Thursday Open Mic! Join me tonight, later! AD&D! D&D!

[00:00:01][music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Good Thursday evening to you everyone.

[00:01:10]How are you? It's good to see you and it's good to be seen by you. I of course am the one and only Bill Sully aka the Dungeon Delver coming to you live, loud and clear on a Thursday evening and boy howdy is it good to see you guys. Just got done streaming with the uh inestimably awesome great old ones and Doom Sword. Of course, Doom Sword was riding shotgun on that and that was a lot of fun. So we we talked some uh talked some foundational some bedrock uh uh Dungeons & Dragons stuff with them and that was a ton of fun. Um I would very much appreciate it if you guys haven't to go check out Great Old One's channel. Um and uh I I really really would appreciate a subscription thrown there.

[00:02:02]Also, @doomswords, please do subscribe.

[00:02:06]And if you're feeling generous with subscriptions, could you do me a solid and could you click the subscribe button for this channel also because I like bringing you guys fun stuff and I like bringing lots of people fun stuff. So, thank you very much if you happen to do that. Oh, let me turn this on and let me give proper greets out to everyone.

[00:02:32]Let's see. So, there's There's Mike Tim Imholt out there in the audience. Tim, good to see you again.

[00:02:39]Roy Loveday, that's That's an interesting handle.

[00:02:43]Thank you for joining us.

[00:02:45]Mike out dealing with kitten distribution system, good luck. Tolumic Shellback Bow, of course, out there. Um and who do we have? Sergeant Rock96, Rear Admiral Five, and Ricky Maru. Good to see you. Good to see you. And anyone else out there who hasn't hopped on to the stream yet, please please do join us here and say hello so I can say hello back to you.

[00:03:17]But, um yeah, just kind of kicking back, relaxing tonight. No major topics to cover. Uh Mike keeps saying Crom.

[00:03:29]What are you Conan fan? Uh okay, Crom to you, too.

[00:03:36]Do you have like half of a case for a Cromemco memory expansion unit for your PDP-8?

[00:03:45]That's a deep cut right there. Gonzalo Lira's Bartab, good to see you.

[00:03:51]Uh but anyhow, so Uh, no, that is one of the sponsors, of course, is Chrome, the character record organization manager. Little software suite cooked up by yours truly. Oh, you know, it doesn't do much. It just creates 100% rulebook compliant first edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons characters that you can multi-class, dual-class if they're human, turn into bards if they're humans or half-elves, buy all their equipment, sell gems and jewelry, add experience points, raise them whole levels, drain them levels, spellbooks get generated for the illusionists and the magic users when you create the characters. If your Dungeon Master uses psionics, it'll take care of that. You can change their alignment, you can change their age, you can change their stats, you can add stuff into their inventory custom. It takes care of encumbrance, so you can save it as text, you can save it as HTML. It works for Mac, Linux, Windows 8, 8.1, 10, 11, 32 or 64-bit.

[00:05:00]You know, that's all.

[00:05:04]That's all. That's all it does.

[00:05:06]Just lets you generate a first edition AD&D character in as little as 3 seconds.

[00:05:16]Jorge, good to see you.

[00:05:18]Yeah, and a partridge in a pear tree.

[00:05:21]So, anyway, yes, Chrome, uh, written by me, offered to you if you're interested, drop me an email, [email protected].

[00:05:34]So, one of the things that, uh, we were talking about, uh, recently is, uh, and we talked about this yesterday, was the Dungeon Cube.

[00:05:45]And it's basically, it's a puzzle cube, a Rubik's Cube like in its mechanic.

[00:05:51]Um, each of the nine uh, face tiles on it is a uh, represents a small section of dungeon map symmetrical to uh, any pieces uh, that are around the corner from it as it were and the center piece, no matter what configuration you get a completely conjoined dungeon map on it. And I um, I I have uh, gone ahead and ordered one. So, one is wheeling its way to me, winging its way to me. Somehow it's being sent to me.

[00:06:33]Hopefully they're not firing it out of a railgun directly into my house from orbit.

[00:06:39]Um, Smug site 97, good to see you.

[00:06:48]So, um, Anyway, uh, when it gets here I'm going to do a video review of it. I'm excited about it. Not a live stream, but I'll I'll do a a a video review of it. Um, and honestly for the price, this thing looks pretty awesome.

[00:07:13]Um, so it's my understanding, I'm not a math guy, uh, Ricky, but it's my understanding that there are 47 quadrillion possible combinations of all faces of a Rubik's Cube.

