@@CrisisGuildWOWthey did but they sort of sucked. Very basic graphics. If they had graphics at all. And the sound was terrible. Just beeps from an internal speaker.
@@tomcruiiseship9461 "sucked" because your comparing them to more modern gaming. Especially at this time when software and hardware was taking massive leaps forward every year. It doesn't mean it sucked, it was just from a different era. The games back then had a quality about them because of their technical inferiority that invoked a players imagination rather than spell everything out for you. In some ways, they were superior to the crap that came after.
You know what, it’s nice seeing an older guy presenting who is genuinely enthusiastic. If this show came out today it would be presented by a 17 year old influencer. 😝
God, this takes me back. Computers were fresh and fun. The internet was a treasure trove of discovery. I could spend hours finding sites. I remember that old Compaq computer in the dad's office. 😊
The Windows 95 era was a time when we had a great merge of technologies all at once. New Windows 95 OS, Intel Pentium CPUs, less expensive sound and graphic cards, popularization of CD-Rom and Internet, new PC and console magazines, new videogame shows on TV, an explosion of great 3D games, various PC add-ons for all purposes......
That guy was actually ecstatic with the timing of the OJ Simpson murder trial and release of their game. "Haha! We got a good...good..." You can see the realization and regret all over his face while trying to play it off.
Damn, 1995 I had a 386 SX 20. I mean I was 13, and it was a computer, but it really hits home that in 1995 there was a Pentium 133 - two or more generations ahead of what I had at the time.
I had my first LEGIT job back then at a multimedia studio. I was given my first office and an amazingly fast professional computer. It was a Pentium 120
We got our first computer in 1991, a base 486. Still remember playing so many hours of X-COM on that thing. We upgraded to a DX2 in '94, but by then the writing was already on the wall, Pentium was clocking 100 MHz to our 66 MHz. By ~'96 our DX2 was essentially an antique. Still, even though we'd eventually adopt the latest and greatest Pentium (in perpetuity), I still have the fondest memories of those 486 boxes. They really brought the computer revolution home for us, figuratively and literally.
I can remember walking in a Circuit City and being able to play Mechwarrior 2 on the demo PC's they were selling. I played that game for HOURS on our home Packard Bell as a kid. I wish I could go back in time.
I had my first computer, a 486sx, for two years at this point. What a great time to have had a computer with incredible games. I had the NES and SNES at this point and let me tell you computer games were just something else. I still loved some games on the NES and SNES, but computer games were on another level. Ultima 7 part 2 - Serpent Isle and it's add-on The Silver Seed I spent so much time on that game for years and years and I never finished the game back then. I just went off exploring other areas that I forgot what I was supposed to accomplish.
my family also had a 486sx AST computer that was brand new in 1993 (I think). we had a Digital Rainbow computer before that but this was the first PC we had that could play games in glorious VGA 256 colors. 4MB ram, windows 3.1, needed to make a boot disk just to play Doom and Duke Nukem 3d. I had an NES but no SNES since my parents saw how addicted to games I had become. I didn't even play a PS1 for the first time until like 2000.
@@hypnos9336 Great times. Yes, I recall the trouble you could have playing some games that you had to configure DOS memory, especially for games like Ultima 7 to get music and voices to work. I didn't have an NES when it originally came out, it took me like 5 years and after I had joined the military to buy an NES. I almost had an Amiga back in 1992 or so. A friend was selling me his, but the limited graphics kept me from buying it. I was already use to higher graphics on the office computers I was using and the library also had computers anyone could use. I got my first computer virus there :) Destroyed my copy of Ultima 6.
Oh yea Ultima was awesome, I had Ultima VI - The False Prophet it was a copy complete with the compendium photo copied Which I didn't know we had until years later xD I had the original poster map though lol
same , doom, duke 3d blood , shadow warrior were all insane , i had a psx and the FPS games were still better on pc , im not a platform supremacist , i buy everything btw
right? at the time was feeling like most games needed FMV for some reason... it ended when they figured out doing some polygonal people was way easier...
In the 80’s, PC’s were mostly used in offices. In the 90’s there was more of a push to start using them in the home. PC gaming was really picking up. That was around when Doom, Duke Nukem, Command and Conquer, and Myst.
@@joshuabray37 I think there was more to it than that. The 80s were sort of the last vestiges of America's more formal past. Most of the guests in the 80s Computer Chronicles were middle aged men in their 30s and 40s, so they would have grown up in the 40s and 50s watching their parents dress up in suits and dresses to go out. By the time we got the 90s developers were trending younger and less formal, having grown up in the 60s and 70s. Now in 2023 nobody but us middle aged and older computer users remember that time. Just another example of what a great time capsule CC is not just for computer history, but also documenting broader changes in American culture.
@@ZagnutBar Yep, good points… I started in IT in 1999 (when I graduated from college). At that time, most people at my company were wearing polo type shorts and khakis. I remember an older co-worker telling me that when she worked at IBM in the 80’s, everyone was wearing suits and women were wearing dresses… Yep, this show is really a great time capsule… Occasionally, I will find an old copy of PC Magazine in one of my boxes, or Computer Shopper. It’s funny to see ads for 8088’s, and things advertised as “IBM Compatible”.
@@VladimirPutin-p3t I think I started buying it in like 1989 (I was around 12 years old). At that time, it was at least an inch thick. It was like a phone book.
Because it was done with the assistance of KTVU channel 2 in Oakland. The anchor was one of the real evening anchors for that station, as well. I got this game as part of a bundle in the late 90's and seeing that Channel 2 segment in the beginning blew my teenage mind, at the time.
