POD - The 1997 Racing Game - 3dfx

POD - The 1997 Racing Game - 3dfx - MMX

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3 жыл бұрын

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POD - Planet of Death is a futuristic racing game released in 1997. It was the first game to use MMX technology and also an early adopter of the 3dfx Glide API. In this video we take a look on what the use of those technologies impacted the game and a take deeper look into the game itself.
System Specs
Penium MMX 166 Mhz (also @208mhz)
3dfx Voodoo Graphics PCI
Socket 7 Acer Motherboard
64 mb of SDRAM
Trident TGUI 9440
Sound Blaster AWE 64
SD to IDE card reader
Take a look at these awesome channels if you like this kind of content:
/ riksrandomretro
/ cpugalaxy
/ retrotechbytes
/ pixelpipes
Follow me on social for daily posts on retro computing and video games as well as general chat if you'd like
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References
www.lazygamereviews.com/0706mi...
www.mobygames.com/game/window...
www.retromags.com/files/file/...
www.bredel.homepage.t-online.d...
Music credits
1. TeknoAXE - Ascent to the Station
2. TeknoAXE - Cruising the Night Sky
#RetroGaming #3dfx #Windows98

Пікірлер: 87

@CPUGalaxy 3 жыл бұрын

Great video and nice review of this game! Keep it on my friend. I appreciate your videos a lot. greez, Peter

@SUCRA 3 жыл бұрын

Thanks, Peter! It's such an honor having you around and I must say that your videos are top notch and I appreciate them very much as well. Have a great weekend!

@WillianWives 3 жыл бұрын

Its interesting that great audio is one of the things that we take for granted this days and we tend to forget that it also had an evolution as steep as the graphics during this period. It is impressive that this game from 1997 has as good audio as a game from today.

@SUCRA 3 жыл бұрын

This is a fact! During this period there were great audio api's released like Aureal Vortex's A3D, Creative's EAX and other! Unfortunatelly this trend was cut by microsoft and motherboard makers in the late 2000s, most of our PCs now only have crappy onboard sound. Thanks for your comment, my friend!

@Banzeken 3 ай бұрын

2:37 Technically there is an ATI 3D CIF acceleration mode in the MMX OEM 1.0 version of POD but given how the Rage and Rage II performed back then I guess you can’t blame anyone for thinking that OEM was without 3D acceleration support.

@KillThad 3 жыл бұрын

Could never get super into this game, but it was definitely a true showcase piece for 3D accelerators at its time.

@SUCRA 3 жыл бұрын

This game was quite a pioneer in these technologies! Lovely game, once you start looking into it, it gets more fun!

@TheVanillatech Жыл бұрын

Difficult to master and win the championship. It required learning the tracks, or at least the problem parts, and you needed to tweak your car depending on which track you were playing on. After learning this, I started to really enjoy the game.

@wizards001 Жыл бұрын

These tracks are still in my dreams

@SUCRA Жыл бұрын

It's fun! I've been playing that on my Premio P2, hardly gets old

@Caleb-fv5fp 2 жыл бұрын

I’m so glad I bought a sidewinder force feedback wheel because there are almost as many racing as fps games in the 90s

@SUCRA 2 жыл бұрын

Yeah, Great buy. I love the sidewinder line.

@Caleb-fv5fp 2 жыл бұрын

@@SUCRA love your PCs btw rn I have a Pentium iii 733 and voodoo 3 3500 I’m thinking about getting a intel 486 100mhz windows 3.1 pc and a Pentium mmx 200/voodoo 1 windows 95 pc like you. Edit: oh and a Pentium 4 @~2ghz and a GeForce 6800 windows xp pc for early to mid 2000s games

@SUCRA 2 жыл бұрын

@@Caleb-fv5fp thanks! I'm glad you get some enjoyment out of it. Yeah, building retro PCs is fun and cheap if you are not picky with the parts. Good luck! 👍

@Falcon0BR 3 жыл бұрын

Great vídeo, I learned lots of things about the mmx tecnology, and was curious about the first implementations of glide.

