Wanted to give a huge thanks to Ben James, John Biank, Robert Dale Smith and the rest of you who reached out and told me your Net Yaroze Story. If you worked on the Net Yaroze, let me know in the comments or send me an email. Id love to hear your story. Enjoy the video !
I remember getting demo disks in playstation magazine's which would contain net yaroze games and it used to blow my mind that random guys had made these games and I always wanted the console myself (to be honest I think I still do )
I've got a complete Yaroze set a few years ago, but sadly I'm no developer, more of a historian/collector. Have beaten quite a few games on it, though. :D
Thank you of explaining the local american game crash , so sick of nintendo fan boys trying to proclaim the nes the Digital JESUS... Nobody wanted a nes in the uk we had Amiga
Glad I could help, even if it was just a little :). Also worth noting that my roommate Todd Broadwater, who also worked on Light Cycle Arena, did end up in the game industry working for Bethesda (Oblivion, Fallout3) and now Firaxis (Xcom)
Sony: Creates affordable SDK for hobbyists to break into console game development Also Sony: Takes Linux support off of PS3 due to fear of hobbyists breaking into console
Sony made the Net Yaroze just for Promation. They never suported coders and hobbyists. Thats why it has no access to the CD Drive. No way to publish your own Games? The only way was through Sony themselfes so they can make Money out of your work. Sony is and always was the biggest enemy to all coders and hackers on this planet. I will never forget the killing of Bleem! and on the other hand using ReARMed on the PS Classic...
It sucked anyway. They denied access to the cell processor and included no drivers for the RSX gpu, so yellow dog Linux just ran on the pretty weak sauce Power PC CPU and it’s vast 256 MB of ram. Yaroze, on the other hand, only had the limitation that your game had to fit in ram.
Thats bs, Sony didnt kill Linux Support cause of „hobbyists“, they killed it cause they were sure it would open doors for jailbreaking and essentially play illegal games....
Me and my brother must have had several dozen PS1 demo discs from magazines in the UK and some of the Net Yaroze games were our most played. Hours of entertainment crammed into these small games for the price of a magazine meant we played a lot of them. The demo discs were always a lot easier to justify to our parents than a full game was, so shoutout for to these devs, big part of my childhood right here.
Same with me and my brother, we had some weekends where we would play hours of those Net Yaroze demos, I remember clearly one doom style horror game and kinda asteroids style minimalistic dogfight game
That brings back memories. I had a Skywalker serial cable and a modded PlayStation so I could do my coursework at home instead of the computing labs. I'm pretty sure we were already working with OpenGL so having to deal with fixed point arithmetic for 3D transformations was a real eye opener.
@@hotmailcompany52 saaame. Even the most advanced "ICT"/"IT" courses just had you using Dreamweaver and Photoshop instead of Excel and PowerPoint in mine. It always felt bordering on a design course instead of a computing course. Guess I can thank New Labour for their "work skills focus" leading us all to get tutorialled on office software instead of how these computers actually work. The most advanced course I talked about was obviously geared toward producing web designers (compared to the standard office drone competency suite), rather than eliding any deeper understanding.
@@connor43057 you can really see the difference in the stability of the N64's graphics from having floating point support and depth values, which released just a year or so later. I did go back to the PS1 and implemented limited support for floating point in a couple of PS1 emulators (specifically for geometry transformation) to try and get a similar improvement.
17:04 "Sony has never been afraid to experiment with their hardware and open it up to the hobbyist bedroom coder." Well, they weren't until they removed "Other OS" from the PS3.
Sony weren't afraid of hobbyists, they feared people getting hypervisor access that would potentially allow for breaking console security and thus allowing software piracy. This fear of piracy is also why Net Yaroze games couldn't load data from CD-R(OM).
My older brother bought this when it came out and I remember tinkering with it. I didn't get very far (I was still a kid at the time) but remember compiling simple code with it. I am a programmer by profession today so I guess it helped push me along towards my career. I still have it and the SDK package on display in my house. Beautiful piece of hardware.
This is my 1st time hearing and knowing about Net Yaroze... Or even the fact that there was a "bedroom coder" kind of movement back in the 80s? Incredible. Just incredible! Damn, if only we had money to buy stuff like this at the time... I could've started breaking in making games sooner. In any case, this is really incredible!
Bedroom coders was how the game industry started… in the 80s there was books on programming and magazines with programs and everything… You mean yaroze was in the 90s and was only for japanese to maintain the Japanese dominance in the games industry to protect japans economy during the so called “lost decade” I used to glorify japan like the rest, when I went there and found out how biased and racists they were, kinda explains every move they made over the last 30 years…
@@ironhell813 Net Yaroze was marketed in both the EU and Japan. Only the NA market was left out - they had their reasons for doing so. Its like you didnt' even watch the video. This doesn't make Sony "racist". It just makes you look like a complete moron. Imagine thinking Sony (a multi-national corporation) leaving out a country that itself is made up of multiple cultures and races, somehow makes them racist.
I love you highlighting developers by name, and saying where they are now. This kind of investigation made my bump my Patreon subscription :) I’d love to see interviews/stories from the emulation/modding scene, even if the video/audio is obscured for privacy.
I've actually been thinking about Net Yaroze lately with the official release of Dreams on the PS4. It feels like creation tools has always gone hand in hand with Sony Playstation (minus the PS2 but that had Linux support) - Net Yaroze, Little Big Planet, Dreams. It feels like sony has always wanted to give people a chance to create something Digitially depending on knowledge and patience.
I always associated the RPG Maker and Fighter Maker games with PlayStation as well. I know they're on other systems now, but in the States they were the first time I saw the idea of "make your own game" outside of PC.
I really wanted one of these when I was in high school... but it was a good thing that it was so expensive and so hard to get one for a casual player. Because this would have been way way beyond my abilities to handle. I would not have been able to do anything with this, I didn't understand what it really took to create a game back then. It would have been wasted money for me.
I always had a huge fascination with the Net Yaroze when I heard about it from one of my Playstation Underground discs... unfortunately I was only a kid when it came out and we didnt exactly have 750 dollars to spend on it so all I could do was admire it and play the demos they displayed... but I loved the games that were made and the stories behind Net Yaroze and it was always in the back of my mind since.
10:30 - Oh my god! I remember Blitter Boy! It was on one of the demo discs, along with a bunch of other games. 12:30 - Terra too! Oh my gosh. So much nostalgia.