I like how she was super professional all the through. Her saying "50 bucks" was the only slip up where the script writer did her dirty. 😂 I know it's an American show but a really professional anchor should say "50 dollars"
Look up command and conquer 3: red alert and watch the bonkers cringe scenes they did for the live action set pieces lmao they are terrible. But the game was freaking amazing!
Buried in Time is a great game! Still have it! I remember we bought MechWarrior 2 but our computer was too slow to even install the game. Ended up returning that game and got Damage Incorporated.
My favorite pc game was kings quest 3 and also wolfenstein was awesome too. Leisure suit larry was pretty cool , my dad would play it and my mom did not like it at all , i remember back then my dad figured out a way to copy all atari games to a computer and download them to individual cartridge... It was awesome , before they had copying protection inside
I have been playing and developing games since "Big Box of air" PC gaming days. I still love those games . However today's Virtual reality games are like the fulfillment of a childhood hope to me. A Disneyland inside my humble house
@@mxich8791most games post 2019 or so are just "look at these cool graphics" and "lots of content" aka go to point A do objective A and repeat 50 times
133 mhz cpu... 1.6 gig hard drive... sigh. Those were amazing times for gaming whether it was the industry or for consumers, and whether PC or console. You just never knew what was going to happen next. The internet was like a new land, strange and unexplored. 3D was just establishing itself on the scene. Online play. Massively Multiplayer. There was plenty of bad mixed in with the good, to be fair, but what a time. I was always looking forward to Computer Chronicles, mainly if it had gaming news (it didn't always, if I recall). It's nice to watch these, looking back. Now, I'm old, I'm out of touch, and the world seems smaller and grayer. Well.
As a 13 year old, I don’t know how i got Phantasmagoria, but that game was scary. Totally brought me back to those memories. I’m glad I was able to experience 90s PC games in the 90s
It was only expensive if you bought pre-builts which had crazy inflated prices. In 95 I got a P-I 100mhz, 8mb of ram, some random 2d card, cd-rom drive, 1.2gb of hdd, sb card, 2 speakers and a 14,5 inch monitor for $1250. A similar prebuilt from IBM Aptiva cost over $1,5k. They loved taking advantage of noobs which there was a lot of back in the day.
@@mesicek7 yes but your 1250 is over 3500 in todays money. If you look at inflation, consumer electronics were was incredibly expensive in the 80s and early 90s thanks
@@matthewweng8483 ok I will then how does it take you 27 years to get past disk 6? it shouldn't take more then 6 months tops although for me maybe an hour or two🤣
Crazy. They demo Mech Warrior 2 and the Mud Connector website. I enjoyed both of those when we got our first PC as a family when i was a kid. Pretty sure it was a Pentium 90.
I have 2 version of Mechwarror 2 21st century combat ATI rage edition (graphics looks like from N64) and Mecharrior 2 Mercenaries. I had a blast playing them.
@@rhaeven yeah. MUDs were really the best games you could play back in the day, which were really the precursor to MMOs, and all the complex RPGs we have today.
It's funny how much developers thought people wanted FMV in games. "Plumbers Don't Wear Ties" and all that. Then Half-Life came out and we all said, oh yeah, this is what we actually want.
@@bd9299292 Yeah, I disliked it because it felt too jarring, and then once it cut back to the gameplay it made the graphics (even if they were good for the time) look bad in comparison. Just messed up your immersion.
The 3D game she was talking about was King's Quest: Mask of Eternity released in 1998, ironically it marked the nail in the coffin for the King's Quest series and let to Sierra Online's demise.
@@mojoblues66 Actually the downfall of Sierra and KQ had to do with the fraud perpetuated on the part of the company that owned Sierra. KQ8 sold really well when it was released. Sierra wasn’t closed until 2008, a full decade after KQ8 came out.
Battle Arena Toshinden was the first game I had for my PlayStation. For the longest time that was the only game I had, and a bunch of demo-discs that I got with PlayStation Magazine every month. Good times.
I remember being so excited to get Battle Arena Toshinden for Christmas. I open it and see that someone had replaced the disk with Compton's Encyclopedia, resealed it and must have returned it. I was a kid so I had no idea what was going on but I never ended up getting it.
@@Film_Archivist that sucks! Specially when one is just a kid and it’s Christmas,.. reminds me of my second PlayStation game purchase; Tekken. Was on sale and when I went to pay for it they opened up their drawer(where they kept the discs) and hurriedly inserted what I thought was Tekken. Later getting home the disc I got was Tomb Raider 2. Happy times! That game had just come out and was super expensive. Never complained about that one.
3000$ pc with a 1.6gb harddrive. Craaaazy. I got my first family pc in 1998. Cant remember the specs but it costed about 3 grand too. I just built a 3 grand computer. The spec difference is insane how far we have come in 27 years.
11:45 I'm glad i didn't spend $3000 on my PC in 1995 to play Mechwarrior 2. Mine was a Packard Bell P60 with 8mb of memory and a 2 speed CD rom drive and a Matrox Mystique 2D/3D accelerator card. and it runs basically the same frame rate as what's here. Also was the first game i played multiplayer, not online but with my buddies Desktop PC, he hauled over to my house and we played using a Null Modem cable.
FIRST A BIT ABOUT THE HARDWARE. THIS 6000 DOLLAR (adjusted for inflation) GAMING MACHINE IS JUST FOR EPIC GAMERS. AND NOW, MECH WARRIOR 2! *7 fps gameplay*
You had a Mystique in 1995? Time traveller! Most likely it was the Millennium I, which you were probably better off with. The Matrox 'Mystake' was lacking many features to be considered a 3D accelerator e.g. bi-linear filtering, table fogging ... I still have my Matrox Millennium II paired up with a Matrox m3D (PowerVR PCX2). Now, that *could* run Mechwarrior II.
