34:00

Kit form so maybe they might have

34:02

like, you know a less destructive solution

34:04

They're just showing this as a as

34:07

a proof of concept Yeah,

34:09

I mean if it's if it's based on that, I mean,

34:11

I imagine if it this is like a retailer that's doing

34:13

it I mean, I'd imagine you give

34:15

them your wonder swan They'll open it up

34:17

They'll do the mod for you and by the looks of it

34:20

They'll put some kind of video output on there whether

34:22

it's HDMI whatever so you can plug it into your TV Which

34:25

is how I imagine they'll do this. But um,

34:27

yeah, I mean I always like seeing Handheld

34:30

systems because it is interesting when you see them

34:32

actually hooked up to a TV I was finding

34:34

interest in the sort of a Gameboy player. Yeah,

34:36

it's gonna blew my mind. It's like weird It's

34:38

cool. And so I do like seeing that and

34:40

apparently I was wondering kind of

34:42

how because you mentioned about that aspect ratio change

34:45

I wonder how you do that But

34:47

apparently hold down like start on the super Nintendo controller and

34:49

that changes it into vertical mode So

34:51

that would work on the screen. So yeah,

34:53

I mean it does look quite cool I

34:55

didn't realize quite how many the sell 3.5

34:57

million wonders ones. Yeah So

35:00

pretty well, it's just never got released elsewhere

35:03

Interestingly, but yeah, like I say as a teenager

35:05

my mate had them. It's so random So if

35:07

I get this fitted though, gotta have a trip

35:09

up to Tokyo, but you know, she wouldn't mind

35:11

that Joe You've loved it there didn't you? I

35:13

did I did love it there and we're all

35:15

about going again Maybe

35:19

wonder swans are much more available there and and

35:21

a bit less of a rare item Do

35:24

you remember pricing Joe? Did you see any of them when you're out

35:26

there? No, I can't remember seeing any

35:28

but I wasn't really on the hunt for them

35:30

But yeah looking on eBay if you want to

35:32

buy one in the UK about a hundred pounds

35:34

if you want to get one From Japan and

35:36

get it, you know shipped over you're looking about

35:38

50 quid plus shipping. Oh, okay. Cool Well,

35:41

if you've got one and you want it Hooked up

35:43

TTV looks like they're gonna be doing that throughout June and

35:46

July I'll link that tweet up if you can read Japanese

35:48

near in the area might be handy now

35:50

this one final story before we hop into our

35:52

chat with Ian Oliver and This

35:55

is something else I always like seeing as

35:57

well when someone takes a previously very popular

35:59

popular game mechanic and you know, franchise everybody

36:01

loved and kind of turns it on its

36:04

head and Swaps it around

36:06

a little bit because someone's actually

36:08

made Contra into a third-person shooter.

