The Computer Chronicles - Computer Games (1987)

Special thanks to archive.org for hosting these episodes. Downloads of all these episodes and more can be found at: archive.org/details/computerch...

[@RobinsonTechnologies]

Great to see Brodie Lockard here, a really inspirational person. What this interview doesn't tell you is that he's paralyzed from the neck down and wrote Shanghai using a special joystick controlled with his mouth. He's now been programming for over 35 years.

[@jfeast5469]

His is a story worth sharing - very inspiring!

[@Del-Canada]

He's my gen. I was doing what he was doing in 85 as well. I wish I could relive those years.

[@mutalix]

Amazing man

[@tribemaster101]

woah what a surprise

[@dsgitlin]

Thanks for sharing this.

[@sperm8141]

Seeing Doug pause frequently while talking and noticing him breathing heavily I wasn't surprised he died of a heart attack at such a young age while looking him up.

[@joshgiesbrecht]

Holy shit he was no older than 34 in this video. Looks like he's in his 50's.

[@Geert365]

@@joshgiesbrecht Oh, then he didn't age much in appearance the next 20 or so years, if he looks like this also in his fifties.

[@1flynlow]

"a fascinating text based game about going to the bank to get them to acknowledge a change of address" . odd I never heard of this groundbreaking game

[@ens8502]

Haha, the only game type that take place in the bank I would play - is First Person Shooter

[@mikecarter8880]

Same, I was surprised to never have heard of it. I also remembered all the Infocom boxes even if I didn't buy them, but that one, and especially since it was Douglas Adams, not sure why this is the first news to me.

[@AdamsOlympia]

Those kind of games are still popular today. Look at "Papers, Please" and all the other strategy, adventure or puzzle games that explore various aspects of politics, bureaucracy, etc.

[@sublimedingo]

Skate or Die was my favorite game back then. What a simpler time.

[@adjusted-bunny]

I just renewed my compuserve subscription. They are unbeatable!

[@ShaneHill69]

I remember these days fondly....the fundamental shift from videogame consoles to Computer gaming was profound

[@raven4k998]

all that's really changed since then is the graphics have got a lot better they are still fun to play

[@oldtwinsna8347]

@9:01 Similar to Jobs and Wozniak duo here. One is the talker, the other the geek.

[@VashStarwind]

Man the future looked so bright back then. The future looks grim these days. I miss the optimism people had in the past.

[@wallacelang1374]

I enjoy playing video games on my computers and on my game consoles. 🕹️

[@helperfunction4981]

The first guy breaths in timed intervals like a machine is doing it for him, it also seems that he is sitting in some kind of wheelchair (hard to tell)...

[@cromulence]

Nice to see Cathode Ray Dude going back in time to appear at 8:57.

[@sideburn]

Lol I thought the same

[@SonicBoone56]

Ikr lol

[@CloneShockTrooper]

When Robocop for Commodor 64 came out that year and I played it a lot.

[@broncofun5636]

Loved Bard’s tale on my Amiga - played it until I fell asleep at the my computer.

[@raven4k998]

300 dollar phone bill to solve a game thank god for the internet and gameplay manuals with play through guides to save you a lot to avoid those kinds of bills🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@Finallybianca]

RIP Douglas and Gary

[@raven4k998]

Gary's not resting in peace he's moved on to his next life and is busy enjoying that life now

[@AgeingBoyPsychic]

Yeah I remember all computers having Mahjong... what happened to that? It was so relaxing. Now Windows comes with candy crush and Macs come with.... chess? I don't remember playing a game on my Mac...

[@gblargg]

Mahjong was always a fun one. It wasn't just matching tiles, but looking ahead so you don't back yourself into a corner and need a tile that's locked between others.

[@jaxnean2663]

10:39 Jeff Lefferts couldn't be more stereotypically nerd!

[@chris-hu7tm]

its the chin or lack thereof

[@MMaRsu]

Wow Douglas Adams, what a legend. I LOVE his game Starship Titanic.

[@RandomPickles]

My god. I have to play that hitchhikers guide game

[@dangevin]

HITCHHIK.EXE

[@mlthmp]

I really wish there was a similar series now

[@raven4k998]

well then you should make one🤣🤣🤣

[@EugeniaLoli]

Today is not needed, because we can learn everything there is to learn from news sites. It's not a coincidence that the show was canceled in 2003, after the internet and news site proliferated. Back then it was needed because computer magazines was the only other way to learn the news.

[@AdamsOlympia]

@@EugeniaLoli It's not so much "news" -- but the fact that all the industry players would line up to be on the show -- often at the same time as their competitors. Something like that would be just as valuable today. We have plenty of tech youtube channels covering the latest gear news and PC reviews, but they rarely have industry guests on the show.

[@gblargg]

That cooling fan on the Apple // in the beginning. It's not just a new craze to add more fans.

