Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 452: The Amiga

Episode Date: May 2, 2022

Stuart Gipp and Dave Bulmer unite to discuss that most esoteric and exciting of computers, the Amiga. History is revealed, many excellent and emotionally powerful games are discussed, and Gilbert Gottfried sadly passes away—almost derailing the podcast. 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, Wacky Workbench. Oh, nice. Thanks, Dave. Thanks, buddy. It's a reference to Workbench, which was the OS, the OS. Retro gamers would recognize the two words put together.

Yeah, and also it's Sonic, which is another thing from games. Sonic, so Sonic, he's a games man. Not from Amiga, explicitly not from Amiga. No, unless you played the game, the evention of Quince, and silver in which he does make a appearance in a quite illegal manner. As hilariously pointed out by the Jeremy Clarkson of retrogaming,

the diseased guru Larry. Anyway, moving on. What if he listens to this and hears me calling him diseased? He's going to think that I'm that I explicitly don't like him. And he's right. Hello, welcome to retronauts,

the show where I, Stuart, gyps, start beef with random other retrograde gaming people for no reason. No reason. I think I'm on a stream with him or just before him on Sunday. So I could tell him what you've said and there could be a beef. They could be a fight. That would be funny if we got a reptilian beef with Guerrilleri, though he would actually

destroy me because I think he has an actual fan base and I just have like some people who live in a bin. Hi listeners. Hi listeners. I'm just kidding. You don't really live. And if you lived in the bin, I'm telling you it would be one flush bin. It would be one hell of a bin.

I'm tempted to start this whole thing over again, but no, no, no, no, no. Welcome to episode 452. I was going to do a preamble that introduce the guest, but let's face it, if you're any good at pattern recognition, you already know who the guest is. Pata recognition. Pater recognition. Oh my God, this is why I invited you on.

No other reason, because I knew you were going to say that exact thing. Yeah, let's go now. Bye. See you do. Anyway, yes, hello, I'm Stuart, Chip. as you know, I'd like to do retro-nized episodes that cover things that are adjacent to being British. Now, today's subject, it's not,

I don't know if it's really British. Is it really British? As Rick Mell would pronounce it and say it. It's more sort of German, and a bit American. This is a bit odd, isn't it? It's not very American. It's a bit American,

and I will explain why shortly. Yeah. But joining me, I want to say as ever, but it's not always going to be the case because eventually I'm just going to get sick of him. joining me as ever thus far is the absolute matriety of remembering things as long as they happened before about 2002 it's Dave demon for Marto Bulmer hello yeah hello I'm I'm English

and so I'm here what I'm basically it yeah I'm drafted in whenever something English has to happen and that's what's happening today we're going to talk about a thing which yeah technically isn't British, but go on. It is, though, isn't it? It is a bit. It is sort of British. You know what? That's me being Anglo-centric, if that's the word for that. See, what I thought was interesting is there was some feedback that we got. I'm going to say that I got, because I'm in charge. I'm the human who thinks he's in charge this time. That was a reference to your podcast, which you should listen to, by the way, listeners.

It's very good. I'm not on it, though. So, you know, it's only a bit good. yeah but you're only not on it because we've never actually got round to setting a date it's true it's true plus i hate sonic you just why would i want to that is a perfectly good reason to come on as far as i'm concerned well i mean i had to i went to see the sonic two movie and i spent the whole thing just yelling and discussed like what is this like why how has this been allowed yeah um but anyway moving on um i want you know what i'm going to bring it up i wanted to do for the intro to this episode where you heard me say wacky workbench which is a reference to the workbench he's already so long ago

No. You remember that intro? It was an hour ago. I was going to do the song Amoeba by adolescents, except I was going to go, Amiga. And I don't know whether or not that was better or worse. So I'd like you to write in. And please tell me whether you think that would have been either A, funny or B, shit. So I'd like to know.

But I think the best way to start this, because everyone listening to this right now is just going, what in God's name is an Amiga? What is that? Yeah. except for maybe the Portuguese and Spanish people who are going, a girlfriend, yes. Like, come to him, I'm caught. What game is that?

Yeah, why are the retro gamers talking about those? But, yeah, why would they even have, or know what they were? They've never encountered such a thing. Now, see, I have a joke about this later in the episode, which I'm now going to remove, because it is now unnecessary. No, I think you should.

I think you should still do it. Just do the same joke again? Okay. Yeah. Why not? Anyway, so we've also received some feedback that the episode, this seems like I'm being too sensitive to feedback.

I'm not. I'm just very receptive to what people want to hear. Yeah, that's a good thing. They want more. People want more, they want hilarious, humorous anecdotes and wackiness and quirkiness. They love those things. They want ramblings.

Of course they want ramblings. They're podcast listeners. Yeah. But what they also want is they want history and they want facts. They want to learn things. So today, rather than just go, what's the Super Frog great? Yeah. I'm going to try and educate people about the

Amiga a bit. But what I want to make clear up front is that I am not an Amiga expert by any means. I realize that's a shocking reveal. But when I was a small boy, I didn't have an Amiga and none of my friends had an Amiga. And all my Amiga love is with hindsight. None of them, nobody had an Amiga. I don't think they did. And if I think one of them may have had an Amiga that turned out to be an Atari ST, which was a false Amiga. Not an Amiga. I know. It's just a worse computer, you know. And as a result, when I give this potted history of the Amiga, which I've compiled through various sources, there's a very good website called lowend mac.com, and I gathered a lot of info from that, so you should go and read it. That's not me saying I've ripped this off wholesale.

That's not entirely true. I changed some words, so I may pass it off as my own words. Ram it through a Thesaurus app. Yes, I did the old stealing from, you know, stealing to pass university things. Yes. except no wait no that's not true I just I did use this as a source so I wanted to credit them that's all

I also used another website which is famously accurate called Wikipedia that is the most accurate thing in the world I've heard it is and that's why it's for soon with lies that I put there that have become canonized as truth

which makes me so happy no thankfully no but there are things on Wikipedia that have now been used as that have now been quoted in books or have been attributed to having sources that I made up I made the world

I made the world slightly worse, yes brilliant Anyway, a crap and too short history of the main bits of the Amiga now, okay? Yes, please, because I don't know this. I know Amiga as a thing I love and a thing I had and interacted with, but tell me, what was it? Well, first of all, the Omega is mostly renowned, renowned as a Commodore system. But, Mr. Bulma, did you know that it began life over at Atari? I know.

This blew my mind, too. And a chap named J. Minor, that's minor as in manic minor, not minor as in a child. And he decided he wanted to make a 16-bit console with a floppy disk drive, because floppy disk drives, big proliferation of parts, cheap, simple to make games for, basically. But the short-sighted P-Pants suit at Atari didn't want to sort of cannibalized. They didn't like

had a disgusting suit. Yeah. Who's the real sick man in this so-called society? Anyway, they didn't want to encroach on sales of their own systems. Atari 2600, 7,800, 8-bit. So they basically told him to sod off. Another Atari

employee named Larry Kaplan got in touch with Mr. Biner in 1982 and expressed an interest in starting his own game company to then sell their stuff back to Atari and a very sneaky move there. And the company was briefly known as High Toro. That's H-I-T-O-R-O. High-T-O. Like if you had a friend named Toro and you saw them, you wouldn't say that. Yeah. They initially made accessories for the 2600. Or if you were saying hello to a bull and then you were goading it to attack you with your

big... To gore you. Yes. That's true. You'd also say that. Yes, anyway, High Toro initially made games and accessories for the 2600. while developing the Amiga at the same time, but at the time, it was known as the Lorraine after Delicious Kish. I made that up. It was called the Lorraine,

but it was actually named after the CEO's wife or something. So they were releasing these 2600 titles called things like Mughal Maniac and Crypts of Chaos, and I haven't played any of them, and neither of you. No. But they are on the 2600, so I can play them in my head, and I'm 99% sure I'm right. That's a joke.

Please don't get upset. fans of the Atari. Anyway, the processor for the Lorraine, later the Amiga, you see, Keep a keep up, folks, was the Motorola 68,000 best known for its use in the Sega Mega Drive,

the best console ever, of course. This makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it does, isn't it? The Amiga was a sort of computer megadrive. The Amiga was a bit Megadrive-esque, yes. This explains so much about it. And at the time, now, bear in mind, we're talking about like 1982-3 here.

Oh, God, are we? Yeah, it could display over 4,000 colors on the screen because of something technical called blitters, which I'm not even going to pretend I remotely understand. Me neither, but I remember the word from the Amiga days, and I'm excited. Now, genuinely, in the early 80s, this kind of visual fidelity, probably even within, like, the coin-up range is quite rare, I would say. Yeah. Like, maybe that's nonsense. I'm going to get my butt kicked out of retron.

So I said, but... No, that sounds plausible. You said a big number. Nothing like, but basically it was sort of unknown in terms of home computing, I would say. That's just, now that is all speculation on my part. That sounds crazy to me. And as I mentioned, this was designed to be sort of easy to develop software for with the keyboard and floppy drive essentially making the Kish Lorraine, its own dev kit,

no proprietary cartridges. Three and five inch floppy disks weren't exactly like the consumer standard at the time, but, you know, they would be. So there was something already there. They'd have to make their own thing, basically. Unfortunately, it turned out. amazingly. A Japanese lawmower company was already using the name Lorraine. So they had to change it to Amiga, which is, here's the joke, Portuguese for girlfriend,

something that nobody who owns an Amiga ever had. Again, that's another joke, so chill, okay? I don't mean it. I go to Sonic, I have been to four separate Sonnet the Hedgehog conventions. I don't have a leg to... I haven't been to one. And I'm like to a Sonic guy. Yeah. And I don't have a leg to stand on here, okay? That's a... If you ever hear me say something like that, it's like, it's like when Graham Linaan insult someone's appearance. It's like, come on. Come on. Anyway, now, as you know, the full hardy Americans chose around this time to destroy the video games industry. Nice going, buddies. Loads of devs going out of business and the Amiga needing to find investors.

So it was taken to the Consumer Electronics Show, CES, 1984, in extremely prototypical form. It was basically four boards linked together, and it was so fragile. They had to buy their own an airplane seat for it, which they codenamed something like, God, what was it? It was like Project Pillow or something, which is amazing. Anyway, no investors bit, but Atari stepped in, and they were pyramiding their fingers in evil contemplation. And they said, well, how about we give you a $500,000 loan in exchange for that motherboard design?

However, the terms of this loan are as follows. If you can't repay us in one month's time, the entire project. on our exclusive property. Oh, that is cheeky. Even back then, they were evil as hell. Of course, none of the team wanted to do this, but they had no choice. You know, they were running out of money.

And then, and then, Commodore stepped in. And they were like, hello, and they repaid Atari's loan. And they officially renamed the Lorain Machine to, hang on, I've got to shrug down a bit. The Amiga, pitching it as a successor to be enormously successful yet crucially not as good as the spectrum.

Commodore 64. That is some proper corporate espionage. That is. That thing of them paying off the loan from the other. Oh, that's, they really sniked them. Oh, hey? And they say there's no drama in retronauts. Yeah, do they?

Oh, well, now there is. Well, I'm going to try and start drama like that beef I tried to start with Gurulari earlier. Yeah, and I'm going to punch you in the head. Excuse you. Yeah, I'm going to directly punch you in the head. That'll be really dramatic. It would be really quite funny. I'll do it just before, like, the end of the episode

so that people are going, what was that? And then they'll listen to the next episode and find out. They'll find out that it was all a game, a gag. Anyway, the original, the first Amiga, the Amiga 1,000. They really made an error that. They should have called it the Amiga 1. Yes. Released on July the 11th, 1985.

There were a price so high it was kept out of many homes. I looked up, I looked this up and adjusted it for inflation. It would set you back over $3,000 in 2022. I don't you're going to say that these days it would be the Amiga 24,000. Nice. Very good. Because numbers have just gone up since the 80s. Yes, the Amiga 40,000 and the grim darkness of the far future. There is only syndicate wars. Was that an Amiga?

Nice! Well, that wasn't on the Amiga, but still nice. Oh, thank you. Anyway, stiff competition from the Atari ST kept it at bay as well. And the later revision, the Amiga 2000, was actually considered to be inferior to the 1000 and much of the original Lorraine team walked out. They were just like, no, this is stupid buy. In 87, though, in 1987, as well as me being born, the Amiga 500 was released along with a marketing depth charge

and a more powerful yet somehow cheaper machine than the Atari ST. And it was a German design machine. And it did much better. And cheaper than the ST? Yeah, it was, yeah. Huh. I know. It did much better in Europe than in America,

but it didn't do horribly in America. I think it sold a shade over a million, maybe a shade under. which isn't amazing, but it's not horrible. No, there's a lot of Americans, so it's probably not many per American, but still. And then that's, and I'm going to skip over quite a lot here, so forgive me Amiga fans, but that's, then this is when you get the lion's share

of the Golden Era of the Amiga, the Omega 500. Commodore immediately get eyes bigger than their stomachs and start introducing new models like the Amiga 2000, the 2,500 and the 1,500, with not that many differences worth noting. Hang on, I think we already had the 2000, didn't we? Wasn't that the second? No, we had, um, yeah, Yes, I made a mistake. I've already ruined the podcast.

Right. Well, I'm going to leave by your... Oh, God. Oh, no. Oh, this is awful. This is awful. Anyway, yes, the Omega 2,500 and 1,500 with, honestly, not that many differences worth noting. And Amiga fans, again, I'm using broad strokes here, so please don't get cross. I know there are differences between these machines. Yes. Okay. Later, improved systems, such as what we call the Arga, the advanced graphics architecture, Omega-1200. which essentially meant ports of Amiga 500 games

but with lots of fruit and things in the background. Yeah, yeah. Genuinely, that's what it was. Yeah, that's what it was, yeah. It's like, would you like to play Zool? Yes. Which would you like to play Zool on the 1200? Yes. Would you like to see what you're doing? Anyway, so the desire, Amiga, a commoner also had the desire to make a true games console

because as great a gaming machine as the Amiga computer was, it was still a computer. It had its practical purposes. It had deluxe paint. I'm sure it had some kind of crazy word processor. You know, people still use their amegas to use days for practical things like music making and graphics. Yes, but when they do it, they're being obstinate. They're being a bit, yeah, they're being a bit much. And more power of them, I love that that they're doing it.

