Flashback
Take a walk through gaming history as we pick a random date in gaming history and bring you the news from that time as if it was now , different era every week - covering all of gaming history
Flashback
A look at gaming in August 2000
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Nostalgia hits different when you can hear the gravel under Colin McRae’s tires and feel the snap of a Tony Hawk manual chain together a perfect line. We’re time-traveling to August 2000, a month that stacked character, style, and ambition across consoles and genres—and quietly set the stage for the next decade of gaming.
We kick off with Sydney 2000’s button-bash lineage and Dreamcast gloss before diving deep into Grandia II’s timeless charm. That timeline-driven combat system, the TMNT-tinged voice work, and the trek to the Great Divide show why this JRPG still resonates. Then we pivot to Tenchu’s demanding stealth—where patience, map knowledge, and late-night mastery mattered more than polygons—and celebrate the strategy brain-food of Railroad Tycoon II, which walked players through economics, logistics, and growth from steam to electrified rails.
Racing and sports make their mark with Colin McRae 2.0’s adhesion modeling and stripped-back elegance, plus ISS Pro Evolution Soccer 2’s fluid control that foreshadowed Pro Evo’s peak. We revisit Spider-Man on PS1, a web-swinging breakthrough with a Tony Hawk engine in its DNA, and spotlight Final Fantasy IX’s candlelit opening, steampunk heart, and warm medieval tone that threw back to series roots without losing scope. It’s a reminder that art direction and framing can outlast any polygon count.
We also open the news vault: Ubisoft acquires Red Storm and secures Tom Clancy’s long-term brand power; Sony contemplates licensing PS2 tech into TVs while ramping production to eye-watering levels; and Microsoft lays down an Xbox vision anchored by hard drives and dynamic audio. These decisions weren’t just headlines—they were fault lines that reshaped how games were built, stored, and heard. Along the way, we share those home theater coming-of-age moments—first DVD players, stacked stereos, and speakers that made living rooms feel like cinemas—because how we played mattered as much as what we played.
If you love JRPGs, classic stealth, sim strategy, and early-2000s racing and sports, this one’s packed with stories, context, and the kind of details only lived-in nostalgia can bring. Join us, subscribe for more retro deep dives, and tell us your August 2000 favorite—what still holds up for you today?
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Welcome And Format Of Flashback
SPEAKER_02Hello, welcome to the back. Episode seven, and this is August 2000. And it's me, RGT, and joined as always by Le Delectable, the Game and God, the collector, the Dulcet Tones from Lincolnshire that you always hear on the UCP. Just a stunning George. How are you? How are you? I'm very well, thank you. How are you?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, mate, I'm great. Ready to I submerged myself in the era last night, so I'm here to get ready to talk about it.
SPEAKER_02I must admit your your levels of research goes above and beyond. Because whenever I give you a draft or whenever I give you what year we're doing, you're up in that loft, you are pulling out consoles, you're pulling out games, you're just buried in them in the dark living room, playing what was out on that month. So yeah, I must hand it to you. Your research is is uh pretty impressive.
SPEAKER_03I'm absolutely knackered.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. But you know everything about August 2000.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, mate, yeah. I I I know I remember the bird from Grandia 2's name.
Sydney 2000 And Olympic Game Memories
SPEAKER_02Oh, brilliant. Yeah, that's that's gonna be interesting to talk about that because I've you know I want to chat about that game. But yeah, so like I said, this is uh August 2000. Um if you haven't listened to Flashback before, this is your first one. Um this is similar to uh a premise to what we do with our main show, the unofficial controller podcast. Um, but we literally take it from a random month of a random year. Um last time we done um 2003, I believe was September 2003. Um and yeah, and we will literally um take what we would have been playing in that in that month, um, bit of news that was coming out in that month. Um we finish up with what we'd been hoping to play, um, what was coming out around that time. Um yeah, so it's just uh it's just a little window, a little look back um to what what would have been going on in them days, and it's just that little nostalgia trip because especially these times, me and George are playing plenty of games in this era, and uh yeah, some you forget, some you remember, and uh yeah, like we always say with flashback, games you loved, the stories you forgot. Um, but yeah, let's have a look, George, jump straight into um what we would have been planning this month. Um it's quite a random selection actually. Um now I'm gonna start with what was out. Um this is out in July, um, so just before Sydney 2000. Now the reason I say Sydney 2000 is because um my sister was out in Australia at the time um living out there, so I was a member I didn't actually play the game, but she did bring me back some Sydney 2000 merch. But I believe you probably played this game, didn't you, George?
SPEAKER_03Uh it's not on the list, but I think yeah, uh on a bit of independent research, and I do remember getting this for Dreamcast and uh Oh Dreamcast, you had this on. Yeah, I wasn't able to find my copy of it. I don't know if I've rebought it in the modern era. Uh I maybe did at nostalgia, I'm not sure. But uh I mean when this game came out, obviously Dreamcast was the upper threshold of of console power. It was quite the looker, uh, it was quite fun. Obviously, you and I'd grown up on games like um the Olympics games, you know, the the National Track and Field, International Track and Field, and the um winter equivalent version. Uh, and then through history, there's been quite a few like Olympics games. I think there was the Lily Hammer, Lily Hammer 92 got a pretty decent game on Mega Drive, or probably all 16-bit consoles. Uh, obviously, PlayStation launch with its international track and field or around the launch window from memory of that. That was a that was a really fun game for a button basher. And Sydney 2000 basically took all of those sort of historic gameplay tropes, mashed them up with a a real kind of at the time modern, sort of fresh, realistic looking graphical style, sort of painted it all in the Olympics colours, and Olympic 2000s in Sydney had like that real fresh kind of like uh logo to it and all that, and that all just represented itself in a really kind of a fun little game. It wasn't the best sports game ever, but it it was one that uh I have some fond memories for.
SPEAKER_02You don't really get them you don't really seem to get Olympic games now, do you? But it seemed to be a lot of.
SPEAKER_03Mario and Sonic seem to have completely sort of co-opted that.
SPEAKER_02Um But I remember that used to be. I mean, you look back now and you think Olympic games are just gonna be shovelware and bits and pieces, but they actually used to be pretty decent, pretty good fun games, I remember.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, this one did benefit from styling itself around international track and field quite a bit in terms of how you interacted with the game. So a lot of the soft edges had been rounded off by all these amazing games that had sort of served their time in the arcade and at home on home systems, and then sort of Sydney 2000 was able just to lift those uh well 90% of those mechanics and lay them in. I if it one thing that sticks in my mind, there was a diving element and possibly a gymnastics element, which was really yeah, I I think hey, listen, message enough we've got this wrong, but uh I think there was a dive-in and gymnastics section which was done through the medium of this was the spirit of the time RGT, our dance rhythm game input system.
SPEAKER_02Oh so a lot of timed button rhythm. Yeah, you know.
Grandia II Deep Dive On Dreamcast
SPEAKER_03Okay, so you jump off, you dive in board, and it's left, left foot, down, circle, green triangle, whatever it is. And I think the gymnastics was I think it descended the screen like DDR or one of those dance games where it kind of you then you timed it in, and it I I don't know if it affected the animation at all, but uh you certainly got rated, I think, on how accurate you were and your timings, etc.
SPEAKER_02Well, it's quite nice they they mixed up the um you know the different genres and the different game styles and gameplay tropes as you played through the games.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I agree. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. Alright, no, I was always interested in that. My sister was out in Australia at the time and was around when the Olympics was going on and sent me some merch back and bits, but I never did play the games. I was always quite interested in I kept wondering whether to get a cover. I think I did was that out did it come out in PS2 or was that PS1 that was out on?
SPEAKER_03It would have been PS1, and I don't know if it did actually get I don't know, it got some strange releases that I don't remember seeing it on anything else, but I was locked in the Dreamcast ecosystem.
SPEAKER_02Well that's what made me think is when I remember when I was researching this and saw the cover that made me think of the Dreamcast case because I'm sure I've seen that Dreamcast.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's quite it was it was quite put out on that to be fair. It it was. Um what other games do you want to talk about, RG?
SPEAKER_02There's one I de because I know you've played this, and this game's always interested me for various reasons, and that's grandier 2. Um and the reason I've always been sort of intrigued by this game because everyone seems to always rate the Grangier games, but they never seem to be that expensive to buy. They're never like a really high-priced JRPG, which is always that's always I found it strange, you know. And but then again, I suppose you can say that for the early Final Fantasy on PS1s, they haven't you know you can still buy them quite reasonably, they're not that expensive, so maybe.
SPEAKER_03Oh, that's right. Well, this game again, I was in the Dreamcast ecosystem. I was a fully paid up member of the Dreamcast magazine. Uh, got every copy. I've rebought every copy since. I know. Um, I love that magazine. I love this era of gaming, to be fair. It was it was oh, it's fantastic.
SPEAKER_02Fantastic.
SPEAKER_03It was quite exclusive to me because no one else, I couldn't convince anyone else to buy Dreamcast by this lad at work who just played like this is football or whatever it was called on his the Dreamcast had like a couple of specific sports games, uh football games, because they didn't have the franchise because of EA. Uh so they were like UEFA and something else. So he'd just constantly play that. And I was like, Have you tried this? Have you tried this? Have you tried Metropolis Straight Race? Have you played Shemmy? Have you played Headhunter? Have you played Crazy Taxi? Have you played AT Wheeler? Have you played Power Stone? Have you played this? Have you played that? Have you played Sega Bass Fisher? Have you played this? Have you played House of the Dead? He's like, No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Right, fine. Anyway, in one of these moments, I find myself uh reading about in previews of Grandia 2 and then Grandia 2 coming. I do believe it probably was a Dreamcast exclusive at the time, or maybe got a concurrent release of the street. I think you're right.
SPEAKER_02At least a timed one, wasn't it? It was a timed one.
SPEAKER_031000%. Now, it because we didn't have the PS2 in Europe at this time. I wonder if it globally launched in Japan and possibly US as maybe like a launch title or something. I haven't done the research. And anyway, my knowledge of it is the Dreamcast version. It's one hell of a looker. Uh I played it yesterday, maybe the first 20 minutes. Oh good. And it did um like straight away the things that I remembered were the voice actor for your main character, the Geo Hound. Um he is voiced by the the guy who did Leonardo in the original 80s TMNT show.
SPEAKER_02Oh, really?
SPEAKER_03So if you've got like any nostalgia for that, you'll be like, hang on, I know this voice. And I remember when I first played it, so it was a bit closer to the 90s.
SPEAKER_02Oh, just say it was still heads. With Lee's facts.
SPEAKER_03And I remember at the time being sort of confused, but the access no one had filled out the internet with a voice cast of Turtles in 2000, mate. No one had bothered at that point, but they have now, and so I was like, Oh, I reckon that is Leo. Last night I was reminded and confirmed it is definitely him. Uh, so some of like some of the more chunkier scenes are all voice acted, which feels nice the rest of the time.
SPEAKER_02That is good because you've got to remember in this era. I mean, you look a lot the other.
SPEAKER_03Don't go all in on that, it's not all of it though.
