Do you have a collection you'd like to show & tell on the channel? If so let me know, we'll book you in and I'll put the kettle on. If you'd like to support the channel and watch videos 1 week early with no adverts please visit patreon.com/rmcretro Thank you! Neil - RMC
I managed to collect the full set of a well known particular 80s handheld LCD game which could make an interesting video if I weren't camera shy, not going to say what the game set is because I intend to visit The Cave and bring them to show people, I want to see their reaction of seeing the entire set.
I started collecting vintage netbooks and to lesser degree any laptops 2 years ago, but I don't have that impressive collection yet. Most of the stuff I have is from around 2010, but one of my treasures, a 90's laptop known specifically of it's butterflyish keyboard, I'm really proud to own. Unfortunately it's not in very good shape, but it does run - and I got it for free! No, I'm not asking to come into the show - and I pretty much collect any retro computery stuff anyway, but the laptops became a special interest of mine only 2 years ago - and I had very little interest in laptops as collectibles before that, so I just wanted to tell about my recent collecting "fetish", it's just not enough that I would be anything else than embarrassed if I actually were to come on someones youtube channel to show it off ;p And thank you! P.S. Did I hear wrong, or am I thinking of wrong podcast, but are you the other person in the "Our Sinclair: A ZX Spectrum Podcast"? I hope I didn't mix you up with another retro youtuber... "What weapon does Ralph, the Idaho Slasher use? A po-Taito peeler, of course!" - I laughed my ass off on that; in the same way I think so called B-class films are awesome :D P.P.S. I lost my most priced computer, my 1st one that my dad bought in 1991, later my dad divorced my mom and then when he bought us a new Pentium 75Mhz/16MB supercomputer in '95, it (the former, not the new P75) got given to my mom, which I then got back from her in 2002 (having moved to live on my own in '99) and I connected it with a null-modem cable to my new 1,2Ghz (sheesh, the speed at which the computers got faster back then) Linux PC and used it mainly for IRC from my bed... And around 2008 or so I lost the machine. IBM PS/1 Model 2011 - if anyone has one, I would gladly give away that IBM ThinkPad 701c in exchange. I'm not actually expecting that to happen - but I would. The PS/1 is probably worth more though, and the 701c is really not in very good shape, is missing the battery, etc.; so it would likely have to be an act of good will towards a poor retro-collector who misses his 1st computer, but hasn't got the dough to actually buy the same model from someone. So I'm not writing this as an attempt to get anyone to do that, I guess I just wrote this last part to express my feelings about that system.
When I worked in the games industry, a guy I worked with told me he went to an interview with Mirage, the developers of ROTR. They asked him what the worst game he ever played was; he said ROTR. They replied "That's one of OUR games! Didn't you notice the arcade machine in the waiting room?" "Yes, but I thought honesty was the best policy." Turns out, no, honesty is not always the best policy...
Fun fact: One Must Fall was made freeware and there's a version available on Github that runs on modern systems (Windows, macOS or Linux) and has modern networking so you can still play online. Search Github for OpenOMF.
It seems to work pretty well, buuut... a long time ago I used a program to mod the game into asigning scrap and destruction to the punch, and that seems to screw up with the gameplay a littel bit XDDD
One positive thing about games getting open sourced is that if they didn't have a native Linux version before, they are almost guaranteed to get one shortly after =)
As a collector of bad movies, I can tell you that having a concentrated collection of the inept is much funnier to talk about. I think it would be an interesting competition if people tried to make versions of this game for the 8 bit micros
@@GlennStubberfield That's not nearly limiting enough - let's say, in the 6502 realm, Commodore PET - and to not exclude z80 realm getting a version, a TI-86 programmable calculator (I'm feeling generous, but perhaps the minimum requirements should be set at TI-84). From what I've seen coming out from retro-developers lately, I wouldn't be too surprised if they managed to totally annihilate the original ROTR and end up creating a totally kickass version of ROTR that lives up to what it was hyped up to be :D
After doing video reviews of all the King's Quest games, I made it my mission to collect all the worst versions of them. Which means I have a lot of Amiga games on my shelf all of a sudden.
Ha, this reminds me of a guy years ago who was trying to collect every version of Shaq Fu, and multiple copies of it too. But surely, this guy's holy grail is to find the ROTR arcade machine, or at least the board to it. :D
I remember paying full price for this game, playing it for about 30 minutes before giving up out of frustration with how bad it was, and then never playing it past that first go. Thanks for reminding me so I can be pissed off about it all over again.
Well, I loved this. First, nice name drop for One Must Fall 2097, one of my all time favorite games. Ross is awesome...I love his down to earth discussion about his wacky hobby..he's a well spoken guy who knows what he's got there. I just thought this was dandy!
The cave looks fantastic in this video. Amazing to see you casually showing it play on the various setups already in place. Ross was a great guest but I must know - Ross have you played One Must Fall 2097 yet?
Thank you for the kind words! I had a lot of fun visiting the cave and would recommend anyone to book a visit. it's brilliant. As for One Must Fall 2097, I have indeed played it and it is infinitely more playable than Rise of the Robots.... But then again, I can't think of anything that is LESS playable than it.