[00:07:37]And as the maps link together, even like over the edge like onto another facing, um that's 47 quad well, I mean, 47 quadrillion if you don't use the uh the the the other sides if you just use one side. So, 47 quadrillion divided by six if you use every side of the cube every time possible map combinations.

[00:08:15]Ha!

[00:08:16]Got you, man. Hey, Excalibur, good to see you.

[00:08:22]So, yeah, that's that's a bunch of potential dungeon maps.

[00:08:30]If you played one map every second, if you explored one map every second, it would take you 85 billion years to exhaust all of the possibilities.

[00:08:48]If I were Mr. Green Jeans, what color uh pants would I wear? I had a black and white TV at the time that I watched uh uh Captain Kangaroo, so gray.

[00:09:00]They would be gray.

[00:09:09]But anyway, I'm excited about the cube.

[00:09:13]Do not turn away from the cube.

[00:09:28]So, I'm I'm uh like I said, I'm going to do a video about it when I get it, and I'll let you guys know.

[00:09:37]Excalibur, I don't uh again, I don't know.

[00:09:42]I I I I don't know if that's right. That's what I was told.

[00:09:46]47 quadrillion possible permutations.

[00:09:55]And we can Google it.

[00:10:00]How many possible color arrangements uh on a Rubik How many different color combinations are there in a Rubik's Cube? Um I'm sorry. You're right. I was wrong. It's 43 quintillion, not quadrillion, quintillion.

[00:10:25]That's 43 252 003 274489856000.

[00:10:37]Possible valid combinations on a standard 3x3 Rubik's Cube.

[00:10:54]The corners on this cube as far as I can tell looking at it as Caliber all have combination possibles.

[00:11:04]They they they all all the the corners all link to each other.

[00:11:10]Crap phone, hello.

[00:11:11]None of consequence, greeting.

[00:11:25]Apparently, it's been proved a bunch of times, so >> You'll get repeat dungeons. I mean, maybe.

[00:11:46]Uh I was told there would be no math.

[00:11:50]One thing that I'm looking forward to putting into Familiar, and it's not going to involve this cube, that's not what I'm saying. Um it's going to be a challenge.

[00:12:02]But I'm looking forward to the random dungeon creator in Familiar because I want it to use the tables that are given and then draw that grid.

[00:12:25]Like you'll you'll give it some limitations for how big of a dungeon you want.

[00:12:31]And then zang it'll create and populate a dungeon for you.

[00:12:39]Hi RPG Grandma, hello.

[00:12:43]Uh yes, Ricky, uh Familiar is basically the follow-on to Khrom.

[00:12:49]Um what Khrom did for the Player's Handbook and for player characters, uh Familiar is going to do for the Dungeon Master's Guide. It's going to automate everything from gem values all the way up to uh well, something like that.

[00:13:16]If I gave Familiar to AI, what would happen? Um I don't know.

[00:13:22]I honestly don't know.

[00:13:32]>> This cube anything like the sphere in Phantasm the the Sentinels spheres they called them I think is the official nomenclature.

[00:13:45]Let me tell you what I don't have much truck with with the Planescape setting.

[00:13:55]If you were to say to me, "Hey Bill, is has there ever been a movie that has approached Planescape?" It's Phantasm.

[00:14:06]And I know what you're thinking, "Oh, you know, it's it's the Tall Man and he's lobbing the spheres around and it's there's a bunch of zombies and other horribleness. What has that got to do with Planescape?" All I have to do or all I have to say about that is watch more.

[00:14:28]Yeah, Great Old Ones I'm I'm not looking forward to the programming.

[00:14:33]Let's take a look at that. You know what? Let's pull up the Dungeon Master's Guide and take a look at what's entailed in random dungeon creation.

[00:14:55]All right.

[00:14:58]>> [snorts] >> And we talked about this a little bit on Great Old Ones channel. The better discussion on the nuances of this are there, but briefly briefly you start here.

[00:15:22]Uh let me share this to the to the the class.

[00:15:27]David McCauley, good to see you.

[00:15:31]So, funny thing about the Winchester house, I actually want to pin that and come back to it.

[00:15:44]Okay, so so you pick one of these.

[00:15:52]And then >> [clears throat] >> you start at a random door from one of these, which like if you pick number four, heaven help you, cuz there's there's five doors there.

[00:16:06]>> [clears throat] >> Periodic check.

[00:16:11]Continue straight. Is there a door? Is there a side passage?

[00:16:17]Um does the passage turn?

[00:16:20]And it's going to have to check if the passage turns, is it going to intersect with something else? This is not going to be easy.

