Glitzy graphics that makes you remember the 80s. Or something like that. Also me. Also a relic of the past.

I have been podcasting since 2018 and have interviewed many people in the IT-security industry. And some on my retro computing podcast. But in May of 2026, the turn had come to me as I was invited on the Crimeycade podcast. This is an interesting videobased podcast/livestream hosted by “Mad Conservative Crimefighter” in Illinois. He is involved in the Arcade machine retro scene and interviews people from various parts of the retro gaming scene.

This time it was my turn as I am active in the demo scene and retro computer scene in Sweden. We spoke for almost one and a half hour about everything from the Amiga, C64 and the fear of an AI planet.

Here is a transcription of the episode. It’s not perfect, but should be good to understand the story.

I’m bald!!! When did thay happen? I used to have some hair back in the day.

The introduction

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (00:00.546)
Welcome to the Crimeycade Podcast. I am the Mad Conservative CrimeFighter, Stephen Lucas, 91 Nintendo Campus Challenge National Champion, 2021 Galbi Ghost Arcade Gamer of the Year. And it’s Sunday. I’m doing a podcast after having such a wild day yesterday, back the last two days.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (00:27.864)
Friday night was set up of a wrestling show.

which extended into Saturday and then hightailing it over to Jacksonville to make an appearance at my 35th high school class reunion. Then hightailing it back to Springfield to do at the wrestling show and

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (00:58.004)
I’m so sore. I’m barely moving and but since I can talk and I don’t have to move, I can do a podcast. But why am I doing it, doing another one on a Sunday afternoon, especially when it’s Mother’s Day? Well, you

I will be introducing my guest in a moment, I have to share a few of my usual announcements. And I got to pull my slideshow up again. There we go. Thursday, my guest was old school Gamer Magazine representative, editor Ryan Berger. And.

About a more than an hour with him and found, learned about, or at least reflected on the past Midwest gaming classic, the magazine and finding out that he was a wrestling promoter for eight years and never expected to find that one out. If you haven’t given that one a listen, go to my Facebook, go to Facebook or Twitch and give that a listen to.

You’ll be posting on YouTube in a few days.

And if you’re listening on Facebook.com, follow me on Twitch at rap underscore sheet. If you’re watching me on Twitch, follow me, Facebook.com slash Kravikate. And the past episodes will be on YouTube, tiny.cc slash PWCI. And with every podcast I do, I have to give, I have to do a Beezer slide, because that has not reached the Galpin Ghost Arcade floor.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (02:54.366)
as of yet. However, the online arcade tournaments are still going on. The main gamer league, the games involved currently active are Sidearms, Exeron, and Beezer.

Cats are nice! Even when they destroy equipment.

Mr. Driller is the latest game to close that closed at 4 a.m. this morning, of course. And now I’ve been joined by one of my feline friends.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (03:27.488)
cat.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (03:29.154)
this girl right here. This turkey decided to crash the stream and now she’s trying to kill the podcast by walking across the keyboard. Great. You.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (03:47.564)
What are you trying to pull, little girl? She thinks now she’s trying to be the star of the show now. That’s what she is. And she keeps walking back and forth because she’s not outside or and she wants to be outside. And she had her time outside a while ago, but now she wants me to let her out again and not be in front of this dog on computer. So.

Currently on the main gaming league season 67. I am ranked 8th tied for 8th And you are not doing this girl Anyway

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (04:28.908)
She’s 18 years old. She’s an elderly cat and she wants to be get all the attention in the world while she’s still around. All right. Well, I’ve already done this, so take that off. All right. My guess at this time, as I mentioned, why am I doing on Sunday? Well, my podcast interviews guests all around the world, not just in the United States.

Yes, I’ve had guests from Canada, a neighbor to the north, but I’ve also gone over to Australia and United Kingdom.

Now I’m going into a new country and it’s over. You know, I’ll say this. There’s a game out of this country that I played quite a bit during my college years and somewhat post college years. There’s a game called Northern Lights, Abramod that ran at Ludd or Luleå University in Sweden.

Come to find out that that that game has gone down, has gone offline and probably permanently after 31 years. Yes. Louay University, I can’t pronounce it. It’s Ludd. Yes. Ran on one of their servers there and that server went down and apparently they didn’t have everything backed up. I don’t know what happened there, but.

Time to start the discussion

Yeah, you gotta back up your data in case the server goes down because, you you’re always running backups because you’re it’s a college server. There’s a bunch of students. It’s like everything’s they put everything on the cloud these days anyway. I guess at this time is a Coder Amiga enthusiast, I think. He’s very interested in the.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (06:38.69)
gaming music and chiptunes, kind of the 8-bit, 16-bit music, and runs an online radio station as Sweden. Introducing our guest tonight, Erik Saladis.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (06:56.206)
Zalitis is my name. Hello, hello, welcome. Zalitis, Zalitis.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (07:02.702)
Yes, almost almost I have to pronounce so many names at my workplace because I Do IT help desk? Yeah, and they names Show up on the tickets and then I have to decipher how to pronounce them

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (07:21.496)
Yeah, all is a challenge though, right?

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (07:24.45)
Yes, you’re also known as DJ

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (07:29.516)
Demon? Daemon, think it’s- I don’t know actually. I think it’s- I say daemon, but it’s kinda- I think it’s more daemon actually.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (07:37.046)
Yes. Welcome in. And there’s no lag time, surprisingly.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (07:42.798)
Well, I got fiber connections, but it’s a long journey to the United States.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (07:49.07)
Yes. So give us the 411. You run the radio station, but how did you get into gaming?

