Retronauts - 570: Gex

Episode Date: November 6, 2023

It is, at last, Tail Time for Stuart Gipp and lizard-loving pals John Linneman and Thomas Nickel as they enter YOUR Media Dimension (brain and ears)! 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

This week in Retronauts, you've been asking for it, you've been begging for it, you've been on your knees, prostrating yourselves, saying, Stuart, please, when? When are you going to do it? When? Please, please, I've been waiting so long. I've given up so much. Please, Stuart, when? But now, at last, it's tale time.

Hello, I'm Stuart Jip, and as I said earlier in the very, very long intro, it is, in fact, tail time. And you know what that means? It means we're talking about geeks, finally. And at the time of recording, I've got COVID. Now, you wouldn't know it, because I've put on my exciting, enthusiastic, radio-ish voice to do this. But in reality, I feel like I'm going to die in like five seconds.

So before that happens, I think we'll introduce the fine gexateers who are with us today. Let's start with... Let's just go at random and see who answers. Right, I just start. I'm Thomas Nicol, and I currently

feel like I'm trapped in by George's pants. Oh, God. And hi, I'm John Lenneman again, here to talk more platform games because we've become kind of trio for talking weird obscure platform games that aren't Nintendo made. And I wouldn't have any other way. This is what I want. I want to have these little niches.

I want these little crews where we cover all of the different things that tickle my nipples. Now, Gex, of course, slightly relevant because limited run games recently announced that the Gex trilogy is coming to Carbon Engine, which is something I don't know a huge amount about, but all I know is that it means we're getting Gex back. So I guess that's an emulation kind of thing. Do you know about the carbon engine? Oh, yeah. It's a custom emulation thing that they have a team working on there

where they're sort of building from the ground up brand new emulators trying to create really optimal versions of games. But also it's not just the emulation, it's also the whole package around it. Right, right. A really nice menu systems and basically presenting the games in the best way possible. That's the goal. Is there anything out on the market yet in that engine that I'm just not realizing. is in that engine.

Yeah, there's definitely some stuff out there. Yeah, there's Shantae, for example, right? Oh, Shantae. The Game Boy Color Shanta, that was one, was it? That's one. There's the River City Gear Zero, as they called it, which was one of the of the... Of course. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And then, of course, they wouldn't want you to know it, but Bill and Tid.

Oh, okay. Well, I mean, I don't see why I wouldn't want you to know it when Bill and Ted's excellent Game Boy Adventure is one of the finest games on the system. You know I'm not joking when I say that. You know I'm not joking. I love that game. It's like manic minor, except, like, much better controls. It's certainly better than the Atari Links version of Bill and Ted. Yeah, it is, isn't it? Now, final question, does need for speed carbon running the carbon engine?

No. Thank you. Unrelated. Okay. That's good to know. Now, I guess the best place to start would be, I'll start with you, Thomas, I think. I'd like to know what your personal Gex experience is. Well, so what can I say about Gex?

I read about Gex in magazines back in the day when it was covered on 3DO, which was, of course, a system I couldn't even dream to afford back then. Oh, God, no, yeah. When the thing was hideously expensive. And then when it came to PlayStation, finally, I ignored it completely, and I later on bought the PlayStation version of the second X game, which was pretty neat, especially since I didn't have an N64 to play other 3D platformers. so I come in basically in the middle of the big epic gex trilogy yeah and for me I kind of played so I also followed the game in magazines I first played it on 3DO at my friend Chris's house who actually had a 3DO

wow shout to Chris yeah but then I ended up getting it first weirdly enough on Windows 95 for the PC which was a Microsoft published game weirdly enough But then, you know, I went on to play it on PlayStation a bit later after that and eventually Saturn as well. So I played all the different versions of Gex multiple times. It's a tough game. For the sequel, though, Enter the Gecko. I got into that actually first in the PC when I got a 3D effects voodoo card.

Oh, is it one of those games that like really specifically needs that card to run? I can't remember. I think it might work in direct 3D, but it came with in a bundle with my diamond. I got a diamond monster 3D card at a computer trade. show and the guy tossed in a couple games with it and Enter the Gecko was one of them and that's how I first played it and being a Mario 64 fan

I was like wow this is like you know actually having a 3D platform on the PC that wasn't crock even though I don't hate crock this felt much more like you know open ended and impressive at the time it's definitely I mean again I also like croc but it's definitely more

impressive than croc in terms of technology in terms of freedom oh yeah my experience with this game is quite typical of me to be honest which is that I didn't have it but I did have the strategy guide for Gex because there was this book sale right near my house that used to get remanded

books and strategy guides for games that nobody bought like the 3DO Gex they tended to turn up quite a lot so I still have this huge collection of old strategy guides that I really should value because it's probably quite valuable So there is a review there is a hint book

a book for Gex and 3O How about that? Yeah for the original I think it covers the other systems as well but yeah there is a big strategy guide like full colour like Primer guide for it and Prima Primer? I never knew if it was Prima or Prima but yeah I used to look at that because

you know I used to because I didn't have any games I'd like to go through these books and just like be like vicariously play these games and eventually I got to play Deep Cover Gecko which is the third Gex game but I'd been following them in magazines the entire time which was essentially until kind of emulation became a going concern that was how I

pretty much followed all games that won on the Sega Master System. So, yeah, love Deep Cover Gecko. When I went back to play the other ones, I, you know, I enjoyed them as well. I like deep cover. Sorry, that's what I just said. I always get them mixed up. Enter the Gecko, Deep Cover Gecko.

Enter was good fun. And the original geeks, I think it has some appeal, but we'll talk about it, you know. I don't hate it, but I don't think it's that good. So I guess we're going to get into it. And I think that might be a good clue to actually do just that. Indeed. So we should kick off. Indeed. So we should kick off with that original

geeks, obviously, because this is where the party started. And its story is an interesting one. So it begins with Crystal Dynamics. You guys know Crystal Dynamics, right? Yeah, absolutely. Tomb Raider? Yeah, they've been making Tomb Raider games since taking it over from core design

after Angel of Darkness. Yeah. And they did a good job as well. Yeah, they also did the Avongers, as I call it, which is the knockoff Avengers game. Les Avengeers, you mean? Les Avengers, well, yes. Did they do Legacy of Cain?

I may completely miss... They absolutely did. Well, they did Soul Reaver specifically. Not the first one. No, but they published the first one. Yeah. But all of this is getting ahead of the horse here. Yes, it is.

Sure. Getting ahead of the GECO. Crystal Dynamics was kind of spun off as a company, started up specifically to create 3DO software, right? Like that was their objective, and that's what they did. And in fact, that's really important because they had the one and only launch title for 3DO, which was Crash and Burn. Now imagine this.

This 3DO launches in 93. It's like $699 US dollars and it has exactly one game. And it's a racing game from Crystal Dynamics, which is a brand new company. Now, Crash and Burn is actually a very decent little game. But when you're spending that kind of money, it's very slight to say the lead. It's hard to think about how consoles did launch with so few. games back in the day. Like, nowadays, they'd want like 20 games on the shelf, like, surely by minimum I

would have thought. Absolutely. You need a lot of games. Back then, I mean, honestly, even by 1993 standards, it was pretty low. Like, you know, Super NES, Genesis, they all launched with at least more than a one game. And the Jaguar launched with three, but it may as well have been zero, given how bad they were. Yeah, I remember then the Nodendos 64 launching with not that many, but I might be completely

misremembering that. You're right. What's like that? What's three games? It was Mario 64 in there, right? Yeah, the game, which is many games. Crash and Burn is not Mario 64. It's not. It's almost as good, but not quite. Needless to say, though, that did actually put Crystal Dynamics on the map,

and they continue to work on 3DO games. So they would release Total Eclipse and Offworld Interceptor Next in 94, as well as something called The Horde, which was a strategy game. I remember that, yeah. Yeah, pretty good. But outside of the Horde, I guess, they were mostly focused on 3D graphics. But at the time, bubbling in the background, starting right with the company, was a little thing called Gex. And a reg tag team got together.