Oh, yes, absolutely. Yeah. But then we, so we had the quick advent of both the Amiga CDTV and CD32 consoles, but they kind of lacked exclusives. even especially impressive software. Now, that's not me saying that aren't some very good CD-32 games, because they are. I'm sure there are. Yeah, but they're not

exactly a whole lot superior or more interesting than the 500 versions of the same games. It was always pretty clear that the CD-32 was just them going, like, you know that really good computer? What if we took some of the bits off and sold it to Americans? Because now it's a shape they like. And, you know, I mean,

Amiga CD-32, it had a good version of Robocod. I had a good version of James Pont III with a little four motion video at the beginning. And it had Elfrid Chicken, so, you know, can't really fault that. And, of course, many will argue this point. They are mainly wrong, but they will argue it. But I would say that the,

what killed the Amiga in terms of its sort of mainstream popularity that it, as much as it had, was the rise of, you know, cheaper and eventually more powerful Windows PCs. Oh, definitely. 100%. And that the workbench interface, It just was not at the time able to compete with Windows.

Windows 95 happened, and that was just the big deal, and it happened not to be the thing on the Amiga, so that was it. And the Amiga took one look at Pitfall of Mine Adventure and went, oh, no, and fainted. But the Amiga scene, as we've intimated, as we've intimated, as that the word, as we've implied, it lives on to this day, and it does. People love the Amiga. There are still new Amiga softs made.

You can go and buy Amiga Addict magazine in W. right now, which is mad. I think I might do that. You should definitely do it. Anyway, and I'd say, I think it's fair to say it's an enthusiast's computer, and as far as as gaming goes, it's a bit of a miracle. It has plenty to offer still, and that's something I'm hoping that together we can convince people of in the course of this hopefully not too protracted episode, but let's face it,

it's probably going to be quite protracted. Yeah. So that's just a very much, what, man, do it, skipping lots of bits, history of the Amiga based solely on things I was able to scrounge together and my own limited knowledge. what we thought we'd sort of settle into really is, I think the best thing to ask at this point, as I traditionally in the past, is, Mr. Billman, Dave, let's up.

Please tell me about how you came to love the amig. I can tell you exactly that very specific thing. So to set the scene, everybody, we've spoken before at length about the ZDX spectrum, and that was the normal computer that, like, most people at my school had, and I was one of those people. and it was a very limited sort of a machine.

We love it, but it was very, very limited, and it didn't in any way look like not a computer, you know, it looked like the cartoon of a computer that you might imagine. And then my friend, now, my best friend at the time, and I'm happy to say he was already my best friend before he got this thing that made me want to go to his house all the time. But he, the computer situation at his house was bleak.

He had one of those computers that's for dads to do word processing on, What were they called the ones that had a green screen with a slot, with a vertical floppy disk slot in the side of the screen itself, those computers. I don't know what they were, but I know what you're talking about, yes. Yeah, yeah. The workstations. My granddad had one of those. Now, my best friend's one, though, didn't have a green screen. He had an orange screen.

It was really weird to look at. And there was only one sort of snack in their house, which were these kind of odd orange biscuits with bits of orange in them. Well, they sound rather nice, I have to say. Well, yes, they were, but it created this sort of in, there was something eerie about looking at an orange screen while eating an orange biscuit in the study of a man who was in some sort of a religious professional. So he had a bookshelts full of religion thing. No, no, no, he was nice.

But do you know what I mean? There was some, it was very serious there. Oh, yes, yes. Maybe the oranges were actually Christingles. Yeah, that's right. That's right. The little bits of orange had little tiny candles. and like sticks with raisins sticking out

Do you think that Chris Dingell is a thing in America? Do I think anyone's going to know what the hell I'm talking about? Probably not, but they can Google it. Because I've mentioned Tristingles before in life in the UK and been looked at like I've just started eating a child. That's just the most insane thing imaginable.

Because now I'm thinking about going to church as a child and going right, we're making Christingles today and me being like right-o, let's crack on then. Now later I think about these Christingles and I just think what was happening there? What was that supposed to represent? Like, was it like a sort of a big fat Christ? I don't understand.

Oh, yes. It was something. Oh, it was. Yeah, all the bits mean things. Yeah, there's like a red band around the middle that's blood or something. Oh, dear, oh dear. Were you allowed, like, jelly tots on yours instead of... I think I was allowed jelly tots on my...

The jelly tots were the, let's say, I don't know, maybe sort of the candied organs of Christ or something. Yes, something like that, yeah. The jelly tots of Christ, keep you in eternal life. Oh, this whole thing was worth it for that. Cut that out. So, and then. No, I'm not cutting that out. I'm boosting the volume for it.

And then... I'm going to sample it and splice it into the episode and blazes. And then, my friend got an Amiga-12. That was the first Amiga I saw, the 1200, which was the powered up version that had the AGA chipset and all of that. And when I went, he was telling me about this. and it was like he was talking about a dream. And when I went round his house, he was.

That was accurate. It was, I just, the thing that really stands out is that he played me music on it. And I just honestly couldn't understand how something in his house could be making this music. It sounded like real music. But it wasn't, and it was coming. And I could see what it was. was coming out of it. Because the first time I heard it, actually, I think it was on tape. He brought it into school on a tape to play to us in the quiet room, which was like the little

storeroom off the side of the classroom. I don't know. What we were doing in there that meant we could listen to a tape without anybody else there. But he played this thing. And it was called. I'm trying to remember what it was. Lars. It was a mod. Now, on Amiga, pro tracker, mute. Forget all of what I just said. Music were called modules, right? Music modules and they were dot mod the file and so he'd play be a mod called Lars dot mod or mod dot Lars I think and it was the one in which

is sampled a wapambugi off the song which may be called Wapambugi and it just was amazing that's the thing right Amiga music was made out of samples not beeps that were arranged into different things and you had four tracks of that and I was just what I was listening to was amazing

and then I went around his house and I saw this thing and it was just It was Zool. Now, we've covered that at length in a separate tone episode. We won't go on about Zool. We're not going to talk about Zool for a further two hours. No, but to see it and to see something that fast, that I'd never seen anything that fast,

because here's the thing about Zool, it's faster than Sonic. Wait, whoa, wait, wait, wait, what? It's faster than Sonic. It's faster than Sonic. Or at least it's faster than the Powell version of Sonic. Yeah, that's true. But, yeah, no, it was so zippy and so color. And yes, it had big fruit and sweets and CDs in the background.

But, you know, it was fine. We were children. We were hyperactive. We could see what we were doing. It's just old people like us who would be confused by it today. Let me briefly explain that a bit better. Let me briefly explain that a tiny bit better. Because what I mean is a lot of the AGA versions or Argo versions of these games,

they would take a game that in the original had, say, let's say a simple gradient background or something. And they would be like, right, we've got this new processing power for the 1200. What should we do? How about we make the most garish, possible imagery and have it scroll at a different speed to everything else like Jim Power so it makes your eyes hurt

and is obnoxious beyond reasoning and they go okay should we add anything else to the game? No, that's it that's what we're adding. Okay that was slightly disingenuous. They sometimes added new levels but not very often. Did they? Oh, not very often. And if they did it wasn't so much to do with the age of chat.

They added new levels to Robocod on 1,200 and they're not very good. So it makes the game less good. It's been no way of telling, because there's millions of levels already. Oh, wait. No, yes, I didn't need to say, oh, wait. I thought for a minute there that I might be thinking of the wrong game in the series, but I wasn't. No.

Anyway, I interrupted you, and I apologize. Please continue with your story of discovering the Amiga. I mean, that's the only way to say any words ever is to interrupt me when you've introduced the concept of the Amiga. That's the way you have to go, and I have no problem with it. So I then took the... He made me a whole tape of all. of the best music from his

Amiga. And so this was the Wapambugi song. It was the soundtrack to things that we're going to mention later in the episode. Super Frog. Lemmings. Oh, no more, lemmings. Body blows. You put that on there. Various things. Just anything that he thought was impressive.

Star Trekker, which was a music tracker that had a demo on it that was the theme tune from Red Dwarf. That's no way. It's had a weird life that tune, by the way, since then. I'll talk about that later if I remember, and if not, ask me on Twitter somebody.

Or in real life, if you happen to see him around, which is quite unlikely. You knock into me, yeah. But anyway, a man's a damn shut in. Go on. I'm going to write that down to tell you about that later in the episode. Red dwarf. Okay. See, that's right, listeners. We make on notes during the recording. Oh, yes. To hell with planning. Oh, yes.

I had this tape of songs from the Amiga. I listened to them over and over again, and then one day, me and my family were on a long drive, and I requested that this tape be put on. And, you know, because car stereos had a tape drive in those days. And reluctantly, my dad put it on. He ejected the copy of Foxtrot by Genesis and put on. I think it was probably a bit of Jethro Toll. Amazing. I was not that far off.

And he put this on. and Stuart, a few weeks later, we had an Amiga. You became the commercial. Yes. You were the instrument of your own. I don't know. I don't know to what extent those two things were related. But like, it is a fact that my dad was not interested in upgrading to a better computer.

And then he heard this. And then he did. Because the thing is, my dad was a tinkerer with when it. comes to computers. You didn't play games. He played one game, and that was Popeye, the brilliant spectrum game, which me and him would play together because I wasn't good enough at playing it. But that was because I was five. Like, I feel like that was something... Was that the game with the really big sprites made by the Traptor people? Yes. Brilliant game. Okay, moving on. Let's not... It's not... It's not... Yes. Maybe when we do a

spectrum episode down the line, we will talk about. Another day. And Traptor. Oh, yes. Anyway, but I think he played that because he was doing an activity with his five-year old son, not because he enjoyed the game personally in any way that made him want to play any other games. But instead of that, he would tinker with computers, and he had written a sequencer for the spectrum and plugged it into his keyboard, and he was making music on it. So I'm guessing he'd heard this and got like, oh, I can play with that, I can make some music on an Amiga. So, an Amiga showed up in our house. Now, it was only a 500 plus. It wasn't a 1200 like my friend, but really at no time in the entire, like, time of having the Amiga, did I ever really

figure out what was wrong with that or why I would prefer a $1,200 plus? You have a 500 plus? You have a 500 of any sort? You are, you are laughing, my friend. You are laughing all the way to the Amiga bank. That's all I can say. Yeah. There's a reason that the recent mini is an Amiga 500 mini and an Amiga-2500 mini. I don't really know what the difference between a 500 and a 500 plus was. Do you? No, I don't. Right. However, if you happen to know, don't bother writing in because I'm sure it's easily available on Google. Yes. Just bang your head against something. Dear Stuart Jip and Dave Bomer, how dare you suggest that we Google the information

for ourselves instead of doing research as you're supposed to do? That is why they're listening to us, isn't it? The disgruntled listeners of retronauts. Well, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. They don't write to Dave. If you have to be right to me, I can take it. No, I said they're right to be. Oh, I see. I misheard you. Yeah, they may write to me. I don't mind. that. I'm fresh off this guru Larry thing, and I'm real spoiling for some fights. Yeah. Like Popeye style, in fact.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so nobody better trying to get squithmy olive oil. No. That's the main thing he doesn't like. Yeah, it's the main thing he doesn't like. That's why they had the famous Popeye quote. Like, they better not try to get squit with me olive oil. That's the main things I doesn't like.

That I doesn't like. Ag, gag, gag, gag. And as everyone, everyone, knows the main thing that I does like is spinach, obviously. Man, how good is that

live action Popeye movie? Seriously. Oh, it's so good. And I only didn't say that that's the other thing he mainly doesn't like because I thought it'd be too obscure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I was going to try and drop I was going to try and drop an obtuse reference to it because I need get it, but you know what I mean, I mean, you know what I mean. Hey! Oh, my word. Yeah. You know what, Popeye episode?

The hell with it. The whole of the episode is us planning future episodes. Anyway, carry on. Sorry. Know the drill by now. This is what happens. Yeah, Amiga. So here's the thing, right, here's the thing about the Amiga. We are on a retro gaming podcast. So what we are going to talk about is retro games.

But I need you to understand listeners, that the Amiga, when you got an Amiga, it wasn't like you got a thing that you could play games on. That was what you mainly did with it, granted. But no, even that is arguable. because what an Amiga really was was an amazing upgrade to your life and your house and everything about you.

Like I, when I got my Amiga, I went from a kid who liked games and cartoons and comics and music and changed into a kid who could make all of them now, myself. I was able to do creativity, anything I could think of it could now happen. It poured out of me through my Amiga. Now, you needed to have some accessories. Chiefly, you needed to have a hard drive.

My friend, his Amiga-1200 had a hard drive in it. It had an internal hard drive. That's insane. And it was all... The PS2 didn't have one of those. No, I know. And it was all of 200 megabytes being. Now, that doesn't...

