The Computer Chronicles - Greatest Games (1996)

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[@volo870]

Ah! 1996 - one of the best years for PC gaming! Equally good as 1993 and almost as fascinating as 1998.

[@ericwood3709]

I like this year, when I can fully emulate a PC of that era in software and play those old games on a Mac that draws less than 40 watts and won't be hopelessly obsolete in three years.

[@volo870]

@@ericwood3709 I'll uncover a secret - many of the computers of the day were also 50-100 watts. 150 Watt PSU was deemed completely sufficient, and CPUs dissipated so little power - they often had no fans.

[@ericwood3709]

@@volo870 This is true. Seems like it was around 50-66 MHz that a 486 or Pentium needed a fan on it.

[@volo870]

@@ericwood3709 I have a couple of Compaq LTE laptops: -LTE 5000 with Pentium 75 and -LTE 5300 with Pentium 133. They both don't have a CPU fan, only a small side mounted dust guzzler. 75 MHz model doesn't ever turn the fan on. 133 - rarely and sporadically.

[@fongmansze7480]

thanks for 3DFX voodoo card.

[@TheCyberDruid]

Playing Quake with keyboard only. Mind blown.

[@MadsterV]

the day I read about WASD with mouselook I ditched my keypad layout and never looked back. Innovation happens in unexpected places.

[@MasterKoala777]

On the year this episode was broadcast (1996), I was able to buy my first PC, a Cyrix MediaGX 133 Mhz with 16MB EDO Ram and 1.2 GB hard drive. It was slow even for its time, but what a wonderful experience it was having my own PC with speakers and CD-ROM drive :) I tried running Tomb Raider (shown in this video) and it was 3-5 FPS. Later, I bought a Rendition Verite 1000 (Creative Labs 3D Blaster PCI) graphics card, and marveled at the fluidity of the game. It ran much better than the 10-15 fps shown here.

[@raccoon681]

Cyrix is why I had there 300 cpu it was getting it's ass kicked by other brands with lower specs.

[@raccoon681]

I was told by a buddy of mine when i first got it that I basically have a Pentium 166. It struggled with mp3's @@zeffster2

[@FlyboyHelosim]

@@zeffster2 *Cyrix

[@BigJasonMc]

Ive been pretty down lately. This series is that little ray of hope I needed. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.

[@speedbird737]

hope you're doing better now

[@WeFightTheCorruption]

I remember playing Quakeworld online and the original Quake Arena for hours on end, tying up the phone lines from 10pm to 3am lol. Those were the days when everything was moving fast and getting magical.

[@dammerunq]

10:02 "Pretty clean smooth looking animation" :) ... God I love my childhood.

[@mattizzle81]

Damn, so smooth.

[@elcarmi]

Kids these days will never know the struggle

[@jkhammar1]

It's crazy looking back and seeing the guys responsible for some of my fav games all time in 1996. The Bioware team went on to do Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gare, Baldur's Gare 2, Kotor, Mass Effect and Dragon Age Origins etc!

[@gamingtonight1526]

And then Jade Empire. and Mass Effect Andromeda...... The cRPGs ended with Dragon Age Origins.

[@AdamsOlympia]

The only company capable of following in their footsteps = Larian. Baldur's Gate 3, best RPG of all time. Much thanks to Bioware for laying the groundwork.

[@jeffyp2483]

MDK was a wacky adventure.

[@glitch200]

And then they got assimilated by EA and ran every single one of their franchises into the dirt in the name of social justice.

[@jeffyp2483]

playing quake w/o a mouse. takes me back

[@SpacePoodle]

Ha! I didn't use the mouse until Half-Life. I bet I'm not the only one.

[@LA-84-FM]

Stewart is 85 and still kicking. Love these videos man!