You are most correct sir, my timeline is most skewed. The Mystique came late in 1996, when i upgraded my PC from a P60 to a P166. I can't for the life of me remember what my first 3D was, Most frustrating. I believe the 2D side was handled by a Cirrus Logic 2 MB card but i don't remember which one@@jimjamz.
In 1998 I had a top-of-the-line Sony Vaio desktop, $2400, with a whopping 4GB hard drive. I remember downloading a song off Napster, took only 20min per song with dial-up.
Hmmm...now, I got both the Playstation and Saturn on 9-9-95 (the same day the Playstation launched) I was such a huge Sega fan that I actually opened my Saturn first and didn't touch my new Playstation for almost a week. The reason for this was Panzer Dragoon. After playing it I was ready to declare Sega the undisputed kings of the 32-bit super machines. That was until I opened my Playstation and played Ridge Racer. At that point I considered them to be neck-and-neck. However, as the first few months rolled by it became clear Sony had the edge. They opened up the floodgates and a smorgasbord of new games came flying out. I wound up renting so many games from Blockbuster that by all rights I should have been offered stock options for my service.
not "the 90s" but at the very end of the 90s - even more in the early 2000s. In 95 still 16-32 MB was standard. 64 MB really rare. I remember buying in 1994 a 486 DX4-100 ... but I am not sure how much memory it had. 2 Years before I bought a 486-33 and put 16 MB in there. These 16 MB in 92 were totally overkill back then. Windows 3.0/3.1 wasnt really able to do good multitasking. I think the DX4-100 also had 16 MB or already 32 MB. When OS/2 Warp 3.0 was released in Oct 94 and this was really a great machine for this OS. In 96 I bought a Pentium 133 which I replaced in 97 or early 98 by a Pentium 200 MMX - I am rather sure this was my first machine with 64MB - one or two years I replaced it with my first AMD K6 which later was replaced by the Athlon/K7. When Windows 98 was launched machines usually had 32/64 and some even 128 MB RAM. I remember starting my job as PC supporter in a large corporation in early 99 and many office machines hat NT 4.0 which should have at least 32MB, better 64 MB. My first office machine in this job already got 128 MB and I got a Pentium II with 350 MHz. Nice machine for office back then. Although... booting was really a nightmare in those times. Took more than a minute until the machine really was ready. But... 256MB... was really not common even in 98/99.
256 MB of RAM was considered way overkill in the 90's. Very few people had computers with that much, it was pointless since there were no applications at that time that needed that much RAM. Back in high school I actually remember one of the kids in my computer programming class talking about how he had 256 MB on his PC and the teacher was like why? lol
Microsoft nailed it making windows 95 a gaming platform, most people nowadays didn't live that time properly, but the first win-95-from-factory pc I used came with the first version of Pentium CPU and it was light-years ahead of the 386/486 DOS pc's that we were using until that. The jump was incredible, not only with games but with office apps too
Ppl shiiit on MS but MS also first created MS Visual Studio circa 95 and made it easy to learn how to program/code cuz it made it easy to setup and compile and build the program. I took an intro to programming class in Pascal and it was on a Unix system which I never used before...it made programming seems so hard. From setting up to just learning how to save and compile was tough. I dropped out feeling really dumb. Fast forward a year later, I took an intro to programming in C and this time this teacher used MS Visual Studio and learning the concepts to programming seems easy cuz saving and building and compiling was an ease. Once I got comfortable in MS I went to Unix and Linux too but I'll never forget MS cuz it helped started my career in software engineering and now I work for a huge telahealth co. as a software engineer. Thank you MS!!!!
to be fair, they were really late to the game. Amiga and Commodore had much better gaming capability (if you compare computers from the same generation) and, particularly early on, a much wider game library. I remember the early Babbages days, when most of the game shelves were full of Commodore, Amiga, and Atari software, with just a small section for IBM. IBM slowly took them all over, but it took many years, because at first, IBM wanted desperately to DISTANCE Itself from gaming. It wanted to be seen as a serious, useful tool for the home. What a bunch of maroons.
@@BrowncoatFairy yeah amiga was previous generation, those amigas were way better than ibm pc clones (286/386) at late 80s early 90s, but when 486s and Doom came it was the end of Amigas and other 16 bits systems supremacy
I honestly miss these days. Having to type the DOS commands to actually run the game and play it. Also, everything was so cutting edge with cinema graphics, etc. Golden Age for sure! Loved the sega Saturn, it’s a shame the system didn’t get a fair shake
I remember in 1990 I brought a Amiga 500 and it had external ram memory ( 1 whole megabyte) you plugged in at the bottom that was half the size of a house brick lol. But could play games like street rod.
Why did Roberta show the end of the game in a review… even the interviewer had to say ‘but lots of things happen before this don’t they’ and she’s like ‘yeah but it leads to this scene which is the end of the game’ lol… love Roberta Williams… Colonels Bequest still my fave game
How did we ever play games back then at 10FPS? I don't remember it being that bad back then, but now I look back and stuff like this and can't understand why this wasn't frustrating. I guess, we didn't know anything different/better?
I think what it was is that our minds filled in the movement so it looked smoother than what we remembered. Since the technology was so new, we were more forgiving of it.
I have Microsoft Arcade (e.g. Asteroids, Battlezone, Centipede, Missile Command & Tempest) which was originally designed for play on Windows 3.1 and yet it works very well on Windows 95 too. They released Microsoft Return Of Arcade (e.g. Dig Dug, Galaxian, Pac-Man & Pole Position) initially designed for Windows 95 exclusively. For I am a fan of classic coin-op arcade video games which these two software packages contain some of the best ones.