Now, it doesn't sound like much. But consider that everybody else, including me, for the longest time when I had my Amiga for, you know, the first year or so of having it, all I had was floppies like everybody else had. You had a floppy disk drive on the side. Floppy disks were one megabyte. So a 200 megabyte hard drive was like if you went to the shop and bought as many discs as they had there. It was a crazy extravagance. The sort of hedistic thing a maniac would do. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And he had that. And here's how you use an Amiga. You turn your Amiga on, and depending on what disc is in the disc drive,

that will load. And if it's the disc for Zool, then Zool will load. And at some point, it might say put in disc two, if you're playing a game that has two discs. Um, I think Zool did. Or more. Some discs had 11 discs like Monkey Island, two, and Simon the Sorcerer. And that was crazy. So you got yourself, the first accessory most people got was a second disc drive that just sat on top of the Amiga, and it was just a second disc drive. So you put both discs in, sat back, got on with your life. And already, that hop, that increase in your quality of life was immense. Now imagine, so here's, so I started saying here's how you're using Amiga. Here's how you use Amiga to do anything that isn't play a game. You had to get your disc of workbench. And you

recognized this disc because it had a label on it on which somebody had written in Byro workbench, 2.0. Yes. And you, I don't know if I've ever seen a non-pirative copy of my life. I was going to ask this, actually. What percentage of your

Amiga library was written on with a pirate? Let's be real about this. Because everyone I've ever known who owned an Amiga was very intimately familiar with the games opening with spectacular

moving graphics and the option to enable implement lives. This is the thing. Piracy was not just rampant. It was not just, just normal. It was like better than buying the games. If you bought a game, you played the game. If you got the pirated copy of the game, you got an incredible demo scene intro with like all scrolly bounty text.

And okay, that wasn't so great, but it had amazing music. Some of the, some of the finest pieces of music in my internal library, in my brain, are these demo scene cracktros, they were called. They're incredible. They are actually incredible. Like, if you go on YouTube and look them up. But you will go, wow. Yeah, but you might be less sarcastic sounding when you say it. I was being sarcastic for a joke, but they are actually amazing. Like, I mean that. Yeah, they're really good. But anyway, Workbench, right?

You put this in, and think of Workbench as the Windows of the Amiga. And you put it in and you got your what we now call a desktop. I guess then you called it a Workbench. I don't know. Yeah. And you had a desktop wallpaper. But on my Amiga, that could just be a repeat pattern or a blank colour. Do you think there are many people who used a Naked Lady as their desktop wallpaper,

like a Sam Fox, for example? I'm certain there were absolutely loads. But I didn't know anyone rude enough to do that. I've been wondering about doing an episode about, like, old Naked Lady games, yeah. Oh, right. I wonder if maybe that would be... Mostly they were quite young, weren't they, the Naked Ladies in the Games. If you can find any old Naked Lady games, that would be interesting enough to make an episode about it.

I think. I'm still making this joke. Still going now. It's still happening. I've stopped. Okay, that's good. I'm glad that it's finished. While it was happening, I was devious about the process. Sam Fox's strip poker was one of the two games that my friend had on his orange screen computer. Amazing. The other one was Talsetti, too. I don't know what that is, but I mean, the Sam Fox's strip poker on that orange screen can only be, and I don't put this lightly, among the more rousing things ever. It's certainly that ever happened on an orange street beauty. I mean, woof. Yeah.

Lord Flashheart, full on. Anyway, forget all of anything I just said about downloading Naked Lady games. I was just being ribled. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's appropriate because it's a British gaming computer legend, and that's the sort of thing we had, wasn't it? We had rude, ribald things in our games. Yes, we did.

But you put Workbench in, listen, right? And you load up Workbench, okay, right? And now you can do things like you do in Windows. And that was where you could load programs like, you know, word processes and things. But because it took all of those steps to do, no, you mostly, if you were someone who didn't have a hard drive, you mostly played games. But if you were someone who later got a hard drive, as I did, there was a day when someone dad knew was, had upgraded their computer and was selling their Amiga. And he brought this home. So now we had a second Amiga.

still a 500 plus, but it had a meg of RAM. Now, the Amiga came with, I think, half a meg of RAM. And if you were extravagant, you could upgrade it to one meg, and if you were like, Richie Poshington, you could upgrade it to two meg.

Richie Poshington. That, I think, is what my friend had. He had two meg. My friend Richard Poshington had two meg of RAM. If I've a lot of millionaire. Yeah. They, yeah, exactly.

They should have got a comic strip about that. It's just like, look at, like, I don't know, Tony Broker's like, oh, look, I got a secondhand Amiga 500 with half. Penny less has got an Amiga 1,000. And then Tony, I have a lot tons up. It's just like, oh, look at that puny thing. Look, I've got an Amiga 2,500 with 2 meg of RAM. Well, this is what happened. This is exactly what happened the day my dad came home with this new Omega because I had 8 meg of RAM in it now.

Oh, my God. Eight meg of RAM. Also, it had a hard drive that was a giant box stuck on the side. There was a big, a big long port down the side of the Amiga, and you could slot a huge box that looked like the shuttles out of Star Trek the next generation, slotted onto the side of the Amiga. And that was a 40 megabyte hard drive. 40 megabyte, so significantly smaller than my friends.

But on those 40 megabytes, that was all you needed for Workbench and a number of files, a couple of games. that's insane and you're good well so you're not just good you're laughing you're absolutely

destroying yeah so now that you're set up with that what can you do with an Amiga yes you can still play the games

in fact you can play them better because if you install them on the hard drive they load up instantly it's like having these days

like an SSD like none of this from the disk no you just click it there it is game amazing

that is amazing workbench you just turn your Amiga on, and we're in. Like, it is no exaggeration to state that my Amiga was about, oh, I'm trying to think of a number that isn't an exaggeration.

I want to say 20 times faster at booting up than my current Windows machine. Maybe that's an exaggeration, but I don't know, man. It was quick at loading up. And so, now you could do, yes, word processing. Now you could do

depaint, the, the best paint program that has ever existed, because as well as being good, it was fun. And a very, very large number of sprites were made in Deluxe Paint, very obviously so. Yes. You can tell when you see them. And many Mega Drive games, for example, I'm almost certain you used Deluxe Paint.

Oh, you can just tell. Of course, there were lots of Amiga ports for the Mega Drive, but that's for another day. Yeah. You could make music with ProTracker. And that was the same music that the people who made the music, the music for the games and the people who made the music for the cracktros and all of that. Same

thing. You would get Amiga Power magazine, which was a very popular enjoyable magazine. They would run cover discs where sometimes they would have mods that were sent in by readers. And one of them became essentially a very early meme. And it was based on a game called Valhalla and the Fortress of Doom, I believe it was called. Oh, yes. And it was called

It's a skull. Because the thing about Valhalla, Haller. There were multiple Valhalla games, and they were notable for the fact that your character talks a lot. Like, they make you could do speech, but it used it sparingly, not in Valhalla. Your little guy in Valhalla would look up at you and say all sorts of stuff. The one I had, I still, this is just one of the phrases in my brain that I still say on a monthly basis, let's say, which was, it can't be done if you were doing something that couldn't be done. But, yes, it's a skull is one of the most iconic Amiga things ever, and I'm going to provide an mp3 of it to sequence into this episode thank you editor person i really appreciate you

and you what works but essentially it's just a sequence with a beat that happens to sample valhalla and the fortress of something that goes it's a skull it's a skull it's a it's a it's a skull i'm scared it's a it's a skull bring me blood i'm not that strong bring me blood it's awesome It's a style I'm scared It's a skits and It's a style It's a skull

It's a skits and skits and Skull I'm scared Bring me Bring me blood I'm not that strong Bring me blood No way

That's what you did If you had ProTracker And now you had to figure out What to do To have fun in ProTracker What I used to do is We got a sampler

So I was actually Like recording my own voice and going like, I'm your local DJ, and then putting that into songs and things. And one of my favorite Amiga mods ever, and you can find this on YouTube right now, if you wish, is called Steve Spam. And that's, I think Steve without the E on the end, it's Stev Spam, right? And kind of what it is, is a man recreating the Monty Python spam song with his own voice just going spam, spam, spam, and it's very homemade. But what it also is, is a man who is much better at making music

than that would imply, who then makes this wonderful tune. He spins this wonderful tune out of just burps and farts and himself whistling and kind of going and things. And it's just amazing. It's a lovely piece of music

and it's great. That's another thing you can have on Workbench. If you've got a hard drive on Workbench, you can have a playlist. You can have Eagle player in the corner of the, right up there, in the corner of your screen while you're typing away on your word processor. playing music mods that you've either got off discs, downloaded off the internet,

because you could have that on the Amiga in those days just about. My friend had it, I didn't. You could make them yourself. You could rip them from games with a Ripper, a Ripper program. You could play a game, reset the computer, slamming your Ripper disk, boot from that, and it would go like, oh, what's left over in the RAM? Here's a piece of music. You could save it.

Loaded up in ProTracker, change it. I redid some of the music from Simon the Sorcerer to make it longer and have more stuff in it, including samples that I'd found that I'd recorded off CDs and stuff. It was a magic type. That's incredible. I'm actually becoming quite excited of the possibilities of this. Movie setter.

You could make your own cartoons. It was the Amiga, let you do everything that we do for fun on computers now. Like we're doing now, we're making a podcast now, or I make videos, you know, all these things. Well, all right, it wouldn't let me do either of those things, in fact, because that was too much data. But it was that sort of creativity was what you could do. We could make a very short podcast of books and parts. Very, very short. Yes, usually about, I think, 10 seconds was probably about the last moment.

But you could loop it. And that is what an amiga, what it was the day that a lot of us, self-included, went from having a spectrum, which was for games and things that you could fool yourself into believing were useful. applications, but not, didn't really have any practical... Like fun school, too, for example. Oh, well, I had a lot of practical use. Oh, wait, I didn't learn my numbers from that.

No, neither did I, but I had a good fun time bouncing around in it. That's true. Or, you know, but you could word process on a spectrum, but it was an execrable experience, and you couldn't really print it out. Whereas on the Amiga, you absolutely could. It was like having a computer today, but here's the thing. With character, the Amiga was fun. It was just nice to use.

It was just fundamentally more fun, way more fun than any computer now. I guess the closest, if you didn't have an Amiga listeners and you're a bit younger than that, try this. You still have to be quite old to get this reference, but what the Amiga felt like

was kind of like what IMAX felt like in about 2005, like in the early iPod era when Max was suddenly really exciting and fun. And maybe the one, maybe the era just before that where they had the coloured screens, the bits of the back of the screens

that were different colours. that feeling of like, yes, I'm using a computer but it's different and it's fun and it's nice and friendly and silly. It's got Bugdom on it. I didn't have one of those Macs, so I'll have to take your word for it, that that's a thing. Well, up until Bugdom, the only game that you could get on the Mac

was Happy Weed. No one's going to get that reference. Forget it. Just forget that. Just forget that reference. I don't get that. Nobody's going to get that. It's a joke about me being a child.

Like, it's a joke about my specific childhood that no one can relate to. It was a huge mis-fired. When all of the listeners heard that, I bet it really bugged them. I bet they, oh, yeah. There are no listeners. Hello.

Oh, who's here? We can't really pause already. This, you're all right. Oh, I just wanted to a quick hug. Oh, quick. Gilbert Gottfried died. Oh, Gilbert Gottfried just died. Oh, my God.

Oh, my God. What? No. this is awful wow there is no way of tying that into an amiga podcast he did not do anything to do with the amiga Disney's Aladdin

was on the Amiga and he played the I guess it was yeah the parrot in tribute shall we do the rest of the episode in Gilbert Godfrey voices I don't know if that would be in tribute or if it would be more kind of like

awful and they're ghoulish yeah I think it would this is unbelievable we're going to have to process this later, aren't we? Let's carry on with the Amiga podcast, and then we'll think about that later on. This is now a joint Amiga and Gilbert Godfrey's death commemoration and celebration, not celebration,

a celebration of his life, not of his death, obviously, that would be monstrous. Oh, you, yeah. My goodness gracious me. The Hardcore Gaming 101 podcast is on a mission to rank the top games of all time. I like the idea that when Bruce Wayne gets angry, he switches to the Batman voice. Why do you have this a problem making boomer eggs shaped like a bat? Jerk, Batman. Not like Batman. Just make it for me. Bruce Wayne, I'm getting even with this guy.

It's a Herculean task, and I'd be lying if I said it hasn't taken a toll on our cognitive faculties. Most people would be happy to have a job during a global pandemic. Goodness. Hardcore Gaming 101. Twice a week, every week. Right here on the HyperX Podcast Network. New this April from HyperX. It's the HyperX clutch controller. Get better control of your mobile gaming with its comfortable. grip, directional pad, analog sticks, and shoulder buttons. This versatile controller can fit a variety of phone widths and can also connect wirelessly for use on tablets and PCs. Learn more and pick one up

online at HyperX&HP.com, Amazon, MicroCenter, Target, Best Buy, and other fine retailers. Do you love Japan and video games? Well, so do we. We're Kinsey and Mark from Kyoto, India, Dev's Chewai Labs. Join us twice monthly for games, silly Japan news, and all around nonsense. Nasty Labs. We stink at making commercials. We've fucking got this one, bro. Be sure to stop

by the Chewai Labs Discord to chat about our games or ask us questions. Two High Labs and the Nasty Labs podcast. We're legally the best. New this April from HyperX, it's the HyperX clutch controller. Get better control of your mobile gaming with its comfortable grip,

directional pad, analog sticks, and shoulder buttons. This versatile controller can fit a variety of phone widths, and can also connect wirelessly for use on tablets and PCs. Learn more, and pick one up online at hyperX and HP.com, Amazon, MicroCenter, Target, Best Buy, and many other fine retailers. Great. So, let's, I'm going to hype myself back up again. Great. So let's, I'm going to, I'm going to try and hype myself back up again. Amiga, where were we? So the Amiga's good.

a computer that was nice. But I'm basically, I've finished saying that. So here's how I'll end it. That's how all things end. I finished saying that. Well, I've basically now come to a conclusion of my insistence that you understand listeners, that yes, we're going to be talking about games. But the Amiga was the moment in which my house was up great. Like my home became more, my friend's home became more. Together, we started making things. We became creative partners. we all started being able to produce stuff and it just unlocked the creative childness and that led directly to me being here talking to you today.

Okay, yes. As a creator of internet content. Yeah, a very, very amusing and entertaining one I must add. Thank you. And during all of that, we were playing such games. Such games. Still, some of the best games of all time.

But I want to tell you how the Amiga changed my life. I wish you would. It won't be nearly as long as your one, and that wasn't a criticism. No, no. It's just that you had the lived experience. I had this very different experience, and I want to tell you about it, because I have no... You know what? I may have told this story before as well.

