorry, John. But the point when you went

⏹️ ▶️ Marco from PC speaker to sound card, that was a major upgrade, it really did change

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what your computer could do. It radically changed what it was like to play games.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I got my first computer, it was a 486, without a sound

⏹️ ▶️ Marco card. And then I got, as an add-on, the next Christmas,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I got a package that was a Sound Blaster that a CD-ROM drive would

⏹️ ▶️ Marco also plug into, because the motherboards didn’t have CD controllers. I think it was a TAPI, the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco interface that they used.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey And so you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John had like early

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sound cards would actually come with Atapi controllers and they would sell the CD-ROM and the sound

⏹️ ▶️ Marco card as a bundle. So that so like my first Christmas after having my first computer

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I added to it a CD-ROM and a sound card and that was such a massive upgrade. Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think there was an upgrade that significant until getting internet connectivity.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like in in how much it changed my computer. And then getting internet connectivity there wasn’t anything really after

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that until SSDs maybe?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well what about Wi-Fi? I mean

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John maybe not the same. How are

⏹️ ▶️ John you not finding Macs because you’re adding this terrible CD-ROM drive and this Sound Blaster card to the computer and it’s such a huge

⏹️ ▶️ John upgrade and like every Mac was already able to do that for years and years

⏹️ ▶️ John when you had your 486 and you were just ignoring them. Yeah

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco probably. They’re

⏹️ ▶️ John off on the side there.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco They all had stereo sound that worked

⏹️ ▶️ John You could connect the CD-ROM drive to all of them. You didn’t have to buy anything

⏹️ ▶️ John weird. It was just there.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco It was just the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco baseline. I probably wouldn’t have been able to afford a good, because like this was, I bought

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this computer in 1994. Or like late 90, no it was early 94. And I remember

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it cost like $2,000 with monitor and printer. What would a decently

⏹️ ▶️ Marco equipped Mac cost in, sorry not 2004, 1994. Right.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco What would a decently equipped Mac cost in 94?

⏹️ ▶️ John probably double that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco right and that that was the problem we couldn’t afford it so you know I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John had my gateway 2000 PC that came

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey in the cowspot box 1994

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco LC is right

⏹️ ▶️ John you could get a crappy low-cost Mac

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with a CD-ROM and sound card

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah well you know there’s no sound card there’s no

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco sound

⏹️ ▶️ John card

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey on the

⏹️ ▶️ John Mac they all came they all came with sound that worked it was like built-in

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not there’s no incompatibility like the very first one, 128

⏹️ ▶️ John kilobytes of RAM, 22 kilohertz sound, it was just like regular sound, you

⏹️ ▶️ John know, they jumped up to CD quality eventually, but it was like, you would never, there was never a Mac that could just bleep and

⏹️ ▶️ John boop at you.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John The Apple II would

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do that.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do you remember speaking of RAM, and this is for Marco, do you remember doing the dance with conventional memory

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and trying to make sure that you’re like autoexecbat and config sys had the drivers set

⏹️ ▶️ Casey up in such a way that you would eke out just barely enough conventional memory in order to run whatever

⏹️ ▶️ Casey game you wanted

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John to run. I

⏹️ ▶️ John did that over at my friend’s house trying to get the

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey game to run.

⏹️ ▶️ John They would come with little instructions on how to change your config.sys. You’d need a bat file

⏹️ ▶️ John to try to get the thing to boot up. You would get one game to work, and then you’d have to be like, hey, are we done with this game

⏹️ ▶️ John now? Because we have another game, and we have to screw with the settings

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey again. And this one needs the mouse, so we need to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey screw

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John with

⏹️ ▶️ John it. You can’t do both of them.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had these bitchin’ boot disks and these autoexec scripts

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that were like full-on menu systems. systems so I you know you would turn the computer on it would be like what game do you want to play

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and based on what game you want to play it would either engage or disengage the mouse and turn on or off your sound blaster

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco same Eric

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was barbaric but god it was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco right after that like I bought my first computer like right when that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff started not mattering anymore like it had it had eight megs of RAM which at the time