I still play Grand Prix Legends released in 1998...the graphics have been upgraded by enthusiasts.An excellent sim released years before the hardware caught up with its requirements.
A $50 game in 1995 is equivalent to $100 today. I don't remember games seeming that expensive. But I looked it up and Quake 1, for example, did indeed sell for $50 in 1996. I remember buying a Sega Genesis with one controller and Sonic The Hedgehog for about $70 circa 1992. Which would be about $150 (it was a sale price). And as a kid that was a big chunk of change. Not sure how I pulled off the computer game library I had at $50 a pop.
22:21 Unfortunately the Pentium Pro did poorly on 16-bit workloads. And since the Windows world was still largely stuck in 16 bits at this point, it made the new 32-bit chip look bad.
I jus spent $599 for a cheap gaming laptop. The newest game it can play is Far Cry 5 and Red Dead Redemption, I actually just got it to play some Command and Conquer and Supreme Commander while out on the road lol Compared to 3000 for their latest gaming PC to my cheapy is a beast haha
Grand Prix Legends was released in 1998..and I still race regularly on this great sim. ,even though the graphics have been upgraded by enthusiasts . It is abandoned software.
The golden age. Everything was so new and fresh in the 90's.
And we didn’t have to deal with flat earthers at this time. Easy living.
@@TheRedRaven_ We still don't!? Flat Earthers are a fringe minority that can be safely ignored.
As if computer games didn't exist before the 90s? Gtfo.
@@CrisisGuildWOWthey did but they sort of sucked. Very basic graphics. If they had graphics at all. And the sound was terrible. Just beeps from an internal speaker.
@@tomcruiiseship9461 "sucked" because your comparing them to more modern gaming. Especially at this time when software and hardware was taking massive leaps forward every year. It doesn't mean it sucked, it was just from a different era. The games back then had a quality about them because of their technical inferiority that invoked a players imagination rather than spell everything out for you. In some ways, they were superior to the crap that came after.
You know what, it’s nice seeing an older guy presenting who is genuinely enthusiastic. If this show came out today it would be presented by a 17 year old influencer. 😝
I dont know, Attack Of The Show and the other gaming show were pretty good.
Bro he’s 17 😅that’s what 17 looked like in the 90s 😂 I know I was 17 in the 90s
It's the Benjamin Button phenomenon where, as time passed, gamers got younger and younger
And they'd say "you guys" and "content" incessantly
@@mattjindrak Don't forget "It's ya boy."
God, this takes me back. Computers were fresh and fun. The internet was a treasure trove of discovery. I could spend hours finding sites. I remember that old Compaq computer in the dad's office. 😊
I couldn't have said it better.
Now when I search the Internet, I literally just get ads and media рrороganda
The 90's had everything. The decade was a gateway between the old and new where optimism and enthusiasm lived side by side with logic and patience.
i miss the 90s. It was simple and fun.
We all do, we all do...
Streamers ruined everything.
That's how we all feel because we were kids in the 90s. 25 years from now people will miss these times.
It was a calm and slow paced time and still we had plenty of entertainment without being slaves to the internet.
@@Quatermain98526 No, it wasn't. Stop with the cope.
The Windows 95 era was a time when we had a great merge of technologies all at once. New Windows 95 OS, Intel Pentium CPUs, less expensive sound and graphic cards, popularization of CD-Rom and Internet, new PC and console magazines, new videogame shows on TV, an explosion of great 3D games, various PC add-ons for all purposes......
Yeah, the 95/98 era was great.
So cool to see Roberta Williams showing off Phantasmagoria in this video. This was a really cool time to be alive and playing computer games.
That guy was actually ecstatic with the timing of the OJ Simpson murder trial and release of their game. "Haha! We got a good...good..." You can see the realization and regret all over his face while trying to play it off.
5:02 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
That has to be one of the most unintentionally hilarious moments in the history of the show. 😂
Damn, 1995 I had a 386 SX 20. I mean I was 13, and it was a computer, but it really hits home that in 1995 there was a Pentium 133 - two or more generations ahead of what I had at the time.
I had my first LEGIT job back then at a multimedia studio. I was given my first office and an amazingly fast professional computer. It was a Pentium 120
Still only plays MW2 at 5fps.
In 1994, I splurged on a 486 DX2 66 and I had the upgraded EIGHT MB of memory to go along with a 160MB HDD. It was a POWERHOUSE BABY!
I was 15 with a 286 ahahahahah
We got our first computer in 1991, a base 486. Still remember playing so many hours of X-COM on that thing. We upgraded to a DX2 in '94, but by then the writing was already on the wall, Pentium was clocking 100 MHz to our 66 MHz. By ~'96 our DX2 was essentially an antique.
Still, even though we'd eventually adopt the latest and greatest Pentium (in perpetuity), I still have the fondest memories of those 486 boxes. They really brought the computer revolution home for us, figuratively and literally.
I freaked out when I saw Roberta in the thumbnail!! She was my hero ❤
The algorithm is resurrecting this gem. I am getting some serious nostalgia for some Age of Empires.
And warcraft. Like original Warcraft
I can remember walking in a Circuit City and being able to play Mechwarrior 2 on the demo PC's they were selling. I played that game for HOURS on our home Packard Bell as a kid. I wish I could go back in time.
The host’s voice unlocked long forgotten memories. Such a wild time and so crazy how far the industry and technology has come!
Host is incredibly informed and knowledgeable about different games and software! Took me off guard, good host.
