Retronauts - 477: Retronauts Episode 477: Back 2 School

Episode Date: August 29, 2022

It’s about time to go back to school with stern taskmaster Stuart Gipp and mischievous but likeable head boy, Dave Bulmer, as they explore the ridiculously esoteric world of edu-tainment software. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

You're listening to Retronauts a part of the HyperX Podcast Network. Find us and more great shows like us at podcast.hyperx.com. This week in Retronauts, let me edutain you. Hello, welcome to Retronauts once again. I'm Stuart Chip. I'm presenting for the first time in, gosh, several weeks. And once again, I am joined by Dave Bowman, who I have released from the Retronaut's Shed.

He's finished his jigsaw. Hello. Hello. Oh, sorry, I spoke over you. Hello. Oh, no. I'm being terribly unprofessional. Oh no! Oh, no! It's all going wrong.

Oh, wait, I just remembered that that's what normally happens. Yes. All I said was hello. Hello! Yeah, we got an uninterrupted hello, just as we could be expected. If you want to use it for your groovy beats. If you want to sample me going hello and put it in your jungle records. Oh, man. What if someone actually did that? That would be amazing. That's like what they used to do on other sort of...

radio programs. I couldn't think of a good anecdote there, so I just gave up. Was it... No, but it's all right, because you're stuttering as you tried to think of something to say, sounded like a remix in and of itself, so now nobody has to do the work. Oh, yeah, I did that on purpose. It was a clever meta-joke. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I wasn't just being incompetent at all. Anyways, speaking of incompetent,

the theme of today's episode of Retronauts, as you have now seen, because you have looked at the words on the player that you're using, is back to school. Is that going to be a number? I haven't decided if that's too obvious. You know what I mean? I feel like it kind of has to be a two, like a number two. Well, it feels like it has,

but that's because there is an old game called Back to School, which this isn't about. No, it's not. Because what we're talking about today is we're talking about the games and software that is game adjacent, that is either from school or relevant to school in some way. Not about a school. Like, back to school and school days, which is the sequel to,

those are about a sort of undefined Bash Street-esque school. For Americans who aren't familiar with Bash Street, it was a school with terrible, naughty children. I don't know if there's an American... Yeah, it's a bit like school days. the game. It was a comic. Don't worry about it, Americans. It was a comic. It's fine. Yeah. It's a bit like, I guess, is it any, was it like Saved by the Bell? That's something you have knowledge of, isn't it? Was there a, was there a Wilfred and a Smithy in, saved by the

bell? Sort of. No, it wasn't very much like Saved by the Bell, but spiritually in a way, it kind of was the UK's Saved by the Bell, yes. I mean, I suppose, well, I suppose Grange Hill was. No, because that wasn't meant to be funny, whereas this was. So, yes, spiritually, it was, and nothing to do with what we're talking about today, at all. No, but Grange Hill, while it wasn't meant to be funny, often was, unfortunately. But only a few are terrible child with a dark sense of humour, which I was. We don't know anyone like that. So that's the notion today.

It's going to be a, this may surprise regular listeners, but it's going to be a quite loose conversational sort of silly episode in which we discuss things that we were made to, or wanted to play at school. Yeah, I think the most... It's going to be a Stu and Dave are silly episode. It is. We're going to be silly, wacky internet friends for you. You know, I saw someone on a major gaming forum

say that they love our episodes where we just remember British... A major gaming forum. A major gaming forum where they said, I love your episodes where you just remember British things. And I was like, yeah, that's what we do. Oh, well. We are your men for that.

That's the main thing that we do in real life. That's what you're looking for. Yeah. In fact, yeah. Sit around. remembering. I don't mean to take my own horn, but I feel it may be my main skill.

Is remembering things that have happened to me in the past? I think it might be mine. It's amazing I don't have a rocking chair yet. Well, I mean, you could make that happen. Yes. I could.

Yeah. There's nothing really stopping you. I mean, all you need to do is tip someone out of what and make off with it. Maybe if there's like an old folks home at the top of a hill, and there's old people in rocking chairs there, and I can throw one out, and then sit in the

rocking chair, and it just go like, wogly, woggley, wobgly, woggy, all the way down the hill. It would sort of grind down the hill. It would be like Tony Hawk's downhill gem. Just like. Exactly like, yeah. Although, listeners, if any of you has a rocking chair going, begging, and you'd like to send it in to Dave, then

by all means, you know, be in, get in touch, and post us the rocking chair, and I'll make sure it gets to him. Providing I don't like it and keep it. Yeah, no, that's fair. Well, come on. You've got a wide listenership. There's going to be at least two people with a rocking chair.

Yeah, speaking of wide, it's going to need to be a big rocking chair for me, okay. Anyway, on the subject of rocking chairs, I feel like we're heading towards a sort of premature one here because we're already six minutes in, and we have talked about no video games apart from school days, which isn't even part of it. That is the opposite of what we're talking about today. So I'm going to ask you, David, I'm going to engage you directly on the subject.

What is the first memory or significant memory that you have of interacting with some sort of computer? Because that's an education in itself. You know what? Not only was it in education, it was an educational computer. Spectacular. Picture the scene. I was being carried by my dad. and we were in some sort of tent

and this tent I can quite securely tell you that this was at a garden festival and so most of the time spent at this garden festival was looking at gardens but for whatever reason this garden festival had got a bit big for its boots

and it was just a sort of general hub of culture at this point this many years in they had all sorts of interesting things they had a hall of holograms I'll never forget that What's I got to do with gardens were they holograms of garden things? like it was a trowl. No, not even. You can always reach out and touch that trowl.

There may have been such a thing. There was a cable car that took you... This is how big it was. You went by cable car over it and you looked down and saw a big octopus that somebody had made out of flowers. Amazing. What's going on? That it does sound brilliant, to be honest.

There is a single nugget. There's a single node right in the back of my mind that makes me want to say that this garden festival was in a place called Kreich. I don't know if that's true or if there is a place called Kriich. I think there might be. I don't know if there's garden festivals at it, but that's just a little neuron connected up,

so I thought I'd say it out loud in case it was right. But also what they had was two computer things of note. One, we're in a tent. It's all set up like a long tent, like rooms of tent, rows and rows of tables on which are computers. And people are at these computers, and I'm there, I'm being carried by my dad. I'm sort of the sideways way you can carry a child.

So I'm sort of on the side of my dad's shoulder. And you were, what, 14, 15? Yeah, 28. And as I looked out, I saw a computer which was running an educational or in some way creative music program. I bet they were Apple 2s now, thinking Mac, I don't know. But it had this music program, and there was people putting music on staves. Now, I just, you know, I recognised the iconography of music. I'd seen a musical note before.

I didn't, of course, know what the staves. meant or anything like that, but I could recognize that. So I knew it was music I was looking at. But that wasn't what impressed me. What impressed me was the piece of absolute magic that was going on between person and computer. Because

what I was seeing, Stuart, see if you could picture this. What I was seeing was a person sitting in a chair their arm, imagine this, picture this, is extended out in front of them towards the desktop. Under their hand is a sort of angular

box. Okay. As they move this angular box around on the table, Stuart, a little arrow would move on the screen according to the movements they made with the little box

on the table. I've never seen the like. So you're saying there's a direct correlation between the way that this box was moved and the way that the cursor on the screen would move. Sorry, I say cursor, you said arrow, I don't know if it was a cursor or an arrow right now.

Yeah, we can only imagine. We can only speculate. It must have been a cursor. And this box, it had two little buttons on it, and it had a tail coming out of it, as though to resemble some sort of rodent. And I don't know how it worked, but it was amazing. And I was hooked. That was me. I was into computers then. And you were thinking, the only, the only cursor around here is the witch who's done this, this witchcraft. Yeah. Yeah. I set up that there were two computer things, so I ought to finish that the other was a booth that you went in. And you looked at a lens on the wall, and it took your photograph, and it printed it out. And the magic here, the gibbic here was that it was a digital camera, if you can imagine, such a thing about it. Oh, my goodness gracious.

I've put the image that it took of me and my dad in my video called Dave's First Game, which you can find on YouTube forward slash DVD about today. Oh, you should watch that. It's very good. And it, you will see there that it's basically made out of, like, dots and circles and, like, almost like, ASCII art. it's a fascinating thing this for this early digital camera that's how far computers have come and we grew up

alongside them and they were there to teach us because in those days people like oh computers they should be used for education and the children were saying games they should be used for games

and the others were going yeah yeah that'll never take off education so we're going to talk about some of the electronic education devices do you know roughly when this was what year this was well listen

if you watch my video I believe it has the year printed on the picture but I don't know it off the top of my head. That's a smart idea, then. That's a smart idea. I want to say in 1986-ish, which would make me four-ish. Oh, Dave, I wasn't even born.

I didn't know what was going on. No, you were a tiny little springy chicken boeing around everywhere. I was just a little sperm. I mean, you are now. I mean, you are now a little springy chicken. Little boingy chicken. Can I talk about my first computer experience before we continue?

No! Well, I'm going to anyway. My first computer experience wasn't even with a computer. It was something called the Tommy Talking Tutor. You know, like, Tuton, son, Tuton, like the Simpsons. Simpsons reference there. For all you talking Simpsons listeners, The tommy-talking tutor, I don't think it was really an actual computer.

I'm just throwing this out there because... The tommy-talking tutor was not a real computer. And every single time it went aloft, they strapped it to a beacon and showed it to the deacon. The tommy-talking tutor was not a real computer. But what you would do is you would put cards in it and the cards would have some pictures on them. It would be like a picture of some caterpillars. And the talking tutor would go, how many caterpillars or something

and then you would press the button that corresponded with what was written on the card. I don't know how it worked. I think it must have been more witchcraft but whatever it was good. I liked it. And that's what really matters. Oh, if that's the sort of stuff we're talking about,

yeah, we had things like that. Because, hey, listeners, we're old enough that our first things of computers teaching us things were from before it was normal to have computers, in homes, at least in a reliable Windows 95 sort of way. So there were separate things that used to come out. Do you remember some of them?