[@jamesedwards5702]

Wow, that takes me back! I remember Quake on my 486/66DX. Then I remember it on my old Voodoo 2 card!! It was like a whole new world. I thought graphics couldn't get any better... I was wrong! LOL

[@zeffster2]

the 66mhz dx was glorious. it ran doom 2 like a dream and I believe this is the point when competitive fps was born - the 4 player deathmatch

[@si4632]

Yeah awesome I stuck a voodoo two in a amd k5 to play total air war🤣

[@DoubleMonoLR]

A computer with a 1992 CPU (and a 2D only card) vs a computer with the top end 3D card of 1998 practically was a new world in the 90s, with how fast hardware was moving.

[@MrGencyExit64]

The children in this video are almost 40 years old now :)

[@unnamedchannel1237]

Closer to 30

[@miczbik]

@@unnamedchannel123740 and over trust me ;)

[@MikkoB89]

Not quite 40 but older than 30

[@Mirrodin82]

What an awesome show. I'm so glad that I discovered this channel 😊

[@hopefulkoala01435]

The world would be a better place if The Computer Chronicles were still running, fact! Lol.

[@rubyvolt]

I actually have most of the ProOne software that sponsored this episode. I actually binge watched this show during the first lockdown in 2020. Been using computers since a DEC PDP-11 in 1978.

[@KokoRicky]

I really miss how this culture was around before computing/gaming became as corporatized as it is today. Obviously it was plenty corporate back then, but software developers had so much freedom in terms of what they wanted to design, and computer/Internet culture wasn't so ubiquitous and toxic.

[@jussikankinen9409]

Nerds played not normals

[@mserlin]

I do find that several vr titles in the last couple of years have had a very similar vibe and some small teams with innovative ideas producing them

[@roahnosh]

Yeah developers talking about their game passionately and not just coped inside their studios. There is passion and creativity. This is why I respect indie companies like larian studios and mihoyo.

[@mindsofeuropa2955]

@@jussikankinen9409 They were far more normal than today's gamers.

[@mindsofeuropa2955]

I like how games had such a variety of different formats and styles. Today, most AAA games are walk around and shoot copies of each other. They look pretty, but there's little originality in them.

[@RobertKliethermes]

Never heard of 'Shattered Steel', looks like a fun game. I would have loved to have played that game back in 1996.

[@DoubleMonoLR]

Mech games were popular in the 90s, albeit the Mechwarrior series started in 1989 and it's still going.

[@alzeNL]

So cool seeing MacTCP in the opening again after all these years ! I used to work for Demon Internet 1997/98 and amongst Amiga and Windows support I was there doing MacTCP ! Happy days - apart from when people tried to dial up whilst still on the phone - was always the Turnpike users that done that...

[@kamelassaf7493]

That would be cool to have a Time Machine, so you and your friends can go back to the 90's and live it again.

[@ronsmith4325]

CNET Gamecenter, BattleNet and TEN, Wow... talk about a nostalgia trip! I had to chuckle at that segment with Quake on the laptop... That thing was an absolute beast for the day and reminded me of my struggles trying to make Quake II run on an old Thinkpad back around the same time... I was a network admin at one of the old World Cyber Games tournaments and needed something to pass the time so I wasn't spending hours a day just sitting and twiddling my thumbs - this was way back in 2004 and Quake II was way out of date at this point, but I did get it to work well enough to be playable. Good ol' software rendering at 640x480, complete with ghosting from the TFT LCD display, LOL. I don't remember what CPU the laptop used, but if I had to guess I would say it was likely a Pentium 200MMX with maybe 1MB of VRAM at best. We are so lucky with what we have today in comparison.

[@DoubleMonoLR]

It was a lot more interesting then (and in the 2000s) though, hardware was constantly obliterating what was only a few years old, there was numerous different gpu chip manufacturers, competing sound cards, etc. Definitely expensive to keep updated though.

[@ashers9680]

I remember getting Shattered Steel on sale at, of all places, a hardware store. They had a big rack of 5 dollar Big Box PC games. This was probably 1999 or 2000 that I got it. Put a lot of hours into that game.

[@RationalAxis]

Oh man, so many hours spent on the Neverhood.