[00:16:31]Then there's the location of the door.

[00:16:34]Straight ahead, parallel hallway, the side passage, they curve, they don't just go at angles.

[00:16:44]Unusual shape, caves, God help me.

[00:16:51]Having this out visually may not be possible. I hope it is.

[00:17:00]I hope it is.

[00:17:02]Then we get into tricks and traps.

[00:17:05]Gas subtable, magic pools subtable, pool with monster, pool with no monster, lakes, enchanted lake.

[00:17:20]And it just goes on and on and on like that.

[00:17:23]And you're making these checks periodically.

[00:17:28]A piece of software to do that.

[00:17:31]Maybe look at how dungeon Maybe.

[00:17:34]Maybe.

[00:17:36]Yeah, and then there's the possible um Well, there There was always a uh shellback bow there like there was a gray space like space adventures around Greyhawk module.

[00:17:56]And then you can travel planarly in the world of Greyhawk.

[00:18:02]So, yes, you're right.

[00:18:08]So, uh this question of Winchester House is it with all the tricks and door Okay, so funny thing about the Winchester House.

[00:18:23]Um I got my Bill Cutes of Borg. Yeah.

[00:18:32]I'll Kirk my way out of it, man.

[00:18:38]But um So, all the lore and everything about the Winchester House like she had visions and seances that said that the ghosts of all the people slain by her husband's weapons uh would haunt her unless she built forever.

[00:19:05]And the answer is that's just not true.

[00:19:12]Um she just didn't want the damn house anymore. So, here's the thing.

[00:19:18]The house was actually a beautiful, well-considered uh country home.

[00:19:25]What happened was they had an earthquake and a partial fire.

[00:19:32]The lady who owned it had several other properties.

[00:19:39]She was just looking to unload the place. It was a lemon.

[00:19:45]The stairs that go nowhere, the windows that open onto brick walls, stuff like that.

[00:19:53]That all that is is her just throwing stuff together, fixing things, repairing like the crack in the wall, plaster over it, put boards, plaster over it. Well, that that that will be in front of the staircase. Don't care. Somebody else's problem. I'm selling this place.

[00:20:22]So, what would one grave say to the other when it thought his friend had a cold?

[00:20:33]Is that you coffin?

[00:20:40]Take care, Ricky.

[00:20:43]Yes, heal up, my friend.

[00:20:47]So, the people who bought the Winchester house, they're the ones that like added onto it.

[00:20:56]You know, they go and find like a broken doorway and just plaster over it.

[00:21:02]Just board it up.

[00:21:16]>> So, she literally like the whole "Oh, it's she went crazy." No, she didn't.

[00:21:28]She just made the house look good on on the equivalent of Zillow at the time.

[00:21:36]"Oh, look at the staircase. Oh, that's lovely. Let's go over here."

[00:21:42]She sold it and she moved on. The people who bought it, they invented all of that wacky lore to make money off of the Winchester house cuz it it frankly sucked as a house.

[00:21:59]Exactly. Exactly, RPG Grandma.

[00:22:03]It just wasn't practical to rebuild those sections.

[00:22:06]So, stairway to nowhere, door that opens onto a blank wall, door that opens like second story door that just goes down to the ground, windows that are like outside it's a blank wall, inside there's like a window.

[00:22:26]She was literally like a just a quick sale.

[00:22:29]Just make it look kind of like a normal house from the outside.

[00:22:33]Gone.

[00:22:40]The stairway was No, the stairway wasn't heaven. It was heaven for the new buyers' bank accounts.

[00:23:03]Gonzalo, fun uh bit of trivia, did you know that Jimmy Page did the audio production on the uh the Butthole Surfers album Hairway to Steven?

[00:23:19]Only know about the Winchester house from that one movie with Helen Mirren. I have not seen this, mugs. I You did know that. Excellent, very good.

[00:23:28]Very good.

[00:23:30]A bit of Led Zeppelin and Butthole Surfers uh crossover.

[00:23:34]Uh Yeah, Page was all over, very eclectic uh music scene. Movie soundtracks, a lot of movie soundtracks. Death Wish, that's Jimmy Page's audio production on the soundtrack to the uh the I picture him in my mind.

[00:23:56]Charles Bronson. My my brain would kept saying say Manson. Say Charlie Manson.

[00:24:01]It's Charles Manson. It's like, no, it's not. Shut up.

[00:24:05]But yeah, that's that's Jimmy Page's audio production.

[00:24:13]Okay, you punk.

[00:24:16]Draw.

[00:24:18]Let's see how you like it.

[00:24:21]Take that, you punk.