36:10

This is a Contra Reforged

36:13

this is very interesting. It's a

36:15

why I say it's a mod of Contra It

36:17

looks like it's been built from the ground up

36:19

Rob. Yeah in some sort of on

36:22

real engine or something like that but very

36:24

reminiscent of a very early

36:26

ps1 game graphically but

36:28

they've taken the graphics of

36:32

Contra one and kind of rebuilt them Into

36:36

a 3d third-person shooter. It kind of reminds

36:38

me of them You remember not Duke Nukem

36:40

3d, but like the one that came after

36:42

the theft auto Did you ever see that

36:45

which was you know, the grand theft auto

36:47

above you but in Duke Nukem 3d I

36:50

never saw that no, but it really reminds

36:52

me of Duke Nukem Well,

36:55

it reminded me of Duke Nukem anyway the

36:57

third time to kill time to kill about

36:59

with it Yeah, and it's a

37:01

recreation of the first level and

37:03

it looks really really interesting. They've used

37:05

all the sound effects

37:07

and Recreated the textures etc. And

37:10

you know you play as the blue Contra

37:12

guy. I can't remember their names running

37:15

around from behind and it's interesting because this

37:17

looks really playable and it looks really fun

37:19

and Contra has

37:22

never really had

37:24

the you know quite the Successive

37:27

on 3d platforms as it did on

37:29

2d platforms in the 80s and 90s

37:32

And obviously it uses all the original kind of

37:34

music and sound effects, which is hilarious actually

37:36

here in the area sound effects Yeah,

37:39

the only thing that annoys me a

37:41

little bit about it is I don't

37:43

understand why they've done this They've made

37:45

it auto-aim So as long as I

37:47

don't mind that as long as the enemy is within the

37:50

rather large Crosshair

37:52

circular crosshair of your gun, then

37:54

your gun will lock onto that enemy But when

37:57

it locks on it sounds like a microwave beeping

38:00

at you and it really takes

38:02

me out of the game. Uh, but

38:04

this is available to download for free and

38:06

you know, it's just the first level. It's about 10 minutes

38:09

long, but yeah, I think they've done a

38:11

better version of a 3d contra

38:13

than Konami ever did. Um,

38:15

I think it's been made by somebody

38:17

called retro lead and available on

38:20

itch right now. Looks really fun,

38:22

really daft, really easy as well

38:24

with the auto lock on. There you go, Dan. So

38:27

you've got a CRT filter as well, which

38:29

is quite nice to see. And obviously it

38:31

is a Konami title, so. They're

38:34

not charging anything for this. Obviously it's

38:36

only one level demo available for Linux

38:38

and windows. Um, yeah, it

38:40

does look like, wouldn't it be great if

38:42

they ported that to like the N64 or

38:44

something? Yeah. Honestly, it reminded me of early

38:46

PS1 graphics. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. N64, anything like

38:49

that. Evercade would be nice to see. So

38:51

if you want to get a hold of that and have

38:54

a little play, bit of a giggle this weekend, I'll link

38:56

that up. And of course, everything else we talk about, you'd

38:58

have to Google around. I save you the job every week.

39:00

Just check the notes on your podcast app or head to

39:02

the website. You can click straight through from the article at

39:04

the retro hour.com. All

39:06

right. Then before we chat to Ian Oliver, let's

39:09

take a quick moment to give a massive thank

39:11

you to one of our

39:13

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39:35

going to lots of events and, you know, we have got

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39:41

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40:04

You know, you need those these days because nobody carries cash

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40:37

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41:00

the show notes and get ready

41:02

to take your business to the

41:05

next level today and hear a

41:07

lot more of this. Alright

41:11

then well thank you so much for checking out the news

41:14

this week. We'll have more for you next Friday. A little

41:16

reminder and I know we ask this a lot but it

41:18

is a really easy way you can help

41:20

us out because we appreciate reviews don't

41:22

we on podcast apps and it's not just to mass

41:24

our jar ego although I will admit when we do

41:26

get a nice review which is you know thankfully

41:29

most of them Ravi always

41:31

takes a screenshot and sends them over and

41:34

you know whatever we're doing Geoff I mean you're out at work and you

41:36

just read that. There's a lot of spring in your

41:38

step doesn't it? A little smile on your face. Absolutely. Well

41:40

you're hard at work so we do appreciate those

41:42

but really the main reason that we like getting

41:44

their five-star reviews and nice comments is that it

41:47

helps us out in that all-important podcast algorithm. So

41:49

that means that pushes up the podcast charts gets

41:52

us in front of new people as well so you know

41:54

if you can't support the show on Patreon we completely appreciate

41:56

it. Everyone can. That's another way that you can really help

41:58

us out so we'd hugely appreciate that. local

1:14:00

hotel with loads of machines

1:14:02

set up, testing and testing and testing. They

1:14:05

couldn't give us any practical help. We carried

1:14:07

on using the PDS system, which was really

1:14:09

great on 8-bit. But when

1:14:11

it was adapted for 16-bit, it was

1:14:15

not adapted enough, so it was creaking at

1:14:17

the seams. So whenever we made a change,

1:14:19

it was taking us five minutes to see

1:14:21

the outcome of that change, which

1:14:23

is too long, really, in my opinion.

1:14:26

So we were struggling a little bit there. I

1:14:29

just remember the last few months of development as

1:14:31

being immensely painful. Partly

1:14:35

because we were trying to do something fairly

1:14:37

ambitious. Also, there were some bits we didn't

1:14:39

really know that well how to do and

1:14:42

we'd left them till the end, of course. And

1:14:46

we were having to do

1:14:48

the really, really difficult bits under immense strain.

1:14:51

Yeah, it had quite advanced AI

1:14:53

and strategy elements to it as

1:14:55

well for its time. It

1:14:57

did. And there had been some

1:14:59

remakes and I don't think any of the

1:15:01

remakes have ever fully captured what we were

1:15:03

doing there. Graham

1:15:05

and I were into the

1:15:08

fantasy role playing games, rolling

1:15:10

the 20-sided dice kind of thing. And

1:15:14

all of the kind of supply

1:15:16

structure, the links between the islands

1:15:19

and the routing of supplies

1:15:21

and the tactics of the enemy carrier,

1:15:23

they're all done for real. And

1:15:26

battles on islands are done for

1:15:28

real twice. If you're

1:15:31

at an island, we

1:15:33

unpack all of the structures

1:15:36

to do with the resource of the island and put

1:15:38

it into 3D and the battle occurs in 3D. And

1:15:41

if you then leave the island, we take all

1:15:43

of those 3D assets and we pack it down

1:15:46

to everything needed to carry on

1:15:48

doing it in a kind of stochastic, rolling

1:15:50

the dice way. And

1:15:52

there was a lot of effort involved

1:15:54

in that. And the enemy carrier was

1:15:56

making decisions on where to go to

1:15:58

be for supply lines. when

1:18:00

you move in between islands. PC

1:18:03

version, we had time

1:18:05

to work on all of the strategy

1:18:08

and really improve the AI and

1:18:11

et cetera, et cetera, and add a lot of new features.