SPEAKER_02No, but what I mean is if you look a lot Resident Evil when that first came out on the PlayStation, it was just literally the the directors and stuff, just you know, and the devs doing the voices and really bad acting. Oh, I see voice acting, had it was only then coming into its four, you know, it's foray, really.
SPEAKER_03You know, well it's these ex it's these cartoon uh voice actors, really, that are the that are the perfect foil in my mind for yeah, they were then sort of spilling into the the video game genre. To me, that seems like the perfect foil for a video game developer. Like this guy knows how to bring an inanimate object to life. Now, voice actors for cartoons they're kind of a little bit over-exuberant, aren't they? But that does bring life into the character, anyway. This this particular dude is meant to be this, he's almost like a monster hunter stroke witcher in this this grandier universe. Plays a bit badass, but he's just a young lad, really. Uh, and he's got this parrot um parrot, what the hell? He's got this hawk with him called the sky, who's like one of your party as well. He can talk, he interacts with you. He's he's quite gruff. The thing that sticks with me, um, and I watched the intro video yesterday and it reminded me that there's this big catastrophe where the kind of earth gets rendered apart, and I think it's called the Great Divide, this sort of stretch of land. And the first chunk of the Dreamcast game or Grandia 2 is getting to the Great Divide and then getting over it. Um and you meet some great characters along the way. I would say that Grandia 2 is probably playing it very recently, it's a bit more of a it's definitely a product of its time, but it does hold up, and the reason why it holds up is the battle the battle menu. It's it's one of my favourites to be fair.
SPEAKER_02It's sort of turn-based, is it?
SPEAKER_03It is turn-based a thousand percent. That you have these little sliders at the bottom, it's a little bit like the Final Fantasy XIII battle system, that you race, you've got a little um little pictogram of your face, and there's like little pictograms of the enemies, and you both kind of depending on your stats, you both race across this little timeline at the bottom of the screen. Whoever hits action first gets to strike first. If you sort of if you get positioned right and surprise your opponent on the on the map screen for one of a better word, or the navigation screen, you do end up with what's called like an advantage. So you do start off the slider a bit further up, and then when you make your move, you're back to the beginning of the slider. Now, if you decide to do like a power move, your from action to implementation takes quite a long time. That and that's the level of the system. Whereas if you're just doing straight attacks, you can be quite back up to the top of the feed each time. So you can be launching your own. That's a clever system, then it makes it feel. I remember at the time when I got this, I was not a JRPG player, I've been brought up in like the Zelda world and and sort of Western developed games a little bit more, so I always kind of bounced off JRPGs a little bit. But this one was the one that kind of sort of went, no, no, no, it's alright, come on.
SPEAKER_02It's on a sort of risk-reward system, innit? Do you risk for the power here?
SPEAKER_03It's not all just pause screens and and now I I yearn for a very static, very old school leave it on attack, like leave it on my choice window for 20 minutes, if you want. Uh, I don't I want to I don't want to be rushed, but uh there was something about my youth and uh enthusiasm that made this quite appealing to me. And I have to say, when I look back on the Dreamcast, I remember Grandia 2 in not quite the same level, but definitely in the same pantheon as something like Skies of Arcadia. So if you haven't tried Grandia 2, give it a go. It's quite fun. There's a little bit of an innocence to it that I always quite enjoyed. It's kind of got this youthful kind of sort of naive edge to it. It's you know, it's got that kind of escapism to it, which is quite nice. Um, but it's on PlayStation 2 now, it's readily available, I'd imagine, most places.
SPEAKER_02I don't believe it's very expensive from what I like.
SPEAKER_03No, I don't think I never looked at the price to be fair, and I've had this PlayStation 2 version of my collection a long time, and obviously up in the loft. I want to speak for the um the PS2 box art's kind of one thing and not really one thing or the other, quite boring actually, but the Dreamcast box art from my memory was stunning.
SPEAKER_02Yes,£10 PS2. So see£10, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Which is lofty-ish for a PS2 title. So if you're thinking of grabbing it, I would say grab it now. Um I think£10 is a fair price, actually. You would definitely get some enjoyment out of that. Yeah. While we're here though, RGT, I mean, I wanna give a quick shout out to Rail Roll Railroad Tycoon 2.
SPEAKER_02I was gonna ask whether it's I thought that was something you would have played, and that's always quite intrigued me.
SPEAKER_03But I would say we're seeing this here like this in this moment because this is the Dreamcast 2 release, um, which I have, which I enjoy. I'm a big Railroad Tycoon fan. Uh my dad's an even bigger Railroad Tycoon fan. I think I've talked before about he's putting a probably at two in the morning when I'm trying to sleep, he's trying to do a double rail extension around Gloucester. So I'm like, oh dad, please. You know, I like this. When I was a kid, I liked it because it was like a train set on your computer that you could play with and it was fun for that. Dad obviously took it to the next level with the business elements of it and needed the most profitable rail company in the UK. And it and you know what, Railroad Tycoon is cool because it does take you from like Stevenson's rocket and those early fledgling sort of rail experiments all the way through to like electrified trains if you wanted to. So you run the whole timeline, yeah. And it's not just passengers, you have to organise little line extensions to woods to build a lumber yard to be able to make that city bigger to get more passenger revenue. There's like coal mines, and then there becomes power stations. So you're trying to get the power to the coal, power to the poor, power to the factories, power to this, power to that. So, yeah, honestly, mate, there's a lot going on in that game that you could just play it just for fun, but then the other elements of it, like the business elements of it, are amazing. Um it looks a bit weird now, and there are many different versions of it. I think there's uh the next evolution from this was a game called Transport Tycoon, still based on the isometric grid, but you could use planes, trains, buses, lorries, um ships, ferries, yeah, every mode of transport was available, hence the name.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think there's a lot of spiritual successor lot of sin on the switch that switch up talk about quite often and looks quite good, but I can't remember the name of it for the love of me.
SPEAKER_03I can't remember the name of the I think there's a few of these kicking around. I think there's one called uh Railroad Empire, which is pretty good.
SPEAKER_02It might be the one I'm thinking of.
SPEAKER_03I think there's a Railroad Empires 2. Not many of them hit as hard as that OG. It was just very simplified, but the mechanics behind it were.
SPEAKER_02I always remember seeing it on a PC at the time as well. You always saw them PC disc cases with Railroad Tycoon on it. It seemed to be quite a big PC title at the time. And and I know them sort of games I sort of dabbled with a bit of Sim City back in the day, but them sort of games have never really struck with me. But Railroad Tycoon, whenever I've seen trailers of it, I've always thought, oh, I quite like the idea of building a railway and a sort of thing.
SPEAKER_03I mean, there's a there's a big community built around the system, got opened up, and I think it's called Open TTL. So Transport Tycoon or Transport Tycoon Legacy, I think it might be. But that sort of basic game is out there, I think, to be played in browsers and uh and all sorts of things. Oh wow, yeah, get get into that. I mean, I've just pumped up a game that isn't Railroad Tycoon 2, but I would equally also pump up Railroad Tycoon 2 as well. They're very interlinked, to be fair. Um, give me some give me some grits about what you're into.
SPEAKER_02Well, I say this isn't so much what I'm into, but I have a lot of memories of this game. Um Tenshu 2. This was out in August 2000. Um, and the reason is uh my best mate, um I remember we we were playing on the UG PlayStation back in the day, and he just said he was playing this game and it was so quiet and so still. And I was like, What are you playing? He's like, Oh Tenshu, it's all just stealth content, and that's what Got him into the stealth genre, and I'd sit and watch him play Tenschu going across these rooftops. I mean, you look at the original Tenshu now, and you you go back and it it's a hard sell, it's a rough looking game, but it's the PS1 era, and you'd go across the rooftops, he'd drop down behind his bloke with Samurai sword, back up on the roof, and he was just a master at it. And Tenshu and Tenshu 2, he absolutely loved these games, mastered them to a T. I mean, he didn't get caught once, and that is one of the first times, other than sort of the Metal Gear era, that I'd seen stealth and I knew of stealth as a genre. And I think the Tenshu games are very underrated. People don't never talk about it much within that.
SPEAKER_03I had a similar friend at work who was big into Tenshu and I looked at it and couldn't make head nor arseholes of it, if I'm honest with you. But I think you're right, PS1 it is a tough sell now. It's got an iconic sort of boxy 3D look to it, um, which you could argue doesn't hold up. It kind of looks like someone's gone a little bit crazy in Minecraft at times, doesn't it, Tenshu 1?
SPEAKER_02It does. Um, but it's got that. I mean, you've got to remember where we came from. We come from 2D side scrolling platformers to an actual an actual 3D plane where you were being on rooftop.
SPEAKER_03Tenshu at all, I'm preparing a modern audience for a landling that might be a good one.
SPEAKER_02No, and I agree with you. It is it is a tough sell nowadays, but back in the day it was it was the height of tech, but also it was a genre I'd never really heard of, you know, because we were used to playing R type, or we were used to doing run and gun games like Gun Star Heroes and things like that, to suddenly say, No, no, no, you don't do that. Everything has to be quiet and stealth, and you have to be you know, and it's like, whoa, hang on, this is different.
SPEAKER_03And it's if you haven't got patience, so you'll think this is the worst game on earth.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. Stealth, I mean, I didn't like stealth for years, really. For me, playing, I liked watching my mate play him because he was very good at them until Assassin's Creed. Um, and he even got me, it was the same guy who got me into Assassin's Creed.
SPEAKER_03So, like look, mate, I don't like stealth, but I like Assassin's Creed, I think that tells you everything you need to know about it. Exactly.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, but yeah, Tenshu, you that was full on stealth, and yeah, I just remember watching him play those and just thinking, oh, I could do that, and then you get spotted in the first 10 seconds and think, yeah, he's actually quite good at this game because I'm terrible.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, one of my takeaways is because it's always at night, you've got this inky black sort of surround of the level from memory, the buildings kind of fade out the blackness. There's a lot of running around on roofs. I think there's my memory is ninja stars, and as you say, jumping down, thinking you're gonna surprise them, but then the guard turns round and just is like what am I doing so wrong? Um, it's a game that on the back of the box fills your mind with years of promise, yeah, and then you put the game in, and it's like, okay. And and it's that classic phrase of get good.
Tenchu Stealth Lessons And Patience
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and the thing you're exactly right with that, because the thing I remember about the game is he knew the layout of each map, and that's what you needed to know. You went through the room that had them sliding Japanese doors, yeah. You knew if you went through that door, that guy's facing the other way. So you slide through, slide the door back, out you go, up the roof, round the other side, over a window. There's that guy, he's facing the other way. So you had to learn the routine, and that was trial and error until you mastered, you know. So there was still that, you know, you're not going to go in straight away and just master this game. It was get good at it. But when you did get good, it was impressive to watch how he used to slide round the cooey pond then back into lilies.
SPEAKER_03Brilliant. I might stick that on later. I know I I've got it and I didn't think to put it on, to be fair. Um yeah, yeah. What else have you been what else have you got memories from? I've seen a couple in here I'd love to talk about.
SPEAKER_02Another one, now this just this triggered me when I saw this when I was researching.
SPEAKER_03So that was Tenshu 2 you were talking about.