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (07:58.306)

Me and my brothers from an era long gone…

Well, I was a kid back then in the 80s and then we had all the cool little home computer era computers like Texas Instrument, the VIC-20, the Atari, the Commodore 64 and my father was a journalist. He was working that as a side hobby thing. So he was reviewing computers for a small newspaper. So he got home a lot of really cool machines like BBC Micro, like the TI-94.

four we also had like the Vectrex if you remember that one and then many of them were beautiful failures stuff that were cool but never really hit the big market but then there were the C64 the C64 was something totally different that was where the cool kids what we had

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (08:46.178)
Yes, I have a Commodore 64 that’s been sitting in storage for quite a number of years because I don’t have room to set it out with all the other stuff I got. I had an Atari 2600, or no, 1200 XL as well. But the PC games, the modern PC has pretty much dominated and the consoles, and now I’m on an arcade kick.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (09:10.732)
Yeah, but that’s kind of what we saw. I believe the PC and the Mac took over in the 92 and that killed off Atari and later Commodore Amiga. So that was kind of this shift over from the olden days with their home computers and stuff.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (09:27.116)
Although, lately, I’ve kind of seen that the C64 Mini has been put out and loaded up with a bunch of games, kind of like those, gosh, the NES classic, the Super Nintendo classic, so there’s a Commodore 64 classic now.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (09:47.67)
Yeah, I know, I know. Those are cool actually. They make sure that people that don’t want to buy their old equipment and kind of dig up stuff that barely works from the cellar or something, they kind of enjoy their old time experience. So I totally, I’m totally into that. Really nice.

The Amiga revolution gets started

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (10:05.294)
So, Commodore Amiga. Yeah. It’s got more of a niche computer, back in the 90s, it was the workhorse for video production and music. there’s gaming. think it dominated the market before the PCs took over. But because PCs were not so good at. Yeah.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (10:28.846)
graphics and stuff. Just think about it like this, when the Commodore Amiga came out, that was 1985, it was revolutionary because before that you had like CJ and EJ, the PC gaming graphics mode that were like a few colors, very bad, very low resolution and the games looked really cheap. When Amiga came out, it had like…

almost VGA graphics from start which was brand new and it also had a sampler an 8-bit Sampler called Paula which was something awesome because suddenly you didn’t have the chip tune sounds you actually had real samplers in the mid 80s No, the PC if you wanted that you had to pay a lot of money and it wasn’t standardized by then So the Amiga took off but it wasn’t until 1987 when the Amiga 500 came out that the whole thing just exploded

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (11:22.894)
Yes. I know back then I was a part of gosh, there was a Commodore computer club that I was participated in and got to look at all that technology as I was growing up. Also went to school to learn computers, although it was the PC side of the thing because the PCs were more for the business community.

So that was its niche. I know Atari ST came out to compete with Amiga, but I believe the Amiga kind of won the war on that one.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (12:04.268)
Yes it did because the Atari and Amiga we were kinda, I shouldn’t say war but it was like Amiga and Atari users kinda pointed fingers at each other and said no my computer is better but to be fairly, to be fair I would say the Amiga was leaps and bounds the better computer. The Atari had the same CPU but it was overclocked one megahertz so some games actually ran faster on the Atari so it wasn’t clear that the Amiga always won.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (12:32.566)
I kind of remember also Jack Trammell jumped ship from Commodore to Atari.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (12:38.766)
He was forced out. That’s a nasty story I can tell you.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (12:41.018)
Yeah, let’s hear it.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (12:46.682)
Okay, I don’t have all the details, but the thing was that Commodore were doing badly and he took a lot of loans from a loan shark company if you want to and that meant that when they wanted control over the company eventually he was forced out and then he went from Commodore to Atari that’s correct, but he was with the whole Commodore company so his

It was his ship when the C64 came out. And he said, this is a computer for the masses, not for the classes. And that was kind of his contribution to the whole thing.

… And the Atari

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (13:22.306)
And then they proceeded to destroy the video game division at Atari and

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (13:26.958)
Okay, I did not know that.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (13:30.848)
Well, there’s a lagging. So. 70, 800 came out after he took over, but his primary focus was the eight bits and the. St. Computer lines, the video game division kind of got. Shafted by about 1990. Which is why there’s so many Atari prototypes floating around.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (14:00.494)
But this can be said about the Commodore as well, because both Commodore and Atari were financially struggling, but Commodore was always worse. Because it was so badly managed. I don’t know about Atari, but in the 90s the PC were coming out with VGA becoming more standard, you get more like sound cards and stuff, which meant that the games were competing in a way that both Atari and Amiga were suffering.

So at that time it made sense, they had problems kinda competing with the PC and both failed.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (14:35.662)
That’s interesting. Why didn’t I remember all this crap?

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (14:39.9)
I don’t know why I do.

… The birth of a gamer

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (14:42.63)
Okay, so you got your first game you touched your first games Gosh what year was that? Or was the first video game you’ve ever played I guess

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (14:56.974)
I believe that was Space Invaders, but it was called TI Invaders because that was on the Texas Instrument 94 and I could guess that was 93, 83, 83, 84 or something. I’m not sure.

… Did we even have arcade games in Sweden?

