[retrospective jazz music] [computer buzzes, beeps] Greetings and welcome to an LGR thing where, I can't believe I'm about to say this, but we're celebrating/commemorating 15 years of this channel here on YouTube. Well really, 15 years of just the LGR show on this channel I've been doing stuff on YouTube since 2006, but yeah. LGR has been going for 15 years as of 2024. The end of June, beginning of July was really when I started this show back in
2009. Just sort of for a bit of fun really, a bit of a challenge to myself, you know. I was like “okay, I'm going to do one video a week for a year and see how that goes” and just kind of never stopped. And you know, I don't know why. I mean I do know why, I was having fun. But I certainly never set out to do this as a career, certainly did didn't anticipate doing this for 15 years. Or even 5 years, you know, I don't know. I'm just still kind of here, and so I wanted to say thank you very much for watching all this time, supporting in every way that y'all support the show. And just yeah, generally being awesome. Like seriously, there's ups and downs to YouTube
always, but in general this has been fantastic. Like 15 years that I never thought would occur like this. I don't know, I'm still flabbergasted this is even a thing that I do. You know I've done all kinds of different celebrations, anniversary things here on the channel before. But I thought
I'd do something a little bit different this time, and just talk about the last 15 years, in general, as it pertains to this hobby. And kind of this channel, and just the community and like, retro and vintage and computing because, my goodness. 15 years is an eternity when it comes to technology and electronics and just all the stuff that we do. The LGR show unintentionally began at the start of the modern wave of retro gaming and vintage computing enthusiasm, at least as I see it. I really got in on the ground level, at least in terms of online presence, being popular or becoming popular. Although it it certainly wasn't when I first started, and that was one of the reasons I started because there was no one really, that I knew of, doing what I wanted to do. You know, covering
certain old computers and talking about MS-DOS and PCs and the shareware games that I remember. And I kind of felt really, really alone. That's definitely not the case anymore! In fact, I now feel really grateful to have done all of this at the time that I've done it, you know through really all the 2010s, and a little bit before and now a little bit after. I used to really lament not growing up in the late 1970s or in the 80s, you know at the dawn of computing, and seeing all these early micro computer things as they were happening. But the more I think about it, I truly feel that we are currently in a golden era for vintage computing, retro gaming. Whether you're getting into the hobby for the first time, or you've been doing it for decades. Obviously there's some
downsides as well to how things are currently. But there's a whole lot of upsides, and that's what I want to really focus on here. It's easy to take these things for granted, the state of things just feels normal until you kind of look back. So we got some hindsight, let's take an opportunity here
to look back at the past 15 years. And we got to begin with the community itself, because that is the biggest thing in retro computing especially, but vintage gaming and you know, just the whole ecosystem of this online community. And off, as it expands more and more. But there are more people than ever interested in vintage computing and gaming, old and young alike. Like at this point, I hear more from people a whole generation are two younger than me just providing feedback on the videos and saying they really get a kick out of this stuff, and getting into retro for the vibe or the aesthetic. Or you know, just the lower fidelity, less connected aspect of it.