Let's see, there's like Mira, Ross, Suzanne Daugherty, Lyle Hall, and the lead programmer. Looking at his blog actually on it here. And the thing is, is like, they wanted to make a new mascot game for the 3DO because in 93, mascots were still big right Sonic was relatively new you know 91 93 not not a big difference and that's kind of what gamers still felt that consoles needed

and there was this race it's the mascot wars which is something I'd like to talk about in more detail at some point oh I'd be happy to do that you know me I love my mascots yeah right I mean Arrow the Acrobat there's Bugsby there's Sparkster Hermie Hopperhead absolutely peak what do you want that

those were late though Awesome possum Awesome possum Don't forget about that guy Was an attempt He's not You know Awesome possum

Bothers me Because there's a voice clip Of the villain saying Like you're not so awesome And he's right Like you can't Disagree with him The villain is just objectively correct

He's not so awesome Exactly You're only run at less than 30 frames per second Awesome possum You suck But Gex though is awesome Though it started out In kind of a weird situation

So From what I can tell it seems like they couldn't initially figure out what they wanted gex to be like at one point he was like a stunt gecko known as gecko x and was tasked with like turning profits around for some like hollywood studio and that meant he'd have to go into different levels like you choose like levels based on themes like there's a western cowboy movie and you have to like you know fix their problems uh there and it was super it sounds very strange but that eventually gets kind of It sounds kind of like bug. Bug kind of did that, right? Bug kind of did, but I think they were trying to ground this and make it more like real in a way, which I'm not sure how well that would have worked. But there was at least some of the TV stuff in there already, though. The idea of like TV remotes and TV related levels was already in the game at that point.

But then they did another concept with a character called Rezul by Dan Airy, or also. Ari. I'm saying his name right. And he had his like video warriors, which were other characters made of TV static. Oh, wow. And they built several worlds around that, including, uh, the graveyard art set, which is important because that is something that would make it into the final game. They also had like these like pseudo 3D rail chase games, kind of like where the screen would proceed into, uh, it's, it's like sprite base, but it would proceed into the, level, kind of like, I guess, you know, what is it, there are other games, like Offworld Interceptor, right?

But it would have been done with sprites. And the idea was like, Gex would be running into the screen, which is something Nottie Dog would do years later with Crash Bandicoot, right? Sort of like the GIGO arcade game or Alligator Hunt. Yeah, yeah, like, yeah, I think that's what they, I've not actually seen it. This is just what the lead programmers talked about, but it seems like that was the initial goal was to have levels like that as well. Right, right.

And they kind of hit this roadblock where they realized, like, making art for a platform like 3DO was just more expensive and time consuming. Because, you know, like on a Super Ones or a Genesis megadrive, you have, you know, a limited set of tiles. You can fit in memory. And you're kind of building the game levels from all these different tiles and assembling it that way. Whereas the 3DO didn't have like a normal tile-based renderer. It had like the cell engine rather than like the tile and sprite acceleration. so they were actually working with like big bit mapped graphics and they could do a lot of bespoke artwork

and like really complicated stuff visually, even if it doesn't seem like a big jump up in terms of what they were doing art-wise, it was. And it just took them a lot of time to make that stuff and they didn't have enough people on the team. And they were not, despite them wanting to make a competitive, like mascot platform game, it sounds like they couldn't get the staff they needed to do it.

And when they did start to get artists in, And they couldn't necessarily get the art done quickly enough or the type of art that they needed didn't really work out that well. And it just seems like the game went into development hell, which continued for a long time with this was a huge crunch period. Months of work, they missed launch dates. And you got to think they actually launched this thing in 1995, which, you know, that's two years into the three-year life cycle, but already it's on the precipice of death. Yep, it sure took a while. It is interesting, though, that Evan Wells did work on this game, which, you know, he went on to be a big, big guy at Noddy Dog, but he was involved with Gex as well. So there's a lot, there's definitely some interesting origins here, but in the end, obviously, they did eventually get the game out.

It came to market, and, you know, as we know, the rest is history. It wasn't necessarily a huge deal, but it was still well respected enough. Yeah, I mean, people took note of it. That's the big thing, I think. They do. Maybe not so much in the UK. I imagine in the UK it was just met with, er, 2D. I think it's too early for that.

Yeah, I still think it was at a time when 2D was well respected enough. And this idea of having all the voiced lines and like, you know, the CD quality sound and the more complex art stuff, all of that was really impressive at the time. Yeah. The final thing, though, I wanted to mention at the end of this blog here, he mentioned, he mentions, a little anecdote about how at the end of one of the levels they had this section where

oh yeah so at the end of a Kung Fu level there's parts they had to remove because they were buggy and they had to remove them rather than shipping them with the game and apparently one of the developers put in this message that said something like didn't you think this level had some cool shit in it

this level was cut because the company didn't put you the customer first but just wanted to make money call Madeline Kenepa at this number and give her a piece of your mind in my mind too. It didn't have a real phone number though, but like a playtester apparently found the message

and pointed out that the publisher which was Matsushita or Panasonic probably wouldn't have taken kindly to it given that they were going to bundle it with the 3DO in certain countries. So the designer got fired over that. I mean, to be honest, you can't really blame them, can you?

No, no. Jesus Christ. You've got to hide that stuff better, guy. That was a, that was not a smart move. If you want to put something like that in, you've got to do something like Wild Woody, you've got to have the topless lady really well-hidden. Like, you can't stumble across that shit. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I mean, you're right.

You pointed out, but there was still this culture back then of hiding stuff in games, which is a lot less common these days for obvious reasons. Yeah, it's a pity. Yeah. Well, it gets patched out. Like they put that reference to it to Coroner V-Tuber in Doom Maternal, and then they immediately got patched out. So if I may just interject one small anecdote about that

because it's so good, not else. So I knew this artist guy a long time ago who went to a certain company making games and he made textures for that game. And since he is a guy at an artist in the game industry, he put in lots of dicks into this textage which you could not see because of the resolution. Then a couple of years later,

they made an HD patch some sort of thing for better resolution of all of a sudden everybody could see all of the Dixie hit in there Jesus so yeah hidden stuff in games

there you go lovely I think my favorite example of that there's, it's, it wasn't streets of SimCity, there was like some, oh yeah, I can't remember what it was, but it just like, everyone is just like a really like buff sort of swimsuit guy or something. I can't remember what it was, but it was triggered like really remarkably easily. That's hilarious. Yeah. But yeah.

So, yeah. So, yeah. So, I mean, this is a game. Yeah. Something that I read, I mean, according to the retrogamer history of this game, like, when it was, when it began, because it was sort of began like late 92 development and didn't come out till 95, but when it began, like, Donkey Kong Country wasn't a thing. Right, that's true. And the artists, I forget, Suzanne, something you said, I think it was, wanted to do the pre-rendered graphics. She wanted to, like, like, render Gex, and the team was kind of like, no, we're not doing that.

like we're not going that direction. And then it was one of those things where he forced to concede later. Like, okay, we'll do that because Doggong Country did it. I think they actually found a nice balance there, though, because they did be some rendered character stuff, but the actual backgrounds are still like more pixel art style, right? It's a, I think it's interesting that you mentioned in the becoming development hell because I do think that the difference in the, in the art style throughout the game kind of reflects that in a way.

I know to a point it's intended because you're going to these different worlds with these different gimmicks but it doesn't gel that well I don't think like some areas look like they're just out of a different game entirely and it's a little bit jarring I think it's I don't dislike it

I think it's actually quite effective in a way but it's not a very coherent game visually actually so maybe we should actually now that it's out you know in regards to this podcast let's talk about what the game actually is about and how much structured. Yeah, yeah.

So... Well, I mean, it's... This game's a pretty traditional 2D platform game where you go around sort of, you know, worlds and in maps collecting remote controls that let you turn on different televisions that you can then jump into and each television is a different level

hiding another remote control or two, most likely. But they sort of designed the character moves first and then sort of worked backwards. So it's a very... because you could climb walls and ceilings and things, that's one of the reasons you have being a gecko. Because a lot of this game is about crawling around and slurping things up with your gecko tongue

and, you know, tail whipping things like real geckos do all the time. So, yeah, you're right. That's the basic structure. And it all deals with geeks like during an intro cinematic being sucked into a television world by the evil big bag. Because he's obsessed with television because he's depressed because his father died. Like, what the fuck?

Yeah, it's pretty messed up. It sure is. Imagine that in Mario, just like, Limeji like, Mario, we have, we must save for the Mushroom Kingdom, and Mario's just like,

I don't know, I'm still grieving. But, you know, that sets him up for, like, being one of those, like,

pop culture guys that just knows all these, like, one-liners, which you hear a lot of them out. Yeah, hilarious one-liners. I mean, you'd think they'd learn from Bubsy,

but nobody learns anything, do they? Yeah, but the difference is, this game came on CD, right? So that meant, He could play these clips constantly.

And there was a lot of voice over lines. A couple of hundred, right? Yeah, there's a ton. And they're all unique per world, right? So it actually does change as you progress. There are some generic ones, but yeah, most of them are. Yeah, yeah. So, yes, so the way you set it up then,

it is this basically like a traditional platformer thing where you have this like an overworld, which is like this TV world. And within that, there's like the five different worlds you can go to, the subworlds. And within each subworld, you have to find remotes in the levels to unlock new levels, and then eventually the boss. And the levels are, you know, it's traditional platforming, but there's a lot of different sort of things that get mixed up in there and turn, especially with the climbing, because it's not just climbing on ceilings, walls, et cetera. They also have you climbing on like the back wall, so like into the scenery.