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (15:11.298)
Face of Eris was my jam as well. You never… Yeah. Although you pretty much… You’re starting to get into this with the computers, but you didn’t really touch the arcade games.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (15:25.71)
Not that much. In America I guess you had a lot of them. In Sweden here in Stockholm we didn’t have that many. We have a big park here called Grönalund which has had stuff like that. But most of the time it was like where we lived in our suburban area we didn’t have anything like that. Most kids had a Nintendo NES or we had C64s or VIC-20s or 128s. That’s kind of how I remember it at least.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (15:54.254)
Yeah. And plus you also TVs were a little are different in Europe. You have pals. Yeah, it is.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (16:03.212)
Yeah, pal, yeah.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (16:07.111)
See, not the same color twice. I’m just kidding.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (16:14.444)
And now I got trouble winding cats in the background. That’s it. So, yeah, the computer, anything that got put out, they had to put up different versions for different sides of the pod. Yes. Because the TVs don’t work the same way. No.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (16:32.142)
Now that was a problem. Also you had to think that Japan and other markets had even more weird standards. France had something called SECAM. And in Russia, in Soviet Union, it was SECAM-OST. So yeah, there were very much problems. There no standardized set of rules, so to speak.

… The gaming scene in Sweden

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (16:51.502)
So just out of what is the gaming scene in Sweden like?

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (16:59.02)
if you mean the retro or the current.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (17:02.122)
How it was back then and how it is now.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (17:07.084)
Okay, I can’t talk much about the current scene because I don’t play that much. I play some games with some friends, but back in the day, it was pretty elitist. You were pretty nerdy to be there and it was also intrinsically linked with something we call the demo scene where people were making art, music, cool so-called demos with scrolling text and nice graphics. It was also connected to the cracker scene where they cracked computer games. It was one large

set of teens, we were all in our teens and twenties when this happened, that did various things. But it wasn’t like everybody was playing games. This came later. It was mostly a very nerdy things for the jungling so to speak. And the games could be super hard. You could play games for hours just to win because I mean if you play them perfectly they could be over in 30 minutes. But in reality

you played for hours and hours and hours and hours because the game for short so they kind of padded the game by making them extremely hard so if you were good gamer back then then you were good

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (18:14.414)
You’re a marathon in games. Yes. A lot of games in the 90s, they do have an ending. If you play all the levels start to finish and you get play the entire game through in about less than a half an hour. Yes. And once for one CC. Where any are kids in Sweden?

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (18:16.59)
Yeah

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (18:39.212)
Yes, I said we had some arcade stations, what you call them, where you inserted coins, but they were mostly at entertainment centers, what you call it. Like I said, Grönalun, maybe Skansen and stuff like that. Maybe in the inner city, but back in suburbia, where I lived, I don’t think we had any actually. I can’t remember that. It was not a big thing in Sweden.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (19:01.068)
What did the Swedes really get into back then?

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (19:09.036)
Yeah, well, I think we were much more out playing football on the street and stuff like that. Soccer. Soccer. Yeah, so not football, soccer. And maybe stuff like that. And we were kind of more active. And I remember the kids, the cool kids next to where I lived, they had a Commodore 128. So when we played, we played games like summer games, winter games, Impossible Mission, GI Joe and all that. Really nice. It was fun to play with other people with.

We had each a joystick and we were sitting around the same computer because there were no network connections to speak of.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (19:48.022)
Not for a while. Now I did touch upon this a little earlier. You told me offline that you’ve never heard of it or played it. Northern Lightsaber Mud, which is basically back then during the college years, we had these mainframes and may not necessarily have video games on this to play on the computers or.

maybe have the money to plonk down quarters at the arcade because we’re going to college. So people would use Telnet to connect to MUDs.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (20:24.462)
This I remember yeah, but I was in eighties. was a kid. I didn’t have a phone line Dedicated or a modem my father didn’t like that because it cost a lot of money But but when I in 90s moved away from from home, then I got a modem and then yeah I started playing stuff like that, but that was later, but that’s still a thing I mean mother multi use Dunions. They were awesome. I really liked that

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (20:51.47)
For me it was like the mid 90s where I was playing them all the way to the early 2000s so I wasn’t in college yet and I didn’t get to telnet into anything until the 90s so I didn’t came aware of them until then although

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (21:10.388)
but you should play sorry

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (21:12.984)
Did you play in your DS back?

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (21:14.674)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We had some Amiga doors. They were kinda mini-MUDs that were multi-user, but they weren’t like connected that you played at the same time. They were more like someone connected you played around and someone else did. One very famous we had here, it was called Hack’n’Slash for the Amiga. I had spent a lot of time. Then we have the regular MUDs, the ones you’re talking to. What are they called? NetHack or something, if I remember correctly. I played them when I…

got a telnet and broadband connection in the late 90s. Before that it kinda wasn’t a thing, for me at least.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (21:51.288)
from the M.E.G.s it did evolve, I mean, back then it was like text and ASCII graphics and stuff, but nowadays we have live service games.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (21:58.135)
Yes.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (22:06.286)
We have second life. Isn’t that kind of the same thought, isn’t it?

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (22:12.11)
Between that there was like EverQuest and Gosh It’s all little can of worms in this influence and Disasters There’s a good there’s a fun side in the dark side

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (22:17.102)
Yeah, but

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (22:30.786)
Yeah, I guess that’s true with pretty much everything on the internet, isn’t it so?