If so, please reach through your earphones and hit me in the face, okay? Now, I, as a child, I had... As is well known, because I talk about this all the time, because it's the reason why I am deprived as I am about retrogaming. I had a master system, and then I had a PS2. In between that, nothing! Oh, wow. Nothing.

Oh, whoa. That PS2 must have been like that Amiga upgrade I just described. It was, it was, yes. Although I still like the master's and better. But anyway, what I did have, however, was A, the early years of emulation, and B, being given old video game magazines by family friends who did not want them. Oh, which meant I didn't have the machine for. I did not. So I would get, for example, Sega, Nintendo mags, like 10 years even after they were even.

kind of thing. So I was learning about, I was always a retro gamer. I was always a retro gamer, always. How did your relatives get hold of those magazines? Were they from their own collection? No, my family friends, they would just be done with them and they would be like, a family friend would be like, a family friend would be like, oh, give these to Stewart. He likes these games magazines, give them to him. So I would hungrily devour them. I would read them. I would trace my finger through the maps and pretend I was playing the games. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. My finger, for example, was the small man. It was the small games man.

Yes. It was the same as playing them. It was called Mr. Fingle in the game. It was. And in some instances, it was in fact better than playing them. But I digress. Now, one of these times that I was given Anne magazine was an issue of Amiga format, which is not a games magazine.

It is more of an Amiga productivity magazine, that there are games involved in it. Yes, my dad, disappointingly got a lot of issues of that. And that was the one where its cover magazines were just full of, like, utilities. like clocks and stuff for workbench. Now, the real Amiga magazine is Amiga Power, which I've already talked about. But I'll get to that in the minute, so I have to at least briefly document Amiga Power because it's important. But Amiga format, now I'm trying to be diplomatic here. Yeah.

Okay. Amiga format in its letters page, it ran a comic strip that was an nominally about the Amiga. It was called Sabrina online. Oh, that was where Sabrina, right. Let me tell you the story. Go on. Now, Sabrina was, it was made by Eric Schultz, who made graphics with the Amiga. Schwartz, excuse me, Schultz is the Peanuts guy.

Eric Schwartz, who also did the intro to Super Frog, I believe. And a superior cartoonist, too. Excellent. It's tremendous cartoonist. Oh, yeah, definitely better than Schultz by Miles. And, well, that's upset me greatly. But no, the, Eric Schwartz did this comment in Sabrina Online, which was about a skunk named Sabrina, like an anthropomorphic skunk, you know. Funny animals.

That's what I like. That's what I would see. I would be like, oh, it's a cartoon animal character, as you did back in the day, you know. And they were nominally about needing connections and Amiga games and buying Amiga software and loving the Amiga. Because he was a big Amiga, nerdlinger, and still probably it. Yeah. So many, many years later, I don't know what happened, but something jogged my memory. I was like, oh, I just remembered that cartoon strip, Sabrina Online.

I'm going to Google it and see what it is. and that's how I learned about furies Yeah Now when I said I'm being diplomatic I do not say that with a tinge of I have no issue with furries whatsoever No no no But I find it fascinating that it was a direct through line

Between furries and the Amiga Because let's face it That makes a lot of sense A hell of a lot of sense Doesn't that make a huge amount of sense I'd be prepared to say I was joking earlier when I Of course when I said that he was

better than Shultz. But there was a direct... He was shit compared to Shultz, but go on, go on. Yes. But there was a... He was one of the first, like, what... He laid some of the groundwork for what furry is now. For sure, he did. He then, he drew some... There were some other pictures that he drew.

Oh, Sabrina Online changed in its form. It became less about the Amiga and more about shagging. But that's not a... It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. No, no. No. No. Eric Schwartz was a very... talented, very talented animator on the Amiga and he did, he did do the Superfog

intro and he also did loads of cartoons that you could just download from his website. For a no, still is. Still is very talented for all I know. I can't imagine he is. I can only imagine he is. I don't, yes, I'd love to know what he's up to because... Well, I think what he's up to is resolutely paywalled. Um, so, yeah. Mm, yeah. Yes, I saw a couple of drawings that he did that I did disagree with sometime later in the later times. But sometimes later in the evening, sorry, sorry. He did do. Well, I do know that when I was 14, we found some quite tantalizing cartoons that he did,

which I've now watched just recently. And they are hilariously chased. Yes. It's like their porn, but done by someone who is, I don't know, like a very observant Mormon. Or something like that. It's like end of the pier tier. Like, it's like one of those postcards where someone says like, oh, I'd like a couple of

big juicy melons, please. Yes. And it's like a lady with enormous breasts saying, oh, I've got some of those out front. Yes. And he goes, oh, I get it. Okay. Yeah. And I remember as a 13 or 14 year old watching this around my friend's house because he had

an internet connection at this time. Listening very carefully for the sounds of approaching. That's the thing. That's the thing. What if someone sees me looking at this hardcore? around. Yes, that's what I felt like. You were casting around to make sure nobody interrupted you seeing this salacious pornography when what it actually was, was a cartoon that ran off a floppy disc, and it ran automatically. It was a movie setter. And it was about a frog

and a cat. And the frog was like a cartoon frog. Like, can he look just like super frog? I remember this one. I remember this one, little squishy frog thing. Flip the frog. And his girlfriend, Clarice Cat, was just like this pin-up model. But with a cat. head or whatever. And the story was that they were trying to do a doing sex in the living room. But people did keep interrupting them sex that they done. And so there'd be a knock at the door or like some, there'd be a postman would come around and the frog was getting crosser and crosser and ended with him launching. Because he wanted to do and sex. And sex. And he launched a big rocket at the people to, because it was all cut. It was like an episode of like

tiny tunes that nobody was overseeing. That was the way he worked. And let me tell you, as a kid, I don't think I'd seen better animation in my life. I was sitting there with stars in my eyes going like, this is amazing! Because it was coming out of an Amiga. It was live. It was being generated before my eyes. And someone with the same sort of skills and style as actual animation on television was doing it.

So, of course, he was used for the, it's so good that they used him for the Super Frog intro. Like, that's really hip and with it of them. Yes, it is. And you know what else has happened with it? The great taste of refreshing Lukezade. Oh, yes. Yes. The Amiga was a golden era, a golden era of sponsored games, man.

Luke Azade in Super Frog, we had quavers in not just pushover, but also one step beyond. We had penguin biscuits in Robocod and James Pond 3. Yep. And then we had Tupichupes in Zool, as previously documented. There was a skips game that I forget the name of, clumsy Colin, I think. Yeah, I think so. Climsy calling in, why would you buy Skip's their disgusting world?

I think that might be what it was called. The podcast of controversial stances. Revolting crisps, truly revolting. Like drinking prawns saliva. I tell you what, yes, what's particularly,

I remember quite liking them the last time I had them, which was, you know, decades ago. And yet, imagine eating one today, you just would refuse, wouldn't you? Well, the problem is that the gimmick, the thing you're supposed to do,

is let them melt on your tongue, which is... Yeah, it's disgusting, isn't it? It's revolting, yeah. Anyway, so as we've, as we've covered, before we even get onto the games, we have covered word processing, drawing, creating music, movies, pornography, fairy pornography. And then there's games. So many bleeding, bloody games.

Oh, the good games. But the focus, of course, while we are going to talk about some games that were ported, I think that it would best for everyone. about games that are best on the Amiga or exclusive to the Amiga because I want to talk about Lemmings, because you mentioned Lemmings a while ago. We've got to talk about Lemmings.

There has been a full episode about Lemmings, so I'm not going to talk about Lemmings extensively. Okay. Now, I want to say this on the air to try and create further beef. The fact that there was a Lemmings episode of Retron Horns and I was not invited Sickensby. It revered, the

rebeil cascades to my throat. No, obviously, that's true, obviously. But in reality, it is in fact true. It genuinely does. Yeah, no, obviously, yeah. And like, same, really, on some level, even though there's no reason they would have invited me on. But, you know, we kind of have this chance to redress

the balance a little bit and say the word lemmings, at least. Lemmings. Yes. But Lemmings, um, on the Amiga, um, probably the best version as well. Well, it's definitely the best version. There's no question about it. Okay. It's the best version that isn't a fan-made mod of another version. Okay. Oh, fine. Okay. Well, I

don't know about that. Basically, there is a thing called Lemmoni, which recreate Lemini, like Gemini, recreates the Amiga version, but adds, for example, fast forward. That's better. Okay, sure. That is better. Well, it will. The Amiga, yes, it is better because you can fast forward all the stupid Lemmings.

Now, what Lemings had on the Amiga, and which other versions did have, but didn't have it properly, is it had the flipping two-player mode, which is the most underrated two-player mode in the history of 16-bit gaming. Yeah.

imagine lemmings except you can troll your friend's lemmings imagine that you've got two sets of lemmings on the screen and you control them I mean not control them I mean can troll them like both yes the idea is to get your lemmings into your exit but if a enemy if your opponent gets their lemings into your exit it counts it counts it's a beautiful game and it's so car it's such utter

a carnage that it's actually difficult to describe. You have to just play it and find out. I think it was on the Mega Drive version as well, but you had to use the Mega Mouse and no one had that. No, no. I don't understand anyone who plays Lemmings with a controller. That's...

You know what I don't understand. You know what I don't understand. How they put Lemmings and Ono More Lemings on the PS1. And they made you play it with the controller and also loading after every single level. Now on the one hand, O'Noh no more Lemmings is the hardest

game in the world ever made. So, Oh No More Lemings, it may well be. I didn't really notice because, to me, normal Lemmings also was. Like, I didn't play Lemmings because I was able to. I played Lemmings. I am the hotness at Lemmings, my friend. I am the king of Lemmings. Lemings, King.

I can't get past more than about three levels of O'No, Lemings, after the tame setting. It's impossible. Oh, that's interesting to hear, okay. Yeah. O'N. More Lemings is basically lemings made by maniacs who are evil I will say here's something about this is my

cancelable take about Lemmings right I think that Lemmings oh no more Lemmings is like the Sonic 3D of Lemmings games and what I mean by that is that yes well not quite it's a it's easy to criticise for its gameplay

but secretly the best soundtrack of the series oh no more Lemmings on the Amiga that's the best Ami at Lemming's music. Oh, that's controversial. Because it doesn't have that version of Tengreen bottles, does it?

No, but the thing about that, right. So the thing about the Lemmings I music, it's amusing, but it's not good. Excuse you. That version of Tenging, it's like a rave. Yeah. It's not incredible. Good, though. And then...

It's good. I want my coffin to descend to that music. I mean, well, we'll arrange that. Yes. Because we're starting a beef. I'm going to punch you in the face. So maybe at some point, maybe I'll stand over your corpse. And I will be, oh, this is darker than I wanted. I was trying to do a joke where I'm present because I killed you. And I don't like that. I'm dialing back from... I don't like to imagine you having killed me. It's a very shameful way to die, I feel. Yeah, as all my victims

can attest. But you did have, you know, on deeming's one, on Lemmings one, which was there. Amazing. Yeah, it was good. I did that perfectly in time, but it'll have gone wrong with the... What about, what about...

What about... What about... I will not accept any shade for a little Leavings music. Perfect. But the thing is, all of those... I love all of those... of those, but they're not like nice to listen

to. They're fun or they're silly. Now, I do love whatever, is it called like Song 12 or so? There's one tune, the one that's da-do-da-boom-boom da-da-da-dum Yeah, that one's very nice. That one lovely, particularly

on the spectrum. If you ever hear the spectrum version of that, I actually think it's the best version. It's so lovely. That's very controversial. I'll be looking that up. Get it. hooked up, and also you could pause it so that it would go slower, and it was just so serene. Oh, it was lovely.

But anyway, the, yeah, the original tunes in Lemmings one, I really love. But they're scrappy. You can tell that they were done in the early days of the Amiga, where, you know, not a tremendous amount of, like, skill is involved in making them. Like, I can confidently say that I could have made them if I wanted to make a version of 10 green bottles. Yeah, no, that's fair. You know what I mean?

Whereas Lemmings 2, proper bangers end to end. They're all good music. Hang on. Hang on. Hang on. What? An impasse has been reached. You just said Lemmings 2.

Oh, sorry. I meant, oh, no. Previously, you said, I know more Lemmings. Now, Lemings 2, the tribes, is a very different game indeed. It is. But I want to clarify that you mean, oh, no more lemmings. I absolutely clarified that the bangers I refer to are the soundtrack to own all But I'm sensing some resistance here.

I also think the music in Lemmings, too, is very good. Oh, no. I love Lemmings, too. It took me a long time to come around to Lemmings, too. I always considered it to be the inferior, far too complicated sequel to Lemmings, where they ruined it by adding in way too many different elements that they did. And then later, I learned that it actually rules. It's amazing because you're supposed to do levels over and over again,

and through trial and error and fun, figure out the best. route through them by trying to figure out what all of the different powers do. Because you can go back and read your levels in order to continue to the next level with more Lemmix, adding a whole new strategic element to the game. Yes, I forgot. Lemmings to the tribes. It's good, actually. Put that on the box.

Yes. Do you know, I'm going to, there's something that I wasn't sure when I'll introduce into this discussion. I'll just do it now because it's how I got Lemmings too. I'm excited. So, we're already talking about how I got into Memega and, And you've talked about, well, you didn't have one, but you know. I never did have one.

I was a little, I had an Archimedes, an Acorn Archimedes, which was like a bad Amiga. Yes. And didn't exist, remember, a fake computer. Yes, yes, yes. Made up by Spod's not real. Move on. Yes. So when we got our Amiga, which was at the start of, it was just before the summer of 93.