Y’know it's mostly offline, and a lot of people get a lot of enjoyment out of that, if they've been online like their whole life. There's a legitimate interest there, and I really don't think that you can be “too young” to be passionate about vintage stuff. Like heck, when I started LGR I was only 22. Some people didn't like that! But I just thought it was fun, I couldn't help it. And I think that the progression of all this has mostly been like, by and large a positive thing. Like we went from all these scattered users groups, and chat rooms, and forums all over the place online. And in my case and a lot of people that I still know are on here, like piracy sites. Underground
Gamer, Black Cats Games, Demonoid. And just doing things on there and sharing YouTube videos and the stuff that was being shared. And yeah, now social media and the video sharing and streaming, and Discord and chat things, on and on and on. It’s constantly evolving and getting larger. In a way, I do miss the older smaller community sometimes. But I also love how widespread and diverse the retro computer scene has become, to the point where even the most obscure system or problem has hardcore enthusiasts and problem solvers coming up with solutions and add-ons and things. And also all the huge conventions, like the Vintage Computer Festival Southwest I just went to, and of course Midwest which has like 3 or 4,000 visitors a year now. And like, it's just getting bigger and
bigger, which leads to people of all kinds from literally worldwide, all in on the same hobby and it's great! That said, the obvious downside to all of this comes in the form of overall scarcity and expense of getting into the hobby, especially. But even if you've been in it for a long time, yeah, collecting and acquiring new things to mess around with it just ain't the same as it used to be. And that's how it is. The cost of original hardware has skyrocketed, especially in like 2020, for obvious reasons. But even in the years since it hasn't come down all that much. Software, particularly big box PC games, have gone up massively as well. Which, that hasn't been fun. As much as I used to
love collecting those, I barely do anymore. And you know, some of that's due to the whole weird back alley hustle of grading and speculation online. But it goes beyond that you know, even common place -- I don't want to do, why am I doing all these quotes? You know what I mean. “Common” big box games right? That used to be known as common, kind of aren't anymore. Like in decent condition and in good shape and got all the things with them, they can go for hundreds and hundreds of dollars now, if it's even a slightly well-known classic game. And thrifting? Thrifting, don't even get me started! That whole scene has completely changed from what it was even 5 years ago, much less 15. I've been
doing LGR Thrifts for 10 years, and going back and looking at those early episodes now? It's basically unrecognizable, just going to every thrift store in this area and the stuff that I would find, and for the prices, it's just it's wild. Y’know, thrifting is a whole entire subculture and genre of its own at this point, and I was doing it for years and years before ever filming it. And yeah just looking back at that... it's nuts, man. I miss old thrifting. And who do we blame
for that? Okay. I admit that a bit of this inflation of interest, value or whatever, it's got to be due to the proliferation of channels like mine. And just greater coverage in general, right? Like even though I'm not a reseller, I try not to focus on the value, the current resale value of things when I pick them up or talk about them. But it is sort of an inescapable reality, especially nowadays as more and more people are trying to just make an extra buck. Because life
sucks. I also see the other side of it, whereas you know at the same time, it's also lending value to things, or letting people become aware of things that they just didn't know existed. And I know for sure that leads to some more of these things being saved from the garbage. I can't tell you how many times I've heard from folks who said they would have completely overlooked certain computers or games or pieces of technology had it not been for my videos. And you know, like as an example of that, back when I started a 486 or Pentium 1 PC was seen as practically valueless. You could barely
give them away, I was just picking them up left and right. And nowadays you're lucky to find one at all. But back to the positive side of things though, and you know looking back at just the hobbyist tech and enthusiast kind of add-on things that you had to pick from in 2009. Back then there were certainly plenty of hand-soldered, “made with love” hack jobs and little adapters and add-ons and things. Limited options really, but you know, they were out there for flashcard interfaces and video
adapters and stuff. But those days are long gone thankfully, and what we have now is just absurd. You can get stuff that looks like professionally manufactured add-ons made by hobbyists and home brew folks all day long. And there are very few needs that aren't fulfilled in some way by like an open source project or whatever. And it’s fueled by all kinds of things, like the rise of Internet Archive becoming like, the place to dump stuff, like publicly available software, and documentation for preservation. And like all of the different modern recreations of classic machines, whether they're official or less so. Fast and more accurate emulation software,
especially on the PC side of things. And of course you got boards like the Raspberry Pi and FPGA hardware and stuff like that, which amplifies the overall desire and development efforts for all this type of stuff. Not to mention the absolute onslaught of homebrew add-on cards and devices. You got your flash cards and sound cards, and different hard disk interfaces and video conberter -- conberter? Converters. Wifi modems and ethernet things for machines that were just never supposed to have that kind of access. It's awesome! And you've even got people making, you know, rare
old hardware with original parts, or recreating it with FPGA or microcontrollers or whatever else. And other folks coming up with completely new hardware adding greater functionality and speed that we could only dream of on our machines back in the day, or even in 2009. And looking back at the past 15 years, it's wild how much of this was spurred on just by the combination of like, having better software to create this stuff. Or better tooling, or better cheaper tooling even, available for
hobbyists to use that want to engineer these things. And you know, community documentation out there, shared knowledge and all these wikis and whatnot. Plus you can use programs like KiCad or Altium. I don’t, you know, but the people that actually do this stuff. And yeah I mean, there's also all those services, right? PCBWay and Digikey and JLCPCB, and I'm sure a bunch of other sponsorships. But like they're important to have around if you're into this scene. You know it's easier to order boards and cheaper than I think it's ever been. And also in there is
3D printers, you know they finally got affordable and then got really, really good. It's interesting, the same year I started LGR that's when the first MakerBot 3D printer came out, I think. And yeah I finally recently got into the 3D printing scene and it's so easy now. It's just awesome. And also just cannot overlook Linux. Linux got really good! Like it's always been good for
some things, don't get me wrong, I've used it ever since like 1999 in some form or another. But yeah Nowadays the modern distros and whatnot, and the stuff that usually comes packed in with these things especially the more specialized ones. It's so easy to find and update your packages and get all kinds of resources, whether or not they're legit, it'll just download them or whatever through scripts. And you can also play Windows software, a lot of times even better than actual Windows machines or VMs or whatever. Not to mention all the console games and arcades. There's things like Retro Pie of course, you know collecting all these shell scripts together and making it dead simple to set up and get going on a pie or similar things. And compatibility layers like Wine, and of course the like the front ends that make that even easier. And of course Proton, holy crap.