@SUCRA 3 жыл бұрын

Thanks, I'm glad you like it!

@RetroTechBytes 3 жыл бұрын

Wow, this is so cool! Thank you for sharing this Bruno! I’ve only ever heard of POD and seen it played in reviews/videos/magazines, but never played it myself. I really need to give this some attention. Like you, this hadn’t captured my attention before; but this video has me sold on it! I can’t believe Intel distributed this with the Pentium MMX, but that’s pretty neat actually. Seems like the game was really a proof of concept that turned into something that was quite fun and just interesting. Most games that were so cutting edge like this were never this well-made, but POD is something special and your video really makes that show! Thank you for all your hard work and for this excellent video explaining, demonstrating, and showing off such an interesting game!

@RetroTechBytes 3 жыл бұрын

Oh and also, on the MMX lock-my MMX 166 is in the ceramic package, but it’s the same. Seems that the multiplier caps at 2.5X! That being said, on a SS7 board, this CPU should be stable at 250MHz, if you’re interested in trying that at some point haha!

@SUCRA 3 жыл бұрын

Thanks for watching my friend. I'm glad you enjoyed it, I hope to do more of these in the future. I thought that Next Gen magazine was a bit misleading but it was a fun article haha. I enjoyed reading that and I might feature their creativity in other retro game reviews 😂

@SUCRA 3 жыл бұрын

@@RetroTechBytes I'll definitely keep and eye open for one of those mobos. Probably not easy to find around here.

@RetroTechBytes 3 жыл бұрын

@@SUCRA Of course, and thank you for all that you do! I really did and I would love to see a series like this. That would be very cool! Next Gen was definitely taking some "liberties" in their reporting, but I agree--it was a neat article and so cool to see! It'd be fun to hear what they had to say about other games too haha! And yeah, of course! Please do keep me posted! One telltale sign (not always) is that a SS7 motherboard has AGP (99% of the time)! The only reason I say not always is because the SiS 5591 sometimes has AGP, but it's limited to an 83MHz FSB (usually). If you can find a board with an SiS 530, VIA MVP3, or ALi Aladdin V, that's your ticket. The Aladdin V usually has an ALi M1453 chip.

@SUCRA 3 жыл бұрын

Thanks man, I'll look for one of those.

@RiksRandomRetro 3 жыл бұрын

Awesome video! It really is a fun game and it's a nice go to for testing machines from this era. Also hey saw my name in there haha thanks!

@SUCRA 3 жыл бұрын

I'm glad you like it! Thanks for the photos, my pleasure featuring your name! haha.

@ivanmastrandrea5482 3 жыл бұрын

Great! I love seeing POD come up on Retro Videos, indeed the 3DFx version looks awesome but has some rendering issues with the SkyBox. Also, i think you are having some sound phase issue with the recordings, it sounds weird, POD sounds so much better !

@SUCRA 3 жыл бұрын

Thanks for watching! I think I'm having a sound doubling problem while capturing, sorry for that, I need to work on my capture solution.

@upgrade1373 9 ай бұрын

I built a retro rig to play just this game but I couldn't find a reasonably priced voodoo card so I went with radeon.

@SUCRA 9 ай бұрын

Oh, you did good. There are tons of options, you don't have to go with voodoos.

@supergauchito 5 ай бұрын

I remember having a 3dfx voodoo banshee, and I wanted to play this pod game more than anything else.... but the day came and I played NFS and others with the 3dfx acceleration, and I forgot to get this game

@SUCRA 5 ай бұрын

I don't really have a lot of memories from it from back in the day. But it's a fun game for sure. For racing games besides the NFS séries I remember playing a lot of MegaRace, remember that one?

@bogey361 Жыл бұрын

Cool vid. Remember playing this when it came out.

@SUCRA Жыл бұрын

Thanks, man! Its a great game, very representative for the period. Thanks for watching and leaving a comment. Have a nice weekend! 👍

@bogey361 Жыл бұрын

@@SUCRA You too.