1:18:14

But with it being a PC

1:18:16

in the very early days, the sound sucked. So

1:18:19

I actually worked a year or so back

1:18:21

with a guy who did

1:18:23

the entire right spy out of carrier command

1:18:26

with one of his guys to put

1:18:29

some more modern sound. OK,

1:18:31

by more modern, I mean, 90s sound into...

1:18:34

Not the PC speaker, yeah. Not the

1:18:36

PC speaker, no. To actually

1:18:38

do one of the very early sound

1:18:41

card support in there and fixed a

1:18:43

few codes in a code base. I

1:18:45

hadn't touched with 35 years, which

1:18:47

was great fun. You know, it's interesting, as

1:18:49

well, you mentioned about doing the ports there. That didn't

1:18:51

even cross my mind. That game came out on seven

1:18:54

different platforms, even the Mac. Are you

1:18:56

guys doing all the ports it has, then? The only one

1:18:58

we didn't do was Commodore 64. Yes,

1:19:00

we did them all. I

1:19:02

think I did the Mac version single-handed, including

1:19:07

modifying a Mac to have the development

1:19:09

interface, you know, piggybacking

1:19:11

chips inside it. Yeah,

1:19:14

we did them all. The

1:19:16

Z80 versions were done by Andy

1:19:19

Onions, and what a heroic

1:19:21

effort that was. I didn't think

1:19:23

he could do it, but he got

1:19:25

stuck in and he did the Spectrum 128

1:19:27

version. Yeah, we did loads of

1:19:29

versions. I've still got the contract for Carrier Command,

1:19:33

and we said we'd do it

1:19:35

in six months on eight platforms, and I can't remember

1:19:37

whether I signed it on the day

1:19:39

after or the day before my 24th birthday, but

1:19:42

yeah, that's how young we

1:19:44

were, and we'd already got an awful lot of released

1:19:46

games under our belts by then. Oh,

1:19:48

after real time, you founded a company

1:19:51

called Cross Products. What

1:19:53

kind of led you there? Well, there was

1:19:55

actually massive overlap. I

1:19:57

mentioned before we were struggling with

1:19:59

PDMs. on the 16-bitters. So

1:20:02

were Vector Graphics,

1:20:04

who were fairly

1:20:06

close to us in Leeds and ended up in the same

1:20:08

building. And I

1:20:11

think it was Andy Craven said, are we going to

1:20:13

be in the same situation in a year's time? Or

1:20:16

are we going to take control of our own destiny?

1:20:19

So I said, yeah, let's do our

1:20:21

own development system from scratch. And

1:20:25

we used some subcontractors, and we threw some

1:20:27

money in a hat. And we

1:20:30

started off cross products in

1:20:32

88, 89, basically

1:20:35

saying, let's take a completely different approach to all

1:20:37

of this and do it on

1:20:39

a PC and use

1:20:42

a far better way of doing links

1:20:44

to the computer using SCSI

1:20:46

links, it was, which is what

1:20:48

actually I added to a Macintosh. I added

1:20:51

a SCSI interface. So there was a massive

1:20:53

overlap between cross products and

1:20:56

real time. But real time, we were kind

1:20:58

of tilling it off a little bit, and

1:21:01

cross products were taking more and more of my time.