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was pretty good like it wasn’t like a workstation level but it was for a home computer that was very good and And so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like I and it was like DOS 6.1 or 6.2. So it was already like DOS was pretty mature

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at that point. The Sound Blaster was really easy. It was a Sound Blaster 16. I just put it on the default

⏹️ ▶️ Marco IRQs and everything and it just worked and all the games just supported Sound Blaster 16s already. So like I feel

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like I entered that like right after it was all those pains in the ass.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey The next time I had such a big pain in the ass and I’m going to butcher the acronym, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was We were living in Austin, Texas at the time actually, and we were trying

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to hook up to our first ISP. And not only did we have to write the modem

⏹️ ▶️ Casey command script, whatever

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco that’s called, where it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco like

⏹️ ▶️ Casey AT blah

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco blah blah. ATH something 252. So

⏹️ ▶️ Casey we had to write that, but then we had to write the script that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the modem would run or whatever, the computer would run once you connect to the ISP. God, I wish I could remember the name

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the script, but we had to write that by hand. And this was when ISPs, like nobody had an ISP.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Everyone had frigging AOL.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Right.

⏹️ ▶️ John It was like, wait for this and send that.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yeah, yeah, yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ John I wrote those in college to connect to my college’s network with my modem.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I used to remember what it was called. And my dad and I literally spent like two weeks trying to figure this frigging

⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing out and finally we did and it was like a whole new

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John world.

⏹️ ▶️ John It didn’t take me that long because I had internet access in the lab.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yeah, I see. We had no such benefit. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John really easy to look up Moda Minute scripts. And yeah, once it… They weren’t that complicated.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, but bear in mind, I was like 12 at the time. We didn’t have an internet to turn to because A, there was barely

⏹️ ▶️ Casey an internet to begin with, and B, this was us trying to get on the fucking internet in the first place.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So oh man, it was so painful. God, I wish I could remember the name

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John of that script. I

⏹️ ▶️ John remember tweaking my Moda Minute scripts. It was like once I got interested enough in it to look up like

⏹️ ▶️ John the AT whatever language made by who was the who’s the one who made

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that? Was it Hayes?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, whoever came up with that originally. It does make sense once you understand how it works. And so you could tweak

⏹️ ▶️ John it to try to get like a little bit more performance out of your Z modem transfers. You know, if you just change this tweak this parameter

⏹️ ▶️ John a little bit, see, let’s try that. Hmm, 500 characters per second. I think I can get more.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think I can bolt on a cold air intake.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I remember the days of like the external US robotics modems. Didn’t you talk

⏹️ ▶️ Casey about that at one point,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Martin? Yeah, well, because that was the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco first. Well, the first modem I had, because I wasn’t allowed to really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco get on the internet for a while just for money reasons, so the first modem I had was just a hand-me-down

⏹️ ▶️ Marco from, I don’t even know where I got it, maybe the garbage at a thrift store. It was 2400 baud, and it was a tremendous

⏹️ ▶️ Marco external serial modem. And this was probably 1996. It was pretty late to have a 2400 baud

⏹️ ▶️ Marco modem. And the only thing I could connect to was this local BBS that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was free. There was no internet service for me back then. So what I eventually got, though, was I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco eventually somehow negotiated—or I think somebody else felt pity on me and handed me

⏹️ ▶️ Marco down a 14.4 modem a little while later, which at the time, again, was ridiculously

⏹️ ▶️ Marco slow, but it was at least a lot better than 2400. So with that, I convinced my

⏹️ ▶️ Marco richest friend, whose dad had an AOL account, to give

⏹️ ▶️ Marco me a screen name on his account. So I could log on and I would leave call waiting

⏹️ ▶️ Marco off. I mean I would leave call waiting enabled and leave the speaker on the modem on

⏹️ ▶️ Marco constantly which is an AT command that you have to modify to do that and and just listen to the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the whole time I’m online just listen to that and I would have to listen for the call waiting beep

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because if the call waiting beep it was either my friend who wanted to use the account we couldn’t both be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco logged in or it was somebody calling for my mom and we only one phone line So I had

