I never get tired of that Bill Gates in Doom clip. Trying so hard to look cool while being awkward, babbling and so unfocused that he forgets that guns have triggers.
Awwww, I think it's super cute. Although he should have gone whole hog and dressed up as a space marine. And they should have used squibs so that he was covered in blood after shooting the bad guy.
Lol the clip of Bill Gates in Doom and then shooting a demon saying "don't interrupt me..." I wish companies nowadays didn't take themselves so seriously.
He definitely had some skill… I’ve never managed to shoot in that stance and without touching a trigger… while at the same time making my target lol. But I get what you’re saying, true.
AHh yes, remmeber buying nhl 94 for the PC, 4mb or ram it needed, thats what we had, but there wasnt enough... apparently it need a full 4mb and after windows loaded there wasnt enough, even rebooting in DOS mode didnt help. My dad ended up buying another 4mb of ram, ($200 at the time equivalent to $330 today which isnt a small upgrade) and finally we could play... Loved windows gaming!
I personally didn't encounter huge problems, some sure, but anyway the biggest issue for me was that 95 was simply too slow platform/I didn't have the bleeding edge computer at that very time. 98 indeed had gotten so much better than I virtually didn't mourn dos gaming at all. Those damned config.sys and autoexec.bat tweaks.
worst thing was managing memory. i still don't get why it was so hard for the damn computer to use its own memory. things ran about 30% worse under windows 95 on my 486 dx4. that overhead kinda became irrelevant when i upgraded to a pentium 233. was more like 5% then, so not a big deal.
@@GraveUypo Well. One thing to keep in mind is that W95 was new gui and it was still a weird mismash of old (the very legacy) and new memory management.
i remember both the top down jurassic park game and x-wing having massive problems. my dad and i spent hours just getting those games to run. i think rebel assault ran ok (if i remember correctly) but we did have to upgrade something get dark forces to run. it was a very different time, and doing almost anything on the computer felt like a pain. but of course that was the point of view of my eight year old self at the time.
@@jack.h99 well yeah they realised depending on Microsoft, especially now they’re pushing Xbox and PC games on their marketplace, was a really bad idea.
DirectX was the umbrella term which included DirectSound, DirectMusic, DirectInput etc and also DirectDraw which was the name of the actual graphics interfaces.
It was an interesting time to own a computer. Ataris and Amigas hadn't completely gone away and the PC even by 1995 wasn't that well supported for games. If you dumped your Atari for a PC like I did it was a rude shock to find shelves full of flight sims and golf games. Wolfenstein and then Doom eased the pain somewhat but mostly I fell back on PC ports of titles I knew from Commodore and Atari. I still favoured DOS and most devs used extenders to simplify the memory management so all was good. Then Tomb Raider came along. The first six months I played it under DOS. It was ok but the graphics were very pixellated to put it mildly. Then I played it with an Orchid Righteous 3d accelerator under Win95. No more games running under DOS for me.
It was a great time to own a PC! There was so much on the cutting edge of tech and it was becoming more and more affordable. My experience was similar but I never ditched my SNES and PS1. PC had what was very rare on consoles and that was strategy games. C&C, C&C:RA, Conquest of the New World, Close Combat 2&3, Empire Earth, Warcraft III, Heroes of Might and Magic 3, Starcraft, Anno 1602...etc. It was packed with fantastic strategy games. Homeworld was what brought me to 3D. Oh man, gonna go play some old strats I got from GOG =) Cheers mate!
By 98 I had discovered emulation and could play my NES games, game gear, and genesis games on the keyboard, and my parents weren’t fighting me for the tv. And then I got a gravis game pad... Plus Myst, Sim City 2000, Sim Copter, Tie Fighter, Combat Flight Simulator, Mech Warrior, Rebel Assault I and II, dark forces... The experience lived up to the hype. My computer was suddenly stronger than consoles when we put 8MB of ram into the pentium 100, where the argument that consoles were dedicated and therefore more powerful suddenly collapsed.
I had a Pentium PC CD system in 1994 and thought the PC was rich in games and the 3D era kicked off. Far better than the Amiga and ST. I thought the quality and number of games was awesome. 1995/1996 was rich in new 3D games. Duke 3D, Quake, Descent, Doom 2, System shock, etc etc
I remember hearing that Direct3D, possibly other parts of DirectX, was purchased from another company. I do know that once we got VGA and the 386-486 CPU, PCs started to be able to do what game consoles could. An NES emulator running on the 486 proves it
In theory emulation is a tad bit slower and the MIDI audio may not be true to it’s intended chip like the Yamaha YM2612 that the Sega Genesis used; but you’re 100% right, if implemented correctly the power was unmatched! The truth is that a well coded emulator has always been damn close and they’ve only gotten better over time! I was shocked how close a handheld Genesis that works through chip emulation has become, sure I noticed the audio had more shimmer like it was trying too hard, but to me there was no lag whatsoever and the games played great!
@@JohnDoe-xh5wp Aww shit, so Halo Infinite is on Switch? And Gears Tactics? Even Forza Horizon 5? And Psychonauts 2? As well as Hellblade 2? And Age of Empires 4? Along with Flight Simulator? And Grounded? We can't forget about State of Decay 2? How about Sea of Thieves? Or Gears 5? Oh! You mean just Minecraft and Ori! Are the 'most' games on Switch
@@wendured5358 halo infinite is on pc, psychonauts 2 is on ps4, forza 5 is on pc, gears tactics is on pc, hellblade 2 is on pc, aoe4 is on pc, flight sim is on pc i believe, grounded is on pc, state of decay 2 is on pc, sea of thieves is on pc, gears 5 is on pc. understandably all the pc games are available through game pass (i think exclusively in most cases) but your jab at the switch and their comment is absolutely useless because you just proved that pretty much no xbox games are exclusive anymore. just because its not on switch doesn't mean its dead outside the xbox.
You are nitpicking a lot... Imagine you couldn't play games one year newer than your gpu or you couldn't play nvidia games on an amd card. Also, in the 90s, sometimes things just refused to work for no apparent reason.
@@Phenom98 what? Im still living life like that, with my gtx 980ti and fx6350 with 24gb ram and windows 7, i still get that sometimes, and I get 100+ fps average but with 1% lows of 10fps... chop chop...