I wish I would of had something like this as a kid to tinker around with. Even if I probably wouldn't have made a game worth while, just having it to learn some of the basics of programming would have been very interesting.
Here in Australia and other PAL regions the ps2 came with a disk that contained YABasic which I believe was to get around import taxes by classing the ps2 as a computer. It was actually pretty terrible and slow but still making and sharing rudimentary games that ran on the ps2 was fun. There was no support for external files so images had to be converted to data statements in the code but from memory it did have pretty fast (Gouraud?) shaded polygon support. I also remember there was an emulated version of the yabasic elf with a few extra features to speed up coding and directly convert images to data statements etc.
I remember playing demo discs, that came with Finnish version of PlayStation magazines. I always wondered what were those games, that felt different from the rest. Nice to know they were indies. Also, didn't know Devil Dice was originally Net Yaroze game! I bet our demo disc had retail version for sure, but that has stuck in my mind for years.
After "wai too kei" everkthing changed. Everk since that time when I press "wai" on the kekboard, I end up with a "kei". Sort by date didn't quite work ankmore, and mank data records with date were misplaced -- especiallk with dates straddling the centurk transition. I dread when that dak in 2038 comes and I find mkself in 1901!
@noo dles Is a combination of stating the obvious, not getting the joke, _ruining_ the joke, and acting like a pretentious smartass all at the same time not enough?
I bought a NetYaroze from Sony back in the late 90's. Back then I was making (euro)demos on the Amiga and the intention was to make demo's on the Yaroze to be used in wild-competetions at demo-partys. However I got distracted with all sorts of other things and never really got very far with that project (also at the time I found C annoying since I was used to m68k assembler). At one point I was interviewed for a PS developer position but did not get the job since I did not really have any proper demos up and running on Yaroze - if I had I would proberbly have had a career in game development. Guess my NetYaroze is for sale now, at the current prices I might almost recoup my original investment lol - "investment by bying hardware" thats new ;-)
2mb is rough but people still pulled off some amazing games. I particularly remember ‘adventure game’. I might have the name wrong but it was a really funny parody of RPGs, and fully 3D.
@@surject What's your point exactly? OG Ridge Racer is a good game but it really doesn't have a lot of meaty content, it's just a simple arcade racer with a few selectable cars and mirror options for the track difficulties. It's a small scope game so naturally it would be of a small size...I'm pretty sure the OP is lamenting the RAM and CD streaming limitation stopping larger scope games.
@@pootisbear Well RR was fucking amazing and when I found out how small the game data was I was pretty stunned. Todays race games are 20'000x bigger, even back then games like this were way bigger, even Daytona was 15MB ..and that was a 'simple arcade racer' as well.
I have heard of this machine before and when the Playstation hit...I was instantaneously hooked. There was a time in my life when I could not imagine not having a PSX in it. It was one of the first consoles I purchased with my own money (I bought a Sega Saturn the same day as my PSX). I was 16 years old with a decently paying job and my own muscle car (what a time in my life!). I subscribed to every game mag I could get my hands on but I never saw this for sale (I live in the States). I would have purchased this machine without question had I been given the opportunity. Even though we in the States did not get into the microcomputer craze we had something just as big hit in 1993...and its name was Doom. I cut my teeth in 1994 making levels for Doom on my cloned 486DX2. When I got my hands on Doom 2 it was it changed everything. I wanted so badly to break into the gaming industry when I was younger but it was not to be. Today I am a collector of all things gaming and if I ever see obe of these out on the wild...I will snag it.
2:20....when I heard that ancient PlayStation boot SFX, I actually rewound it just to hear that delicious ear candy again. Man that is a fucking legendary console.
I fianlly snagged myself a complete Net Yaroze a little while back. Not with it's original box but all it's original software. I don't code like but always wanted to learn to have a go. I found a website with a copy of the FULL developer SDK's some time back as well. So bouns.
@Lupni3rd. That's awesome bud. I have been trying to get my hands on a Net Yaroze DevKit for quite a while now, but the cheapest I can get one for in my country is GBP 499.95. Obviously won't give up that easy, the search continues...
@@joeyvdm1 Yeha all told I snagged it for about £300 at the time. I bought a replacement lens unit for it though as it's original was a bit off. I 've kept the original though.
@@Lupni3rd Man, that is a steal. An easy lens replacement (I'd keep the original lens too) and you've got a beauty for the collection. It's gonna be fun if you do decide to cut your teeth coding on her. Got me tingling, mine will come...
@@joeyvdm1 One day my dude if you're willing to play the waiting game :) Yeah man I've got myself a Compaq Presario 2200 series computer running DOS 6.22 so a super age appropriate PC to play aruond with it.
@@Lupni3rd The waiting game was how I was also able to get my NA yaroze, which also seems to be more uncommon (probably because of the lack of interest in the US mentioned for it but idk). I was on the cusp myself of getting an old PC to do Win95/DOS to try everything out, but ended up finding that I could make it work on any modern linux system and luckily ended up saving myself some desk space.
Wow! This is one of your all time best episodes. Very interesting and I’d really like to see that Vita episode or any other episode you can design on this type of stuff. Thanks MVG.
Abertay Uni still had a Net Yaroze, when I was there a back in 2015. Was cool to see. One of the things I loved about Dundee was having access to current and old dev hardware.
Good video, fun walk down memory lane! The Yaroze was always so fascinating to me back in the day and I continue to adore the look of the console itself. I still have a vivid memory of booting up Terra Incognita for the first time, but I'd totally forgotten about Total Soccer until it appeared in this video and then it instantly came rushing back. That was a genuinely good Sensible Soccer clone and I think it's still quite impressive!
2:20. Nice. Both the sound and video stream right into my soul.! I have such an extremely positive association with that bit of audio video. It brings a tear to my eye. So so good. Thank you for that.! Excellent video 👍
A chipped standard PS1 with a flashed Action Replay cart connected by parallel cable to PC was a hundred times more useful for development and cost a third of the Yaroze. Using a chipped retail PSX for dev, you could run code directly from the PC without the need for the memory card dongle, you could access CD storage, and it created standard PSX format ELF binaries so you could burn the finished game to a CD which would boot on any chipped PSX. Back in the day we looked on the Yaroze as a fun toy, but not useful for actual development.