@alaricjeard269 3 жыл бұрын

Motorhead is a very great racing game from 1998, you should try it!

@SUCRA 3 жыл бұрын

Sounds good, I'll definitely check it out, thanks for mentioning it!

@alaricjeard269 3 жыл бұрын

@Johnny Macaroni motorhead2 does not exist.

@ted-b 3 жыл бұрын

That looks like bloody hard work to play! Nice vid SUCRA!

@SUCRA 3 жыл бұрын

All worth it! This little PC keeps on giving. I'm having a lot of fun with it. Thanks for watching Ted, I'm glad you like it!

@wizards001 Жыл бұрын

You need the 3dfx graphics card to really make this awesome

@SUCRA Жыл бұрын

Yep, always need more 3dfx!👍

@hardwarechronicles9178 3 жыл бұрын

Hey buddy count me in im always in for some 90s gaming

@SUCRA 3 жыл бұрын

👍 hell yeah man! A fun time for PC gaming was the 90s! I'm glad you're on board! 👍

@PixelPipes 3 жыл бұрын

Considering how poor a lot of games at the time ran with software rendering, this one is definitely a highlight.

@Jason-fp7vi 3 жыл бұрын

No kidding... Look at half life 1's software rendering lol. This game looked pretty well on software mode considering

@SUCRA 3 жыл бұрын

Agreed, it kind of made me think MMX was doing something special, but I am leaning to believe they really just used MMX for audio and did a good job on the game engine.

@TheVanillatech Жыл бұрын

@@SUCRA MMX didn't improve framerate here at all. My Pentium 200 vanilla beat my friends Pentium 166 MMX hands down in POD.

@CYON4D 22 күн бұрын

Nice one.

@SUCRA 21 күн бұрын

Thanks, I'm glad you like it

@framebuffer.10 3 жыл бұрын

nice game and nice video!

@SUCRA 3 жыл бұрын

Thanks, much appreciated, my good sir.

@jamescarter8311 Жыл бұрын

Fun game, but I only ever got it to work with 3Dfx on my original voodoo card. Voodoo 2 and 3 could never get the 3Dfx version to work. The 3Dfx render looked far better than software.

@SUCRA Жыл бұрын

Totally agree, great game. Indeed the Voodoo Graphics PCI was more compatible to early glide games. Glide games always looked so good comparing to pixelated software rendered games, but some complain about washed out colors. Have a great week, thanks for commenting.

@Jason-fp7vi 3 жыл бұрын

Hair cut? Looking sharp 👍

@SUCRA 3 жыл бұрын

Haha it was overdue for a while! 👍

@kalimolli5721 3 жыл бұрын

Pentium MMX CPUs had a very good yield rate! Most of the 166 MHz MMX CPUs also runs fine with 250 MHz (100MHZ FSB x 2.5) at default 2,8V voltage. My best P55C MMX CPU (200 MHz) runs very stable (also under prime) with 300 MHz (100x3) at default voltage. Not bad, but I still prefer a AMD K6-III (+) or K6-2+ (not a normal K6-2) for a Super Socket 7 build. The on-die fullspeed L2 Cache is very nice for a Socket 7 CPU!

@SUCRA 3 жыл бұрын

Agreed, these CPUs are nice. If I get an ss7 motherboard I'll try it at higher clocks. 👍

@3dfxvoodoocards6 3 жыл бұрын

Would be nice to see some more games with this system.

@SUCRA 3 жыл бұрын

Thanks for watching! I do have other games running in this system in the video MMX meets Voodoo. But, tell me what games you have in mind!