[00:24:26]RPG Gen X Isle. Hey, there's one I could do. I could I could do uh I could do Charles Bronson readings of AD&D books if anybody wants if anybody wants to throw a super for that.

[00:24:42]So, my dad, God rest his soul, used to listen to streaming music.

[00:24:49]And he would he'd listen to a lot of traditional blues.

[00:24:53]And I mean, I like I Okay, full confession, I do not have like the the Library of Congress presents like you know, 5,000 records of of Mississippi Delta blues that goes back to like single digit years in the 20th century. I don't um uh I I I don't have uh that deep of of a knowledge.

[00:25:26]But I do I do know uh about the history of blues. So, I'm over there visiting my dad one day and um the original version of When the Levee Breaks come comes on.

[00:25:41]And look, I absolutely unquestionably respect where the music originated from.

[00:25:53]If you're like, "Man, if the Led Zeppelin version of When the Levee Breaks or Gallows Pole or or um you know, just insert Zeppelin song that they just kind of said, "This is ours now."

[00:26:07]is good, then the original's going to be great." Generally speaking, no, they're not.

[00:26:12]The recording quality isn't great because it was like literally somebody either doing a wire recording or recording it on on on like a wax cylinder.

[00:26:22]You like my Sean Connery voice?

[00:26:25]I haven't done Sean Connery in a while.

[00:26:26]I got to I really got to focus to make Sean Connery sound decent.

[00:26:35]This isn't Branson, it's Brunson.

[00:26:42]Was it Was it Death Wish 9? I wish I was dead.

[00:26:53]You know, RPG Grandma just taking us on a tour of the the Winchester Mansa Mansion. Mansa, damn it. What is wrong with me tonight?

[00:27:08]By the way, that person whose name I kept tripping over there did record a talking blues album and I have listened to it. It's not good.

[00:27:18]It's It's It's really not good and I'm not just saying that. I'm not just saying that because of who he is. It's just It's not a good It's not a good musical experience. I've heard way better.

[00:27:33]Oh, I'd love a good map of the the Winchester house. That would make a fantastic module.

[00:27:52]But anyhow, um We got there from somewhere, didn't we?

[00:28:01]All right, you punks.

[00:28:09]It's like the Money Pit movie. We Where were We were talking about Oh yeah, we mentioned that on on the D&D game on Tuesday. We were talking about the Money Pit, the film.

[00:28:21]Uh I think it was it was that Alexander Godunov was in that. Tom Hanks, Mako.

[00:28:32]You think there is a module base It It very well could be That thing's a mess.

[00:28:51]>> Ah, but anyway, um Did we mention the conductor in Die Hard?

[00:29:00]The conductor?

[00:29:03]The conductor in the I'm not sure I follow you.

[00:29:11]Oh, oh, yes. Yes.

[00:29:13]Uh yeah, Alexander Godunov character.

[00:29:25]Robert Philpsman I have a question for you, but I must ask you later.

[00:29:39]>> [snorts] >> You know, um local precinct house, uh someone broke into the police barracks and stole on the stole all the toilets.

[00:29:51]The cops have got some leads, but so far they don't have a thing to go on.

[00:30:02]Call of Cthulhu the most prominent publisher in the area is the is the Westchester house found in the Secrets of San Francisco circle. Very interesting.

[00:30:13]I'm I'm I've actually got an idea for um for Halloween's Call of Cthulhu game.

[00:30:29]Um it'll be more of a more of a gumshoe style Call of Cthulhu scenario, but it's not set in the '70s or '80s or '90s this time. We're we're going back much older.

[00:30:46]It may offend some people. I don't care.

[00:30:54]Ah, that's that's a good one.

[00:31:03]I don't know why they just didn't just make one based on the Winchester house.

[00:31:07]It's not like, "Oh, this place is on the registry of historical locations."

[00:31:12]Cool. I'm making you into a into a Call of Cthulhu adventure.

[00:31:23]Oh my goodness.

[00:31:32]So, what else is happening tonight?

[00:31:36]We made Jorge facepalm.

[00:31:43]What's a kidnapper's favorite shoe? I shudder to think. What is it? What is it, Sergeant Rock?

[00:31:58]Mike, go stand in the corner.

[00:32:02]White van Oh, that's good.

[00:32:05]>> [laughter] >> White vans, that is good. That's a good one.

[00:32:10]>> [laughter] >> Oh my goodness.

[00:32:15]Pair of white vans.

[00:32:18]That is very good.

[00:32:23]Daniel, go stand in the What do you get when you goose a ghost?