@@RossTaylor79 The graphics of "One Must Fall" are like the gameplay of "ROTR"! I also got it when I was little, but somehow did not manage to get into the single player mode, so I returned it. If I had, I think I'd loved it since I never played a fighting game before :P
According to Wikipedia (so it shurely must be true) the first video game to be novelised was actually "Shadowkeep" in 1984, some 10 years before Mr. Murdoch's effort. While it wasn't a full novel I also distinctly remember "The Dark Wheel" being released with "Elite" in the same year.
There were some old CRPGs, too, but some of those might depend on how you counted them, since sometimes they were things released as co-branded and related, but sometimes were not direct novelizations. 1989's Pool of Radiance novel was, I believe, a direct novelization of the 1988 videogame, but 1988's Curse of the Azure Bonds didn't directly novelize its videogame - the videogame came out in 1989 to tell a parallel story as Pool's sequel. And that's just two closely related games that went two different routes.
@@delusionnnnn Pool of Radiance (the novel) was done in-house by TSR as part of the FR novel line, and worked off of existing world editorial stuff and the Ruins of Adventure adventure for AD&D. TSR editorial was happy to do things for cross-branding but always wrote their novels and tie-in products on their own terms.
Not quite as big, but I've got a RotR collection too. The game was a fascinating disaster and even though it's terrible I've tried to get every version that I can play (so no CDi or Game Gear versions). Pretty much stopped after getting the two Director's Cut versions though.
It is really wonderful that someone collects a really awful game, because those too have a significant historical importance reminding us that not ALL was better in the days of old. Even then there was baseless hype and outright lying with pretty pics and huge words.
Absolutely spot on! I do see a lot of people talking about old games like they were all brilliant and things were better back then when in reality, it wasn't. There was a load of stinkers about just like there is now.
Yea the gaming press from that time seems very bad i think the best time was probably the 2000s you could get your reviews online from random gamers not just corporations but things like micro transactions and mandatory online was not common yet and there where less sellouts online so it was great.
In all honesty, there was more shovelware back then than there is now, in recent times, its extremely rare for a game to be less than average, but back in the day, there were plenty of games you could say that about, not just less than average, but borderline unplayable, i'm thinking 8 bit micro's especially but they were there, all the way up to PS1 era really.
@@RetroGamesBoy78 There are still a lot of super bad games now but they don't get any attention before the internet age you could make a garbage game and be successful because its based on a movie or because you have a big marketing budget. And back then most gamers where kids that did not have the ability to give feedback or spread awareness to people who where not in their friend circle.
@@belstar1128 Back in the day an arcade 'Smash' could get a port to a micro and be virtually unplayable, that kinda stuff just doesn't really happen nowadays, yes there are games that are released too early and are full of glitches and need extensive patching, Driv3r was the last release i remember being an absolute train wreck of a game.
There was a Rise of the Robots standee. I worked in a games shop in the 1990s and our one came home with me! I had him for years, even took him to university. Have posted a picture on your Twitter feed. He’s long since been binned I’m afraid.
One minor correction - January 1995 issues of the magazines would have been available for sale in November 1994 because... uh... I guess publishers wanted you to think their magazine was the very newest on the shelf. It was incredibly dumb and very annoying.
Honestly, with realtime raytracing now actually possible, a remake of Rise of the Robots could both look and play amazingly. I could imagine this game being remade with the Unreal Engine.
I saw a Rise of the Robots arcade machine in the Trocadero Leicester Square. I watched the intro, had my pound coin ready to insert, and the machine blue-screened. It was a PC inside the arcade cabinet.
Regarding the 3DO Version and the 2 boxarts: these are PAL and NTSC Versions. The PAL version is the version with flames in the background. They reissued the Pal version since the NTSC didn't boot on PAL machines due to a bug. Since the 3do is region free normally NTSC games work fine on a pal system.
It should be the other way around, I think. The one with the flames is the NTSC version, since it was published by Absolute Entertainment & had an ESRB rating on it. The one that Ross has by Art Data Interactive (yes, the company that published 3DO Doom...) should be the PAL version, especially since the back cover indicates that it also has French & German language options of some sort.
Despite his excellent self-irony, I can confirm the claim that writer Jim Murdoch makes about having written "the first novelisation of a computer game" is regrettably false: there were indeed Ultima, Wing Commander, Shadowkeep, The Bard's Tale and more such books as far back as the mid-1980s. Points awarded for not taking himself too seriously but points deducted for factual inaccuracy.
I remember that the Amstrad CPC464 version of Elite came with a novella, and when I bought the original ZX Spectrum version of The Hobbit (back in the very early 80's) that came with a hefty novelisation of the game too, written by some bloke, JRR Tolkien if I recall 🙂
26:35 As far as I know, the first novelisation of a computer game was "Elite: The Dark Wheel" by Robert Holdstock in 1984, ten years before "The Rise of the Robots".
What an absolute gem of a video this one is. Rise of the robots had a profound effect on my life. I was captivated by the pre release hype and specifically the making of stuff using 3d studio v4 DOS which culminated in me becoming a 3d artist. Shame the game turned out to be an absolute stinker!
Maybe some day someone will make a remake and fix it. The guys that made Fightin´ Spirit would fix it for sure, since they made the best Amiga fighting game.
I bumbped into an old friend recently who I hadn't seen since the early 90s. He was telling me that for a while he putting floppy discs and paperwork into boxes of Rise of the Robots!