Yeah. And they do a lot of trickery with that. Like there's some levels that are extremely vertical where you're like making your way. up to the top, and, you know, it relies heavily on the system, right? Yeah, yeah. It's got that kind of, I don't want to say, like, Pitfall of Mine Adventure style, because I think it's a little bit more linear than that. Yeah, it is.

I remember them talking about them wanting to do a kind of a Japanese-style level design where it teaches you the game mechanics through play rather than tutorials, but then in the game there are, in fact, tutorials. But the thing is, I think it does feel closer to a Japanese game, to one of the European platforms because the levels are more straightforward and less the as they call it, which we'll learn from you guys

less airplane hangar. I mean there are like warp zones hidden which is called which are fun to find you know well hidden secrets and things I like the way they integrate the theming with the novel design just to use the graveyard stage as an example because it's the first one

the way that you've got sort of the guillotine all over the place almost straight out of like goals and ghosts you've got the skeletons in the coffins popping in and out and all of the enemies change in each world as well I don't think there are any sort of generic enemies maybe the flying TVs but that's about it but it's a nice way of creating a sense of variety and even within the different worlds

the levels do feel quite distinctive I find yeah I think that's actually one of its biggest strengths is like the art style and the feeling of the levels is so different like you said you start in that graveyard world But then you end up in, like, Tune Town, which is a cartoon-themed area with these checkerboard backgrounds. And then you go to, like, a Japanese garden-style area. I got to, I got to say, I don't remember that stage very well, but would it be, I bet some of the wisecracks in that haven't aged very well. I bet there's some racist stuff in there.

Somebody said that recently, and I actually looked it up. And there is a, somebody assembled all of Gex's lines into a database. Right. And I found that today when it's researching, yeah. And I found that most of them are fairly innocuous. They're not as bad as I thought they could be. They could have been so much worse. Okay, that's good to hear.

I'm glad that Gex isn't big at it. But we haven't even mentioned, I guess, the fact that Gex is voiced by Dana Gould, right? Yeah. That's kind of one of the big things. They actually got an actual comedian to do the voiceover. Dana Gould, best known for appearing in live action in that one episode of Family Guy where Brian Griffin debates his book on the television. Yeah.

Also, I think he was a Simpsons writer. It was a Simpsons writer, but not when it was particularly good, unfortunately. But not when it was particularly terrible, either. I agree. And I would say his voice acting in the game is actually quite entertaining. It's not bad. I don't have a problem with it at all. It's not his fault that they repeat lines so often.

No, exactly. I think he does an okay job. And some of the lines are kind of lame, but his delivery is about as good as you can expect. And it's nice that in the US, at least, there's a consistency in his voice acting, because that is not the case in the UK. we'll get to. Well, there is an interesting thing as well. So there's a Japanese version of this game.

Oh, yes. Which I do have. And that, uh, so the intro movie is dubbed into Japanese in that version by a different actor, I guess. But the game itself still has Dana Gould's lines. But by default, they're disabled. So you actually have to go to the options menu and say, turn on, you know, the gex voice. So I guess it's like they, because they didn't dub over the in game lines, I'm wondering if they're just kind of trying to sweep it under the rug, so to speak. default. So what you're saying is the Japanese

version is objectively the best version of the game by default. Potentially. One could argue that. Well, I'd like to hear them read some of those lines and try and translate those gags into Japanese localized gags. I would have thought I would have been quite interesting actually. Yeah. But I kind of want to get back to what Thomas, you said earlier

about the level design, and that I do think when you look at American-made platforms of this era, if we look at all the regions, Japan, Europe, America, I think American-made platformers were far and away the weak during the 16-bit era. Well, what are we thinking, when we say American platformers, for example, sorry, what are we

talking about here? Well, you tell me, how many really great American-made platformers can you think of? Well, I mean, I guess all I can think of is pitfall and Earthworm Jim. Right, but those came quite late. Yes, they did. That's true. Beyond that, I don't really know. It's hard to think beyond that, which, what I mean, because all I

think of is Japanese games and, you know, Amiga games, and those are Europeans. So, I mean, it's not brilliant, but there is good chameleon from the States, for example, which isn't... Oh, that's not brilliant at all. It's not good at all. As I said, it's still one of the better ones, I think.

Yeah, yeah, that's fair. I agree with that, yeah. Normie's Beach Baberama, it's that American. Green Dog as well. Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jackan. There's chakhan, of course. Chacken the forever man.

Oh, God. Yeah, that's horrendous. And there's also, oh, there's Tasmania, of course. Oh, okay, I've got nostalgia for it, but it's not good. Yeah. Oh, jeez. What was that? Hey, wait a minute.

Why do Americans always have a go at European games when they were putting out such shite? I'm just, I'm furious now. How dare they insult our games? You just discovered a thing, and I think they're going to take you away now. I can't believe this. I agree with you, Stu. I've always wondered that as well. They always have a go at these, at the European and UK-made games, but.

And they were okay. You see me pretending that Mario 3 isn't better than every spectrum game, no. I'm not going to pretend that. There was an X-Men games in Genesis. Oh, no. Ex-mutants. Oh, those are stinkers. Dude, there's so many, like, it's, wait, no, that's ocean.

What about Fantasia? Did they do Fantasia? Oh, that's French. That's French. Oh, okay. Fair enough. I mean, there's a lot of bad European and UK games as well. Oh, yeah.

Don't get me wrong, but, yeah. But just to mention that, John just found out this week and that Chuck Rock It's not terrible. Really? I hate the character, but the gameplay is not as bad as I thought. Okay, well, we'll get into that in the Chuck Rock episode coming up. Yeah. But the point is, like, you know, American-made platform games during the 16-bit and 8-bit era, I would say, are largely terrible.

And I guess there was some stuff on the PC, like, you know, Apogee stuff. But even then, compared to... Because they had ambition. That's the difference. It does travelware. There was interesting stuff from Apogee, but I would say their platform games were still generally much worse. than what the best Japanese games were on consoles. Oh, I mean, yeah, I don't think anyone would dispute that.

I mean, I was playing Jilla the Jungle recently, and I was enjoying it for what it was, you know. Yeah. But compare that to like Mario, even Mario 1 in 1985, and it can just fuck off, to be honest. So that's my point. As you look at Gex and like the quality of the design in Gex is so far ahead of most American-made platform games,

especially for when it was being made, that I really have to like hand them like, serious credit there because they made something that was pretty good. I mean, my only problem with it, personally, and I don't want to get bogged down on it, is I do feel like Gex is a little bit slippery to control, but when you're not on a wall, but when you are on a wall, he's almost too sticky. He's very sticky, yeah. The levels aren't ever seemingly designed to kill you with that. You're never going to need to be, like, both quick and precise. Really, it's quite a slow-paced game. It's pretty hard, though, I would say.

It is pretty hard, but not... I mean, it's much harder if you're just running headlong into everything. It's not really meant... You really have to play carefully, yeah. Yeah, but you have so many offensive options, I think, that it's kind of okay. Offensive, I like that. Yeah, they're both offensive and offensive, so... Yeah, but you've got the tail bounce, you've got the tail swing,

you can shoot, like, fireballs once you've got the upgrades and such. So the thing is, when I played Gex for the first time, not too long ago at John's Playton 3DO, I have no nostalgia for Gex, whatever. And I think one of the first things I mentioned is, this feels pretty good, actually. Yeah. Didn't I? I think that's what I said. Yes, you did.

You were surprised. Like, oh, this feels pretty good. And I agree. It actually, it plays well. It feels like a good game. And I think it actually, it's fun to kind of joke about, but I think X1 is actually decent. Yeah, well, no. I would agree that it's decent.

I'd say it was above average. I wouldn't put it much more than that. I think that when I compare it to its. sort of taking away from the 3DO a little bit and talking PS1 here and Saturn, when I compare it to its contemporaries on PS1 and Saturn, it's, again, it's definitely better than quite a lot of those attempts at 2D platforms that you get there.