I wanted one of those from the moment I heard about it, but it was way out of my budget at the time. Thanks for sharing the story about it though and some of the demos!
Still got all my official magazines and demo discs with the yaroze games on. Terra incognita, psychon, haunted maze................Those were the days, lad.
The most beautiful console ever made. That matte black system with the multi-colored PS logo is just drop dead gorgeous. I remember seeing one of them in either EGM or PSM way back in the day, and thinking "I have to have one of those". I'm no programmer and never did get one, but every few years I scour ebay to see what they're going for. One day...one day...
14:54 - There was an official USA Playstation Magazine. I had a subscription for years and in fact I still have some of the discs. I was an underground member too so I did play some of the Net Yaroze demos. But I think you are right in that they weren't on the official mag disc.
I used to have, or actually still have, demo discs containing just about every Yaroze game featured in this video. I had no idea about the background story on these games until I saw this video. Actually, a good amount of those games were quite playable and entertaining for a while.
6:15 : «the main difference is the serial connection port for debugging». No, the serial port is the same as the retail version. In fact, the console is almost the same on the outside as the SCPH 1000 version (minus S-video port).
@@TechnologistAtWork Of course, it has. How would multiplayer works, then? Just look at any back of any SCPH1000/1001. In fact, every Playstation model has serial port. I think you're the one who smoked...
I just watched a video the other day of a game boy player that connected to the serial port of a ps1 and it went over this as well, the port was removed later
Very interesting, and well presented, as always! Thanks for this. That darker coloured Net Yaroze console looks fantastic. I’ll be looking forward to subsequent episodes. Keep up the great work!
I remember rumours on the school yard about a mysterious black PlayStation. I always thought it was fake. But I was wrong. Now I want one for my collection. Thanks for the nice videos.
@referral madness No, I gave that up a long time ago, my programming days were just when I had my ZX Spectrum, so around 1990 would have been the last time I did.
Great Video! Is an interesting topic, I writed an article about it some years ago. Terra Incognita is one of my Favourite title in the PSX Library btw. Oh and I'm glad that you explained that here in Europe, we never had a real "crash". Looks to me that nowdays, most ppl think it was a worldwide thing.
Used to love playing these games on the old demo discs as a kid. I found them all fascinating for reasons I'm only just realising through this video. Terra Incognita and Devil Dice were my favourites
Apparently Sega was considering something similar for the Dreamcast. I remember some VP (I think?) of Sega of America reaching out to active people on the dcdev mailing list to do some market validation research. They asked us to keep it quiet at the time. Given the advanced state of homebrew libraries and tools and the soon-to-be death of the Dreamcast, the project never went anywhere AFAIK.
You might have the ONLY content on ALL of TH-cam that I look forward to watching. I was SO immersed in console modding scene in the late 90's and early 00's. Watching your stuff takes me back. Also makes me feel I'm connected to a community that experienced the same things I did. You can never stop making videos. Thank you for all you did within the scene back in the day.
I still have mine! I need to root through the garage and see if I can find the access key. It was pretty fun to tinker around with, but I mostly only ever used mine to make simple demos. It was pretty cool though. There was also an option to buy a Metrowerks Codewarrior along with it to get a proper IDE.
This brings back memories. I used to to subscribe to Edge magazine and when I read about the Net Yaroze I was really excited about it and knew I had to get it. I wasn't much of a coder in those days and while I wrote a couple of tools for it I never did much in the way of games. There were however many other talented members and once people got passed the fact that writing games isn't easy many that persevered did end up with jobs in the industry. From what I remember Europe seemed the most active region compared to American and Japan. I'm grateful to Sony for providing the opportunity to allow bedroom coders to write games for their console, and for the support they provided as part of the program.
Before Net Yaroze, there was Family BASIC for Famicon (NES). It was released by HUDSON, and many future game developers had learned how to program games with it.
Oh man I remember playing a demo disc with Terra Incognita. For some reason my 10 year old brain felt so much sorrow for the guy at 17:07 the way he turned his head to the captain made me feel a deep sadness within him. Crazy how impactful that was on me even though I now see it's just a model turning it's head.
Never knew about this hardware, freaking awesome that this was possible :) Seeing the Acces Card i wonder why there are not any Gecko/FMCB cards for the PSX.
I need to look more into the Net Yaroze scene. I remember playing some of the games included in demo discs but hardly remember the specifics. Seeing Blitter Boy brought back a vivid memory, so that's one title I can now put a name to.
I remember hearing about the Net Yaroze on one of the PS Underground discs back in the day and it looked like the coolest thing ever. I always wanted to own one just because of its black color.
It’s sad the way the industry has changed. Seems like they used to pretty much support people developing for and experimenting with their consoles. Now they immediately try to shut anything down that wasn’t made by them or some other corporate monster. I doubt we’ll ever see any type of development kit for any console ever again. Hopefully something changes otherwise they might be looking at another crash. I see it already in our current gen of consoles. We’ve got some great consoles but the library of games for them is pretty limited.
Uhhh Sony and Nintendo do that. But you can transform any Xbox One into a development kit and send code from your PC to the Xbox... So it's definitely still a thing today
The intro segment brought back such good memories. I learned to code as a kid by typing out code listings from magazines such as Home Computer into my BBC Micro and Commodore 64. Good times man!
6:11 I had a regular PS1 back in the days (still have it at my parent's home) and it has a debug port. It is an early model though (probably from 95-96 era). I know later ones had that port removed, the same for the RCA jacks.
2:19 so much nostalgia!!!! Brought back a memory on a quiet Saturday morning 5am in December. I turned on the PlayStation and would just hear the breeze of the cold winter wind hitting on my bedroom window 🪟with my warm heater and my cozy blanket and hearing this sound was brought me that memory just like when ratatouille critic ate the plate and thought about his childhood memory 😢. I was just a small child I think I was 7yrs old and playing twisted metal 2 with that jet moto stage cheat code stage….
bader almajed I was an N64 kid back then so I don’t have the same type of nostalgia but boy, the boot up theme for the PS1 is beautiful. My nostalgia for PlayStation began with the PS2. The PS2 also has a wonderful boot up.
It's so cool seeing such old indie games. Especially ones on an otherwise closed platform like a console. Really puts things into perspective for me now as an indie developer myself.