1:21:03

I think the one project I remember where

1:21:07

they kind of came together must have been in 1991. We

1:21:11

had got a contract

1:21:14

with Sega of America to

1:21:17

port a couple of Electronic

1:21:19

Arts PC games to the

1:21:21

Genesis slash Mega Drive. And

1:21:24

the games were Abrams

1:21:26

Battle Tank, which we completed, and

1:21:30

what was this San Francisco Racer 1? Racer

1:21:32

around San Francisco, something like that. Streets

1:21:35

of San Francisco, I think it was called, which

1:21:38

we didn't do because we just can get enough speed out

1:21:40

of the machine for racing

1:21:42

around skyscrapers. So we

1:21:45

got the contract. We got

1:21:47

some information from Sega. I

1:21:49

very quickly extracted the 68,000 CPU from

1:21:51

a Genesis and

1:21:56

added a piece of homemade hardware of

1:21:58

my own. You'll find pictures of it. of it on the

1:22:00

web. I did some big

1:22:02

stacks of RAM, I mean literally stacks of

1:22:05

RAM sold on top of each other in

1:22:08

place of a mask ROM and a SCSI

1:22:10

chip and wrote the code and got back

1:22:12

working with our own development system and

1:22:15

started working on the game. You

1:22:18

know, a few things were happening at once. I was

1:22:20

doing that Abrams battle tank game and

1:22:22

forging close to the solution with Sega of

1:22:24

America. We were

1:22:28

taking my hand built

1:22:30

prototype piece of hardware and making it into

1:22:32

a commercial product. And

1:22:34

I was getting close to the end of

1:22:37

Abrams. And this is the second project where

1:22:39

you felt it's almost writing itself. I

1:22:42

did it single handed. It

1:22:44

came together really quickly. I mean,

1:22:46

it was a port of a PC 3D game

1:22:49

to the Genesis. So it was never going to

1:22:51

be, you know, the next

1:22:53

Shinobi or the next Sonic the Hedgehog.

1:22:55

But it did very well. I'm quite

1:22:57

early on for Sega of America. And

1:22:59

in a book

1:23:02

that's been published about Sega of America, they can

1:23:05

both those are their credit to it was being the

1:23:09

Genesis game that

1:23:11

convinced that Sega of Japan. Well, actually, maybe these

1:23:13

guys do know what they're doing. Maybe there are

1:23:16

some decent coders out in the West. So

1:23:18

yeah, that came together well. But I

1:23:21

went out to San

1:23:23

Francisco for 10 days,

1:23:25

10 to three weeks to

1:23:28

finish the game. Took my,

1:23:30

you know, hand built load of junk

1:23:32

with me and sat

1:23:35

in the inevitable cubicle there and started coding

1:23:37

away, working on the bug list and adding

1:23:39

new features and what have you. And

1:23:42

people come back and go, Oh,

1:23:45

I shot this tank here with this weapon

1:23:47

and something disappeared. There was no explosion. It

1:23:49

was like, Oh, okay. Well, let

1:23:51

me have a look. And I went, well, the

1:23:54

reason for that is because I'm a muppet and

1:23:57

the piece of code for what happens when that hits that.

1:24:00

registers its died but doesn't do an explosion. So I'll cut

1:24:02

it all up, I'll just take that one there, put that

1:24:04

in there, da da da da da. And

1:24:07

I said, right, if you stay there and grab the

1:24:09

joystick, I've taken you to that level with invincibility, play

1:24:11

it again and check it works. And the

1:24:13

guy was like, what did you just do? And

1:24:15

I was like, Cody, Cody, Cody,

1:24:17

press button, code now running on console,

1:24:19

you test. He was like, that quickly,

1:24:21

he was like, yeah. And he went, okay,

1:24:24

I'm gonna go and get Bob. So

1:24:27

he goes off and gets Bob. So everybody ended

1:24:29

up coming by my cubicle to chat with the

1:24:31

strange English guy and see how the hell it

1:24:33

was I was coding so quickly for it. What

1:24:36

a great advert for your product though. It

1:24:39

really was. So over the next

1:24:41

few months, Sega

1:24:43

became my biggest customer for

1:24:46

Genesis Development Systems. We

1:24:49

had a close working relationship which

1:24:51

got even closer under really

1:24:54

strange circumstances. You

1:24:56

know, you've been running

1:24:58

your own small companies as a

1:25:01

scruffy engineer in Leeds

1:25:03

in the grim North for a decade.

1:25:07

And something strange

1:25:09

happens, which is electronic

1:25:11

arts get in touch and said, can you come and see

1:25:14

us down in somewhere grim like

1:25:16

slough? I can't remember. Cause we want to

1:25:18

talk about strategic relationship. So

1:25:20

we popped down to see them and we went, actually

1:25:23

the strategic relationship is we want to

1:25:25

buy your company. We're like, okay,

1:25:28

fair enough. Let's talk about

1:25:30

it. Oh, we can't. You need to go out to America

1:25:32

and talk to them. So,

1:25:34

well, actually we

1:25:36

are there next week. So yeah, we'll pop in and

1:25:38

see them. We'll see if anything happens. So

1:25:41

we're out in California the next week and we

1:25:43

popped into CEA and

1:25:46

I got in touch with a few of the people in

1:25:49

the Bay area, customers, et

1:25:52

cetera. And I spoke

1:25:54

to Joe Miller at Sega. I said, hi,

1:25:56

Joe, we're in the area. She

1:25:58

would pop in and said, oh, definitely. to

1:26:00

talk about strategic relationship. I thought,

1:26:02

okay. So we went to see

1:26:04

EA in the morning and EA

1:26:06

kind of went, oh yeah, we wanted to

1:26:09

buy your company, but you need to do all

1:26:11

the business plan and cashflow analysis to show that

1:26:13

it's gonna be a good idea. And

1:26:15

I kind of thought, I'm not sure it works that

1:26:17

way. It's like, why do we need to do that?