SPEAKER_02Tenshu 2, yeah. Now another one that triggered and I can't hardly remember, but Action Bass on the PlayStation. I'm sure I bought and played this because I was a big Sega bass fishing fan. And I'm sure I bought this, and I've from what I remember that was quite good fun. Um real fishing for Action Bass on on the original PlayStation.
SPEAKER_03So I see real fishing's in here as well, which I also had.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I don't remember playing real fishing, but action bass I'm sure I did. And there was a bit of that early 2000s, there was a bit of a thing for the fishing game, which I think Sega Bass Fishing had brought to the the forward.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, a thousand percent.
SPEAKER_02Um and it sort of struck on, and I think I went for a bit of a stage of you know buying fishing games. And for me, I think these these fishing games are good fun, they're always quite cheap, but also I think the good thing was they were good if they had the multiplayer when you're on your own, they weren't quite as much fun. But if you had your mate on the couch and you were sitting there and seeing who could catch the biggest fish in that, they had their they had their place in game and they were good fun. And I'm sure I remember I don't even know if I saw it.
SPEAKER_03Mate, my biggest gripe with fishing games is I don't want to lure fish all the time.
SPEAKER_02Yes, it is the American bass fishing way, and it sometimes you want it was and I think they'd done that because I think they thought the attention span of a game was short, quick fishing experience, in it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you've always got to be pressing a button to reel it in. Yeah, it's not until more modern games like some of the more fishing simulators, can you actually throw a float out and watch it?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Which to me is fishing.
SPEAKER_02Exactly, yeah. Yeah, there was that, it was all bass stuff, right? It was all American bass fishing at the time. Drive your speedboat out, car reel in, rip his head off bank, go next. Exactly that, you know, but yeah, good function.
SPEAKER_03And with the with the Dreamcast Sega Bass fishing reel, that was kind of fun because you had a rotary dial, but hammering X is garbage.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and it was also you don't realise as well how precise those Sega Bass fishing rods were. They were good because you were reeling, you know, and it was quite responsive. When you're on the X button, you're trying to balance that you know, you've got no pressure sensitive, that's on or off, so you're a bit it's it's a it is quite harder to do. Um, there was one on here I was gonna ask you about. I don't know if you played this, it was a Dreamcast game called Deep Fighter. Have you played that?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I've played Deep Fighter. I've never heard of this. It's basically Wing Commander under under the water under the water in a submarine. My memory of it's a little hazy. I bought it second time round in my retro phase. I bought it OG concurrent Dreamcast. I had loads of Dreamcast games. Um and then I bought it again to nostalgically, really, to backfill to the collection that I had. This intrigues me, this one. I think that you if you like Wing Commander, Jeep Lee, Senior, those sorts of games, it would definitely appeal to you. Imagine that in a mashup with like Sequest DSV. Uh, I can't remember the full story, and I'm not wikiing it to cheat, but I think sort of humanity is kind of living under the sea now for some reason. Resources are scarce, blah blah blah blah blah, and you go out in these missions. If you're looking for something on the Dreamcast that's got that vibe to it, this is definitely there. Um I think because it's a submarine, you've obviously got the 3D movement, so it feels this is why it always reminded me of like Wing Commander and games like that. You know, I had some fun with it. Uh, if it's the game that I remember from memory that I'm talking about, I had some fun with it, but it it didn't it didn't overstay its welcome because there were just so much other good stuff to play on the tree cast that I just would rather slap in Crazy Taxi than Deep Fighter 3000, if I'm honest with you.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and also I suppose there was a lot of you know, with your colony wars and your wing commanders, um G police. G Police, what was the other one, Starfighter 3000 or something there was? There was uh um maybe yeah.
SPEAKER_03I did have one on a set, and I can never I can always get mad up, but there was a lot of these almost space sim sort uh you know excuse to let them sort of screw around in 3D shooting other flying things, and it it you know it definitely felt like that. But if you've got a dreamcast you're locked in like the Sega ecosystem, this would be kind of a high point for you, I think.
Fishing Games Craze And Hardware
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, very interesting. Um, also see that ISS Pro Evolution Soccer 2 was out. This is when that Zinn starting to Jane Graham before it went over to well, that was then going over to Pro Evo, but yeah, yeah. I remember first installment. I spoke about this in the show before and sort of being a bit blown away about it. And this was when I started getting on to the the hype train of you know Pro Evo and the old Konami games, and uh yeah, that was when it was really starting to take take over a bit then, I think.
SPEAKER_03Uh tell me about Colin McCrae too.
SPEAKER_02Well, again, I I don't think people speak about Colin McCrae enough. Um, there'd been various rally games and games that in their different guises had rally events in them. Um and I think everyone thought when the first Colin McCrae game came out, they just thought, oh, it's just a licensed game, they just bought his name and it's gonna be a crap game. Actually turned out to be a good series.
SPEAKER_03Obviously, when prior to this, we had like network rally queue games on the Amiga and ST. Yeah. Uh this was as you say, it could have been throwaway. Uh, the first let's talk about the first Colin McCray, first of all. It could have been throwaway, but actually was very realistic. You had adhesion systems underneath you in terms of like how it felt to be riding on gravel, mud, ice. Obviously, ice was your classic ice level, but you know, um, and that game kind of blew everybody away, put Codemasters on the map. Uh, in terms of you know, they'd been doing toker and other bits and bobs, but certainly planted them on the map as like an automotive simulator. And then two landed, and two's box art alone must have shipped a million copies because that sort of light blue with the cars on the front and that simple Colin McCray 2.0 font.
SPEAKER_02I mean, yeah, and it it it it made it suddenly look, you know, almost different from the rest. It looked professional. Do you know what I mean? It looked like you know, when you sort of looked at that box that you think, mm-hmm this is actually a bit different.
SPEAKER_03This this it looked fresh, it looked clean, it looked separate from the noise that you would see. I think yeah, your original Colin McCrae was a great big picture of his Subaru. This was like little pictures, four little pictures across the front from memory of like maybe his focus or something, but basically you've got this real nice, almost metallic baby blue with this really clean white like writing on it. I don't know what font it is, but it they needed to do nothing else.
SPEAKER_02Do you know what always reminds me of these games as well? I'd come from I used to love Sega Rally in the arcade, love Sega Rally on on you know Dreamcast and Saturn and various different geysers, and you you you know it was like my first bowl and you had bumper rails, you know. If you hit the side, you just slowed up.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I went into this the same, went straight into a tree, damaged the car, and thought, whoa, hold on, this is this is no this isn't arcade now, is it? Yeah, I need to think about these corners. I just don't go in full throttle every corner trying to drift. If you're drifting too much, you're losing time. And I thought, oh, hang on a minute, and then you have to get over to the you get the markers at the end, get over, and I just thought I remember the sounds of the beeps when you went, and I thought, this is proper rally, actually, because I was quite into rally at the time as well. Yeah, um, yeah, I and I actually um I wish I had it done at the time, but um later on about 2004 or 5. Um Mrs. RGT's from Cumbria, and she wasn't far from um M Sport that done the rally cars for Ford, and she got me a day there going round and Colin McCrae's focus was in there.
SPEAKER_03What the the the building with the track at the back of it?
SPEAKER_02Yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_03I've been there, I've been round on that track as well.
SPEAKER_02Dovenby Hall. Dovenby Hall in Cumbria. Yeah, I think that's where I went to. Yeah, I went and looked round all the rally cars and had.
SPEAKER_03Got a load of rally cars lined up in like a white shed. Uh it's like a big metallic modern-looking building. Touched like an old fall or something.
Deep Fighter And Dreamcast Space-Sim Vibes
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's an old hospital. Dovenby Hall, it's an old hospital. Yeah, Malcolm Wilson owns it, yeah, he runs M Sport. And um always amazed me as well. I know we're going off piece the bit when you went in. Everything was pure white, like surgery. The cars are all on axle stands. And I said to the guide, he said, any questions? I said, So what they when new trainees come in, what's the first thing they do? He said they have to paint all their spanners white and we check them at the end of the day. And I was like, No way. It's like surgery. But he said he said, You get a grain of dirt in a gearbox, that could cost you a world championship. And I was like, fair enough, you know. But yeah, brilliant.
SPEAKER_03I think from memory when I was there, they're like an RS2000 and other bits. They had some McCrae's bits and bobs there as well.
SPEAKER_02So it's a special place, yeah. It's special, and he's focused from off on the front of the bottom.
SPEAKER_03Not open to the public though, by the way.
SPEAKER_02No, no, you have to you can do tours. I don't know if they do it nowadays, but you can do you could do tours at the time, but they were they checked you for cameras and you weren't allowed to take uh certain pictures and bits in only certain areas because of obviously if you're in uh the world championship bit where they're obviously competing, they don't want pictures getting out of what they're doing and as of their sort of work and that on the cars, but yeah, very interesting. And it always reminds me because of that focus on the front of Colin McRae 2.0, but yeah, great game, way ahead of his time.
SPEAKER_03Colin McRae 2.0 was one of those games where they actually used the in-game graphics on the front of a magazine, or you opened it up to the review and it was a spill of the in-game graphics because they're true, but they were good enough, uh, which is not true for every game in this era, so that was nice. And that's one thing I remember the Dreamcast magazine in that era. They weren't shy of putting close-to-game graphics on the front cover because it was like, what what well wow.
SPEAKER_02And also, I think you've got to you've got to think this is when people started realising codemasters knew how to make a driving game.
SPEAKER_03That's what I'm saying. I think it put them on the map as those people, yeah, yeah, definitely.
SPEAKER_02Um other games you want to talk about? I see what Final Fantasy is that yeah.
ISS Pro Evolution And Colin McRae 2.0
SPEAKER_03Listen, I popped nine back in the tray last night just for some fun, played the opening minutes, you know, where you do the um sort of town sort of village area. Yeah, you'd perform the opera for them, don't you? You do a like a little sword fight, which is like a QTE, and you get rated. Do you want to do it again? Because the Queen wasn't impressed, like, yes, and yes, and in the end, I was like, no, I'm not doing it again. Um, but that whole, you know, from the minute it starts, what I would say about nine is it just reeks just cuteness, niceness, fun, friendly. There is an element of danger there, but at the same token, it's just wrapped up in this really nice universe. It's airships and steampunk and fantasy, and it really like Final Fantasy VII, I know it has its lovers, um, but it's really hard-edged, sort of future design. You're in these buildings, you fight in these corporations, it's all very serious. Yeah you move to eight, and it's a love story setting, like this futuristic world of like, and and again, it's very future, very gunblade, I think is the the shtick of eight, and then you get to nine, and it's it's very much a callback, maybe on purpose, with the airships of six and the maybe a more kind of not pixelated style, but definitely back to that kind of cute little feeling.
SPEAKER_02It's funny you say this. My brother-in-law's massive Final Fantasy fan, you know, all the steel books, and he's he's completed every version, used to import the early games from Japan, and he always said to me, nine was that callback to sort of a medieval more steampunk. They'd done that futuristic seven, eight, and then just thought, hang on, let's take it back again, let's get a bit more than I'm nine to get more.