I nearly bought one of these back in the day, went as far as getting all the paperwork from Sony, from what I remember they required you to sign a contract and would send you a large envelope with all the paperwork. In the end I decided against it, as it was quite expensive, but I can imagine it would've been fun to write little games for the PSX and probably makes for a nice collectors item today.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart, for being one of the Only people to ever talk about the crash, while also mentioning it was a purely American event, and did not effect the rest of the world. Get so Sick of people talking about it as a global event.
"Late 1987" 11m 46 secs. Clearly meant 1997. For anyone casually listening that line will wake you up. Well played. Cheers and thanks for the look at this ps1 consumer Dev kit
@@ModernVintageGamer happens to the best of us and oddly worked to reengage the listener :) . Most importantly it in no way changed the fantastic quality of the video and your detailing of this homebrew history. I learnt alot. Thanks so much!
It’s amazing Sony went from this to the PS2 HDD\Network adapter to the official Linux distro on PS2 and PS3, only to pull the shit they did early on in the PS3’s life removing support for Linux (even though people PAID for kits) they suing those who jail broke the consoles to restore functionality Sony removed!
16:19 I had a demo disc with that Adventure game on it when I was a little sprog, I have to be honest I did remember this game quite vividly from my childhood and a few years ago and I remember looking for any images from the game, could never find anything. I was beginning to believe I was delusional and that the game didn't look as I remember, or even exist, so thanks for that.
"Rocks and Gems" was my favourite Net Yaroze game. Spent dozens and dozens of hours of my childhood playing the game and would love to play it again. Sadly I lost the PS1 demo disc that it was on. If the developer is still out there somewhere, I'd like to personally thank you for making a great little game.
Nice video. I worked in City Software in Liverpool between 1982 and 1988, so I knew quite a few of the developers, artists and musicians that worked in the game industry at the time.
Please someone tell me: What's the game at 8:57?? I remember playing that game when I was super young and it left a really lasting impression on me (I think because it scared me). I wasn't even sure if it was real or if I had just imagined it!! Please let me know if you know the name. Thanks!!!
I remember time slip. It was amazingly addictive and I spent hours on it. if I recall correctly you could play your own music while playing it. I just thought this was such a clever game. Like you said the graphics were not amazing but it made me realise that it wasn't all about graphics = good.
The sight of those PlayStation Magazine demo discs takes me straight to my childhood. Some real gems from that time. I remember playing the demo of Vib Ribbon and desperately trying to find such a niche game in the store. Would never have bought it if it were just for the good review in the magazine. A bygone era
This video is absolutely mind blowing, especially given as a kid I used to fairly regularly get those PlayStation Magazines and thusly have a ton of those Demo discs, including most of those Net Yaroze games mentioned here, the notaslgia is incredible!🤯👍👏
I wanted to get this when it came out but as a young man of 23/24 years old and a new baby in my life to take care of I needed the $750 or so that it cost at the time for other things. Sadly I'd love to have this in my collection today.
I have such fond memories of Net Yaroze games. Some had trash graphics and repetitive gameplay, but unique tracks, visuals and sound effects made some awesome games that you spent several hours trying to beat because they didn't skimp on difficulty. Psychon, terra Incognita, Blitter Boy. Hats off to the creators.
Wanted to give a huge thanks to Ben James, John Biank, Robert Dale Smith and the rest of you who reached out and told me your Net Yaroze Story. If you worked on the Net Yaroze, let me know in the comments or send me an email. Id love to hear your story. Enjoy the video !
I remember getting demo disks in playstation magazine's which would contain net yaroze games and it used to blow my mind that random guys had made these games and I always wanted the console myself (to be honest I think I still do )
This video is sooo siiick!👍
I've got a complete Yaroze set a few years ago, but sadly I'm no developer, more of a historian/collector. Have beaten quite a few games on it, though. :D
Thank you of explaining the local american game crash , so sick of nintendo fan boys trying to proclaim the nes the Digital JESUS... Nobody wanted a nes in the uk we had Amiga
Glad I could help, even if it was just a little :). Also worth noting that my roommate Todd Broadwater, who also worked on Light Cycle Arena, did end up in the game industry working for Bethesda (Oblivion, Fallout3) and now Firaxis (Xcom)
Sony: Creates affordable SDK for hobbyists to break into console game development
Also Sony: Takes Linux support off of PS3 due to fear of hobbyists breaking into console
Then sony had to pay a lawsuit as a result of removing said support, and the PS3 was later hacked in the end anyway. Karma's a bitch
I figure their stance against hobbyists is also what killed off the Vita so damn quickly.
Sony made the Net Yaroze just for Promation. They never suported coders and hobbyists. Thats why it has no access to the CD Drive. No way to publish your own Games? The only way was through Sony themselfes so they can make Money out of your work. Sony is and always was the biggest enemy to all coders and hackers on this planet. I will never forget the killing of Bleem! and on the other hand using ReARMed on the PS Classic...
It sucked anyway. They denied access to the cell processor and included no drivers for the RSX gpu, so yellow dog Linux just ran on the pretty weak sauce Power PC CPU and it’s vast 256 MB of ram.
Yaroze, on the other hand, only had the limitation that your game had to fit in ram.
Thats bs, Sony didnt kill Linux Support cause of „hobbyists“, they killed it cause they were sure it would open doors for jailbreaking and essentially play illegal games....
Yes! I remember buying the official PlayStation magazine and sometimes had full games built from yaroze in their monthly demo disc.
Jim P Ah the good'ol demo disk, almost as good as the old cheat books!
Some of those games where really impresive !
Also , In my country the yaroze was like the holy grail .... a console for make games ...
Exactly the same here , man I wish I kept all those demo disks
The best of net yaroze demo disc, that was a great demo.
Say WHAT? How did I miss these?
Me and my brother must have had several dozen PS1 demo discs from magazines in the UK and some of the Net Yaroze games were our most played. Hours of entertainment crammed into these small games for the price of a magazine meant we played a lot of them. The demo discs were always a lot easier to justify to our parents than a full game was, so shoutout for to these devs, big part of my childhood right here.
Same with me and my brother, we had some weekends where we would play hours of those Net Yaroze demos, I remember clearly one doom style horror game and kinda asteroids style minimalistic dogfight game
@@mansionoflostspiritsrecordsthe doom horror one was called clone
That brings back memories. I had a Skywalker serial cable and a modded PlayStation so I could do my coursework at home instead of the computing labs. I'm pretty sure we were already working with OpenGL so having to deal with fixed point arithmetic for 3D transformations was a real eye opener.
