Nostalgia Nerd

It's been a while! Good to see you again. Today I thought we could take a look at the 3D glasses of the early 00s'. Namely the X-3D Extreme 3D System and eDimensional E-D Glasses, which tried to conquer the PC gaming world with shutter technology, but failed... thankfully without being sold with the Nintendo Wii. That wold have been terrible on so many levels.

The humble computer mouse. It's an item we take for granted. We use it to navigate around our GUI. But there's an altogether darker use for the mouse, a use that may have slipped us by, but could have easily changed our lives for the worse (or better, depending on the outcome). In this video, I explore promotional novelty mice, and their effect on our lives.

Bert is Evil. Bert is Evil. Bert is Evil. Fortunately, saying it three times doesn't conjure Bert into your living room, but it does instil a sense of dread for anyone who witness Bert on the news, back in 2001, being paraded around in anti-American protests. But the story of Bert is Evil is much deeper than that, and begins way back in 1996 with FractalCow. So, let's get stuck in.

Max Headroom was a legendary AI character from the 80s. In 1987 however, a somewhat more controversial version of him appeared on Chicago TV at 9:14pm. Rather than a comedic and exaggerated host, this version was a weirdly unsettling hijacker, and the incident became known as the Max Headroom Incident. This hack/hijack/intrusion is something that has fascinated me for years, so here, I decided to cover the whole debacle.

Malware, computer viruses and computer worms are rife. They're so rife that antivirus software is now standard on Windows operating systems, and we're routinely advised to upgrade to something more "secure". But the origin of the computer virus, of computer worms may surprise you, because it wasn't actually from a malevolent desire at all. It was in fact born out of intrigue and the desire to actually help productivity, rather than destroy it. In this episode I'm exploring the Creeper Worm; created by Bob Thomas and Ray Tomlinson back in the 70s. But alongside Creeper, I'm also looking at Reaper, and a slew of other computer worms that were created by Xerox in the early 80s. Because without Creeper, Reaper and Xerox, our computing landscape would look very different today.

Recently I found myself at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany. Now Gamescom 2022 is the largest gaming convention in Europe, so it contains a lot of wonders. But one of the things that stood out was a bunch of Sega Electro Mechanical arcade machines nestled about. Now these machines are from the 60s and 70s, but are still great fun to play. They're also incredibly impressive, so let's take a look at gamescom2022 whilst taking a focus on these impressive machines.

Hello Darkness my Old Friend...and by that, I mean Hello Yahoo! Chat my old friend. You see, back in the 90s, Yahoo Chat sprang onto the scene, and it caused quite a commotion. For many, this was their first introduction to the world of chat rooms, and finding yourself suddenly in one was quite an experience. So we're going to take a dive into Yahoo!, Yahoo Chat, Yahoo Pager and, of course, Yahoo Pager to see just what those glory chat days held, and that sadly, includes much of the horror that it included.

Any fan of classic computing or retro gaming will have faced the "monitor" dilemma. Which screen is best for the various systems you have? Well to answer that call is this potential new monitor from Checkmate; A Retro Styled Modular IPS Display for old and new systems. Let's take a closer look at it before it's too late.

In 1993 screen shots of a game started appearing which promised to be the best fighting game ever made, if not, the greatest game ever made. The hype was insane.... That game was called Rise of the Robots, and although it was initially designed for the Amiga, it quickly spread to about every other platform in sight. We had Rise of the Robots Amiga, Rise of the Robots Sega Genesis, Rise of the Robots SNES, Rise of the Robots CDi, Rise of the Robots 3DO, Rise of the Robots on PC, even Rise of the Robots on the Game Gear... of all consoles. The problem was, it turned out to be an absolute turd. They lied to us through the power of marketing. In this video, I'll explore the story and just why Rise of the Robots was such utter baubles.

In 1984 there existed a company called Imagine Software. They went under the label of Imagine The Name of the Game, and they developed lots of games for machines like the Commodore VIC-20, Sinclair ZX81 and ZX Spectrum. But their best known title is one which never actually got published. It's a game that has become legendary for it's hype and promised offerings. That game was called Bandersnatch, and just like it's Netflix spinoff, the story of it is a whole world of adventure. So settle in and let's get ready to enter the Bandersnatch (whilst not forgetting Psyclapse), and see how it broke the dreams of an entire gaming generation.