Speak and spell, you know some of them. I'm not going to talk about that, because you all heard that. that's the one that the American thing that goes like a dog says. on, speak and spell goes, I think you a... Oh, why? I don't know. It just had four little tones.

But I, what I had, what I had was speak and music. Not a lot of support for speaking music out there. Not good enough for you with speak and spell, no, we had to go to the next level. So speak and music, it was like a, oh, the thing is that by my day, if you've seen E.T, you may think that a speak and spell

has all these little buttons on it, but by my day, it just had drawings of buttons And that was the draw. That was what was so good about it. It was just a picture of all these buttons. And you could press them, and they worked even though they were just drawings. So, speak of music, it was like that, but there was a keyboard, and there were some buttons. And you turned it on, and it went like this.

It went, this is going to be quite a good impression. It went, hello, press a blue key. And the blue keys were the buttons that had the different things on it. So if you press the one that said song, it would go, song, press a yellow key to choose a song. Now, sing along. Thank you. It's a very good impression.

Speak and music, oh, I loved him, in the manual for speaking music. And I say him, because in the manual, it was drawn with a little face, and it was like, hello, I'm speaking music. You can use me like this. And it was, and it was, oh, it sounded a little bit rude, and I didn't mean it to. But it was telling you how you could use speaking music. And there was very... I was going to draw that comparison. It taught me some music thing.

and it was good. All I can think about is the fact that I have a friend called David, who sounds like that normally not even doing an impression. Hello, hello, Stuart. My name's David.

Let's go down the pub. Hang on a minute. I think David's just inviting me down. Wait a minute. That was you. That was you doing an impression. Oh, oh, man. Wait, hang on, wait.

Counter, wait a minute. My name's David. Were you talking about me and how that sounds like me? No, I actually forgot that your name was David. It's really hot. Oh, okay. I forgot who you are, where I am and what's happening.

Hello, I'm Dave, and I'm doing an impression of Dave. This is deeply confusing. So that was speaking music. We had the one that was like a calculator that had like a little teacher drawn on the top of it. Do you remember him? No. Yes, you do. He had a little professor, a little maths teacher's man with a motorboard, not a motorboat, not a motorboat.

Maybe if I saw it, I would remember it. Professor Calculator. I'm going to type in and I'm going to... Yeah, there it. Do that. Type Professor Calculator. He's called Little Professor. Oh, yes.

I remember... Yes, I do know him. Yeah, exactly. Thank you. See? Did you have any other exciting devices that taught you things? Flipping, yes. Yes, I flip-o-dip-o did.

Here's one. It was called The Animator. I wanted to talk about that. That was... It let you animate things, even though you're only a six-year-old child. How? How? Well, imagine this. Imagine, uh, oh wait, etcher sketch. I forgot what an etcher sketch was called for a minute there. Imagine an etcher sketch. But instead of, so you got the two little twiddly knobs and you've got the screen. Instead of a sort of a magnetic hair line, pen line being drawn across the surface of the screen with your little twiddly nerves. Instead, imagine that it is actually like a gigantic Game Boy screen blown up beyond all proportion. So it's got giant pixels on it. Some kind of Super Game Boy.

And they're big, big squares, and what you do is you use your little twiddly knobs to fill in those squares. So you're making pixel art, but only in one colour, grey. And you get, I think it's like 11 frames of animation you can do with that. So you draw 11 different things. That's more than like an entire episode of a Hannah-Barbera cartoon from the 70s. Pretty much. And I'll be able to determine how many it had by the use of sound. Because when you played the animation back, it went like this.

I'm 16. It might have had all of 16 frames. But I want to say it had about 11. If you speed that up, it sounds like the intro to fire starter by the Prodigy. That's exactly what you used to do. That's what you used to do with it. Or you could do it all sorts of different speeds. but you couldn't really It came with a book

With examples of animations that you could do And it had quite sophisticated Like a running horse animation A skeleton doing a dance I learned how to draw skeletons out of that thing It was absolutely brilliant And that taught me Various ways of drawing

And the basics of animation And I'm like five, six years old What on earth's going on And finally The one that we got Sort of last of that sort of thing And one of the most One of the fondest ones

This was when I was a couple of years older than this, so I would have been probably about eight or nine, and my brother's three years younger than me, so it was probably more for him, really. But it was called Video Painter. And what that was, this was by VTech, the company VTech, who make very good children's toys of this sort. And then we're involved in some kind of controversy recently. I think somebody hacked one of their products or something. I don't know about that. That's not what we're talking about. NFT Tech, maybe. Video Painter. It was a big tablet. It was an art tablet. That was exactly what it was. It was a big art tablet that you

plugged into your VCR and, or your TV or whatever, but you plugged it, it was called video painter, video, not, not meaning, you know, moving image, but meaning specifically your video, plug into your video, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because then you can record on video the stuff you do on it. And what you could do is you could, it was a graphics tablet, you had a pen, you could draw on your screen, there wasn't really a delay, there was fill, there was patterns, There were like pre-existing animated brushes of little characters. There was a little fairy, you wizard, dragon, all sorts of different things you can move them about. You could make them do stuff.

They had little limited frames of animation. Amazing. That is quite amazing. You had a palette of different spots of different colors that you could dip your pen in and then now the pen would draw in that color. Brilliant. It was like a full art package software and hardware for the TV. And this was when, roughly? Well, I mean, I think it was a year with 1980 at the start.

It might have been as late as 1990 or 91, something like that. It was some quite exciting tech. Let me look it up now and find out. Speaking of animation, I'm jumping ahead a little bit because I just wanted to talk about this thing. In school, we had access to a program called the IOTA Complete Animator. It was just a trial, I believe, because the school was too cheap to buy the full version. But you could essentially animate in a very big. basic way in that you'd have

a frame you could use stamps or stickers on it, you could draw a freehand then you would choose the next frame and it would give you the onion layer look of the previous frame so you could copy it or draw over it and modify it or whatever so you could do frame by frame animation. That's the stuff. And I remember quite

strongly making animations on that and a lot of us were doing it because it was really easy to use. Any one could use it to the point that I actually tried to find it later and you just you can't find it. You have to buy it with real money which I refused to do. Because, for God's sake,

anyway, everyone who made it at school, there was real exasperation from the teachers because everyone who got their hands on it, this is when we were older, this was like 11, 12, 13. We would just make something violent as hell. Yeah, of 2008 toxic, just like blood everywhere,

like someone getting speared in the face, that sort of thing. Because, you know, that's what we were into. And I remember making this animation that had this little bee buzzing around and the head of IT being like, well, thank God, finally, someone's made an animation that isn't just an absolute disgusting gore fest. And as soon as he said that, like, the next scene was the bee getting like impaled or something and just absurd amounts of blood, just gushing out everywhere, flowing realistically.

Of course. Of course. You were children and you were given an animation, program what did they expect if i had an animation program now that was easy to use i would probably be doing the same exact thing and you know if i had had that then maybe i would be internet famous because that's how you got famous on new grounds back in the day you made stickmen doing realistic violence to one another you know yes quite but that's that's the iota complete animator Class is back in session, HyperX has the grade A gear you need for dorm life, remote classes, and for schooling folks online. Shop the HyperX back-to-school deals going on at HyperX.com to help make your return to student

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HyperX products and accessories. Do you like the TV show Friends? Then check out watching Friends with me, Mark, and me, Ryan, every week as we go through every episode of this iconic TV show, giving you behind the scenes facts, our thoughts on every scene, and some personal stories. Do you know which actor can't remember how many seasons of the show there are?

How about the one common housed object that could never be seen on the show? We've got the answers and more as we explore Friends in-depth every week. Watching Friends, only on the HyperX Podcast Network. Yeah, and that is, I've now said all of my things about before computers. I think we can move on to computers, because having got all excited about that, now you've got a computer in your house, it can do some of the same stuff. It can teach you things. And, like, in most cases, you're not going to be interested in that,

because you've got actual real games that you could play instead. But some of them, some of them might stand out. Did you have any? I had Fonschool 2 for ages, I believe, 4 to 7 for the spectrum. Now, I actually was quite delighted to play Fun School 2, because it meant I got to go on the computer, because my computer use was quite regimented. It was here.

Yeah, it was like you can play on the computer for this amount of time in an evening. Like, for quite a long time, until I was 22 years old. Of course, yeah. I don't remember having those kinds of restrictions put on me, but I think that was because I couldn't sit still and be interested in one thing for long enough for it to matter. Yeah. But fun school, what fun school has is a piece of spectrum software on tape, obviously,

where you'd play the tape and it would boot up the first of, of the six games that were on this tape. If you wanted to play another one, you had to reload the tape, I believe. You had to continually take it out, flip it, and put it back in. That's my understanding. And it would gradually load all these different games. I don't remember exactly how it worked.

I know how it works on the emulator now, because all you need to do is reload it into a different model spectrum, and then it will boot the next game. That's the only way I can get to work. But I think it was just a matter of stopping and reloading to get the next game up. Now, because this is a ZX spectrum, each reload, we're talking, what,

four, five minutes? Something like that. That's how long they usually took. But the games were, and I hasten to add, I did actually like this at the time. I would say, not necessarily

because of this, but I would describe these games as educational in almost no way. Oh. There was very little that one could realistically learn from this, I would argue.