1:26:20

Well, we want to buy your company, but CD management

1:26:22

are convinced. And the easiest way is if you just

1:26:25

do a good presentation to show it's a good app. We

1:26:27

were like, okay. So

1:26:29

we said, we'll go for lunch. We might be back.

1:26:31

We didn't go back. And we

1:26:33

went to see Joe Miller at Sega in the

1:26:35

afternoon. He said, actually this strategic relationship is we

1:26:37

want to buy your company. And

1:26:39

here's the sum we had in mind. We're like, well,

1:26:42

that's more how it's supposed to be done. Some

1:26:47

professionalism finally. Yeah, some professionalism.

1:26:49

So yeah, in

1:26:51

94, Sega bought cross products

1:26:53

from us. Real time was

1:26:55

pretty much shut down by then. Abrams

1:26:58

was the last game I

1:27:01

personally worked on because

1:27:03

I was far more into cross products, which was

1:27:05

ramping up very quickly. And then

1:27:08

I went from being the aforementioned scruffy

1:27:10

engineering leads who'd always run his own

1:27:12

company to reporting into

1:27:15

Sega of America. And

1:27:17

they had bought us to do

1:27:20

the development tools for, we'd

1:27:23

already done Mega CD on top of Genesis

1:27:25

and things like that. And they wanted us

1:27:27

to do 32X and Saturn. They'd

1:27:30

made a start themselves and

1:27:33

some parts have gone well and some parts have

1:27:35

gone not so well. And they really

1:27:37

needed us to fix all of the not so well

1:27:39

parts, which we did. And

1:27:42

the tools kind of worked, but not as much as

1:27:44

if we'd had a blank canvas. But

1:27:47

I got on well with all of

1:27:49

the Sega of America people. I engaged

1:27:51

fully and was out there once

1:27:53

or twice a month and

1:27:56

was there all the way through the 32X and

1:27:59

the Saturn time. Were

1:28:01

those difficult times at SAGIX and other products

1:28:03

were even though they were innovative? Obviously they

1:28:05

didn't quite have the success in the West

1:28:07

that I imagine they hope. Yeah, there is

1:28:09

a book, I think it's called Gaming at

1:28:12

the Next Level, about the whole history of

1:28:14

SAGRE America and all of the struggles

1:28:17

and disagreements and nobody

1:28:19

quite knowing the right thing to do, but everybody

1:28:21

wanting to do the right thing. It

1:28:23

all comes out in the book. There were

1:28:25

difficult times, competition

1:28:28

was hot and in retrospect

1:28:30

you go, well, it's obvious they were going to be

1:28:32

the major competition and it wasn't obvious at the time.

1:28:35

And should SAGRE have done this,

1:28:38

should they have done that, should they have

1:28:40

gone straight for Dreamcast, this kind of thing?