I'm so jealous. There was never any programming stuff at my school :/
Haha crazy to think that floats were once expensive
@@hotmailcompany52 saaame. Even the most advanced "ICT"/"IT" courses just had you using Dreamweaver and Photoshop instead of Excel and PowerPoint in mine. It always felt bordering on a design course instead of a computing course. Guess I can thank New Labour for their "work skills focus" leading us all to get tutorialled on office software instead of how these computers actually work. The most advanced course I talked about was obviously geared toward producing web designers (compared to the standard office drone competency suite), rather than eliding any deeper understanding.
@@connor43057 you can really see the difference in the stability of the N64's graphics from having floating point support and depth values, which released just a year or so later.
I did go back to the PS1 and implemented limited support for floating point in a couple of PS1 emulators (specifically for geometry transformation) to try and get a similar improvement.
17:04 "Sony has never been afraid to experiment with their hardware and open it up to the hobbyist bedroom coder." Well, they weren't until they removed "Other OS" from the PS3.
Correct. The PS2 was also able to run Linux if I recall correctly
@@iProgramInCpp I remember that too, there was a Linux disc
My anus smells. It has its own olfactory glands.
Sony weren't afraid of hobbyists, they feared people getting hypervisor access that would potentially allow for breaking console security and thus allowing software piracy. This fear of piracy is also why Net Yaroze games couldn't load data from CD-R(OM).
My older brother bought this when it came out and I remember tinkering with it. I didn't get very far (I was still a kid at the time) but remember compiling simple code with it. I am a programmer by profession today so I guess it helped push me along towards my career. I still have it and the SDK package on display in my house. Beautiful piece of hardware.
This is my 1st time hearing and knowing about Net Yaroze...
Or even the fact that there was a "bedroom coder" kind of movement back in the 80s? Incredible. Just incredible!
Damn, if only we had money to buy stuff like this at the time... I could've started breaking in making games sooner.
In any case, this is really incredible!
Bedroom coders was how the game industry started… in the 80s there was books on programming and magazines with programs and everything…
You mean yaroze was in the 90s and was only for japanese to maintain the Japanese dominance in the games industry to protect japans economy during the so called “lost decade”
I used to glorify japan like the rest, when I went there and found out how biased and racists they were, kinda explains every move they made over the last 30 years…
@@ironhell813 Net Yaroze was marketed in both the EU and Japan. Only the NA market was left out - they had their reasons for doing so. Its like you didnt' even watch the video.
This doesn't make Sony "racist". It just makes you look like a complete moron.
Imagine thinking Sony (a multi-national corporation) leaving out a country that itself is made up of multiple cultures and races, somehow makes them racist.
I love you highlighting developers by name, and saying where they are now. This kind of investigation made my bump my Patreon subscription :) I’d love to see interviews/stories from the emulation/modding scene, even if the video/audio is obscured for privacy.
I've actually been thinking about Net Yaroze lately with the official release of Dreams on the PS4. It feels like creation tools has always gone hand in hand with Sony Playstation (minus the PS2 but that had Linux support) - Net Yaroze, Little Big Planet, Dreams. It feels like sony has always wanted to give people a chance to create something Digitially depending on knowledge and patience.
The PS2 had Yabasic.
@@mumboking ah I didn't know that.
Media Molecule who made Little Big Planet and Dreams are based in the UK. So it seems to always be the Brits pushing for it too.
@@faustianblur1798 meanwhile in America...
I always associated the RPG Maker and Fighter Maker games with PlayStation as well. I know they're on other systems now, but in the States they were the first time I saw the idea of "make your own game" outside of PC.
I really wanted one of these when I was in high school... but it was a good thing that it was so expensive and so hard to get one for a casual player. Because this would have been way way beyond my abilities to handle. I would not have been able to do anything with this, I didn't understand what it really took to create a game back then. It would have been wasted money for me.
I always had a huge fascination with the Net Yaroze when I heard about it from one of my Playstation Underground discs... unfortunately I was only a kid when it came out and we didnt exactly have 750 dollars to spend on it so all I could do was admire it and play the demos they displayed... but I loved the games that were made and the stories behind Net Yaroze and it was always in the back of my mind since.
10:30 - Oh my god! I remember Blitter Boy! It was on one of the demo discs, along with a bunch of other games.
12:30 - Terra too! Oh my gosh. So much nostalgia.
I wish I would of had something like this as a kid to tinker around with. Even if I probably wouldn't have made a game worth while, just having it to learn some of the basics of programming would have been very interesting.
*would have
@@bobojenkins5805 🤡
Here in Australia and other PAL regions the ps2 came with a disk that contained YABasic which I believe was to get around import taxes by classing the ps2 as a computer.
It was actually pretty terrible and slow but still making and sharing rudimentary games that ran on the ps2 was fun.
There was no support for external files so images had to be converted to data statements in the code but from memory it did have pretty fast (Gouraud?) shaded polygon support.
I also remember there was an emulated version of the yabasic elf with a few extra features to speed up coding and directly convert images to data statements etc.
It was called YAbastard in Scotland
I remember that Uk 👍🏻
@@at-cj2iy Lol
I remember playing demo discs, that came with Finnish version of PlayStation magazines. I always wondered what were those games, that felt different from the rest. Nice to know they were indies. Also, didn't know Devil Dice was originally Net Yaroze game! I bet our demo disc had retail version for sure, but that has stuck in my mind for years.
11:47 "...but in late 1987..."
Are you sure about that?
I think he meant late *1997*...
@@alexdhall People like you are literally the dumbest and most obnoxious people on the planet.
After "wai too kei" everkthing changed. Everk since that time when I press "wai" on the kekboard, I end up with a "kei". Sort by date didn't quite work ankmore, and mank data records with date were misplaced -- especiallk with dates straddling the centurk transition. I dread when that dak in 2038 comes and I find mkself in 1901!
George Michael's Faith was the #1 song in late 1987.
@noo dles Is a combination of stating the obvious, not getting the joke, _ruining_ the joke, and acting like a pretentious smartass all at the same time not enough?