[00:32:30]I don't know, Rear Admiral. What do you get when you goose a ghost?

[00:32:40]>> Why did the female ghost leave social media? Everybody asked her to show her boobs.

[00:32:51]Handful of sheet.

[00:33:05]What do you I don't know. What do you do with the dead chemist? Bury him. Oh. I see I saw a barium but I missed I missed the wind up on that.

[00:33:13]>> [snorts] >> Barium. Oh my god.

[00:33:23]So anyway, yes. Uh I um I was mentioning this last night. I am excited about familiar.

[00:33:31]Uh I think it's going to I think it's going to do well. I I I think I think people are going to like familiar a lot.

[00:33:37]Um I am intimidated by the random dungeon generator.

[00:33:45]But uh I I I think it's going to be a a very very good application.

[00:33:55]And as I said, the way everything is going to be compartmentalized, I am I am outlining. People are like, "Oh, have you started writing?" I've started outlining is what I started doing.

[00:34:05]Cuz the minute the the the minute I came up with the idea for Crom, I don't even think I called it Crom at the time.

[00:34:18]But the minute I came up with it, I started writing code, which I should not have done.

[00:34:25]>> [gasps] >> I should have started planning.

[00:34:36]>> So, I'm I'm just I'm just going to carefully plan it. It's going to be just isolated modules. If something breaks in a module, I can go in and fix it, and it will fix it universally across the entire program.

[00:35:01]Don't forget air vents, toilets, and bathrooms. Yeah, no kidding.

[00:35:10]Watching Canadians doing portages, and then you realize the time you said Kram.

[00:35:17]By the way, if you're interested in Kram, if you're sitting out there in the audience, uh when did jokes become dad jokes? Uh I don't know.

[00:35:26]Um they become apparent.

[00:35:30]Mhm.

[00:35:37]You know, I was trying to get out of the parking lot at the circus, uh and I a a a trailer with two with two uh elephants on it backed into me. Um I'm not going to sue the guy. It was just a lock sedant.

[00:35:54]Did you guys hear about the uh the speech therapist who became a serial killer and they caught him? Yeah, he's getting the death penalty. They're going to electrocute him.

[00:36:05]>> [snorts] >> So, anyway, moving right along.

[00:36:13]Uh let me know if >> [laughter] >> Cuz I was like, No, that's it.

[00:36:32]>> Um Anyway, uh if anybody out there has not seen Crom and you want to see it demoed, um Working uh working on the game for me and a few others next spring. Well, that's cool, Die Don't Lie.

[00:36:50]Um But uh if there's anybody out there new to the show, new to the audience, cuz right now we have 52 of you beautiful people watching over on X and 31 of you beautiful people watching over on YouTube. Uh but you you haven't seen it yet. You don't know you keep hearing me say Crom Crom Crom Crom Crom, whatever. Um if anybody wants to see a demo of it, I'll demo it tonight. I have the the latest and greatest version up and running on this machine now.

[00:37:24]Uh I will gladly happily I'll laugh while I do it.

[00:37:29]>> [laughter] >> I'll get to play Thank you, Die Don't Lie. Can I make my character with Crom?

[00:37:43]>> [laughter] >> You're going to be disemboweled for that joke.

[00:37:59]Well, Die Don't Lie, you flatter me. You flatter me, sir.

[00:38:11]>> [snorts] >> But I'm looking forward to it.

[00:38:27]>> I picked up Neverwinter Nights on Xbox and if your PC won't work with yours, so you got the console version.

[00:38:33]Um I like that shell back. I like that a lot. 5E has mages at prom when he has mages made by Crom. That's right.

[00:38:54]Um I I think I have a physical copy of Neverwinter Nights sitting around here.

[00:39:01]Neverwinter Nights struck me as one of those things that I think it it went like there was so much potential with NWN.

[00:39:18]And I don't know of anyone who because what So, if if you never played it, never heard of it.

[00:39:26]Um Neverwinter Nights was like third edition computer game, third edition rules-based computer game.

[00:39:36]But it was completely open-ended in quest making, map maybe making, NPC scripting, magic item creating.

[00:39:46]It would let you create a digital D&D experience and then DM it for people on a LAN.

[00:39:54]It really is what Wizards of the Coast was trying to make for many many many many years.

[00:40:04]It it really was and it was incredibly flexible.

[00:40:09]Just like the gold box games were back in the day when they released the Frua Fantasy Realms Unlimited Adventures.

[00:40:21]But nobody glommed onto it.