There was a game called Toy Shop Where you had simply a list of six toys The game would say find the ball or find the mask You press space to cycle through them And when you find the thing you hit enter The till would ring up two pounds or four pounds The shopkeeper would pop up and it would say that's right Now I assume this was to teach you rudimentarily about money

But it didn't really teach you anything thing. You didn't add anything up. It just had the single price of the one item that you bought. You didn't see the price until he'd bought it. There was nothing like, you have 10 pounds. What can you buy with 10 pounds? That would actually be educational. That would, you know, that would learn that get me into a life of capitalist sort of slavery. But it didn't teach me anything. It was just find the mask. Okay, found it. You win. Have some endorphins. Thanks, game. That's all it was. That does seem It seems a little simple I also had two fun school games on the spectrum And they were both So it's a bit complicated It's a bit complicated the way it worked

But both of the things I had were fun school two But then it depends what age group it's for So there was fun school two for six to eight year olds As you said Fun School two for the overates And those were the two I had And they were characterised by the younger one having a frog on the cover

and indeed in all of the games or most of the games and the older one it was a robot and then for little tiny tiny children there was a teddy bear one but I never played that I do remember educational benefit to the games in fun school though so the frog one that I had among his games

were there was a shopping game where you had a shopping list and you went and a row of shops And so as you went down the shopping list The next thing you had to get Was you know something that was it was clear what shop you would go to to get that Yeah Such as shoes you would go to the shoe shop

And you go to that shop and if you got it right you got a tick It was yeah it was like pets was one of them wasn't it And toys and food I think it were only four Food shoes pets and toys Which is all the things that you would ever need to buy Yeah that's everything but they're the elements It's like RGB

I challenge you listeners to name one thing you may need that doesn't come under one of those four. Yeah, and that can't be, and it's more of an alignment chart. Like, you're never going to come up with something that isn't somewhere on that chart. Yeah. That was one. There was another game, which was a treasure hunting game, where you were presented with a sort of treasure island, and it was on a grid, and one of the squares was going

to have a treasure under it, and you basically just picked, based on, you know, letters and numbers on the sides of the grid, and if you were near, and it would say, like, warmer or colder, and you had to get close to. and find the X marks the spot. When you mentioned that I had a sudden Proustian like remembering that thing. A Proustian remembering that thing. Can you tell that it's been the hottest day

in the history of England in the last couple of days? If I seem sort of low energy or that my banter isn't quite up to scratch, that's why I apologise. Because you know what? You, the listeners, shouldn't suffer because of my overheatedness. No, whereas I'm fighting fit because I live in Manchester and it's all drizzly and dreary here today. Yesterday, it was exactly like

Abby tells me, being in Vegas, which is a desert. She's been there and I haven't. But today, just drizzly and dreary and cold and, you know? It would be funny if you went to Vegas and like gamble your money.

I know. Just because I have, as soon as you mentioned that, the picture that appeared in my head is of you standing outside like Caesar's Palace with theatrically pulling out the inline meanings of your pockets and like a little moth is flowing out of it or something and go

you're shrugging I oh no there it go yeah you're all past you're like there's no way I'm going to be doing any gambling I'm not that stupid and then there's like a slot machine themed around I don't know the go boss or something and you're just like hello that's something that you like I don't know

I couldn't even bother to think of a thing that you liked then how about fun school too for the over eights that's a thing I like and I can describe some of its games. I'd love you to do that. Because that, this was for older kids. And I can't really remember much of it. I'm looking at the manual now.

There's one where you use coloured shapes to fill a gap in a bridge. There's one. Oh, yeah, here's one. You got a maze. It's called unicorn, because there's a sort of a... Not a maze, like a thin passage

in a screen of, like, bushes and burning bushes and stuff. And just interesting scenery. And at the other end of it, there's a unicorn. And you've got to get to the... unicorn but it's not just you that's got to get to the unicorn you've got to get three things over there oh blindy and buzz in when you see where this is going okay you've got to get three things and they are a bird oh christ a worm and an apple and you've all those three things have

to be over there it's the old riddle and you have to figure it out for yourself in video game for and this is for i mean i can't do this now and i'm like 35 years old well that and you're asking me not only to do this as a child but also to solve a maze. That is nothing. Listen to this. Here are the instructions. I'm just going to read you out of this.

This is the game Souvenirs. Okay, I'm excited. Imagine this. And I remember this. On the left-hand side of the screen, you've got a jagged shape, and it's got different letters on it. And those letters represent different countries,

because the jagged shape is a map, maybe of Europe, but it's too jagged to really recognize. The aim here is to visit all the countries on the map once by pressing the appropriate letter. buy a souvenir from each selected with the appropriate number and end up back in Britain you start off with a limited amount of money in pound sterling

but all the souvenir prices are in the currency of that country an exchange rate is given to convert pounds to the currency there are four levels to the game one to three are similar except for the amount of money available and the accuracy of the exchange rate level four is different in that a series of flags are given with numbers and you have to visit all the countries by recognizing the flags. So here's what we're being asked to do here.

Look at flags, recognize what countries they're the flags for, press that one to go to the different countries, buy a souvenir at each of them, while in your head calculating the exchange rate of that country's currency, which, to be fair, is given on screen, but you have to do the maths, because you've got to be able to afford all of those souvenirs, one from each country, without running out of pound sterling,

that you've, I, no way could I succeed at that game now at age 40. No. Absolutely, no question. I would not be able to do that. That's a sad indictment of today's... That's not... Yeah, well, it's a sad indictment of Fun School too as well. Yeah, true.

It should have taught me, shouldn't it? That's not it. The final level, here's what the final level of this one was. This ultra-hardcore over-eight-year-old's version with the robot. Yeah. There was a machine. It had all handles and whirly bits and stuff And you had to know which order to do all the things

To get the machine to do whatever it was going to do To find the order, you had to solve a code There was a load of text at the bottom of the screen And it was all in like made up symbols, I think They weren't English, Roman numerals Not Roman numerals, Roman letterals They weren't in the alphabet, they were wingdings And you had to just

without any more clues than that, that was it, you had to just decipher the code. And the way you did it was you put your little robot on the letters and then you pressed space to acknowledge that you wanted to do that letter and you typed a letter on the spectrum's keyboard and it would change to that letter, whether you were right or wrong. And in doing so, you had to work your way towards solving the code. So this was trial and error, essentially.

I remember. Yeah, logical trial level So you would look at it and go like, oh look, there's two of the same code letter together So I bet that's this vowel and stuff of that. Oh my goodness. I remember my parents and their friends Standing around the computer

Having a big night of it figuring this out. I never figured it out. I was just there in awe. I was inputting the commands that they suggested. It's like a really early version of keep talking and no one explodes in a way in that you're almost doing a team game they're trying to solve arcane symbols.

I mean, yeah. I mean, you put that in front of me now when I'd have a blast. What does the machine ultimately do? Oh, it just gives you a code word. All the games, when you win them, give you a code word, so that you can play the final game.

Escape! Oh, my God, there's like a final... That's amazing. You have to unlock it. Yep. And you have to have written down, because there was a ram in those days, you have to have written down

all of the key code words that were given at the success of every previous game and you had to use them in the right order in some kind of maze to get out of it. Were they always the same? So once you'd done it once, you could just go straight to escape if you wanted to. Well, that's the big question, isn't it? I don't know. I can't remember. Well, this is the interesting thing that I find about fun school is this is now almost certainly

the most complete acknowledgement of the existence of fun school ever that's been produced by anyone. Because... Yes, I went looking today. I couldn't find any. That's why this is so speculative. Yeah. The website World of Spectrum

that archives everything. It has like every cassette tape, every cassette tape, inlay, scan the instructions for everything. It doesn't have anything. I mean, it has the ROM. You can download the game.

Don't do it, though, unless you delete it off 24 hours, otherwise it's illegal. Well, that's everything then. It's got the ROM. It's got the inlay. It hasn't got the inlay. You can't get the inlay.

That's the point. There is no way to know how to play them It has to do, because that's what I just read out to you It was the inlay from World of Spectrum Oh, wow, well, I couldn't find the one for Fun School With the one that I had I know why, it's because I'm on World of Spectrum Classic, the backup of when it used to be good

Oh, oh yeah, because they've replaced it with trash now, haven't they? With a CAC one, yes. World of Spectrum, people, what are you thinking? Change it back. Yeah. Don't make new things, what are you thinking? Imagine making a website based around the spectrum and then thinking you need to improve it somehow.

Absurd. I see, I thought it was just a complete full recreation with all the same content. If they've not even got around to pull all the content over there's almost nothing on it. It's what you want is world of spectrum.net. Okay, that's good. I'm going to bear that in mind. Well, I apologize for the misinformation then.

You know, take it up with World of Spectrum. That's what I have to say to that. You absolutely should. You should riot and you should kick down their doors. and I'm only half joking. It really was, in fact, a big piece of cultural vandalism when that was changed. But it's the backups there, so we're okay for that.

At least it's to the line. That's okay, then. I had a game on the spectrum called Henrietta's Book of Spells. It came with a York Sinclair or something like that, and it was about, well, I don't know. Your Sinclair was a magazine, by the way, American people. That's right. And Henrietta would be standing there, and there was a rope, I think, and at the end of it was a thing,

and you had to pull it towards you by spelling things correctly. That was my spelling experience on the spectrum. My wife was quite different. She had a pack-age, a package, a pack, a package pack, which was called Learning Box. And what it was, it came with a number of things. It came with, it was like a full educational package. So you got an overlay for your spectrum, not the screen, the keyboard, and it had holes in it for the buttons, and it changed what they were buttons of. And it said, press this for this and stuff like that.

And you put that on your keyboard. There was a tape, an audio tape of a lady off play school reading the story of Hansel and Gretel. And on the screen was a recreation of scenes from the story of Hansel and Gretel and how they had. had to learn to spell that time, and it would help you to learn to spell. Except that this was, quite famously, among those who experienced it, just the most terrifying, horrific thing that a computer could possibly be made to do. And all of the parents who, in good faith, bought it for their children to help them to spell, I think we're probably about as scared as the children were.

Certainly, I know that Abbey's mom acknowledges that this was a harrowing experience. Because what it was, was you had a silhouette. It was very well drawn. It was very, it looked like shadow puppetry and good stage setup for a shadow puppet show. So you had like layers of what looked like, you know, artificial arch scenery. And then in the middle of it, this stark black, quite large figure of a witch standing there with a, you know, leaning on a staff. and Hansel and Gretel cowering on the other side of the screen and then for some reason just a scary tree with a spooky face in the middle

and the witch would like bang her stick on the floor and you had to spell a word and if you got the word wrong it would go like and I don't know if that was meant to sound like oh no or what it was but it would be like and the tree would turn to face Hansel and Gretel and if you spelled another word wrong and the tree would like lean towards Hansel and Gretel. And if you did it, you know, if you got

three wrong, you would see the tree grab out at Hansel and Gretel and then we'd go like, boom, oh! And the whole screen would black out and they'd be dead. Very, very frightening. You spelled Paulia now the children are dead. Is that we're

swinging here? That's atrocious. The fact the tree is unremarked on, it makes it even scary but sorry, do go on. Yes. Well, it may have been remarked on in the tape, I don't know, but yeah, there was another I was going to say there was a second scene to do with the bit where, you know, there's the witch trying to put Hansel into the oven. And again, you know, presumably he goes in the oven if you get it wrong. Nobody really knows what happens in this game because nobody ever dared play it for more than a couple of seconds.