@@RedPillRachel Not really the same. Before you'd be lucky to get 60fps, then the next gen of games would be below 10fps on average if they ran at all, you were required to upgrade your hardware along with the times for gaming.
I've been working my way through your backlog and I've almost watched everything so now I'm starving for new content. I was happy to see a new video :D Your the britsh LGR 😊
I’ve always thought it seemed a little lazy just to take the colloquial name from around the water cooler and turn that into the official name. Kinda also underlines then-Microsoft’s strategy of, if there’s a market out there that we don’t control, throw Windows at it until everyone else gives up. I’ve accepted Xbox into my console collection now, but it took over a decade to warm up to the idea that MS wasn’t just in it to see if it was lucrative, and then out just as fast if it wasn’t.
I've always had a memory of the Windows 95 game disc from when I was a child, but could never figure out what it was. Thank you so much! This is actually the third time you've helped me find something like that, first, it was Alien Breed 3d for the amiga cd, then it was Einhander for the ps1, now this!
I remember playing Quake 1 on DOS and Windows 95, the difference was huge. Convinced me to stick to DOS for the time being. With Quake 2 there was no option and I had to take the plunge to Windows 95/98. Avoided the first generation of 3D Acceleration. Did take the plunge with my Riva 128ZX.
Just wanted to say I love your documentaries and how professional they've become. Your gentle English accent is soothing to my American ears. I'm grateful to get to learn more about niche retro computing topics.
Demo discs were a huge part of influence in that time. I remember playing the hell out of some demo discs for the Dreamcast and PC. My most fond demo memories were House of the Dead, Ready 2 Rumble, and Power Stone.
Demo discs were a huge reason why both PC and console gaming was still somewhat cheap in the 90's and early 2000's. Sure nobody would bother with such anymore today but the return of demo versions on Steam and Nintendo's eShop tell me that developers and publishers actually noticed the need for those by consumers.
@@MegaManNeo you hit the nail on the head with companies that still dip a toe In the demo waters. It truly does encourage a buy with non flagship titles.
As a DOS gamer you didn't exit Windows 95/98 or use a BOOT menu. You disabled the autostart of Windows 95 by addiung [Options] BootGUI=0 Logo=0 to the MSDOS.SYS. Then if you needed Windows, you tipped in WIN, just like old times. :)
I'm just surprised WinG is still functional on modern windows. The only thing that it really hates is the Open/Save windows dialog, which no longer exists in the API.
@David McGill I’m pretty sure the Nostalgia Nerd explained why all these legacy programs still technically exist even though they’ve long since been made redundant by newer innovations in software and hardware. Something to do with not messing up anyone running older software that still calls on some of this legacy code to function properly as well as avoiding weakening the bedrock that modern Windows is built upon due to it evolving all the way from some of the earliest incarnations in the 3.x era in a similar fashion to Bethesda’s Creation engine.
Microsoft: Don't buy a console Also Microsoft: Check out our new console Another thing about the Don't Buy A Console headline was that computers were way more expensive than they are nowadays and far more expensive than a console. Also, unlike nowadays where every console gamer also has a PC, back then it was more likely that a console owner only had a console.
Your not "running" adverts - you are pitching a product you are a pitchman you produced your own custom ad reads. Its another level I would never have thought so many people would be into being pitchmen on youtubes
Interesting that they developed DirectX to bridge all the different PC configurations, then made Xbox using DirectX, which has exactly one configuration :D
In Finland computer magazine called Mikrobitti made few shareware collection CDs. Same programs and games they had on their BBS, but now everyone had easy access.
I remember demo floppies before that. And demo audio cassettes for the C64. And downloading files from BBSs before those. And typing software in from magazines before all that. Man…. I’m old. :-P
I wish you mentioned that microsoft partnered with sega to create the dreamcast, back in 1998, but after the dreamcast flopped in 2001, they decided to go on their own with the xbox,however sega was eventually making games for the xbox among other systems as well.
This was one hell of a trip down memory lane! Thank you! BTW, I was working as tech support for Gateway (Think: Cow spots) towards the end of Windows 95 through Windows Me and we had a game room with about a dozen networked PCs to use during breaks or off-hours! They were all high-end PCs as opposed to their lower-end “Select” and “Essentials.” They worked great when they were in fact working, but were feisty little beasts when they were not! It was a very interesting era for computing let alone gaming. We’ve come a long way since. Cheers! ✌️
Surprised you didn't mention Doom95 had a 640x480 highres mode. The Win95 era of non3d accelerated games was a weird time. So many games released with a dos version too. Win95 released without DirectX was probably a mistake
When I saw that Ultra 64 sticker on the N64 I remembered how unbelievably excited I was as a young teen for all of that stuff. The anticipation and the joy of getting a new console, new games with all those fancy new graphics...life was just so full of wonder back then. Nowadays I still look forward to stuff sometimes, but it's so different and a lot less fulfilling.
The _Windows 95 lunch party_ was held in *Redmond,* not Seattle, according to the city printed on the event ticket. Which makes sense, since Microsoft is headquartered there.
Folks often say "Seattle" because it's very close and better known. Same like when people say something is in DC, but it's really in Northern VA, or say it's in Boston when it's actually just outside the city. Also: I want a lunch party. :)
@@Psychlist1972 I know, but it's still false information, which is unacceptable. Also, to everyone else, they probably served food there, so maybe "lunch party" is still accurate. XD
Holy crap! I remember the first disc from when I was a kid! I spent forever going around that ship and finding its secrets. Thanks for the nostalgia trip.
DirectX 3 was the first actual version that made me think this all might work out. Though it wasn't until DirectX 4 that that beachhead was fully secured.
This was insightful to me. After the 8-bit era I was a resolute console gamer and had no interest in PCs (consoles offered more of what I was looking for in games), but this was a good look at seeing how the other half lived. :)
@@mikakorhonen5715 I guess you own an iPhone? Might want to take a look at the history of steve jobs. People need to stop painting Gates in these colours, back then it was the wild west of technology, it was a new frontier and people set out to make their stake in it in any way they could. It was all new, no direction on what was acceptable or not. Some succeeded some didn't. Gates was hardly the worst of some of the people out there at the time.
