My first REAL Gaming Rig - Playing Wow in 2005

 

This was a beast back then, and I'll explain why.

     In 2005 I was already over a year into playing World of Warcraft with my wife. I use to own a small but well known PC Repair Business, which I sold my controlling stake to a friend, so I had no shortage of old and aging PC parts, monitors, keyboards, etc. Really common in the business sector at the time was Pentium 3 Coppermine gateway computers, so I had tons of them laying around. There was a well known FAQ how to get an extra 200-300mhz out of them, and really get them screaming for zero dollars spent. I had an entire box of used Geforce 2-4 video cards, so this was the PC's we rocked at the time for many, many years:

• Gateway Moo-moo box
• Pentium 3 Coppermine T, Overclocked to the tits
• Geforce 4 MMX (or shittier 2/3)
• 512mb ram
• Random sound card
• Random junk monitor

This would be an exact example of what my wife and I gamed on for a loooong time

     We had just moved into our first real house, and we wanted a baby, so money was super tight. I started taking computer jobs again out of the house. Replacing broken modems, selling parts, replacing hard drivers, easy stuff. Our Pentium 3's just screaming away in the office room in the front of the house, still playing WoW on 17 inch monitors. A big job got dumped in my lap from someone I use to get a lot of work from, these huge Dell Dimension Business Class PC's from 2005, brand new, four of them total. They needed to be set up, office installed.. nothing crazy. He dropped the PC's off to me, then came back to grab them about a week later, but with no payment. He promised to pay me in a month, next week, you name it. Needed it right now, and how important it was. We talked over a beer, and next thing you know, in lieu of payment, he offered me one of these brand new PC's. The specs:

• Dell Dimension Business E500 series?
• Pentium D (early Dual Core!) 3ghz
• 1.5GB Ram
• Dual AMD 1900XT Video Cards (why!?)
• Two hard drives
• Random Tape backup drive under DVD rom

    Insane luck. I needed the money, but I wanted this so much more. Instantly went from everything on Low settings and taking minutes to boot, to having the best of everything. This PC got me all the way to playing Skyrim in 2011, and beyond. A friend hooked me up with an old viewsonic 21 inch CRT as he was going the LCD route, and I took it in trade for some work. I was all of a sudden a high-end gamer, and it forever changed my outlook on having a high end gaming PC. For it's day, I did not know many people that even had performance video cards, the market was so small. PC gamers were the huge minority, and many games were just not available, or hard to get. I would later sell this PC, and use a free Core 2 Quad, which I bought two of from the State Library Auction, but that's a story for another day. 

Note: Before you say a Pentium 3 was not good enough, here is a picture from the original manual. We played on dialup by the way!

Vampire Hunter D - Full Movie!

 

Watch it for free on youtube now!

     Vampire Hunter D was on of those movies that I heard about in middle school, in the early 90's. "Hey, have you seen that crazy R Rated japan cartoon with the Vampires?" Suncoast Motion Picture Company had the goods, but holy hell did you have to pay. $39.99 for a VHS tape on the worst quality that you would pass around to all your friends, watch at sleepovers, and introduce tons of other people to the genre. I lump this movie up with Wicked City and Ninja Scroll- I watched them around the same time and felt like this was the more tame of the three. I was really into Vampire shit at the time, reading tons of Anne Rice, so this was icing on the cake.

NEC PC Engine LT - An interesting and very rare console way ahead of its time.

 

It's expensive and rare so I don't own one.

The NEC PC Engine LT was released in 1991, and it was an expensive Japanese only release then, so did not do well. For less money you could get the Turbo Express which had a way to connect to an external monitor and used batteries, where the LT needs an AC adapter to fully work. The trade off? Better quality backlit screen and compatibility with all your old gadgets and gizmos that hook up to the PC engine already. This console fits the same cradle as the Core Grafx, so could slot the Super CD Rom adapter, audio enhancer, different card readers for the three different kinds of CD roms you need, and the myriad of other add-ons that you don't really need, but want.