I think it only had those two screens. They would play it for a certain amount of time and then once you got a little way into that second screen, the sheer, the horror of everything would overcome whoever's playing it and they would poo their pants and they would not be able to continue because they would have to go in. They'd put their pants hard. They'd put their pants so hard that they would be expelled up

through the roof of the house. Yeah. And that would be that. You'd just, like, their parents would look up and they would see a decreasing dot going up into the sky. And their parents would just be like,

I can't believe that I bought this for you. Yeah. If I knew that you were going to defecate into your own trousers with such vigor that you flew through the roof into space, then I would seriously reconsider. isn't it? And they'd be very embarrassed

as well, because of course, their trousers and pants have remained down in the house in the sitting position. In the same sitting position. So they're up in the sky with their hands covering their shame and little red patches on their cheeks. And then when they get to the apex of their propelling into the sky,

a bird will come by because they'll hover in place at the top of their art company. And then a bird will come by and, you know, give them a funny look before they start falling back down again with a kind of, you know, like a slide whistle noise or a, you know, missile dropping noise or something like that. Straight back through the hole into the waiting bathtub.

Into the, yeah, if the parents have been lucky enough to, have been cany enough to put a bathtub under there, otherwise they'll just go straight back into the trousers again. Yeah, and then the whole seat cycle repeats forever, unfortunately. Yeah, because what they've done is a very bouncy boo. So they just got sprung back up into the sky again, giving the parents a second go. Because they haven't dragged the bath all the way under yet. Oh, my goodness me. Yeah, that's what, that's what happened.

That's what happened. There's no, there's no theories about it. I would like to mention on the subject of fairy tales. I would like to talk briefly about this. They still let us on this podcast. I don't understand why, but I'm not going to challenge it. I mean, all I can think of is that they just don't listen to it. That's all I can think of.

That genuinely must be it. Yeah. And of course, that whole bouncy poo story was anecdotal. because, you know, we wouldn't say anything untrue on here. But there was a game... What anecdotal means? You know what? I don't think...

I didn't have the fun school that taught me that, so hands up. Yeah, yeah, sorry. Fun School 5, where they teach you what words mean, the next step after spelling them. You know, I want to mention, actually, Fun School 2, the one that I had, it had the only game on there that was kind of challenging and interesting, I thought, was the one where... It was just called electricity. And it just presented you with a circuit.

the circuit was flawed in some way and you had to complete the circuit to figure out what was missing and you had the choice of like conductor insulator on switch, off switch, et cetera, et cetera. It's surprisingly challenging, although I did... Why don't I remember that? I don't know, maybe we genuinely didn't have

the same fun schools because there were quite a lot of fun schools. Yeah, but we also done if they were both fun school too for the six to eight year olds. Well, maybe the one I had was not that one. Who knows? There's no way of verifying it. I'd have to go upstairs into the attic and find my spectrum stuff, and I don't know where it is. I know where mine is, but I'm still not going.

Yeah. See, this is the commitment that we're putting into this. But electricity, I think, was a cool idea for a game. There was also one called Journey, which I mentioned briefly, where you had to go to places. Now, the reason I think this is interesting is, okay, I'm going to be serious for a moment. No more talk of bouncy poos. That's finished.

No. It's a serious time. Now, the interesting thing about Journey, is it's one of the very few existing video games that is so relentlessly sensible in how it works that my brother can play it, who's very autistic. He can't play many games, but he can play this

because all there is, all it is is get the frog to go to, let's say you've got a choice of two places you've got like the church and like the school. Two things that must remain separate, but I digress. The frog will be there, and I'll say that, go to the church, and all of the buttons are like, F on the keyboard is forward, B is back, L turn left, R turn right, like tank controls in that respect. Anyone can do this. It's like Sonic. I put it up there as one of the five main good games as a result of this.

But I just thought that was interesting that of all these games, they're all so abstract, except for this one. I find that genuinely interesting. I honestly think there might be an episode in this at some point. I just wanted to get that out there, that's all. I think that there's something to be said for a video game that is so relentlessly lacking in any kind of abstract detail that anyone at all can play it, and I mean anyone. That's great.

Anyway, back to the poo. So I went spinning into space in terrific speed. It was so spectacular. I could hardly speak. Space has sparks, space has spangles, space has speckles, and it spins. Space is the spot where sport begins. Am I all alone in space? Can't you spot the sparrow and the spider?

And don't you recognize this space? It's spuggy. Space is special. Class is back in session, and HyperX has the grade A gear you need for dorm life, remote classes, and for school and folks online. Shop the HyperX back to school deals going on now at HyperX.com to help make your return to student life a breeze. Comfortable cloud headsets can keep you focused in as you cram for finals with some lo-fi beats, and stay productive with lightweight pulse fire mice, responsive alloy keyboards, and more.

Keep your GPA and your KDAI with HyperX products and accessories. Video Deathloop is the show where we watch a short video clip on Loop. Until we just can't take it anymore, along the way we'll try our best to make each other laugh and to hold out longer than the other guy. Come in on any episode. Video Deathloop, new episodes every Friday. Flying free, flying high, flashing wings across the sky

Jordi racer, Jordi racer On the road in the street Hear the sound of pounding feet So we return to the scene of the boo where the child is currently falling back down towards Earth. Yes. What will happen now? If you want to find out, listen to the next Stu and Dave episode

where we will continue the saga of the... This is like a new thing that we're going to do, I guess. I didn't run this by anyone. I'll tell you this. I don't remember any educational things on the Amiga. So probably that has to do with what age me and my brother were when we got the Amiga. I know, for example, that you... can get the fun school games

on things like the Amiga, the ST, they were completely different. It wasn't where they like recreated the graphics. I think they gave someone else a written description of what each game is and they just did anything. I've seen the visuals of say like the

ST versions of these and I vaguely recognize that they are trying to recreate what I have played but there were quite a lot of Amiga games where they had basically been made by someone who had had the gaming question, Paul described to them, I think. Like the Amiga version of

Castlevania, but that's like a whole other episode, I would say. Yeah. I want to talk about software that we were made to play in actual school. Yes, please, Daddy. What a strange way to end that. That really was. Oh my goodness, me.

It was a good thing that nothing else bizarre has been said in this episode. But I'd like to begin by talking about Joy Reacer, because I feel like it's important that people know about this. Now, I know about JordiRacer, but how is that educational software? Well, that's precisely the thing. It's not what it is.

But JordiRacer was something that we had on the school computers, which were B, B, B, B, C, micros, or as I believe, they were also known, EG1 Electron. Yeah. The ones with the red function keys, you probably know, in black keyboard. You'd know them if you see them. Every school in the UK had them, and then they graduated to PCs eventually, I guess, maybe. or I think there are also some Archimedes thrown in there somewhere, but I digress.

I can tell you that I was 14 years old and my school still had a suite of these. That's a disgrace, appalling. The same exact model of computer that my primary school had had when I was six. The computing museum that I believe I've mentioned in previous episodes of this podcast in Cambridge has a classroom setup that has loads of these

at like desks. I'll get lost. Yeah, it's kind of cool. And the first time I went there, I just went on basic and just 10 Stuart Gyppist skill. Yeah, obviously. 20, go to 10 run.

You know, that's like... Wait, though. Wait a minute. That's not accurate. If they've got a classroom set up with these computers on the desk, no, no, no, you have one. It's wheeled into the classroom on a blue gurney.

Okay, okay. Yeah, this is even before my time, I think. Now, the point is, The point is, Jordie Racer. Do you do Americans know what a Jordie is? This is the real question. I don't think that they have any frame of reference.

Probably not. And I can tell you that when we had Jordy Racer, I didn't know, well, this is where I learned the word Jordy. Jordy Racer. Well, I mean, I didn't know this till many years later. I just assumed that the character's name was Jordy. I wasn't paying attention. It sounded like a name.

He's Jordie. He's doing a race. I mean, this was about a running child, is my understanding. I haven't revisited the look-and-read serial in order to... No, no, no. Jorley Racer was a... Not a penguin, but a pigeon.

Oh, this was about Peregrine Falcons again. Oh, no, no, that was Sky Hunter. Why were there so many look-and-read serials about birds? I don't know. Why don't they just pack it in? Honestly, it's ridiculous. Yeah, the Jorley Racer was a pigeon.

You're absolutely right. A racing pigeon, in fact. Yeah. And in this game, that explains what you do in this game. I was like, this is weird. It's not really about jogging your time. all. It's about pigeons. A jordie. A jordie is a person from or around a town called Newcastle. Great, excellent town. In the UK. Can't recommend it enough. Had some tremendous times in Newcastle.

Mostly nothing to do with pigeons, but not entirely. I would also recommend it, except the sum total of my experience there was I once bought a screen protector for a phone there, and that was it. That went well, though, so... Excellent story, and I'm glad that we've managed to preserve it forever. So, Joyly Racer, what you're doing Joy Racer is, first of all, you're greeted by a creature named Wordy. And wordy was the mascot creature from a BBC school's television program called Look and Read, which would present essentially serialized drama for children, drama of varying tone, but mostly, obviously, pretty light children's drama,

interspersed with songs about words. Yes. Song by Derek Griffiths off the telly. Really? Blimey. So what will come up is you'll get wordy. You then have the choice to move wordy or hide wordy. And when you press move wordy, all that he does is sort of wiggle his arms a bit, I believe, which is unusual.

