(upbeat robotic music) - Welcome.
- No, they're people, not a peephole.
Oh, hello chip dippers.
Welcome to another Quick Bytes.
A Retro Recipe, without the usual bells and whistles.
(upbeat robotic music) (dog whistle blowing)
♪ Little computer people ♪
♪ Livin' in a digital world ♪
- Thank you.
- Hello Puppyfractic.
- It's Perifractic.
- I was talking to the dog.
(upbeat robotic music)
- Upstaged again.
But as for the tune she was whistling,
did you know that in 1985,
Activision claimed to have discovered
little computer people, yes, and dogs,
living inside Commodore 64s, Spectrums,
Nintendos, even Japanese PC-9801s?
(upbeat robotic music)
And that they devised a way to coax them out.
Now in a moment, we're gonna explore something about that
that still to this day is incredible to me.
You see, if you bought a copy of the software
they later released, your little computer person
would be completely unique in looks,
character, personality and name.
But more than that, your little guy would remain the same
even after you turned the computer off,
which was seemingly impossible for a game
that was mass-produced and cloned
from the same master disk right?
But first some important context.
The big computer men behind LCP, as we'll call it,
were Rich Gold, real name,
Sam Nelson, and the equally legendary David Crane.
And by the way, all of the genius details
you're about to hear came directly from David Crane himself,
who once again helped me make this video.
So huge thanks to you, David.
But yes, that really was how LCP was marketed,
as a House-On-A-Disk.
♪ You're the master, you're the key ♪
- Now as the story goes, back in the early '80s,
David Crane was trying to work out what was causing bugs
in otherwise seemingly perfect code.
This led him to theorize that something, or someone,
was actually living inside his machine,
and wreaking that havoc.
And so they set up
the Activision Little Computer People Research Group,
or as it was actually called... (awkwardly) ALCPRG.
(upbeat robotic music)
♪ Little computer people ♪
♪ Livin' in a digital world ♪
♪ Can't you see them on the screen ♪
♪ You are the master, you're the key ♪
- So anyway, allegedly in 1985,
they successfully discovered and drew out, literally,
dozens of tiny little creatures
trapped inside store-bought computers.
And seeking to capitalize on what they discovered,
they released a version of that laboratory on disk
for any of us to use and use it we did, in our droves.
As did the creator of The Sims, Will Wright.
Yeah, but you see, LCP is actually the mother
of not just The Sims, but also Tamagotchi.
(upbeat robotic music)
So after booting your House-On-A-Disk,
which comes with its very own deed in the box,
you're presented with this empty house.
But what you might not know is that that was originally
the Ghostbusters HQ from David's other game, Ghostbusters.
I suppose you could say
it was the foundation for this house.
(drum rattling)
Anyway from there, the LCP will basically entertain himself.
I wonder if he's got a little computer person
in his computer?
And it was really only up to us to offer food,
water and mood boosters, and you could get gifts delivered,
make the phone ring, and when he's on a phone call
of course it was a great opportunity
to give him a good petting.
Speaking of pets, don't worry.
Yes, you could get dog food delivered
for the little puppy too.
(upbeat music)
And if you were lucky, your LCP would write you
an intelligent context-aware letter,
explaining his current feelings and needs.
But things were to get much cleverer.
First I have to mention that in Japan,
LCP was of course called Apple Town Story
and didn't feature a man and his dog,
but a little girl and her cat.
Yes, I said cats.
(upbeat music)
Kawaii.
But yeah, everywhere in the world
this game got rave reviews and it even gave me
some psychological trauma back in '85.
As I recounted briefly in this lockdown livestream,
what happened was I would load up my little computer person
and I would go to school and my friends basically had to
give me therapy because I was so worried
about my little guy back home.
And I would be at school for what was it, eight hours,
and just couldn't wait to get back home.
And of course you would lose the game on the tape version
'cause there was no save option,
so you had to leave it on all day.
(soft music)
Thank you, reassuring me after that.
By the way, if you want some great little computer boards
from just five bucks, I recommend PCBWayyyy.
Because as we all know, PCBWay stands for
Puppyfractic could be whistling at you, doesn't it?
Now whilst these creatures being real
might just have been clever marketing,
I said might, don't quote me on that,
what was very real was that yes,
every single little computer person in the world was unique.
But how?
Well close your ears and block your eyes
if you don't want the secrets spoiled.
As David recounted to me, every LCP started life
as a pseudorandom value comprised
of four 8-bit numbers.
And those four numbers we used as a seed
for what's known as a polynomial counter.
And that counter specified your LCP's name,
facial features, clothing and personality traits.
We'll save polynomial counters for the maths YouTube channels
while we explain the cool retro tech behind it.
What David did was work with Activision's production team
to modify the actual firmware
of the high speed disk duplication machines
to have each of them write an incrementing serial number
on each and every disk.
And that serial number held the seed value that we just saw.
And with combinations of 255 values
for all those attributes, including the name,
which by the way, David recalled typing in
from a 1001 Baby Names book,
I think it is safe to say
that there were no two LCPs alike in the whole world.
But things get even cleverer.
First as you played the game,
there were these transitory states that would change
just as in real life you'd get more hungry, tired,
and such like, the game recorded these values too.
And obviously you'd want those states preserved when you
turned off the computer and then came back to it later.
Now this is easily solved by just saving the game to disk.
But there's one problem, with the Commodore 64,
whenever you write to disk, it turns off the sprites.
And this means that your little computer person
could suddenly vanish.
(children booing)
And that could be really traumatizing for a 12-year-old
that was lovingly caring for their LCP.
Or for a 47-year-old.
(children cheering)
Oh! Did you have a nice walk?
No we're not going for one.
Anyway, if you play the game, watch your disk drive light
whenever your LCP goes to the loo, the toilet,
what do you call it, John?
Yeah.
Toilet breaks were actually clever excuses
for saving the current state of your little guy
to 256 bytes on the disk.
If he's off the screen anyway,
player's none the wiser, so clever.
But guess what? Things get even more clever, yeah.
You see here's Zzap!64's review of the game,
and a really fun diary that Gary Penn
and Jaz Rignall did writing about their experiences
with their LCP, until Gary killed him.
But don't worry, there was a solution for that too.
David set up an LCP hospital program
on a special Commodore 64
at Activision's customer services office.
And so if you murdered, accidentally killed your LCP,
you could send it or the disk back to the hospital.
And that special Commodore 64 had an equally special
1541 disk drive, that was modded with that same firmware
that the original disk duplicators used.
This gave it the ability to take the serial number
off the disk and write it to a brand new disk.
And so Bob, Fred, Larry, whatever your guy was called
was essentially resurrected from the afterlife.
♪ Little computer people ♪
♪ Livin' in a digital world ♪
- The nicest of all, and surely unheard of today,
is that Activision did this completely free of charge.
Those were the days, aye?
Well I hope you enjoyed this little voyage of discovery.
And I do hope sincerely that nothing in here
spoiled too much about LCP for you.
That said, nothing in this video is certain,
and indeed David Crane did tell me that his memory
is a little unclear about things, too.
In fact, it may just be that none of this is true
and little computer people really do live in our machines.
We'll be back soon.
So thanks for watching.
As always subscribe and join below.
Cheerio.
Or as my LCP would say,
(warbling LCP synthesized voice)
weird, right?
Cheerio.
♪ Little computer people ♪
♪ Livin' in a digital world ♪
♪ Can't you see them on the screen ♪
♪ You are the master, you're the key ♪
(upbeat techno music)