@@RC-nq7mg or today, if you consider how the vaporware salesman who "founded" Tesla gets away with outright fraud. Is it just me or does the government seem to hold grudges against AT&T and Microsoft for no good reason?
I love that demo disk space lounge based on Star Citizen for Windows 95. I knew they had been devoloping that game for a long time but, wow. Great video once again, thank you.
After the 8 bits I bought into the Amiga system and finished up owning a 1200 with a hard drive. When the Playstation came out that was me, how could anyone resist Ridge Racer and Wipeout, sold up and bought into that system. I followed the tech press and the PC market was a minefield. I was into my driving sims so when the magical combination of Grand Prix Legends and Windows XP (with full USB plug n play support) came out it was time to jump systems again, I was tired with Grand Turismo 4 (now on PS2) and was looking to get my teeth into a 'real' challenge. I have run both Sony and PC systems since that day.
I had a very similar history, except I went from spectrum to playstation (some years in the British army intervened). I then went to PC gaming and my son's had consoles. I went back to consoles with the PS3 and Xbox 360. I now mostly game on a PC again.
@@handlesarefeckinstupid Have you tried Grand Prix Legends? It is the 1967 F1 season, the last without aero. It is all about mechanical grip, four wheel drifting and lots of learning. Some of the cars can be driven in Assetto Corsa, the Lotus 49 and the Ferrari 312 F1. They are challenging to say the least but ultimately rewarding. Similar cars are available in R-Factor 2.
Ahh the good ole days of running MEMMAKER.EXE and fiddling with CONFIG.SYS, AUTOEXEC.BAT with HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.EXE to squeeze those extra few KB of memory to get different games to run... i don't miss those days at all 😂
I got a Compaq Presario for Christmas 1995. For a year I couldn't play ANY Windows 95 games because of DirectX shenanigans. After a year I decided to completely format my hard drive and install a clean copy of Windows (which came on 30 floppy disks that I had to create myself because the computer did not come with Windows on a CD), and lo and behold, there were no issues with DirectX.
My first time playing Doom 95 was on Windows 98 with a 4 meg 3D Dlaster PCI card with a Cyrex 133 I think. It was the only version I ever played. It to me was amazing. We went from 3.1 to 98. It was a good runner for me at the time. I was 12 so computers became the #1 gaming platform for me after that. We still had NES, SNES and SEGA Genesis as well. After Doom 95 was Space Marines I think that's what it was called. Was sorta like War Hammer maybe.
Do not buy a console? Dude, back in 1996, a N64 cost about $200, a gaming PC would cost about $2000-$4000 (in 1996 prices, no less) it was for rich kids. Thats why most people bought consoles.
Man, I remember our old DOS PC when I was a kid. It didn't even have Windows 3.1 on it, and the 5" floppy disks were actually floppy. My uncle was a computer coding nut, and he set up a navigation menu system for my 5yo self that used the F-keys to navigate so I could get to my games. Like Mixed Up Mother Goose (which was actually really fun) and a Barbie coloring book game. It also had a version of Klondike that would allow you to cheat, and if you won it would pop up and say "You won, but you cheated!!". _Those were the days._
We had the game Privateer and for whatever reason the Tandy Computer we had required a very specific code editing sequence in DOS in order for the game to run, not sure where we got the printed paper of 20+ pages from, but once we lost it, we couldn't run the game anymore.
I remember feeling like a genius discovering the easter egg on Demos 95, where you throw the coins at a hidden door until you can open it and it shows you the developers and some bonus games (I think.)
I remember trying to play the damn Lion King demo on a W98 machine and during 2nd or 3rd level it would always just crash out. It ran okay otherwise, but had a lot of bugs.
When I was a kid in the '80s, Commodore (CBM) used the same advertising campaign using William Shatter. "Why buy a game machine when you can own a computer?" It worked on my parents.
On 95 I played mostly shockwave games in school. When we got a 98se family PC, I played Starcraft, Warcraft I & II, and Diablo I & II. I also lived off of IRC, mp3s and flash until I got into Ragnarok Online. Then XP was out by then.
I remember that game sampler cd. It had a 30 minutes demo credit system. My friend found a way to unlock the timer and alot of the games would freeze and error out at the end of the demos game software, they really were in progress demos some weren't even debugged it seemed
Back in the days before DirectX, I worked on some DOS games, and we'd just write directly to video memory, which was, IIRC, always at 0A000h on PC's with a VGA card. And for input I had to write my own keyboard interrupt handler. This was only a year or two after I'd stopped programming the Amiga, which required the same sort of hardware banging, so it was all very familiar, albeit a bit more clunky. The graphics and input weren't so much the problem, since they at least had an established standard. It was the sound that required the most work and was a nightmare to cater for all the different cards. It wasn't like the Amiga where you could rely on every computer having the same sound hardware. DirectX made things so much easier. It became almost embarrassingly simple.
What I hated was needing Direct X updates on a computer that didn't have an internet connection - it meant rummaging around CDs looking for one with a more recent Direct X!
I remember that Station X sampler CD. There was a game on it called Drowned God which I really enjoyed. It took me ages to find a copy of the full game but I eventually got it. Great times.
There was a q&a in gamepro magazine where someone asked if Nintendo and sega would ever work together and the editor replied that the reader would never see sonic on a Nintendo system.
Things changed so much and so quickly back then, which gfx card to get? what CPU is best value for gaming? enough memory? need a bigger monitor! oooo need a PC case with a side WINDOW !
@@Claudius_Nero Yeah pushing the Xcloud and phasing out hardware is probably the next evolution. Not really down for cloud gaming until it improves more but I like Gamepass. I still buy the games I want but having a library of stuff to try all the time is really nice. Also great for kids because they can find new games without me having to drop more money.