So I hadn't quite left primary school yet and was able to have a last couple of months at primary school. And then the summer was when I really sat down and really played with my Amiga in a big, big way. And when I did, and by the way, I'll just mention that some of the discs that we got with it, the one that had a workbench on it, or the one that had deep paint on it, one of them can't remember. If it may have been a workbench back up this, it had some like brushes for deep paint that were these like intricate 3D looking alien characters and you could kind of like build them out of bits. And if anyone knows what that was, please tell us so that I can see them again. It was like a hairy one and a one with eyes on storks and

stuff maybe. I can't even remember. I just love them. Big nose. It's lovely. Anyway, that, the very first day of that summer holiday was a Saturday and we went to the local market in town. And in the local market in town, there was a game stall selling mainly, I think, perhaps only Amiga games, because that was just the thing. And that was when we bought Superfrock, which was our first Amiga game and a very good game and a very good first Amiga game. A game that really showcases what an Amiga

can do in terms of good games. And it's got an awesome ass frog. It's got an awesome ass frog. It's got Lucas Aid's got an amazing intro. It's just a very good game. It has music that is composed of croaking. The music in Superfrog is as good a demonstration of the Amiga as anything else. It's phenomenal. It's a brilliant game.

The only reason I hesitate to say, go and look it up listeners is that I get the sense that people have like uploaded it to YouTube wrong in some way I can't really understand maybe they put the like there was a bad remaster or something maybe they've used that but Alistair Brimble's original tune Super Frog HD yes well actually I have praised Super Frog HD in the past

on this very podcast and I stand by that because of the fact that they did include all the original levels now now and the music and music however they of course did not include the original graphics which is a huge market against it. No, and it makes the whole thing completely unplayable. That's slightly unreasonable, but I'm going to... It looks awful.

While that is inarguably true, I have no follow up to this sentence. Go on. Sure. Well, it's just that Super Frog was like the best, you know, this is the best a game can look, and then the release of a version that's like the worst a game can look.

Anyway, anyway, so there I had my one game, and thereafter you'd think they would all be part, And this answers your question. I deflected your question a bit earlier, like what percentage of your games were pirated. Because for most people, the answer is almost all of it. Because you didn't want to admit to a crime. Didn't want to admit to a crime. No, no, no.

I want to admit to a crime. And I have to shamefully say that actually I had loads of games that were not pirated. And the reason for this was because very shortly after getting the Amiga, and I don't know how this took place. This was not the sort of thing that happened in our house. No. My dad agreed to sign us up. a sort of Amiga games club thing.

Oh my goodness. What it was, was that once a month, a catalogue came, and you had to buy one game from the catalogue. Oh, is this like one of those record of the month club things? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you had, and so you, so every month, me and my brother would look through the thing, and we would, like, decide what game we wanted.

And I think we alternated, like, I was allowed one, one month, and my brother was allowed one the next month or whatever. Fair system, fair system. Fair system, and, well, sort of fair. It was fair and unfair at the same time. The way it was unfair was that my brother... Is that your brother got goes, which you would like to have had, is that? No, no.

Sorry, Colin. No, sadly, it was unfair to my brother, because, of course, he didn't know what any of the games were, because he didn't really care about Amiga games particularly, and I did. So, you know, so a lot of the time he simply wouldn't know what to pick, and so I would go, oh, pick that or whatever. or sometimes he would pick one based on the cover and it might turn out not to be a very good game. It would be quite cack, okay.

But to be fair, though, I also didn't know about half the games and I was also just picking based on the cover and I just happened to always pick absolute megabangers every time. That's amazing. But the way that it was fair was that, was that I was picking really good ones that my brother was able also to play.

We shared the game once they arrived. It wasn't like, no, you can't play that, it's mine. We played them all together, basically. Well, and so I did end up with, and presumably these games would be a bit cheaper than if you bought them from the shops, but you had to have one every month. So I had a new game every month, and the first one we got was Lemmings 2. Amazing. Right hot off the heels of Super Frog. Do you see the picture I'm painting here?

My first two games, Super Frog and Lemmings 2, both of them, really good. So you're saying that you played Lemmings too before you played Lemmings? Oh, did I? There's a possibility of that. Now, the thing is, oh, well, now I already had it on the spectrum, though. That's why I love the spectrum. Oh, okay, fair enough, fair enough, fair enough. I also seem like quite the leap.

Yeah, and I did also have the pirated version of Lemmings and No No More Lemmings. It's just a question of how I already got them by the time we got Lemings too. I feel like we probably did. But it would have been about the same time, you know, within a few weeks of each other. Yes. And I'd played it around my Amiga friend's house. I referred to him at last on my podcast as my Amiga friend. Yes.

which is an unfair description of our friendship but a very fair description of what we did together when we were in each of the house is the reason you don't give their name because they became a serial killer or something no no no I know his name was Andy Lee and I wanted to get in touch with me I still think he's really cool

but I haven't found him for a long time oh man maybe this will be the time he popped up on Twitter once to say that he played one of my songs to his daughters and I replied and I never heard from him again he's gone he's just gone off social media sensibly you know what I mean

Do you think that antagonism would be the next best step? Because we can antagonize him. Let's think you'll cut back on. Why don't we try and get him into, okay, that's a good idea. I'll try and get him into a car park fight with you or me. And then we will use the fight to lock the doors and force him to become your friend. Well, he won't remember who I am. So what we can do is we can get, we can arrange a fight and then, you know,

because he won't recognize him about a beard and stuff now. I'm a grown man now. So we'll arrange a fight. but when he's about to do punches on me, I will start singing the Wapambugi and a single tear all that out of his cheek. Throw up your hands, cover your face and shout, no, no, I'm so weak.

Don't hit me. I'm so weak. That's what I do in a normal fight. What's I got to me with this? That's what I do, and it works every time. Oh, that explains that fight we tried to have where we both just... All we did was hold our hands up

and both shall in perfect synchronicity. Oh, no, don't hit me. I'm so weak. Please, I'll die. immediately. And because we're retro gamers, we said, oh, no, instead. And that's why we're friends. Then we recognize that. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So I had Lemmings, two from that, and a load of other games. And more or less, like, a lot of the games I'm going to mention, that's how I got them. So I had some legit games. So I had some boxes. I've got the stickers that came with Zool, too. Amazing. I've got them.

They're stuck on things, but I've got them. Of course. Well, it's like how when my, my, my, father was, uh, went to somewhere where the Sega bus was. I never got to go to the Sega bus, but my father did. And he said, can I, please give me a thing I can take back and give to my small child who loves Sonic. And he gave me what can only be described as infinite stickers. It was a role, a full-on roll. And I'm talking like when you buy a new celetap role of small Sonic 2 stickers with Tollic and Tails standing there with the two. I'm fairly sure.

I still have them. You have, that is important to me. I have that sticker, but I only have one of it. And the way that I have it is that I was at Games Master Live. And there was the Sega Bus, but the cue to play Sonic 2, because it wasn't out yet, or it was just out or something. I hadn't seen it. It was so long that definitely the whole convention would have been closed by the time I got to the front. Yes. And somehow I was talking to a woman, she was probably a teenager, but like there was a, I feel as if my parents said like,

go and talk to her. She's got one, and they must have thought she seemed safe. And I went over, I'm 10, and I said, where did you get that sticker? She's got it on her, on her clothes. And she went, well, I got it in that bus, but I'm going to give it to you. And she put it on my little cardigan. And somewhere in this world, I have that in my Games Master Live stuff bag. Where that is, couldn't tell you, but it's somewhere in this world. I, did I am talking to a man who maybe has, but certainly used to have the whole role of those stickers. A full role.

A full role. To this day, to this day when I'm at home, sometimes I move things and I see them stuck on things. Like sometimes I will just look at a type of, from the old house, I will look somewhere at an odd angle and there will be a sticker. There are Sonic 2 stickers everywhere. They are hidden.

They were hundreds of things. Oh, what used, did you deliberately, were they like in hidden locations? I just stuck them everywhere. Yes, and many of them were found and peeled and removed, but not all of them were accessible to anyone who wasn't for. No, indeed. Every so often I will find what can you be described as that exact sticker. I will see if I can find them, and I will take a picture, and we will compare the stickers.

I thought you said to anyone who wasn't Thor, God of Thunder. Oh, no, four, no, four. Yeah, for the age, four years. I was not ever the God of Thunder. This was it. I was wondering how you managed to hide them there then, if you needed to be Thor to, like, I thought you meant, you'd have to, like, lift up furniture that's too heavy. or whatever.

Well, yeah, or mealny. Yeah, you've got a sticker. It's not that great. You put a sticker on mealny. Yeah, put a little something two sticker on meleon.

And then Avengers Endgame just becomes silly as a result, as opposed to extremely serious and normal, like it is now. Very, very deadpan. Yeah, anyway, that's nothing to do with the Amiga. No, we're supposed to talk about the Amiga. Now, can I please,

I would like to talk about an Amiga thing, please. I'll give you permission to do that. There is a company who made games for the Amiga, and they are called Crisillus. Yes. K-R-I-S-A-L-I-S.

Now, their most well-known game is Soccer Kid. Yes. Oh, I wonder where I knew the name from. That was released in the United States with the ridiculous name, The Adventures of Kid Cleats. Oh. K-L-E-E-T-S.

Because apparently, like, that's more marketable than soccer kit. Well, hang on a minute. Yeah. If we're not, hang on a minute, if we're not doing it to bow to them, and why wasn't it, Foothy Kid? I am 100% with you on this.

absolutely 100,000% with you on this. I don't understand it either. But anyway, that's not what I want to talk about because everyone knows Sockey Kid. It's a pretty good game. What I want to talk about is the other two games, two other games that they made, which are less well known. First of all, Mad Professor Mariety. Oh.

Now, Mad Professor Marietti is a game that I actually had on the Naughty R comedies, but it is an Amiga game, and it was the same exact thing. Now, what it is, is a game where you take control of the titular Mad Professor Mariati, a quite clumsily drawn sprite in a quite clumsily drawn but very charming game

and you go around a series of laboratories five different individual levels large relatively open plan round with enemies and full of dizzy style puzzles where you had to pick up items and take them elsewhere in the levels to do things

now what made it great is that this wasn't a big fantastic dizzy style world this was small levels that were like small dizzies Every level was like your very own portable half-hour long dizzy. How good? How good is that? That's very good, and I'd like to play it.

Oh, you should. It's tremendous. And when you jump, he goes, boing, and it's great. And the music's awesome as well. And I believe it was made by Matt Furness, who went on to make lots of cool things. The thing about the Amiga is that because it had that samples-based sounds, there was a lot of very good jumping sounds on Amiga games. Yes. Now, of course, you press up to jump, and a lot of people have problems with that, but shut up.

Only if they're idiots and have never used a joystick properly. Yes. Now, Matt Professor Mariety, tremendous game, recommend it highly, very much fun. But Chrysalis later, they made a game called Arabian Nights. Oh, of course. Now, surely that was pre-Socket Kid, wasn't it, Arabian Night? I believe it came off the Soccer Kid. What?

I could be mistaken. I could be mistaken, because it's much better than Soccer Kid. Is it? I believe so. I believe it to be better than Soccer Kid. yes. Now, Arabian nights... That was Arabian nights, isn't it?

When I got my A500 million, that was the first thing I played on it. I slidloaded it and immediately played it, and I was the happiest I've been in a long time. That tune was one of the ones that my Amiga friend, Andy, gave me. Amazing. Now, you know what? Now that you mention it, I think it did come before Sucker Kid, actually.

It must have turned. Because it looks like a more primitive version of the same kid. I like it better than Sucker Kid. Sure, that's fine. Because soccer's not as good as a... Arabia. No. Now, Arabian Nights is a level-by-level platformer with also some sort of subtly-dizzy-ish

elements where you have to find items and then go about doing things. But they're very, very limited. They're not particularly difficult. It's more just the excuse to explore. Now, what makes Arabian Nights the bestest, best thing ever? On the one hand, it's never been ported to anything else, which is disgusting. That is. Because that game, had it been on the Mega Drive, and I promise you this,

it would have been a top 10 for me. Like, it would have a top-term mega-drive game. Now, as it is, it's just simply a top... No, you know what? It's not even a top-10 Amiga game because Amiga is that good, but it's a very good Amiga game. And in playing it,

what gets me about it the most, and this is what people who are familiar with my game tastes will immediately recognize. It's got so many secrets they're coming up of the goddamn walls, quite literally. Now, if you go, like, in the original, the first level is a dungeon.

Now, there are walls. can just break, and there are tons of gems to collect behind them. There are gutters in the walls that don't look like doors, but if you crouch down and press A, by God, you crawl into them, and by God, there are a whole new challenges and items behind them. And more gems. You can't beat you know, and more gems. And you know, I have played that at first level, possibly hundreds of times,

hundreds. And do you know what happened when I played it the other day? Did you find a new secret? I found a new, amazing secret. And I'm going to tell you it now. There is a room. How familiar are you with this game? Only passing. I've seen it. I may have played it once.

There is a room in the first level where there are pots, and if you drop into the pots, they will propel you upwards. Now, I believe these are actually already in a secret room that requires you to walk through a wall. So within the secret room, if you drop into the pots, they propel you upwards, and in the air, there are lots of gems, so you will sort of travel naturally towards the gems to get them. Now, if you decide to forsake sanity entirely,

and repel yourself to the left towards the wall, away from the gems, instead, you will land on an invisible freaking platform. Invisible platform. And then if you jump, you will land on another slightly higher invisible platform. And if you keep jumping, you end up in a room directly above the secret area. You're already in. Secret nestled within a secret. And you know what's in that room?

Aladdin's lamp. Oh, get lost! No, Aladdin's lamp is in that room. And it does nothing, except at the end of the level, when you're cashing in all your stuff, you get loads of points for it. I bet you're flipping do. And when I found that Aladdin's lamp, I stood up, ladies and gentlemen,

I stood up on my chair because I had found a new thing. It's like when I play Sonic 3 in Knuckles and every time I play that game, the game I've played 100,000 times, I find something new in it. Oh, I do not. I think I've found everything in that one.