I worked for Mirage briefly after Rise of the Robots came out. Walked past the old offices recently when in Congleton. At least I got to meet Brian May :-)
Ross of the Robots! Really enjoyed this, I remember getting swept up in the hype for this back in the day and being disappointed that I didn't get the Mega Drive version for Christmas. In hindsight this was probably a shrewd move from the parents.
I remember when I was a kid this cartridge for snes hit our home mysteriously. I called it RICE of the robots, and I wondered where the rice was at lmaoo
There's no doubt that Rise of the Robots is terrible in every way except for the visuals. That said, though, I can sort of get Ross' obsession with getting every version of it, because it's just such a fascinating disaster of a game.
I played the rise demo on my a500. The good point was it was very pretty. The bad points where everything else. I pleaded the demo a fair bit, and got the distinct impression I’d seen all the good bits. That, combined with being a student, having to survive on a grant and the pittance I got from working for Blockbuster and having to buy a pc for my degree studies meant that I really couldn’t afford the game. Everything I’ve seen since suggests I wasn’t missing much.
The flame background 3DO version appears to be the american version, bunch of them on ebay. I remember the hype and build up to this, was at uni and a friend had an Amiga 1200, so we pressured him to get rise of the robots. We got back from the shop, eagerly fired it up , everyone crowded round the computer and we were instantly deflated! Where was the game that was promised? Is this it? We played it for a while then never again.
@@RossTaylor79 I think you're right. Makes you wonder why that happened? Seems odd that it missed a North American Genesis release with all the apparent hype surrounding the game.
I remember huge cardboard cut outs of this game all over the game shop in Bristol - probably ‘95-‘96. They over hyped it so much. PLUS, remember the Xmas magazines always said January on the front but were available from early December (I worked at Future Publishing for a bit)
My personal story surrounding RotR is unspectacular. Simply, when this game was released, pretty much *everyone* was hyped for it, however, 1994 was a transitional period for gaming and the only 'legacy' machine I had left around was a trusty Amiga (as, ironically, my "daily driver" at that point was actually an Atari Jaguar 🙈, pre-acquiring PS1). So... I get to a computer store (Computer World in Blackpool, if any of you were familiar) and, at that precise moment of anticipating the game and wishing to buy it - more than anything, can you imagine the crippling pain I experienced when the store clerk gives me the life-changing news: "Sorry. I'm afraid this game won't run on the original Amiga 500 - 1MB Ram or not. You need an A500+ minimum". Honestly. I was gutted! Life works in funny ways sometimes #bulletdodged
I remember Sega Power released short novelisations of Golden Axe and Road Rage in the very early 90s. The guys who wrote the magazine actually adapted them. Not sure of the date but they would definitely have preceded Rise of the Robots.
Part of the problem was the one button limitation on the vast majority of Amiga joysticks, which is a crime on behalf of the joystick makers, whey the hell did no one make a decent 2 button joystick. I'd certainly have bought one. I remember being stunned to find Flashback on the Amiga supported 2 button joysticks when I plugged in my Megadrive joypad at random. Even just 2 buttons would have allowed for a decent number of moves
One iof my abandoned projects was to see if i could make a script that could finish ROTR without any input other than flying kick right and flyng kick left.. The idea being removing all human thought and interaction from the player character and just spamming jump kick, have it run 24/7 and use random wait times between kicks. I gave up on it in the end but i think if someone knew what they were doing they could stream it 24/ 7 on Twitch, just leave it going forever to see if one day it actually manages to finish the game by chance. I know TAS can be used to finish games automatically but that involves frame perfect keypresses and is effectively enhanced human interaction, this random kick script would be pure chance.
Always had a soft spot for Rise of the Robots, but on reflection i think it was just because I enjoyed the Brian May soundtrack. I could have just bought Back to the Light and saved my time.
What a terrible game to spend ya time collecting lol I worked in small computer shop when it was released and people were hyped up for it on snes ,megadrive Huge day one sales but then once the word got about on how bad it was the sales stalled The following day we had people wanting to swap it back in for anything else as it was soo bad lol What a great interview though both having a laugh about how bad it was
I can see why this guy collects Rise of The Robots merch, if you weren't there you won't get it but the hype and time that this game was around was magic. This is awesome.
There are lots of nostalgic feelings I get from seeing and hearing all of these old things, but I get a particularly unique feeling from seeing a specific magazine cover that I recall exactly from getting that magazine when it was new. In this case, that The One Amiga with The Lion King on the front did it for me. I have no idea what was actually in the magazine, but the cover is etched in my mind.
I remember we had this on the Amiga CD32 back in the day, I knew with in 60 seconds of playing it how bad it was, it just has no gameplay to it whatsoever as I recall, but given how starved for games we were on the CD32, it got way more playtime than it deserved, not to say that we didn't get a couple decent games for the system in the end, Roadkill being my fave, such a brilliant game that I still play to this day.
I remember the hype of this game because Brian May or something played a riff in it. lol I own the original CD32 version, big boxed. The one at 16:33 in the video.
So nice seeing Rise of the Robots on the Amstrad Mega PC... how many people played it like this? 8 or so? I was one of them, thanks for bringing back those memories :)
I don't remember being caught in hype but robot fighting game did sound cool on paper. The wasted potential of this game. It made Primal Rage look like a master piece in comparison. It didn't get to dust in my collection very long and traded it in with some other games for Killer Instinct (SNES) when it came out.