SPEAKER_03I'm grateful they did because like I bounced off seven, I have to admit, the first time I played it because it was like, oh crikey, uh this this is a lot, and then nine just grabbed me by the skin of me scrotum and just sat me down, and it was like, right, okay, I'm into this from the very opening. I know this is a very iconic game for one of uh our Discord sheriffs, DM. He's big into nine, um, like it's a very you know, a game that resonates with him, I believe. Um, and I I totally get it. To me, I'm gonna get some hate for this, but come at me because we're all allowed an opinion, they're like arseholes, we've all got one, but they have to be the same. Um to me to me, nine is the banger for me on PS1. I know a lot of people got nostalgia for seven, but it's hard to love because it's kind of um polygons, in my humble opinion. Eight is a beautiful looking game, but the storyline of teenage lovers just doesn't really sing to me. I like the gun blades, I like the combat, but the rest of it I'm not that interested in. Nine came along just as I was about to dismiss myself as a Final Fantasy player and went, no. So it's alright, George, sit down. Here, mate. You want this? This is what you wanted. This is that medieval callback. This is the game that you looked at in magazines with the um with the mode seven and the clouds and the and and and this is kind of and it was like, yes, this is right. And I think there was something about the the opening as well. It was very innocent, it was very kind of naive. Um it's it's a beautiful game.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'd recently downloaded it on the Switch. Um, just literally like the it's just like a res duck.
SPEAKER_03But it looks banging on there.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's literally just a resed up PS1 game on the Switch, but I must admit, then pre-rendered backgrounds and the town and that, it looks lovely.
SPEAKER_03And they they had they looked very well at setting the scene, and it did feel like a little village and town and from the start of that game where you start off, uh I think the main character's called Zidane or something like that, and you you start off with uh like a little a candle, and you're walking around and it's kind of showing the room just the edges, as this sort of like pixelated blackness is there, and you get to the table and it's light the candle on the table, and you do that, and then that whole pre-rendered world just gets sort of flooded with this light from the black, and it kind of pulls you into the world. It's a very clever kind of yeah, yeah, sort of game design technique. On even on a modern big screen, you're a tiny little dot of colour and light, and then you do it, and it and this would have been mind-blowing on the PS1 as an example. Definitely, you like this little character on the screen, and then boom, the light comes out and it just fills the room with all that glorious detail. Like, wow, this is great! And what a great way of getting interact with the game and then like draw you in because that light expanding is almost like your little window of light, sort of expanding you and bringing you into the game. That I was I forgot about that, and that kind of that stuck with me. I probably over resonated a moment where you turn the lights on in a game, but uh to me it was reflective of everything this was doing. I did find sometimes the kind of you do switch. From like an almost isometric view to a side-on view to an isometric view to a side-on view sometimes when you're navigating through the towns and the buildings and things, and that's a bit like for me. That was a bit like oh god, what's happening here? But I I love it, and every single shot is framed well. Uh battle system's fun, it's very simple, it feels very raw Final Fantasy and 9, but I've got no complaints at all.
SPEAKER_02And I think it is, I think the battle system is like that because they literally have almost gone back to their roots again. Basic battle system, sort of a medieval, yeah, old time setting, and where they go again.
SPEAKER_03I definitely recommend dead fresh.
SPEAKER_02It does. Um, I definitely recommend it. I I think I picked up in this on a sale for like£3 on the switch from the eStore. It's definitely worth picking up because it looks if you want a bit of PS1, goodness, but has been tweaked a little bit, it's definitely worth playing. So it looks it does.
SPEAKER_03The OG in a PS2 yesterday evening, but didn't actually go in. You know, you can go into the options of the PS2 and improve the disc speed and the rendering of the PlayStation 1 games. I didn't touch a thing and went into it raw, and it was still super impressive. So I mean, I'm probably now about to detail the most expensive way to get it because I was I can't remember where I was. I was in a CEX not that long ago, or retro shop. I was and I saw the price of PlayStation 1 and I was like, what the hell? Yeah, what the hell price is that? Are you kidding me? It's like 60, 70, 80 books or something. It's like that ain't right. Um and I don't know what a copy of Final Fantasy 90 is running to you running you to. They've always kind of been this kind of mythical. I remember when I bought a copy of this in like 2004, it was like this mythical 15 quid. I guarantee you now it's still a mythical 15 quid 20 years later.
SPEAKER_02Um you can well, if you don't mind a platinum edition, you can pick it up for 12 quid. Um, but a boxed black label's 18. Okay, so yeah.
SPEAKER_03And I remember I got this in Liverpool and I remember saying to the guy, can't you do something on the price? And he went, Have you seen how many discs are in there? As if that matters.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's not it's not on disc quantity, they're worth about 10 pence either.
SPEAKER_03So that's why it's 15 because it's like per disc or something. So I was like, right, okay, mate, fine. If that's what it is, I don't really care. I was only looking for a couple of quid off, but whatever makes your day. Yeah, you only gave someone a fiver for this, you treacherous snake. Everyone's got to eat though, Georgie boy. Everybody's got to eat. Um, one of the other games I wanted to talk about, and I I did play it yesterday evening, um, is the original Spider-Man on PS1. Yep. I had this originally on the Dreamcast. I've still got it on Dreamcast, but have it most readily available on PlayStation 1. Uh look the Dreamcast version out. But the the PS1 version, do you know what? It's got a lot going on. Obviously, there's the whole story mythos of the fog on the ground from Dr. Ock or whatever it is, so you can't touch the floor.
SPEAKER_02Because I think this was out sort of this is that September time, aren't it? This came out just like.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well, it's in our sort of games to play sort of or games we were playing scenario, and and Spider-Man, do you know what Rachel sat down next to me, she's like, Oh, I'll tell you what, this really shows you how far in such a short space of time they came with that Spider-Man game you play on PlayStation 5. And I was like, Yeah, you're right, because this was what technically 26-25 years ago that Spider-Man for the PlayStation launched, and if you put them side by side, it is super stark. But if you play Spider-Man 1 on the PS1 in its just in its on its own, separate from everything else, you can jump, you can a lot of the buttons are the same, it's right trigger to swing, it's triangle to wrap the enemies up in your in your web. Um, there's a lot of similarities here.
SPEAKER_02You can see where it's DNA's air in it.
SPEAKER_03A thousand percent. And this was the first game that nailed it in the 3D. We've had Spider-Man games before, but they're all sort of 2D beat-em-ups that really did not play to any of Spider-Man's unique skill sets as a character for a game. This one nailed it. Now, if memory serves, this came about from some experimentation with the Tony Hawk engine, uh, and this is what this sits upon. You can feel that in it, um, but that does not hold it back from being one hell of a great web tangling uh romp dude.
SPEAKER_02It was head of an achievement for the tech.
SPEAKER_03Did you play it back in the day? You didn't feel a little bit as a kid game.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, I did play it because my mate again, who was into Tenshu, was a massive Spider-Man fan. He watched all the cartoons, the comics, bits and pieces, read the books, he loved the whole universe. Um, so yeah, he had a and I remember uh seeing it for the first time thinking, oof, Spider-Man in 3D, this is good. And I liked how they because you were high up on the buildings, they would use the smog of the city to hide.
SPEAKER_03Although smog was poison.
SPEAKER_02Yes, that's it. Yes, sorry, yeah. Um it's a great idea. And I thought, yeah, this is actually really good. It looks for the time, it looked fluid and the way you could swing your webs and use your website looked very good.
SPEAKER_03It still looks good now in that regard, if you take it within the era that it's from. Um, but to me, it looks like it's pushing the PS1 to breaking point. I mean, that's what it looks like to me.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah. They done that they've done a hell of a job with that, and that was a brilliant game.
SPEAKER_03Definitely if you're a PS1 collector, it's definitely worth picking up because it's uh the character models like might leave a little bit to be desired from the cutscenes. I mean, I had a sick bag with me, it's that bad, but uh the actual gameplay feels quite good. The the only thing is like New York does feel and do you know what? They managed to make the effort of making that story about the smog and Dr. Ock and all that sort of stuff, but it does feel New York feeling like like Cloud City, if I'm honest with you.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03You could be anywhere, you're like totally detached from the reality of what New York is. You're just floating around these. Yeah, I mean, if Lando walked in stage left, I would not be surprised about it.
SPEAKER_02No, but these are the sort of barriers they had to sort of work around in the in the at the time they didn't jump.
SPEAKER_03Spider-Man 1 on PlayStation 2, you could see the floor, but goddamn you couldn't touch it. Whereas two allowed that full interactivity of the city from memory. I might be getting confused with the PSP version, but something in my mind sticks that that first movie tying game was also very restrictive.
Final Fantasy IX’s Charm And Legacy
SPEAKER_02But yeah, I'll uh I'll just read out a few notable mentions that were also out of this time before we go on to the news. Um, we had uh Dynasty Warriors 2 was out. Um we also had Men in Black 2, um we had uh Pro Pinball, Fantastic Journey was out. Um we had um Madden NFL 2001.
SPEAKER_03Game I've got a game here I want to talk, couple uh game I want to talk about just briefly. Yep. Um we got Sega GT on the Dreamcast, now I got this.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Um it was sort of their competitor, weren't it, to Grand Turismo, so I suppose it's oh that's probably what they thought it was.
SPEAKER_03It wasn't that. No, it wasn't when it made its way to Xbox OG, it it was that. It felt special, it felt different. Now this one was kind of okay, but the handling was very, very odd. It felt kind of stilted, you kinda yeah, Sega GT 2002. That is that to this day is still a really great game. There were some things that were doing well on the say on the Dreamcast version with the sort of you the way you bonded with your car, but other than that, it it just didn't hit. When you were driving around the circuit, just felt it didn't feel connected to the road, and I think that's where my memory of Sega GT on the Dreamcast really sort of got on and got off. I played more of it than I should have because I was desperate for a GT clone on Dreamcast at the time, yeah.
SPEAKER_02But I should not have played that much of it because it it wasn't no, and I think they were they then started to realise that there was actually a market for something a bit more serious rather than Sega Rally, Crazy Taxi, there was a market for a more there was a big car scene with your Fast and Furious and stuff. There was in this area, yeah. Yeah, there was so I think they were they were looking at it that way. And first one they didn't quite get there. The second one, even when you look at the back, you if you just looked at the back first, you think it was a grand turismo game. It's very similar setting, and you could see why they done it. Um but yeah, Sega GT and Dreamcast. We also had Tocker World Touring Cars, another Codemasters great game. We had uh Mario Tennis, um Turok 3 was out. Um I know I didn't realise they're they're even at the third one. Um Kirby Tilt and Tumble, Game Boy Colour. Um, I do believe we even had a um metal gear uh for Game Boy, I think it was a collection, yeah, Konami Game Boy Collection, um, which looked quite good. I don't know if there was metal gear and a few other different bits and pieces on there, but that looked quite good. Like you say, Real Fishing 2, and also just one last one, Trick Border, which I'd never heard of, and Game Boy Colour, but the font is the same as cool borders. So I don't know if that's from the same mate.
