Hey everybody, what you're about to hear is a free preview of a podcast on our $5 exclusive episodes

here at patreon.com slash RetroNots. And if you want to hear the whole thing, please go to patreon.com slash

RetroNots and sign up at the $5 exclusive episodes here. Once you do that, you'll get access to all of

our previous exclusive episodes and our future ones as well as long as you remain a patron,

and our exclusive episodes will launch every other Friday. Again, that is the RetroNots Patreon

at patreon.com slash RetroNots. And I'll let you get to this free preview of one of our exclusive

episodes.

Hey, do you want to go over the history of these games in order and talking about Portal 1? Let's start

with that. So a portal starts with a little project called Narbacular Drop. Narbacular

is not a word, but they chose it because it would be a very Google friendly. Nothing else is

called that. So this was a senior project made by students at the DigiPen Institute of Technology.

And it basically is very portal-like in terms of mechanics. It's a proof of concept with six levels.

And most of the basic gameplay elements are there, including the orange and the blue portals.

Though it has more of a fantasy setting compared to the very sterile lab setting of Portal.

And you know, like many folks who end up doing great things at Valve, the team is essentially

plucked from obscurity to do great things within the company and find great success elsewhere after

that. So the basic story is this, a Valve developer sees Narbacular at DigiPen's career fair

and invites the team to pitch at Valve and they're hired on the spots. And then after two years

past, Portal is released. And there are so many of these rags to riches story that happen within Valve.

I mean, I assume the company is still kind of known as us, even though they don't release as many

games, but it is very much like Gabe Newell's Chocolate Factory. Just you get the golden tickets.

That no children are killed, thankfully, but you know, you learn a little something. Yes,

...