Nice collection, although in terms of games released on a huge number of formats, it's hard to imagine Lemmings being outdone by much other than maybe Tetris.
@@nafcom but they weren't all released at the same time. The SNES version came out a month after the Amiga, and the Megadrive version was released several months after that, and 3DO still later. Not that different to the Lemmings schedule really, only that was on more systems.
There were novelisations of various NES games released in the 80s for younger readers, as well as the Ultima ones and Elite also came bundled with a tie-in novel, so the claim that this is the first novelisation of a video game is extremely iffy.
The hype around this game was huge at the time. The infamous issue of Edge magazine for example. I hired it. The atmosphere was there. The art design was mostly there. But the gameplay. So basic compared to even the vanilla version of SF2.
I own two copies of the CD-32 version - I'm not sure quite how or why. It is the only fighting game I ever managed to beat by doing nothing but spamming low kicks.
I remember as an indie retail manager the era clearly, the hype Mirage and SCA were trying to hype Indies about it. I ordered 2 copies on the Megadrive, 1 SNES, 2 Amiga and none the rest. I didn't buy the hype and it didn't fly off the shelves....
What a great episode! I remember Rise of Robots back in the 90's. Graphics were great, but the game was too short and easy. It would have better for the game to perfection it for one or two plattforms than releasing it in such variants. I guess that was the plan back than. The game had potential... i I still like the cinematic scenes. Wish your guest will get his missing pieces soon.
Glad you brought up OMF 2097, it's actually one of my favorite fighting games! Also, PC Magazines over here in Argentina were hyping this like there's no tommorrow and giving it scores of well over 80 percent! I was so disappointed when I actually tryed the actual game XD
Do you have a collection you'd like to show & tell on the channel? If so let me know, we'll book you in and I'll put the kettle on.
If you'd like to support the channel and watch videos 1 week early with no adverts please visit patreon.com/rmcretro
Thank you!
Neil - RMC
I managed to collect the full set of a well known particular 80s handheld LCD game which could make an interesting video if I weren't camera shy, not going to say what the game set is because I intend to visit The Cave and bring them to show people, I want to see their reaction of seeing the entire set.
Nice you mentioned OMF, as I really enjoyed One Must Fall: 2097 back in the day
Didn't see the big box Amiga cd32 version proper pressed disk 💿💿
I'm omy to a full skies of Arcadia set but still missing some of the most showy editions. Maybe down the line though.
I started collecting vintage netbooks and to lesser degree any laptops 2 years ago, but I don't have that impressive collection yet. Most of the stuff I have is from around 2010, but one of my treasures, a 90's laptop known specifically of it's butterflyish keyboard, I'm really proud to own. Unfortunately it's not in very good shape, but it does run - and I got it for free!
No, I'm not asking to come into the show - and I pretty much collect any retro computery stuff anyway, but the laptops became a special interest of mine only 2 years ago - and I had very little interest in laptops as collectibles before that, so I just wanted to tell about my recent collecting "fetish", it's just not enough that I would be anything else than embarrassed if I actually were to come on someones youtube channel to show it off ;p
And thank you!
P.S. Did I hear wrong, or am I thinking of wrong podcast, but are you the other person in the "Our Sinclair: A ZX Spectrum Podcast"? I hope I didn't mix you up with another retro youtuber... "What weapon does Ralph, the Idaho Slasher use? A po-Taito peeler, of course!" - I laughed my ass off on that; in the same way I think so called B-class films are awesome :D
P.P.S. I lost my most priced computer, my 1st one that my dad bought in 1991, later my dad divorced my mom and then when he bought us a new Pentium 75Mhz/16MB supercomputer in '95, it (the former, not the new P75) got given to my mom, which I then got back from her in 2002 (having moved to live on my own in '99) and I connected it with a null-modem cable to my new 1,2Ghz (sheesh, the speed at which the computers got faster back then) Linux PC and used it mainly for IRC from my bed... And around 2008 or so I lost the machine.
IBM PS/1 Model 2011 - if anyone has one, I would gladly give away that IBM ThinkPad 701c in exchange. I'm not actually expecting that to happen - but I would. The PS/1 is probably worth more though, and the 701c is really not in very good shape, is missing the battery, etc.; so it would likely have to be an act of good will towards a poor retro-collector who misses his 1st computer, but hasn't got the dough to actually buy the same model from someone. So I'm not writing this as an attempt to get anyone to do that, I guess I just wrote this last part to express my feelings about that system.
When I worked in the games industry, a guy I worked with told me he went to an interview with Mirage, the developers of ROTR. They asked him what the worst game he ever played was; he said ROTR. They replied "That's one of OUR games! Didn't you notice the arcade machine in the waiting room?"
"Yes, but I thought honesty was the best policy."
Turns out, no, honesty is not always the best policy...
I would have loved to be a fly on the wall of that conversation.
I'd say this proves honesty definitely is the best policy, would anybody want to work somewhere with that little self awareness? Bullet dodged!
Dodged a bullet it sounds like 👍
lol never ask questions you don't wanna hear the answers to
They missed an opportunity to make better games
Fun fact: One Must Fall was made freeware and there's a version available on Github that runs on modern systems (Windows, macOS or Linux) and has modern networking so you can still play online. Search Github for OpenOMF.