Interface unit! Super CDRom2! It's like a transformer. 

     Long before the release of the Gameboy Advance SP, you could play 16 bit (well, not quite) games on a backlit screen, play modern titles available on the SNES, and look much cooler doing it. 

People need to stop being so hard on the Sega Tower of Power.

     Sega did not have an original idea with adding more consoles and adds on to current systems, it was being done for a while. While NEC and Sega were building higher and more elaborate, Nintendo was adding full blown RISC processors, math co-processors, ram, DMA, flash memory, and custom sound chips to it's game carts and wrapping it up in the price of the game, as opposed to making cheap add ons as a requirement to play games. No surprise, if the game is more accessible, more people will purchase it, and so Nintendo won this war in a big way. Not to be outdone, it got way worse than just the tower of power; they even made a Laserdisc console system, PC computer combo units.. the list goes on and on and on. Even if you had your NEC Turbo DUO-R SuperGrafx with an Arcade Card, you would not be able to play any of the Fatal Fury games, or any of the rare titles, because they require the Arcade Card PRO. Don't forget a special controller that does not come with the console as well. You see where I'm going here. 

     I could go on forever about this, and I just might in another post. For now, enjoy more pictures of this unique handheld that inspired a whole marketing angle years later. 

r/bindingofisaac - We're taking over.

Hold R and pray. 

    I noticed a fun trend on r/bindingofisaac where people took increasingly shitty pictures of what was happening on the screen, and then asking a question of the community on how to solve said question. People are breaking out the worst possible flip phones and digital cameras from 20 years ago.. so I decided to grab some of my son's camera equipment that is already set up, and take a few pictures:

     Nothing is shittier and more deserving than actual VHS camcorder from JCPenny in the early 1980's. Beat that Isaac fans!

PS: I actually still play Isaac very often, and I'm a huge fan. 

Aeon Flux - Full Series & Notes

 

Ahead of it's time. Click the Tape to watch now!

     Aeon Flux, part of MTV's late night experiment, starting airing after midnight on the Liquid Television's late night block. If you were lucky enough to have MTV (A paid channel then!) and stayed up, then you were one of the few that got to be amazed. Totally rated R, full violence and gore, and the main character died in some strange way each episode, and seems to be aware that she is prone to dying over and over as evidence in the end of the second short.. Other than music and sound effects, there is no real voice acting going on. This is the first example of dystopian spy fiction that I can think of. Lots of feet licking (tons of licking in general across the series) fet-life worthy porn store vibes in the first episode that aired, which is worth noting I suppose. 

Concept Artwork was rad. 

     Peter Chung worked on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, and was fully involved in the creation and design of C.O.P.S., where you can really seen the design similarities. Rugrats was his design, and has that same gritty art style, but lacks the overall attention to detail and quality of Flux, showing how much he really wanted this to succeed as a passion project. I still have my original DVD compilation I paid over $100 at suncoast motion picture company all those years ago!

Labyrinth (1986) - Full movie.. and extras!

 

Not sure how long this will stay up. Click the titles above to watch now!

     I know I talk about Legend a ton, but Labyrinth was equally as important to me growing up as a child in the 80's. My son took a liking to it when he was young, and it was really a mind-fuck watching it with an adult set of eyes later on. Did you know David Bowie is always watching the main character throughout the movie?

Amazing, and also a little creepy.

     The soundtrack was equally as good. Very memorable, cool musical parts with muppet choreography by Gates Mcfadden of Beveraly Crusher fame.  You remind me of the babe. What babe?

Nearly as good as the movie itself.

     Amazingly, there was a feature length movie made about the making of Labyrinth that was very common on VHS back in the day, and even included on some versions of the tape: Inside the Labyrinth. Really cool look behind the scenes with the cast, Jim Henson, Steve Spielberg, and George Lucas even making appearances. Watch it for free here!

     One last oddity: Think Labyrinth by Walter Pullen.

Strange and amazing.. really.