I really like, for example, Lomax, but it's probably better than Lomax. Yeah, yeah. Lomax is gorgeous, but really annoying. It has problems. And I love it. I mean, I'm biased because I had it as a kid, so I've got a lot of nostalgia for it, but it's not a great game by any means. It's better than like obvious shit like

god what like spider like cheesy or like yeah you know what this game was competing with on 3DO Johnny

bazook atone oh that's not that sucks I have tried I have tried so hard to like that game because I feel like I should because it's got

so much of the things that I like about a game but then you actually try and play it and it's horrible it's horrendous horrifying it's garbage

so yes this is dramatically better than that. Yeah, agreed, strongly agreed. But there is one caveat I think is worth mentioning. And this, this always kind of like shocked me is the fact that so this was designed as a 3DO showpiece and like a mascot for the platform, right? And then it comes out and it barely runs at 30 frames per second. It drops below that a lot. Like this is a 20 to 30 frames per second game, right? But it's a 2D platformer. Like 2D platformers on 16 bit machines are almost universally 60 frames per second.

Yeah, whether or not it's a big problem. Right? 3D, no, this 699, well, it wasn't 699 when this game came out, but you know, this expensive machine with these supposed next generation tech capabilities, we couldn't even do this game at 60 FPS. That's not good.

But the reason is that, again, it ties back into the cell engine of the 3DO, and the way the 3DO draws its graphics. It doesn't have the tile and sprite acceleration features of those consoles, right? So, like, drawing a large scrolling play field costs a lot more in terms of processing resources and it was a similar problem that the 32x had yeah which is why platform game like the pitfall the mind adventure port to 3d or 32x

where like so the background's rendered by the megadrive but the foreground is higher color and done by the 32x in the background the megadrive layer is still 60 fps but the foreground 32x is like 20 to 30 FPS at best that makes me that makes me so that makes me so sad. So basically, this generation of hardware, like this new stuff with the 3D capabilities was basically made in a way where it was no longer well suited to making a platform game.

So Crystal Dynamics was given a very difficult task here to do a scrolling platform game on the 3DO. So it's a game that was designed to sell a console, but is better on every other console that it is port to. Correct. Yep. Good stuff. Well done. So that's, that was

always one of those weird things. And I forgot about that until I revisited like 15 years ago when I purchased my own 3DO and I was like, wait a minute, this runs bad. But again, I pose this question now to the two of you because I can't, I don't remember what it was

for me back in the day. Did we notice these frame rates so much back then? You did? I do. I wouldn't have if I'd only played that version. If I played both versions, I would be like, yeah, this one's way better. But

back in the day, I wasn't super alike. I mean, I definitely noticed when games ran differently to other games, but I mean, I would have failed, yeah. I would have sat back then, yeah, it feels a bit tropeer than I'm used to, but I couldn't have put my finger on it. What was the difference?

For sure, yeah. But nowadays, if I wanted to play Gex, there's no force on Earth that would make me play a 3-D version over any of the others. It's neat, well, to be fair, though. Is there a top version for it? Is there a version that is significantly better than the others? So that's the weird thing.

and look every version has its own strengths and weaknesses yes which is unexpected the 3DO version actually has the best visuals uh the background the colors in the background the way they do the shading and the sort of dithering it's more detailed on 3d0 they actually sort of like reduced the color quality on the other platforms yeah which so it ends up looking a little worse there it's also missing a few special effects like when you would go into the portals they would zoom the whole stage in on 3DO because it was just like, you know, like a 3D object kind of thing. On the other versions, they only scale the sprite.

So it's actually kind of like they couldn't replicate that same effect. And the same with some of the power-ups. Like they do these really crazy like special effects on 3DO. And all the other versions, it's not nearly as impressive, especially like Saturn where it's all dithered and like low color looking. So that's interesting. So I wondered if some of the transparencies were different on like Saturn and PS-1. That's a very common thing.

Absolutely. they're different. Yeah. And on PS1, you also get some additional dithering because it's, you know, PS1.

This is PS1, yeah. The Windows, sorry, you're about to say. Yeah, the Windows version, Windows 95. So the same guys that did the pitfall

and Earthworm Gym ports, I think, worked on this. This is the version I played at home myself at the back of the day. And this is the version you can still buy on Gog. Yeah.

Here's the thing. This one is based on the 3DO version in the sense that it runs at 30 frames per second. Oh, for God's sake. Just like that. So the PC technically kind of had the same issues in terms of targeting high frame rates for platform games back then. But, you know, when this launched, Pentiums were out there and it could have done better and it didn't. It's the same thing that happened with the PC port of Sonic 3D Blast, which also is 30 frames per second.

Wow. Why I know all this? I can't tell you, but it's just, it's something I've been fascinated with. And it's, but if you want to play this game at 60, it's Saturn or PlayStation. And as a result, I do have to say, even though they look slightly worse, those versions do play much, much better. Yeah. The only real caveat here is that I think it's only the 3DO version has the save feature.

Right. The others have passwords. That's interesting. Because, yeah, you have to collect like a videotape to save your game. Correct. And, yeah, that's odd. That's surprising. That explains a lot because I've always, when I've played this game,

I've only played the 3Dio version once, so that was through emulation. And when I played it on PS1, which is how I've mostly played it, I found myself thinking, when do I get to save? I know I've got a tape, but like, why can't I save the game? The way it works there is when you get those tapes, after you clear the level, it'll show like the spine of the tape and there's a password written on it. Yeah. And that's how you save.

You basically write down the password. Interesting. Okay, well, that explains a lot. It's biogenic in a way. Wow. Yeah. Right. But on 3DO, are they like inserted into like a virtual tape machine and you just like save from there?

That's really unusual that they wouldn't retain that feature. But I don't know. Wow. Weird. Another interesting thing that Thomas, you also saw here over here was Crystal Dynamics did a 3Dio port of Samurai Showdown. Yep. And that one also runs at a lower frame rate than the NeoGeo, but it does retain like the full high-res assets. And it looks very comparable to that version.

and even has like the camera zooming in and out. All of it's there. It just runs slower. So like they were one of the few developers that were also doing 2D graphics on 3DO in a pretty decent way. So I've got to ask, it's a little bit off topic and I apologize, but like does the 3DO have any like killer apps?

Is there like a banger game for the 3DO that's worth buying a 3DO for? So that, I mean, a lot of the stuff was ported, right? But I think games like the original, well, 1994 version of Roadrash is a killer app. Yes, of course. Yes, yes. I forgot about that. Yeah, no, I have to agree with that one.

Yeah, because the PS1 version is not as good. But, John, why would you talk about road rash now? I don't understand. Oh, because I just did a two-hour retrospective on it on D.F. Retro. Oh, my. How about that? Isn't that only accessible to patrons at the moment? Yeah, but it will.

It is currently, it will eventually go public, but it is currently to- Don't say that. Don't say that. No one's going to subscribe. Man, we are giving you such a nice... I don't know when this episode's going to. going to go live. It's going to be a while. 20, 25. I mean, I'm really looking

forward to seeing that one, I have to say. There's also a some other killer apps. It got a port of Super Street Fighter 2. Oh, I heard about this. That is really good. Yeah. It's stunningly good. Like, for when it released, it was extremely close to the arcade in many ways.

And it had an arranged CD audio soundtrack and like super quick loading. Wow. So like, it's actually like an awesome version of that game. Stuff like Return Fire was really good. Killing Time, P-O'd, I actually like. Killing Time. Isn't there a bit of good Wing Commander on there?

Yeah, Wing Commander 3, you get an excellent port. I'm sorry, but I'm challenging Killing Time as being a killer app for anything. I've played that game. It's not actually a killer app, but it's... I'm not having that. Okay, fair enough. I'll accept that it's interesting. I like a... I offer D, by the way.

Oh, yeah. D. NGiano. Okay. That's cool. Uncut, of course. So, and then, you know, there was games like police knots came to the 3DO. Oh, wow. Which was really cool.

And there was a bunch of Japanese exclusive stuff. I think Lucian's Quest is quite interesting. Lucian's Quest is pretty good. There's a Sailor Moon fighting game on there. It's like 2D pixel art. It's pretty good. Oh, the 3Dio kicks ass. I had no way to do.

The Japanese liked it quite a bit for some reason. Yeah, it was popular. I heard that. Yeah, yeah. Did they get ports of any sort of the laziness games and things like that? Well, I think so. Like Mad Dog McCree, I think is on there.

But not like Timegal or the Taito stuff. coming out on switch suit. Man, we'll check in Tokyo in September. It's going to be awesome. So, yeah. You know, the 3DO, it's not necessarily an amazing machine these days, but it's cool and interesting new experience. Are they expensive to buy now?

They're not that bad. I think quite cheap, actually. The key with 3DO is that there is no copy protection. Yeah, I was about to ask about that. Can you just burn games to a CD? You can burn games to a CD and then break the CD after 20 hours, yeah. Yeah, yeah, for 24 hours, yeah. You know what I'm going to be.