Wow, I tought this project was dead, but there's a pre-release from like 2 months ago!! I'll try it out!
It seems to work pretty well, buuut... a long time ago I used a program to mod the game into asigning scrap and destruction to the punch, and that seems to screw up with the gameplay a littel bit XDDD
Got it = Nice
The DosBox version was (for me / my settings) too quick.
@@garyhart6421 AFAIK the game has a speed setting
One positive thing about games getting open sourced is that if they didn't have a native Linux version before, they are almost guaranteed to get one shortly after =)
As a collector of bad movies, I can tell you that having a concentrated collection of the inept is much funnier to talk about. I think it would be an interesting competition if people tried to make versions of this game for the 8 bit micros
Vic 20?
@@GlennStubberfield That's not nearly limiting enough - let's say, in the 6502 realm, Commodore PET - and to not exclude z80 realm getting a version, a TI-86 programmable calculator (I'm feeling generous, but perhaps the minimum requirements should be set at TI-84). From what I've seen coming out from retro-developers lately, I wouldn't be too surprised if they managed to totally annihilate the original ROTR and end up creating a totally kickass version of ROTR that lives up to what it was hyped up to be :D
After doing video reviews of all the King's Quest games, I made it my mission to collect all the worst versions of them. Which means I have a lot of Amiga games on my shelf all of a sudden.
still cant believe no former journalist has come out and told us how much they got paid/bribed to give this 90%+ would love to know!
Ha, this reminds me of a guy years ago who was trying to collect every version of Shaq Fu, and multiple copies of it too.
But surely, this guy's holy grail is to find the ROTR arcade machine, or at least the board to it. :D
I remember paying full price for this game, playing it for about 30 minutes before giving up out of frustration with how bad it was, and then never playing it past that first go. Thanks for reminding me so I can be pissed off about it all over again.
Well, I loved this. First, nice name drop for One Must Fall 2097, one of my all time favorite games. Ross is awesome...I love his down to earth discussion about his wacky hobby..he's a well spoken guy who knows what he's got there. I just thought this was dandy!
I bought the SNES version from a clearance bin for a quid and still felt ripped off!
I saw a snes copy in Woolworths for £70 back in the day. Imagine if some poor sod bought that!?
Clearly, the best version of ROTR is the book.
The 'January' mags are almost always the Christmas issues, on the shelves in early December.
Great chat! Ross seems like a really nice guy, you should have him on the podcast some time.
The cave looks fantastic in this video. Amazing to see you casually showing it play on the various setups already in place. Ross was a great guest but I must know - Ross have you played One Must Fall 2097 yet?
Thank you for the kind words! I had a lot of fun visiting the cave and would recommend anyone to book a visit. it's brilliant. As for One Must Fall 2097, I have indeed played it and it is infinitely more playable than Rise of the Robots.... But then again, I can't think of anything that is LESS playable than it.
@@RossTaylor79 The graphics of "One Must Fall" are like the gameplay of "ROTR"! I also got it when I was little, but somehow did not manage to get into the single player mode, so I returned it. If I had, I think I'd loved it since I never played a fighting game before :P
@@RossTaylor79 Can I have your autograph please?
@@RossTaylor79 tournament mode in OMF is great!
RotR isn't even the first fighting game to get a book adaptation. There are two gamebooks based on Eternal Champions from SEGA.
very nice episode with an excellent guest. loved the dry humour!
According to Wikipedia (so it shurely must be true) the first video game to be novelised was actually "Shadowkeep" in 1984, some 10 years before Mr. Murdoch's effort. While it wasn't a full novel I also distinctly remember "The Dark Wheel" being released with "Elite" in the same year.
There were some old CRPGs, too, but some of those might depend on how you counted them, since sometimes they were things released as co-branded and related, but sometimes were not direct novelizations. 1989's Pool of Radiance novel was, I believe, a direct novelization of the 1988 videogame, but 1988's Curse of the Azure Bonds didn't directly novelize its videogame - the videogame came out in 1989 to tell a parallel story as Pool's sequel. And that's just two closely related games that went two different routes.
@@delusionnnnn Pool of Radiance (the novel) was done in-house by TSR as part of the FR novel line, and worked off of existing world editorial stuff and the Ruins of Adventure adventure for AD&D. TSR editorial was happy to do things for cross-branding but always wrote their novels and tie-in products on their own terms.
@@Arivia1 That's what I mean - it depends on how you count them. It wasn't like they just hired someone to novelize a videogame.
Not quite as big, but I've got a RotR collection too. The game was a fascinating disaster and even though it's terrible I've tried to get every version that I can play (so no CDi or Game Gear versions). Pretty much stopped after getting the two Director's Cut versions though.
The original BBC Elite had a novella that came with a game. That must be one of the earliest novelisations of a computer game?
That was fun! Not a great game, but a pretty interesting story non the less. Especially considering the reader reviewer relationship side of things.
It is really wonderful that someone collects a really awful game, because those too have a significant historical importance reminding us that not ALL was better in the days of old. Even then there was baseless hype and outright lying with pretty pics and huge words.
Absolutely spot on! I do see a lot of people talking about old games like they were all brilliant and things were better back then when in reality, it wasn't. There was a load of stinkers about just like there is now.