I bought a NetYaroze from Sony back in the late 90's. Back then I was making (euro)demos on the Amiga and the intention was to make demo's on the Yaroze to be used in wild-competetions at demo-partys. However I got distracted with all sorts of other things and never really got very far with that project (also at the time I found C annoying since I was used to m68k assembler). At one point I was interviewed for a PS developer position but did not get the job since I did not really have any proper demos up and running on Yaroze - if I had I would proberbly have had a career in game development.
Guess my NetYaroze is for sale now, at the current prices I might almost recoup my original investment lol - "investment by bying hardware" thats new ;-)
never thought i'd hear net yaroze said so many times in 20 mins
Take a shot every time he says Net Yaroze
@@madgigahz If you wanted to commit suicide, you might as well go full Kurt Cobain.
2mb is rough but people still pulled off some amazing games. I particularly remember ‘adventure game’. I might have the name wrong but it was a really funny parody of RPGs, and fully 3D.
Ridge Racer was around that size...
2MB for an SNES-like game is a decent amount. The biggest issue would be music. I have no idea if the PlayStation or the SDK had its own synth
@@surject What's your point exactly? OG Ridge Racer is a good game but it really doesn't have a lot of meaty content, it's just a simple arcade racer with a few selectable cars and mirror options for the track difficulties. It's a small scope game so naturally it would be of a small size...I'm pretty sure the OP is lamenting the RAM and CD streaming limitation stopping larger scope games.
@@JoeStuffz Correct. In case of Ridge Racer the CD was XA with audio tracks.
@@pootisbear Well RR was fucking amazing and when I found out how small the game data was I was pretty stunned. Todays race games are 20'000x bigger, even back then games like this were way bigger, even Daytona was 15MB ..and that was a 'simple arcade racer' as well.
I have heard of this machine before and when the Playstation hit...I was instantaneously hooked. There was a time in my life when I could not imagine not having a PSX in it. It was one of the first consoles I purchased with my own money (I bought a Sega Saturn the same day as my PSX). I was 16 years old with a decently paying job and my own muscle car (what a time in my life!). I subscribed to every game mag I could get my hands on but I never saw this for sale (I live in the States).
I would have purchased this machine without question had I been given the opportunity. Even though we in the States did not get into the microcomputer craze we had something just as big hit in 1993...and its name was Doom. I cut my teeth in 1994 making levels for Doom on my cloned 486DX2. When I got my hands on Doom 2 it was it changed everything. I wanted so badly to break into the gaming industry when I was younger but it was not to be. Today I am a collector of all things gaming and if I ever see obe of these out on the wild...I will snag it.
"Most of them weren't very good, but there some impressive standouts!"; Sounds like modern indie-games to me!
*modern games
@@gordonfreeman6305 lol
2:20....when I heard that ancient PlayStation boot SFX, I actually rewound it just to hear that delicious ear candy again.
Man that is a fucking legendary console.
Best showcase of Net Yaroze games I've seen.
Wow! Zero comments, and 30 likes on mrmario?
he really said "period"
I fianlly snagged myself a complete Net Yaroze a little while back. Not with it's original box but all it's original software. I don't code like but always wanted to learn to have a go. I found a website with a copy of the FULL developer SDK's some time back as well. So bouns.
@Lupni3rd. That's awesome bud. I have been trying to get my hands on a Net Yaroze DevKit for quite a while now, but the cheapest I can get one for in my country is GBP 499.95. Obviously won't give up that easy, the search continues...
@@joeyvdm1 Yeha all told I snagged it for about £300 at the time. I bought a replacement lens unit for it though as it's original was a bit off. I 've kept the original though.
@@Lupni3rd Man, that is a steal. An easy lens replacement (I'd keep the original lens too) and you've got a beauty for the collection. It's gonna be fun if you do decide to cut your teeth coding on her. Got me tingling, mine will come...
@@joeyvdm1 One day my dude if you're willing to play the waiting game :) Yeah man I've got myself a Compaq Presario 2200 series computer running DOS 6.22 so a super age appropriate PC to play aruond with it.
@@Lupni3rd The waiting game was how I was also able to get my NA yaroze, which also seems to be more uncommon (probably because of the lack of interest in the US mentioned for it but idk). I was on the cusp myself of getting an old PC to do Win95/DOS to try everything out, but ended up finding that I could make it work on any modern linux system and luckily ended up saving myself some desk space.
Wow! This is one of your all time best episodes. Very interesting and I’d really like to see that Vita episode or any other episode you can design on this type of stuff. Thanks MVG.
Abertay Uni still had a Net Yaroze, when I was there a back in 2015. Was cool to see. One of the things I loved about Dundee was having access to current and old dev hardware.
that david johnston guy who made timeslip definitely got inspiration from jazz jackrabbit :D my favourite series as a child.
Good video, fun walk down memory lane! The Yaroze was always so fascinating to me back in the day and I continue to adore the look of the console itself. I still have a vivid memory of booting up Terra Incognita for the first time, but I'd totally forgotten about Total Soccer until it appeared in this video and then it instantly came rushing back. That was a genuinely good Sensible Soccer clone and I think it's still quite impressive!
2:20. Nice.
Both the sound and video stream right into my soul.!
I have such an extremely positive association with that bit of audio video.
It brings a tear to my eye.
So so good. Thank you for that.!
Excellent video 👍
A chipped standard PS1 with a flashed Action Replay cart connected by parallel cable to PC was a hundred times more useful for development and cost a third of the Yaroze. Using a chipped retail PSX for dev, you could run code directly from the PC without the need for the memory card dongle, you could access CD storage, and it created standard PSX format ELF binaries so you could burn the finished game to a CD which would boot on any chipped PSX. Back in the day we looked on the Yaroze as a fun toy, but not useful for actual development.
I wanted one of those from the moment I heard about it, but it was way out of my budget at the time. Thanks for sharing the story about it though and some of the demos!
Still got all my official magazines and demo discs with the yaroze games on. Terra incognita, psychon, haunted maze................Those were the days, lad.
The most beautiful console ever made. That matte black system with the multi-colored PS logo is just drop dead gorgeous. I remember seeing one of them in either EGM or PSM way back in the day, and thinking "I have to have one of those". I'm no programmer and never did get one, but every few years I scour ebay to see what they're going for. One day...one day...
your response is my fave on this topic. As a USA gamer, this was/is exactly my sentiment.