There was one drawback with DOS when it came to RAM. DOS had the infamous 640k limit which some games overcame by using extended memory manager. But the biggest advantage was Windows 95 ran in protected mode and we finally had access to all of the computer RAM installed. DirectX was not very easy to program compared to VESA extensions or OPENGL for 3D which were far easier to learn and program. I think Microsoft missed the boat, DirectX should have shipped with every copy of Windows 95.
that loading sound track for the Manhattan space station... Wow, that hit my nostalgia hard. how many weekends did I burn on that CD? I could never get my folks to buy any games. It wasnt until a trip to Bali and all the pirated CD's that I could afford myself that I started gaming seriously in windows. there was a hot trade in dos games on floppy in the schoolyard. I feel bad for how much a pirate I was, but it was the only way. as a kid, I only knew ONE person who owned boxed games. n he was twice my age.
Our first PC was a Packard Bell with Windows 3.1 on it. I felt I became somewhat of a pro at DOS as a result, but was hugely disappointed when I learned that Quake 2 would only run on Windows 95. Maybe it was for the better, because as I recall, I would've had to delete basically half of the computer's hard drive in order to install it--took like ~250MB of disk space, as I recall.
I wish the Win95 era hadn't passed me by. I went from Windows 3.1 to 98. I would have been thrilled by those sampler discs, as I kept looking for 3D games but was limited to cheap games. Sure, these were just demos, but I rarely played games to the end anyway. Eventually I got my 3D gaming fix with N64 HLE emulation.
GUIy malarkey... yes, I was both HW and SW centric and when 95 came out and was forced onto many platforms, including test equipment, I switched to most/only HW. I didn't want to mess with that messy GUI and API's. So I stayed in the DOS universe until it just wasn't possible anymore. (Including early Windows, such as Windows for Workgroups, etc.)
The windows 95 game lobby "game" is weirdly similar to the Devolverland Expo but for full games... think Puppetcombo did something similar as well but in a VHS tape spooky compilation kinda way (as they would)
I guess I now understand why things like 1,000 best games for Windows existed. To show off what was possible and to prove an OS can be your main gaming platform.
I never get tired of that Bill Gates in Doom clip. Trying so hard to look cool while being awkward, babbling and so unfocused that he forgets that guns have triggers.
No, he was just preoccupied trying to decide which wetsuit to wear from which wardrobe on his billion dollar yacht.
@Newsbender This is true
He was actually there to visit is friend Jeffrey E.
@Newsbender we had dinners, and he's dead, so, there's really nothing new there - Bill Gates
Awwww, I think it's super cute. Although he should have gone whole hog and dressed up as a space marine. And they should have used squibs so that he was covered in blood after shooting the bad guy.
Bill Gates as a character in Doom was the most unexpected part.
He is a demon alright 😂
Wait...U NEVER SAW IT?!
What about "Led by Microsoft's Gabe Newell"?
unexpected part is him shooting without pulling the trigger.
Could be Quake.
Always loved how within a few years microsoft went from "don't buy a console" to "buy our console"
It would be really funny for a competitor to bring this up nowadays!
If you can't beat them, join them
"a few years" almost 10 years
And is now, "Buy our console. Or don't. We'll sell you the games on PC or console. Doesn't matter to us."
and gaming has died forever drowned be remakes of sequels of hd releases of reboots number 57 of the same damn game but with different skins
Lol the clip of Bill Gates in Doom and then shooting a demon saying "don't interrupt me..." I wish companies nowadays didn't take themselves so seriously.
Nintendo kind of did that for a while with their Nintendo Directs, with the big executives doing little skits
He definitely had some skill… I’ve never managed to shoot in that stance and without touching a trigger… while at the same time making my target lol. But I get what you’re saying, true.
I'm reminded of how much of a pain it was at times to just get a game to run properly without problems. Patches, fixes, wrappers. Missing .dlls
AHh yes, remmeber buying nhl 94 for the PC, 4mb or ram it needed, thats what we had, but there wasnt enough... apparently it need a full 4mb and after windows loaded there wasnt enough, even rebooting in DOS mode didnt help. My dad ended up buying another 4mb of ram, ($200 at the time equivalent to $330 today which isnt a small upgrade) and finally we could play... Loved windows gaming!
I personally didn't encounter huge problems, some sure, but anyway the biggest issue for me was that 95 was simply too slow platform/I didn't have the bleeding edge computer at that very time. 98 indeed had gotten so much better than I virtually didn't mourn dos gaming at all. Those damned config.sys and autoexec.bat tweaks.
worst thing was managing memory. i still don't get why it was so hard for the damn computer to use its own memory.
things ran about 30% worse under windows 95 on my 486 dx4.
that overhead kinda became irrelevant when i upgraded to a pentium 233. was more like 5% then, so not a big deal.
@@GraveUypo Well. One thing to keep in mind is that W95 was new gui and it was still a weird mismash of old (the very legacy) and new memory management.
i remember both the top down jurassic park game and x-wing having massive problems. my dad and i spent hours just getting those games to run. i think rebel assault ran ok (if i remember correctly) but we did have to upgrade something get dark forces to run.
it was a very different time, and doing almost anything on the computer felt like a pain. but of course that was the point of view of my eight year old self at the time.
looking back now, the time between Win95 and 98 releases feels like an entire decade
“Don’t interrupt me”
I fear for my life
"Led by Microsoft's Gabe Newell" - Something about that sentence is seriously cursed.
How so?
Edit: Oh. Just figured it out whilst taking a shit. He owns Valve now.
Considering Valve's spent a good amount of resources into proton so they can unofficially port every windows game to linux, yeah it is
@@jack.h99 well yeah they realised depending on Microsoft, especially now they’re pushing Xbox and PC games on their marketplace, was a really bad idea.
Gabe was onboard the moment they said the title wouldn't be doom 3
Was there a Games Sampler 3 CD?
DirectX was the umbrella term which included DirectSound, DirectMusic, DirectInput etc and also DirectDraw which was the name of the actual graphics interfaces.
So what about Direct3D?
"DOS is dead", ships os that runs on top of it
It was an interesting time to own a computer. Ataris and Amigas hadn't completely gone away and the PC even by 1995 wasn't that well supported for games. If you dumped your Atari for a PC like I did it was a rude shock to find shelves full of flight sims and golf games. Wolfenstein and then Doom eased the pain somewhat but mostly I fell back on PC ports of titles I knew from Commodore and Atari. I still favoured DOS and most devs used extenders to simplify the memory management so all was good. Then Tomb Raider came along. The first six months I played it under DOS. It was ok but the graphics were very pixellated to put it mildly. Then I played it with an Orchid Righteous 3d accelerator under Win95. No more games running under DOS for me.