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to flip the modem off, pick up the phone, and answer the phone. And then, you know, lose all the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco connections I had. Any download that was in progress would be lost, have to start over again.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The AOL client would freak out, because it wasn’t really accustomed to your modem just being turned off all the time in the middle of being

⏹️ ▶️ Marco used. And it was terrible. And I went straight

⏹️ ▶️ Marco from that terrible AOL setup to eventually a 33.6 modem modem.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That was a gift for me from my mom. I really appreciated that 336 modem. Still

⏹️ ▶️ Marco no service, though. I still use my friend’s account. And then after about another year of that,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I went right to cable. I finally convinced my mom to let me buy my own Internet service. I was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco working at a little hippie food co-op grocery store when I was like 15,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I was able to pay the 40 bucks a month for the Roadrunner service from Time Warner. was one

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the very first cable modems it was awesome and I went straight from 33 6a well my friends account

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to 10 megabit unmonitored awesome everything

⏹️ ▶️ John you never got 56k no I

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco skipped

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I skipped 28 8 and 56k that’s like the two most common ones yeah skip both of them I know

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco skipped 28 8 and 33 6

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I

⏹️ ▶️ John went I went 24 97 96 14 for 56 yeah see I went 96 14 for 28 30 33 6 and a lot of this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I went through every step and I remember that we chose the x2 side of the x2 k56 flex

⏹️ ▶️ Casey debate But the reason I was able to get all this stuff was not because we were particularly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey fluent But because dad worked for IBM so he arguably needed all this crap for work

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so because of that I got to kind of ride on his coattails in the same way I’m riding on Marcos and fives

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco coattails if you will.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I need this car for work Well, I think I still have the 33 6 good like it was so, you know

⏹️ ▶️ Marco boxes and everything I got the cable modem in like 98 or 99 one of those and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I was still I still had a reason to pull out that old external 33 6 us robotics modem

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like once a year Until like 2005 like I held on to it because I kept

⏹️ ▶️ Marco needing it for like occasional like oh crap Something’s broken. I can’t do something I need this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco modem to save me in some way like that kept coming up for almost a decade

⏹️ ▶️ Marco after I had it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh man, memories. We’re so

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco old.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco We really are.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Is this a good time to end or anything?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, probably. It’s getting late anyway. I’m about to turn to a pumpkin or whatever you do when

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you get really tired. Anything else though?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was gonna let you keep talking. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey right? It’s getting

⏹️ ▶️ Casey better. That’s not due. And I only had that one glass of silver

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco tree. Some kind of fruity

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was not fruity,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Jackass.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that is long since done, so I can’t even blame it on the booze. Oh,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey well. All right. Anything else?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I think we’re good.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually, that was a really good accidental tech podcast, if I’m allowed to say so.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You guys okay with

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that? I thought

⏹️ ▶️ John that wasn’t actually going to be a podcast, so I was too loose with my gaming talk. My fans will be disappointed.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh, God, listen

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco to this guy. The whole

⏹️ ▶️ Marco point, John, is that if we convince you to do any kind of additional tech podcast, We can’t allow you to prepare

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for it because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John then

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’ll get burned out and you’ll have to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John stop doing it.

⏹️ ▶️ John I still gotta find the video. I only saw the tail end of the video. I just looked

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco at the Sony

⏹️ ▶️ John reports of the front part. I joined when they were showing the Killzone

⏹️ ▶️ John demo, the obligatory pre-rendered BS Killzone demo, which has become

⏹️ ▶️ John part of the Sony press conference experience.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really have doubts with these consoles. Is the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco console business still growing meaningfully?