Because that game is rammed! And Arabian Nights is that good. It is that good. It is constantly rewarding. It absolutely just fustoons you with riches for doing insane, stupid things, and I love that. Yes. Do you remember, when you were that age, responding to that sort of game,

did you ever, like, draw, like, design a game just on paper? And all you were doing was hiding things like that and not doing any thought to what the actual game was. I have a cupboard at my house, my family house. I have a child, that sounds like I have two houses. I mean with my parents. I have a cupboard completely full of drawings. And what they are is an a-four sheet of paper turned sideways,

a line, two lines drawn across the middle of it, sort of equidistant from one other, to create three similarly sized rectangles. Okay. Now those rectangle constitute a single strolling plane. Right. If you start on the top left, that is the beginning of the level. Yeah.

I would start drawing a level. When you get to the top right, it now goes to the next row down, and it continues. That is the next bit of the game. Right. And then it continues again at the end of that, and that is your whole level.

I have probably got about 5,000 of those of games I have tried to design. I've only managed to successfully design to, I think, full games, and they had never been made, sadly. No. But who knows? Perhaps one day they will. Perhaps one day. Probably not, but perhaps one day.

What I used to do is Lemmings levels, and I was responding to Lemmings too. So I loved, this is what I was itching to comment when we were talking earlier about Lemmings too. I loved the fact that there were now just a seemingly unlimited number of mad different things that Lemmings can do. And I rolled with that. And so I was like, I would just make them up. So I would just be designing a level where it's like, yeah, okay, on this level, your lemming turns into a beach ball and bounces over there or whatever, you know.

I'd just make up stuff that your lemmings could do to go with the level. Yeah. Well, do you want to know an interesting and fascinating fact? Go on. The Lemony engine comes with the level that's till you can make your own lemmings levels in. And it's really easy to do it, too, and I have made some. Oh, what if I dig up some of the old ones that I drew and then make them? that would be a fitting tribute to me

I think the main thing that I have made levels for on paper is Oddworld Abe's Odyssey but that's another episode entirely because level editors in games are the single used to be the single most driving reason for me to want them.

There is an absolutely terrible PC platform game called Speedy Eggbert that advertises coming with a what you see is what you get level editor and I literally begged my mum for it and I got it and it became a five-year meme and it remains kind of a meme to be honest it's amazing but speedy egg boat level

can wait level god episode episode not level I'm thinking about levels now Speaking of levels, What other games did you enjoy on the Amiga? Okay, other games that I enjoyed on the Amiga include. So two of the games that I got from this club are two of my favorite games ever in the world. Sam Fox's strip poker. And?

Sam Foxx's strip poker too. Thank you. No. They were. The lost levels. There are your levels. Go on, sorry. If someone was to say to me, Dave, I'm thinking of trying out the Amiga, what shall I try?

that would be an example of the sort of thing that Amiga is good at. This is what I would recommend to them, just because of the... I think I know what's coming, listeners, but I'm not going to spoil the surprise. I don't think you do. I've got a vague idea. I think it rhymes with bettlers. Oh, do you know what? That yes, but actually, I'm saving that up.

That wasn't it. Okay. Okay. Although, yes. Yes. No. Goblins. So... Oh, you don't mean goblins.

You mean goblins. Goblins. Well, that's the thing, though. I don't actually care about the original game, Goblins. Okay. But I do care about Goblins 2 and Goblins 3. The gimmick was that, yeah, each game had fewer goblins in it and therefore fewer eyes in the middle of the word goblin. I have never clocked that. Go on. Yes. Goblins, so Goblins was a sort of a puzzler where you've got three goblins. And I'm not going to talk about it because I don't really rate it. It's fine. I'm sure it was amazing when it first came out, but whatever, I didn't play it then. I played Goblins 2. In which you are, imagine, okay, this isn't what it is, but imagine a point and click adventure. And so

picture a setting in one of those. And instead of having one guy that you're pointing, clicking around, you've got two guys. And you click on one of them or the other one to choose which one you move around. Okay, fine. And it's all really, really cartoony, not like the point and Click Adventure's sort of house style that develops. This is more of a kind of a cartoon strip sort of a look for you, these little guys. Now get rid of the inventory at the bottom. That's not there. You haven't got any, you haven't got verbs, you haven't got any out.

All you've got is a load of interactable objects, and you can tell which ones they are, because the background has a kind of sort of painted look, and the interactable objects are, you know, outlined cartoons. So it's like in a cartoon where you can tell which floorboard is going to be a trap door. It's going to pop up and hit Tom in the face, yeah. Yeah. And you just click one of your two little goblins, or three if you insist, or one if you're playing Goblins 3, and you click on the things, and they each have a different way of interacting with them. And maybe it'll be nothing and they'll just shrug at you, or maybe they'll do something, and it'll hurt them. And that's the thing. The main thing that happens is that your goblins get hurt over and over again in a series of really funny ways. If you click the wrong thing, if you would annoy a man, he will slap you and you'll go flying. and you'll hit a tree. Unless you're the other goblin in which he'll slap you and you'll go flying and perhaps you'll land in the tree. And now you've got a goblin up in the tree and he can go around

and do stuff. So it's a game of just trying everything with your little guys. And there's no text really. Oh, actually, that's true. That's not true. There's some bits of text. But generally speaking, the whole game is just these little cartoon reactions. You see what works. And so if you've got an item in your inventory, which is you can, I think you click the right mouse button and it comes up in little box, you might take the object, click it on a thing in the world, and the guy might just go, eh, he might not have a thing to do with it, or he might plop it on there, and now we've advanced, and the next bit of puzzle can begin. It's so good. It's just so good, and I regret that it's difficult to see without playing it how good it is, because of course, the videos are

available of this. There's plenty of videos of this on YouTube. I must add, though. unless something's changed you can buy this game you can go on good old games I think you can just buy it can go on good old games I recommend you do however it's the PC versions

that's the thing the music is the music is drastic on the PC it is not good whereas on the Amiga it was these lovely little bouncy tunes and they were so good but but I still

sort of recommend it because if you just watch them on YouTube this is what I was going to say you're going to find long plays done by people who know the answers to the puzzles and so you don't get to see all of the comedy mishaps

that take place when you get the puzzles wrong which is the whole point so yeah but absolutely great game goblins too and I just played and played I don't think I ever finished it but I played and played and played it I'll still pop on the music now and then

from type of it's like with Lemmings 1 it's not what you'd call accomplished Amiga music but the tunes are just so nice and great. Just lovely. And then Goblins 3 shook up the formula a bit by basically just having one goblin, but he quickly gets other characters that you interact with

as if they were a second goblin or a third goblin. You kind of amass them on each screen, and they sort of upped the size of the screens. They were now, you know, scroll left and right, and did fantastic gimmicks. Like, there's this one bit where you die. and you end up in the afterlife and everything is like black and white because you're in the afterlife. And so what you have to do on that screen is essentially like free the spirits of

red, green and blue, thus returning color to the afterlife. And now you get to be resurrected and you're a werewolf now. Amazing. I don't think that's the way around it goes. You may already be a werewolf. But anyway, great games. So good. Yes, do get them on good old games. I might do that myself. The only reason I haven't is that it would be a betrayal of everything I stand for because the music is not a mea music. There might be a mod to include the Well, that is what I want. If that exists, then I will be on Cloud 9

because it's not just that they do the tunes, but badly because it's on a dingley old MIDI sound, yeah. No, they, it's a bit like that, but they also sort of screw up the tunes. Do you know what? It is to some people's taste. So, sorry,

to everybody who prefers it that way. Sibby people. Such as that one commenter on the video of it who says, I prefer this and I'm like, okay, mate. Nobody asked you, commenter. Speaking of games with amazing music, I want to very briefly shout up Twin World. Twin, I don't know it.

Twin World is a, here's the thing, I'm going to get a bit, I'm going to get spiritual. Twin World is a game that I heard before I saw it. because I used to volunteer this sort of youth club thing when I was quite young and they had amigas there

or some kind of computer that was exactly like an Amiga I can only imagine it was an Amiga and I heard this music playing it as kind of almost sort of ethereal sort of music but also with a twinge of synth pop to it like almost all Amiga music has and I was like, hello, what's this? And a sort of Ringo Star Voice

when searching for it eventually found this stupid game where you play as this giant-headed goblin lad like big elf ears like big head platformer very early Ubisoft game. Not a bad game, just a very generic platformer that is nonetheless great fun because it's an Amiga game so it looks amazing, you know, and it's full of stupid secrets where you just jump on the floor and the floor breaks and loads of diamonds fall on your head. Because that's what those games were like.

But the music, for some reason, whenever I hear it, I get this incredible Pristian rush, this very specific place where I first heard it. Not even a nice place, but a time, a time in my life. Now, when the Museum of Computing History opened in Cambridge,

which, by the way, is amazing, they let me go in the attic, which is where they keep everything. When it first opened, before it was officially actually open, I went along there for like a preview sort of thing. And they let me, and my dear friend,

I'd up in there. And they had this database where you could search up like what they had and where it was because we're talking about hundreds of cardboard boxes completely full to brim with pristine big box video games and I was like I'm going to search for twin world because twin world is a game that had eluded me since my childhood basically I remember the name of it because that music was stuck in my head still and I remember going and finding this box opening it up taking out the big box for twin world and looking at the art on it which is still

a really lovely piece of fantasy art basically, really traditional, exactly what you kind of picture in your head, like one of those old disc world covers, you know. And despite the fact that I didn't really know what this game was, the fact that I had in my hand, the source of this music that had sort of invaded my head,

I nearly started crying. Yeah. I was like, lump in my big time, like, why is this happening? This is really weird. So Twin World, despite not being that good of a game, is up there. Like, it is up there because it is one of those evocative games. Like, I can't hear that music and not get a little bit emotional.

I'm listening to it now. It's lovely. It's very Amiga-y. Yes. But that's something that the Amiga has a habit of doing is launching a game. Like, I tweeted about this recently, but there is a Yogi Bear game on the Amiga that looks like a piece of old shit. Okay. And the music goes harder than it has any necessary.

There is no need for it to go as hard as it does. The music is absolutely insane. Like, you do the game up and you get this. ridiculous tune that goes in astonishing directions and it's like, guys, this is a high, this is Yogi Bear. Yeah.

This is like the third Yogi Bear game. There's no need for this. Settle down. Just play the Yogi Bear theme that no one even knows. I don't even if anything has a theme. It does. And I know it. Oh, does it go, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo. No.

But that was Yo Yogi. That was Yo Yogi, yeah. What is the Yogi bear theme? Oh, yeah, I know the Yogi bear theme. It's like, do-d-do-do-do-do-d-d-d-d-d-y-d-y-d-d-y-d-y-d-a, yeah, I remember it now, I remember it now. Now, I had Yogi Bear on the spectrum, mate, but I didn't have that music, so who cares? No, I had the Yogi Bear and the greed monster on the spectrum, and they had good music. Oh, really?

I didn't have any music on my spectrum, so I had a 48K, and my music was this. Oh, dear. Just the sound of your elders tutting as they watch you play the game. No, that's what the game sounded like. They would go, like, bhr! Yeah. Good, good stuff. And meanwhile, I was like, no, this Commodore 64 is worse.

And then the Commodore 64 is playing like CairnCraft 400 Zombination. I was like, oh, no, that's rubbish. I'm not jealous at all. Yeah. Anyway, yes. They're weird sideways pixels. I'll go. I'll go.

I'll go. And real briefly, because I don't want to take it in terms, but I just want to bang this out real quick. I want to mention the game Benefactor because you play as an extremely human man in it. That's on my list. Oh, good. That's what I was going to bring up. Yeah. Well, I can't go on very much.

The only thing about Benefactor that I feel is worth mentioning from my perspective is, I like the fact that you play as the smallest man in the world. That's very excited to me. No, it's great. Anytime I see a game now where you're a very, very small person, it makes me think of Benefactor. Benifactor was sort of an obscure game. I feel like it came out

at the tail end of the Amiga, so not really many very many people. It was quite obscure. It wasn't well reviewed either. What? I know. Which baffles me because it's obviously awesome. Okay. No, it really obviously is awesome. What it is, is that you're a little tiny, pixely man, and in the level you're in, which is, if I remember correctly, sort of made to look a bit like a cave, there is, there's a little lemming walking about. And it's a sort of reimagining of the concept of

lemmings in a way, except what it is, is that you've got one lemming, and he, you need to get that lemming to somewhere, to the exit. And to do that, your little fella, he has to jump around the level preparing everything he has to you know find the keys open the doors pull the levers move the things stop the spikes from hitting him and things like this and that's what you have to do in benefactor and you can because it's so zoomed out and you're so little you can see loads of the level like the whole level maybe yes yes and it's just so good and that is one of the games that i would sit and design my own levels for because that idea of that interactivity the game that makes me feel the most like it now is gunpoint

where you can get it on Steam and it's great and you're a little tiny man, little pixly man and you're interacting with a cutaway of a room and just setting things up in that way. It always reminded me a benefactor. It's not, it doesn't play similarly, but... No, it's a benefactor is just a beautifully intricate thing. It's like a cross between, as you

say, Leavings and sort of a cinematic platform like another world or something. Yeah. It's really rather good. You know, I believe Benefactor was being ported to the Megadrive. It was going to come to the Mega Drive and Mega CD, and there were screenshots in magazines and things. But it got cancelled. Oh, my God, it would have been such a classic.

Had it come out of the Mega Drive as well. Why did they keep doing this? But I don't know, Dave, I just don't know. But that's not to say it's not a classic because it's only on the Amiga. God, no. I just mean that it would be a renowned classic, where it's on the Omega Drive as well. everyone would be like, oh, yes, Benefactor, that's a banger.

Yeah, no, I don't, I don't. Instead of what the hell is Benifactor, what are you talking about? Shut up. Here's another. Here's another what you're talking about game that nobody'd heard of, but that was kind of good, and I don't know what it was called. Maybe you'll know, oh, you probably weren't, no, you didn't have an Amiga. No, but I still might know because I'm clever genius.