But yeah, that's pretty much like, that's pretty much like, that's the Gex release stuff, you know, came to 3DO, did okay for them, but then ended up getting poor. to other platforms, and that's kind of where the franchise really started to take off, I suppose. Yeah, and he must have made an impression on, like, PlayStation. Absolutely. Because 1998, which is later than I thought, actually, he came back, which would be, I want to say two years after the PS1 version of Gex. Yeah. Enter the Gecko comes around, and Gex Enter the Gecko, of course, the sequel moves to 3D platformer, which at this point, on the PlayStation is still

relatively elusive or at least in terms of being true 3D or like proper sort of full 3D but now I have read that this is the first like full 3D camera PS1 platformer that seems unlikely like is it definitely no

it's not I mean there's obviously Bubsy 3D oh of course Bubsy 3D yeah how can I say what you will but it's it is a 3D platformer with a free roaming design I would also put out something like, I don't know, Jumping Flash, even though it's first person, it's still kind of a platform game.

Yeah, yeah. But this, you know, the thing is, is by 98, this wasn't even the only, I guess you could say Crystal Dynamics has done a bunch of other stuff between Gex and Into the Gecko, including they made two games called Pandemonium. So Pandemonium, Panamonium 2, which are 2D platform games, but they use 3D graphics. So it's like the camera. They were big back in the day. yeah they were popular and they even got Japanese version

are the Japanese version is called magical hoppers and has an anime redesign you go I mean I'm not disrespecting

pandemonium but when I go back to pandemonium and I play it which I have done relatively recently and then I hear that

those games were popular which I know they were I want I think about how different things were like a game like that could take off

because like I mean I mean we will get there when we talk about how Gagged 3D plays because it feels a bit

a bit dated nowadays. Indeed. And, you know, most of the... I hate saying that, but yeah, it's, I think that's why I'm

mentioning their other games as well. It's like they, this was this time of experimentation, like figuring out how to do movement with 3D polygons, with characters. Like vehicle stuff, Crystal Dynamics was doing that for years,

right? But actual 3D character movement was still new to them and new to many other developers and I think they did okay in the grand scheme of things like when you look at the whole library of early 3D games but it's definitely kind of rough but obviously gex into the gecko being that it's January 98 I feel like this is this is a game where they looked at the success of Mario and they're like yeah we we want to do that but with gex and I mean if you compare now

stuff like pandemonium and clonoa this is such such a difference I think that deep-cover gecko is, sorry, I did it again. Enter the Gecko. I always get in the mixed up because they have such similar names. Enter the Gecko, I think it's actually aged better than quite a lot of PS1 3D platforms because the fully visuals are so stylized. The way that this game feels to me when I control it is that it was designed around the D-pad, the digital controller rather than the analog sticks, which you can use with it.

Oh, yeah. but they don't quite feel right, I don't think. No, they don't. It's like trying to play Craspandakut 1 with anything other than the D-Pad. It's just weird. So it feels like this to me. You have the velocity on the analog sticks, so you can walk slowly and faster,

but you only have a-direction still. So this is why I think it feels weird. Oh, really? Okay. It's very rigid in that regard. I didn't realize that. I mean, Deep cover is definitely better for it in that respect, but the fact that this game is quite rigid, I think, almost assist.

it because it means that you can't really get like it's all very precise you know the controls and the levels aren't particularly big but they are quite dense with things like with objects with collectibles with like platforms and enemies and things so I never found myself like you're just running an empty space

there's always something going on to engage you I think this is actually a pretty good game in my opinion I think this and the next one are pretty good but this one Like, I felt it held up reasonably well. I enjoyed playing it, because it really did kind of just feel like playing a 16-bit game, but translated into sort of semi-well, not Sammy, but into 3D, in a way that retains the playability of a 2D platformer, I think.

Well, what I found difficult, though, was orientation in the levels, because they are quite big. They are, in many cases, separate into several rooms, and I never really knew where I am right now, and, of course, the camera also adds to that. Yeah, I think that's true, but at the same time, that doesn't really hinder you much in the goals, because if it's like get three of these things,

they're usually all in the same area. Are there any ones that become real troublesome, I would say, are the ones where you do need to get like every single collectible. And I can't recall if this game actually has that or not. I know that Deep Cover Gecko has Get 100 Flycoins as one of the remotes, but ends the Gecko, I don't know if it does that, you'll get one-ups as you collect the items and I think that's what they're for

but I thought that Enter the Gecko held together reasonably well it is dated definitely but compared to games contemporary games like fucking sorry I keep swearing because I hate this game so much Rascal I don't know if you've played that one it's stinking

but games like that and cheesy and other contemporary 3D platformers on the I guess the closest would be crock because they're both reptilian 3D platform games but I mean, Croc is fun, but Croc is like baby's first, like, game, you know. Croc is basic as hell, and Gex is a little bit more sophisticated, but it's dated. I can't disagree with that.

Yeah, although it does, again, this kind of ties into, like, having the different worlds and themes again, right? And that's, and each one is going to have broken up into chunks. And while I do think, Thomas, you're right, that it can be kind of disorienting at first, the areas are, fairly small to the point where I feel like you can get your bearings pretty quickly it's just that initial entry into a stage where you kind of feel like what's going on here

It feels that the stages feel to me like because they're kind of this wide linear kind of thing they almost feel like Crash Bandicoot stages that just happen to have a couple of alternate routes you can take Yeah I know what you mean Because like especially in the early game Like obviously the Toontown might as well be a Crash Bandicoat stage

There's one bit where you're just in a side area which you are very, very clearly signposted where you drop in and then suddenly you're in Lunytoon's Pastiche and your Bugs Bunny, basically. Thinking of that, you're right, it has like Elmer Fudd in there basically the equivalent. And that's, they really lean into that into this game because it's pretty much all like film references.

Like I think the secondary is called like Smell Razor. It is, yeah. And there's like... It's like a Dracula Castle kind of place. Yeah. There's like a honey. I shrunk the gecko stage. Polter Gecks, stuff like that. Samurai Night Fever.

But I think my favorite is that one of the levels is called, like, I think it's www.w.com.com, which is like so perfect for when this released. Yeah, yeah. Right. I mean, this is, this is the way the game is dated outside of its feel. Like, this is, like, the game is, uh, this, this one is a bit more generic. But when we get to deep cover, you, we'll see a lot more like, oh boy, like real like dated 90s, 2000s sort of stuff. But, uh, I, I, I think this one is still worth a go. I mean, I played it relatively for the first, because I played Deep Cover Cocoa first and the most, so I never really felt the need to go back,

but I did go through this on the Vita quite recently, and I felt really good on the Vita, I have to say. I had a lot of fun playing it on that thing, because they re-released all of the Gex games on the PSN, and I think you can actually still go and buy them if you have a PS3 set up, so that's kind of nice, but, you know, that's not necessarily anymore because they're coming out through limited runs, so let's go. True, true. I will say, they made some pretty smart decisions on the tech side with how they present gex like doing a four-legged creature that's very well animated in a 3D space that was pretty tricky for the time but one of the things that they did with this character is that

he's primarily like flat shaded they don't use a lot of textures on gex which was kind of like the achilles heel of playstation right because you get close to a texture warps with affine texture swimming but gex himself is just like uses like a vertex painting and like colors basically. So he's just like flat polygon shapes with colors, except for maybe on his back, there's some texture work. But as a result, like even today, like his character model just looks good. Yeah, but it's, it's that angular kind of a cartoony look to him. And does that help when they're rescinding him for like the different stages when he gets different outfits and stuff? Yeah, I'm sure it does. But it also means that even when the camera gets close to him,

he doesn't look like a mess of pixels. Like, his model looks clean. Well, in general, it was a big deal in terms of tech that the way Gax was created as a character with bones and skin and everything, which was not usual back then. That's right. He had a full skeleton system, which, you know, creating skeletons for 3D models was something that would become kind of the norm. I think Half-Life did it as well in 98, and it was very important towards advancing, like, animation in 3D. but in 98 it was extremely new and Gex did in fact have a full skeleton system for Gex and they show knew how to hype that fact as well

because I still recall that from the article from back of the day that I read so that everybody mentioned that explicitly yeah he has a skeleton system now that's high tech that's awesome I can imagine me reading that at the time as a kid and being like wow I don't understand

what that means at all but it's awesome that's how they went with it but I actually do think that this game is technically very impressive for PlayStation especially because you know the PS1 didn't have many games with these large open spaces like obviously stuff like Spiro would come

along later and one up this I would say but you know the N64 was kind of where it was at for larger scale platformers and Gex comes in with these big environments they're relatively free of like warping textures and they look pretty solid

the frame rate is very stable or mostly stable on PlayStation and it just looks and feels pretty good. But it also got ported around to other platforms. So I think the main ones are PC, which I played, and then N64. And I always thought it was odd that the N64 version ended up being significantly worse. But I mean, isn't it always the case when you part to another system? Yeah.