Ericade.radio – how it got started

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (22:36.59)
So tell me about the radio station, how did you

It looks like reading the description online and the history written out This is the second iteration of Eric Kade radio

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (22:55.808)
Ericade. It’s Eric and Arcade.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (22:58.934)
Yes, kind like I have Crime Fighter and Arcade merged together.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (23:06.158)
crimeycade crime fighter arcade yes yes so you had to i guess how do you put together an online radio station and acquire all of these eight bit tracks 16 bit tracks and chiptunes

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (23:11.57)
Crimeycade. Crimeycade.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (23:29.07)
Well, back in the day, when I started in the 90s, it was a radio station for real on a real frequency, 88.9 MHz. So we had kind of competitions. We weren’t only, we were mostly running other kind of music, but we had competitions where people could compose for the radio station and we put them on the air. But that wasn’t the first real Ericade radio. The first one was in 2005 and then I had a BBS.

So I had people upload hundreds and hundreds of track music tunes or chip tunes, what you want to call it. So I had a real big repository of stuff. But when I came back in 2020 and made a real radio station, the one I have now, then I relied heavily on stuff I found on the internet. So I had thousands and thousands of songs. Then I started using ModArchive, if you know that, ModArchive.org, I think it is. And that has all track music you ever wanted.

Mostly Amiga, but also modern PC.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (24:30.776)
How do you curate all that music and then arrange it, just kind of decide what to play on day-to-day basis?

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (24:38.382)
I actually do it once per week and what I do is simply that I try to see what’s new or if I want to make a podcast because I also use the podcast to like add new music to the station so I play it on the podcast then it goes on the station

Sometimes it’s a genre like rock classic music or something but most of the time it’s just what’s the newest one if Modark have have brand new songs that an artist had released in the last two days I’m listening on it and if I feel it too one it must fit the station two it must be good So I work like that and I kind of work sometimes by the highest rating tunes or high lighted tunes where the editorials have said this is a good

And also I let the listeners say, hey, I got something cool here. I also scrape a lot of stuff coming out on the demo scene, which means that there’s a lot of things to consider, but it’s manually curated. I actually go through each song and see if it fits.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (25:40.322)
How often do you get dinged for… I know YouTube’s notorious for this. Twitch has flagged some tunes as well for bizarre reasons. Dealing with copyright and copyright claims and all that crap.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (25:55.086)
Yeah

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (25:59.552)
Yeah, sometimes actually yes. thing is that thing misfires more than it gets it right. It can say this is like Spain’s song from Euro, whatever, whatever, but no, it isn’t. It just says that. Sometimes, yes, it is. Sometimes you can set something on that someone have copyrighted song and then it does correctly and I have to remove it. This happens occasionally because here’s the thing. The demo scene is very sloppy when it comes to adherence to a copy.

They are notoriously putting everything on for any reason and nobody seems to care But I try to be at least smart about it some stuff like old game music is on the station It’s technically copyrighted, but nobody cares. Whereas putting something brand new on is stupid that that’s should you shouldn’t do So I try to be smart about it I really copied right notices and I also have a lot of problem with Spotify that removes the whole episode if it finds just one infringement So yeah, that’s a problem

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (26:59.18)
I know Twitch just mutes the segment that it gets flagged, although I don’t know why. Out Run soundtrack for that. The first tune got flagged recently. was like, you didn’t flag it before. Now you’re flagging it now.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (27:14.862)
Yeah, I know. It seems like it’s misfires a lot, but Spotify is worse because it’s fires even when YouTube says cool. So I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s kind of something you have to live with. And most the worst thing you can have is a copyright strike because then you get like if you have three of these, the channel is toast. Then you just remove the channel. I have never had that bad. But also when it came to Alastair Brimble, which we feature on the station, I actually

mailed him and said, is it okay we host your music? And he said, yeah, okay, fine.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (27:50.414)
So… go ahead. So what… can name,

Those magic tracks from the past…

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (27:52.832)
I don’t know.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (27:58.956)
break it down by five. Your top five favorite gaming tracks or chiptune tracks that you play on your station.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (28:07.084)
Well of course I have a number of them. When it comes to gaming tracks I absolutely love Utopia, the gaming music for Utopia. Giana Sisters all remixes awesome. Dragon’s Lair has a number of them so that’s the gaming music that I can remember right now. are many others but others is like there’s a song called My Wolf 2 which I love so much. It’s an Amiga 4 track module made by a France French artist called Arpeggiator of chrysis and it’s just awesome it’s really a magic tool we have Hymn to Aurora which has some kind of role-playing almost medieval slate to it or you say so there are a number they think that’s five right something around that

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (28:51.83)
Yeah, fair enough.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (28:53.73)
Yeah

Flashback, track from the past…

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (28:56.494)
So tell us about the podcast. So it’s pretty much segments in between tracks you play on the radio. of, I think, when you are on the air broadcasting in between the tracks, I know there’s several archived episodes on your YouTube channel, which I had it on, had it showing a little bit ago.

Kind of tell us about the podcast, kind of the, some of the games, or kind of the, some of the content you covered.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (29:33.12)
Yeah, Flashback Tracks from the past is the name of the podcast and the idea is it’s a radio show first so it has music and short speeches and the speeches are generally about gaming history, demo scene stuff and other things and generally all tunes you hear on the podcast is new. It’s the first time you hear them before they get onto the station. So that’s kind of a thing. Otherwise, it would just be the station music with my speech. I try to make it a little bit smarter.