[@sluggotg]

Shanghai was a killer hot seat game. If you were watching, not playing, you would think both of them were idiots. Back in the 80s I had many of us 20-28 year olds playing this. If you were not in the Hot Seat, It looked easy. BUT... When you are in the Hot Seat.. Holy Crap what a game! 2 player Ruled!

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

Mahjong solitaire can’t have been a new game, though, even then. The KDE version lets you choose from differently-themed tile sets and different board arrangements. I like the Egyptian-themed tiles.

[@daniramc]

10:26 Good ol' Francis, he was awesome in Pee Wee's Big Adventure

[@spearPYN]

Games back then were just better...and computing was fun. Today computers are just boring appliances like a fridge.

[@techpriest4787]

I see that you do not like the junk millennials created. :D

[@LifeAquaticDivingExperience]

my mom used to play shanghai...the guy who wrote it seems like a real geek......buerocracy sounds brilliant

[@PauloConstantino167]

+Life Aquatic Diving would you marry the guy who wrote the game shanghai?

[@adjusted-bunny]

How can I get my hands on these fast machines that were presented in this episode?

[@AndrewTubbiolo]

I wonder what that NEC neural computer was released as.

[@DS-pk4eh]

24:42 That is Amiga 1000 behind him used as graphics background

[@simmyt64]

F1 game is really impressive for 1987

[@TopSecretVid]

Love my Amiga’s. Still use them today 🤙🤙.

[@JL0ndon]

Does anyone know how I can get a copy of the Douglas Adams text game "Bureaucracy" ?! It sounds freaking hilarious!

[@ET_AYY_LMAO]

Just google this "Bureaucracy+game" and take your pick.

[@thealaskan1635]

there's this site called ebay

[@JL0ndon]

@Andrew Tarrant I’ve tried, it’s incredibly hard to find a hard copy of it.

[@weaponofmassconstruction1940]

@@thealaskan1635 Go sit on a pineapple.

[@wildone106]

10:20 my god its as if Im actually IN THE GAME!

[@ens8502]

Its a PHOTOREALISM !!!!

[@Krisztian5HUN]

Totally stable 3-4 fps in that F1 game. However there is no DLC, 0 day patch, lootbox etc.

[@alexkaa]

Paul Schindler is uniquely funny.

[@Losttouchjs]

A young Lucy Bradshaw! What a future she’ll have :)

[@PauloConstantino167]

bullshit

[@Fastwinstondoom]

@@PauloConstantino167 Yeah, going from demoing solitaire Mahjong in 1987 to senior VP for Maxis in the 2000's is totally "bullshit". Educate yourself.

[@CousinSteve]

This dude was born wearing that wig.

[@adjusted-bunny]

I need that smartcom program. For only 150$ !

[@cyphaborg6598]

Bureaucracy is still as bad as it once was. Probably worse but I need to believe it somehow works :P.

[@FJ-Channel]

2019 kids watch this be like "NOOO MY EYES !!!!... ITS BURRRNNNNNNNSSSSSS!!!!"

[@techpriest4787]

I feel like a World War 2 veteran. Except all I know is Quake 1. :D

[@randywatson8347]

To be honest, who doesn't love the reward animation of finishing patience on win 3.1?

[@rooneye]

23:19 what happened with the Neuro computer by NEC? 100x faster than a normal PC? Did it even ever come out? I guess it failed lol

[@IExSet]

Why should it be 100x faster ???

[@techpriest4787]

​@@IExSetI figure it is a reference to multi threading. Neuromorphic computation is by default very multi core. Though I also would like to know what on Earth they tried to sell there. Too bad that no actual names were mentioned.

[@oldtwinsna8347]

Don't really see much out there in the archives about it. Apparently was known as the Neuro-07, which was just a plain jane NEC PC-9801 (an 8086 machine with custom color graphic chips) with an add-on board and, most important, was the neuro network software). My guess is that the add-on board was just a DSP and maybe some conventional computing chips thrown on there. Could not be much, as $12k for a workstation at that time was hardly what one would call a beefy configuration to begin with. What we know of 3D graphic processors was still many years away.

[@rustynail6819]

9:21 NEEERDSSSSSS!!

[@shelby3822]

Stereo sound effects??? What is this 2090??

[@nprbiz]

2 things have "funded" the progress of technology the most, our pursuit of Video Games and Digital Marketing.

[@weaponofmassconstruction1940]

Also porn. Lots and lots of porn.

[@sanyey8405]

lol that f1 game runs with like 5fps XDD

[@brberis]

Welcome to 1987

[@mojoblues66]

Modelling aerodynamics and suspension physics as well as displaying 3D graphics apparently was a bit too much for the poor Amiga in 1987. This game was obviously ahead of it's time!

[@michaelmcconnell7302]

Man, that 5fps looks smoooothe 😅

[@DaxVJacobson]

@13:17 I think this is Michael Meischeid

[@ruthlessadmin]

Proud to be a nerd but wish i had their style at around the 11:56 area!