Ah, right, okay. So there was a game in which you were a little fella, probably with a sword, probably a little adventuring, more in the sort of, you know, Greek myth hero type. Leander, Lionheart, Odyssey. The gimmick of the game was that he could turn into animals. Ah. And, you know, you got certain power-ups to turn into certain animals. So you could be a little spider and you could crawl through little gaps.

Or you could be an eagle and you could fire along. And it was really, the graphics were really good, but I can't remember what it was called. You might have to cut this bit out. Otherwise people will be angry. It was honesty. It was frigging Odyssey. Was it? Yes.

It was Odyssey on the Amiga. I'm telling you it was Odyssey. And if you look it up, you will go, yes, it was Odyssey. All right, then I will. Hang on. Yeah? Because you turn into a bird and you can fly. Yeah.

You can turn into a grasshopper. This has got to be it, it's Odyssey. It's flipping Odyssey. I knew it. As soon as you said, it was a Mitz and Legends man, I knew it was going to be Lionheart, Leander, or Odyssey. Boom. Clever genius.

I told you. It's Odyssey. Yep. I'm looking at screenshots and I bet this is what I'm thinking of, yeah. The gyps that delivers again. Yeah, well done. Thank you. Wow.

So there you go. Games. And yeah, I'm going to have to mention my Schmettler's game at some point. Shall I do it now? Let me mention one other thing quickly before I do. Because it's another game that no one's going to have heard of and they're going to half when they hear the title. It's a game called Woody's World.

Get it like an erection, Woody. Woody's World is a platform game which you play as a small sort of wizard man. Oh, sold. I like a good wizarding game. And it's another one of those games where there are so many false walls and fake invisible platforms that there may as well not be any walls. It's just, it's a game comprised entirely out of finding things and being showered with collectibles, which is the absolute sort of apotheosis of the Euro platformer collecting infinity things. And people going, oh, but it's just a collectathon. And me going, I don't understand those people.

What the hell? collecting things. They're the best thing to do. There is nothing, there is no greater feeling in gaming. And there is no place you're going to feel this more than the Amiga. Absolutely. Than finding a way into a room full of different jewels and just running through them and cutting a path through them. And all numbers come out of them.

All numbers. All numbers. All of those numbers make your score go high. And that's not fun to you. Then I don't want to know you. No, I don't know what's the... I don't know what your problem is if you don't like that. I will also mention before we get the Schmetter.

I think Schmettles is going to be a Don. I think it's going to dominate. I want to mention the Chaos Engine, because while the Chaos Engine has been ported to do things, the Amiga version is still the best version. Yeah. The Chaos Engine is a top-down, shoot-up game from a Bitmap Brothers,

where at the beginning you can choose a different class. Each one has different special abilities and different health and different powers and things. And however, you can either play with a friend or you can play with a computer mat, a CPU, who will walk along with you, and they will also do the shooting. It's rather like the game Gauntlet,

except it has fewer levels that are more bespoke and expansive, and lots of secrets and hidden things and really, really cool music and speech that goes like Node, activated, exit open, and things like that. Oh, I've forgotten Node activated. Yeah, node activated. And it rules, and everyone should play it, and you can actually get it on Steam,

and it's basically literally the Omega version of a rapper. Oh, brilliant. However, if you buy the Steam version, it comes with a option that has full 360 aiming. Turn it off. Turn it off. The game is not designed for this. The game is designed to aim in eight directions only. And this sounds like I'm being a bit weird. But no, I'm not being weird.

It feels crap to use 360 aiming in a game designed around eight-way aiming. It makes the game actively harder because there are suddenly thousands of ways to miss. So please put on the normal controls, I beg you. if you're going to play the Chaos Engine. It's very good. Also, don't accidentally play the Chaos Engine 2, or you will have to die because it is bad. The Chaos Engine 2 is rubs. Do not play the Cowles Engine 2.

Play the Chaos Engine 1. I don't care if you have to play it on the Mega Drive, because that's a good version or on the Amiga, like you should do. But you must play it because it really is extremely good. In fact, if you are lucky enough to own an Evercade, there is a Bitmap Brothers collection cartridge that includes inexplicably the SNES version. So I, in fact, counter-recommendant. it. I've changed my mind.

The SNS version of the Cowan's Engine is it's fine, I guess. But it's also crap, because it has the wrong music and it feels wrong. So, no, Mega Drive or Amiga, please. Please play the Chaos Engine. My friend Matt doesn't like the Chaos Engine. I don't know what his problem is.

Just wanted to get that immortalized on Retronauts there. I don't understand why anyone would not like the chaos engine. It's insane to me to not like the chaos engine. It's like saying, unless for some medical reason, obviously. It's like saying, I don't really like ice cream.

I don't like treats. I don't like feeling happy. Yeah, that is strange behavior to not like the chaos. I don't like having a big sleep. Shut up. I don't mean the big sleep. I mean a big sleep. Let's not go nuts.

I don't like Asimangadio. Huh? Actually, my friend Ken doesn't like Asimanga Dio, but that's because he's also a widow. The rest of this podcast is now me insulting my friends for not liking things that I like. I think you should, yeah. Well, I mean, that's the underlying premise of this episode anyway. It is. It's true. But anyway, yes, the chaos engine. Absolute top-class cop-clubbing jamboree, as tyres from Space would say.

Yeah, that is exactly what it is. Anyway, you were going to talk about the game. The game, the Settlers, it's just, I wonder even if we ought to do another episode about the series, because I can talk about every episode, every, every game in the series has something to say about it. I like this idea. Okay, so I'll do it, I'll do it briefly then. The Settlers was this, it changed. my life. It came on a magazine.

I don't know what it was. It was Amiga power, whatever it was. It came on a magazine. And it was, again, later on in the Amiga's life, I guess. I mean, no, it wasn't. It was like 1993, but I was joining later on the Amiga's life. Sadly enough, that is actually quite late in the Amiga's life. In terms of its mainstream. Popularity I was

when I got it. That was the Superrog came out, wasn't it? And Lemmings, too. Either then, it was smack in the middle of the Amiga's life when I'm talking about at my bottom. Well, anyway, everything I just said was wrong anyway. But Settler's right. It was different than any other game I'd played on the Amiga because there were tropes on the Amiga.

A lot of Amiga games were platformers with big eyes. There were certain art styles even that you saw on the Amiga that were in the majority of games. Men, the Settlers came, and it was just so gorgeous and so the concept of it was so beautiful. And what was happening on the screen was so lovely. And what it was was that you are given. some lovely scenery

and you build a little village in it but you don't build it you just tell them and they build it because they are the settlers they're these lovely little tiny little tiny pixel people we've already established we like tiny little pixel people small men small men

little small men little round blobby little men and they would come out of the castle and you chose where the castle was and they would come out of it and all you had to do was go oh, there's some trees there, I'll put a woodcutter there. And then you had to connect that woodcutter up by a path leading to the castle. And then the little men would come out, and one little woodcutter man would come out,

and he would go and be the woodcutter. And then another little man would come out and he would stand on the path between the woodcutter's house, woodcutter's hut, and the castle, or anywhere else you happen to put two flags down on it, because you put flags along these paths, and they would stand between the paths. And they would carry the things back and forth. The woodcutter would cut a tree down. There would then be a log outside.

his house. The carrier would go and take the log and put it at the next flag. And that was, you know, if that was the flag outside the castle... So we're talking about a relatively early RTS-ish thing, or is there not the pressure of an RTS? Are you not getting invaded by evil settlers? You eventually get raided by settlers. Ah, bad settlers, okay. The thing is, you can... It's still gentle. When you get raided, what happens is a little night, a little night.

politely knocks on the door of your little knight's hut and he waits there outside and out comes your little knight and they have a little duel and one of the knights falls down and sort of flaps away and I don't really know what that was meant to be

it's like he's getting dragged off screen almost and then streaming to hell and then like whichever night won they then win that knight's house and the land around it so their border expands a bit but they can't do that

until their border is pushing up against yours anyway map, then, you know, it's going to be a while before that happens. And the thing is, the size of map you can build is tied to how much RAM you've got. And I had eight megabytes of RAM, so I can make these gigantic worlds. And they're randomly generated. I remember putting in my previously mentioned best friend's phone number as my randomly generated land. And it was a banger. It it generated a lovely little land. And that's what you do.

You build this little village. Now, people who play it, really, people who properly play it, they know that it's all about min-maxing the production lines and, like, making sure that... Oh, boo, who? Yeah, whatever. Who are these words?

What I was doing is I was just putting down a little house when I wanted to watch a little man make a sword or whatever. Brilliant. And then the little swords, they put them outside the house, and little piles of little swords are there. And then the people take them, and they give them to the little knights. And then the knights get, you know, if you do well, you get better knights and they get better helmets until you get the knight with the round helmet with a big plume coming off it. And he's really, really little. They're just a couple of pixels high. They're about the size of a lemming. And they're all walking about. And they're doing, the butcher is doing little butchering. And the sword-making man is, you can see him, little blacksmith hammering away. They're all doing their little jobs. A man comes out and plants some corn and it grows. And he comes out and he reaps it. And then he gives it to the miller. And the little windmill goes.

I was around, you see him making it back. Ooh, it's so lovely. And the music was some of the best in any game. And it was like seven minutes long or something. Or more. Like, it was just really long tune. It had all these different movements in it, and it was great. And it was kind of like the first, it was the first game of its type

where it was like, never mind what your buildings are. Yeah. It's the people. That's the thing. You get to see the little. the personality. Yeah, and that has kicked off a lifelong love of that sort of thing.

Now you've got the Anno games and all sorts of things like that. And of course, kind of populace was sort of an example of that and that had already come out. I was going to mention populace, but that was more of a game about being a terrifying god, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah, and it was... A molding terrain, yes.

Yeah, that was just a look into Peter Moly's brain, I think. You know what, with populace, when that came out, it was... I remember it being quite famous of saying, oh, yes, this game has, I think, 400 levels. And then the Masters and version came out, and it was like, yeah, we got 4,000 levels. What? I remember being a small child and seeing that on the back of the box and just thinking, like, well, how in the world would ever finish that? Yeah, never going to finish that.

It's ridiculous. Most of the games in the back of the back of the box, it would say, like, rounds, six. But then I would like that, though. If I saw something that says, like, 4,000 levels, you're never going to finish this. I'd be like, there you go. That's a good investment. I want that. it is a good investment but

I don't want to finish So would you say that the settlers found you in fine fettlers Hey hey And you know what the settlers had That is not talked about very often It had vertical split screen two player Oh my goodness gracious me

Plug in a second mouse And you can build a town At the same time as your friend builds a town That's insane Yep Was it sort of a bit like kind of ish the Sims Except you couldn't your settlers, have it off?

It wasn't actually anything like The Sims, but the reason that people like The Sims was the reason that I liked the set of what I'm getting at here, the idea of creating some life and watching it prosper. Yeah, that's exactly what I mean, what I would honestly, what I would sometimes do is I would

set the set uhs up in the morning with just multiple computer players and no me player. I just go to school and then I would come home from school and I would see their world that they'd made and look at all the little piggies that they were rearing and all the fish they were catching and just the lovely time that everybody was having in their lovely place I have I think I think it's

time to wrap up the Amiga podcast for now. But I would like to add a small coda to this previous set of this discussion. Okay. Which is, I wonder how soon after the invention of computer games, the idea of can we make tiny people have it off came up. Because I'm willing to bet 15 minutes. Yeah, must be. Space war after, space war gets made. And immediately is just like, this is cool.

but can we make little computer people have it off with each other? Yeah. And Nolan Bushnell, like, stroking his beard, like, yes. I wonder who the first little people, little computer people. But there was a game called Little Computer People, wasn't it? Yes, I wonder if they have it off. I don't know if they have it off. Or maybe that was the sequel, Little Computer People Have It Off.

Yeah. It was. Oh, I tell you what, a Settlers-esque game that came out a few years later, Baldies. Oh, I know Baldies. That was a game in which, similar thing, except the Little Bald men and the way that you made more little bold men. Like staring into my future. Yeah, go on. The way that you made

more little bold men was that you put them in a house and if you looked in the house, you could see them jumping up and down on the bed and that made little bold men. I thought that was very good. That is amazing. Yeah. I think that is true. It's how we procreate. Anyway, yes.

Another thing I want to mention before I stop thinking about it, do you know that the creator of Lord of the Rings, J.R. our Tolkien stands for Junior Rolkin Tolkien

that has nothing to do with anything I've just been thinking about it all day long and I'm going to immortalise it that's not much to do with the Amiga

I woke up first thing this morning my first thought was Junior Rolken Tolkien Here are all the games I want to recommend on the Amiga I will not talk about

them they are settlers benefactor Olemings pick one Goblins 2 or Goblins 3 now theme park you guys know

about that you know the game theme park I liked the Amiga version, but it's, I'm sure probably the PC version runs faster, so maybe he's wrong way that. One of my favourite games on the whole Amiga, it's difficult to, I haven't mentioned it, and so I'm only mentioning it briefly at the end, because it is Syndicate. And the... Well, bear in mind, we could do a follow-up episode that is just more Amiga games that are worth playing. Love to do that.

So I think we should consider expanding that, so we should keep some of these on the back burner, but by all means, feel free to recommend more games. No, I'm going to stop there. Syndicate, very, very, very good game. One of my favorite games on the Amiga, but I can't deny the fact that it runs better in DOS, so that's probably the version you want to play. Syndicate is a game that I would describe as desolation, like, in a good way.

That's a ridiculously bleak game. Yes, I suppose so. I didn't see it that way as an 11-year-old. I just saw it in the way that I suppose I could best describe with the sound. yeah that's fair enough I think if you play syndicate now not to say oh my god it's so dark

but it actually is that dock it's a very bleak game if you bear in mind that the lore and such the lore yes the law that was bullfrog wasn't it

uh syndicate yes it also made the flood or just flood maybe just called flood and think part come to think of it yes

oh what an excellent and dungeon keeper I think what a great punch of flats oh they were amazing yeah they were properly like One of, like, maybe the best. They meant magic carpet. Yeah.