Yea the gaming press from that time seems very bad i think the best time was probably the 2000s you could get your reviews online from random gamers not just corporations but things like micro transactions and mandatory online was not common yet and there where less sellouts online so it was great.
In all honesty, there was more shovelware back then than there is now, in recent times, its extremely rare for a game to be less than average, but back in the day, there were plenty of games you could say that about, not just less than average, but borderline unplayable, i'm thinking 8 bit micro's especially but they were there, all the way up to PS1 era really.
@@RetroGamesBoy78 There are still a lot of super bad games now but they don't get any attention before the internet age you could make a garbage game and be successful because its based on a movie or because you have a big marketing budget.
And back then most gamers where kids that did not have the ability to give feedback or spread awareness to people who where not in their friend circle.
@@belstar1128
Back in the day an arcade 'Smash' could get a port to a micro and be virtually unplayable, that kinda stuff just doesn't really happen nowadays, yes there are games that are released too early and are full of glitches and need extensive patching, Driv3r was the last release i remember being an absolute train wreck of a game.
There was a Rise of the Robots standee. I worked in a games shop in the 1990s and our one came home with me! I had him for years, even took him to university. Have posted a picture on your Twitter feed. He’s long since been binned I’m afraid.
One minor correction - January 1995 issues of the magazines would have been available for sale in November 1994 because... uh... I guess publishers wanted you to think their magazine was the very newest on the shelf. It was incredibly dumb and very annoying.
Great episode, I love reviews of "mediocre" games .. I almost burst out laughing when you read those bold statements about the game!
Honestly, with realtime raytracing now actually possible, a remake of Rise of the Robots could both look and play amazingly.
I could imagine this game being remade with the Unreal Engine.
I saw a Rise of the Robots arcade machine in the Trocadero Leicester Square. I watched the intro, had my pound coin ready to insert, and the machine blue-screened. It was a PC inside the arcade cabinet.
According to a former BFM tech the machines used to fail all of the time. It was one of the reasons this cab was never mass produced.
These old games were still challenging. I never managed to defeat the green robot in 3rd level with its claws.
Still love the soundtrack.
This was an excellent video. You should make this a series and find other people that collect the real esoteric and/or crappy games!
Regarding the 3DO Version and the 2 boxarts: these are PAL and NTSC Versions. The PAL version is the version with flames in the background. They reissued the Pal version since the NTSC didn't boot on PAL machines due to a bug. Since the 3do is region free normally NTSC games work fine on a pal system.
It should be the other way around, I think. The one with the flames is the NTSC version, since it was published by Absolute Entertainment & had an ESRB rating on it. The one that Ross has by Art Data Interactive (yes, the company that published 3DO Doom...) should be the PAL version, especially since the back cover indicates that it also has French & German language options of some sort.
Brilliant. This is utterly pointless in the most fun sort of way.
Loved every minute of it.
What could easily have been a boring game video ended up being fun, absurd, informative and eccentric. Love this type of content.
Despite his excellent self-irony, I can confirm the claim that writer Jim Murdoch makes about having written "the first novelisation of a computer game" is regrettably false: there were indeed Ultima, Wing Commander, Shadowkeep, The Bard's Tale and more such books as far back as the mid-1980s. Points awarded for not taking himself too seriously but points deducted for factual inaccuracy.
I remember that the Amstrad CPC464 version of Elite came with a novella, and when I bought the original ZX Spectrum version of The Hobbit (back in the very early 80's) that came with a hefty novelisation of the game too, written by some bloke, JRR Tolkien if I recall 🙂
CHOLO etc
Great. Im a Collector myself for 25+ years. Had so mutch Collecting Goals over the Years.
Hate the Game,but love the Collectors Passion!
26:35 As far as I know, the first novelisation of a computer game was "Elite: The Dark Wheel" by Robert Holdstock in 1984, ten years before "The Rise of the Robots".
What an absolute gem of a video this one is. Rise of the robots had a profound effect on my life. I was captivated by the pre release hype and specifically the making of stuff using 3d studio v4 DOS which culminated in me becoming a 3d artist. Shame the game turned out to be an absolute stinker!
Literally ran to the shops just to get beers for this episode, this is gonna be a blinder 😂
I have this game for pc. The game may not be good but the graphics were awesome back when it was released.
*If you guys painted yourselves blue, you'd look like the main character on the box lol* 🔵🔵
The farting box at 22:26 was champagne comedy.
Until you mentioned One must Fall 2047, I was falsely remembering playing Rise of the robots. But no! It was the shareware OMF that I played.
in the early 90s I worked for a Multimedia company and the office I inherited came with a lifesize cardboard Rise cutout
Battle Beast, Released 1995 - Don't forget about that one!!!
I love the sound at 22:26
Maybe some day someone will make a remake and fix it.
The guys that made Fightin´ Spirit would fix it for sure, since they made the best Amiga fighting game.
That would be interesting to see.
I bumbped into an old friend recently who I hadn't seen since the early 90s. He was telling me that for a while he putting floppy discs and paperwork into boxes of Rise of the Robots!
I worked for Mirage briefly after Rise of the Robots came out. Walked past the old offices recently when in Congleton. At least I got to meet Brian May :-)
Ross of the Robots! Really enjoyed this, I remember getting swept up in the hype for this back in the day and being disappointed that I didn't get the Mega Drive version for Christmas. In hindsight this was probably a shrewd move from the parents.