I had my first computer, a 486sx, for two years at this point. What a great time to have had a computer with incredible games. I had the NES and SNES at this point and let me tell you computer games were just something else. I still loved some games on the NES and SNES, but computer games were on another level. Ultima 7 part 2 - Serpent Isle and it's add-on The Silver Seed I spent so much time on that game for years and years and I never finished the game back then. I just went off exploring other areas that I forgot what I was supposed to accomplish.
my family also had a 486sx AST computer that was brand new in 1993 (I think). we had a Digital Rainbow computer before that but this was the first PC we had that could play games in glorious VGA 256 colors. 4MB ram, windows 3.1, needed to make a boot disk just to play Doom and Duke Nukem 3d. I had an NES but no SNES since my parents saw how addicted to games I had become. I didn't even play a PS1 for the first time until like 2000.
@@hypnos9336 Great times. Yes, I recall the trouble you could have playing some games that you had to configure DOS memory, especially for games like Ultima 7 to get music and voices to work.
I didn't have an NES when it originally came out, it took me like 5 years and after I had joined the military to buy an NES.
I almost had an Amiga back in 1992 or so. A friend was selling me his, but the limited graphics kept me from buying it. I was already use to higher graphics on the office computers I was using and the library also had computers anyone could use. I got my first computer virus there :) Destroyed my copy of Ultima 6.
Oh yea Ultima was awesome, I had Ultima VI - The False Prophet
it was a copy complete with the compendium photo copied
Which I didn't know we had until years later xD
I had the original poster map though lol
same , doom, duke 3d blood , shadow warrior were all insane , i had a psx and the FPS games were still better on pc , im not a platform supremacist , i buy everything btw
Try setting up an emulator through dosbox or pcem and finish it this time lol it’s lots of fun to bring the old games back to life
27:30 "DONT COPY THAT FLOPPY" lol he said that like he knew it would become a meme
Man i loved these shows on pbs back in the day! Definitely had a huge influence on me and my career path.
For a mid 90s title, there's some real production value going on with the courtroom game!
right? at the time was feeling like most games needed FMV for some reason... it ended when they figured out doing some polygonal people was way easier...
They went as far as to use a real Bay Area channel for the news clip - as well as a real news anchor who worked for that channel
now you have captain cringe from ign
This show is so old-school, but man, those were the days!!
I was in line for WIn95 when it was released. FMV games were so fun. Need to bring them back!
They are back and better than ever.
You could check out Erica. It was a hood FMV game imo
Footage that proves: EVERYTHING WAS BETTER BACK THEN!!!
Interesting that by 1994 nobody was wearing suits to talk about their games like they did in the 1980s games videos.
In the 80’s, PC’s were mostly used in offices. In the 90’s there was more of a push to start using them in the home. PC gaming was really picking up. That was around when Doom, Duke Nukem, Command and Conquer, and Myst.
@@joshuabray37 I think there was more to it than that. The 80s were sort of the last vestiges of America's more formal past. Most of the guests in the 80s Computer Chronicles were middle aged men in their 30s and 40s, so they would have grown up in the 40s and 50s watching their parents dress up in suits and dresses to go out. By the time we got the 90s developers were trending younger and less formal, having grown up in the 60s and 70s. Now in 2023 nobody but us middle aged and older computer users remember that time. Just another example of what a great time capsule CC is not just for computer history, but also documenting broader changes in American culture.
@@ZagnutBar Yep, good points… I started in IT in 1999 (when I graduated from college). At that time, most people at my company were wearing polo type shorts and khakis. I remember an older co-worker telling me that when she worked at IBM in the 80’s, everyone was wearing suits and women were wearing dresses… Yep, this show is really a great time capsule… Occasionally, I will find an old copy of PC Magazine in one of my boxes, or Computer Shopper. It’s funny to see ads for 8088’s, and things advertised as “IBM Compatible”.
@@joshuabray37was Computer Shopper an inch thick every month in the 80's the way it was by the mid 90's?
@@VladimirPutin-p3t I think I started buying it in like 1989 (I was around 12 years old). At that time, it was at least an inch thick. It was like a phone book.
They also discussed Star Citizen in this episode but that segment is missing from the uploaded recording.
I think it's kind of hilarious that when comparing the PSX vs Saturn, they showed actual gameplay from the PSX and a cut-scene from the Saturn
Its more like a commercial for games.
@@kattihattwooosh.
How I miss Sierra!
That was the most realistic news segment in the history of video games.
Because it was done with the assistance of KTVU channel 2 in Oakland. The anchor was one of the real evening anchors for that station, as well. I got this game as part of a bundle in the late 90's and seeing that Channel 2 segment in the beginning blew my teenage mind, at the time.
I like how she was super professional all the through. Her saying "50 bucks" was the only slip up where the script writer did her dirty. 😂 I know it's an American show but a really professional anchor should say "50 dollars"
You gotta appreciate the live action they use to do. I mean how epic was the Command & Conquer games.
Look up command and conquer 3: red alert and watch the bonkers cringe scenes they did for the live action set pieces lmao they are terrible. But the game was freaking amazing!
@@MiBrCo4177 They were intentionally terrible as a callback to the 90ths.
IM from Ukraine and c&c my love game in 1998....i have 5*86 DX4133 (analog 486DX4-133....and 12mb RAM.. And Video Cirus logic PCI... 1mb...
They remastered them not long ago so you can play them on modern hardware, original FMV still included
@@realdubai that’s one hell of a retro system bud, happy for you
Buried in Time is a great game! Still have it! I remember we bought MechWarrior 2 but our computer was too slow to even install the game. Ended up returning that game and got Damage Incorporated.
My favorite pc game was kings quest 3 and also wolfenstein was awesome too. Leisure suit larry was pretty cool , my dad would play it and my mom did not like it at all , i remember back then my dad figured out a way to copy all atari games to a computer and download them to individual cartridge... It was awesome , before they had copying protection inside
I heard "Don't copy that floppy" Oh man, haven't heard that in ages!
back when new games literally did something completely different...