It's theoretically superior. I know. I mean, the game is just really tailored to the PlayStation. You're totally right. It's just, man, when you actually see... I think that what might... What might be the issue is that, so on PlayStation, developers had to use a lot more triangles to, like,

sort of solve the warping texture issue. Because when you have a large surface with just, like, very few triangles, it really makes the affine texture swim, like, super visible. So they would almost, like, tessellate the environments as you get, as it gets close to the camera. N64 was less capable of geometry, but you could do, like, you could have very few triangles,

but it would be perfectly perspective, correct, and clean looking, which is what, you know, Mario did. Is that why O'Reaner of Time only has those three triangles? That's a classic jape from Stuart Chip there. Dear Retronauts, the host is the worst thing about this episode. Please eliminate him. Thank you.

No, no. The host is the best. Thank you. Thank you. You're wrong, but thank you. Now, I mean, removing voices from a gex game isn't really a bad thing, I would argue, like necessarily, but it does remove a lot of the character from the proceedings if the N64 version is, if you've got fewer voice clips, but they just looped a lot more, that would be quite bad. Actually, yeah, I think that's kind of what happens is there's just less voice lines.

But there was an exclusive level in the N64. version called Gax Costo or something, like an underwater level. And it was almost worth it because G-E-C-C-Q-U-E-S is really funny. Like, I got to give them props for that. But, you know, the trade-off is you lose six other levels, but you gain this shitty water levels, so well done. Well done. Yeah.

And of course, Dana Gold returns in the U.S. But in the UK, I have to mention this. They changed the voice to Leslie Phillips, who's this carry-on movies, Doctor in the House, sort of actor, which means the geck sort of sounds like, oh, ding, darn, it's tail time. And it's like, what the, what, huh? That's not, he doesn't even look like he would sound like that at all, you know? It's bizarre, really bizarre. I mean, and that is, again, one thing I never expected to hear in Retronaut podcast,

mention of the Carry On movies. Yeah, yeah. So, way to go. Thank you. I have never heard the UK version. I did not realize that this was the case. When I emulated this game, I, well, when I emulated Deep Cover Gecko as well, actually, I started playing it, and as soon as Geck spoke, I was like, oh, no, no, no, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

That's not, I can't, I mean, no disrespect to Dana Gould, but that's not what I grew up listening to. I can't have that, so I had to go and find the power version and emulate that. Instead, I will take the speed hit because I want to hear the correct voices, you know. What someone needs to do is they need to dub in those versions to the, back to the NTSC version. but I mean I've got my fingers crossed and I know it's not going to happen that when I don't blame them either

it's not worth the money but when limited run does do like deep cover gecko I'm just like God please have Danny John Jules as an option I know they won't That would be an awesome thing

to be honest for them to do It would be so cool but it seems like it would cost money that maybe they don't want to spend and I don't blame them I feel like that's the kind of thing that they actually do try to pull off there Right right I mean yeah

But you're right. It could be a money thing. It might not be feeling. If we get a Gex collection, which has not only all three games, but both voice tracks for each game, or all three voice tracks in the case of the Enter the Gecko, I will be in Hog Heaven. Yes, I will. But if it comes out and it's just a state of gold, I will be completely fine with that. I will understand.

Yeah. But it will hurt. Speaking of which... It would be awesome. That Japanese version, published by Bondi, have you seen that? It's called a spin tail. No, I haven't. I've seen the box art, which is ridiculous.

The box art is incredible. It's so good. It's worth seeing. It's a really interesting release. And it's much better than, so the 3DO Japanese version has a great cover. But have you seen the Sega Saturn version of Gex, the Japanese Saturn version? No, I'm going to go look this up right now. The cover art, I don't know what happened, but it just, it completely broke apart.

Okay, let's see this. Oh, Jesus. What that. What's happened to him? I don't know. I mean, you, you wouldn't expect this, like, weird, distorted 3D render of Gex to appear on official box art, but it did. That's really horrible. Yeah, it's bad.

It's real bad. Oh, boy. That's upset me. But, yeah, so Gex Enter the Gecko. I also, as I mentioned earlier, I played this game first on the PC. Yeah. It was a game that ran on, uh, where, you know, I played on my 3D FX Voodoo one card. And at the time, I remember quite liking it and thinking it was rather impressive because, like I said, I was looking for 3D platform experiences on the PC as well.

Yeah. And this one kind of scratched that itch, and it looked really nice and clean, higher resolution than the console versions, you know, smooth, filtered textures. It was just good all around. And because the game has that slightly jerky eight-way movement, it actually plays well with a keyboard. Yeah. Like, you don't need an analog stick, which I did not have on the PC back then. I'm not even sure there were many options for that. I mean, I find this game quite hard to imagine playing it on the keyboard,

but then again, I managed it with almost everything else. You'd be fine. Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. I mean, as I said earlier, I don't know why I had a problem with that. It's a pretty linear digital kind of game. So, yeah, I think it would be okay. Maybe if I was not hearing Leslie Phillips' voice, it might throw me off again, but I don't really know. I remember this game being criticized in, I think, PC Gaming Magazine as being basically unplayable,

because I actually had the specific graphics card, it wouldn't even boot. But that seems unlikely to me. I think that was just John Walker being pissing, as usual. I don't remember, this might have been one of those games that actually required a voodoo card. That's what I remember reading. But I got it with my voodoo card, right? Yeah, yeah. It was this and like one other game, I think,

and I can't remember what the one was, to be honest. I see that it did come out on the PC as well in Europe, so I wonder if there is like a UK version with the voice acting. Maybe. Then again, there's always mods, this huge mod scene for Gex's sending. Yeah, exactly. So I want to mention one last thing for Into the Gecko. I really like that jump kick he does.

It's just one of these moves that really feels just nice to pull off. It's very easy. It covers nice, a lot of ground, and it's just a cool thing. yeah in deep cover gecko which i guess we'll move on to now there's a reasonably long and quite extensive tutorial at the beginning which i don't think that ends the gecko has where it teaches you all the practicalities of like it teaches you how to use the jump kick to cover like long jumps and things it's like it's the gex's version of the long jump basically uh but i really like the i like deep cover gecko a lot 1990s game uh this direct sequel to ends the gecko and it's really just the

same exact game again, but with even better graphics and I would say, I would say slightly a more polished level design. You can tell that they're learning a lot at this point. Yes. By 1999, Crystal Dynamics in general had evolved a lot, I think, and they were doing, I mean, just, I think they came out around the same time, I suppose. Well, I guess it was a little bit later, but they also did Legacy of Kane's Soul Reaver at that same year in 99, which was absolutely incredible, both from a gameplay and technical point of view. And I feel like Gex3 also benefits from some of their learnings on the technology side. I have to say I noticed when you were talking about Rezol in the original Gex,

that Reziel is also the name of the character from Soul Reavers, so God knows what happened there. Raziel, I guess. Yeah, but Rez is the villain from Gex, right? Rez is like the evil chap. This metal, gecko. Yeah, it's like a, it looks like a Xenomorph. Crystal Dynamics did publish the original Blood Omen Legacy of Kane, but they didn't make it, but they did make Soul Reaver.

So that whole weird, I don't know, it's bizarre. But there's definitely something with those names. I mean, Legacy of Kane is a series that has absolutely gone in a memory hole for a lot of people, I think. It was around for PS1 and PS2, and there were quite a few games, and then now it's just gone. I think there was a PS3 or PS4 one that was being made, but then it got cancelled.

Anyway, that's another episode. Yeah, yeah. Deep cover Gecko Like Look I've got to Address the elephant In the room

And I'm sorry about this I know this is crass But I have to talk about it Okay Please do In this story for this game Gex is like He wants to have sex

With a human woman Oh so it's like Sonic 2006 Yes it is It is Except Sonic doesn't talk about Getting his dick out All the time And Gex does

Like the opening cut scene He's like sexually harassing Asian Extra Over Over Vidcom And Agent Extra is this model actress Marlis Andrada or something is her name who she was in Baywatch I guess

but she's I think they use other actresses for sort of other regions they'd like just use different live action footage which is which is quite funny to think of but there's just something about Gex openly like lusting after human women that I find uncomfortable to me it always felt like an influence from like

the popularity of Austin Powers or something Yeah, but with Gex. But I know that there was a PlayStation magazine, I think it was station where the render for the cover was this actress Topless, but they'd got a render of Gex standing behind her with his gecko hands on her. Oh, that wasn't an ad in Germany, I think.