1:28:42

Well, maybe. I don't have fond

1:28:44

memories of 32X and Saturn. We've

1:28:47

got development systems working for

1:28:49

them, but there were a big

1:28:52

muddle of a machine with lots and lots of processes

1:28:54

and buses and it was just a bit of a

1:28:56

mess. And Saturn

1:28:58

was never designed to do 3D and it

1:29:00

could be persuaded to do it,

1:29:02

but not easily and not efficiently and not

1:29:04

the way everybody else was

1:29:07

doing Polygon 3D. It

1:29:09

was made for those 2D arcade games

1:29:11

already. It was 2D, 2.5D. So, I

1:29:13

mean, you could do games like Sega

1:29:15

Rally Championship, but you had to be

1:29:17

really, really good. An awful

1:29:21

lot of companies did not have engineers who were good

1:29:23

enough to do that kind of thing. So

1:29:27

Dreamcast, it was a different

1:29:29

approach. There was, again,

1:29:31

an awful lot of disagreement in the early

1:29:33

days. And what

1:29:36

was interesting was there have

1:29:38

been earlier machines suggested

1:29:40

based around SH3E, which is an SH3

1:29:42

with a floating point unit, and we

1:29:44

actually started work on a

1:29:47

machine there. But then, you know,

1:29:49

the SH4 was mooted and Hitachi was

1:29:51

still in the design stage. And

1:29:55

the American side wanted to

1:29:57

put together a machine. based

1:30:00

on SH4 and the 3D effects

1:30:02

chipset. And the Japanese

1:30:04

side were far more in bed with

1:30:06

NEC who had a relationship

1:30:08

with PowerVR, you know, imagination technologies

1:30:11

as they became. And

1:30:14

both sides were courting us to do

1:30:16

the development system, which seems

1:30:18

strange because we were part of Sega. So you'd have thought,

1:30:20

well, we were part of Sega, so obviously we're

1:30:22

going to do it. Well, it wasn't that way. You

1:30:24

know, the Japanese side, it took quite a while to

1:30:26

convince that actually our way of doing things

1:30:29

was the right way to do things. So

1:30:31

we were working with both sides. So,

1:30:33

you know, we were getting prototypes of

1:30:35

things based on 3D effects from

1:30:38

one side and later on, actually

1:30:40

much later on prototypes based on NEC from

1:30:42

the other side. And, you

1:30:44

know, I wish I had that prototype with 3D effects

1:30:47

chipset in it. I went to find it to say,

1:30:49

I'm going to put this in my loft and sell

1:30:51

it on eBay in 30 years. And it disappeared from

1:30:53

wherever it was. Somebody else had a way with that

1:30:55

one. But I was going to say,

1:30:57

that'd be interesting to see because it's kind of a

1:31:00

proto dream. It would. But, you know, to

1:31:02

say it was a bunch of hardware just

1:31:04

to shake out the silicon, the SH4 at

1:31:07

the time, the floating point registers were right

1:31:09

only in that you could write to them,

1:31:11

but there was no read path, which isn't

1:31:13

that useful. So, you know,

1:31:15

it was early days for the chips, but

1:31:18

it became inevitable. The Japanese side were going

1:31:20

to win in

1:31:22

97. The ownership of cross products moved

1:31:24

to Sega of Japan. So rather

1:31:27

than me being scruffy engineer

1:31:29

reporting into an American company, I was

1:31:31

reporting into the Japanese side. So rather

1:31:34

than going to America once or twice a month,

1:31:36

I started going to Tokyo once or twice a

1:31:39

month. We started working

1:31:41

like Billio on

1:31:43

the Dreamcast development system. So

1:31:46

we were in all of the early

1:31:49

meetings where we

1:31:51

were feature stuffing the SH4 to add everything we needed

1:31:53

to do the job. So we added 20% to the

1:31:55

SH4 die size in kind of Sega

1:31:59

products. private features and going

1:32:02

through the whole fairly

1:32:04

painful Dreamcast development process really.

1:32:07

The development system wasn't painful, but

1:32:10

just everything had to be

1:32:12

done so quickly on Dreamcast and everybody

1:32:14

working on the silicon was having problems and

1:32:16

the GD Drive was a problem. But

1:32:20

we ended up doing all of the

1:32:22

development hardware, development software, the

1:32:24

emulator for the GD

1:32:26

Drive, the set

1:32:29

five development system, loads of the hardware

1:32:31

boards for that. We did the

1:32:34

code for building together the GD

1:32:37

Drive data structure so people could drop files

1:32:39

in and move things around and then we

1:32:42

did the code for burning that

1:32:44

onto the writable disks and a

1:32:46

mass disk duplicator. Sega were throwing

1:32:49

project after project at me,

1:32:51

particularly if it involved a

1:32:53

mixture of hardware, software, documentation,

1:32:56

you know, matter engineers, bit of software on

1:32:58

the PC, all that kind of thing. So we had

1:33:00

an awful lot going on in the Dreamcast development process.

1:33:04

Did it feel like a lot was riding on Dreamcast because

1:33:06

obviously that was, you know, their exit from the console market

1:33:08

after that didn't compete quite as

1:33:10

well as they hoped with the PlayStation 2, I

1:33:12

imagine. Did it feel like they were kind of

1:33:14

banking the farm on it a bit? It was,

1:33:17

as you say, banking the farm. It was, that

1:33:20

was the only gaming town. It

1:33:22

had to work. It probably deserved to

1:33:24

work. In many ways it was ahead of its time.

1:33:28

But I think relationships

1:33:30

with some of the big software

1:33:33

houses have been soured a little bit.