     There is a fansite that has been up for 20+ years, made by a fan of the movie, and mazes in general. They once had the record for worlds largest maze, both hand drawn and computer generated. A real deep interesting rabbit hole of the time with custom maze generating software, pictures from magazines and news papers, and a very early look into some of the labyrinth marketing from the movie that people have no idea exist. 

Taco Bell.. Bring Back the Sante Fe Gordita.

Nothing has more urgency than this.

    I made a post on Reddit about it, and I created the petition in question. Taco Bell - Bring back the fucking Sante Fe and Baja menu again. Give us a reason to visit outside of the Luxe box options. Not even a new flavor of Baja Blast will bring me and my money back faster. 

• Reddit post
• Sign the Petition  

1991 TSR Trading Card Set (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons)

Premier! Counterfeit proof!

     In 1991 TSR sold packs of collectable cards that you could trade and have fun with, contained all the accurate stats and a bio on the back, and printed on good quality card stock with a hologram. All your favorite characters from all the popular books of the time, with items and "common" low level monsters and consumables of varying types. Rares were the main characters from the book like Drizzt and Raistlin, commons were ogres, goblins, and potions. Cards from this set have a silver border, cards from the packs have a gold border. 

This card would be considered uncommon

     750 cards in total, with the majority of them AD&D, Forgotten Realms, and Dragonlance. I noticed the art on the Ravenloft cards are in black and white, but still really fun to look at. Lots of the main characters come from the covers of popular books they were mentioned in.

So fresh, so clean, also.. musty.

     I found these on Facebook marketplace for $5 around 45 minutes north of me, from a storage unit sale. The guy that sold them to me was confused on why I would drive 45 minutes for them, but jokes on him, I would have drove further for less.

Front and back of some of the cards

     What a cool little oddity of the day. I'm really jazzed about seeing some of the lesser characters from the Clerics Quintet and Dragonlance series that I never had a visual to match to the person described in the books. It would have been badass being 12-13 again, playing AD&D with my friends, and having this cards as quick reference and a visual representation. 

Grayhawk & Spelljammer!

     I'm going to put these in a box and not look at them for a few years; I hope you enjoyed this little time capsule as much as I did. Comment below if you want to see more D&D/TSR content. 

Highlander - Rare Japanese Movie Program

James Bond - A View to a Kill - Rare Japanese Program

Kenwood KRC 999 - The Most Insane Car Cassette Audio Money Can Buy

 

Studio level Hi-Fi, in your car.

     People take car audio very seriously. The old Crutchfield magazines of the 80's and 90's are a stark reminder that you could spend an infinite amount of money on your car audio system, and be absolutely blown away by the quality of sound. Look at the list of bullet points in the magazine blurb above. What can't it do? Well if you're a smart ass, and you're thinking it can't play CD's, guess again- they made a CD add on for this head unit as well as a single din amp and graphic equalizer combo. Not like you needed it, as this has it all. The KRC 99 even had one unique feature, it had a retractable EQ, where you could edit the graph on the fly.Watch the video below and watch it in action:

Behold, the Kenwood KRC999 Mark II!

     Even the sweet sweet tunes of Nite and Day by Al B. Sure sound better on this glorious over the top piece of equipment. Currently running for around $1200-$1500 on ebay for a working example, The Kenwood line of KDT and KRC head units are a really cool glance into the past, and how insane technology was at the time. Full motorized and servo driven. Dolby B&C. Sensors to increase and lower audio depending on road noise. I could go on forever. 

Full DAT version? Sure, why not. 

     Not pictured in the above video and the small advertisements is the amount of computerization required to control it all, which was housed in a "Brain Box" you install somewhere else in the car. Amps, crossovers, wiring, some of it proprietary to Kenwood tuners, all completes the absolutely insanity that is the KRC-999. 

The pics above are the accessories you need to get one of these running.

     I wish I had one, and I wish I was more knowledgeable about the subject, but this is just one great example of retro technology at it's crazy-best. Does anyone need this? No. Did we all want it? Of course.