But it's sort of, it comes to define the game as you move on because it's a multi-stage multi-part sort of not entirely word-based game that all honesty has very little educational value

it has more in common with something you may find in a puzzler magazine or something in places but what you've got to do is you've got to pick a pigeon and you can choose

a pigeon called Star a pigeon called Homer and a pigeon called Bonnie and they all have varying different what's the word attributes Star is a brave Pigeon Homer is fast and Bonnie it is strong

but they also have weaknesses that you don't know until you pick one of them. Ah! So when it says who do you want to fly in the race, you pick Homer because they're fast but then it says, hello, I am Homer, I am fast but I'm also fussy. And I think we all know another video game character who's fast but fussy and I think we all know who that is. I think we do. Of course we refer to Zool again.

Yes. And first of all, you get presented with a list of foods. oranges grapes, ice cream nuts, honey and meat all the food groups and you've got to pick them in the correct order and the correct order is spelling out the word homing pigeon. Now I find this quite unintuitive because it doesn't really explain that but

yeah so if you choose the wrong food to give your pigeon the wrong order it says no thank you not that which is stunning to me then the game will tell you about beastly bats who is presumably the villain Oh, watch out for him. Yeah, Baz, Beastly Baz.

He's the only character who's been really adequately animated. And you've got to watch out for him because it says, watch out for Baz, he's a pigeon fancier. Now, I don't think that means what it sounds like. Because if it does, then they can't have a whole bus all. But what the game essentially becomes here is a choose-your-own adventure, you know, like a fighting fantasy book, because all it is is a side-scrolling scene

with a choice of things to do it's like you see a cloud and a house where do you want to go and if you type the cloud it's like you are struck by lightning and you die instantly reload would you like to go to the cloud or the house you say to the house

would you like to go to the house roof or window or chimney and it's like oh yes the chimney you are struck by lightning and instantly killed oh yeah so this is the whole next sequence is you just making sure for a minute there that you're a bird.

Yeah. A pigeon. Yeah. So you can land on bits. Yeah, yeah, okay. That makes sense. Then you've got to do, after that, you've got to do some directions. So it teaches you about north, south, east and west, in which you chart a flight path. Again, firing pigeon. They did a better job teaching you about those directions in the later, through the Dragon's Eye program. I'm quite excited to hear about that.

North or south, east or west. You will. Continue. I still remember some of the look and read songs, and I wish I didn't. It's really horrifying that they've stuck in my memory for this long, despite the fact I only ever saw this when I was at school. Not you... No, I remember them, but I like them. Oh, that's fair enough.

Jordy Razor, Joyer. I didn't like that one. I was not a fan of Jordy Razor, by the way, but then I didn't get to play the computer game. Do you remember the one about capital letters? Think big, big, big at the beginning. Put a capital first and you're winning. Think big. Think big. Think big.

And of course. the Magic E song was the standout hit from the Look and Read series. Magic. Magic E, it was a little, you know, well, I can't think of any example now, but... I had some magic E to rave once. Moving on.

That was a humorous joke. I've never been to a rave, and you should never take drugs. Oh, and then the finale of the game, you have to make words out of the name of your pigeon. Like, say, Homer, you've got to put, say, like, Ro and Rome and Home and stuff like that, you know?

And then if you get enough words, then you win the pigeon race. God knows how those two things are related, but they are. Someone's obviously never raced a pigeon. No, I've never raced a pigeon. I've freely admit that. I've only raced lizards, insects, and humans.

There was more water jolly race, so I don't remember it. I only remember those first bits, unfortunately. The rest of it has escaped me. I suggest you didn't get any further than those first bits, I may not have made it that far. I think I may have got to the bit where you have to do words

and started screaming and maybe I remembered Hansel and Gretel and became too frightened to continue just in case, you know? It was a nightmare. I didn't mind that. Maybe there's something later on in this game that's so harrowing and disturbing

that it's erased your whole memory. It becomes like Kess and someone just like breaks the pigeon's neck or something. Oh God. Ooh, I think I may have found it. Which cave would you like to visit? The game asks, quiet, noisy or smelly

Oh my quiet There's no choice there is there Of course I would go for the quiet cave Why would you want to go for a noisy or smelly cave Well you would But if you're a school child That's what you're doing in real life If you're a school child

You go to the smelly cave Yeah of course So you can find out what the smell is Apparently the smell is seaweed Disappointing isn't it Yeah it's quite disappointing It's not really that funny No

In fact you were so surprised By how boring that was That you pooed your pants violently And shut up into the sky and now the cave has a new reason to be smelly. Podcasts back on track.

We've brought it on home. Well done, don't they. Even in unprecedented 40 degree weather, we found a way to get it back to the subject of poo. We are so sleepy. This was the last possible time we could have recorded this episode. You know what?

We were waiting. Yeah, we were actually originally planning on doing this on Tuesday when it was, in fact, 40 degree heat. And Dave said to me, quite sensibly, shoot, no, we can't. We can't. Jog on like some kind of jordy racer. Magic, magic E.

Magic E. A strip gets a stripe with me, a pip makes a pipe with me here. What you do with me add magic, magic E. Magic magic E. But that wasn't the only game. that was played by us at schools. And oh no, I'm sure, though, that you must have other games

that you played at school that you would like to tell us all about. Hail, yeah! Exciting. So, our school had one, one computer for my entire school, and you took an intern, I guess, like, we weren't in charge of where it was.

It just would sometimes show up, and, you know, the days it wasn't there, and he didn't complain. But I remember on one of the days when a man came to the school, like a rep for this software and this guy I loved this

so this guy sits down with a big folder and it's got in it he opens his big folder and it's got pages and pages of like presumably laminated artwork the pages are divided into grids and they've got various drawings of things you know there's a fairy there's a king

there's a goblin things like that fairy tale things storytelling things and they've each got a number or letter and number, some kind of associated code with them. By the way, we were six years old. This is my second ever class at school. And what you did was you went on the computer

and what the software that he brought was basically a word processor which dealt with very, very large fonts. You could really only fit as many words onto a page as, say, a small child could in their handwriting. Yes. So, you know, sort of 10 words maximum. But as you wrote your story, you could put those codes in

and that accessed the database on the disk of those same illustrations except in the program. So you would put, you know, once upon a time there was a princess and then you do the code for the princess drawing and up comes a pixelated princess. Now what was interesting was that none of the things in it

in any way resembled what was on the page in the first place. it was a completely different Again, it was like with Fun School you know, someone had been told there'd been no consultation between the person doing the graphics and the person doing the illustrations. They had not compared their work at all.

So there were two interesting, different takes on the same thing. And so you made your little stories up out of that and then you printed it out and you had a couple of pages of things. I remember that my story was about a monster who I tried to give the silliest name I could think of

and the name I came up with was the green hilly because green hill that's not a person that's a kind of that's a bit of landscape Sonic thing it's a sonic where it wasn't yet this was before Sonic existed no I was only talking

about real green hills from real life he was called the green hilly bean silly ninny nony no a quite good name for a six year old to come up with I think you'll agree that's not bad because what I've done there is

I've used I've used the lyricist's trick where Green Hilly that's only there to rhyme with Bean Silly but I've made it the first line to disguise that relationship So the Green Hilly

Bean Silly and you think You get to Bean Silly and you're like Whoa Oh wow that was convenient that rhymed Yeah if you'd done it other way around It would be Bean Silly Green Hilly And I'd be like oh I see Desperish But because you said Green Hilly Bean Sill

I was like hello chess master That's exactly what it was And then you know you know is silly noises, which is amazing. Hmm. It sounds a little bit Edward Lear, actually. I wonder if I'd been reading some limitics. Hey, nony-no, that was the thing from something I have a vague memory of saying that.

I think it may have been from some kind of rolled doll book. Well, hey, nony-no is Shakespeare, I think. Yeah, but, I mean, I wasn't reading Shakespeare as a child. I was not, I mean, come on. Oh. Come on. One of those stupid children who doesn't read Shakespeare at age six. No, I don't. I wasn't. I mean in Shakespeare's really. It was just like too scary for me, you know?

Yeah. They'd either be like, ah, a witch or, ah, a family. You know, it was terrifying. Ah, two houses, both like indignity. The concept of love. Yeah. So, yeah, I was joking. No six-year-old should read Shakespeare. They'll be very scared. I mean, I think that sounds pretty good. I think the green-in-hilly, being silly, had slacks. What did it look like?

It had legs, and it had a big head, and it had a growly mouth and angry eyebrows. I think it was, I suppose, well, today the children would describe it as a Shrek. Oh, I have to do it. It would be a bit like the original illustration of Shrek, that kind of, a shouting ogre. Yeah, the classic, like, literate Shrek, basically,

literature Shrek. With tufts of hair coming off his head, I think. I don't know. I'll obviously if I can find the prince. printout. It's around somewhere. Of course you've still got the printout. Of course you have it. Yeah.

Okay. It's an important... Okay. That wasn't judgmental. It was just, oh yes, it's you. Of course, you still have this. Because I don't say this. I don't say this because most people are right, but most people would have been to this

many years ago. Well, years later, right, we were... My class was also introduced to look and read, but we'd skipped over Jordan Eraser. We'd skipped over Badger Girl. We didn't have any of that. We came on board with Through the Dragon's Eye, which was where the educational television program... By the way, we didn't say that the computer program was a peripheral tie-in, part of the overall educational experience, the heart of which was a television program.

Yes. And a book. And you had your book out on your desk in front of you while you, as a class at school, watched the episode of educational TV program, look and read. And you could follow along with the story being told. So normally it was a boring story about some Geordie children and their bird What? Or a boring story about some I don't know, probably from some other place children

And their badger How dull can you get? And then one year they suddenly turn it around And they go, oh, what if instead of just to try it out What if instead of that Just for this year we make The Greatest Work of Literature That's ever been put to paper

And that's what they did Christine and Christopher Russell the greatest authors in the world wrote something called Through the Dragon's Eye which was that year I think it was 1989 series of Look and Read and it was about a dragon

who some children paint a mural of a dragon and it comes to life and it invites them into the land of the mural and now they're in a magic world where the Vita Corps which is the jewel that powers the life force of all living creatures in this world has exploded

and its bits have gone all over the place and they have to journey the land, getting the bits back, and fighting against the evil chan, which is like an inside-out man who's kind of a bird skeleton and all of his intestines are dangling out, and he can breathe fire to melt you and shoot you with electric from his finger knives. It was flipping incredible.