I have been playing and developing games since "Big Box of air" PC gaming days. I still love those games . However today's Virtual reality games are like the fulfillment of a childhood hope to me. A Disneyland inside my humble house
Sounds like you don't play many games.
What a stupid comment. 😂 You clearly only play AAA games.
Funny, I was thinking how bad it was to game back in the day of crappy FMV titles..
@@mxich8791most games post 2019 or so are just "look at these cool graphics" and "lots of content" aka go to point A do objective A and repeat 50 times
133 mhz cpu... 1.6 gig hard drive... sigh. Those were amazing times for gaming whether it was the industry or for consumers, and whether PC or console. You just never knew what was going to happen next. The internet was like a new land, strange and unexplored. 3D was just establishing itself on the scene. Online play. Massively Multiplayer. There was plenty of bad mixed in with the good, to be fair, but what a time. I was always looking forward to Computer Chronicles, mainly if it had gaming news (it didn't always, if I recall). It's nice to watch these, looking back.
Now, I'm old, I'm out of touch, and the world seems smaller and grayer. Well.
I can't believe thats Mechwarrior 2 😳 as a kid I was MIND BLOWN at how real it looked.
The golden age of computer software happened when internet bandwidth was still at 33.6kbps.
This really makes me feel old!
As a 13 year old, I don’t know how i got Phantasmagoria, but that game was scary. Totally brought me back to those memories.
I’m glad I was able to experience 90s PC games in the 90s
18:40 one of the only times on CC that the GUEST said 'I'm going to cut things short here' instead of Stewart.
Remarkable to think how expensive tech was back then. But it was so new and exciting
It was only expensive if you bought pre-builts which had crazy inflated prices. In 95 I got a P-I 100mhz, 8mb of ram, some random 2d card, cd-rom drive, 1.2gb of hdd, sb card, 2 speakers and a 14,5 inch monitor for $1250. A similar prebuilt from IBM Aptiva cost over $1,5k. They loved taking advantage of noobs which there was a lot of back in the day.
@@mesicek7 yes but your 1250 is over 3500 in todays money. If you look at inflation, consumer electronics were was incredibly expensive in the 80s and early 90s thanks
@@sagelight7777 I'm talking my country value not USA. We already had like 20% more expensive stuff than Germany.
It's even more expensive now though.
@@unruler no its far far cheaper. You have to factor in inflation. Tech is incredibly cheap now
I've been stuck on disk 6 for 27 years... I can finally finish!!
also... online D&D?! Yeah, who's the nerd now Becky? lol
Becky is so haha🤣
it took you long enough🤣
@@raven4k998 yeah, yeah... rub it in. Lol
@@matthewweng8483 ok I will then
how does it take you 27 years to get past disk 6? it shouldn't take more then 6 months tops
although for me maybe an hour or two🤣
@@raven4k998 It was just a joke. I didn't really play the game for 27 years... 🙄😆
LOL @ you both 🙂
Crazy. They demo Mech Warrior 2 and the Mud Connector website. I enjoyed both of those when we got our first PC as a family when i was a kid. Pretty sure it was a Pentium 90.
I have 2 version of Mechwarror 2 21st century combat ATI rage edition (graphics looks like from N64) and Mecharrior 2 Mercenaries. I had a blast playing them.
I remember when my best friend (still so to this day) got a P75 in 1994 (Windows 3.1 LOL) It was MILES ahead of my tired 386 SX.
i was so excited to play some MUD when we finally got internet access, had played Discworld MUD a bit at a friends house
@@rhaeven yeah. MUDs were really the best games you could play back in the day, which were really the precursor to MMOs, and all the complex RPGs we have today.
It's funny how much developers thought people wanted FMV in games. "Plumbers Don't Wear Ties" and all that. Then Half-Life came out and we all said, oh yeah, this is what we actually want.
Truth. Developers were all-in on FMV back in the day but I never saw the appeal.
@@bd9299292 Yeah, I disliked it because it felt too jarring, and then once it cut back to the gameplay it made the graphics (even if they were good for the time) look bad in comparison. Just messed up your immersion.
16:54 Roberta Williams and Phantasmagoria!
The 3D game she was talking about was King's Quest: Mask of Eternity released in 1998, ironically it marked the nail in the coffin for the King's Quest series and let to Sierra Online's demise.
@@mojoblues66 I don't know what that has to do with my comment. I was just pointing out where she showed off Phantasmagoria.
@@mojoblues66 Actually the downfall of Sierra and KQ had to do with the fraud perpetuated on the part of the company that owned Sierra. KQ8 sold really well when it was released. Sierra wasn’t closed until 2008, a full decade after KQ8 came out.
Nerdette!
@@floydjohnson7888 Who?
this is awesome.. instant sub.
Battle Arena Toshinden was the first game I had for my PlayStation. For the longest time that was the only game I had, and a bunch of demo-discs that I got with PlayStation Magazine every month. Good times.
I remember being so excited to get Battle Arena Toshinden for Christmas. I open it and see that someone had replaced the disk with Compton's Encyclopedia, resealed it and must have returned it. I was a kid so I had no idea what was going on but I never ended up getting it.
@@Film_Archivist that sucks! Specially when one is just a kid and it’s Christmas,.. reminds me of my second PlayStation game purchase; Tekken. Was on sale and when I went to pay for it they opened up their drawer(where they kept the discs) and hurriedly inserted what I thought was Tekken. Later getting home the disc I got was Tomb Raider 2. Happy times! That game had just come out and was super expensive. Never complained about that one.
This was the peak before the fall.