It was a great time to own a PC! There was so much on the cutting edge of tech and it was becoming more and more affordable. My experience was similar but I never ditched my SNES and PS1. PC had what was very rare on consoles and that was strategy games. C&C, C&C:RA, Conquest of the New World, Close Combat 2&3, Empire Earth, Warcraft III, Heroes of Might and Magic 3, Starcraft, Anno 1602...etc. It was packed with fantastic strategy games. Homeworld was what brought me to 3D. Oh man, gonna go play some old strats I got from GOG =) Cheers mate!
@@Alakazzam09 square and hex based strategy games were my favorites, too
By 98 I had discovered emulation and could play my NES games, game gear, and genesis games on the keyboard, and my parents weren’t fighting me for the tv. And then I got a gravis game pad...
Plus Myst, Sim City 2000, Sim Copter, Tie Fighter, Combat Flight Simulator, Mech Warrior, Rebel Assault I and II, dark forces...
The experience lived up to the hype. My computer was suddenly stronger than consoles when we put 8MB of ram into the pentium 100, where the argument that consoles were dedicated and therefore more powerful suddenly collapsed.
Civ, Railroad Tycoon, SimCity, Champ Man. It was amazing!
I had a Pentium PC CD system in 1994 and thought the PC was rich in games and the 3D era kicked off. Far better than the Amiga and ST. I thought the quality and number of games was awesome. 1995/1996 was rich in new 3D games. Duke 3D, Quake, Descent, Doom 2, System shock, etc etc
These excursions into Nerd history are my favorite.
I remember hearing that Direct3D, possibly other parts of DirectX, was purchased from another company.
I do know that once we got VGA and the 386-486 CPU, PCs started to be able to do what game consoles could. An NES emulator running on the 486 proves it
Ah yes, Nesticle.
In theory emulation is a tad bit slower and the MIDI audio may not be true to it’s intended chip like the Yamaha YM2612 that the Sega Genesis used; but you’re 100% right, if implemented correctly the power was unmatched! The truth is that a well coded emulator has always been damn close and they’ve only gotten better over time! I was shocked how close a handheld Genesis that works through chip emulation has become, sure I noticed the audio had more shimmer like it was trying too hard, but to me there was no lag whatsoever and the games played great!
And till this day, Microsoft still says: "Don't buy a console, if it's not an Xbox"
Technically they only care if you buy Game Pass. Most of their titles are also on Switch and Steam as well.
Well, all companies say "buy our products, not their products"
@@JohnDoe-xh5wp Aww shit, so Halo Infinite is on Switch? And Gears Tactics? Even Forza Horizon 5? And Psychonauts 2? As well as Hellblade 2? And Age of Empires 4? Along with Flight Simulator? And Grounded? We can't forget about State of Decay 2? How about Sea of Thieves? Or Gears 5?
Oh! You mean just Minecraft and Ori! Are the 'most' games on Switch
@@wendured5358 halo infinite is on
pc, psychonauts 2 is on ps4, forza 5 is on pc, gears tactics is on pc, hellblade 2 is on pc, aoe4 is on pc, flight sim is on pc i believe, grounded is on pc, state of decay 2 is on pc, sea of thieves is on pc, gears 5 is on pc.
understandably all the pc games are available through game pass (i think exclusively in most cases)
but your jab at the switch and their comment is absolutely useless because you just proved that pretty much no xbox games are exclusive anymore. just because its not on switch doesn't mean its dead outside the xbox.
Back then: Demo discs, magazines, whacky af internet sites
Today: Micro-transactions, youtube ads, DLCs
I kinda prefer the old days...
youtube vanced, piracy
@@SimonBauer7 Also AdBlocker
You are nitpicking a lot... Imagine you couldn't play games one year newer than your gpu or you couldn't play nvidia games on an amd card. Also, in the 90s, sometimes things just refused to work for no apparent reason.
@@Phenom98 what? Im still living life like that, with my gtx 980ti and fx6350 with 24gb ram and windows 7, i still get that sometimes, and I get 100+ fps average but with 1% lows of 10fps... chop chop...
@@RedPillRachel Not really the same. Before you'd be lucky to get 60fps, then the next gen of games would be below 10fps on average if they ran at all, you were required to upgrade your hardware along with the times for gaming.
I've been working my way through your backlog and I've almost watched everything so now I'm starving for new content. I was happy to see a new video :D
Your the britsh LGR 😊
Seriously underrated comment
He is our the 8 bit guy... Lgr sucks. Lol
@@Trev794 LGR sucks?
No, it's awesome.
@@ezioauditoredafirenze5453 dude lgr and the 8 bit guy are basically negbours it was a joke. I love both channels.
@@Trev794 you don't know what a joke is then if you wrote that and it was supposed to be one... Sorry to tell you that xD
the fact that "xbox" isn't just some name they chose because it sounds cool caught me off guard
The full name is DirectXBox which obviously sounds stupid as a selling product but it shows very well the routes of the system.
I’ve always thought it seemed a little lazy just to take the colloquial name from around the water cooler and turn that into the official name.
Kinda also underlines then-Microsoft’s strategy of, if there’s a market out there that we don’t control, throw Windows at it until everyone else gives up.
I’ve accepted Xbox into my console collection now, but it took over a decade to warm up to the idea that MS wasn’t just in it to see if it was lucrative, and then out just as fast if it wasn’t.
Video’s like these are the reason I keep coming back to this channel
I've always had a memory of the Windows 95 game disc from when I was a child, but could never figure out what it was. Thank you so much! This is actually the third time you've helped me find something like that, first, it was Alien Breed 3d for the amiga cd, then it was Einhander for the ps1, now this!
RIP Eric Engstrom. Apparently died last year from liver damage after accidentally taking too many painkillers when injuring his foot,
I remember playing Quake 1 on DOS and Windows 95, the difference was huge. Convinced me to stick to DOS for the time being. With Quake 2 there was no option and I had to take the plunge to Windows 95/98. Avoided the first generation of 3D Acceleration. Did take the plunge with my Riva 128ZX.
happy 20th anniversary, Windows XP!
