LGR - Golden Oldies - DOS PC Game Review

Adventure, Eliza, Life & Pong. These games are oldies for sure, but just how golden are they? Check out this review of the game compilation from 1985:
Golden Oldies Volume 1 for MS-DOS
The goal of these "Lazy Game Reviews" videos is to see how quick I can crank out a review after a day at work, with short reviews based on a game or theme of games (this one is a single game, Golden Oldies Vol. 1 for DOS - the only volume I'm aware of).

[@trifontrifonov4297]

"Life makes no sense" the understatement of the century... :D

[@PhoenixNL72-DEGA-]

Life is actually a simulation and not really a game. The original monochrome version had a few basic rules like: If a cel has a single neigbour, all the neigbouring cell will invert. If a cel has no neigbours it will die of loneliness (turn black) if a cel has 4 neigbours then it will die from overcrowding (turn black). When they first ran this program and let it run for a couple of hourse, it started producting recognizable patterns that where reckognizable as behaviours seen in certain lifeforms. There is a wiki page about it: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life

[@AndyLundell]

This appears to be the original game. The cells are being colored according to their birth generation. It's just an aesthetic thing. Personally, I think the colors just make it harder to understand.

[@canag0d]

Dude learn how to spell ffs.

[@tremorstudio9766]

“Life is actually a simulation….” I read your comment out of context (I was in the intro part) and it makes it SO much better!

[@andrewfaraday8918]

Conways Game of Life is a pretty standard programming exercise these days. I didn't realise it's ever been sold commercially.

[@dannykeat]

Conway's Game of Life demonstrates how complex, emergent phenomena and self-organisation can evolve from a set of VERY simple rules and starting conditions. To date, some very complicated patterns have been developed. One of the most impressive is an actual Turing Machine with the GOL. ...So I guess it's more of a scientific experiment than a game.

[@twistedmetalyrock200]

6:23 That cut just when you are typing FUCK YOU is golden lmao

[@supermartinman64]

"Life makes no sense and pong is useless" That sounds about right.

[@PhoenixNL72-DEGA-]

When I bought my floppy drive for the C64 it came with Zork III it was absolutely awesome. I was and still am a big fantasy novel book fan. So having an interactive fantasy book just blew my mind. I never really got all that far in it though. I was in middle school and I had justed started to learn english (My native tongue is dutch) so it was kinda hard to understand. But still some phrased from that ame are embedded into my memory forever. "It is pitch black, you are likely to be eaten by a grue." classic sentence..... :)

[@desmondtester373]

it amazes me how much video games have advanced over the last 20-30 years i am so glad to live in this generation i am old enough to enjoy old low res games but young enough to also enjoy the current gen

[@citroenboter]

I kind of feel blessed my dad let me play Lucasfilm and Sierra games when I was little. Vastly improved my English and I'm just happy I get all the nerdy jokes now.

[@420sakura1]

You should thank Nintendo for that 👍

[@aragornthe5th]

Are you wearing a head crab and a hat, OR are you wearing a head crab and the HEAD CRAB is wearing a hat?

[@stevefuentes1412]

Haven't Half-Life'd much have you?

[@MintleafCakes]

This was in my recommended. In 2018. Have I died and gone to heaven? Cause I love old stuff, and it's even better when it's old videos.

[@Anonsage3]

I remember reading Carl Sagans "dragon's of eden" book and being AMAZED by the Eliza transcript of a conversion.

[@greenatom]

Not one of Sagan's best.

[@Skywatcher68]

Some early versions of Sound Blaster cards came with an Eliza clone called Dr. Sbaitso. I had a little fun making Sbatiso go crazy by repeating everything he said.

[@JR-gl1nx]

Ironically this video is now a _"Golden Oldie."_

[@feywerfolevado6286]

Oh an early video I missed! I realized that I’ve been watching LGR for over 10 years. Best times since preteen until now.

[@Joshua110591]

Digging into the ancient videos

[@SamuliTuomola_stt]

It's a game in same sense as Game of Thrones (book/tv-show) is a game, that sense being of the metaphorical kind. Of course this should've been recognized by the people trying to include it in a game collection, but the fact that they also went with ascii-based pong speaks for how much thought they put into it.

[@12ismorethan2]

Eliza kinda reminds me of a prehistoric Façade, but it's funny- Façade is meant as a big leap forward for the genre, with an interactive environment and "interesting" characters, and yet the more things change, the more they stay the same. This many years later the most fun thing to do with games like that is still curse at the AI.

[@twallcx]

Wow I just realized I started following you not long after this (your Acorn I think Archimedes review) fortuitously I was fascinated with the origin of ARM at the time

[@HappySnoutHour]

lol your hat in the beginning reminds me of the cheesy hats viewers used to send Wink Martindale on Tic Tac Dough that he used to show off on Every Friday's show. Good Review btw.