I believe that I recall Chan being terrifying. Yeah, it was the most, it was the most frightening thing that's ever been shown to a child, and therefore the most thrilling. Can I make an amusing? Can I make an amusing, gaming joke, please. Yes, go ahead, yes.

I bet Sony wish they could have got hold of that Vita core. Ha! Because the PSVita didn't do very well. And then if they had the power of the Vita core, maybe they could have turned things around. Yeah, and if it had like a core market, then it would be a Vita core. Yeah, yeah.

It's a layered joke, I admit, it's layered. North or south, east or west, it's best to know. For sure you understand the plan. Looked me through the dragon's eye and fly. Okay, so look and read. So through the dragon's eye came with a tie-in BBC micro game. And it was, well, so all evidence on the internet.

and people reminiting about it, say, that it was an actual game that you played like a game. But that is not what I remember. What I remember is the word processor thing again. But this time, with images of all the characters. And I was so, like, I was our schools through the Dragon's Eye, a fan boy. Like, there was one time where I feigned illness.

Maybe it was real illness, and it just happened to be a good circumstance. But, like, I happened to be able to watch through the Dragon's Eye at home before it got shown to our class. And it was the episode where Doris, played by Carolyn Pickles, who was one of the people, the keepers of the Vita Corps,

she was like a sort of a purple librarian. And she was whispering a warning onto the videophone of our heroes to warn them that Chan had infiltrated the Vita Corps house. But in the middle of saying the phrase, Charne is here, she gets blasted in the head with electricity.

And she just melts. Her face. Meltz onto the screen through which we're watching her. She just, like, sinks down into this purple puddle on the... It was the best special effect I'd seen in my life. The most horrific, the most thrilling thing I'd ever seen. Apart from that time when I was four years old and I was watching the TV and I saw a man step out of his own skeleton.

Yes. In real life, I saw that happen. Wait, wait, wait, wait. That was the... How do you step out? of your skeleton? Well, I've since been able to review the footage because it turns out to be part of a song called

Anything Can Happen on Halloween. The man is Tim Curry and what he actually does is it just steps out of the way of a skeleton that was hiding behind him. But I interpreted it upon initial airing because I was there, ladies and gentlemen, when that first aired, I was watching it and I'm so glad that the internet has latched onto that's the thing.

Anyway, so through the Dragon's Eye, What? Can our listeners can watch this on YouTube, can't they? I believe they've all been uploaded the look and read serials. Through the Dragon's Eye? Yeah. Certainly that has. I don't know if any of the other boring ones have.

I haven't watched them because they're boring. I think I remember looking at Earthwob on YouTube, you know. Oh, that one sounds quite good. Yeah, had an alien in it. Oh, right. Oh, what's that one? And then afterwards they did Spy Hunter, which was about the war. Oh, no.

World War II. Boring. You know, honestly, bore it. What are you playing at? You've just had one about a dragon and Chan, the best children's villain ever. What's going on?

I can't believe they... Anyway, so that had some software that was educational. The end. The end. Oh, there was another educational thing that we had on the BBC micro and it was about music

and you made music by selecting images is that represented tunes. And here's the problems, Stu. Yes. As with all of these other things, I can quite intimately remember the music that I and my friend, because you always went on these things in pairs,

made on this package. Yes. I remember very clearly the tune we made out of the little snippets that each of these images represented. Here's the problem. I can't sing it to you. I don't mean I can't, I wouldn't be able to. I mean, I can't, for reasons of, like, impropriety.

Is that the word? Because if such a thing can exist, they were racist tunes. Oh, dear. Okay, right. So what we're talking is, like, the sort of music that may be, let's just be very, what's the word, pragmatic about this whole thing. Yes, that's what I'm trying to be. The sort of music that may be played over an old cartoon,

they don't show anymore. Yes. Where someone's teeth are dice. Yes, although not that sort. It was the sort of music that up until the 90s would always play the same tune if anyone of Eastern descent were to appear on screen. Oh, I see.

In literally any television program. This was usually played when a Chinese person, I suppose it was, came on. Yes, that's right. It was when Chinese people came on screen. It was the few notes, and I don't want to do it, but I know exactly what you're doing. No, that's the thing. We're not going to sing it, because if such a thing can exist, it's a racist tune. Is it the one that sort of plays during the We Are Siamese song in Lady in the Tramp?

I can't remember that one well enough, but I bet it does. Yes, it does, yeah, yeah. I'm pretty sure I know what you're talking about now. Yeah, okay. Well, that's a darned shame. It's a darned shame because I and my friend took that and the other little snippets of, like, you know, other tunes that they thought were adjacent to that and made something quite

you know we made something out of it that was very much our own not recognising at the time that there was anything problematic about the tunes themselves but we did we chopped and diced it and we cut it up like Norman Cooks did might might have done like little Norman cooks might have done so that was that yeah these were these are what education was like in those days

I'm afraid listeners the things have moved Well, don't get the started on what we learned in history, for God's sake. Long story short, we were the good guys. Hooray! Yeah. Hooray, we've discovered this thing. And we found it ourselves. Isn't it lucky that we've now put it safe.

This isn't meant to be retronauts. Oh, no. Well, what is retronauts, if not taking a look back at the folly of the past? Of the past. There you go. Educational software, let's think. oh I had a on the ZX spectrum I had a paint package

Now what a thing On the ZX spectrum A paint program And I think it was called Just like draw it Exclamation mark Certainly something I had was And I think this is what I'm talking about

And you But you had to You know we didn't have things like Like a mouse on the ZX spectrum So you had to use You know directional keys To try and draw things And it came with you know

MS paint style spray can And things of this But here's the thing. This is why I remember it. And this seems apocryphal. I must be wrong about some detail of this. Because it's not at the forefront of my memory, because I would only

have used it once in my life. And that's because to run the paint program, you had to keep the tape playing. Oh my goodness. Or possibly keep a blank tape recording something like that. It was the weird. I never experienced that anything.

Yeah. I didn't experience that anywhere else. Like I just remember that when the tape got to the end. The whole thing would freeze up until you turned the tape over and started again or something. It was odd. I don't know what was going on with that. I don't know what possible benefit that could have to a running program. Because I don't think it had, you know, because it was on a cover tape. It was like not the only thing on the tape. So it's not as if it was a continuous stream of data that the program needed to know in order to run. Because there would have been other stuff on the tape. Sorry, a cover tape. This came with another

magazine, Sinclair user or something. Yeah. Oh, blimey. Yeah, it was the same, I believe it was the same issue that had the demo of Turtles the Coin Hop on it. Oh, my goodness. I can't imagine how that held,

how that was on the spectrum. Brilliant, no doubt. Oh, it's good fun. Yeah. Yeah. I'd like to talk about a paint program that I had one. I was a small child that had a game of gaming element of it. It was called Fine Artist,

and it was for Windows 3.1 and 95. For Microsoft Kids. Now, it was twinned with a piece of writing software, which I believe I used first, which was called Creative Writer. And essentially it was like a word processor. If word processors were bonkers. And to this day, I believe it should be sold completely as is with no changes.

Like maybe increased the resolution of it. But it was incredible. This is starting to sound quite good. You'd love it. I'm interested. Why? What was bonkers about it? Well, you'd start the game.

You'd enter your name and then it would be like, pick your favorite animal. And you'd pick your favorite animal. And then it would, okay, here's what it showed. You'd see a city or. Are you sure it wasn't just trying to get hold of your passwords? Impossibly, but... Was it like, pick your favourite mother's maiden name? Yeah, and then it would be like, enter your pin number, enter your full card number.

And then you win? Enter a list of your fears, that sort of thing. I stole that joke from Family Guy, sorry. But, you know, got still from the Bustama, right? So, the first thing you'd see is you'd see this character whose name was Mook Z. It was like, as in Mook, the Scottish man. A purple fade, like weird, Picasso-looking fella. And once you enter your details, you'd see this place called Imagineopolis,

and it was this beautifully drawn little city with loads of weird, classic, sort of Classy-Cupo look to it, I would say. That's slightly rough lines. And there'd be like a roller coaster going up towards Imagineopolis. You'd see Mick Z in a mine cart, rocket along it, fly off the end and just crash. Wait a minute. So this guy's called McZ.

He looks like Picasso. And he's on a rollercoaster. Yes, he is off the chain. He's mental. What's cool, dude. Then you'd click on it, and it would go to a building, a green building, with a rotating, like revolving doors, nine windows, a bin, and a fire hydrant,

just like on the sort of scene. And so far, you're thinking, this is a word processor? Anyway, that's exactly what I was thinking If you click on the fire hydrant For example, it would like overflow And water would come flying out If you click on the bin The bin melts and then it pops up

At the ground again If you click on the windows You see the silhouette of makes you travel up to the third floor And then fall back down again The whole game is full The whole like software is full of weird clickable bits Like this We'll just show you funny animations

And this is a word processor Exactly exactly Now you go into it the building and you've got these four floors you've got the lobby which is obviously the ground floor the writing studio the second floor the project workshop the third floor and the idea workshop which is the top floor

now as soon as you get in you're just surrounded with things to mess around with you've got Muzzi there on the left he's looking bonkers I'm looking at him right now he's wearing one of those hilarious Groucho disguised masks he's got a little big flower coming out of his lapel he's holding a plunge of some reason

this guy's out of his mind he's wearing bowling shoes huh What? I know. And you've got, like, a fireman's pole that you can either slide up or go down to get to the different floors with appropriate sound effects. You've got a lift, so you can just jump to a floor. And on the ground, you've got a little bag, which is like McZ's handbag or man bag, if you want to be, like, tedious. And inside of that bag, you'll have another bracelet of options you can do.

