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Hello and welcome to the Retro Hour podcast episode number 113, your weekly dose of retro gaming

and technology news with me Dan Wood and me Ravi Abbott. And we would just want to say a massive welcome. If you are a new listener to the Retro Our podcast, and of course if you listen every week, we appreciate you being there as well. Because checking our stats recently, we've had quite a lot of new people through the door. Yeah, totally. And it's great, you know, just to see the podcast growing, but also retaining this really cool old-school audience as well.

Now, if you want you to the show, the way this works is, I mean, how long have you been a video game before?

What age did you first pick up a control pad?

Oh, probably five or something.

I think I was about four years old when I played my first ever game at a friend's house.

I still remember what it was, actually.

It was Kung Fu Master on the Ness. I feel mine was Missile Command.

On the Atari 2600? Yeah. You are old school, Ravi. Well, and we've been lifelong video game fans. All our lives we play video games. And this show kind of covers the entire history of gaming. I mean, the line that I generally kind of used to people is the ZX-181 to the PlayStation 2. Yeah, it's kind of the back backstage of gaming, but what we like to do is we like to get really in depth as well. So we'll have some, you know, kind of standard information in there, but then we'll also have some really nerdy technical stuff as well. Because I was doing a bit of research recently, and the video game industry, how much do you think it's worth worldwide now? Billions. I know it's in the billions.

$108 billion, it's estimated. It's going to grow this year.

And this show, we kind of chart the history of an industry that went from, like, you know,

garages and bedrooms in back street towns, and now is the biggest form of entertainment media in the world.

Well, we're talking about barns and sheds and stuff. And our guest this week, David Wise, he was actually working for Rare, but he didn't know what was going on in the world. He was creating great games for the Nairs and for the Snares. And, you know, he did the soundtrack for Donkey Kong Country. Amazing game. Just absolutely amazing. And he kind of didn't know that there was this wider world because he was trapped in this shed with no internet, nothing. And there were people all around the world doing these different things. And that's what we're trying to do, because I mean, now the whole world's connected. But like you said, then before the age of the internet, a lot of that stuff isn't documented. No. Apart from a few magazine articles that you might find on Archive.org. So the aim of this show is that we will bring you the backstage of gaming and get the people on that were actually involved in these legendary games, these amazing companies, the games that you grew up playing essentially. And this week, our special guest, if you're a fan of Rare Games, I mean, how many amazing titles did Rare put out on Nintendo platforms? Oh, just hundreds. And also there's some Genesis stuff. There's just like, God, he's even done ukulele now, which is the new kind of rare remake. Yeah, like a school reunion kind of came in it, really. And so today we're going to be talking to David Wise. He's actually going to be coming in the studio in about 20 minutes from now. He's on his way him because he lives just around the

corner. So we thought, you know, instead of getting him on the phone or Skype, we'll get him in. So that was nice, isn't it? Get the kettle on Ravi. And we just want to say, you know, we might need your support soon, guys, as well, because we have gone in for something that we're crossing in our fingers for. We're not overly optimistic, but we'd like to get involved anyway.

And that is, we've put an entry in again for this year's British podcast awards. Yeah, it's a really good awards, and I hope we get a free bar this time, like we did last time. Yeah, we shouldn't have probably announced that in the podcast here. The wait there'd be loads turning up now. Everybody's come in. Not bothered about podcasts. I just want to be there.

But yeah, it was the first one last year and the entries closed about two weeks ago. We've gone for Best Interview Podcasts. Yeah, we went for Best Newcomer last year. And I think seeing we've done over 100 interviews now every single week, I think we kind of stand a good chance in Best Interview. Well, fingers crossed. And there are going to be some public votes open soon as well.

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