As of recently, we have covered live broadcasts from revision in Zarbuchen in Germany, where me and a friend broadcast and that became a podcast episode of five hours of music and speech and interviews and stuff. And also I have reviewed old games like utopia, sci-fi trading company and other games such as Bioshock even actually, which is pretty recent. And that’s kind of the thing. It’s a short format with just mostly one to two minutes of speech and

mostly music.

The games I remember

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (30:33.294)
Yeah. So some of the games you play that you remember from over the years, what are, I guess, some of the games that you really love over the years?

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (30:47.288)

They pretty much used the same package styling for all their games. Epyx probably just had one marketing guy.

There are many. If you’re gonna look at games like the C64, the Epyx Summer, Winter and World games comes to mind. They’re super simple, but they’re fun to play with friends. That’s kinda the whole idea with them. I also love Sci-Fi Trading Company, which is a game like Star Trek or something. It’s not that well known. Then there are games like Paradroid, where you try to liberate a ship of crazy AIs that have taken over. You have Spy Hunter, you must have heard about

That one, right?

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (31:17.774)

Cutting through the robots with your brand new “999”. It’s all fun until it explodes in your face.

Yes, I’m pulling up Paradroid. I want to see this thing.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (31:22.048)
It’s awesome. What a game that was. I don’t know if it was popular, but it was very I like games that are kind of Something extra and they often do not get as popular as they should so I don’t know how well known that was But it was such a game. Yeah, that’s the one

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (31:39.022)
hairdroid let me get it’s a lot here up here how do you play this

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (31:42.702)
Yeah, that’s the one That’s What you do is you have an influence device you are a human being floating in a device that can take over other robots and what you see there is to take over sequence you try to take over a robot and the number is like how advanced the robot is zero zero one is yours, that’s the

primitive one that you start with and you can’t jump to the highest numbers because they are very hard to take over they have many more cables in this attack view so you have to be smart and you have to jump from robot to robot because you don’t control them forever after a while you fail and then you lose control so you have to kind of jump and all the time like either take over a robot or shoot it down so it’s kind of smart that way you can’t just take over everything and stick with the

most advanced robot, because it will fail as well.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (32:38.016)
I see that that four seven six number. Yeah versus seven forty two so

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (32:44.588)
Yeah, you can see the 742 have more capabilities to defend itself, but you were able to take it over anyway, or whoever’s playing that. So that’s a thing, you can’t jump too much, because if you have like a hundred and you try to take over a nine hundred, that’s not gonna work. That’s too high jump, so you have to be smart about it. And each robot has their own weapon systems, and you can’t shoot all the robots, because then you will fail, because then your own will explode after a while, so you must, like…

balance between taking over a robot or shooting one.

Commentary: here is how I commented on Paradroid from my podcast Flashback, tracks from the past (episode 21. Look at you, hacker!)

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (33:16.97)
Where’s some of the other games you were into?

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (33:20.27)
Yeah, there was a platform called SEUCK or shoot ’em up construction kit, which was actually a You know that one

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (33:27.703)
yeah.

Yes, as I… I… I got that. I made a game called Battle for Nintendo Power where you’re basically playing to recover all your Nintendo games because I guess your video parents took it away. They gave them to some, I guess, villainous evil characters and you’re like…

battling bullies and I don’t know, motorcycle games or whatever and then you had to find the homework first device key to unlock your Nintendo and be able to play it again. So yeah.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (34:11.993)
Seuck was a great game creator. It created very advanced games really. There were some really nice ones. There were also a lot of really crap games because anyone could create a game. I and my brother made one called Eric on the Run and it was very bad. Alas, I don’t have it anymore, but it’s kind of, it was fun for a few hours creating sprites and logic and enemies and background graphics and stuff. It was highly automated, a really good one.

It was a bit limited because it was a shoot them up which means it scrolls upwards. Sideway scrollers could not be made by it for example so it was kind of limited exactly what you could do. But you can see it’s highly advanced for a C64.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (34:58.21)
Yes, and plus you have to like keep track of all the pixels and or at least You had to build your backgrounds

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (35:07.463)
You can load some presets, but generally if you want it to be good, yeah, you had to

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (35:13.358)
Yeah, and that took… You pretty much can’t really stop once you start on a game because then you forget… Forget stuff. Over time, I’m going to advance past this and actual… See, here we go. Yeah. This is where they’re building the map.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (35:31.914)
Yes, exactly. So you can put them on the map block by block. It’s pretty easy to learn. It’s not like super hard. It’s a very intuitive interface, which says something because yeah, this is I think it’s called slap and tickle. I think that that’s that’s a clone of it. Sorry.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (35:50.222)
It’s one of the games that was included on the disc.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (35:54.47)
Yes, yes it is. I recognize this one so well. I played it so many times. It’s actually a very clever little clone.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (36:03.382)
I know somebody did a version of Tiger Helly on this, which is an arcade game. Yeah. Although at some point the game will loop. doesn’t take long for this game, for any of these games to loop. I made my game much longer because I just did a remix of previous levels and made it appear that the levels were different. They’re just kind of

broken up into different, I guess, the pieces of the level were just put together in a different order and for a quasi unique level.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (36:43.692)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Given how primitive the C64 is by today’s standard, that you could do this was amazing. But again, a lot of people didn’t put much effort in it, so a lot of Zouik games are not good, but there are some really nice ones.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (37:01.558)
Although here’s I gotta show you this and you probably heard about it. Games are still getting made for the C64. Yes, somebody did a port of. me see if this gets up here. Here we go. Mario, how do you know? Yes, somebody did a perfect port of this game. For.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (37:18.648)
Mario Brothers

I have it.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (37:26.846)
It’s awesome! It has some lag, there are some levels where the C64 is not able to cope with it, but it’s minor. As a major rule this works, and you know what Nintendo thought of it?