[@sebastianhama5624]

gamers rise up

[@AshtonCoolman]

Japanese games were light-years ahead of the games in 1987. We had to play catch-up in North America. I'm glad the Japanese consoles showed us the possibilities.

[@BlownMacTruck]

In terms of console games? Sure. As a blanket statement? Not even close.

[@IExSet]

No.

[@unnamedchannel1237]

WTF were they doing at the start when the lights were down, sleeping/hibernating? Woke up as soon as the lights came on

[@weaponofmassconstruction1940]

They're synths! This whole show has been them demonstrating how they and their kind are taking over our planet.

[@wildone106]

22:44 theres physics in this?! LOL cmon..

[@ens8502]

You suffer from the lack of imagination :)))

[@1neinate0]

Lucy kinda cute 🥰

[@SWRadioConcepts]

What kind of computer is playing that baseball game? I want it! edit: Amiga 1000. If I can connect an ethernet card and at least telnet I'm definitely buying one.

[@Magnus_Loov]

The hardware in the Amiga 1000 isn't really good enough to do the Racing simulation. I mean, it seems to run a 1-2 FPS slideshow. And, adding to that, the cars speeds seems to be very low, although that may be an effect of the extremely low framerate since a too high speed makes it impossible to handle in curves (you would travel a great distance from one frame to the next in that half a second and would crash).. The older computers could only do simpler 3d action racers like outrun and the likes, but even that was well below any acceptable framerate of today. I think need for speed was the first really good 3d racing games on any computer.

[@thealaskan1635]

Magnus Lööv wah, wah, wah

[@ens8502]

Test Drive 3 was playable though

[@Clay3613]

40-80 hours with the product, you need at least 200 to be able to accurately find most bugs.

[@Spontainousteve]

They were talking about giving hints, not finding bugs. It's tech support not a play tester

[@zacotb]

These were very short games by todays standards, so about 40-80 hours was enough.

[@mutalix]

Like others have mentioned, these games were simpler times, testing or bug searching was a far less complex issues, unlike today's games which in many cases rival huge movie franchise budgets and computing complexities.

[@SpiDey1500]

It's electronic arts (EA Games). Nowadays they don't test at all.

[@totallybonkers76]

Am I experiencing a drug induced flashback or is this real?

[@tiiito1988]

Why most of the computer games were written in Assembly language in the old days?

[@nancykerrigan1335]

Are you asking weren't they mostly programmed in assembly or why were they mostly programmed in assembly? If it's the first question, the answer is yes. If it's the 2nd, it's because back then, the machines were simple enough and the compilers unsophisticated, so the only way to optimize code was to do it by hand. Assembly is 1 for 1 equivalent to machine opcodes, and the architectures were something a person could hope to understand. Nowadays with the complexity of timing multicore processors and multitasking OSes, a compiler can optimize code far better than a human being in most cases, and even were that not the case, the bottlenecks in computing are different and human optimizations at the machine level wouldn't amount to much.

[@tiiito1988]

2nd. Thanks for the info.

[@oldtwinsna8347]

​@@tiiito1988 Pretty simple, as high level languages weren't really available for the tasks these games were set out to do. There was no memory space for such things. Game systems back then had a lot of custom chips and there wasn't really any method to access them otherwise.

[@soonerborn9073]

My God. We went from this to gamer girls streaming games on Twitch nearly nude.

[@Fygee]

Could someone go back in time and tell them to fix the refresh rate on the monitor playing Shanghai?

[@grabisoft]

i love how people at that time used this ancient technology and the way they talk about it as "so advanced and top tech" its so adorable. first video game i ever played was duke nukem 1 for old D.O.S also commander keen

[@grabisoft]

***** yeah whatever, fuck off man, im working here

[@grabisoft]

***** oh look who joined the party, a freaking mexican. guess what? you will be building a wall in the next 10 years, or maybe doing someones backyard gardering.

[@Mahoromatic]

Uhm... that's rude.

[@ritsukasa]

well current technology is also kiddish as video games can't look like real life, doesn't have artificial inteligence, and there are so many things capped because the machines are not "fast enough".

[@yellowblanka6058]

It wasn't ancient at the time. Your hot shit computer rig today will be a laughable relic in 20 years, it's called technological progress.

[@LifeAquaticDivingExperience]

14:15....they play games! now they just surf porn

[@wildone106]

Hi resolution 800x600 lol

[@brendongyde]

putting your comments in context would be worth while.... Back when 1080p first came about, we thought it was high def.... but then came 4k and we look back and think lol 1080p high def..... now give it 30 years lol 1080p/4k high def lol

[@wildone106]

Yep I know Im just being facetious lol

[@1234Molotov]

Sadly, all of these people still live in their parents' basements.

[@Joeyboots80]

Got a message for you. The late 1980's called. They want their joke back.

[@1234Molotov]

David Spade, is that you?

[@ens8502]

Lol, you live in your fat uncles basement, its not much better...

[@IExSet]

D.Adams is lousy plagiarist, he've stolen the novel from Robert Sheckley's "Dimension of Miracles".