@3dfxvoodoocards6 3 жыл бұрын

@@SUCRA Motorhead, Ultimate race pro, Motoracer 1/2, NFS 2/3, Klingon Honor Guard, Tomb Raider 1/2/3, Star Wars Rougue Squadron, Monaco GP Racing Simulation, Castrol Honda Superbike 1998, Carmageddon 1/2, European Air War, Quake 2, Sin, Unreal, Thief 1, Fifa 98/99, Official F1 Racing 1999, Sports Car GT... there are so many great 3d games from 1997-1999 that run well on this system. By the way my first pc was a P1 166 MMX with a 1 mb video card :)

@SUCRA 3 жыл бұрын

@@3dfxvoodoocards6 sounds good! I'll keep that for future reference, thanks for the suggestions, some great games there! 👍

@warrax111 3 жыл бұрын

@@SUCRA Requiem (1999), Battlezone (1998), Terracide (1997), Mechwarrior 2/3 (1996/1999), GLQuake (1997), Shadow of the Empire (1997), NHL 98/99, Jedi Knight (1997), International Rally Championship (1997), Mortal Kombat 4 (1998)

@warrax111 3 жыл бұрын

@@SUCRA Turok (1997), Lifeforce Tenka (1998), Hexen II (1997), Shattered Steel (1996), G-nome (1997), Croc (1997), Forsaken (1998), Incomming (1998).

@demasprojects 3 жыл бұрын

future games videos: blood2, heretic2, Urban chaos, Medal of honor 1, soldier of fortune

@SUCRA 3 жыл бұрын

Sounds good! I have great memories of Soldier of Fortune, I remember it was quite impressive for the time.

@demasprojects 3 жыл бұрын

@@SUCRA especially ghoul engine for gore

@Ivan-pr7ku 3 жыл бұрын

The nature of MMX instruction set was meant predominantly for audio and communications signal processing. There wasn't much use for 3D graphics acceleration, on top of the fact that MMX couldn't be issued in parallel with the FPU, though video scaling and some basic 2D manipulations also benefited. Soft modems and AC'97 cheap audio codecs is what MMX was mostly designed to be used for.

@SUCRA 3 жыл бұрын

Alright Ivan, thanks for the info, have a great week!

@Banzeken 6 ай бұрын

Voxel-based renderers benefitted quite a bit from MMX, so not quite pointless for 3D games in that regard. I would be very interested in seeing how games like Comanche 3, No Respect and Armored Fist 2 (all from ‘97) would run on an MMX vs. a non-MMX Pentium [including Pentium Pro].

@SUCRA 6 ай бұрын

Interesting! I suppose they have to be made to use with MMX? Or do your think they would benefit from it regardless?

@Banzeken 6 ай бұрын

@@SUCRA Pretty sure there needs to be some form of optimization for MMX present to see any benefits. I know for a fact that Armored Fist 2 is MMX-optimized, but I have no clue if No Respect (same devs as Outcast) is MMX-optimized. I read from an old Game Developer Magazine (April-May 1997) scan on the web that Comanche 3 *might* have MMX code in it but if so it’s probably negligible, NovaLogic probably only just got started learning the Pentium MMX at that point before moving on go AF2. Delta Force (NovaLogic, 1998) required MMX to even run, same with Outcast (Appeal, 1999). I’m not fully educated on what voxel-rendered game existed during this time but it’s something I’m still interested in digging into deeper since I’m planning on getting an old Pentium MMX board myself.

@modernandretrogaming 3 жыл бұрын

I tried POD on my testing PC with Athlon XP 1700+ and it don't want even to run there. I hope you try also Colin McRae Rally.

@SUCRA 3 жыл бұрын

This game is quirky, you might have better luck using an older PC. Colin McRae sounds great, I need to try it. Thanks for watching!

@modernandretrogaming 3 жыл бұрын

@@SUCRA I tried patches even for POD and nothing worked. Someday I try my K6-2 PC with that game. Colin McRae Rally I played years ago on my Pentium 133 with S3 Virge at 320x240 on Black/White monitor and I was very happy with all that, some time later I bought Voodoo 2 for that PC.

@SUCRA 3 жыл бұрын

@@modernandretrogaming a k6 with windows 98 will probably run the Pod with no hassle. Oh wow, black and white! I never had a monochrome monitor.