You forgot BodyBlows! It came in several versions.
I remember when I was a kid this cartridge for snes hit our home mysteriously. I called it RICE of the robots, and I wondered where the rice was at lmaoo
I don’t think I’ve seen anything more beautiful.
There's no doubt that Rise of the Robots is terrible in every way except for the visuals. That said, though, I can sort of get Ross' obsession with getting every version of it, because it's just such a fascinating disaster of a game.
Affectionately known as Rise of the Turdbots in my friends circle
I remember drawing the main cyborg character in a copybook in secondary school, haha
I had Body Blows Galaxy for Amiga and really loved it. By the time this came out we had a PC with Mortal Kombat, One Must Fall 2097 and Doom...
I think this counts as the only enjoyment I have ever got out of `Rise of the Robots`.
I remember this game...it was to be the most advanced fighting game in history. Sadly, it was not worth the purchase. Cool stuff though.
I played the rise demo on my a500. The good point was it was very pretty. The bad points where everything else. I pleaded the demo a fair bit, and got the distinct impression I’d seen all the good bits. That, combined with being a student, having to survive on a grant and the pittance I got from working for Blockbuster and having to buy a pc for my degree studies meant that I really couldn’t afford the game.
Everything I’ve seen since suggests I wasn’t missing much.
There was a Multiformat mag in the UK that gave all versions of the game a high score.....I wish i could remember which mag it was
Cvg gave it 91%. And Amiga power gave it 5%. Lol
The flame background 3DO version appears to be the american version, bunch of them on ebay. I remember the hype and build up to this, was at uni and a friend had an Amiga 1200, so we pressured him to get rise of the robots. We got back from the shop, eagerly fired it up , everyone crowded round the computer and we were instantly deflated! Where was the game that was promised? Is this it? We played it for a while then never again.
There's a 3DO flame version up on ebay right now. Closes in 9 hours.
Great vid, good luck with the collection. I love seeing people with this sort of passion for retro gaming who can find a fun goal.
Nice collection. Looks like he might only be missing the Sega Genesis and Game Gear branded versions (if this is his full collection on display).
I am indeed missing the Gamegear versions but, it didn't actually come out on the Sega Genesis for some reason.... as far as I can tell anyway?!?
@@RossTaylor79 I think you're right. Makes you wonder why that happened? Seems odd that it missed a North American Genesis release with all the apparent hype surrounding the game.
I remember huge cardboard cut outs of this game all over the game shop in Bristol - probably ‘95-‘96. They over hyped it so much. PLUS, remember the Xmas magazines always said January on the front but were available from early December (I worked at Future Publishing for a bit)
My personal story surrounding RotR is unspectacular. Simply, when this game was released, pretty much *everyone* was hyped for it, however, 1994 was a transitional period for gaming and the only 'legacy' machine I had left around was a trusty Amiga (as, ironically, my "daily driver" at that point was actually an Atari Jaguar 🙈, pre-acquiring PS1). So... I get to a computer store (Computer World in Blackpool, if any of you were familiar) and, at that precise moment of anticipating the game and wishing to buy it - more than anything, can you imagine the crippling pain I experienced when the store clerk gives me the life-changing news: "Sorry. I'm afraid this game won't run on the original Amiga 500 - 1MB Ram or not. You need an A500+ minimum". Honestly. I was gutted! Life works in funny ways sometimes #bulletdodged
With the budget spent on graphics and a license for a few chords from Brian May, little was left for actual gameplay.
I think if that dude covered himself in blue body paint, he’d be the ROTR character.
Big breakfast had adventisment bumpers based around rise of the robots at the time, Crazy crazy stuff.
It's like that website in the early 2000s that was asking for copies of Shaq Fu to burn
The 19% in Amiga Format were way more fitting than the 91% Amiga Joker gave it xD
From what I'm seeing the noticeable omissions are the US Super Nintendo version. I don't think it came out on the Genesis in North America.
i feel this. i collect everything related to the wipeout series
Which is why i only bought games that I had pirated first. Had this on a copy and installed onto A1200 hard drive. I bet it it never got loaded again.
I remember Sega Power released short novelisations of Golden Axe and Road Rage in the very early 90s. The guys who wrote the magazine actually adapted them. Not sure of the date but they would definitely have preceded Rise of the Robots.
I was a tester on the Amiga and CD32 version of the original 'Rise' game.
I'd love the chance to ask you a few questions about your time working on Rise for Amiga and CD32 if it would be ok please?
@@GlennStubberfield - Fine with me. Will have to work out the best comms channels to do this.
@@richardhewison6414 No problem at all. Please let me know what works best for you?
“I may not have a mouth but I’ll bite your fucking face off” was one of the magazine advert taglines. In 1994.
It was indeed. That advert ran in Viz magazine I believe... I think I have that copy somewhere too.
I got Rise of the the Robots and Dangerous Streets for $5 each. The salesman asked are you sure you own a CD32? 😊😊😊
Part of the problem was the one button limitation on the vast majority of Amiga joysticks, which is a crime on behalf of the joystick makers, whey the hell did no one make a decent 2 button joystick. I'd certainly have bought one. I remember being stunned to find Flashback on the Amiga supported 2 button joysticks when I plugged in my Megadrive joypad at random. Even just 2 buttons would have allowed for a decent number of moves
One iof my abandoned projects was to see if i could make a script that could finish ROTR without any input other than flying kick right and flyng kick left..