Where does the time go?
FeelsOldMan
I miss it so much I might dual boot it
Still the GOAT operating system.
I feel old
Just wanted to say I love your documentaries and how professional they've become. Your gentle English accent is soothing to my American ears. I'm grateful to get to learn more about niche retro computing topics.
Demo discs were a huge part of influence in that time. I remember playing the hell out of some demo discs for the Dreamcast and PC. My most fond demo memories were House of the Dead, Ready 2 Rumble, and Power Stone.
Demo discs were a huge reason why both PC and console gaming was still somewhat cheap in the 90's and early 2000's.
Sure nobody would bother with such anymore today but the return of demo versions on Steam and Nintendo's eShop tell me that developers and publishers actually noticed the need for those by consumers.
i loved FPS demos because usually you could port levels into them and play them no problem, basically turning the demo into a full game
@@MegaManNeo you hit the nail on the head with companies that still dip a toe In the demo waters. It truly does encourage a buy with non flagship titles.
I can still hear the music from the demo disk 1 for PlayStation.
As a DOS gamer you didn't exit Windows 95/98 or use a BOOT menu. You disabled the autostart of Windows 95 by addiung
[Options]
BootGUI=0
Logo=0
to the MSDOS.SYS. Then if you needed Windows, you tipped in WIN, just like old times. :)
The second I saw what you were typing into that DOS prompt I had a huge wave of nostalgia. Love Tie Fighter.
I'm just surprised WinG is still functional on modern windows. The only thing that it really hates is the Open/Save windows dialog, which no longer exists in the API.
@David McGill I’m pretty sure the Nostalgia Nerd explained why all these legacy programs still technically exist even though they’ve long since been made redundant by newer innovations in software and hardware. Something to do with not messing up anyone running older software that still calls on some of this legacy code to function properly as well as avoiding weakening the bedrock that modern Windows is built upon due to it evolving all the way from some of the earliest incarnations in the 3.x era in a similar fashion to Bethesda’s Creation engine.
@@Jolis_Parsec It explains the jank and vulnerabilities too
Microsoft: Don't buy a console
Also Microsoft: Check out our new console
Another thing about the Don't Buy A Console headline was that computers were way more expensive than they are nowadays and far more expensive than a console. Also, unlike nowadays where every console gamer also has a PC, back then it was more likely that a console owner only had a console.
Your not "running" adverts - you are pitching a product you are a pitchman you produced your own custom ad reads. Its another level I would never have thought so many people would be into being pitchmen on youtubes
Interesting that they developed DirectX to bridge all the different PC configurations, then made Xbox using DirectX, which has exactly one configuration :D
🤣
Never owned an Xbox, but can you play any games online with PC users?
@@MrTaxiRob
Originally such compatibility was rare, but these days it's common.
@@OriginalPiMan p.
Oh man I remember getting pc gaming magazines with demo cds in them.
Now you like if you even get the box or cover
ruclips.net/video/u9jm0y4GNqs/видео.html
In Finland computer magazine called Mikrobitti made few shareware collection CDs. Same programs and games they had on their BBS, but now everyone had easy access.
I remember demo floppies before that. And demo audio cassettes for the C64. And downloading files from BBSs before those. And typing software in from magazines before all that. Man…. I’m old. :-P
The MacFormat shareware CD's were like 60% of my childhood gaming at the very least.
I am so excited to watch this after work. I love all your videos. ♡
12:20 ... Uhhh Mortal Kombat 11 was made by Netherealms... Monolith's most recent games have been the two Shadow of Mordor games.
MORDOR KOMBAT!
This was a really good episode took me right back to my youth with Dos, and my adolescence with Windows 95 / 98.. great job on the video
I wish you mentioned that microsoft partnered with sega to create the dreamcast, back in 1998, but after the dreamcast flopped in 2001, they decided to go on their own with the xbox,however sega was eventually making games for the xbox among other systems as well.
There's a lot to that situation. Pretty sure there's been a few videos about it.
ruclips.net/video/lWGiHgTdLBc/видео.html
This was one hell of a trip down memory lane! Thank you! BTW, I was working as tech support for Gateway (Think: Cow spots) towards the end of Windows 95 through Windows Me and we had a game room with about a dozen networked PCs to use during breaks or off-hours! They were all high-end PCs as opposed to their lower-end “Select” and “Essentials.” They worked great when they were in fact working, but were feisty little beasts when they were not! It was a very interesting era for computing let alone gaming. We’ve come a long way since. Cheers! ✌️
Surprised you didn't mention Doom95 had a 640x480 highres mode. The Win95 era of non3d accelerated games was a weird time. So many games released with a dos version too. Win95 released without DirectX was probably a mistake
When I saw that Ultra 64 sticker on the N64 I remembered how unbelievably excited I was as a young teen for all of that stuff. The anticipation and the joy of getting a new console, new games with all those fancy new graphics...life was just so full of wonder back then. Nowadays I still look forward to stuff sometimes, but it's so different and a lot less fulfilling.
Play some chex (not chess) quest, watch some kablaam on Fridays, life was good
@@braidena1633 you forgot the cat vids
@@hpsmash77 you mean going outside and watching neighbourhood cats?
@@mikejones-vd3fg oh yeah sry my bad
Try VR sometime. Life will be full of wonder again
The _Windows 95 lunch party_ was held in *Redmond,* not Seattle, according to the city printed on the event ticket. Which makes sense, since Microsoft is headquartered there.
A lunch party? That sounds like my kind of party.
Folks often say "Seattle" because it's very close and better known. Same like when people say something is in DC, but it's really in Northern VA, or say it's in Boston when it's actually just outside the city.
Also: I want a lunch party. :)
Launch* sorry about that
@@Psychlist1972 I know, but it's still false information, which is unacceptable.
Also, to everyone else, they probably served food there, so maybe "lunch party" is still accurate. XD
@@Schwarzorn Fair.
Holy crap! I remember the first disc from when I was a kid! I spent forever going around that ship and finding its secrets. Thanks for the nostalgia trip.
DirectX 3 was the first actual version that made me think this all might work out. Though it wasn't until DirectX 4 that that beachhead was fully secured.