[@10vid5]

It's crazy how Tomb Raider ran at ~8FPS while Quake at 30 FPS, in the same era.

[@hewh0wearspants]

Yeah, John Carmack really was a game engine sorcerer. Even the latest id-Tech engine runs ungodly smooth compared to its peers

[@izusspecman]

I think, that they demoed tomb rader (and also Shattered Steel) on a quite crappy PC in their studio, There is a few freezes even in Neverhood and Diablo sound a bit scratchy. While gaming cafe has pretty fast machines.

[@Phenom98]

Quake has very few polygons. Every room is quite boxy

[@chaoticsystem2211]

they could have used a real graphics card there. i think 3dfx was released around that time...

[@DoubleMonoLR]

From memory, Tomb Raider was rough in software mode if you didn't have a powerful pc, but it was a lot better with a 3dfx voodoo card. Quake likewise wouldn't have been running at 30fps on many computers - from looking up references online it seems even powerful(for when quake was released) PCs were struggling to get that in 320x240 resolution. People were used to low frame rates, but you have to remember that effective computer speed increases were *extremely* rapid in the 90s, so if you were on a budget you could buy games that were a couple of years old and it would likely run great on your newer but (relatively) cheap/low-end computer.

[@oldtwinsna8347]

amazing how these games can now run in hundreds of frames per second even on integrated graphics with the cheapest of setups.

[@incumbentvinyl9291]

I'm sure hundreds isn't nearly enough. Absolutely has to be in the thousands, we are talking about a quarter century of technological progress. It may be that the fps may be limited by something else however. We may not get 15k fps just because the computer is 15k times faster.

[@a9udn9u]

What do you mean? They can run on my watch, in an emulator.

[@spdzodzo]

looking back this was probably the year of best games of all times, quake and diablo are classics with cult followings, same for tombraider

[@theforsaken127]

lol, and to think, I still play Quake 1 to this day, its been installed on my PC since it came out, I just kept moving the install dir from build to build.

[@daehawk9585]

Hearing that Diablo music takes me back. Also I really miss old Bioware. All we have is Bioware in name only because we are EA.

[@Caplax40]

5:52 CH Flightstick Pro! I still have mine from back in the day. One was also used as a prop in the first X-Men movie.

[@DanielPerez-hy6qi]

what a great computer show, they dont make them like these anymore..

[@Ligioseete]

@DanielPerez-hy6qi I stopped scrolling when I saw your comment. Can you please elaborate on what you mean by "they don't make them like these anymore"? I was thinking the same but then realized that channels like gamespot and the likes do showcase newest games, game reviews, and brief showcases/user stories. I'm very curious as to what you mean exactly, as I myself just started my own YT channel on all things gaming industry. If I could, with the right team, I'd love to revive "The Computer Chronicles" format and bring back the good old days of reporting, explaining, and educating.

[@unnamedchannel1237]

“Wana be a women?”

[@Reason4Termination]

oh man.. that looks like an early Diablo build.. haha.. I can still remember the dying guy in front of the church being different: "Please... listen to me.. the arch bishop Lazarus.."

[@Hurt009]

Love how they are playing Quake with keyboard only :-)

[@Amalekites]

The only way to do it! 😁

[@brandonupchurch7628]

Judging by the news section I'm guessing this episode was filmed around December 1996, looking at Falcon's website in the Web Archive it looks like they refereshed the Mach V to a Pentium MMX by February 1997 and upped the ram to 32MB.

[@syproful]

Quake was wizardry. The amount of history in this one episode…. Just look at the performance compared to other games.

[@KokoRicky]

I noticed that and was a bit surprised that 1996 computers had such a smooth framerate. It was incredibly well-optimized.

[@oldtwinsna8347]

@@KokoRicky Used the FPU which wasn't common until then for this type of game. And only because the Pentium line had such a powerful FPU. Cyrix users who bought the kool-aide from them were left mad as its FPU was pathetic and couldn't come close to the framerates.

[@Konacrusher]

For me Descent was revolutionary, not Quake.