1:33:36

So Sega was very dependent on Sega

1:33:39

and not many other people for the launch

1:33:42

games. So Dreamcast

1:33:44

did okay. I saw that from memories

1:33:46

of the Dreamcast, but ultimately I think

1:33:48

we have to accept it was a

1:33:50

failure. For me personally

1:33:52

and for cross products, it was a

1:33:54

good time. When the

1:33:56

ownership of cross products moved to Sega, I

1:33:58

was reporting to some people. somebody who got

1:34:00

a tiny office about three levels down in

1:34:02

the building. Because

1:34:05

again, it was like, to

1:34:07

some of the higher levels were a bit of

1:34:09

an unknown quantity with these strange Westerners who'd done

1:34:11

this development system. And, you know,

1:34:14

we're not one of their big partners like

1:34:16

Zach's doing emulators. And I

1:34:18

just kept doing what was asked of me and delivering the

1:34:21

goods. And the

1:34:23

next thing you know, somebody says, oh, you don't report to

1:34:25

me anymore. You report to my boss's boss. And

1:34:29

shortly afterwards, I was reporting to

1:34:31

show it to a remusory who

1:34:34

had been brought in to manage

1:34:36

Sega, who was

1:34:39

president of Honda of America, a very

1:34:41

highly connected guy. So I was reporting

1:34:43

directly to a remusory, a remusory Sam.

1:34:46

And by the time

1:34:48

we shut down Dreamcast on the day we

1:34:50

announced it to the press, I

1:34:53

was fire them reporting directly to Hideki

1:34:55

Sato. And I was having a private

1:34:58

lunch with him in his office on the top floor on

1:35:00

the day we announced it

1:35:02

all. So what

1:35:04

memories have you got of that? Cause that must have been a tough

1:35:06

time. It was a tough time. And I

1:35:09

do wish I hadn't commuted back from the

1:35:11

office where in my Sega Dreamcast jacket was

1:35:13

cigarette across the back. But

1:35:17

that attracted some attention. I

1:35:19

kept having people go, hang on, hang on. Let

1:35:21

me get my microphone out of my backpack. It's

1:35:24

like, no, I'm not allowed to tell you anything.

1:35:26

I'm just a scruffy and engineer from Leeds who's

1:35:28

in the stolen jacket. Go away. It

1:35:31

should have bought a Sony jacket. Yeah. Some

1:35:33

kind of cover. So yeah, I was with Dreamcast throughout. It

1:35:36

was obvious after Dreamcast died

1:35:39

that Sega had

1:35:41

no more use for cross products and

1:35:44

they could have shut us down or they

1:35:46

could have said, break it up, get however

1:35:48

much money you can. And

1:35:50

they actually said, what we want is the

1:35:52

best for you and your team because you've

1:35:54

done everything we asked of you. We

1:35:56

can't give you an infinite amount of time,

1:35:58

but take the time you've got. need to

1:36:01

find a buyer for the company, try and

1:36:03

maximize the amount

1:36:05

Sega will get, but try and

1:36:08

keep your team together, you know,

1:36:10

if it has to be broken up, do

1:36:12

it. So they really worked well with me to find a

1:36:15

new home. It ended up

1:36:17

being with Imagination Technologies who did

1:36:19

the PowerVR 3D chip

1:36:21

in the Dreamcast, and

1:36:23

they had actually worked with me quite a bit.

1:36:26

So as soon as they found out that

1:36:29

we were up for sale by

1:36:32

October 2001, you know, a month

1:36:35

after, you know, the whole

1:36:37

Twin Towers thing, we put the

1:36:39

deal together. So 2001 until 2018, I

1:36:41

was with Imagination Technologies. That's

1:36:47

an incredible ride, you know, what a jet in

1:36:49

the industry. It

1:36:51

really is. I mean, you know, I read this book on

1:36:53

the history of Sega of America, and I was like, I

1:36:56

think I'm first mentioned in a chapter in

1:36:58

page 47, and I remember the whole

1:37:01

way through. So yeah, it was quite a

1:37:03

ride. And nothing planned.

1:37:05

It was just, you know, just, you

1:37:08

know, well, you know, that worked

1:37:10

or that didn't work. What now? And

1:37:12

that's amazing. You know, it's like, people say to

1:37:14

me, Oh, what's it like been a games designer?

1:37:17

I was like, well, my

1:37:19

whole games career is

1:37:22

kind of bracketed by two tank games.