14:54 - There was an official USA Playstation Magazine. I had a subscription for years and in fact I still have some of the discs. I was an underground member too so I did play some of the Net Yaroze demos. But I think you are right in that they weren't on the official mag disc.
I was going to say the same, I wasn't a subscriber but I remember the magazine being on offer
2:19 this brings back so many good memories. I have replayed it over and over call me weird but it sounds so beautiful.
Also kind of eerie?
Its really awesome to see "Blitter Boy" being featured in this video. I remember playing it on one of my brothers demo discs.
I used to have, or actually still have, demo discs containing just about every Yaroze game featured in this video. I had no idea about the background story on these games until I saw this video. Actually, a good amount of those games were quite playable and entertaining for a while.
6:15 : «the main difference is the serial connection port for debugging».
No, the serial port is the same as the retail version. In fact, the console is almost the same on the outside as the SCPH 1000 version (minus S-video port).
Retail version doesn't have a serial port. Are you high?
@@TechnologistAtWork Of course, it has. How would multiplayer works, then? Just look at any back of any SCPH1000/1001.
In fact, every Playstation model has serial port.
I think you're the one who smoked...
@@TechnologistAtWork They did initially. Serial port was included with SCPH{1000-9003} and removed with SCPH-100 (PS one)
I just watched a video the other day of a game boy player that connected to the serial port of a ps1 and it went over this as well, the port was removed later
@@v4lgrind do you have a link to that? Because all I can find is just a cable meant to connect 2 consoles together for few multiplayer games.
2:19 Oh man, I got crazy great shivers hearing that again. Thank you for putting that in the video in its full form.
Very interesting, and well presented, as always! Thanks for this. That darker coloured Net Yaroze console looks fantastic. I’ll be looking forward to subsequent episodes. Keep up the great work!
I remember rumours on the school yard about a mysterious black PlayStation. I always thought it was fake. But I was wrong. Now I want one for my collection. Thanks for the nice videos.
As someone who was part of the bedroom programming era this was a joy to watch, brings back good memories of coding simple games on my ZX Spectrum.
@referral madness No, I gave that up a long time ago, my programming days were just when I had my ZX Spectrum, so around 1990 would have been the last time I did.
@referral madness I just moved on to other things that interested me.
Great Video! Is an interesting topic, I writed an article about it some years ago.
Terra Incognita is one of my Favourite title in the PSX Library btw.
Oh and I'm glad that you explained that here in Europe, we never had a real "crash". Looks to me that nowdays, most ppl think it was a worldwide thing.
My all time favourite is Gravitation and I am a bit sad you didn't mention it. It was insanely fun with 2 players on a split screen!
Used to love playing these games on the old demo discs as a kid. I found them all fascinating for reasons I'm only just realising through this video.
Terra Incognita and Devil Dice were my favourites
Apparently Sega was considering something similar for the Dreamcast. I remember some VP (I think?) of Sega of America reaching out to active people on the dcdev mailing list to do some market validation research. They asked us to keep it quiet at the time. Given the advanced state of homebrew libraries and tools and the soon-to-be death of the Dreamcast, the project never went anywhere AFAIK.
You might have the ONLY content on ALL of TH-cam that I look forward to watching. I was SO immersed in console modding scene in the late 90's and early 00's. Watching your stuff takes me back. Also makes me feel I'm connected to a community that experienced the same things I did. You can never stop making videos. Thank you for all you did within the scene back in the day.
I still have mine! I need to root through the garage and see if I can find the access key. It was pretty fun to tinker around with, but I mostly only ever used mine to make simple demos. It was pretty cool though. There was also an option to buy a Metrowerks Codewarrior along with it to get a proper IDE.
This brings back memories. I used to to subscribe to Edge magazine and when I read about the Net Yaroze I was really excited about it and knew I had to get it. I wasn't much of a coder in those days and while I wrote a couple of tools for it I never did much in the way of games. There were however many other talented members and once people got passed the fact that writing games isn't easy many that persevered did end up with jobs in the industry. From what I remember Europe seemed the most active region compared to American and Japan. I'm grateful to Sony for providing the opportunity to allow bedroom coders to write games for their console, and for the support they provided as part of the program.
Blitter Boy! Those crying babies caused so much teenage anxiety. Dude this video was awesome!
Before Net Yaroze, there was Family BASIC for Famicon (NES). It was released by HUDSON, and many future game developers had learned how to program games with it.
1:55 You could've called this game Bird vs Camel and no one would have argued with you
Oh man I remember playing a demo disc with Terra Incognita. For some reason my 10 year old brain felt so much sorrow for the guy at 17:07 the way he turned his head to the captain made me feel a deep sadness within him. Crazy how impactful that was on me even though I now see it's just a model turning it's head.
Dreams is the modern equivalent of the Net Yaroze
If something like tbis existed the game industry would have a heart attack because rhey cant control content and monetise it.
bro, it' never been easier to export to consoles than today, and was never more encouraged either. You're totally wrong, here
ori zach I was thinking the same thing
I really want one of those playstations and not just for codeing games. it's also because the console looks cool af
Never knew about this hardware, freaking awesome that this was possible :)
Seeing the Acces Card i wonder why there are not any Gecko/FMCB cards for the PSX.
I am SO happy I found this channel. Seriously, such good content that's right up my interests.
The original PlayStation’s boot screen still gives me chills. :)
Great video as always, detailed and interesting
I like the fact you covered this. Doesn't help prices of these though,
Lol the prices have been really high before my vid dropped
Not that you can't use a retail PS1 and a Serial Cable to replicate a development environment, though...
M D They can and will, though, just for the sake of collecting...
It’s going to sell just because ooh black PS1.
I need to look more into the Net Yaroze scene. I remember playing some of the games included in demo discs but hardly remember the specifics. Seeing Blitter Boy brought back a vivid memory, so that's one title I can now put a name to.
"This continued on the ps2 and 3, and even on the PSVita.. which we will cover in another episode"
PSM Covered by MVG Confirmed!!!
I remember hearing about the Net Yaroze on one of the PS Underground discs back in the day and it looked like the coolest thing ever.
I always wanted to own one just because of its black color.
It’s sad the way the industry has changed. Seems like they used to pretty much support people developing for and experimenting with their consoles. Now they immediately try to shut anything down that wasn’t made by them or some other corporate monster. I doubt we’ll ever see any type of development kit for any console ever again. Hopefully something changes otherwise they might be looking at another crash. I see it already in our current gen of consoles. We’ve got some great consoles but the library of games for them is pretty limited.