[00:40:26]Like I still know people to this day that talked about downloading and people did total conversions. They did like Top Secret, Star Frontiers, Gamma World, um uh Metamorphosis Alpha for the uh for the Frua.

[00:40:51]And I mean people just just ate that up. But for some reason Neverwinter Nights despite I mean it came with a thick instruction book. The thing was like like 2 in thick.

[00:41:07]All the stuff you could do. You could build an entire dungeon and then just sit there and run it.

[00:41:14]I still don't know why they didn't just leverage that damn thing into a VTT, go right back to that company and say, "Now make it for fourth edition. Now make it for fifth edition."

[00:41:27]And just say, "Boom, there's there there's your VTT kit.

[00:41:34]Go.

[00:41:35]Have fun."

[00:41:46]Yeah, you'd have to run the Unlimited Adventures on DOSBox. I I think all of that is available through GOG and or Steam.

[00:41:57]I bought a bundle. Like like I bought them when they were all like 99 cents a piece on GOG and have them sitting around somewhere.

[00:42:15]>> I miss the Commodore 64, too. I I am kind of interested in and keen to see the Commodore 64 ultimate.

[00:42:25]Um and now I really want to get them.

[00:42:30]Uh I I I really want to get it.

[00:42:33]Uh I don't know. I thought Gunship was better, Sergeant Rock.

[00:42:41]Um Zack Melvin says because they're greedy and stupid.

[00:42:47]That that That may be the truth.

[00:42:54]But I I'm just aghast. Where were our fifth edition Like they they should have had a a gold box games run at every [clears throat] edition.

[00:43:18]But to swerve back to what I was saying about the Commodore 64, I I like that that new C64 ultimate that Commodores got out runs it up to 56 MHz. And why is that important? Like okay, uh there there were a fair few sim type games on the C64 and racing driving games on the C64 that were a pain to play.

[00:43:43]And it is not trivial to accelerate a Commodore 64.

[00:43:50]Crush, Crumble, Chomp or Mail Order Monsters.

[00:43:55]Sergeant Rock, that was from Epyx.

[00:43:58]They did draw a little bit of heat from Toho and from Universal because they had uh Uh, early versions featured King Kong and Godzilla as playable monsters.

[00:44:18]But, yeah, so the C64, there was Epic, Echelon, Cholo, um, I said Epic, uh, not Epic.

[00:44:31]Elite, sorry. Elite, Elite, Echelon, Cholo, uh, F-15 Strike Eagle, F-19 Stealth Fighter, um, uh, F-16, uh, Strike Fighter, uh, Gunship, of course.

[00:44:49]Um, all of the SubLogic sims, Thunder Chopper from SubLogic, um, which, of course, could use all the SubLogic data disks if you just wanted to fly your helicopter over wireframe approximations of of cities and terrain.

[00:45:13]Um, yes, the one with the lipstick, which was literally just a uh, it's That thing, I remember I got that for Christmas. That that rigid wire you that was supposed to be like a headset, it was not a headset.

[00:45:29]It was not a headset. It was coat hanger wire wrapped in plastic with a fire button that you would say, "Fire!"

[00:45:38]And it it is literally just a little sensor. You could you could keep it on your lap and tap it with your finger, which is what I ended up doing. B-17 Flying Fortress, that's another one.

[00:45:50]All of those games, all of those games, um, Test Drive 2, Test Drive and Test Drive 2, um, on the Commodore 64 had atrocious frame rates.

[00:46:07]Any of the Access golf games, the draw in on the 3D terrain was just murderously slow.

[00:46:20]Um The thing See, I did my best to make um to to make uh Echelon work.

[00:46:33]I didn't understand open-world games.

[00:46:37]I just I literally did not get My mind did not conceive of open-world games.

[00:46:43]And Echelon kind of gives you an entire planet to explore.

[00:46:53]>> [snorts] >> So, um So, playing those games on a C64 Ultimate, I think would be a lot of fun.

[00:47:14]So, like Jet Pilot from SubLogic, any of the SubLogic flight simulators otherwise, all the ones that I just mentioned, the golf games, anything that involved moving polygons around on the screen on the C64, crank up crank up the the uh the speed of the C64. The reason the C64 couldn't like There is a There is a guy who's created like a a 100 MHz FPGA for the 6502. It's a drop-in. So, like you got an Apple II, you plug it in. Now, there's latency because of the data bus.

[00:47:59]As far as the Apple II is concerned, that 6502 is running at 1 MHz.

[00:48:05]Or the Atari 800 or uh the various 6502 based chess games, but it really really really really really really speeds them up.