@24:53 what ever happened to this foot mouse? never even heard about it until i watched this just now.
Damn, I love this old games.
*these
Dang. I was rocking a P133 Packard Bell from Sears at the time. I miss this time of amazing technological wonders. Such a simpler time.
"The media tells you everything in this game..."
Just like real life.
Phantasmagoria was such a fantastic game! I absolutely loved the game play and how it created a very unsettling mood.❤❤
A couple years later, the best game ever made, in my opinion, released. Ultima Online.
Kal port or
Such a time capsule of computing. Surreal watching this now being 41
3000$ pc with a 1.6gb harddrive. Craaaazy. I got my first family pc in 1998. Cant remember the specs but it costed about 3 grand too. I just built a 3 grand computer. The spec difference is insane how far we have come in 27 years.
1.6 GB hard drive? Thats a crazy amount of memory for a hard drive
11:45 I'm glad i didn't spend $3000 on my PC in 1995 to play Mechwarrior 2. Mine was a Packard Bell P60 with 8mb of memory and a 2 speed CD rom drive and a Matrox Mystique 2D/3D accelerator card. and it runs basically the same frame rate as what's here. Also was the first game i played multiplayer, not online but with my buddies Desktop PC, he hauled over to my house and we played using a Null Modem cable.
FIRST A BIT ABOUT THE HARDWARE. THIS 6000 DOLLAR (adjusted for inflation) GAMING MACHINE IS JUST FOR EPIC GAMERS. AND NOW, MECH WARRIOR 2!
*7 fps gameplay*
You had a Mystique in 1995? Time traveller! Most likely it was the Millennium I, which you were probably better off with. The Matrox 'Mystake' was lacking many features to be considered a 3D accelerator e.g. bi-linear filtering, table fogging ... I still have my Matrox Millennium II paired up with a Matrox m3D (PowerVR PCX2). Now, that *could* run Mechwarrior II.
You are most correct sir, my timeline is most skewed. The Mystique came late in 1996, when i upgraded my PC from a P60 to a P166. I can't for the life of me remember what my first 3D was, Most frustrating. I believe the 2D side was handled by a Cirrus Logic 2 MB card but i don't remember which one@@jimjamz.
Their answer to the increased storage CD ROM offered games was to fill it full of FMV!
I remember games of this era feeling photorealistic after having started with an Atari 2600 and then an XT clone with CGA.
Damn, I thought Summer Games and Pitstop on C64 was photorealistic compared to Atari
I remember Dragon's Lair....
In 1998 I had a top-of-the-line Sony Vaio desktop, $2400, with a whopping 4GB hard drive. I remember downloading a song off Napster, took only 20min per song with dial-up.
Let’s hope it wasn’t any Metallica songs, lars would sue your ass
Yeah I'm going to agree, Sony definitely ended up with the 'slight edge'
The Saturn was still a great console, though. Could have done with a couple of original Sonic games, though.
Hmmm...now, I got both the Playstation and Saturn on 9-9-95 (the same day the Playstation launched) I was such a huge Sega fan that I actually opened my Saturn first and didn't touch my new Playstation for almost a week. The reason for this was Panzer Dragoon. After playing it I was ready to declare Sega the undisputed kings of the 32-bit super machines.
That was until I opened my Playstation and played Ridge Racer. At that point I considered them to be neck-and-neck. However, as the first few months rolled by it became clear Sony had the edge. They opened up the floodgates and a smorgasbord of new games came flying out. I wound up renting so many games from Blockbuster that by all rights I should have been offered stock options for my service.
Ah, yes, the 1990's, when 256 MB RAM was top of the line.
not "the 90s" but at the very end of the 90s - even more in the early 2000s. In 95 still 16-32 MB was standard. 64 MB really rare.
I remember buying in 1994 a 486 DX4-100 ... but I am not sure how much memory it had. 2 Years before I bought a 486-33 and put 16 MB in there. These 16 MB in 92 were totally overkill back then. Windows 3.0/3.1 wasnt really able to do good multitasking.
I think the DX4-100 also had 16 MB or already 32 MB. When OS/2 Warp 3.0 was released in Oct 94 and this was really a great machine for this OS.
In 96 I bought a Pentium 133 which I replaced in 97 or early 98 by a Pentium 200 MMX - I am rather sure this was my first machine with 64MB - one or two years I replaced it with my first AMD K6 which later was replaced by the Athlon/K7.
When Windows 98 was launched machines usually had 32/64 and some even 128 MB RAM.
I remember starting my job as PC supporter in a large corporation in early 99 and many office machines hat NT 4.0 which should have at least 32MB, better 64 MB. My first office machine in this job already got 128 MB and I got a Pentium II with 350 MHz. Nice machine for office back then. Although... booting was really a nightmare in those times. Took more than a minute until the machine really was ready.
But... 256MB... was really not common even in 98/99.
256 MB of RAM was considered way overkill in the 90's. Very few people had computers with that much, it was pointless since there were no applications at that time that needed that much RAM. Back in high school I actually remember one of the kids in my computer programming class talking about how he had 256 MB on his PC and the teacher was like why? lol
Roberta Williams is a legend
I remember when chat sites in the 90's required you to keep pressing refresh on Netscape to see the next line of text. Great times ❤😂
Remember mIRC?