Systems like the Steam Deck that really brought that to the forefront. But there's like 50,000 of these x86 handhelds now, plus infinite numbers more of all these Android handhelds. None of this stuff was even on the radar in 2009, that I know of. Like yeah sure, everybody was like “oh one of these days is going to be the year of Linux.” But I don't know, maybe we're in a decade of Linux. And you know, it extends to like broader industry trends and just pop culture and media in general. Like movies, music, TV, etc etc. Like Vaporwave for instance. I don't even think that existed as a genre in 2009 when
I started. Albums like Ecco Jams and Floral Shoppe just became kind of instant classics, at least among a certain type of retro folk. Yeah there were some synth wave and chill wave, retro wave, future wave, Outrun type of stuff that was out there. You had like the movie Drive in 2011, that really kind of clued me in that that was a thing, I think for me that's when I first ran into that. Of course Hotline Miami a year later. But again, spurred on by a lot of the stuff that's on you YouTube
and this general community. That you know, expands into like, abandoned places and urbex, and y’know, exploring dead malls and that kind of stuff. It's not just the Vaporwave but you know, a lot of those folks are also into the old computing and so it all kind of mingles, right? It mingles! Which also ties into the resurgence of vinyl records and cassette tapes more recently. And even overtaking sales of CDs for some of those. Which I think CDs are going to come back, too, but you know, whatever. That's probably another 5 to 10 years. Or like, general pop culture
things, like Ready Player One and Wreck-It Ralph or even Pixels, right? All these movies, plus a billion great documentaries that have come out over the past 15 years. Holy crap we've gotten some really good stuff to watch. And you know, there's the whole 80s pop culture trend, which I guess is still going with Stranger Things and all that. It's fascinating to see all this evolve to the point now we're getting to like, 90s, 2000s nostalgia. It's getting weird. In 2009 when I started, 8-bit,
16-bit style retro aesthetic kind of games, even just indie games, they still felt like kind of a fresh thing, you know? Flash, Macromedia Flash was still like the dominant way to distribute this stuff. And websites like Newgrounds where you went to play things things like Meat Boy, and Cannibal and whatnot. Flash games, right? And then they started becoming “real games” and you got like, VVVVV. And Minecraft, which was still in alpha at the time, but it was around.
And heck, Roblox was even around back then, but it was completely different to what it is now. And then you just got the whole rise of that whole scene, like online distribution for indies became way easier, Steam Greenlight and all that stuff. But then it became arguably oversaturated, to the point where it's very hard to keep up anymore. You know, you got like retro-style FPSs, or Boomer shooters or whatever you want to call them. Seems like there's a new one coming out
every week. Those certainly didn't exist when I started LGR and those have just exploded in popularity. Plus all of the countless delightful new games being made for old systems all the time. Like often with big boxes and feelies and physical documentation and even floppy disks and stuff. I never thought big boxes would return, but they certainly have if you look out for them. You know, you've got reproductions and re-releases galore through certain companies. Like they're just making
that their entire business model, you know. Crazy obscure stuff even, that's been in licensing hell forever, or locked away on a certain system, now it's getting ported to the PC and PS5 and Switch all the time. And decompiling, reverse engineering, creating new engines for old games. It's a legit business now and it's kind of wild to see. And yeah again, even though it is a bit of a price
barrier to get started collecting actual retro hardware and games and software anymore, if you just want to get into playing retro stuff? Again it's so much easier and more accessible and more options than ever. You know not all just the emulation stuff, but like the official mini systems and retro-inspired hardware that lets you play old carts with new hardware in new ways, whether it's FPGA or otherwise. Or you got like, retro compilations coming out, restored and modded systems just all over the place. It's so easy to find like, a guy that'll just clean up and make you the perfect Sega Genesis or whatever. Or you know, even people restoring PCS and selling custom towers now.