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (37:40.076)
Nintendo probably wasn’t

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (37:42.924)
No, it’s gone from any site you can find it. you search for it can probably find it, but the main ones, I don’t think it’s on CSDB or anything. So they pretty much killed it with their lawyers.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (37:56.652)
Did not know that. Now prior to this, I know this game was…

They ported… Here’s a clone of Mario Bros.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (38:11.418)
Yeah, Giana Sisters, absolutely. Yes, yes. That was kind of ix-nayed by the Nintendo gurus as well. They had to stop selling it.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (38:22.798)
I know that some hackers went in and changed the sprites to Mario ones and made it kinda quasi Super Mario.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (38:34.454)
But to be honest with you, the problem with Giana Sisters wasn’t that it was a total rip-off. It’s just the first level is very reminiscent of what Mario first level looked like. The whole game has very different approach to different stuff. So it isn’t a total rip-off. It’s a stupid thing that they did that. The game could have fared much better if they kind of found their own way already from start.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (39:00.952)
There’s a lot of side scrolling platformer games over the years. I don’t know how many the Nintendo decided to complain about, but that were kind of somewhat clones of this. Clones of Mario Bros.

Are everyone in Rapture this cynical? Yes, yes they are.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (39:17.086)
But that’s the thing, if it works it gets copied. They say “all art is grift”.

Commentary later on from me:

“On the 100th episode of the CrimeyCade podcast I was interviewed by their host “Mad Conservative crimefighter”. There I stated that “all art is grift”. Then I explained it as all artists steal from each other. But that’s not exactly what the word grift should be used to say. The statement more means that much of the art is used to con other people. Think like NFTs, propaganda and so on. I would probably have explained it more correctly if I had choosen my words better. But I actually meant what I said. Many clones were meant to be a big cashgrab for people that thought this was the cool thing right now. And the list goes on…”

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (39:22.252)
Yes, all art is grift. Grifted, scammed. Grift is. Maybe maybe you’re saying maybe the word, maybe you’re saying the different word I’m hearing G.R. I. F.T. Stolen. OK. gosh. Comments in the chat that I’m catching up on here.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (39:28.386)
Yeah

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (39:38.818)
Is that one?

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (39:48.238)
Ah, here we go. Podcast on Sunday. Interesting. Yes, this happens to be episode 100 of my podcast and also my streamer, anniversary. So.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (39:59.864)
Congratulations!

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (40:01.536)
Yes.

Tracy happens to be from the United Kingdom, it’s daytime. It’s late, early evening. Kind of a couple hours ahead of you. OK. Yes. All right. Where was I? Some of the other games you played. Actually, I should pull up Utopia because you.

Utopia – creation of a nation

Utopia – the creation of a nation. Not pictured: hordes of evil bugs that will eat you alive.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (40:27.892)
Yeah, absolutely. Utopia was interesting because it was the first prototype of something that later became RTS or Real Time Strategy. It plays like a little bit like Dune did, the original Dune game if you remember, but it had a very different slant. Think about it as Dune meets Sim City meets some sort of civilization-esque. That’s not the right game.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (40:53.87)
No, this is for the Intellivision. I know if you’ve heard of it.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (40:57.87)
No, I don’t know what that is. That is not the right one.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (41:01.25)
Yeah, I’ll find it. What?

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (41:03.314)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It was a very interesting game, but it was kinda too early to really make it. There you go, that’s the one.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (41:16.6)
So how do you play this one?

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (41:18.062)
It’s basically the same thing as all kind of RTSs. You build a base in this case as a city. You build research, you build living quarters, you build hangars and stuff and you build power, you make sure you get mining resources and if you look up at the rightmost corner it says QOL 46. QOL means quality of life. 46 means he is not doing good. It should be close to 100. When it starts sinking people

starts being angry, crime rates goes up and the game can actually end that game way because you can get assassinated. So you need to kind of keep that up while making sure you have a balanced budget that you have to go to war with the insects that inhabit the planet. So it is kind of unforgiving. You have to work real time and not turn based or anything.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (42:14.722)
You know, it kind of reminds me of Sim City. A little bit.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (42:20.716)
Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. It is a marriage between SimCity and maybe Dune. Or maybe some sort of Red Alert-ish experience, but this was before Red Alert came out.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (42:31.148)
or maybe the game called Civilization.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (42:33.476)
Yes, yes, that’s also very true.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (42:36.686)
Um, all right,

Building a civilization to stand the test of time

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (42:43.214)
What other games do you really enjoy? I do you like these world builder games?