@@oldschooldude8370 👍 yup
Microsoft nailed it making windows 95 a gaming platform, most people nowadays didn't live that time properly, but the first win-95-from-factory pc I used came with the first version of Pentium CPU and it was light-years ahead of the 386/486 DOS pc's that we were using until that. The jump was incredible, not only with games but with office apps too
Ppl shiiit on MS but MS also first created MS Visual Studio circa 95 and made it easy to learn how to program/code cuz it made it easy to setup and compile and build the program. I took an intro to programming class in Pascal and it was on a Unix system which I never used before...it made programming seems so hard. From setting up to just learning how to save and compile was tough. I dropped out feeling really dumb. Fast forward a year later, I took an intro to programming in C and this time this teacher used MS Visual Studio and learning the concepts to programming seems easy cuz saving and building and compiling was an ease. Once I got comfortable in MS I went to Unix and Linux too but I'll never forget MS cuz it helped started my career in software engineering and now I work for a huge telahealth co. as a software engineer. Thank you MS!!!!
to be fair, they were really late to the game. Amiga and Commodore had much better gaming capability (if you compare computers from the same generation) and, particularly early on, a much wider game library. I remember the early Babbages days, when most of the game shelves were full of Commodore, Amiga, and Atari software, with just a small section for IBM. IBM slowly took them all over, but it took many years, because at first, IBM wanted desperately to DISTANCE Itself from gaming. It wanted to be seen as a serious, useful tool for the home. What a bunch of maroons.
@@BrowncoatFairy yeah amiga was previous generation, those amigas were way better than ibm pc clones (286/386) at late 80s early 90s, but when 486s and Doom came it was the end of Amigas and other 16 bits systems supremacy
Wow, Broderbund games. Now that is a blast from the past.
damn we have come along way since then. if we brought something that way have today back to the mid 90s there heads would blow off.
The Mechwarrior bit gave me middle school flashbacks
The Journeyman Project games were so good. Wish these would get a proper remake.
I'd rather play these games today than the crap on Mobile phones and advertised.
I honestly miss these days. Having to type the DOS commands to actually run the game and play it. Also, everything was so cutting edge with cinema graphics, etc. Golden Age for sure! Loved the sega Saturn, it’s a shame the system didn’t get a fair shake
Glad you’re being honest.
I remember in 1990 I brought a Amiga 500 and it had external ram memory ( 1 whole megabyte) you plugged in at the bottom that was half the size of a house brick lol. But could play games like street rod.
Oh WOW, this sure takes me back!
Roberta Williams was a legend in the 80s & 90s. One of the very first celebrity game devs.
Who was there to see this air the first time?? I remember I was working at Borland in Scotts Valley at the time I think I just got in my Nintendo 64!!
Why did Roberta show the end of the game in a review… even the interviewer had to say ‘but lots of things happen before this don’t they’ and she’s like ‘yeah but it leads to this scene which is the end of the game’ lol… love Roberta Williams… Colonels Bequest still my fave game
and if we could see todays visuals back then we would pass out
How did we ever play games back then at 10FPS? I don't remember it being that bad back then, but now I look back and stuff like this and can't understand why this wasn't frustrating. I guess, we didn't know anything different/better?
I think what it was is that our minds filled in the movement so it looked smoother than what we remembered. Since the technology was so new, we were more forgiving of it.
I have Microsoft Arcade (e.g. Asteroids, Battlezone, Centipede, Missile Command & Tempest) which was originally designed for play on Windows 3.1 and yet it works very well on Windows 95 too. They released Microsoft Return Of Arcade (e.g. Dig Dug, Galaxian, Pac-Man & Pole Position) initially designed for Windows 95 exclusively. For I am a fan of classic coin-op arcade video games which these two software packages contain some of the best ones.
I still play Grand Prix Legends released in 1998...the graphics have been upgraded by enthusiasts.An excellent sim released years before the hardware caught up with its requirements.
A $50 game in 1995 is equivalent to $100 today. I don't remember games seeming that expensive. But I looked it up and Quake 1, for example, did indeed sell for $50 in 1996.
I remember buying a Sega Genesis with one controller and Sonic The Hedgehog for about $70 circa 1992. Which would be about $150 (it was a sale price). And as a kid that was a big chunk of change. Not sure how I pulled off the computer game library I had at $50 a pop.
22:21 Unfortunately the Pentium Pro did poorly on 16-bit workloads. And since the Windows world was still largely stuck in 16 bits at this point, it made the new 32-bit chip look bad.
Made huge waves in server computing though. Instantly became the gold standard.
Roberta!, uow so many good memories playing King's Quest
These games look cool! I can't wait for them to come out.
I jus spent $599 for a cheap gaming laptop. The newest game it can play is Far Cry 5 and Red Dead Redemption, I actually just got it to play some Command and Conquer and Supreme Commander while out on the road lol Compared to 3000 for their latest gaming PC to my cheapy is a beast haha
Wow, they even had Roberta Williams herself introduce phantasmagoria.
PC, Sony Playstation and Sega Saturn games! What a great era!
Oh how far we've come. AND how much farther we will go...
Grand Prix Legends was released in 1998..and I still race regularly on this great sim. ,even though the graphics have been upgraded by enthusiasts . It is abandoned software.
$32.50 for a videotape with a single episode of TV show.
Perhaps people didn’t copy that floppy, but they sure did copy that tape.
Guessing this episode came out before Warcraft II was released in Dec 1995.
Theres now a twisted metal tv show. What a wild 20 odd years its been
Wow i remenber this show .So glad someone posted this
07:12 I can feel David Jaffe’s eyes rolling just hearing that
Fmv games are the future…
Ha I forgot about this guy. I remember watching all of these. He always reminded me of the Motorweek guy from around the same time.
My god… if I could go back to that year..
The HP sponsorship ‘logo’ on the screen got me.
I was here in 2013 thinking man this was like a lifetime ago.
Fury 3 running at 1 fps and with space invaders like sounds. What a time to be alive.
This is BIG!
What a beautiful day to kick-start my morning ☕
Crazy that you need to lose it to understand how good you had it.. :D