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, I don’t know if they’re going to be successful business-wise, but the hardware they’re making, I would like to

⏹️ ▶️ John buy and use, and I hope they stay in

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey business long enough to make

⏹️ ▶️ John Game Sword. I’m not even going to attempt to handicap their business stuff. But the

⏹️ ▶️ John hardware, I think it’s still very interesting, much more interesting to me than just making a gaming

⏹️ ▶️ John PC.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you look at the optical disc for video business, I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we had the HD DVD versus Blu-ray format where which sucked and and then now we

⏹️ ▶️ Marco still have the problem with like a lot of people just don’t upgrade to Blu-ray because DVD is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco good enough for them and they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John don’t really know this Blu-ray is so terrible

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah and Blu-ray is such a pain in the ass like all the weirdo new menu things they do now the Java

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is so terrible and so like I think looking at that landscape it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco very well might be that Blu-ray is the last video disc format

⏹️ ▶️ John oh certainly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if it’s not, there’s only probably one more. But I think Blu-ray is probably going to be the last one.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Looking at these consoles, I would say there’s a good chance these might be the last consoles that Microsoft

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Sony make.

⏹️ ▶️ John If they play their cards right, they shouldn’t be. They’re the last consoles that are going to have optical disks in them, probably.

⏹️ ▶️ John There was many questions about whether the PlayStation 4 would have an optical drive where they were just going to go download only.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think we

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John don’t know the answer to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that yet, do we?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, they’re gonna have to go press. They can’t go to download only because the games are too

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco big Yeah, it’s a little aggressive

⏹️ ▶️ John actions are too slow, so Yeah, I have faith that certainly Microsoft

⏹️ ▶️ John can stay in business with their other things finding them and Sony I Think though I think they’ll both pull it

⏹️ ▶️ John out

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean Microsoft will be fine because Microsoft is fine pumping money into a losing division for a long time

⏹️ ▶️ John And an Xbox is finally making money for that. Oh it is yeah, it turned around sometime

⏹️ ▶️ John towards the end I don’t know if it like turned around if you ignore the

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco red ring of death right

⏹️ ▶️ John cost or if you don’t but basically it Came around like it. That’s that that’s their one little success story.

⏹️ ▶️ John They’re just Fighting the wrong battle, but yeah, I hope they will stay in business because I like game consoles And

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t want them to go away.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I I do like I It’s hard for me to really enjoy them because I haven’t really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco had time to enjoy a game console or rather I haven’t even played journey. It’s shameful.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know like I haven’t I haven’t chosen to spend my time that way I guess

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John It’s two

⏹️ ▶️ John hours, Margo, two

⏹️ ▶️ Casey hours. So angry. Go do it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John now, Mr.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Icestamp, until the middle of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey night. I think I might have even bought it. Oh, you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John ever did? Well, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco two hours to

⏹️ ▶️ John play the game, but it takes four hours to get

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco game. Right, that was the problem. There was a day, and I ammed you for recommendations. There was a day where Tiff

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I decided, you know, this was before the baby was born, and we were bored. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was like a weekend. I’m like, okay, I can justify not working for one day. And we’re like, let’s play video

⏹️ ▶️ Marco games. And so we go play video games and we’re like all right well What do we have we have we have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all three systems well the Wii is I think upstate somewhere at her parents I don’t know where the Wii is anymore, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because we’d have no desire to play the Wii, but we have the 360 and the ps3 they both have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco internet connections They both have downloadable game stores all right. Let’s go. What what do you want to play? And we realized

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we were totally unqualified to even choose a game to buy and play from their stores,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so So I am Syracuse, so I asked you what should we

⏹️ ▶️ Marco get, you gave me all the recommendations, they were mostly pretty good. So I go and I’m like, oh I gotta add more

⏹️ ▶️ Marco credit to my account, but I don’t want to give Sony my credit card because they keep getting hacked, so I have to find some way

⏹️ ▶️ Marco around that, and then while the PS3 game is downloading, I’m like, let’s switch over to the Xbox, this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is going to take forever, and then go through 17 system software updates and all these reboots,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco go over to the Xbox and do pretty much the exact same thing. through all the software updates and all the reboots, then

⏹️ ▶️ Marco going and trying to buy some games, having to add more credit to my account because I haven’t added any credit

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to it since 2005, or whatever, and like all these hoops to jump through,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco these overhead of trying to start playing a game, and, oh, let me download