Not to mention like optical drive emulators and flash carts, and all those kind of add-ons combined with really extremely capable scalers like all the RetroTinks and OSSC and those type of things. HD and 4K is also a fantastic option, you don't need a CRT if you don't really want to. And you can still have like, a basically lag-free, wonderfully scaled experience. Like dude, when I started
this show, capturing different PCs was a nightmare! It could even be impossible to get certain resolutions and refresh rates and TTL and stuff like that. But now like, I just need a good scaler and an adapter or two, and I can capture like every single system I have. It's a nice time to be into this, is what I'm saying, over and over here. And of course you know, all your tutorials and wikis and online forums and YouTube videos explaining all of this in excruciating detail.
And channels out there dedicated to making sure that everybody knows how to get the best settings. These things were just not a thing when I started, it was a completely different different landscape. I'm just happy to still be around to see it, right? Seeing all this evolve and seeing myself evolve, too Like to get real for a second, I don't recognize myself anymore in those old videos of mine. I know people still enjoy them, but I find it very hard to go back and watch like, the majority. And you know, I think it's for the better like overall. I was very much a more cynical, critical, easily irritated, unsure of myself kind of person in my 20s. Or even you know, I guess early 30s.
I don't know, whatever, I'm constantly getting older and rethinking my own reality and dealing with the ups and downs of doing this as a full-time job, and burnout and stuff. But at the same time, I think that I'm constantly getting better and better and better, to the point where I always feel like I haven't done my best work yet. I still have so much more to say and to cover and do and explore. And like, realms of this constantly-expanding community of retro people and vintage nerd stuff that's just endlessly intriguing to me. And the passion is still there, if not more so than when I started.
Like I said at the very beginning, this was a personal challenge, right? And just something to do while I had been kind of laid off. And then rehired for less pay, for more work, at my job at the time. 2008/2009 was sucky. But you know what? It was exciting to just continue doing this for fun, and seeing what the community reaction was. And you know things were just weird in YouTube land, they've been weird, they're always weird. But especially from like 2011 to 2014 or so. I was jumping from one MCN or multi channel network to another for years. They were all increasingly crap in their own way or another. Some good but mostly not. And eventually I just
went fully independent and left all that stuff behind, and just went directly through YouTube, once they allowed my kind of channel to join in the partner program. And I’ve been lucky to have this become my full-time job. More or less ever since December of 2012, that's when I quit my day job anyway. And looking back like, as crazy as it was, I wouldn't trade it I wouldn't trade
it for anything. I don't think I would go and do it all over again, I would certainly do about a billion things differently. But I'm certainly okay with how things worked out, you know? Like hitting all these subscriber milestones over the years, I never thought I'd get to 100,000 much less a million. And like certain videos going viral every so often is just bizarre. Hitting the trending pages or like, mainstream media. And just kind of stuff like that, it's a rush. But that's not why I
keep doing this. In the end, it all passes, and those weird surreal feelings of fakeness and y’know just, evaporating attention. It all passes, and I'm right back to just being a dude, a geek that for whatever reason, people care to listen to regarding old computers and stuff. For 15 years now, good grief. And yeah, whatever reason you're watching, whatever reason seriously, I thank you for it. I'm glad if it relaxes you, it puts you to sleep, if it's just part of your routine. I don't
care man, like, you're watching and that's amazing. It's weird for anybody to be able to do anything, I think, for 15 years. But especially something in the creative “online person space.” Whatever, like I said, it all feels kind of fake. But it's real at the same time. And I'm reminded of that every so often, like right now. So again, thank you very much for watching. Here's to another... amount of time!
2024-07-02