[@gadblatz4841]

Gadzooks your videos are much more concise and watchable 9 years after this was published (yay subjectivity!) Thank goodness for learning and progresssion!

[@treysan257]

excellent review, lots of detail, and good video of graphics...i enjoy seeing these reviews for the old games as they are harder to find... lol i remember some of these games reminds me of the infocom games, those were the best! took alot of thinking and the little extras that came with it were awsome for its time : )

[@pn2543]

I learned 6502 assembler programming Life on a Rockwell AIM65 in 1982, iterations being printed on the dot matrix printer tape, having read the article in Scientific American

[@branchonequal]

9:34 - if you think life makes no sense, you should probably seek advice from Eliza... ;-)

[@ArcticSix]

It's pretty awesome that you can access an updated version of ELIZA on modern Mac systems. There are a few little gems hidden in the Terminal if you look up how to access them.

[@hellblazerjj]

There is a lot of interesting mathematics and history in respect of the game of Life. You should check it out for a Tech Tales or something maybe.

[@Dorelaxen]

Oh, man, I LOVE that old Herculon chair.

[@tombert512]

Conways Game of Life is pretty neat for learning about game theory and stuff. I'm not sure why it's part of the golden oldies collection, though.

[@MuttFitness]

Colossal caverns is tough! There's even a time limit, as i recall.

[@whatamalike]

Best aspect of the game by a mile: The packaging. Is the actual book section worth reading?

[@TyphoidBryan]

I believe the "Colossal Cave" from Adventure inpired a board game of recent years.

[@AQWBlaZer91]

"More Like A Very Tarnish Silver." Well said LGR.

[@sirrvs]

Cool, didn't know about Adventure till I watched this. Always thought Zork was the first of those text-based adventure games.

[@GmodCaboose56]

I don't know why, but the "Pong is pong, is pong, is pong" part made me laugh.

[@MaxineAndrew]

I love your conversation with Eliza. Classic.

[@vhbmaster]

Hi LGR from Christmas Past, can you make a Best Box Art part 4 and Worst Box Art part 2? Thanks, love your videos!

[@LGR]

Both are on the agenda for the LGR of Christmas Future

[@KevintheBooth]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life

[@StephanS]

I not only like your videos.. i also love the music you're using in the background

[@AlyxxTheRat]

Sounds like Laserdance in the background. Love that band, they made so much great 80's music.

[@jonigazeboize_ziri6737]

Life makes no sense, true. The "game" called life is a celular automaton.

[@tomahzo]

LOL sounds like some classic Laserdance in the background :D

[@CoTeCiOtm]

I don't know if I'm correct, but I think that "FUCK Y" at 6:24 is the only instance of an expletive in an LGR video. Unless I missed something else.

[@greenatom]

I had this collection and the Adventure game had a bug or something. I had the key, but when I said "unlock grate" it would respond "The grate is already locked". It still gives me an arrrgish feeling to think about it.

[@BluePBoxProductions]

Oh, it's not a hat, he is actually a Xen overlord. That's a real Headcrab.

[@alaeriia01]

I need that headcrab hat for reasons.

[@timothyypa]

Atari had "Video Easel" for their 8-bit computers, which was their version of "Life". It didn't make a lot of sense to me, but it sure was colorful and cool to look at! And like others, my time was with the Zork series, rather than Adventure.

[@richardgerbes7509]

Fuck me 14 years on..

[@AlyxxTheRat]

Love the background music in this episode. Very italo disco.

[@JimPlaysGames]

"Life" is an interesting simulation but yeah not a game. It's about the most basic example of how simple interactions between many elements can create high complexity and apparent chaos, not really randomness though Just like how the relatively simple laws of physics and chemistry on a molecular scale lead to all this insane complexity of humans, computers, game reviews and stuff on the macro scale. "Life" seems relevant to biology rather than games, so don't see why it's in that collection.

[@jonathanbeattie129]

Conway's "Life" is less of a game and more of a fun little contraption for CS nerds.

[@sugarfrosted2005]

I know that Life was an entertainment pack game on some versions of Windows, maybe that's where you remember it.

[@alexsmith6607]

Back in the day the frist data server had 200 pdp-10 at Compu today they still have 4 of them still working 247 from the day they was turn on

[@Highretrogamelord]

Also available for the Apple II ;D

[@datasilouk1995]

I remember Eliza on the Apple 2

[@Robloxian182]

oregon trail is awesome even today!

[@dwoodman26]

10 years ago, when Clint was but a child...

[@wesjerentosky3716]

I NEED THE HEADCRAB HAT!