SPEAKER_03That totally passed me by. I mean in this era, I was um I was a Dreamcast user, I was about to become like a Game Boy Advance user, so a lot of these sort of Game Boy games. I was perusing the shelves around this time to find games to play on my Game Boy Colour or whatever it has, and then I think upgraded to a an S a first ever advance, not the SP but the garbage one. So a lot of these sort of I was blown away by how many Game Boy games are in this list. Like I'm looking at Perfect Dark for the Game Boy Colour. Uh I had that, it's garbage. Um, and then all these different box arts where you got like Game Boy up the side of it, just I spent hours looking through that 8-bit tat hoping to find something that would be.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and the thing was that well, like we said at the time, there was because of the cost of gaming at the time, a lot of people, and I knew people in the time, their console was a Game Boy Colour or a Game Boy, that was their home console. Yes, so these developers thought there's so many millions of these out there, desk label this up as perfect dark, use the old metal gear engine and chuck that on there and make it look like it's a perfect dark game, just so they're getting a version which is nothing like what the real games were like.
SPEAKER_03I remember you know, obviously, in 2000 was when I got my Dreamcast and I said goodbye to my sort of N64 and Game Boy ecosystem, and yeah, it even if you were in the Nintendo ecosystem in 2000 and Game Boy was a bit of a deep cut, yeah. Um, but you know, it's what we had, and it's it's what we're into, and it you know, it was of the era, so yeah, definitely.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well that was um that was what we would have uh hopefully been playing at the time. Um, but this leads us on to the news. We've scoured the very darkest back pages of the game and mags and even delved deep into the interweb to bring you what was the latest story's first up from Eurogamer. Ubisoft takes over Red Storm. Um French publisher Ubisoft has confirmed long-running rumours that they are planning to buy out Redstorm, the American publisher slash developer, best known for the Rainbow Six series. Following the exploits of an elite international anti-terrorist organization, Rainbow Six, and its sequel, Rogue Spear, have gone on to sell three million copies on everything from the PC to the Game Boy. There you go. Redstorm was co-founded by famous author Tom Clancy, and as part of the deal with Ubisoft, he has signed up for a new exclusive long-term licence and endorsement agreement with Redstorm and Ubisoft for all video and computer gaming platforms and products. Expect to see more Rainbow Six games then, and perhaps a game based on the forthcoming Jack Ryan movie Sum of All Fears.
SPEAKER_03Which we got, didn't we?
SPEAKER_02Yes, which is also based on a Tom Clancy novel uh for the full scoop and takeover read the press release, um, which is a link there from the website back in the day. Um I thought this was great.
SPEAKER_03Looks pretty freaking gross.
SPEAKER_02That is that was a uh yeah.
SPEAKER_03How the hell, where the hell did you find this? Yeah, good god, that's time travel itself.
SPEAKER_02Some of these articles. Well, people the good thing is people like Eurogame and IGN keep all their history on their website.
SPEAKER_03I have to nod to that.
SPEAKER_02That is brilliant, so it's great for research.
SPEAKER_03Um when you yeah, when you're doing research, you find an IGN article concurrent with the time, with the concurrent feelings of that moment about that series or that franchise, it's time travel, and to people like you and I, it's mana from flipping heaven.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I thought this was quite interesting because obviously now we you know with the Rainbow Six and the Tom Clancy's and Ubisoft, we don't, you know, we don't think too much of it nowadays, do we? You know, it was but this is obviously where it all started. And I I never even realised at the time about Red Storm. I didn't realise Red Storm was owned by Tom Clancy, I didn't realise he had his own development side of games that then Ubisoft come into. Um, and it must have been a long-term contract because it's gone on for years, you know, with all these games.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I I have to admit that I was around this, I was kind of bouncing off military simulators and bits and bobs at the time, so the Tom Clancy name was known to me. It had been attached to sort of other bits and bobs, or more military games had kind of had a theming of a Tom Clancy novel. But this this um original Rainbow Six and Tom Clancy's way of doing it was a real like it's not, it's not, but it was a super super super realistic take on the super army soldier shooter shooter game. Um that I I mean I played the original Rainbow Six on what, N64?
SPEAKER_02Wow, really?
SPEAKER_03I think so. I remember it the car, black big black label, rainbow six white with like a red edge to it. Um I think if I didn't have it, I think my cousin Matthew had it.
SPEAKER_02Um what I always remember about it is my my uh I've got a uh friend, you've probably seen him on our um Unfished Controller podcast, Discord, Speedy Wheels. He's really into Rainbow Six, and I know another guy's into it as well. And you always find if you're into Rainbow Six, you're hardcore fans of it. Do you know what I mean? They have memories of playing through the games and when they got into multiplayer later on down the line and bits and pieces. And I mean, military games were never really my thing then, so I never really delved deep into them, but I always found this story interesting that this is when you start to see companies merging and when they start seeing IPs and start buying up, you know, at the time, early 2000s, excuse me, there was probably so many different uh development teams out there, so many publishers, so many different hazards. But nowadays, you know, everything's everyone's bought everyone, and it's all come down to a certain few. But this is when I would imagine that those those buyouts started, and um obviously the license they bought, they went on to sell millions and millions of games, and what they developed with with Tom Clancy, but yeah, very interesting, very interesting. What we got next then, George?
SPEAKER_03Um, bear with me because I've had to just load this up on a different machine so I can read it because it's that old, it's uh it's a bit faded from my eyes on my phone, unfortunately. But um this is an article from official PlayStation magazine. Sony expands PS2. Um Sony Computer Entertainment, aka S-C E has announced intentions to license its PlayStation 2 technology to other companies in order to expand the platform's reach. Sony's plan is to allow its PlayStation 2 technology to be used in non-traditional video game devices. With this investment, we will enter into a new business place, said Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony Computer Entertainment. We'll be able to provide customers with powerful and flexible processor functions in the future. PlayStation 2 may be absorbed into TV sets and the game console may disappear, added Nobuka Eide, president and CEO of Sony Corp. There are no other consumer electronic products that sell two million units in 80 days as the PlayStation 2 did. If the console remained just a Sony platform, there'll be limits to its market penetration. Sony Computer Entertainment also announced that it in conjunction with Toshiba will boost the production of PlayStation consoles from the current level of 500,000 units a month to two million a month. My god. Yeah the company clearly has faith in the PlayStation 2 becoming a success in the US and European markets, as it has in Japan. Interesting article you prepare and bring to us here. Um I'm not quite sure how well this took. I know we got maybe a PlayStation TV at some point in time and um some other bits and bulbs, but this isn't quite this is obviously early fledgling days. We're reporting this from August 99 in the UK where the we were all excited for the PlayStation 2, but it hadn't quite landed yet. Um and seeing talk of its domination uh around the world at such an early stage in its life, and the the war machine kind of uh ramping up to two million units a month, um that is terrifying if if you're in the industry because it's that level of pain that they can bring that you probably just can't compete with. There's no way Sega were making that many consoles a month.
SPEAKER_02No, no, it was and that's why I put this story in here, because I'm you know, this was obviously um just before that you know we obviously got the system, um but it like you say from 500 units a month to two million a month, and you're like, what you know that Sony must have thought, right, we're we're on to something here. The DVD player's an absolute master stroke, and I found it quite interesting that this share and tech, this is something that you know is quite uh nowadays. I mean you look at Series X and a PS5, they're very similar internally, but in these days everything was quite different, and this share and tech, and I thought, I wonder what their vision was for the PS2.
SPEAKER_03I wonder well, I'll tell you their vision, and I'd I probably need to do some research off there to validate this one way or the other, but I think their plan was to just make the PS2 be your DVD draw built into your TV. Uh except bizarrely, at the same time you can play games. Um as a side note, by the way, I decided last night I need to get a I don't need your help. I don't want anyone that you're sponsored by. I want the best. No mucking around, oh I've got this one, I'm like you know, I sell these bits and bobs. I don't want any of that. I want the best PS2 wireless uh controller in the modern era. Is it the Brooks Wingman or no.
SPEAKER_02Brooks Wingman is just so you can play your um in that the extension so you can play your normal controllers on a in a memory card that you plug in the front so you can play. Yeah. Now I again like I've said this many times before Retro Fight is Defender because you get your dongle for your PS1, PS2, and PS3. Um and it's a great controller. I use that for my PS1, PS2, and PS3 games. It's brilliant.
SPEAKER_03Send me a link, then I'll give in. I'll do I'll roll over and bite the dog.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no worries. I'll send you some pictures of mine later on as well.
SPEAKER_03But uh great. In the meantime, this technically I imagine that they were thinking 3DO. I'd imagine they were thinking like uh when the Mega Drive got slapped into the things, yeah. And I just think they were thinking that the I think this early in the life of the PlayStation 2, and that they were obviously proof wrong because I don't remember too much of this happening. It wasn't like there's not a million TV sets out with PS2s in. There might be like a hundred there and a hundred here, but not that I'm fully conversant with. So we're exploring sort of link-ups with other sort of front room technology providers to sort of stealth the console in. I mean, it does reek of their strategy of stealthing the console in as another device, a DVD player for Mumsey, and then the bedroom it then then obviously it plays games as well. It's the marketing angle that they were super confident of the back of the PlayStation one, no doubt about it, but it it shows a couple a technology company that doesn't quite know what to do with its second iteration of its very bizarre successful first console.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. I mean I think you hit on something there with like the 3DO and what Sega did where they sort of licensed out, so you had a JVC Mega CD and Wonder Mega and bits and pieces, and obviously you had Panasonic 3DO, and then you had one by I can't remember who made the the others. Gold Star. Yeah, there you go. Well done. Um, and I suppose they were thinking the same thing, you know. Imagine if you had had an NEC PlayStation 2, or do you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_03It's imagine the world of collecting now where no doubt some nerds on Reddit had decided that this very rare skew of a Panasonic uh PlayStation 2 was like the best version to have because it had this special cool-in, but it had this room for expansion that the original console didn't have, and because it's coupled directly to a TV screen, you're getting the full raw image straight off the self off the processor, and it's like, oh, it's the emotion engine, it's got to be this. This is the only way to play it, guys. If you're gonna play PlayStation, it has to be in this way, it has to be in this way, and there's no other way you can even comprehend play it. Like, well, funny because I'm just lashed it into my TV on composite and I'm having a pretty good time. Oh my god, darling, composite. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_02Arrest him.
SPEAKER_03I don't want to touch him, I don't want anything to do with this chap. I don't know who I am, I'm like computer snob, uh Reddit computer snob.
SPEAKER_02Somewhere in a parallel universe, that's that's probably what happened. There was a Panasonic PlayStation 2 with expansion bay and god knows what two million quid now, and they sat on top of them like but yeah, so weird. I mean, another year down the line from this article, I think Sony realised we don't need to license any bits out, we're absolutely being.
Spider-Man PS1 And The Tony Hawk DNA
SPEAKER_03Absolutely, so it's it's it's amazing this has been captured in an official magazine. It's amazing that this has been publicly said by Ken. Um, one thing I would say is that the Mega Drive started to license its technology towards the end of its life to put it out there. Tripp Hawkins with the 3DO set out from day one to say, no, we aren't looking to make a machine, but we're gonna license the technology for you to make the machine. It was a very clear distinction from the start. He said, No, we're doing things differently. Whereas PlayStations come out with the success of uh all the sales that already exhibited, uh, that they were stoked, the current level of 400,000 that had all gone home and been sold and stuck. The success of the PlayStation 1, so already an installed user base there that you can migrate, and there's still early days in the PS2's first year calendar year of use, they're talking about selling its birthright to Toshiba. Yeah, they didn't quite know what they had there, did they?