Yeah and if I remember correctly, DirectX2 3:19 never existed, the number was skipper to 3 due to the introduction of Direct3D.
my opinion of babylon 5 for all these years has finally been verified, thank you!
don't blaspheme on B5 bro
I’m watching the newly-remastered B5 now! Still love it, over 25 years later. :-)
@@MrTaxiRob "Babylon 5 is a big pile of shit" ruclips.net/video/vpb1OXvNNMc/видео.html
This was insightful to me. After the 8-bit era I was a resolute console gamer and had no interest in PCs (consoles offered more of what I was looking for in games), but this was a good look at seeing how the other half lived. :)
Old man lmao
4:38 First time I've seen Bill Gates with a gun and in cosplay. He should have kept doing it at future MS announcements.
He was. Presenting pure evil corporate greed.
@@mikakorhonen5715 I guess you own an iPhone? Might want to take a look at the history of steve jobs. People need to stop painting Gates in these colours, back then it was the wild west of technology, it was a new frontier and people set out to make their stake in it in any way they could. It was all new, no direction on what was acceptable or not. Some succeeded some didn't. Gates was hardly the worst of some of the people out there at the time.
Are we not going to talk about how he held the gun by the barrel to shoot the monster?
There is a joke about Microsoft handling resources improperly in this scene somewhere lol
@@RC-nq7mg or today, if you consider how the vaporware salesman who "founded" Tesla gets away with outright fraud. Is it just me or does the government seem to hold grudges against AT&T and Microsoft for no good reason?
Every video is a fantastic lesson I wish I knew already. Thank you Peter.
I love that demo disk space lounge based on Star Citizen for Windows 95. I knew they had been devoloping that game for a long time but, wow. Great video once again, thank you.
After the 8 bits I bought into the Amiga system and finished up owning a 1200 with a hard drive. When the Playstation came out that was me, how could anyone resist Ridge Racer and Wipeout, sold up and bought into that system. I followed the tech press and the PC market was a minefield. I was into my driving sims so when the magical combination of Grand Prix Legends and Windows XP (with full USB plug n play support) came out it was time to jump systems again, I was tired with Grand Turismo 4 (now on PS2) and was looking to get my teeth into a 'real' challenge.
I have run both Sony and PC systems since that day.
I had a very similar history, except I went from spectrum to playstation (some years in the British army intervened). I then went to PC gaming and my son's had consoles. I went back to consoles with the PS3 and Xbox 360. I now mostly game on a PC again.
@@handlesarefeckinstupid Have you tried Grand Prix Legends? It is the 1967 F1 season, the last without aero. It is all about mechanical grip, four wheel drifting and lots of learning. Some of the cars can be driven in Assetto Corsa, the Lotus 49 and the Ferrari 312 F1. They are challenging to say the least but ultimately rewarding. Similar cars are available in R-Factor 2.
damn i need this cd back in my life, at the time i didn't speak English so i was unable to fully enjoy even the intro
10:06 That's some random B roll footage of a craft fair at the Oregon Convention Center.
Ahh the good ole days of running MEMMAKER.EXE and fiddling with CONFIG.SYS, AUTOEXEC.BAT with HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.EXE to squeeze those extra few KB of memory to get different games to run... i don't miss those days at all 😂
*I bloody love when you do these history type videos like this! keep them coming, mate!! cheers! Please do more Amiga stuff too* 💪💪
I got a Compaq Presario for Christmas 1995. For a year I couldn't play ANY Windows 95 games because of DirectX shenanigans. After a year I decided to completely format my hard drive and install a clean copy of Windows (which came on 30 floppy disks that I had to create myself because the computer did not come with Windows on a CD), and lo and behold, there were no issues with DirectX.
The other day I found out that Fury3 runs natively in Windows 10 with pretty much no issues...
Wow, the original release? Amazing compatibility if so.
Microsoft : Don't buy a console
A few years later....
Microsoft : Buy OUR console. LOL.
My first time playing Doom 95 was on Windows 98 with a 4 meg 3D Dlaster PCI card with a Cyrex 133 I think. It was the only version I ever played. It to me was amazing. We went from 3.1 to 98. It was a good runner for me at the time. I was 12 so computers became the #1 gaming platform for me after that. We still had NES, SNES and SEGA Genesis as well. After Doom 95 was Space Marines I think that's what it was called. Was sorta like War Hammer maybe.
Do not buy a console? Dude, back in 1996, a N64 cost about $200, a gaming PC would cost about $2000-$4000 (in 1996 prices, no less) it was for rich kids. Thats why most people bought consoles.
This is true. Back in the day we would play games on a console or down the arcade. The only time I used a PC back then was at school.
Man, I remember our old DOS PC when I was a kid. It didn't even have Windows 3.1 on it, and the 5" floppy disks were actually floppy. My uncle was a computer coding nut, and he set up a navigation menu system for my 5yo self that used the F-keys to navigate so I could get to my games. Like Mixed Up Mother Goose (which was actually really fun) and a Barbie coloring book game. It also had a version of Klondike that would allow you to cheat, and if you won it would pop up and say "You won, but you cheated!!".
_Those were the days._
We had the game Privateer and for whatever reason the Tandy Computer we had required a very specific code editing sequence in DOS in order for the game to run, not sure where we got the printed paper of 20+ pages from, but once we lost it, we couldn't run the game anymore.
I love the look of those old Packard Bell monitors with giant speakers on the side
I remember feeling like a genius discovering the easter egg on Demos 95, where you throw the coins at a hidden door until you can open it and it shows you the developers and some bonus games (I think.)
I remember trying to play the damn Lion King demo on a W98 machine and during 2nd or 3rd level it would always just crash out. It ran okay otherwise, but had a lot of bugs.
When I was a kid in the '80s, Commodore (CBM) used the same advertising campaign using William Shatter. "Why buy a game machine when you can own a computer?" It worked on my parents.
Fury 3, B&B virtual stupidity and Dogz is peak windows 95 nostalgia for me, so many hours spent on all of those demos as a kid for me.
I love these old dives into forgotten history!
On 95 I played mostly shockwave games in school. When we got a 98se family PC, I played Starcraft, Warcraft I & II, and Diablo I & II. I also lived off of IRC, mp3s and flash until I got into Ragnarok Online. Then XP was out by then.