Yeah, that wasn't an ad. And it's just kind of like, really Gex is getting more than me, like really, like this gecko is not even real. It was just a depressing. I mean, it was the, 90s, what are you going to do? Yeah, but that's not a trap from the fact that this game,

despite being quite retrograde in some respect, is honestly really good. Like, it holds up to me really rather well. The levels based around different sort of genres still are quite a lot more diverse, and the costume changes are more frequent. The collectibles are kind of off the chain in this one. Like, not only are there tons of different collectibles, but they make a succession of really truly obnoxious noises when you collect them.

This is a game that, to me, feels like the aim is to give the player their money's worth in the sense of, like, cramming almost every little corner with hidden stuff and secrets. And, like, that's kind of a thing for this whole series. But we didn't even mention that, like, the original Gex, it doesn't have a secret level. It has, like, an entire secret world full of secret levels, like, nine secret levels. That you can only access if you've been, like, looking around. pretty hard. And

deep cover gecko is the same. It's got secret levels. It's got bonus levels. It's got multiple playable characters. It's got poor coins. It's got bonus coins. It's got fly coins. Everything is interact. You can interact with pretty much everything. Like if you see some penguins

having a skate into some penguins, you can just track them with your tail and collect coins out of them. It's extremely packed with stuff to both its detriment and to its benefit. Because it can feel a bit like, come on exhausting, I think, at times. But, I mean, what do you make of this game?

What do you two make of this game? Thomas? Well, I mean, what can I say? What I have played, it just feels like a refined Gex II to me. It's a nice game, and of course, at this time, we were already used to some better, more complex, more interesting stuff. But I think it's a nice caper for the series. I mean, this game also is quite heavy on the humor, because in Gex 2, there's quite a lot of humor. but in this one

almost everywhere you look there's like sign gags like an old Simpson's episode like just get signs everywhere with stupid jokes on them or little gags or little childish things like

in the ice in the snow level like Santa's name written in like piss in the snow there's gross stuff like that I mean gags always did that

I remember the intro of the second of Enter the Gecko it starts pretty much with a fart joke of course it does I want to say that one thing that they really did well is they refined the character movement. Yes.

And specifically so, and enter the gecko, you would go from standing still to full run, like in a single frame, right? You press the direction, he's instant full run. You just go. And this one, he is a very subtle, like, wind-up animation where he takes a few steps, and then he leans into it starts running. And it gives it a little bit more weight and sense of control to his movements. They've improved the analog controls as well.

So I think they're actually true 3D now. true analogue rather than... I think it's... You know, the Dual Shock had been around now for a while at this point, right? And, you know... But for me, personally, people will disagree, and I respect their

opinions. I think with the Gex series, I honestly feel that there might be a case of whichever one you played first is your favourite. Right. But this is my favourite by far. I think it's the best one by far, but I respect... I mean, it's kind of a showcase for this series that anyone could say my favorite Gex is this one, and you don't really want

to argue with them, because they're all pretty good, right? Like, it's a pretty strong the series for what has become something of a punchline. Is that not fair to say? We don't deserve that as well. No, I mean, compared to other series, like, for sure. I mean, I want to, at some point,

I do want to do an episode that's like almost mopping up some of the stuff that doesn't deserve its own kind of episode. Because, I mean, we could, I don't think Croc deserves its own episode, to be honest. And there are things I'd like to complain about. Although, having said that, the story of Croc's creation is quite interesting, so maybe it deserves its own episode.

Gosh, it is fun to revisit these games today, it is fun to revisit these games today because it really kind of you an idea of what was hot at the time. Like, I think this has, like, a sleepless in Seattle gig. It has, like, an unsolved mysteries level. It has a boss battle with what's just Stone Cold Steve Austin, basically. All right. It was, like, exactly the attitude era of doing that at the time.

I mean, of course, you shouldn't just go in there and just expect the modern comfort of modern 3D platformer. No. But when I did research for this, for this episode, now I read some of the articles online, and some of them are almost, I wouldn't say hateful, but really, really, quite miserable, I think. I think there's, I mean, my understanding is when it dropped it, it did okay. Like, it reviewed okay at the time. Oh, in Germany, they were reviewed very well back then. They were really, really hyped.

Because this game definitely got some magazine covers. I remember that render of him with the snowboard coming up quite a lot. I think, as you said about John, with the tech, I think that, with deep cover gecko sorry with god damn it again fuck with enter the gecko there's a lot of fog going on in that game and that's okay

like that I get it in deep cover gecko they found either they are much better at masking it or it's just not there because this game I like from the off it throws you into this quite expansive space and I think just like the way that they've managed to

disguise the draw distance is much better and it makes the whole game look more polished and colourful as well. There's a lot more colour in the game, too. I don't even know what to say about this, because it really is just the same game again, but refined. And there's nothing wrong with that. I do like the creativity of it.

Like, one of the earliest levels you go to is like a Sherlock Holmes, or maybe like a sort of drawing room, like mystery, Miss Marple sort of a stage where you've got like the Deer Stalker and you're like looking through a magnifying glass of stuff. And one area you find a stuffed bear that you then inexplicably shrink and go on its back, and then you're running around whipping the fleas or the ticks off of it.

And it's such a... But then, like, after that, you come back to the normal size again, you go outside, and you're in a hedge maze, and it's like, of course you're in a hedge maze, you know? And the creativity of that, I think, keeps the game feeling exciting and fresh, and even going to play it now, I think you have to respect the fact that they found new angles for all this stuff, you know? Yeah, I think it's just a very respectable game in every aspect.

But it was at a time, I think, when IDOS, which I don't think we mentioned it, but in 97, I think it was, IDOS acquired Crystal Dynamics. So they became a Crystal Dynamics Studio. So this was like under the label of Tomb Raider and everything. And by 99, it was pretty obvious that they were kind of just pumping these games out each year. Yeah. And I feel like Gex3 got a little bit lumped into like that kind of like, oh, they're just taking the Tomb Raider. approach again. You know what I mean? It's true. Yeah, I mean, and Gex was in

like, there was a brief period when he was being used in games like, I want to say Hot Shots golf. He was a golfer in that game. And he's in Mad Dash Racing as well, I think. Yeah, that's right. What's really funny to me, though, is that I almost forgot about this, but

are you guys familiar with the game director on this and Enter the Gecko? The game director. It's Glenn Showfield of Dead Space. Oh, right, right. base. Oh, wow. So, yeah, this was one of, not his first.

He'd been around for a while, actually, since 91, I think, but yeah, he worked as a game director on this. I think this was his first actual credit as a game director, in fact. And deep cover Gecko, though, that was

the last released Gex game, but there was another one being made that got canceled, Gex Jr. Oh, yeah. And that got leaked out as a proto for the place to the PS1 it was like a 2001 game you can see it on YouTube I think you can probably download it somewhere and

it's essentially the same exact thing except Gex as a kid now and therefore more annoying oh yeah and when I looked it up for this one of the first things I saw is that one of Gex's moves now is to just do a huge fart and it's animated

so disgusting like his like tail goes up and he's just like like his whole body like vibrates from this gas coming up his air and it's like Jesus Christ Why it was cancelled I guess

Yeah you're damn right it was cancelled I mean it's not exactly Bugoman level is it No I mean at least Bugoman had the decency to not be that realistic That's true Imagine if that was your job

You had to render this gecko Just like flatulence You had to do that Well I have to say I'd rather do the flatulence than the Mortal Kombat finishing moves but that's just me. Well, what about Barajos finishing moves,

which are flatulants? Worst of both worlds, all right, you win. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I think I do win, Thomas. I think I do. I think you, yep, you got to be there. I feel like we need to chime in here and say that

we've talked about these 3D games, but Gex did not stop there. There were portable versions of both of these games. Yes, the Game by Color games, yes. Very, very slight. You might say, oh, it's a return to like the 3DO era, 2D size-calling gex game but then you look at it in motion you're like

oh I I'm very very tolerant and reasonable with my games and I will try to find the good in everything that I play I really will it's the basis of my extremely popular book all games are good I can't with these

games I can't even as the kids say with these games they are just they feel like they only exist because of contractual obligation oh yeah yeah they have These are the games that give the Game Boy Color a bad name. Yeah, they are very shovelware-ish, I would say. I do not recommend them at all.

I might be wrong, but I think the first one is a cross... I think it might be a Game Boy original compatible as well, but that might be total bullshit. Oh, I don't remember that. But yeah, they're both pretty bad, banal platform games that don't even seem to really have designed level. so much as thrown together slap dash, like, big

open plan areas that don't really work in 2D. I can't recommend them at all, but they did need mentioning. I feel like it actually circles back to the discussion earlier about American-made platformers because this feels like an American-made 8-bit platformer, which is to say it's not

very good. Even though I will say technically speaking, like it looks okay, like decent visuals for Game Boy Color, fairly colorful and good sprites, but it's still, it's just very uninspired, but it was made by David A. Palmer Productions, if you're familiar with them.

