David, what's your favorite piece of retro attack? Well, come on, let me show you.
Let me show you. Full freaking drawer. Yeah, let me show you my drawer of Game Boy games.
So I've got my Game Boy games, Game Boy Advance stuff, but I have a modded Game Boy Advance with the IPS display.
Is that your favorite? Oh, it's my favorite. I am in love with this thing so much.
It's a close second to my Vita. It's a close second to my Vita right over there.
Right, right, right. But this thing looks and plays amazing.
How long did it take you to mod that? Oh, like 20 minutes, 30 minutes. Wait, serious?
Yeah, it's super, super easy. I could show you how. Welcome back to Taran Tech Tips.
Today on Taran Tech Tips, the Wii. It's funny, I talked about this in another video.
People don't think of the Wii as being retro, but it is. It's old enough now.
Yeah, when did it come out, like 2006? Oh, I don't even remember.
It was ages ago, back when we still had CRT televisions.
Oh, man. But what's so cool about it is that it's really, really moddable.
And even though they shut down the Wii online store,
there are ways to get all the games.
So I have been playing through like a ton of classics.
It's been really fun. I would say my Dreamcast, but that's
a bit of a cop out since I already showed that off in a video.
I'd say actually my favorite, just like a nostalgia thing,
is my first sound card, the ESS1868 audio drive.
That was a Sound Blaster 16 clone, ISA.
And it had an OPL3 clone on it that did actually pretty weird
things with the sound of MIDI instruments in Windows
and in DOS as well. It was actually pretty neat. It kind of was the first thing that opened my mind
to the idea that MIDI was actually kind of good.
Because otherwise, it just sounds like farts and stuff. But this actually sounded like instruments.
It was pretty good. Did you do any MIDI composing yourself during that time?
No, I never really had the mind for composing music,
unfortunately. I always wanted to. And I was super into the stuff that people were composing.
But it's never too late to learn. I just, I don't know.
I can't conceptualize how sound is supposed to work, especially if I don't have a keyboard or something.
And I'm just dragging notes around. What was the game you played the most on that sound card?
Probably Duke Nukem 3D. Classic. I played the crap out of that game.
I actually only ever had the regular version, not the atomic edition.
But I downloaded a whole bunch of maps and stuff, and total conversions like Platoon back in the day
to just kind of extend my game experience. I tried to make my own maps too, but I never really
got the hang of sector effectors and stuff.
Well, everything I own, the oldest camera that I have,
is the Contax T2. It's new to me. I've only had it for about two years, but I love this thing.
It's a point and shoot. So it's very portable. Look how tiny this 40mm lens is.
You can control the aperture on it. It takes full 35mm film, so you get very nice, interesting
images off of it. And I can walk around this. I just leave this in my car.
And whenever I see a photo opportunity when I'm driving, I'll pull over, take a photo.
That's great. No. Yeah. So you're saying I should break into your car?
Shit. No. So I couldn't think of anything, but I do have a clock at home.
And it's like an analog 2 bell clock thing.
I don't know. It looks pretty old, and it's the only thing that can wake me up.
And they're annoying as hell, and it wakes up everyone else. But that's my favorite, because if I didn't have that,
I wouldn't be here right now. Hey, I mean, that's fair enough.
Wait, when was this clock made? It was an Amazon thing, I don't know.
But it looks old. I'm probably going to have to say reel to reel tape.
They're like giant 12 inch reels of audio tape.
I'm sure you've seen them. They're like two of them, and they go through the middle thing.
So this giant ass audio tape thing. Audio quality, mostly the visual aspect of it too.
They look, I don't know, ridiculous. They're like the size of a computer monitor
almost to play low quality audio.
Can be very high quality too, but yeah. What's a music you're blasting out of that, though?
I think that's got to be vapor wave, just for the aesthetic.
Maybe some lo-fi hip hop beats to relax and study too. So basically my thought is that if it's older than 15 years,
it's got to be fair game. I know that some people might balk at that.
But I'd say that the top two for me
are the third gen iPod Nano. It was the stout little square one.
It was the perfect blend of size
and also having a good display. I remember watching probably the entirety of Invader Zim
on my iPod, because I bought all of the seasons on iTunes
because that's what I did with my allowance. How much did that cost?
Oh, probably like $60, like so. And then the other option would be the DS Lite.
King of handhelds, even if it's very small
and now as an adult, I'm sure I would not want to use it. When I was a kid, I was doing all sorts of crazy shit
on that thing. DS was great. I had the DS FAT.
Oh, you had the OG? I had the OG and then I also had,
I remember I have a very vivid memory of my mind being absolutely blown because on Christmas day,
I was able to play a three-dimensional Mario game
on the toilet on Christmas day. It was the best Christmas of my life.
Best gift you could've ever got? Yeah, yeah. It's definitely my film like, huh?
I shoot that all the time and still loving it.
Is that like the oldest camera you regularly use?
My lens is pretty old. I have a 1966, 50mm, I have a 1975, 50mm,
I have a 1980-ish, like 35mm.
But that film looks the way to go, huh? Oh yeah, oh yeah. All right, Jamie, your favorite piece of retro tech.
All right, this isn't it, but it's close enough.
The first graphics card everyone out and bought was a GeForce 8800 GT, but it was a BFG card
and it had cool dog tags on it. It was fire. Why mess is the art and the graphics on these graphics cards?
Yeah, so this is back when graphics cards were cool
and they were also very thin. So that's a plus.
It only has one power plug on it. Oh my gosh.
You don't need like four like these new ones do, right? But this thing was hot.
It came with a copy of Company of Heroes. Was like the most played game on this card, you think,
for you? Company of Heroes. Company of Heroes? Yeah, fair enough, fair enough.
But yeah, this got me through university. Not this specific card, the other card, Rest in Peace,
the other card, like Rest in Peace, buddy. But I took it to QuakeCon twice, maybe three times.
And then I got replaced by like a 9800 GT
or something like that. This is probably like the last time I like vigorously researched the graphics card.
Ah, great memories.