Uhhh Sony and Nintendo do that. But you can transform any Xbox One into a development kit and send code from your PC to the Xbox... So it's definitely still a thing today
The intro segment brought back such good memories. I learned to code as a kid by typing out code listings from magazines such as Home Computer into my BBC Micro and Commodore 64. Good times man!
6:11 I had a regular PS1 back in the days (still have it at my parent's home) and it has a debug port. It is an early model though (probably from 95-96 era). I know later ones had that port removed, the same for the RCA jacks.
Tigrou7777 me too man.
2:19 so much nostalgia!!!! Brought back a memory on a quiet Saturday morning 5am in December. I turned on the PlayStation and would just hear the breeze of the cold winter wind hitting on my bedroom window 🪟with my warm heater and my cozy blanket and hearing this sound was brought me that memory just like when ratatouille critic ate the plate and thought about his childhood memory 😢. I was just a small child I think I was 7yrs old and playing twisted metal 2 with that jet moto stage cheat code stage….
2:20 Goosebumps.
bader almajed I was an N64 kid back then so I don’t have the same type of nostalgia but boy, the boot up theme for the PS1 is beautiful. My nostalgia for PlayStation began with the PS2. The PS2 also has a wonderful boot up.
It's so cool seeing such old indie games. Especially ones on an otherwise closed platform like a console. Really puts things into perspective for me now as an indie developer myself.
I nearly bought one of these back in the day, went as far as getting all the paperwork from Sony, from what I remember they required you to sign a contract and would send you a large envelope with all the paperwork. In the end I decided against it, as it was quite expensive, but I can imagine it would've been fun to write little games for the PSX and probably makes for a nice collectors item today.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart, for being one of the Only people to ever talk about the crash, while also mentioning it was a purely American event, and did not effect the rest of the world. Get so Sick of people talking about it as a global event.
aw hell yeah, this thing
"Late 1987" 11m 46 secs. Clearly meant 1997. For anyone casually listening that line will wake you up. Well played. Cheers and thanks for the look at this ps1 consumer Dev kit
My bad on that . Should be 1997
@@ModernVintageGamer happens to the best of us and oddly worked to reengage the listener :) . Most importantly it in no way changed the fantastic quality of the video and your detailing of this homebrew history. I learnt alot. Thanks so much!
I'm a simple man. I see Dev-Kits, I watch.
Psychon was AMAZING!
Lovely vid MVG! A great overview and a great trip down the Nostalgia lane...
Finally... After so many years, I finally found out how *that* game was called...
Blitter Boy...
Thank you MVG
always love learning more about yaroze as a ps1 demo disc collector, thanks mvg~
It’s amazing Sony went from this to the PS2 HDD\Network adapter to the official Linux distro on PS2 and PS3, only to pull the shit they did early on in the PS3’s life removing support for Linux (even though people PAID for kits) they suing those who jail broke the consoles to restore functionality Sony removed!
To a system that cant even play audio cds. Crazy.
16:19 I had a demo disc with that Adventure game on it when I was a little sprog, I have to be honest I did remember this game quite vividly from my childhood and a few years ago and I remember looking for any images from the game, could never find anything. I was beginning to believe I was delusional and that the game didn't look as I remember, or even exist, so thanks for that.
2:20 You had to do it didn't you :)
The glorious quality!
It's almost a religious experience
Man, that PS1 start up sound gives me chills... Pure nostalgia taking me way back. Giving me many good memories.
lovely content
Smoke on the water
"Rocks and Gems" was my favourite Net Yaroze game. Spent dozens and dozens of hours of my childhood playing the game and would love to play it again. Sadly I lost the PS1 demo disc that it was on. If the developer is still out there somewhere, I'd like to personally thank you for making a great little game.
That comic sans though
Absolutely fascinating episode. Never even heard of the Net Yaroze before!
So basically Dreams PS4 brought this “bedroom coding” stuff back.
Dream is definitely the modern day PlayStation Net Yahoz
Nice video. I worked in City Software in Liverpool between 1982 and 1988, so I knew quite a few of the developers, artists and musicians that worked in the game industry at the time.
Please someone tell me: What's the game at 8:57??
I remember playing that game when I was super young and it left a really lasting impression on me (I think because it scared me). I wasn't even sure if it was real or if I had just imagined it!! Please let me know if you know the name. Thanks!!!
Looks like a Doom clone. You might also be thinking of Quake or Wolfenstein.
The game is called CLONE
th-cam.com/video/pAtwKex8U3M/w-d-xo.html
probably king's field? by FromSoftware aka Dark souls dev
Clone II
@@gtheskater Thanks, that's it!
I never really understood the system as a kid, I just loved the song from the demo disc trailer!!
At 11:48 you said 1987 I think you meant 1997
I remember time slip. It was amazingly addictive and I spent hours on it. if I recall correctly you could play your own music while playing it. I just thought this was such a clever game. Like you said the graphics were not amazing but it made me realise that it wasn't all about graphics = good.
"and making games was fun" - it's also super fun now. It's you that has changed.
The sight of those PlayStation Magazine demo discs takes me straight to my childhood. Some real gems from that time. I remember playing the demo of Vib Ribbon and desperately trying to find such a niche game in the store. Would never have bought it if it were just for the good review in the magazine. A bygone era
yeehaw, nothing like a video released 25 seconds ago,
This video is absolutely mind blowing, especially given as a kid I used to fairly regularly get those PlayStation Magazines and thusly have a ton of those Demo discs, including most of those Net Yaroze games mentioned here, the notaslgia is incredible!🤯👍👏
Is it Rare Today
No shit Sherlock
I wanted to get this when it came out but as a young man of 23/24 years old and a new baby in my life to take care of I needed the $750 or so that it cost at the time for other things. Sadly I'd love to have this in my collection today.
I have such fond memories of Net Yaroze games. Some had trash graphics and repetitive gameplay, but unique tracks, visuals and sound effects made some awesome games that you spent several hours trying to beat because they didn't skimp on difficulty. Psychon, terra Incognita, Blitter Boy.
Hats off to the creators.
Super interesting, as a Unity developer in the UK, makes me realise how easy we have it now :) and why Game Dev is such a big deal here.