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (42:48.718)

The smug face of someone who made Gandhi the biggest war criminal in the game

Absolutely, I love world builders. Civilization, you just mentioned that. That was on the Amiga. It was on the PC, of course. And I have followed Civilization from 1 to 7. The 7 was the latest one that came out. My favorites are 2 and 5. But the first one was really good. Because when you started playing it, you felt, this is too hard. I have no idea what’s going on here. And like 16 hours later, it’s like, oh my god, the Babylonians are stealing my stuff. And you were kind of…

You were so immersed in the game, so time just flew by and it was eventually like late in the night and you were still playing. That just sucked you in.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (43:28.256)
I did play this one all the way through. Typically I played the Americans.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (43:34.102)
Yeah, yeah, They’re kind of like well-rounded, jack-of-all-trades kind of. They’re very easy to work either way with, whereas some civilizations are specialized and have some clear disadvantages and clear advantages. So it depends on if you want to play any game, anything goes, or if you want to specialize.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (43:54.318)
Yep, Tracy says it’s 2020, 24-2 here.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (44:01.036)
Yes, this is yes, because you know when I typically on the air she’s in bed although she’s gotten up way or middle of night to come on my podcast like crazy But she’s coming to America in two weeks, so Let’s see Well, this is kind of going through the evolution of the civilization. What was the other title you mentioned?

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (44:20.044)
Nice.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (44:32.168)
Pull that up.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (44:34.19)
No, we talked about, we talked about, what do say? Utopia, but-

Simcity

Burning! It’s burning! You know, someone got bored and let it all burn.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (44:40.558)
Yeah, we got utopia. I’ll throw up Sim City

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (44:44.435)
Yeah, SimCity, that’s also very good. It was on the C64 as well, I can tell you.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (44:49.646)
Yes, I had that on this yeah, I played that so we’re playing this on PC I played this on the PC first because others were They got the cover 64 version at some point But you’re pretty much laying out these maps and then yes, they Kind of develop grow on their own

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (45:14.338)
The idea is that you zone the area, like you say, this is how they build cities in real life. They say this zone should be residential, this zone should be commercial, and then they build stuff if the city works. So it can be very interesting, but it can get very boring as well. But when you play that everything is just working, you’re like incrementally just adding stuff and nothing really happens. So later on, they create a disaster. So you could say like, I want an earthquake or something.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (45:26.69)
Yes.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (45:43.682)
then you could spice the game up a bit.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (45:48.174)
You have to deal with nuclear fallout. Yes, Godzilla plane crashes tornadoes. I’ll say, though, the original Simsey, I enjoyed playing when it went to 3D and then they added other stuff like. Water, had water lines and and other stuff, it got to be.

A little bit too complicated.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (46:20.522)
Yeah, that’s the problem with all games or programs they come to a sweet spot when everything is working then they just try to add stuff and it gets more convoluted it gets bad it gets buggy or whatever it’s like sometimes you have to just say sorry

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (46:36.834)
this jump in this ahead so you can see how it evolves that’s for the audience who’s never played this game I bet a lot of them have

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (46:45.986)
Yeah, yeah.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (46:48.332)
So I’ll show the 3D model because SimCity 2000. receiving to a spot where it’s gameplay. Okay. I’ll turn off CC. Yeah, this is where things got a, there’s a bit of a major learning curve on this one, I think.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (47:08.44)
could be to play it well. mean, just the basics I think is easy to learn. But I remember the game kind of helped you with tickers running telling you what’s up and what you needed to know and stuff. it took a while to get it well. And I know some people were crazy with it. It’s like, I played it for 15 hours and now it’s getting boring. I’m like 15 hours. What the heck? Yeah.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (47:34.606)
I mean, it’s a simulation game. It’s not like you’re playing the you’re going for the world record like Tim McVeigh trying to score a billion points on Nibbler over two days. Which somebody in Italy has that has that score now because he went 50 hours.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (47:57.026)
Yeah, yeah, you get nothing out of playing SimCity for 15 hours, can tell you as much. It’s a fun game, but it’s like after a while it’s like, yeah, well you have to take another thing and later games came with scenarios so you can say like, yeah, we have a failing city, can you save it? And economy is kind of bad and what do you do?

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (48:16.0)
Is there any other sandbox like games? Because this is, think, an OG. Well, actually, SimCity didn’t come first. There was a game on the Colecovision that was similar to SimCity.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (48:30.284)
I can guess, I can guess.

The sandbox of fun

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (48:32.396)
Yeah, but, How into sandbox games are you?

What a standup guy. Political smear-campigns, assasinations and all the money you can get on his Swisss bank account.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (48:38.25)
Much actually, I love the kind of thing that you try stuff and see what gets you anywhere. One later series which is modern but has been for quite a while is of course, what’s that called, Tropico. Have you played that?

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (48:52.95)
Never heard of it, how do spell it?

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (48:55.104)
Tropico, like you are a generalismo. You know, a dictator on a little island somewhere in… Yes! Yeah, it’s pretty new, but it’s been around since the 90s, I think. I played it for ages. And that’s a sandbox simulator because it’s fun. It has some kind of really irreverent humor where you’re trying to do dumb stuff like sometimes you can oppress your people, they protest or you can align with the Soviet Union or the United States and…

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (49:03.598)
Well, that’s number six in this.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (49:24.748)
You can play the game anywhere you want to. can also steal money for your Swiss bank account. The game is…

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (49:33.57)
This is probably the better. The evolution of the game anyway. The first generation, yeah, these are fully 3D animated characters on in the.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (49:35.394)
Yeah

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (49:38.807)
Yeah.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (49:44.578)
Yeah, this is probably a little bit too modern for the rest of the discussion.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (49:50.35)
2001 close enough

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (49:52.686)
Yeah, I guess it’s okay. I mean the cutoff point should be what 2000 or something,

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (49:59.31)
Yeah, this is 2001. yeah, we’re in the time frame.

The SIMS

All the best plans of men and mice. Don’t use fireworks inside!