That Monolith demo was also distributed via Chip in Germany I think as HitWare disc.
The Windows 95 demo disc, fond memories! I'd forgotten it was done as a walk around game to load all the demos.
Don't buy a console. Buy a PC disguised as a console.
With half the functionality...
I remember that game sampler cd. It had a 30 minutes demo credit system. My friend found a way to unlock the timer and alot of the games would freeze and error out at the end of the demos game software, they really were in progress demos some weren't even debugged it seemed
Back in the days before DirectX, I worked on some DOS games, and we'd just write directly to video memory, which was, IIRC, always at 0A000h on PC's with a VGA card. And for input I had to write my own keyboard interrupt handler.
This was only a year or two after I'd stopped programming the Amiga, which required the same sort of hardware banging, so it was all very familiar, albeit a bit more clunky. The graphics and input weren't so much the problem, since they at least had an established standard. It was the sound that required the most work and was a nightmare to cater for all the different cards. It wasn't like the Amiga where you could rely on every computer having the same sound hardware.
DirectX made things so much easier. It became almost embarrassingly simple.
Dogz?!!!! What a nostalgic hit. I didn't get a Windows PC until 1998 and had Macs before then. Dogz was on Mac. I had it. And now I need it again.
That manhatten space station application looks as if it's running 3D Realms' Build engine.
Agreed! Did Monolith and 3D Realms have a relationship before they used the BUILD engine for Blood?
What I hated was needing Direct X updates on a computer that didn't have an internet connection - it meant rummaging around CDs looking for one with a more recent Direct X!
You ever get nostalgia so much it almost physically hurts? That browsing music on the ship 🤣 I need that. Where can I find that?
I remember that Station X sampler CD. There was a game on it called Drowned God which I really enjoyed. It took me ages to find a copy of the full game but I eventually got it. Great times.
The creator of Drowned God murdered his wife, killed their pets and then committed suicide. He stabbed his wife over 30 times.
@@EmergencyChannel Seriously? Fucking Hell!!!
There was a q&a in gamepro magazine where someone asked if Nintendo and sega would ever work together and the editor replied that the reader would never see sonic on a Nintendo system.
missed this era, first gaming PC for me was '98. Can't believe the fanfare they created for DirectX
HellBender is the game i've thought about for so long, but couldn't remember the title. thank you
Sample 2 "Includes English Internet Explorer 3.0" Well, for an ESRB-rated (thus USA) disc, you kinda hope it would be in English. :P
I know LGR reviewed Claw. Could you do a review if you played the game? Or Twinsen’s Odyssey
Thanks for sharing the archive links
Things changed so much and so quickly back then, which gfx card to get? what CPU is best value for gaming? enough memory? need a bigger monitor! oooo need a PC case with a side WINDOW !
Honestly think we are probably one generation away from Microsoft saying “Don’t buy a console, just stream games”
We're kind of already at "Don't buy/own your own games, just pay us a monthly fee forever via gamepass."
@@Claudius_Nero Yeah pushing the Xcloud and phasing out hardware is probably the next evolution. Not really down for cloud gaming until it improves more but I like Gamepass. I still buy the games I want but having a library of stuff to try all the time is really nice. Also great for kids because they can find new games without me having to drop more money.
Why spend £300 on a console when you can spend £3000-£4000 on a suitably-specced PC for 3D gaming in 1995?
I was always amazed about how much smoother the original iMac ran. Compared to any windows computer.
Thankfully I never listened to Microsoft. :-)
Same
15:45 what's the music in the background, it sounds extremely familiar.
There was one drawback with DOS when it came to RAM. DOS had the infamous 640k limit which some games overcame by using extended memory manager. But the biggest advantage was Windows 95 ran in protected mode and we finally had access to all of the computer RAM installed. DirectX was not very easy to program compared to VESA extensions or OPENGL for 3D which were far easier to learn and program. I think Microsoft missed the boat, DirectX should have shipped with every copy of Windows 95.
Were those menus using an early version of the Direct Engine, aka Lithtech?
"Bill Gates sure is a charming guy!" said no one.
that loading sound track for the Manhattan space station... Wow, that hit my nostalgia hard. how many weekends did I burn on that CD? I could never get my folks to buy any games. It wasnt until a trip to Bali and all the pirated CD's that I could afford myself that I started gaming seriously in windows. there was a hot trade in dos games on floppy in the schoolyard. I feel bad for how much a pirate I was, but it was the only way. as a kid, I only knew ONE person who owned boxed games. n he was twice my age.
Our first PC was a Packard Bell with Windows 3.1 on it. I felt I became somewhat of a pro at DOS as a result, but was hugely disappointed when I learned that Quake 2 would only run on Windows 95. Maybe it was for the better, because as I recall, I would've had to delete basically half of the computer's hard drive in order to install it--took like ~250MB of disk space, as I recall.
The same guy said "640K should be enough for anybody." 🤸🏿♂🤷🏿♂
Wow. This CRT Monitor... Back in the 90s in Germany it always seemed like 9 out of ten computers did have this exact model...
12:18 How goddamn slow was this? I'm looking at your sparkling glitter-lava-lamp-thingy and see the footage was sped up.
I wish the Win95 era hadn't passed me by. I went from Windows 3.1 to 98. I would have been thrilled by those sampler discs, as I kept looking for 3D games but was limited to cheap games. Sure, these were just demos, but I rarely played games to the end anyway.
Eventually I got my 3D gaming fix with N64 HLE emulation.
The moment when the mid video advertisement starts running and you don't mind.
GUIy malarkey... yes, I was both HW and SW centric and when 95 came out and was forced onto many platforms, including test equipment, I switched to most/only HW. I didn't want to mess with that messy GUI and API's. So I stayed in the DOS universe until it just wasn't possible anymore. (Including early Windows, such as Windows for Workgroups, etc.)
The windows 95 game lobby "game" is weirdly similar to the Devolverland Expo but for full games... think Puppetcombo did something similar as well but in a VHS tape spooky compilation kinda way (as they would)
I guess I now understand why things like 1,000 best games for Windows existed.
To show off what was possible and to prove an OS can be your main gaming platform.