That wasn't even an Amiga game, but it was still hot, hot, hot. Now, I feel like the Amiga we've genuinely scratched the surface. There are so many games I could reel off that I like, not to mention Scooby and Scrappy Do. Banger, much better than the Ui Bear game. Anyway, I think there will be another Amiga episode in the future. I think we will find another angle. I think so. Stu and Dave Gush about more Amiga games, which is very likely to be that.

Even if it's just that I finish off. my anecdote about the Red Dwarth theme tune. We'll do that in that episode. Oh, we're going to have that as a sort of a holdover, or do you want to fit it in now? What do you think? I mean, here's the thing. On the one hand,

I think we should make a satisfying journey for the listeners to come to the end and set up. On the other hand, bollocks to Red Dwarf, I'm sick of it. But no, no, no, no, no. I think you should finish the Red Dwarf anecdotes. As long as it's not 55 minutes long, in which case I'm going to have to cut your legs off there.

I hope it isn't. Okay, well, I'm excited. It's just that I'm realizing now that I might not really fully remember the anecdote. Well, that's okay, because if that's the case, then it will end disappointingly like Red Wolf has many times. Yes. Okay, here's what I can do. I can narrate this while reading the time I posted a thread about it, which will remind me of what it is. This is great.

This is a live forum reading. This is what we come here for. I found on YouTube a 16-bit, a megadrive cover of the Red Dwarf theme. And I thought, cool, how interesting. Imagine a Red Dwarf game, you know what I mean? Yes, yes, yes. But there was something really familiar about the specific 16-bit megadrive sounding cover of the Red Dwar theme that I was listening to. Yes.

Not beyond the fact that it was the Red Dwar theme. Yes. And it was because it wasn't the Red Dwar theme. It was the Red Dwar theme I heard before I heard the Red Dwar theme. Because this disc that I got on the Amiga off my friend, Star Trekker, a sci-fi-based music tracker for the Amiga, whose demo that came with it was the Red Dwar theme. Good God.

And it was slightly different in subtle ways to the real Red Dwar theme. There was a way that it, you know, they included the slow intro version from the early seasons, and then they moved into the end-themed version, and then they did the guitar solo from the later seasons. And this Megadrive version did those all exactly like that. Amazing. Except that the Megadrive version had, like, errors in it, where certain notes were just wrong.

They were just, like, sharp or flat, you know, they were wrong. And I knew why, because in the Amiga version, that was where the notes started. but then it slid to the correct note. Do you know what I mean? I get you, yes. So it would be like, do, do, do, do, like that. And in this Megadry version, it goes, do, do, do, do you get it?

I do get it, yeah. And so I posted a thread about this and about how, like, I know the origin of this weird thing on YouTube. And it turns out that what happens, oh, and there were also bits where extended notes on the Amiga in the guitar cello, was like, you know, it played the note over and over again. And it turns out that what happened is that in the early days of the Amiga, someone took that Amiga mod or Med or whatever it happened to be

and like ran it through a thing to convert it to MIDI. And that is still today being used as the basis for new covers of the Red Dwar theme by people who want to make covers of the Red War theme without going through the trouble of themselves making it. So they find an old obscure thing, upload it through a new sound font and go, I made this. And that is flipping bananas to me.

That A, I was able to sleuth my way to the bottom of a weird mystery nobody else except me had even heard of. But B, that this thing that me and my friends danced to in the quiet room next to our, so-called, because you weren't supposed to do this in it, next to our classroom on a tape recorded by my friend to show off his new computer that he'd got in 19. 1992 is still now being used to fool people into thinking that people are musicians who have made a new cover of the Red Dwarf theme. Isn't that weird?

However, I feel as if I'm now feeling unkind. I'm sure the people who did it have complex lives of their own, and I oughtn't to slam it in that way. No to hell with every one of them. They're all great, and I love them, and I get proof of everything they're doing, and I just want to know more about why. What I will add at this juncture is though Red Dwarf does irritate me because it's not funny Right, that's not correct. It is correct, I'm afraid. Right.

Okay, let me rephrase that. I don't think Red Dwarf is very funny. Thank you. Compared to the reception it gets. I think the reason why it is as popular as it is, because when it was happening, there was no other British sci-fi. That is the only reason. Oh, yeah, that's a big reason.

And also that's. I believe that. And also that the first few seasons of it were, in fact, good sci-fi as well as being, you know, vaguely funny. I will say this, though. I do think the Red Dwarth theme is amazing. I love the theme. It's good. I think it is a beautiful theme.

And having said that I don't like Red Dwarf, I bought the Blu-Rae set with all of Red Dwarf on it because of one main reason. Okay, this is a total tangent, but I don't care. Red Dwarf is the most exhaustively chronicle to production of any sitcom ever made. Like the amount of behind the scenes documentaries, extras, commentaries, other smaller documentaries, programs about Red Dwarf, that they just crammed into those discs. Makings of of the documentaries about Red Dwarf. Okay, what other sitcom gets the goddamn Body Snatcher Collection?

Come on. What other sitcom gets something like that? As a fan of British comedy, how could I not buy that? How could I not? You don't sound like a fan of British comedy if you don't like Red Dwarf. I'm a fan of British comedy, I'm a fan of British comedy that is actually funny. And there's not just a man saying, oh, no, I drop my bollocks in a curry.

Now, the problem that you're having there is that you've continued watching it past a certain point. Or, oh, I like to have sex. That's all the jokes in Reddorf as far as I can tell. This curry is hot. My pants are too small for my willy. And I am doing a long salute. I'm being very uncharitable. I don't dislike it as.

much as I'm making out. Otherwise, why would I buy the Blu-ray? Let's say. No, obviously, yes. But, no, I'm sorry. It's it. Or, for example, I'm trying to play basketball, but I've got a hard on. Is that a really one? I believe it was a later episode, yes. Yeah, depending on who you are,

it changes what your cut-off point is, I won't go a step beyond series six. For exactly the reasons you're described. Oh, a load of diarrhea. Oh, we're spying on women in the shower. Oh, God, I've forgotten about that in Susan. Jesus Christ.

Yeah, that didn't hold up very well. And it wasn't good at the time either. No, but one to six, I'll go to Bat for any day. I will go to Back for one and two, and then I lose my patience. As soon as the poo flies back into the cat's anus, I am done. I am out. Oh, right, yes. I am absolutely finished with that.

I'm like, that's quite enough of that. Thank you very much. Basically, as soon as the theme song changes from... Yeah. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. downing a pint-larger between every friggin' bar. Yeah, and you know what, as well? Because that first intro

is, like, serene shots of a giant vessel drifting through space. Yeah, that is a man trying to clean, which is hilarious. And then the second version is a man hurts him testicles with a thing. Yeah. He doesn't hurt his bollocks.

Anyway, thank you for, I think we've wrapped this up now. Oh, yeah, it's am eager there, isn't it? No, thank you for listening to the podcast, Retrodauts, Red Dwarf, episode number 452, Reddwarf. Now, if you are, if you enjoyed this episode of Retronauts, or you didn't enjoy it, and we like to hear one of the other episodes of Retronauts that does not feature me it, Dave, in which you may learn things about video games. It's possible. You can visit patreon.com forward slash Retronauts where you can give money to the Retronauts. And for $5 per month, which is nothing, it's no money. You get two, that is not one, not just a single one,

two full-length and completely exclusive Patreon episodes per month. And these episodes will net... The scrubs who don't pay $5 per month, they're not going to get to these episodes. No, and they're going to want to as well. These are the best episodes, because the three episodes are crap. I've had the experience myself of deciding to listen to Retronauts

and going like, oh, I want to listen to this one. And then it turned out to be a preview of a Patreon one. So, yeah, they're better. I want to hasten to add. this point for those who aren't quite versed in irony. That was not... The three episodes obviously are not crap. They are great.

It was a joke, okay? I'm trying to upsell you, okay? That's what's happening here. But of course, other than that, you will also receive benefits on the official Retron's Discord, which I occasionally drop in, make a stupid true joker, then drop out again. So you're missing on those. Also, you are going to be getting for just...

Whatever is the tier below $5 someone? Because weirdly enough, what I have here is $5 per month and £2.50 per month, which is not half of $5, you will get easy. You get early access to the weekly Monday episodes, so you can join in the conversation while in advance. And we've got a very, very excellent community that you will love. They are lovely people. They love video games. They do. They do have girlfriends, the ones that want them. They do.

But you know what else you get? As well as these exclusive episodes and early access episodes, you get to read and listen to the, the Weekend Retro pods by Diamond Fight, which I might add are brilliant. And, you know, check out the Patreon. Maybe if you're flush with cash, you would like to join in one of the tiers where you get to pick a topic of a Retronauts episode. Or perhaps the tier where you get to be on a Retron's episode. Who knows? Who knows?

For £500, Stuart will say something nice about Red Dwar VIII. I mean, as long as those £500 come directly to me and don't get shared with anyone else, then yes. I will do that. But no, thank you. Retrodauts, good podcast, highly recommended. Now, Mr. Dave, Mr. Dave, Hello. Once again, where can people find your various doings and transpirance? My doings and leavings are to be found in the form of the podcast. Sonic, the comic, the podcast, where myself and Chris McFeeley off of Transformers the Basics on YouTube are basically going one issue at a time through the British sonic comic,

not those American Archie ones. Everybody knows about those. These are the British ones from a when Sonic was completely different than he has been retconned into being now and he had an origin story where he turns blue and everything was different and this is the thing better and there was other Sega games. If you're a retro game fan

in general, you're going to be interested in hearing about the comic adaptation of Golden Axe. The Mark Miller Streets of Rage comic. Yes, that's the Mark Miller of the Unvonnie's fame did a Streets of Rage comic and it is exactly what you'd think it was.

And it's his best work down right. No questions asked. I'm not going to comment on that. Because someone was restraining him and telling him not to be so silly. Currently, well, I don't know when this comes out, but like roundabout now, they're doing a JRP. They're doing Shining Force, adapted into a six-part comic of five pages per part. It's a ridiculous undertaking, and nobody understands why they did it. It's a fascinating aspect of our past, and we make sure that you get to basically feel what it was like

and understand all the context of what you'd like to be a kid in the UK, in the early to mid-90s, enjoying video games. We put all of the stuff in, you're going to love it. There's another one I do. I want to quickly, before you saw what other one, I want to say something very from the heart because I mean this. Now, I wouldn't say this if I didn't mean it. It's a very, very good podcast, my friend. I really highly recommend listening to it. I've heard most of the other stuff

and it's shit but there's not the comment the podcast tremendous and also I was lying about the other stuff being bad it's also good but do go on No but it is such as my other podcast

Serious Disney in which we talk about animated stuff and that you know you get the idea but we're covering some of the some of the weird remakes live action remakes they insist on making

that nobody knows why or who therefore who is the other person on that again the other person on that is called Jahan Rannessing and he's not from anything else. The man is an amazing movie analyst. Yeah. I was listening, because I've not heard as much of serious business, okay? I was listening to the Sonic 2 movie episode that you did. Yeah. And

he's a genius. Well, yeah. He's just sitting there. And he's just saying stuff that's like, insightful and clever and brilliantly observed that I'd never thought of. Yeah. And I'm like, he should be famous too. No, I know. That's what he flipping does. What he does is he like, he has a way of watching films that I can't understand where he doesn't make any judgments until he's seen the whole thing. It's like he watches him like he's Dr. Manhattan where he sees the whole thing as a shape

and he's somehow, whereas I just sit there reacting moment to moment to whatever's happening. If something makes me cross or whatever, I'm like, oh, I hate that bit. And he'd be like, but it connected to the third actor. Well, okay, but I was already annoyed by that time. I don't know how you know that. Yeah, he's very good.

He's very good and that's why I tolerate him in my house. Serious business, that is. and Sonic the Comic, the Podcasts, and all of this you'll find I am at Demon Tomato Dave on Twitter where I do not let up. I'm unrelentingly sitting there tweeting. The man can tweet. But I think you're going to enjoy quite a lot of what I tweet.

It's a good feed. I rate it. It's one of my top three feeds. There's a lot of retro gaming stuff. I'll post old music, I remember, and I'll talk about how old I am. Well, the thing that I appreciate about you, Dave, is that you will talk about things that I

never, in a million years, imagine anyone would ever even bring up. No, let alone like. I surprise and alarm everybody with the things that I'm fond of. It's incredible, and I mean that. It's a very good feed. The value is high. Yeah.

Especially considering you're paying nothing for the privilege. Oh, yeah. And also, I'm Demon Tomato Dave on YouTube. Go and have a look at some of the videos I've done that reflect this sort of thing. Specifically, I bet you'll like my video called Dave's First Game where I talk about the first game I ever owned

and what that felt like. And also another video about the settlers that I made that's called Learning to Settle. But that's a bit political. You might not like that. I don't know. I hope you've not got any of the old, keeping some of the old lefty politics in there. A little bit. There's a little bit of criticism

of something we call Brexit in that video. Oh my goodness me. Oh, careful. Yes, you have to watch out for that sort of thing. But Dave's first game, you're definitely going to like that. In case anyone is wondering what my personal position on Brexit is, I think it's great. That wasn't true. That wasn't true at all.

Where you were going with that, and I could just sort of hear gears turning around to try and frantically come up with a punchline. I think it's benefited us massively. I think that there's been no downsides whatsoever. It's just been supposedly on the whole way. And you can tell because of how great everything is in the country now. All better off. We're all better off. Everyone who wanted it.

is reaping the rewards right now. And those who didn't want having to come around to the fact that, yeah, in the end, it was all for the best. Now, Stuart and I are going to have to leave now because we can't afford any more electricity than this. Yeah. That's what eventually puts pay to Britronauts.

We run out of Lecky. Thanks very much for listening, and we will definitely come back, and that is a threat. You're going to be able to be. Thank you. Thank you.