[@JC-XL]

What an episode - first Diablo demoed and then Steve Jobs return to apple mentioned.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

The past was full of history back then.

[@PhenomRom]

@@lawrencedoliveiro9104lmao

[@m9078jk3]

I saw the specs of that Falcon Northwest Mach V PC online at an archived PC Mag May 14,1996. page 366. It used a STB Powergraph 64 Video card 2mb EDO DRAM S3 Virge the infamous 3D decelerator !

[@DoubleMonoLR]

While it(and probably a bunch of other cards) definitely sucked in a bunch of games, it actually worked well in some others, like Mechwarrior 2 & Terminal Velocity from memory. I think I was actually disappointed in Mechwarrior 2 when I upgraded to a Voodoo, I think it looked nicer on an S3 - though the Voodoo was vastly faster on other games. Ironically the virge was an excellent 2d card though, and good to pair with a voodoo.

[@m9078jk3]

@@DoubleMonoLR I agree the S3 Virge makes a great pair with the Voodoo 1 3D Graphics card. The S3 Virge was especially fantastic with high frame rates and fluid game play with build engine games like Duke Nukem 3D,Blood,Redneck Rampage and more etc.

[@Amalekites]

14:50 That didn't look like an espresso. 😆

[@Zombytes]

What ever happened to educational games? I had a blast playing those when I was a kid, and they taught me how to use a computer, and some other logical stuff. Something I feel we need now more than ever.. Someone should bring back cool educational games

[@4thewinir344]

I like how a minor blurb story in the ‘news’ part of the broadcast was Apple buys Next and Steve Jobs comes back to Apple. In other news lol…Little did they friggin know the massive chain of events that was about to happen starting with that acquisition. Not to mention, Apple’s lowest stock price at $12/share. What a time to be alive!

[@AgnostosGnostos]

At 22:00 the return of Jobs to Apple.

[@JC-XL]

Yes, and only 5 years later the iPod hit the market and changed the music industry forever, then another 6 years later the iPhone changed mobile phones as well.

[@andersdenkend]

Ah, good times... when every 3D looking game was called a Doom clone...

[@MondySpartan]

I must say Quake killed the DOOM clone term.

[@XStreet1985]

I was 11 when shattered steel came out. I was eyeballing this game for a long time, asked my parents to buy it. But that never came to pass 😭

[@igano111]

Damn, even the guy that worked on the game calls her Laura Croft.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

22:31 Cyber Promotions - featuring Sanford (“Spamford”) Wallace, the spam king! Yes folks, spam was still a new thing, then. And this guy was not only a pioneer, he pioneered it big. Even after repeated court verdicts and penalties and injunctions against him, he kept popping up again and again, under different names and locations, bombarding the world’s hapless email users with unwanted crap. Seems he just couldn’t give up the spam habit.

[@yw1971]

22:22 - Very part-time... The best part time in history.

[@tommyeastwood4393]

9:50 smooth animation, aint it? 😂

[@greenhowie]

That guy has the patience of a saint. They all might be gaming legends but they're awkward and nerdy as hell.

[@stanislavdaganov574]

Not true in this case: these game presenters seem surprisingly disciplined and expressive.

[@Life_Is_A...]

18:36 It sounds like the voice actor IS the presenter.

[@realdubai]

IM from Ukraine. In 1996 I have 486DX2-66....and Video card Trident 1mb ISA

[@rayaspo4893]

Woah espresso has changed over the years

[@AdrianLopez-sb7eo]

Was that a paid advertisement at 23:56, or just an unsolicited recommendation? Kind of blurring the lines there.

[@Erikcleric]

That guy gave himself a proper screen to play Quake on for sure! Hooking up his tv to the computer?

[@shaddy7787]

Windows 98 and PC's from the later 90's really helped to improve performance

[@AdhamMGhaly]

The Neverhood ❤️❤️❤️❤️ One of the greatest and strangest games ever created.

[@pantyukovk]

Stewart Cheifet born September 24!