1:37:24

There's Tank Duel in 94. And

1:37:27

there's Abrams Battle Tank in

1:37:29

91. And you know,

1:37:31

that's sort of like a seven year span. So

1:37:33

even being generous that I managed a few games

1:37:36

after Abrams Battle Tank, you know, you can say

1:37:38

maybe I had a 10 year career and you

1:37:40

might count some of the time

1:37:42

I spent doing hardware and software development by

1:37:44

Sega, albeit not on the game side as

1:37:46

part of it. But, you know,

1:37:49

I then spent 17 years with imagination

1:37:51

technology is basically working for a chip

1:37:53

design company. And all the

1:37:55

time, you know, I'm growing the team, you know,

1:37:57

I think the time when we're required by in

1:38:01

94, I think it was maybe 15, 16

1:38:03

people, built

1:38:05

that team up to 30, 40 people. And,

1:38:08

you know, with the magic, took a smaller

1:38:11

team into imagination, but

1:38:13

then they started growing a bigger team

1:38:15

around me. So I ended up with a team of 60

1:38:17

and 70 people on

1:38:19

four continents. And I do not know how

1:38:22

many countries, but when

1:38:24

I had to do my annual pay review spreadsheet,

1:38:26

it was in 11 currencies. You can imagine how

1:38:28

much fun that was. So

1:38:31

yeah, I mean, we talked about, did

1:38:33

I want to be an engineer or a manager? I

1:38:35

started off being an engineer and got lured into doing,

1:38:38

you know, pretty much full-time management, struggling

1:38:40

to be hands-on at work. You

1:38:42

can't avoid those spreadsheets sometimes, can

1:38:45

you? I really couldn't avoid those

1:38:47

spreadsheets. Spreadsheets, PowerPoints, you

1:38:49

know, giving big presentations to hundreds of people, you

1:38:51

know, that's where I ended up. What

1:38:54

are you doing these days, any of you? What am I

1:38:56

doing these days? Well, imagination

1:38:58

hit hard times after Apple

1:39:01

decided to kind of drop

1:39:04

the technology and imagination ended

1:39:06

up being broken up. And my side of

1:39:08

things, because we'd bought MIPS, went

1:39:11

through American venture capitalists who fairly early

1:39:14

on decided to close us down. So

1:39:16

2017, I was made

1:39:18

redundant, but

1:39:21

I'd always intended to retire on my 54th birthday.

1:39:25

And they made me redundant three

1:39:27

months before that. So that was

1:39:30

okay. Worked out.

1:39:33

That worked out, yeah. So that

1:39:35

bought me a Tesla, that was nice. And

1:39:39

since then, I've been happily retired, but

1:39:41

I've been actually getting back down to

1:39:43

far more Hens engineering, a

1:39:45

little bit of coding, but actually

1:39:48

quite a bit more electronics. Back

1:39:50

to your first love. Back to my first love.

1:39:52

So yeah, throwing solder around and trying

1:39:55

to work out why things don't work. But

1:39:58

I try and keep busy doing my work. own projects but

1:40:00

I've also been doing a thing called repair

1:40:02

cafe where you go along to

1:40:04

a community center and people turn up with broken

1:40:07

things and as

1:40:09

quickly as you can you try and work out why

1:40:11

it's broken and get it

1:40:13

working again so you know throwing salt

1:40:16

around swapping components hooking

1:40:18

scopes up to things and generally

1:40:21

learning a lot. Do people

1:40:23

bring many spectrums and Commodore 64s a lot? I

1:40:27

haven't had either of those. I've

1:40:29

had a Genesis. I have the

1:40:31

usual Nintendo switches, Xboxes,

1:40:35

yeah an

1:40:38

awful lot of other handheld ones which were absolute

1:40:40

pain to work on. A

1:40:43

Dreamcast. I actually had a Dreamcast that

1:40:46

wasn't reading its CDs a

1:40:48

couple of weeks ago so

1:40:50

yeah but you never know what's going to come

1:40:52

through the door. It's part of the thrill of

1:40:55

it really is just somebody puts something on your

1:40:57

desk and you either go right I've worked on

1:40:59

one of these before I've got a good idea

1:41:01

or you go please can you tell me what

1:41:03

this is? You can see that of a clue.

1:41:05

You might have

1:41:07

a few of our Yorkshire-based listeners now thinking hang on

1:41:09

I've got a game gear needs recapping. Do you

1:41:12

know if I've actually got my wife's game gear

1:41:14

on my bench next to me that needs recapping.

1:41:16

I heard there are pain are they? No

1:41:19

actually I've looked through the instructions that looks like

1:41:21

a dawglet it's just I haven't got around to

1:41:23

it yet. Well Ian it's

1:41:25

been absolutely amazing to hear you know your incredible

1:41:28

career like I said what a ride that was

1:41:30

so yeah we've crammed a lot into that hour

1:41:32

I really appreciate you coming on and doing some

1:41:34

reminiscing with us it's been incredible to talk to

1:41:36

you. Well thank you thank you very much and

1:41:39

I'll look forward to hearing their hearing the final

1:41:41

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