The idea being removing all human thought and interaction from the player character and just spamming jump kick, have it run 24/7 and use random wait times between kicks.
I gave up on it in the end but i think if someone knew what they were doing they could stream it 24/ 7 on Twitch, just leave it going forever to see if one day it actually manages to finish the game by chance.
I know TAS can be used to finish games automatically but that involves frame perfect keypresses and is effectively enhanced human interaction, this random kick script would be pure chance.
Always had a soft spot for Rise of the Robots, but on reflection i think it was just because I enjoyed the Brian May soundtrack. I could have just bought Back to the Light and saved my time.
What a terrible game to spend ya time collecting lol
I worked in small computer shop when it was released and people were hyped up for it on snes ,megadrive
Huge day one sales but then once the word got about on how bad it was the sales stalled
The following day we had people wanting to swap it back in for anything else as it was soo bad lol
What a great interview though both having a laugh about how bad it was
I can see why this guy collects Rise of The Robots merch, if you weren't there you won't get it but the hype and time that this game was around was magic. This is awesome.
There are lots of nostalgic feelings I get from seeing and hearing all of these old things, but I get a particularly unique feeling from seeing a specific magazine cover that I recall exactly from getting that magazine when it was new.
In this case, that The One Amiga with The Lion King on the front did it for me. I have no idea what was actually in the magazine, but the cover is etched in my mind.
I had an A500+ at that point though, so I couldn't play that cover demo of RotR!
awesome collection, great idea for a collection ! thanks for sharing !!
Amazes me that Bellfruit the U.K. fruit machine manufacturer was gonna release an arcade version of this
I remember we had this on the Amiga CD32 back in the day, I knew with in 60 seconds of playing it how bad it was, it just has no gameplay to it whatsoever as I recall, but given how starved for games we were on the CD32, it got way more playtime than it deserved, not to say that we didn't get a couple decent games for the system in the end, Roadkill being my fave, such a brilliant game that I still play to this day.
Great video. Rise of the Robots was my childhood Cyberpunk 2077 moment. But that is eventually coming good. Rise not so much!
I found this video fascinating! Thanks!!!!!!
I remember the hype of this game because Brian May or something played a riff in it. lol
I own the original CD32 version, big boxed. The one at 16:33 in the video.
I remember the more than a year's worth of hype in Amiga mags, but until now I have never actually seen the gameplay.
So nice seeing Rise of the Robots on the Amstrad Mega PC... how many people played it like this? 8 or so? I was one of them, thanks for bringing back those memories :)
I don't remember being caught in hype but robot fighting game did sound cool on paper. The wasted potential of this game. It made Primal Rage look like a master piece in comparison. It didn't get to dust in my collection very long and traded it in with some other games for Killer Instinct (SNES) when it came out.
Nice collection, although in terms of games released on a huge number of formats, it's hard to imagine Lemmings being outdone by much other than maybe Tetris.
listen again, that is why they say "released on most systems on the same time"
@@nafcom but they weren't all released at the same time. The SNES version came out a month after the Amiga, and the Megadrive version was released several months after that, and 3DO still later. Not that different to the Lemmings schedule really, only that was on more systems.
There were novelisations of various NES games released in the 80s for younger readers, as well as the Ultima ones and Elite also came bundled with a tie-in novel, so the claim that this is the first novelisation of a video game is extremely iffy.
The hype around this game was huge at the time. The infamous issue of Edge magazine for example. I hired it. The atmosphere was there. The art design was mostly there. But the gameplay. So basic compared to even the vanilla version of SF2.
I own two copies of the CD-32 version - I'm not sure quite how or why. It is the only fighting game I ever managed to beat by doing nothing but spamming low kicks.
I remember as an indie retail manager the era clearly, the hype Mirage and SCA were trying to hype Indies about it.
I ordered 2 copies on the Megadrive, 1 SNES, 2 Amiga and none the rest.
I didn't buy the hype and it didn't fly off the shelves....
One thing you were sure of back then was if Accliam was involved it was probably best to avoid.
What a great episode! I remember Rise of Robots back in the 90's. Graphics were great, but the game was too short and easy. It would have better for the game to perfection it for one or two plattforms than releasing it in such variants. I guess that was the plan back than. The game had potential... i
I still like the cinematic scenes. Wish your guest will get his missing pieces soon.
Oh wow this gave some flashbacks! The hype was real with this one.
Glad you brought up OMF 2097, it's actually one of my favorite fighting games! Also, PC Magazines over here in Argentina were hyping this like there's no tommorrow and giving it scores of well over 80 percent! I was so disappointed when I actually tryed the actual game XD
I also really enjoyed OMF: 2097 back in the day
I think I have an issue of C&VG that had a huge feature on the game & covered every version at the time.
12:10 - Wow, my A2000 had a 50GB hard drive, and even my A4000 only had 120GB. That install size is enormous.
@@vardekpetrovic9716 it's likely a typo
@@vardekpetrovic9716 haha, yeah when you put it that way. Maybe they don't know the difference or do it automatically?
I'm waiting for the Speccy/C64 de-make!! I got this game for the Megadrive...... god, I wish I hadn't!