Yeah. And actually thinking about it, do you know if David A. Palmer Productions, if that's American or UK-based? Because I always assume they are American, but I could be wrong. No, they are UK-based. They're from Sheffield.

Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, okay. That changes things. They also, yeah, they made some, oh my God, that's interesting. I was about to say it reminds me of the absolutely awful version of pitfall beyond the jungle. Oh, yeah, they made that. On the Game by Color, but they totally made that shit too.

And they made all the shit ones. They made Earthworm Jim, Menace to the Galaxy. And they made Commander Keane on the Game by Color. All these awful. And Men in Black, too, the series. Yeah, yeah. Basically, all the games that you immediately think of when you think of bad, like, uh, Game by color platform like license games really and that horrendous tasmania game uh they did however

do that first port of doom to the game boy advance which is pretty good pretty impressive for the platform yeah pretty good and you know what they did speedy gonzalez on the game boy not bad not bad yeah yeah that's all right the one that's always used as sonic rom hacks yeah And, of course, the most important thing about Gex that I feel like we should mention personally is the fact that there is a novelization of Gex by Michael Titlebaum, who wrote quite a lot of these things, I believe. Just like Road Rash then, which also has a novelization. Was that the one that came with Sega Power Magazine in the UK? Oh, man. I did a line reading in my newest video on that.

Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome. Because I was thinking it might be a good way to end this to do like a brief excerpt of the Gex novelization. Do you have it? If you do. I'm looking at it right now. I think that's the only way to end it. Okay, well, let's, but first of all, do we have any final thoughts on Gex?

I like Gex. I think Gex is, it's fondly remembered for the lulls and the memes these days, but I, I actually think that it was a legitimately good game for the time, not amazing. It's very B-tier, but I think these are solid platforms, and I especially think the original, given what the situation looked like with American-made platforms at the time, they did an exceptionally good job with what they were working with, especially given how difficult development was. Yeah.

I have a lot of respect for that original game, and I also think it was really important to the history of Crystal Dynamics and then becoming a pretty powerful. well-known studio. So what I find interesting about Gexis, if you just compare the game, if you play it nowadays, and the reception they got back when they were released, because back in the 90s, late 90s,

they were really, really featured, really high ratings in the magazines. And if you play it nowadays, of course, it feels a bit clunky and a bit unwieldy and the camera is all over the place. But I think if you can get into that mindset again, what games were like back then,

I think it's really enjoyable. And it really, I think it's just admirable what they did with the PlayStation hardware that nobody else even attempted in many cases. That's true. And as I've hopefully made clear, I'm also a fan. I do like it. I like

deep cover the best. I think it is the best, but that's a series that I think I think they did their best with it, and I think it shows, and I think it's an enjoyable game. It's still fun to play now, today. And it baffles me that they never did another one, to be honest. It surprises me

a little bit, especially because mocking media never gets old like Netflix for God's sake the whole Netflix era, the whole streaming era like it writes itself, doesn't it? I came up with this on Retronauts years ago, I said, here's my pitch for a new Gex game. Gex gets

sucked into this new thing called ResFix where Rez is streaming himself across the entire media dimension and you go through parodies of Stranger Things and Netflix stuff. And every level ain't early because it's cancelled. Yes, perfect. Oh! Here we go. Boom. We are sticking it to Netflix today. Oh my God.

Seriously, seriously. I mean, Square Enix, a while ago, they have this creator program, right? At Square Enix, where they also bring games like, what's it called, with the Ant Ninja guy. You had a podcast about Zool. They had Zool, for example, like that. So they are open for people pitching new Gex projects and doing Gex stuff. I think if you can convince them, it is possible to make a new Gex game. Actually, he's not actually an alien ninja from the Earth Dimension. Oh, yes, of course. I'm sorry. I mean, come on.

Come on, dude. What I mean, what I think is quite funny about that is the fact that when recently they announced the limited run, you know, the trilogy, it sort of showed that they've got rid of Tomb Raider, but they've retained Gecks. Like, that's where they've, they know where their money really is. Yeah. Oh, wait, right. No, doesn't that mean that Square doesn't own Gex anymore at this point? Maybe. They do not.

Oh, dear. It was sold off to Embracer, I think. And, of course, being with Embracer, the way it's very close to limited run games. Oh, yeah, of course. So, everything comes together. Wonderful. Thanks. So just before we do the kind of where we can find you online, I'm going to just do this very quick reading from Gex.

It's simply titled Gex. You know, it's just a one-word title. It's a very prestigious. It's like Lolita. It's like Gex. Right, exactly. Excuse me. Now, I'm not well, so this may not be quite so good as I hope.

But here we go. This is how it starts. And if you like this, you can pick up a copy of a copy of a, Gex, by Michael Teitelbaum, on eBay for far too much money, to be honest. We go back a long way, Rez and I. Oh, by the way, I'm Gex, short for Gecko Extraordinaire. Anyway, I've been fighting Rez for a long time, since way before I saw the report on TV news telling me that Rez had kidnapped my beautiful partner, Agent Extra, and pulled her into the media dimension. I'm going to have to go back there to rescue her. But I get ahead of myself. This will be my

third trip into the media dimension. I just barely survived the first two tours, and now I've got to go back in. It's going to be Deja, ouch, all over again. Good thing I've got my James Bond Super Spy Tux, because believe me, in the media dimension, I get both shaken and stirred. But again, I get ahead of myself. I guess the best thing would be for me to start at the beginning, a long time ago in a dimension far far away. Luke, I am your gecko. Now, so I'm not really. I'm not read any more of this shite. I'm sorry, that is drivel. It went a little bit too far there. I'm not reading any more of this. That's absolutely bullocks.

Just forget it. No more. No. I can't remember. If Dave Bullmore was here, I'd make him read all of it, but he's not. So it's not happening. Don't buy a copy of that book. I don't know. That might be better than the Road Rash book. What's a rasher? I inquired cautiously.

I wish I'd never asked. I bet I was written by just like, I bet I bet that was, like, written by just like Andy Smith, the editor of the magazine. It was written by Neil West. Neil West, yeah, just one of the reviewers. Amazing. That's absolutely incredible.

You know, when I was a kid, I designed a Road Rush, like, fighting fantasy style, Road Rush, Choose Your Own Adventure. All right, I'm into that. Yeah, it's rad. If I ever dig up, I'll probably scan it. Probably is I don't know anything about bikes or, like, or Road Rush, so it's mostly just made up shit. But, yeah, fun.

So, John, where can our listeners find you on the internet as if they don't know already? As usual, at Dark 1X on, I was going to say Twitter, but whatever it's called now. X, X, X, for X. Yeah, okay. And, of course, you know, doing videos in Digital Foundry, YouTube.com slash Digital Foundry, Eurogamer.net slash Digital Foundry. And we have a Patreon where, yeah, I mean, that RoadRash video is pretty good. But if you want to see it in full and not chopped up into parts and you want to see it without ads,

then you can go to the Patreon. It's there. It's like a film length. So please enjoy it. That's awesome. And Thomas, where can we find you as if we don't know already? So if you, for whatever reason, would want to find me online, you check at maniac.com for the magazine I'm writing for, or if you want to find my personal comments on stuff, check X at Bimbo Fortuna. There's no way of saying it without sounding contemptuous, isn't there?

It's hard. It's hard. Yeah, check X. Blue sky. No, no. Z? I don't know, what do they call? Z. God. The only X that there's going to be

is an ex-ed-dus of users, am I right? I wonder if Exhibits posting on there. Yeah, maybe, maybe. Well, that's the end of that. If you like Retronauts, you can like support Retronauts,

going to Patreon.com forward slash retronauts, you can spend a mere $5 a month, which is literally nothing. And you'll get two completely exclusive, full-length episodes per month, as well as early access a week early access to every episode. So by the time all the kids in the playground

are talking about the new episode, you'll have already seen it, and you'll be the coolest skin on the playground. You'll also get Diamond Fights tremendous this month in retro columns, which are both in text form and in speaking form. And you can call on the Discord, and you can call

me every single swear word there is, and I'm not allowed to retaliate, Jeremy said. So thank you very, very much for listening. And what's the best way to end at Gex? A gex podcast, do you think? It is no longer tale time? I don't know.

It is no longer tail time. I'm for a tale joke, yeah. Yeah, we've come to the tail end of our podcast, has that? Very nice. Yeah, yeah, it is no longer tail time. You no longer have to taste my tail. Thank you for listening. Don't think about that too hard.

I don't know. Thank you.