SPEAKER_02No, and then I think once it released two or three months later in Europe, and they suddenly thought, oh, why is there 350,000 people queuing outside shops in the UK? Yeah, forget Toshiba, we're alright with what we're doing. We'll be okay, I think. Yeah, and I think no more. Um, yeah, very interesting. Um, I love these because you look back at PS2 now um and you don't realise that obviously that that was a bit unknown at this time. So you see, yeah, like the same for them.
SPEAKER_03It was the difficult second album, so they'll maybe preparing to have a fallback plan so they didn't get their ass handed to them by Sony Big Bots. They were like that fledgling out there on the Edge PlayStation department that had got lucky the first time, but there's no way they're gonna capture Lightning in the Bottle twice, is there? Is there?
SPEAKER_02Well, yeah, exactly. Um and then Unbeknown to them that was uh absolutely smashed at um still has, and I think it's still a highest-selling console of all time.
SPEAKER_03I do believe it is.
SPEAKER_02Um right, we'll move on to our final article. Um, this is from EGM magazine. Um, good article. Yeah, Microsoft shows off its X Factor. Um, although Xbox is still well over a year away, Microsoft didn't keep quiet about its new console at E3. Uh the company didn't have as big a boo as Sony, Sagor, or Nintendo, but Microsoft gave showgoers some first glimpses of its future game technology. Microsoft intends to not only set the Xbox ahead of the game graphically but also audibly. The demo we saw showed the Xbox doing on-the-fly transitions between drastically different types of music, such as rock turning into country and so forth, uh, seamlessly as a slider was moved across the screen by the touch of a side winder pad. This sort of uh technology could be used to add living soundtracks to it to a game where music smoothly changes according to the action on screen. Xbox development kits are going out to most developers during June, and they'll have plenty of time to get working on games for the launch of the console in the fall of 2001. We asked what Microsoft reaction was to Sony's decision to incorporate a bay for a hard drive. Uh Kevin Bacchus, Xbox's uh Microsoft Xbox's third.
SPEAKER_03Kevin Bacchus! Oh my goodness gracious me, isn't he the Roman isn't Bacchus the Roman god of wine drinking and exuberance?
SPEAKER_02That'd probably answer a lot. Um Microsoft's Xbox third party guru told us all that does is validate our decision. As for what the final version of the Xbox will look like, Bacchus told uh uh couldn't reveal anything yet. However, he did use the following terms when describing it very precise, clean, and high fidelity. We were informed that um that the metallic silver casing accented by a green translucent bubble we saw at E3 was merely a mock-up to give the current chipset a presentable look, but should should give us a hint at the what the finished Xbox might look like. Bacchus also pointed out that the design of the Xbox, who happened to be sitting in the same designer, sorry, of the Xbox, who happened to be sitting in the same room of us at the time, spent three years trying to find the exact pair of sunglasses that he wanted uh that he'd want to wear. That's the kind of guy you want designing your console. Really? Um when when we were asked about some of the rumours circulating about Microsoft buying certain developers, Bacchus was quick to point out that many of them were bogus. He went on to reg on record to say that Microsoft has made no offer to buy Square, contrary to internet scuttle scuttlebuck.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's a phrase.
SPEAKER_02Uh Bacchus also brought up the um to the point that it would make little financial sense for Microsoft to purchase a large publisher that generates much of its revenue with products on multiple platforms such as PlayStation and Game Boy Colour. Oh how times have changed, and asked it to focus all of its efforts onto one platform, especially considering the Xbox will have a small user base in the beginning. But with that said, he also mentioned that Microsoft has its eye on certain developers. I'm sure that somewhere along the line we'll pick up a company or two. Oh, you did that. Um yes, um, I thought this was interesting because this is when the early days of the OG Xbox was coming out, the rumours were coming out, we didn't know what it looked like, we didn't know about the power, but he was dropping little things.
SPEAKER_03I've got a f yeah, I've got a few things to chuck in on this. Obviously, if I've got the name of the Roman god of drinking wrong, let me know. Uh community corrections on unofficial controller podcast Discord or email us at uh questions at unofficialcontrollerpodcast.com. That's not flashback, George. Yes, flashback's part of a larger entertainment uh platform now, it's part of the UCP. Um now I am sat here staring down the barrel of a gun of being an early Xbox adopter. Um I got this, I was away at the time, but when I got back, I got one within the launch window, and the proof of that was a message from Microsoft when they dropped the price, where we were given a free if you had bought the console in the launch window, and then obviously subsequently Microsoft dropped the price. They actually sent to all the early adopters a game of your choice. They weren't that great games. I think I chose Fusion Frenzy, and I think you it's actually quite a good game, actually.
SPEAKER_02Fusion Frenzy nowadays.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it is if you're into the party games, but if you're a solo player game like me, it it kind of begs the question what we're doing with it. Yeah, true. But I had all the other games that were in the launch window other than Fusion Frenzy, so I really only had Fusion Frenzy to get, and I think they sent you an extra controller, those two things combined kind of equaled the distance in value between the launch price and maybe they price they dropped it to three to four months later. Um so I was there day and day. I'd kind of been hyped by this. Like the PlayStation 2 had come out, I'd been burnt historically through gaming. Um I saw the Dreamcast had been killed a bit by the PS2, so I was a bit anti, even though I had a PlayStation 2. But I also knew that I wanted to try and future proof myself by getting the most powerful machine, and therefore this Xbox probably is if I'm gonna get a new home console, I ought to get this Xbox. Um it I want to also talk about the Chrome design. I think a guy on YouTube recently tried to reproduce that out of uh his name's Macho Nacho Productions RGT if memory serves. And um he actually, as soon as I saw it, I thought, well, I don't think they'll hewn that out of a solid piece of aluminium or aluminum, as our American listeners might think. Um surely that's welded. Uh because if you you know you grind off the edges and then send it for a polish, you'd never be able to tell anyway. Anyway, Macho Nacho on the edge of probably hard metal engineering decided this had been milled out of a solid piece of aluminum. When he got to uh Microsoft to unveil it, theirs was welded and a lot smaller than his one. Uh so we had some adjustments to make, but still a really great way to launch a console. Nod to Macho Nacho for making a working Xbox fit within that uh that thing. Because don't forget the Xbox was called the Xbox because it was using it was going to be a DirectX machine, yeah. And they'd basically got the Xbox working out of a load of power laptop parts that kind of cobbled together to get this thing up and running to the level they wanted it to. So the Xbox is always a little bit of a mungrel of a console, it's it's one and one half of one thing and and not of the other. I think the fact that it had the hard drive in from the get-go allowed you to do games of a much larger scope with a lit with a lot more slickness than we were already experiencing on the PlayStation 2. A lot of the sort of cross-gen games that I had were better on Xbox. Um, but this was a great start. I mean, I've I've got to raise an eyebrow that the guy who took three years to pick his sunglasses might not be the guy you want designing your console.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, this was very early 2000s, and also if we've read a few of this era of Microsoft at the time, they were quite well, yeah. You know, I'm just justifying my decision, you know. If if Sonia put an expansion ban for a hard drive, I'm just justifying well, we've got a hard drive built in. You know, it's that real tree coming in, you know.
SPEAKER_03I think having all this what probably held the PlayStation back from its full hard drive utilisation is it was an accessory. So if you brought out a game that didn't run without the hard drive, I don't think Sony would let you. So they kind of throttled their own advancement. The PlayStation 2 probably could have been knocking on the doors of the Xbox a lot more sort of cohesively if it had been allowed to bring the hard drive in as a mandatory thing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but it was still nice to have their memory cards, weren't it, and take around your mates to take the whole console, you could just take the memory card and carry on the page.
SPEAKER_03You could do that with Xbox though.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yes, you could. You could. You did have the memory cards as well.
SPEAKER_03It was a bit more Dreamcasting its interpretation of it, but uh yeah, and not that many people were buying memory cards because it kind of felt a bit pointless when you had the hard drive.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.
Notable August 2000 Releases Recap
SPEAKER_03Um so the the the memory cards, and I've seen probably one my whole life if that uh was for taking your kind of characters to your mate's house sort of thing. I don't know many games that actually use the memory card functionality, even, but uh yeah, and then and the last point I suppose that kind of stuck was look what Microsoft can do when they concentrate on the platform that they want to make games for, that they they build games for that platform, that they push games on that platform and they and they acquire developers for that platform. Um you know, in Bacchus's own words, and where is he now? It would make little financial sense. This is brilliant, this is why I put this in here, quote unquote, it would make little financial sense for Microsoft to purchase a large publisher that generates much of its revenue with products on multiple platforms. Well, yeah, even then, yeah, you've got to ask yourself, well, why Microsoft would you not do that? Because you you you've already said that they make revenue on other platforms, so why not use that as a bankroll and also put out games on your machine exclusively or timed exclusively. But no, no, no, no, no. At the time, they had a mantra, it's all about the Xbox platform, and that's all it's about. And I would say the OG Xbox and 360 did really, really well off of that mindset.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yeah, definitely. And I think as well, this guy, I can imagine him, you know, sort of casual suit wearer, one eyebrow up, and just when he was asked, well, what is the Xbox gonna look like? I can just imagine him saying, Well, the guy we're got here took him three years to pick a pair of sunglasses. Now that's the sort of guy that you want designing the Xbox. And I was like, Well, no, because it's gonna take him years and years and years to design this.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well, I kinda I kind of see in 2000. The guy used so picky design-wise that yeah, and let's face it, I think that comment takes it a little bit out of context. He's probably wearing sunglasses, but over the course of three years he finally found this pair that you really settled on because it had this unique design flare or whatever. I think that's what they're saying, but I don't see any unique design flare in the original Xbox's design, if I'm honest with you. I see the I see the survivor of the Chrome X living in the top of the Xbox with the green jewel that sits on the bulk frame does look kind of fresh, and then it just descends into ambivalence, really, as you get down the sides of the console. Um if they'd brought out the X, it would be the most obtuse and unviable thing you could ever have imagined because it wouldn't have fit in Hi-Fi Sys in T V stacks, it wouldn't have vented very well, you probably would have had to fold it down anyway, and then you're just looking at a load of wires and garbage. It's a shame that that ethos didn't stick, but yeah, um, yeah. So, what is there anything in there that you've sort of decided to grab out RGT? Because I've obviously gone a little bit all crazy there.
SPEAKER_02No, no, no, no, no, no, definitely not that was a good chat. Now, I I like you say, I back you up on things like you know, when you were saying about it's not not much sense buying large publishers that obviously development for obviously he didn't say it in this, but he means competitors, um, which is very true, and like I say, how the tables are turned nowadays because they're now selling all their games on the competitors, um yeah, and making good money off the back of it, exactly. Um but I think this is this shows um uh how early Microsoft and Xbox what their attitude was going into this. It was quite a forefront of attitude. They were like, Yes, we haven't got as big as boo for Sony or Nintendo, but we're gonna go in fighting, you know, we're gonna talk a big game, we're gonna show what we got, and we're gonna, you know, and I love all that. I love it.
