Posted on September 13, 2021
Livestream 9/9/2021 – Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun
Being a big fan of Command & Conquer as well as the game that followed it Command & Conquer: Red Alert I was hotly anticipating the true sequel with Tiberian Sun. A direct evolution of the first game it promised a lot leading up to the launch back in 1999. Things such as a destructible terrain, in game lighting, elevation changes and many more things were promised. While Westwood ended up delivering on many of those things I can’t say I wasn’t just dissapointed upon finally playing the game.
Gone was that small eye sparkle that the game didn’t take itself too seriously from the original(s) and replacing it was a much more serious dystopian future setting. The Red Alert series would go on to champion that inherent sillyness with its setting and some truly remarkable acting from a variety of actors including Tim Curry. But Tiberian Sun was just drab… and sad… and some of the features touted were there but just not what I was expecting. To be clear it’s not a bad game, far from it, but it just doesn’t live up to the hype and promise. Perhaps I’m just sour that Frank Klepacki that produced the phenomenal industrial rock soundtrack from the first game was now tasked with a brooding and more sad soundscape.
The game is just more bland than I was hoping so my dissapointment was there. BUT before I rant any more about how I felt back then it’s a fun game to revisit. With the benefit of the passing of 2 decades the game has had plenty of time to bake in the collective consciousness and it might be better for it. It’s actually quite fun to play and we had a blast doing so during the last livestream.
Posted on September 3, 2021
Livestream 9/2/2021 – Tandy 1000 SL for Septandy
The event for the month is SepTandy which celebrates all things Tandy. I have a Tandy 1000 SL that I felt I had to stream from in honor of the theme for the month. It was not easy getting there but it was also a fun experiment. We chatted about Tandy in general and explored a lot of old school games appropriate for the era.
The Tandy support in many games was a big improvement from the plain IBM CGA that came before it leading to a very capable mid 80s DOS gaming computer.
Unfortunately we had some issues with the stream toward the end where my bitrate (the quality being pushed to YouTube) just tanked which took the stream with it. Not the ending I was hoping but still it’s a fun machine to explore! Check out the livestream replay below.
Posted on August 30, 2021
Quick Note on Tandy Video
The event of SepTandy is coming up in a couple of days. The focus for the month of September then are all things Tandy as one might guess or expect. I’ll be partaking in this with the one Tandy machine I have and I’m hoping to make the video the same quality as my MiSTer one so we will see if it turns out the way I have planned.
Capturing video from a Tandy 1000 machine is a little bit tricky to say the least. First off the video out port is 9 pins and it doesn’t support VGA at all. That wasn’t even a standard yet when the Tandy 1000 line launched so that is not an option. It basically outputs digital RGB which isn’t compatible with most capture solutions. You could drop in a VGA video card instead but then you lose out on all the great games offering TGA or Tandy Graphics Array mode.
Look at many games from the 80s and they will explicitly call that TGA mode out. A special 16 color mode only really available on Tandy computers of the era (PC Jr used a very similar setup being a direct competitor). Capturing this video raw has some challenges mentioned above. However I think I managed to sort that out.
What you are looking at is a raw capture from the video out port on a Tandy 1000 SL. It goes through a converter that changes the video signal to an analog RGB format a modern capture card can understand. As long as the card then can capture 15 kHz (as opposed to 30 kHz used by VGA) you are all set! This is mostly to support the video I’m working on but this also opens up the door to streaming with this Tandy machine with little extra setup so look to that happening as well.
The adapter in question being used for the conversion can be found here: CGA2RGBv2. My Datapath E1 card I use for most retro captures supports 15 kHz natively so that makes that part easy. Below is a video capture test I performed as well.
Posted on August 27, 2021
Livestream 8/26/2021 – Voodoo 5500
PixelPipes (check out his YouTube channel here) reached out to me a few days ago asking to do another shared stream. I was definitely up for this as the last one we did for the GPUJune event was a lot of fun. We discussed that we’d stream using a Voodoo Banshee but then when I happened to fall on the Voodoo 5 5500 recently we knew that would have to be the topic for the evening.
So for the livestream this week we discussed and explored a bit what made the V5 tick, what makes it so special and of course put it through its paces with some games. I love doing these co-host streams so definitely expect more of them in the future. It’s a great way to chat about just about everything and makes the stream even more fun.
As far as the Voodoo 5 5500 there are many reasons it’s a legendary card at this point perhaps not from a pure performance perspective but more it being the final high end card from 3dfx before they went out of business. Using their VSA or Voodoo Scalable Architecture, it is in essence running 2 GPUs on one card in an SLI configuration. The seamless integration of that relies heavily on the drivers doing their thing and in the case of the V5 that’s handled beautifully. As a user you really would have no idea 2 GPUs are working in tandem so they really nailed the software side of that.
So yes, great co-host, great video card and great games. Just a super fun stream so check out the replay below!
Posted on August 25, 2021
Video Game Prices
As most people who collect or just simply want to buy classic games are acutely aware the prices have skyrocketed as of late. Spurred by nostalgia in most cases it’s a simple supply and demand formula. There are only so many copies of any given game available (not counting re-releases or remakes obviously) so with scarcity comes price. Nothing wrong with that and just about every collecting market works this way (looking at your Sega Saturn games, sheesh).
But that doesn’t account for things like a copy of Super Mario Brothers selling for a record $2 million recently. That’s right. Millions.
https://www.polygon.com/22613037/super-mario-bros-sells-for-2-million-investment-rally
Now anyone even remotely aware of video game prices can tell this isn’t normal. Sure a mint and sealed condition copy of this very iconic and classic game should fetch a higher price. $2 million is not that price. Just about everyone who heard this the first time assumed something fishy was up. Money laundering, a scam or something else like that. Well it may very well have been something akin to a scam.
A YouTuber named Karl Jobst released a pretty daming expose in a video going into some detail in the major players in this. Heritage Auctions and Weta Game Ratings. If these allegations are true it’s simply a matter of very wealthy people profiting on their own inflated and overvalued goods. Video games just happen to be the target as this has happened to the comic book as well as coin collecting hobbies in the past.
The problem with this of course is that is pulls everything else with it up as far as prices go. Suddenly everyone thinks they are sitting on a gold mine with their old games and prices follow suit. But it’s all based on a bubble that may very well pop soon. And the people already getting rich off this will take their money and move on to their next target or scheme. It’s really sad it finally came to our cherised hobby of game collecting.
I’d highly recommend watching the video and see what your own conclusion from this is. I came out informed but definitely not a happy camper…