[00:48:16]The problem with the C64 is the VBI the raster interrupt all the system timing on the C64, what made it so good is very very tightly integrated. You can't just pop out the CPU and pop another CPU on.

[00:48:40]That's why making the C64 uh uh the super CPU the CMD made was so damn hard.

[00:48:55]It was so damn hard.

[00:48:59]And they charged a couple hundred bucks for one back in the day to run it like I think 12 MHz or something like that.

[00:49:13]And they they gave you like up to a couple of megs of RAM.

[00:49:17]Um and today, if you can find one in the open market, yeah, they're a couple thousand dollars.

[00:49:28]Now, I did love Star Raiders on the Atari, but uh Mike, you're absolutely correct about that. I played that on my brother-in-law's uh 130 XE and then on his ST, and I was like yeah, I just can't go home and drag the 2600 out and play it again.

[00:49:50]ColecoVision was peak.

[00:49:52]Damn near arcade perfect conversions for a lot of their software.

[00:49:58]Loved going to arcades, Gustav.

[00:50:04]Yeah, PHM Pegasus. I That was an Electronic Arts game. Play that on my C64.

[00:50:11]Loved it.

[00:50:18]I tell you as a as a war gamer, there was a game on the C64 or on the It was like only for like the Apple II, the Apple III, and Atari 8-bits that SSI made. I was always pissed off that we never got it on the C64.

[00:50:36]And um it was called Cosmic Balance.

[00:50:40]And Cosmic Balance was basically Starfleet Battles. It was It was the the Starfleet Battles war game for the Atari 8-bit.

[00:50:53]And it was Again, my my sister's husband had an 8-bit Atari. I'd go over there and spend a weekend and there were mission discs, shipyard discs. You could trade scenarios with people.

[00:51:10]And it was a lot of fun. It was an incredibly fun war game.

[00:51:28]But um yeah, they never released it for this the for the 64.

[00:51:38]But anyway, yeah, so that's got me thinking a lot about the the Commodore 64 Ultimate.

[00:51:45]A lot of those games.

[00:51:48]What I would probably do and what I recommend you do in this case is if that's if you think that's going to scratch an itch, download an emulator and download it in an abandonware game that you think you'd like to play.

[00:52:04]See how it plays.

[00:52:06]Tweak the C64 emulator so it runs in a turbo mode and see how Jetpilot or F-15 or Gunship play.

[00:52:23]Yeah, the C64 was great for cartridge-based games. The I I will tell you this, the best the absolute best Defender arcade conversion was on the Atari 800. I very very briefly I had an Atari 800 but no disk drive for it.

[00:52:44]I had a 800 and a data set.

[00:52:46]I don't want to go into the reasons why.

[00:52:52]But very briefly I did have one.

[00:52:55]And I borrowed Defender from a guy at school. And I kept it for like a month.

[00:53:02]That game was so good on the Atari 8-bit.

[00:53:11]Excuse me, I had a Wait.

[00:53:14]No, I had a 600XL.

[00:53:21]Okay, so this is the weirdest thing in the world but hear me out, Mike. The best home port of Battlezone the best looking, the best playing was on the Vic-20.

[00:53:35]I don't know how they did it. They faked wireframe graphics and it just works.

[00:53:44]It just works.

[00:54:02]And they made it work with one. The Vic only had one joy port on it, so.

[00:54:07]Timer suck right Yeah.

[00:54:13]I'm trying to remember the last time I went into like I think at the local AMC they have like a Terminator something video game and then there's a a uh um uh a light gun um Jurassic Park game.

[00:54:36]And that's it.

[00:54:39]But I remember that cluster of arcade games, man, that was in every movie theater.

[00:54:49]Uh not the one from the early 1990s.

[00:54:52]Uh the one uh Mike is um Uh the one today has uh >> [sighs and gasps] >> It it's it's it's based on Terminator Salvation, I think.

[00:55:08]Operation Wolf. That was a good one.

[00:55:16]Oh, what was the other one from Taito that was basically a thinly veiled rip-off of Alien?

[00:55:23]What was that one?

[00:55:24]I love that game. I could throw quarters down that game all day.

[00:55:31]Heavy Barrel. That's not the game that I was I was thinking of. Um Uh actually I think it's just called Space Gun.

[00:55:39]Space Gun. But, uh, Heavy Barrel was was uh, a great great great great great game. I loved Heavy Barrel. When I finally got Heavy Barrel running on MAME, I was in heaven. Being able to beat Heavy Barrel I mean, yeah, infinite quarters, but still, you know.

[00:56:02]Best D&D-style action game other than the D&D games themselves, uh, for my money, was Black Tiger.