SPEAKER_03That was very much a moment of time as well, if you think about it. A company's success over the forthcoming year was designed or or decided by the square inch of their booth. Like, oh, Sony got the biggest booth this shit. Oh right, okay, it's their year. Sega got the biggest booth this shit, alright, it's their year. Nintendo got the biggest, alright, it's their like all of that's such ego drivel, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02You know, now it's where do we go? There's there's an elite anymore. Do you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_03It's all about if we're now to judge their future 12 months on their last state of play or inside Xbox or whatever drivel Nintendo, whatever they're called, direct, yeah. Uh they are awful. They're PowerPoint buddy displays that we have to watch on YouTube. We never got to go to E3, don't get me wrong, but there was something nice about looking in the mags and seeing what the developer thought it was going to put his arse into by the square frontage of the games, yeah. Quite often in a state of play or a direct or inside or whatever it is. They hype them all equidistant, but in reality, behind the scenes, they're banking on a few of them more than the other. There was no doubt at E3 which ones they're banking on and which ones they bloody weren't. Uh, and we've lost that a bit. We have lost that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, there was, and I used to love, look you say, getting the magazines after E3 opening up, and they'd always have pictures of the booths, then they'd have all the all the guys and girls in their Sony PlayStation 2 or whatever they were wearing. And gear and polo shirts talking to the press, and then you'd see screenshots of what was coming out, and you'd see a second iteration of your favourite game coming out. You'd be like, Yes, when's this being released? And you'd go out and buy another magazine because they'd they'd done a preview of or they had special access, or times have changed a lot now, but they were very exciting times of E3 to see what was coming. Um, but yeah, some three different news stories there.
SPEAKER_03Um great, yeah, really good. Nice kind of um what I love about flashback and the news that you grab is that I've said this before and I'll say it again. You go to the concurrent news sources, so we get from magazines and websites of the time the zeitgeist, which is lost when we sit back and reflect, or you watch a YouTube video where they reflect. This is actually going and grabbing the opinion of the time, and often the opinion of the time actually jives completely against like the modern interpretation of what has gone on, and some of these stories, dude, as well. Like, I challenge anyone else in the internet space to be finding examples where Sony are on about expanding and broadening the PS2 technology.
SPEAKER_02I bet most gamers didn't even know that they were doing that. They would have been no way would they have done that.
SPEAKER_03And the thing is, they didn't they either didn't do it or didn't do it to any great extent. But this now, this article here is one of those snippets that's lost to time. Like they said that they pursued that angle quite aggressively.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, this is this is Sony thinking all what happens if in Europe the PS2 bombs. They're just a plan in place in case it bombs, you know, and people didn't realise they ever fought like that, but yes, they did at the time.
SPEAKER_03Well, you as a as a console manufacturer, you kind of have to prepare for the worst, don't you, and hope for the best. Uh maybe this was then.
SPEAKER_02Um you know, not only is this like a look at you know what Gaiman was thinking at the time, it's also how the writing was at the time. The writing's very different to modern day articles, and it is, you know, yeah.
SPEAKER_03It's slightly more journalistic as well, I think. In something I've noticed in these games magazine write-ups is like games journalism now, there seems to be less sneaking about, more just reporting on press releases. Just relaying it, yeah. Relaying it.
SPEAKER_02In the time this was the this was the journalist's impression and his thoughts, and you know, something like that.
SPEAKER_03Well, and also when you read some of these articles, they'd had to properly get their deerstalker on and try and piece together a news article from facts that they'd gathered, which to me is journalism.
News: Ubisoft Acquires Red Storm
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and there's a lot of stories that have this is what we think. We found out that this might happen. We looked in to find, you know, there's all that rather than just relaying a story. So, yeah, it's it's good stuff from the time. Um, but that leads us on to what we call Stingray's boot. What's nestled between some can't fit nappies and a dodgy copy of Battle for Endor is some of the new releases for September 2000. Um there was a bit of slim pickings here, but there were some big games.
SPEAKER_03Hang on a minute.
SPEAKER_02There were some big games. Oh, yeah, sorry. Sorry, go on then.
SPEAKER_03Now you say No no no no no spring stop, wow, whoa.
SPEAKER_02Spring stop wow. Whoa. Whoa.
SPEAKER_03Um if you want to invoke the Ray, you've got to do it right.
SPEAKER_02Sorry. Have you seen Ray this week?
SPEAKER_03No way up, Ray. Uh I'll tell you what, I'm seeing him today. He's come dressed as Spider-Man. Uh, except it's the PS1 version, so he's made it out of boxes, a little bit like this Lara Croft cosplay.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so he's got polygon.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so he's got a square head, he's he's got triangular arms, and uh yeah, he's generally looking a bit of a state if I'm honest with you. But yeah, he's looking good. Um Wayne is just dressed as himself, but he's wearing what looks to be a knockoff Xbox t-shirt. He's getting ahead of the game. Oh uh, and he's trying to flog merch. Uh wow, he is ahead of the game, yeah. Yeah, he's showing me some confusion frenzy. What's that, little Wayne? Best game on the console. Get it now. Alright, put it in the pile, young Wayne. You looking good by the way.
SPEAKER_02Wow. Wayne's uh little Wayne's getting the old sails up, isn't he?
SPEAKER_03He is. How are you seeing Sting and Ray? Or is it just Sting you're seeing?
SPEAKER_02Well, I can't see Sting at the moment. Um Wayne's here, he's he's dressed as Kirby, but he's rolling round like Kirby tilt and tumble. He's like a football, he's rolling round all over the place in a little pink football outfit. Well done, Wayne. Very very good on piece. But I don't know where hang on, there's someone on the roof over there.
SPEAKER_03Oh no.
SPEAKER_02Oh, he's just dropped down, he's landed on his back, but um oh Stingray's painted his karate outfit black. Um he now thinks he's uh he's tensu. And he's got oh, he's got tensu merch to sell. That's why he's got headbands with tensu written on. Oh wow. He's spelled it wrong that says tension to. Oh well, but that'll do. That's close enough. Don't worry, Stingray, that's close enough.
SPEAKER_03Tension sheet.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, the tension sheet, yeah. There you are. If you know what that is, drop it down in the UCP Discord if you know what the tension sheet's from. Um yeah, so let's have a look. Um, I what I'm gonna pick out, I think. There's a couple of games I want to pick out. One of here is a no-brainer for me. Um, and that is what was released 19th of September 2000, Tony Hawke's Pro Skater 2. Now, the early Pro Skater game was brilliant, but one thing they missed in there was the manual, which they then added into Pro Skater 2, so then you could do your tricks, land in a manual, and carry the combo on. It was a game changer in the skateboard times.
SPEAKER_03So Tony Hawks it was the start of the ridiculousness, though, wasn't it?
SPEAKER_02It it was, but Tony Hawke's one, two, and three were brilliant games, and then at the start of Zero.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_02But me and my mate Tony Hawke's Pro he was a big skater as well, so this is right up his street. Um, I was never a skateboarder but loved the games, and we would play every level till we 100% had it, we'd find the video tapes, we'd find the skate letters in one run, we'd get the high scores, and we spent hours and hours and hours on this game, and we used to chip in and buy the games together. Do you know what I mean? You'd you'd get this game for 30 30 pounds, you know, 40 bucks, we'd we'd go half each, get ourselves a case of lagers, and there we were just playing this right the way through the night. Brilliant memories of Tony Hawk's pros because they too, and still holds up well today. I mean, it was only about a year ago a year ago I put the original pros.
SPEAKER_03Let's talk about this. I need to stop you and talk about this. Your ability to drink and play video games astounds me.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Because I'm like one can and duh.
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_03I might still be awake and talking to you, but I'm remembering nothing of it. So I would come down to Tony Orks 2 to find that we'd somehow three quarters completed it the night before, but don't remember any of it.
SPEAKER_02Well, the the thing the thing with us was um my mate had a tendency to fall asleep before me, and he could fall asleep at any time. So pro skater would play, and also when we played ISS, and the reason I knew he'd fall asleep because when we played ISS we'd play on the same team in a league, and I'd pass in the ball, and I'm sitting there eagerly watching the screen, and his player would run, run straight off the pitch, through an advertising hoarding, and was just stuck against the wall. They're now having a throw in. His player's still running against the wall, and I'd look round, he's fell asleep with his thumb forward on the analogue stick. Yeah, so that would be the same in Tony Exprose skate. He'd be doing a trick, and then you'd just see him sort of just roll to a stop, and you'd look round and he's right, okay. Wow.
SPEAKER_03Also, I find alcohol sort of numbs my reflexes. So two cans in, I suddenly can't do the bit I was doing when I first sat down.
SPEAKER_02I nowadays that's the case. Years ago, that used to enhance me a bit. I'd be like, Yeah, I can do this. Yeah, used to help me having a couple of the tins a bit.
SPEAKER_03The the liquid confidence. Wow.
SPEAKER_02Okay, yeah, Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2. Um and another one, which I haven't played and I've got, which I really, really want to play. Um, and I still don't think people talk about it that much, was that sort of Resident Evil spin-off, but Dino Crisis 2. Oof. Mmm. Mmm.
SPEAKER_03I quite like the Dino Crisis games.
SPEAKER_02They are quite cool, but it's that sort of Resi engine game.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, good luck going back to that today.
SPEAKER_02I think you might find that a little bit your tank controls might be a little bit frustrating.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's still a good game, don't get me wrong. As is the original, as is, you know, it's a great continuation of like Resi in a way, but not.
SPEAKER_02I'd like to have gone to remake one. Dino Crisis, I'd like them to remake one, not to have the Reszies.
SPEAKER_03It's been rumoured for a long time. Yeah. Uh I just don't think that if you even if you revamped it, I just don't know if it'd have that grit that it had. Maybe that's what they're thinking. And it never really gripped like Resi, did it, you know. Uh it's a shame. I quite enjoyed the first one, I think, from memory. Um, I think I dallied had a bit of a dalliance with two. Um, but yeah, pre-warn if you're going back to it today. It's a bit like I recently put Fear Effect in and was like, oh god.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I've got that out there.
SPEAKER_03Oh god. Um, so yeah, just a word of caution. But if you go in knowing, is there anything else you're picking out there?
SPEAKER_02No, I think oh those those two. What about what about you?
News: Sony’s PS2 Tech Licensing Ambitions
SPEAKER_03Um well I'm I'm already playing Spider-Man because I got it early from Ray, so uh that's kicking around in the zeit guys, so definitely gonna continue playing that and enjoying that. Tony Hawk's too. Seems like an absolutely banging idea. Yeah. Um, for a bit of fun and ridiculousness, I might actually grab myself this copy of um Duke Nukem Land of the Babes. Very much a game of the era, very much kind of schoolboy humour, uh, probably aimed higher. I mean, this thing's got a Metacritic rating of 37, so it's uh it's a hallmark of a good game. Whereas the the Dino Crisis I told you to express caution on got a Metacritic of 86, which is you know far away from what I would call as near perfection. Uh so yeah, there's a there's a there's an interesting take from me. Um the gate I've just collared Ray Um because I want to use my Christmas voucher because I want to grab I want to grab quite a few movies this weekend. I want to grab um he's got a he's got a cam copy of Bring It On, the cheerleading comedy. He's also got uh a cam copy of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, which I'm quite excited to watch. Uh and he's also telling me he's got a US import of Perfect Storm and Scary Movie. Now, any other year bangers, aren't they, that still live with us to this day. Um, so I'm coming out of here mob and with movies. Are there any that you're picking up?