[@ohohothisrocks]

Ah "life makes no sense". So philosophical

[@tombert512]

I think the reason it's called "game" of life has to do with Game theory...at least that's what I heard in a class once. Really didn't have any reason to be on a compilation like this, though.

[@lonewolfette]

Eliza = Dr Sbaitso... "PARRITY ERROR!"

[@LightTheUnicorn]

Throwing this collection into PocketDOS on my Jornada would be sweet! Hmm...

[@TheRetroRen]

"FUCK Y--" lmao

[@Doomsdayman]

Where do you get the music its nice and catchy?

[@lettmons]

so pong had the honor of becoming one of the first or maybe even the first ever (bad) console port, very interesting.

[@yostoyou]

background music? anyone know? love amiga/old school epic mega games music.

[@Nino_Z]

I want a hat like that!

[@Skriak]

6:23 I see what you did with that cut :P

[@hellblazerjj]

You should check out the game of life again and see some of what makes it cool.

[@bmbpdk]

Absolutely shitty video quality and mediocre sound quality; but damn i love it and that made me a subscriber years back, because LGR videos have more quality content that many of those Hollywood/broadcast videoquality youtubers

[@HermesPasser]

7:30 its game of life, a pretty simple algorithm. Look the wikipedia page about it.

[@SvetCookie]

What's the song that starts playing at about 0:55?

[@gamesthatiplay9083]

What's up with the frame rate? Is it the video compression from a decade ago or the camera?

[@GasglowJones]

Adventure is cool, Eliza is interesting, Life makes no sense and Pong is useless..." Yep. Pretty sure that applies even out of the context of the video...

[@benalon74]

Must... Own... Hat...

[@handsomebrick]

Wouldn't not playing Colossal Cave be more akin to an English major not studying something like the Canterbury Tales? The Shakespeare equivalent would be, say, Zork or King's Quest.

[@Isaac-gh5ku]

Hey, is anyone familiar with the Japanese NEC PC-9801 (tell me if I get this right or wrong)? Can anyone do a review on that PC that is only exclusive to Japan?

[@CamWhetstone]

is eliza pretty much the same thing as Creative Labs's Dr. S.B.A.I.T.S.O (Sound Blaster Acting Intelligent Text To Speech Operator) for DOS?

[@GLORYIMURDER]

@phreakindee you should do a review on life and tell us all the bad parts about it and by life i mean life the game on xbla i think or retail im not sure how to get it but you should do a review on it or go to SSoHPKC or uberhaxornova and look up life and you should find it

[@RammsteinFan1122]

Oh god I miss the Intro :'D So much greatness!

[@ImperatorZed]

The rules are very simple if you look them up on the internet. There's an actual community for it, I think :P

[@kookoon]

pong looks cool to me for educational purposes. looks made in gwbasic.

[@Uber0Vegito]

240p seems to work fine

[@herrabanani]

i think i know how that life game works! i have a game that i think works 100% the same but only white and gray, when there are 3 cells around an emty space a new cell will apear, and if there are more than 3 or less than 3 cells around 1 cell that 1 will die! and i that's it and when you watch each step of this video you can see that that's what's happaning!

[@Lachlant1984]

You say these games are CPU dependent, so how fast would they run on my 3.0 GHZ HP computer? They'd be unplayable, which isn't saying much about that version of Pong.

[@thatgeek8064]

I played this before this video and I just wanna say: how the fuck did they mess up pong?!

[@zesty2023]

I'm glad LGR is doing good. But I was with this guy since the beginning and going back, I love the quaintness of these old videos. The crappy grainy video, the low budget video making it's great.. everything's to HD and polished now.

[@SandwichGlitch]

That's what I love about Ashens.. still using a bad camera and the old sofa since ever

[@MattMcIrvin]

Only two of the four are actually games, which probably confused a lot of people.

[@nibelung34343]

anyone remember the old text games zork zork2 amnesia deranged sea stalker

[@12me91]

Eliza is clever bot's mom?

[@kinmanyuen]

ascii games..

[@razgar02]

I think he was talking about "fart" and not "fuck".

[@Wayno717]

@flennepf606 lol rob y were u getting mad at shadow

[@michaelmjd7012]

10

[@Pozorrogo]

Its not 'gold' unless it has Oregon Trail on it!

[@JoeServo]

Fuck, dude! Lighten up!

[@bikutoso]

Loading times :(

[@Brandunfriendlyman]

There are modern apps for both iPhone and Android that do the same thing that are kind of interesting. Not really usefull or game like but anyway :)

[@raulandj]

lol google "Conway's Game of Life" and see what comes up on the right.

[@TheJustixi]

i think grown man may swear of he wants to. why not?

[@flennepf606]

@GLORYIMURDER wut?

[@michaelmjd7012]

PC

[@thatgeek8064]

How can you be an old tech geek and not know about life?