[00:56:14]Loved Black Tiger.

[00:56:16]Side-scrolling beat-'em-up game.

[00:56:19]Um, beautiful sprite work.

[00:56:23]Hidden rooms, secret side dungeons, stores where you could buy uh, weapons.

[00:56:34]Oh, Tempest. Yeah.

[00:56:38]I loved Tempest that where they just they basically said, "This is utterly abstract.

[00:56:47]You're not flying a spaceship, you're not you're not moving a guy around the screen.

[00:56:53]That you're just you're just moving this thing. Story, we don't need that.

[00:57:00]You're just moving through geometry."

[00:57:12]Yeah, Tempest without a dial is just like, "Why?"

[00:57:19]Ah, Satan's Hollow. That was a good one.

[00:57:25]First arcade game with filled solid 3D polygons was I, Robot. And we had an arcade here in the Orlando area that had one. That was a very, very, very limited game.

[00:57:41]Um, you guys talking about timers in games, I, Robot had a, uh, what they call the ungame. You could enter the ungame at different points in the game.

[00:57:55]And it was literally just a painting. It was a painting tool. You could pick polygons and use them as stencils and paint around.

[00:58:03]But you did not have enough time.

[00:58:07]You did not have enough time.

[00:58:15]And you know what's funny? Of all of the arcade companies, uh, Namco, Taito, uh, uh, you know, Bally Midway, um, God, who else?

[00:58:37]Williams, um, >> [sighs] >> I'm trying to think.

[00:58:46]And and and even even Atari, um, none of them took their arcade boards except for one company.

[00:59:00]None of them took their arcade boards and said, "Let's package this in a computer and sell it to people at home."

[00:59:09]Increase the RAM, clean up the logic boards so it's maybe only two instead of like five, and give them the like a programmable full arcade experience at home.

[00:59:27]Except for a company called Exidy.

[00:59:31]The Exidy Sorcerer.

[00:59:34]Um that thing like if you had a fully kitted out Sorcerer you had a beast of a computer.

[00:59:42]You basically had something about as wide as a Commodore 128.

[00:59:47]Cuz you had full keyboard and numeric keypad, but there was an S100 expansion box you could get for it that you could put hard drives on a modem, printers, everything else.

[01:00:03]The Exidy Sorcerer was a a just a just just a phenomenal phenomenal little thing and not too many people heard of it. It It hit big in France.

[01:00:25]It hit big in France.

[01:00:29]Um that's one of those you got to go dig through back issues of Creative Computing to find ads for, but nobody really did anything with a Sorcerer like Exidy made their arcade games for the Sorcerer.

[01:00:43]That that was like one of the their their generic arcade board inside of a computer case.

[01:00:53]And you could get um just a lot of their early titles for it.

[01:01:05]What was it that It was the Exidy Sorcerer.

[01:01:12]Anyway.

[01:01:14]Um I have waxed on now we've completely wandered and lost the plot. Um I am probably going to wrap up here. I'm trying to get back to normal sleep patterns and that means uh getting to bed on time. So, I want to thank you guys all for hanging out uh very much with me.

[01:01:35]Um, tonight we had 63 you guys watching on X, 30 watching over on YouTube and I appreciate that. We're going to be back tomorrow night, guys. We're going to be back playing We're going to be back playing uh our continuing play through of S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks with an almost all evil party. I say almost because we got another player joining us and he might not roll up an evil character, but it will certainly be uh interesting. So, uh thank you all. If you haven't already, again, subscribe, click the like button, give us a thumbs up. We love it to pieces.

[01:02:16]Uh I will see you all tomorrow. Be there for some uh for some Gamma World cuz if you're not, I'll send an Owlbear in power armor after you. Peace.

[01:02:30]Have you seen my Owlbear?

[01:02:32]>> [music] >> Here's to all the weirdos [singing] everywhere [music] in the woods and in the air. Have you seen my Owlbear?

[01:02:47]Should I shave off all my hair?

[01:02:50]Bobs are all around. Some live in tunnels underground. [music and singing] Some are fat, some are rich, some are sleeping in [singing] a ditch.

[01:03:00]>> [music] [music] >> Can you ride a crooked horse without [music] a saddle way off [singing] course?

[01:03:13]Make it as a toad all the way to Smokey [music] Joe's. Have you seen the little creep driving fast in his little green jeep [music] he smells like fish and brandy but his rotten teeth look deadly Take me to the show I don't care if fast or slow for the action flicks and dancing [music] chicks just take me to the show >> [singing]