SPEAKER_02There is one I'm picking up. Um Perfect Storm's a good one because this is when I first bought my first DVD player. Yes, mate. I'd I'd um I'd been in uh my current job, I'd only been in a few years by then, but I'd then worked up to full time and proper money, and I'd then started getting decent decent wage packets, and I thought, oh, I'm gonna get myself DVD player. I bought it from the uh the co-op electronics department for$179.99.
SPEAKER_03My god.
SPEAKER_02And I got myself new TV everything. I went full setup with my first wage packet, decent wage packet, and I got perfect storm DVD, but I also got Hollow Man. Oh yeah. That was that was out in March 2000.
SPEAKER_03The thing is, don't get me wrong, when DVD technology was sort of propositioned, uh in my mind, my slightly childish mind at the time, I'd have thought, well, if I get perfect storm on like um on DVD, I'm gonna get drenched. You know, it was the idea that it was gonna be that real.
SPEAKER_02Well, I still remember I got that. I got Hollow Man Perfect Storm and Austin Powers. I can't remember that.
SPEAKER_03Did you get like a did you get any stereo system with this TV or was it just?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I bought I bought a um I think it was the make, I think it was a Pioneer DVD I bought$179.99 X demonstration model. I got a I got I think it was a trying to think of the size of the TV, 28 30 inch TV, big telly for the time um with a stand with my DVD unit underneath, and I bought a little stack system stereo, which they said, oh this is perfect because the DVD and TV go through it with two speakers either side. And I had it at the end of my bed, I still lived with my parents, and I had it at the end of my bed, and I was just like put the first DVD in, which the first bit I watched was Austin Powers, and that was in space, and there was like a big um Doctor Evil spaceship in space, yeah. And I remember watching it thinking, My god, this is like having a cinema at home, the quality of it. Because my mum and dad were still recording Emadale on the on the video recorder downstairs. Do you know what I mean? So this was just like the advancement in tech was unbelievable, and they they couldn't believe that you had films on discs. What's the world coming to? It's left us behind, it's left us behind. Um, and I was just blown away by it. Yeah, I was I was just blown away by it.
SPEAKER_03I had a similar experience. I'd just moved into a at my own place, uh, my first own proper place, uh, mortgaged a whole bag of tricks, and I think for my 21st birthday or something, I'd like put some money in or whatever, and I'd also like put it all together to get a TV, a stand, like you said. Yeah, didn't get the DVD player because I think I'd like somehow got some points from work or something like that. So I had the Dreamcast and the DVD player, so I was right on the cutting edge. So, why do you need a PlayStation 2, eh? Uh and I had I think it was Toshiba. When you said pioneer, it kind of rang a bell, but I think it was Toshiba. So it was a Toshiba TV, similar size to what you talked about. And I've recently seen a YouTube video where a guy got a brand new unopened version of this shit, and it was a at the top it was like a three C D jobby that could turn awfully complicated. That was the first thing to break. Two tape players on the front, and then you could put your red and white phono wires into it and have because my one came with left and right speaker, and possibly a left and right rear speaker or something. So if you selected the right mode, you could get Dolby Prologic 2 out of it or something, uh, which was pretty cool. I never really put the effort into setting it up properly because I was young and a bit confused by it, but it it worked in some movies to some degree, and in some games as well, it did work. Like Halo was was great on there. Um Halo probably actually was in Dolby Digital as well, or at least the sequel was. But yeah, I was meddling with like late-end well, I Prologic technology.
SPEAKER_02There was a 6040 shop, if people remember those in in town, and they were selling a brand new technic stack system, but but it was a little dodgy because the speakers weren't with it, although this was still sealed. And I gave the guy 40 quid. I've still got that system because it sounds that good, but at the time I had a set of JMO 165 speakers.
SPEAKER_03I've actually got the speakers, and I guarantee you this, I've actually physically got the speakers in my hi-fi setup that go with your bookshelf set up. They're wood. Um, the techniques on the front is a little bit gold.
SPEAKER_02Um this is silver static system.
SPEAKER_03This is uh I think some of them might still have come with the wooden speakers.
SPEAKER_02Might have done, yeah. Yeah, and I still use it, it's a brilliant system, sounds amazing. And I've still got the JMOs as well. I've got the JMOs and the stereo system. The JMOs are good, aren't they? Brilliant. I bought them on Finance through my mum's catalogue, two pounds a week when I was 15, and I still use them. They sound incredible. D165s, they are.
SPEAKER_03Um where do you have them? Are they in your like personal front room setup, or what's the crack with those?
SPEAKER_02Um I at the moment, as I've been changing round, I haven't got them set up at the moment, but I've been using them right up till now. I've done my living room out, but they will be part of my stereo setup. I just have one in each corner and because they just sound amazing.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and the wider you can get stereo speakers the way the wider the sound field is.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, oh yeah, definitely.
SPEAKER_03Get them on the edges, but then you've got to tow them into your seat like a triangle. You need to be in the centre of that audio triangle.
SPEAKER_02When I had the shed, I had the couch in the middle down the length of the shed with the screens, and I had one up in each corner on a shelf, sort of angled down. Yeah, oh, it sounded incredible. When you're playing all the old systems through, because I I had everything through the techniques, so all my old consoles, everything, it sounded brilliant.
SPEAKER_03Um, but yeah, that's what I upgraded to the sense of scale that would even give something like Sonic because the Mega Drive 2 was obviously the Mega Drive stereo.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um, we talked what a couple of episodes ago about um your man who had his Mega Drive through. Yeah, I just keep thinking about the setup and the stereo levels that that kid was enjoying. That you know, most of us were playing it out the side of a tinny speaker, mono speaker on the side of a telly pointing in completely the wrong direction. And this kid in '92 had two stereo speakers perfectly angled to his playing position.
SPEAKER_02And I can still remember his like the different bed spreads he had when he had like the grey one with the yellow, red, and that lines on that had that sort of almost arcade carpet look to your bed spread. I remember he had those, and yeah, brutal.
SPEAKER_03Mate, when you said to me about perfect storm, and I said I'll be disappointed if I didn't come in sort of soaking wet with seawater. Your mate comes into school one morning, sort of August 92, and you're like, What's all that sand? Oh, yeah, I've been playing Desert Strike.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, he's got two black marks under his eyes like that.
SPEAKER_03So brilliant. That was a that mate, I've loved this episode. Absolutely brilliant. What joy.
SPEAKER_02As I always say, as a little window into uh 2000 and especially narrowed down to August and around that time, you know, um, what was coming out, you know, what was already out, what we would have been playing, a few news stories. Um hope you enjoyed that. If you're new to Flashback, this is the seventh episode, so six others to download and listen to. Um, we've also got our The Mother Ship, which is uh the Unaffish Controller podcast. Um check that out. We've just done our 300th episode on there, um, which is amazing to think.
SPEAKER_03Um 301 will be out right now.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, 301 is out, so there's plenty of back catalogue to listen to there over the years and had a show.
SPEAKER_03Oh, because it's Tuesday as well today, RGT.
SPEAKER_02It's Tuesday today, yeah. So uh this is the new day that this comes out every Tuesday. Um, so yeah, uh go if you want to jump into a a place where there's fellow gamers and people who love retro, because I would imagine you like retro if you're listening to this, jump onto the unofficial controller podcast Discord. Um there's like minded people in there. We have good fart times, we have challenge accepted, which has got a lot of retro stuff in.
SPEAKER_03Um share your pickups, share your own pickups.
SPEAKER_02Yes, if there's anything. You want to get rid of? We've got a little bit for selling your bits or swapping or whatever you want to do.
SPEAKER_03Swapping primarily, I think, is the is the win.
SPEAKER_02We have a Gen 7 uh playthrough on there at the moment, which we've just done a vote on, which at the moment we're now starting Sleeping Dogs. So if you're interested in playing Sleeping Dogs and come and join in and with us, jump on there. That's a great little place to be. Oh my god, I think I might get a George joining in on this. Um and also we say Gen 7, you haven't got a play on Gen 7, there's a PS4 remaster of this. You can't play it on the PS5. It's one of them non-backwards compatible ones which are a bit dodgy on the PS5. So you think if you've got a PS4, you need to play it on the PS4. But there's Xbox 360, PS3. I think it might be on Steam, PC, whoever you want to play it, just join in. Come and join in. We'll we're we're planning to, there's 30 missions. We're planning to the tempth mission, and then we'll all have a chat about it and see how we're getting on and blah blah blah. Um so there's plenty going on over there. We've also got the Unofficial Controller Podcast um website, and there's now a flashback area being added to that. So if you want to check out our show's flashback, you can jump over there. That's the unofficial controllerpodcast.com. Um if you've got any questions you want to ask us about flashback.
SPEAKER_03There's a flashback page, but there's also your hidden history on the gems on there as well. So if you're a retro player, there's something for you there.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yeah, there's plenty there. Um and um also if you've got any questions you want to ask us, me, George, or the other presenters we've got, Seb scott, or anything you want to know about the show, or if you want links to anything, you can message us at questions at unaffectioncontrollerpodcast.com. Um excuse me. Um ask us whatever you want, and there's always something going on and we can direct you in the right way or whatever. So um yeah. So thanks for listening. Thanks for downloading. I hope you enjoyed the show. Um for another week. That's another one done. Thanks for uh joining us, George, again as always. I hope you've enjoyed that and your uh your research always goes above and beyond. Or you're sitting there for 24 hours straight on absolutely as a Lucas Atron.
SPEAKER_03I don't know how much more this can go on for. My episode seven, I'm literally a broken husk of a man, and my efforts for the UCP are in a bin, I don't think I'm playing modern games ever at all. Um but you know, it's been a joyous experience, it's a great episode, everyone loves a bit of nostalgia. Um everyone loves to remember the games they played, or at least the stories that surrounded them at their launch. So dude, I am slowed to be here, long may continue. I might need to wrap down the research a little bit this episode. But you know, I want to speak for the time and for the moment and at least give that sort of modern view on some of these older games. So it's been a joy, and thank you to everyone that's listened to support the show. It's gone away beyond anything that we expected in its first uh month to two months of trading. So yeah, stoked.
SPEAKER_02Brilliant, yeah, like I say, thanks again, George. Thanks for everyone as well. I hope you're enjoying these. Um like I say, they also you can also uh watch these on YouTube or the audio versions of them, so um, they're on there as well. Just go to the unofficial controller podcast uh YouTube channel, give us a sub, give us some likes, look at the old the old videos that we've got on there, there's a few of them which are video as well as audio. Um, yeah, and thanks again, sir. It just leaves me to say flashback the games you loved, the stories you forgot. Thanks everyone and see you later, George.
SPEAKER_03See you guys, thank you.