[@AlexSimesky]

Guy at 15:15 looks like he's about to send Ripley on another shady mission.

[@Caleb-fv5fp]

“Wanna be a woman?”💀😂

[@SSJfraz]

Takes on a whole new meaning these days.

[@Itemtotem]

Aged rather poorly

[@SSJfraz]

@@Itemtotem Become a woman, you may age better.

[@unnamedchannel1237]

All I can think of is that Donald trump rally where he tells the weight lifting story of the man named Alice .

[@mutalix]

I've played every Tomb Raider game ever, including the handheld versions, had no idea Lara Croft was a doctor.

[@a9udn9u]

PhD doctor

[@Michael_Hunt]

I don't think that was actually made canon, this was before the game was released.

[@wallacelang1374]

I have both Tomb Raider and Tomb Raider II for my Pentium MMX Windows 95 PC and it is fun to play Lara Croft searching for valuable hidden treasures.

[@kh7955]

I still remember playing halo online when it was nearly impossible so to speak. Lag was def an issue. Played a ton of Diablo but never online

[@kh7955]

Legit nerds...that also actualized the games we always wanted.

[@incumbentvinyl9291]

19:20 - They couldn't find a proper computer to run that game on? Perhaps it has something to do with the version, because it looks slightly different than the finalized product. Looked it up, the year is wrong in the title of this video. This aired on the 10th of November 1995 and the game came out on the 3rd of January 1997. You're welcome.

[@AgoraphobicLocust]

Aired or was shot on?

[@incumbentvinyl9291]

@@AgoraphobicLocust Read the sentence again, there is no reason I should repeat myself when I was clear in the first place.

[@AgoraphobicLocust]

@@incumbentvinyl9291 please don’t eat my bum at all.

[@Driver_93]

Very cool, I need to fix my Falcon Northwest Mach V, But one thing, Didn't this actually air in January of 1997, I'll give it to you for it being in january, but wasn't it in 1997?

[@mctapoutos7426]

10:00" that's pretty smooth animation " 😂

[@Kai0nTheMoon]

I don't remember 1996 looking and feeling like 1986. I guess because of my age at the time, going from childhood to teenager, it made the distance between those years feel longer. 1986 feels like a long time ago, but 1996 feels like yesterday.

[@PhilipKerry]

I was 40 years old in 1996 :)

[@TheRedOGRE]

​@@PhilipKerryI was 6. Got my first pc around this time and also ps1 for Christmas. Actually had the original tomb raider. Good times.

[@PhilipKerry]

@@TheRedOGRE I did the same , got the PS1 with Tomb Raider because of the Worldwide hype that was surrounding the game at the time :)

[@TheRedOGRE]

@@PhilipKerry mine came with crash bandicoot. But I had tons of good games. Eventually my dad's friend mod chipped it and burnt us tons of games. Good time for gaming.

[@PhilipKerry]

@@TheRedOGRE I still own mine along with PS2/3/4 , I mainly play the GranTurismo games on them nowadays :)

[@JBTmusicc]

Diablo!!!!!!

[@auralplex]

I remember using Netscape.

[@Amalekites]

Who didn't..

[@chevyrupleix]

Back then it was all doom-type, now it's all souls-like.

[@denknugz87]

im assuming hes referring to the same terry taylor who wrote many great wwf/wwe themes

[@Mauro0]

You can zoom in Diablo 1 ?? !!! I had played 4 times and I had no idea you could that 😭 loool

[@theforsaken127]

damn, that fps in Tomb Raider....

[@AllahDoesNotExist]

12:08 LAURA Croft??

[@lastofusclips5291]

12:07 crazy that even this guy gets her name wrong (many people call her 'Laura' instead of 'Lara')

[@tylerwightman2315]

Those frame rates 💀💀💀 And here in 2024 my somewhat lower midrange PC can run some of todays AAA titles at 150+FPS 🤣 I do miss the 90s tho. Was such an exciting time!