But basically, you mess around with this thing looking for fun and creative stuff to do. like go and start typing, start making a document. And bringing up a sort of a new document, you're instantly presented with a completely graphic interface. There is text, but all of everything is visual. Like, you've got a picture of a giant nose Mona Lisa that you can use to import, like clip art. You've got a little honking...

I bet that was funny. If she had a big nose, a little bit funny. It was hilarious, because normally she doesn't. So it was a subversion in that respect. you can bring down like a big sort of wide toilet roll to add a background to your writing you can put sounds onto specific words so you can be typing a story and then as you're reading the story

you click the word and it will make like a boi-o-o-y-o-y-y-sound effect like if you're writing a story about someone doing a poo or something you can add a boi-o-o-oh, obviously but look I'm not making it sound as good as it actually is but it is in fact brilliant Everything there is just designed to just be as accessible as possible and fun to just dick around with. It's like if Microsoft Word wasn't an absolute ordeal to use.

You can import clip art, edit the clip art incredibly easily. You can import images that aren't from this program. Everything's mostly localized to within this program. The fine artist was essentially the same thing, but based entirely around drawing. But creative writer was, you know, make a document, make a story, make a greeting card, make a custom like fake newspaper cover, you know, make a banner that you can put up at a birthday party or something. And every single screen you could use this item called a magic wand, and it would just transform every clickable into something else. It was just pointless, extra funny cartoon details. Yes.

And it sounds great. It was brilliant. It's still brilliant. and the fact that you can't just go and buy it right now is deeply distressing. And I want to make it clear that they made a creative writer too, and they ruined it. They took all of the fun stuff out and made it more serious. What's the point of that? That's what a normal word processor is.

I know. It's ridiculous. I mean, they didn't even have Maxie in it anymore. They got rid of him. But they did put Maxie. Oh, but he was so cool. They did put him in something called 3D movie maker, which was a staged, a program where you could create, well, 3D movies using actors incredibly easily.

Like, you'd pick your actor, you'd chick what it wants to do, what path they want to follow into the backgrounds of the foreground, put text on, put sound effects. It was very easy and cool and good. And if you ever had the Simpsons cartoon studio, which a lot of people did, it was quite a bit like that. However, the reason I mentioned 3D movie maker is if you go on YouTube and you type in,

I'm going to do this to make sure that I'm right. And if not, this entire section was a waste of time. Grandpa found the car keys Fifteen years ago This was uploaded to YouTube It was made entirely in a 3D movie maker And it is 21 seconds long And I honestly think it's one of the funniest things

I've ever seen in my entire life Oh Now you have to find carnage funny Which I think carnage is very funny And if you watch this If you enjoy carnage and comic timing You will enjoy this video And it justifies the existence of 3D movie maker by itself.

That is quite funny. So what's funny about that is that it's so well realized. And the figures look so bad. Yes. So it's like, so for whatever reason, this man, the way that he drives down the road is to be spinning all the way down it no matter what else is going on.

Yeah. Yeah. It's an incredibly characterful use of limited resources, essentially. Yeah. It's just seconds of this guy smashing his car into every possible obstacle.

Yeah, that's good. It's good. I like it a lot. And I recommend, and again, I wish, I think that there is a project being done by fans to make that,

like a new version of that. Like 3D movie maker exactly as it was, except it just works on new Windows. That, oh, I thought you meant Grandpa found his keys. They're trying to do a 4K upgrades. I'm fair, no, there probably is that already because it's on internet classic,

but no, not that. But that's creative writer and fine artists, just some of the best things I've ever used on any computer ever in school or otherwise, as far as I'm concerned. I remember it's one of those few things where I had it at school came home and said, I want, for my birthday, creative writer.

And I honestly think that without that, I may not have got into writing. I honestly think that it may have been a huge factor for me to be like, hey, writing can be fun. And then eventually I learned, I don't need gimmicks. All I need is putting things in brackets and writing Ed after them. That's the only gimmick I need.

What I mean, that's fun? But no, I mean, if I could write all my games journalism in Fine Arts, in Creative Writers, I would. but I can't. Oh, you should try. I'm going to try. That could be your gimmick. I'm going to give it a good.

My introduction to word processors was via school. There was, and yeah, and I'm a writer as well, dear listener. I write comics and stuff. They're really good. We had a, I mean, we had a typewriter at home. So I was already writing silly things on that. But then my granddad got one of those old men computers, the one, whatever computer it was that I think I mentioned on a previous episode, the one that had a green screen, that one.

Oh, yes. And I used to use that for writing stories about my cats and things like that. But then, when we got the school computer, they had Caxton Press. And that's what I think of every time I hear about Caxton, the man who invented, I don't know, the printing press probably. Caxton Press, that was the name of the program. And I remember I was allowed to write a story on it. and the story I wrote on it was, well, I say aloud. It was more that I'd been told off and I'd been sufficiently disruptive in class

that I'd been moved into what they call the quiet room, which is where the computer was stored. And already in the quiet room, there was a student teacher there or a supply teacher or something, trying to get on with some work. And she didn't want to have to deal with me either. So she said, well, why don't you go on the computer and write a story? And so I did, and the story that I started writing was about a magic tomato. and now I go around calling myself

Demon Tomato Dave because of that story about the demon tomato That's... Then we got the origin of Demon Tomato Yeah, well, there's more to it than that But that's about the point immediately after They point immediately after the origin of that story, yeah

And then I also remember that when I was older and bolshear I got into my head Do you remember It was about, well, I don't know if you will Because you would have been younger than me But in about 1992, they tried to do, they tried to make education happen by, yes, making children, in fact, engage with Shakespeare. All joking aside, they tried to do this.

And the BBC aired a series of animated Shakespeare things that were like a Shakespeare play. Was it called Shakespeare The Animated Stories or something? I vaguely remember this. I think I remember seeing this in school. Yeah, you will have done. Was it just called Shakespeare animated? I'm going to look this up. I actually remember this.

And they were all animated. in different styles because it was educational, which ultimately what that meant was that one of them was entertaining, and that was the one that was done as like a stop motion, you know, looking a bit like Paddington or... Shakespeare, the animated Tales, that was it. Tales. I remember that. Yes, BBC 2. Yes, I did see that. Yes. Retained and none of it. And me and my brother had a teacher for a mum, so she was keen on getting us educational things. So she got us the hardback book that came with the series, which were like the abridged, you know, scripts, which weren't exactly the same as the ones that they used in the animated versions,

but they were abridged scripts. So I took that, I took the Macbeth one, and I said to my teacher, hey, miss, can I use the computer to translate this play into modern English? And obviously I'd take an inspiration from the abridge, but they were already translated into modern English. They were for kids. So I got the complete works down off the shelf. They must have had a copy of this at the school somewhere. Even though it's a primary school. The oldest kid's 11 years old. I don't know why we had a copy of complete works or shapes me.

I don't know what we're supposed to do with that. But I took it down and the teacher was like, yeah, fill your boots. Like, I'm not going to stop you. That sounds educational. Go ahead. And I think I got, you know, four, five lines in to this project before I got bored and walked away. And it was, you know, it's probably like, you know, which one? Hello?

When we see each other again? Double toilet. Oh, the hell with it. Yeah. Fire burning, cauldron. Oh, this is too hard. Caldum, whatever. Who cares?

I'll just read Word Sisters. Around then, we got our Amiga, and I got my first word processor on that. It was called Interword, and I was so excited because it let you save documents with a password. And so I was like, oh, I can put secrets, I can put all my secrets.

You put swear words and bums and... Didn't think of that. I was trying to think of secrets, and I didn't have any secrets. But I had information that nobody was interested in. So what I did was I password protected a file in which I wrote down everything I'd found out about the continuity and the lives of the characters in Saved by the Bell. Oh, God.

And it was called my Save by the Bell, I found out, diary. You're so happy about that, aren't you, Dave? You were just so gleeful when you said that. It made me really gleeful as well. Yeah, I wonder if I ever find that disc. I wonder if I'll be able to remember what the password was or guess or whatever. The password is saved by the bell. Don't think it was.

I think I was coming up with cryptic things, but to do with saved by the bell. So it'll be like Friends Forever or I'm so excited or something like that. I don't know. Something like that. One of the few references to that show I could ever get. Hey. Yeah. Everyone rips, but that's actually a good episode and that's a good scene.

I don't have. I never saw enough. I turned it off because it wasn't a cartoon. I'm not watching that. Yeah. But I never, I'm never ripping saved by the bell. I never saw it. I had no place to rip it.

My understanding is they did a reboot of it, and even that was supposed to be good. It was spectacularly good. Save by the bell episodes, coming up later. Anyway, so, but we've talked about paint packages. The Amiga, of course, had deluxe paint, the ultimate. It's the last time anyone really enjoyed using painting software, you know, and it wasn't.

their job and they didn't and they weren't monetizing it. It was just what you were good at. It was so much fun because what you could do on D-Paint was, I mean, there's loads of stuff you could do, but one of the things you could do was it had a morph feature. So you could draw two things and morph between them over a number of frames. And of course, I knew all about the basics of animation from the animator, the etchersketch animator that had as a child. So what I used to do was I drew the child I liked the least at school and a pile of like

blood and guts and gau. Oh my. And and I morphed him from one to the other. So he was he was undergoing a process of turning into a load of guts. Yeah. Oh my goodness. I did a load of things of him being killed and hurt and maimed in different ways because I was 11 and a little bit over-excited. And you just can't hide it. It was things just like where that's also another saved by the bell reference. Well done, Stu. There was same episodes. They sing that in the... I know, I was just doing a callback

because I thought that was... Oh, damn it! It's not a different reference. It's literally the same word. It's the same. Oh, I was just thinking of a different scene where they sing it more thoroughly. Oh, I see.

We've explained, haven't we listeners, about what's been happening to us the last couple of days. Well, I've now had this standing lamp on because it's the night and my light bulb's gone, and it's a very warm lamp, and I'm not doing well. Ah, di-da-da-da-do-do-do-do-do. What's that? Zoo Tycoon.

