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Hello and welcome to the Retro Hour podcast episode number 90, your weekly dose of retro gaming

and technology news with me, Dan Wood.

And me, Ravi Abbott. And if you are a new listener to the Retro Hour podcast, you have got 90 episodes to catch up on. Oh God, that's a lot, isn't it? Can't believe we're up to 90 already. But if you have just found us for the first time, welcome on board. Now, the way the show works is, at Ravi and I do the show every single week. It comes out on a Friday.

We go through all the stories that will been making the headlines in the world of retro. And when we tell that to people, people are always like, well, what news can there possibly be in retro gaming? Hey, the mainstream news has got a lot of news about retro gaming at the moment. It's overspilling guys, you know. I mean, you know, we did an interview with, you know, TV journalist and magazine. That's always a question they ask. And they're always amazed by how many new developments they are. And, you know, we have too much news for this show. Well, look at it, you know, Sonic Mania is one of the top games at the moment. Who would have thought a Sonic game of that kind of 2Dness would be that high up.

Well, look at the games I've been playing over the last month or so.

It's been Sonic Mania, Micro Machines and Crash Bandicoot. It's crazy. You're living in the past. But the future as well. Yeah, yeah, it's mad. So we are going to go through all these stories that have been making the headlines this week in just a bit. And then, in the second half of the show, I mean, if I'm honest,

I think this is where our show really comes into its own.

This is the unique half of the show. I mean, if I'm honest, I think this is where our show really comes into its own. This is the unique thing about this show. We have guests

and we have high calibre guests and this guest is of one of the highest calibers. He's Gary Penn.

And he originally worked for Zapp 64 but he also worked for PC format. He also worked for Amiga Power. He worked for The One magazine. He was the editor of The One for around a year. He was the full editor of the One, and that was a cool year that was like 89 to 90, so peak times. But he also worked on Frontier Elite. Do you remember that game? Oh, David Brabben. That was a long-awaited sequel to Elite, wasn't it? Procedural generation. Well, I remember, you know, I think I got that on a magazine cover disc, and it was just an introduction animation. And you know, where the music's playing and you see the ship. Yeah. Epic, wasn't it, that opening? Oh, God, it was so good.

And then his name pops up, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah, totally. And then he moved on to a really small company called DMA Designs. Never heard of them. Yeah, yeah, and then kind of became the creative director for Grand Feft Auto. And, you know, they did some really cool stuff with Grandf Dotto. You're going to find out in this interview.

You know, they did GTA 1, but they did 2 where they introduced like kill frenzy, gang areas.

They also did GTA Landon, which was a 1960s version, which is really cool.

And little do you know, they actually tried to do GTA 3D, free times DMMA did. On the PlayStation 1. Yeah, so we're going to find out about those. I think it's fair to say, he's got quite a history there, hasn't he? Lots of interesting stuff to talk about. So Gary Penn is our special guest on the Retro Hour podcast in around 20 minutes from now. And like we said, this show does come out every single Friday. And this hasn't been disputed yet. We've said it a couple of times on the show that we are probably, probably the world's only weekly retro gaming podcast. Yeah, I'm not going to get it printed on a t-shirt or put in stone yet. But yeah, if you find any other guys, then please let us know. Yeah, but you know, we've put this out there a couple of times no one's kind of took the challenge yet so but the only way we can keep doing this show week in week out and also get to stuff like you know these massive events that we've got coming up there's a lot more that we're planning as well oh god the winter schedule is crazy we're going to be going international events we're going to be you know in events. It's going to be great. That's the aim, isn't it? We really want to do more of this in 2018 as well. Get out there and see our fans and meet our listeners and get to all these events that are all happening all over the place. But the only way we can keep doing this and the podcast every single week is thanks to your very generous support. Now, we do have a couple little buttons on the front page of our website, the retro hour.com. There is a PayPal donation button there

and one for Bitcoin as well. Now, obviously, you know, we appreciate any donations that we get. It is

completely optional, but every penny, every cent, every dollar, every dime that we receive,

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