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the demo for this one before I buy it, and then the demo sucks, and then you can’t multiple download or anything, because if you do, it cancels the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco first download, and it was such a disaster. ended up spending hours trying

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to play a game and then by the time we actually started playing a game which eventually we started what’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that black and white

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John one

⏹️ ▶️ John you played limbo

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco yeah

⏹️ ▶️ Marco limbo and that’s a really good game we enjoyed it for a while but haven’t actually gone

⏹️ ▶️ Marco back and finished yet that was like the perfect game for this for us but it took us

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hours of dicking around with the consoles

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John and their story didn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John turn on your Mac for a couple years and you wanted you wanted to get something oh well the thing you want is only in the Mac App Store.

⏹️ ▶️ John What’s the Mac App Store? Oh, you need 10.6.8 to get there. Oh, well, then I got over there. Okay, I wanted to get 10.6.8. Oh,

⏹️ ▶️ John that only runs online, so I got to upgrade again. Like, if you didn’t use your Mac for years, you’d be in for the same

⏹️ ▶️ John crazy upgrade thing. You know, if you use your console frequently, the system updates are,

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re more frequent than OS 10 point updates, but they’re not that onerous.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey They’d be spread out because you’d be using it more

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco frequently. Well, I do use it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco frequently, but I use it frequently as a media player.

⏹️ ▶️ John Right. So the people who don’t actually play games on it, except for Once in a Blue Moon, Just like they have all

⏹️ ▶️ John these updates built up for them But if you if you use it frequently like that’s not stopping

⏹️ ▶️ John any of my kids But they’re playing the things that at least once a week and so everything is all always updated and

⏹️ ▶️ John really fine And I think there’s plenty of Wii games that you would actually enjoy Not that I’m recommending you

⏹️ ▶️ John Day out the week is now it’s kind of past its prime But you know

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I mean honestly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if I was gonna get back into the Wii I get the Wii U because one of the things I hated so Much about the Wii was the lack of HD output

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, well, you know it was Past its prime when it was introduced and it’s even farther past

⏹️ ▶️ John now. Yeah, the Wii U is fun. Talk about multiplayer gaming where one person’s got the little screen, one person’s got the big one, no

⏹️ ▶️ John split screen. It’s kind of nice.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I imagine like once my kid is old enough to want to play video games,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I imagine my opinion of consoles will change and my usage pattern will change. But for the next few years until

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that happens, presumably…

⏹️ ▶️ John So you got to keep those console makers in business, waiting for Adam to get older. It’s got a couple years, maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John five years, before he can do something useful. And there better be a console maker still standing.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I imagine some geek parents have probably attempted this, where you attempt to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco make your kid just be happy with a very large quantity of games for an old system that now

⏹️ ▶️ Marco costs nothing. But I would

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John imagine that plan falls apart when they go to their friend’s house. I

⏹️ ▶️ John did that with my kids. I did that with my kids. They do not care. He played Nintendo 64 games, GameCube

⏹️ ▶️ John games, Wii games. None of those are HD. Some of them are just tedious looking, and

⏹️ ▶️ John he has never made a peep about a game not looking good. Not once, and he’s eight now.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s pretty good. Yeah, maybe I’ll try that. I still have that modded Xbox somewhere,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco loaded up with my emulator packs of every game ever made for the Genesis, the Super Nintendo, the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco NES, and I think even a few for the TurboGrafx-16, and a few,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John and it could, it did emulate the N64. I didn’t try

⏹️ ▶️ John 2D games. Maybe he would have complained if it had 2D. They were all like Nintendo 64

⏹️ ▶️ John as far back as I went, but Nintendo 64 games look awful compared to, I mean, that was like the first things

⏹️ ▶️ John that were 3D, you know, they’re not good looking. But maybe he would have balked

⏹️ ▶️ John at 2D, I’m not sure. So you’ll find out. Try him out with Space

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Invaders. Well,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but now so many iOS games are 2D and so many kids end up playing those.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but they’re, you know, 2D Retina. It’s a little bit different than

⏹️ ▶️ John Super Nintendo graphics or whatever.