Right. So, yeah, what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to talk about how earlier you were saying that you used to draw blood and guts stuff. This is why I used to do. I used to, on D-Fa-in, I used to animate, like, a big weight would land on this kid, and he would get splatted and all of his guts would go on the screen and then dribble down. That was one. Amazing. There was one way, got chopped in half, things like that. Well, I used to draw comics when I was a kid.

They were, you know, I had a violent phase, and then I sort of lost interest in excessive violence, really, and I became extremely interested in, like, bums and poos and farts, you know. Also, very good for animating. And I remember, because I remember quite strongly, I used to draw these comics, and I used to show my dad the comics, because then I get some, you know, feedback, and I said, oh, that's very good to do it. And then I remember when the transition happened, and I drew one that was mostly about poos and farts and bums. Yeah. So here's my comic dad, and it was just disappointment.

and it's just like, come on. This is low brow. This is really low brow. He was wanting you to go back to the ultra-violence. I'm sorry that my child's... Yeah, he was like, what's this? You get the Mary White House in or something. It's ridiculous.

Yeah. Why aren't they dropping anvils on each other? Because Animaniacs has been over for a long time. Oh, God. I thought you didn't like Animaniacs. I don't like Animaniacs, but I used to watch it because it was on, you know? I used to like it when I was a small child. And besides, I sort of don't hate it anymore.

after watching it for anime chat, which is coming back instantly, I've gradually developed tolerance for it. So, yeah. That was because you've been browbeaten into having you tolerance for it. Well, no, I mean, it is awful. Like, it's an awful, hateful cartoon. Right. But it's okay.

It's like, it could be worse. It's better than, like, I was about to say it's better than modern cartoons, but it's not. It's, the modern cartoons are better in almost every way. Yeah. So I don't know why I said that. That's all just completely untrue on every level. But, no, that's nothing to do with Animaniacs. That was a video game.

Anamaniacs' gigantic adventure had no educational value. Trying to bring it back around. Animaniacs was related to Tiny Toon Adventures, Tiny Teen Adventures, was on in competition with Tumon and Pumba. I learned typing from typing with Timoon and Pumba. There we go. Oh, well done. Thank you.

I'm not going to say anything else about that, but I brought it back. Is that true? You learned typing from Typing with Timon and Pumba. Yeah, I had this thing called typing with Timon and Pumbo, or like Typing Adventure or something. thing. And it was just a series of mini-games that involved learning different sort of finger placements on how to touch type. And yeah, that's how I learned to touch type. See, we're not, I don't think we're that far apart age-wise, except I had definitely fully

learned to type before they invented the characters to Mone and Pumba. That feels weird. Yeah, well, maybe I'm just a little bit of a dumber. No, it really just... Maybe I'm just a little slow. Maybe that's just the way it goes. It shows that a few years are a long time. time in child years you know we can't all be to moan some of us have to be pumba I'm getting sleepy I'm getting sleepy yeah same I think we should consider you into the icy blue um it's a bric sack the lightest backpack it's me crack go back go back

I'm getting sleepy yeah same I think we should consider wrapping this a brilliant episode up to be honest um it's a brilliant episode We should put this on one of those gold discs and send it to space for the aliens to find out what retronauts was like. There is one more thing I want to share, though, and it is, I feel important. Now, this comes years after school. I am adult at this point, or not, maybe not an adult, but like getting towards being an adult. It was definitely at least 18, 19. So I guess legally an adult.

But anyway, point is, I discovered emulation, and I was playing basically every game because I could, because they were free now. Now, obviously I deleted them all after 24 hours. That goes without saying. Oh, yeah, of course. Because otherwise I would be doing time on me. You have to do this. Because otherwise you would be in breach of the law that we all made up

after making up the one about how after 10 minutes you're allowed to go home. Yeah. If the teacher doesn't show up. Yeah. But there was a game on the Super Nintendo called Thomas the Tank Engine. And I'm like, oh, I love Thomas Tank Engine. I'm going to play Thomas Tank Engine game for the memes, you know, for the lulls. What a cool 19-year-old you must have been.

Oh, for the lulls. Fair enough. Who cares? So I put it up and it's like, how old are you? I'm like, well, you know, your choices are like three to four, five to six or like eight. I don't know what happened to seven. So I chose eight. And of course, the game is absolutely piss easy.

It's incredibly... Even when turned up to maximum difficulty. Incredibly untaxing game. And there was a... One of the mini games in it is about building track, building train track. You get Thomas and you get the station. you have a certain amount of train track and you have to build the route

to get all the way around like a loop to the station and back to the other station Of course you I can picture it in my mind's eye right now It's top down Just from that description yeah Now I did do it on the earliest things

I did it on the medium ones Because I was like I want to see where this is going You know And I get to the hard one And this is just like in my memory very vividly I couldn't do it It was literally impossible It was like no

I was getting really frustrated because I even got to the point where I was using save states in placing these things. And I was getting really mad because I was like, no, this is actually impossible. Save scumming Thomas, the tank came in on the snow. I was saves coming Thomas. And I was actually getting mad because I was like, this can't be done. It is physically not possible to do with the pieces that I have. It can't be done.

And the solution after hours of trying to figure this out is it turns out that if you place a piece of standard track on a river, a bridge appears. Oh. There's no indication that's going to happen. It's not used anywhere else in the game, just that one spot. So you thought the river was a hard back. Yeah, I thought the river... You couldn't cross that. I mean, just a single piece of track doesn't...

Isn't a bridge, is it? It's a piece of track. And to this day, I still feel like that is deeply unfair. Was it that game where, like, I want to say one of the Follins did a really good recreation of the Thomas the Tank Engine theme tune for the title screen? Honestly, it almost certainly was. because I had Thomas the Tank Engine for the spectrum as well and it wasn't that

because I didn't have music on my spectrum to my knowledge or hardly any of the games anyway yes it was that I looked it up and yes it was that yeah it was the SNS game yes and it's actually like it's actually a good representation of the music like I listen to it expecting to go like

oh yeah I agree and instead I went more like oh yeah so it is I'm there there's something that we can have in this episode because I be wondering what music we're going to have in this I know, it's been difficult, isn't it? Because half of the stuff we've been talking about

It's just been clicks and beeps Maybe we can get all the look and read songs And that would be hot I'd like that Yes! Yeah But there you go Even a rucksack

The lightest backpack makes me crack Go back Go back I don't want to hear anything more About your crack going back That's enough Go back back back off Back away

I'm too thin to hold you today It was a song about thin ice Oh, clever. Well, I think what we've produced here is nothing short of the finest episode of Retronauts ever produced. Of a podcast. Of a podcast. Ever. And I think the only way to wrap this up, really, is to ask you, Mr. Bonner, where the hell can people find you?

And what the hell do you do? Well, I've taken all of the skills that I've learned via this old educational software. and I let it pour out of me in the form of content, creative content on the internet. And you'll find it, I mean, you'll find all of it if you go to my Twitter, which is Demon Tomato Dave. But you can hear my voice going on in the way that we have here, but less rambly, in a podcast called Sonic the Comic the podcast, where me and my friend Chris McFeeley, who is a YouTubeman, Transformers fans may have heard of him, talk about the British Sonic comics, which were examples of, it's a sort of thing that listens to this

might like, because it's, that that magazine had games reviews and games news of the time, so it was all like, we think this is about to happen in retro gaming, and then it doesn't, and we make fun of them when it doesn't. Like when they say, oh, the 32x is about to land and it's going to be one of the best-selling consoles

ever, or like the time when they say, we absolutely guarantee that Sonic X-Tream is going to come out at least next summer. And that's in an episode that's just happened and it's like no you know none of that took place but also they have they have comics and we tell you what happens in them if you're interested in that and we have special guests and we're quite funny sometimes and it's all silly so that's called sonic the comic the podcast i got another

one called serious disness for animation fans haven't updated that in a long time but if you've never heard it that doesn't matter to you so you might enjoy serious business i think i mentioned on a previous episode i listened to serious business and i was genuinely taken aback by how strongly analysis was not that i was expecting it not to be good, but I was expecting to be entertained, and rather than being entertained, I was actively engaged in like, oh my God, I'm thinking. Yeah, yeah. I've been made to think. This is, I eat horrible. I hate this. My head hurts so much. Exactly. So if you want to feel horrible and have a painful head, you can listen to series

or Sonic the Comic, the podcast, or nip over to Demon Tomato Dave on YouTube and watch Dave's first game, which covers many of the topics discussed today. It's extremely good, yeah. And it does so in a way that I could accurately consider to be more concise. If you are wanting to give some money to Retronauts to support Retronauts for a mere $5 per month, which, as I've said before, is a pitiful sum. Pitance. Pitance.

You will receive not one, but two full length. Patreon exclusive episodes every month that's like huh how many episodes that's two whole full episodes that's madness what are we thinking and you know you'll also be able to get

early access to the weekly Monday episodes which is just bonkers level of value as far as I'm concerned and you'd be sitting there back thinking well for five dollars that's a brilliant value I mean of course of course surely that's all that we get because anything more would be out of our minds

to give you anything more but we have we have what yeah you'll also get episodes of diamond fights tremendous mini podcast slash essays this week in retro and uh they're fantastic and they're only available as part of the patreon you'll also get benefits on the official retro nauts discord where you can go and uh witness me yelling at people who i think have said things that are wrong uh that's the that's the only thing that happens that no it's not uh but that's a me of five dollars per month and you two can be a Patreon support of a retronauts and, you know, we would super duper

appreciate it because we love making retronauts and if we had more patron money maybe this episode would have been ten times better. Can you imagine? Imagine this episode if it had had a cash injection. There'd have been a full big band orchestra.

There'd have been dancing girls. There have been... I was going to say like elephants balancing on balls and doing stuff with beach balls, but that's not... We'd have been able to afford... air conditioning and none of this would have been. Yes. Think about that.

So thank you very much for listening and until next time I forgot if there's a retroanauts thing I was supposed to say at the end. It's too hot. Bye everyone.