[@MondySpartan]

Apparently, MacOS already had dark mode of sorts in 1996. 20:44

[@_zoinks2554]

I love this old stuff. I was too poor back then to be a PC gamer so I was stuck with the 8 and 16 bit consoles. Chefman is the real deal, however most of these devs are complete idiots.

[@Revelator2025]

Love me some Diablo!

[@quatz1981]

That PC in the studio definately not high end for the time. Tomb Raider looks like its running at like 10fps

[@EGOS42]

I feel bad for the devs demoing their games on apparently underpowered PCs in the studio. Those framerates are crazy bad.

[@AdamsOlympia]

The Blizzard rep should have came in with a high level sorc and thrown some lightning and teleport to really show off the game. Having a low level warrior swing without any skills = missed opportunity.

[@PhenomRom]

He was playing his main

[@Amalekites]

3:58 That pc could not handle Neverhood. Lagging as hell! 😂

[@alexanderbjork6451]

Interesting to hear the completely different dialog for the Butcher quest in the beta compared to the final version of Diablo.

Huge news at the end! Apple buying Next, I wonder if it will be a good decision.

[@earthwolf82]

Schaefer's Hammer

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

23:35 cgi-bin in the URL ... those were the days ...

[@Alianger]

18:45 Oh man that beta voice acting

[@sluggotg]

Bioware?? GODs... thanks for the great games!

[@buzzfunk]

Is TR running under 10fps? Omg. So slow. This was before even the first Voodoo Fx came out. Pretty crazy. When you look at a game like CP2077 today on a 4090.

[@infinitecanadian]

The Neverhood was shown in 1995's episode about games. Mr. Cheifet even asked how much clay it took to make the game.

[@JeanCarlosArtist]

Original Tomb Raider, Original Quake, Original Diablo. 1996.

[@TechWizMaster]

would have been great for him to have a computer fast enough to show tomb raider at more than 12 fps...LOL !!!

[@antdude]

No kidding. Did this game even have 3D card support?

[@lasersauceretroarchives6544]

for a casual like you, back then games where played in software mode and frame rate like that was still acceptable especially for a game that uses 3D graphics like Tomb Raider.

[@yellowblanka6058]

@@antdude This was 1996, 3D cards were still in their inception and software support was spotty at best. I'm old enough to have used computers during that time, and I remember a smooth 30 FPS was a tagline for 3D accelerators. The footage shown was how your average machine ran 3D titles.

[@antdude]

I remember buying my first video card: Diamond Monster 3D (3Dfx's Voodoo 1).

[@m9078jk3]

@@antdude Yes Tomb Raider looked best with a PowerVR Videologic Apocalypse 3Dx (PCX2) card and could even run at an amazing high 1024 by 768 Pixel resolution. No other card could do that. However that card was available in April 1997 Also it could run at a 640 by 480 resolution with a 3Dfx Voodoo1 3D accelerator card too (available late 1996). Some other 2D/3D cards supported it as well but usually in a even lower resolution

[@lockedine]

What is a frame rate?

[@officemishler3364]

30 second news bump about the future of Apple and computing as we know it with the next acquisition story

[@realdubai]

I like 486DX4-120 MHZ this power of 1997 yar

[@masterofx32]

12:30 „This isn‘t motion capture“ as if motio capture was anything bad. They probably should have done that 😉

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

20:03 Soon as he said “Battlenet”, I thought “whatever happened to bnetd” ...

[@RajeshKumar-kz6576urmotherhsoj]

oldest computer games.....

[@GSi16vrs]

Man.... give em a 3dfx

[@TuckerMcCannon]

14:52 that does not look like espresso! LOL! :)

[@bakhtiar6977]

That eye max schaefer...the true dark side of game..long live blizzard north

[@jeffyp2483]

i can easily see Stewart Cheifet describing fortnite as 'like doom, but a bit cartoony'😆

[@jussikankinen9409]

More like full retards

[@bunchamp85]

computerliments to the cheiffet gameboy

[@Boro87]

I bet they cant translate that guys hair physics and look into a 2023 game.