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (50:03.502)
Somewhere and then we also had to mention. I know we’re a little bit too late here, but like Sims that is something

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (50:13.058)
Yeah, I never got into The Sims. I just kinda like see the game, see it, see gameplay of it like ehhhh

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (50:22.318)
The thing is, it could be both boring and fun, depending on how you play the game. I think the first one was fun, but the later ones, I didn’t care for them. It was like, they just made a dollhouse of it. And it was fun when they wasn’t kind of overbearing. Later games where you were supposed to buy DLC of the DLC of the DLC to get pets, dating options, ski resorts or whatever. It’s kind of like, no.

And so it was fun in the beginning and you should know that The Sims is built on a C64 game called Little Computer People.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (50:57.91)
oooo

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (51:00.994)
You should, it’s very interesting.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (51:04.558)
Now the commercials were interesting though. I will say that because they’re marketed as an interactive soap opera.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (51:13.378)
Yes, yes, it could be that. And it was kind of smart. I mean, you do did stupid things just to see what happened. I remember trying to launch fireworks inside the house. I thought they have not thought about that, but they had the whole thing caught fire. The whole living room caught fire.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (51:32.45)
Yeah, here it is. And this was by Activision. Interesting.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (51:35.776)
Yes, where Sims from Electronic Arts. Yes, this is the one. Generally this dude just walks around and does stuff, but sometimes you chat with him and you can help him with stuff and I can’t think you can play cards with him and stuff.

Modern era gaming – not my strong point

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (51:50.83)
Alright. Any gaming feats that you’ve done in the past? did you ever participate in a competitive gaming scene? Scorchacing? Or… been collecting? Or…

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (52:10.72)
Not much actually, I’m more like a single gamer so to speak. But I have played with and against friends, with everything from Spy, what do call it, Starcraft, played Red Alert series and stuff. But generally when you start playing on more commercial gaming servers, the people you play against, even on the noob level, they are too good for you. It’s not fun because they always beat you. I’m not really into that, but I played some at least, some games.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (52:43.158)
Any games you’re out, any games you’re, I guess, campaigning on currently.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (52:50.892)

The game is cheap and the bugs are free!

Well, what I’m playing right now, but this is modern time mind you it’s called jump space and I also play something called SWAT Commander I think it’s called those are competitive games where Sorry, they’re not not competitive. They are I say when you cooperate I think they call them right, so you and your number of friends you man a spaceship and you fight robots and stuff and you try to collect stuff and you raid air bases and

It’s very fun actually but it’s in some sort of preview state so every week there is some new interesting feature or bug or game level tuning and stuff but it’s actually very very nice. It can get a little bit too repetitive sometimes.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (53:37.122)
This right here is jump space. Yes.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (53:38.569)
That is the correct one.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (53:44.834)
So what you think of the live service games currently? Because the last few years, there’s been new live service games that come on that try to compete with games like Fortnite and Player Unknown Battlegrounds, and they don’t even last a month.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (54:03.884)
No, I can’t talk much about it. Unless I don’t play that kind of games I know about them. Of course I do but it’s more like I think many games today and I’m not specifically saying something have way too much like pay to win schemes and you have to pay it to get stuff and I don’t like that also they are Microtransactions that’s the thing. Yes

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (54:24.238)
Transaction

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (54:28.782)
Yes. I also saw news. I don’t know if you ever played wizardry. Thoughts on Atari acquiring the old IPs like wizardry.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (54:41.378)
Don’t know much about that. I’m sorry, this is too new stuff for me, but it’s cool that Atari is still left. Atari is still out there somehow. But I think that’s a brand name in name only. Whatever it once stood for is gone. So I’m sorry, I cannot comment on that.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (54:57.998)

Understanding people? Nah! Try controlling them instead…

Alright, is there any… So your gaming collection, if you have one, or I don’t know how big… Any grails in your collection, or is there a grail you’re seeking to have?

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (55:13.774)
To be honest with you, I don’t know what you mean in those achievement stuff, right?

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (55:19.66)
Like a game title that you’d like to get your hands on that has eluded you or maybe you got something rare in your collection now.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (55:29.176)
don’t really have anything rare. And Janrej, I know this can be cool, but I’m so much of a casual gamer, so I don’t really seek those. But I know what you mean. That’s for other people, I would guess. So I have only the common stuff.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (55:43.946)
Okay. Any famous gamers you’ve had on your show?

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (55:49.644)
not gamers per se, we only had a few interviews but we had a lot of cool demo sceneers that have done games like we have a guy called Harakit we interviewed do you know what those boxes? He invented it, that’s what he built so we talked about it he’s the original guy who created it and we interviewed him on the podcast so that we’ve had we also talked with a Finnish

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (56:03.0)
Dustbox, yeah

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (56:08.768)
He’s the designer.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (56:19.47)
I can’t remember, think name was Oilheap or something. He was an old games programmer in the old days with some games to his name.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (56:30.216)
I do recall that one of most famous games to ever come out of Finland is a game called Angry Birds.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (56:37.271)
Yeah, not that, not that, sorry. Yeah, I know, I know, that’s a weird one. It’s basically like some kind of scorched earth, isn’t it?

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (56:47.266)
You’re trying to get your eggs back from a bunch of pigs. You, I guess, can’t… I don’t know what infatuation they have with eggs. I don’t think pigs eat eggs. They grain. Mostly.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (56:51.213)
Yeah

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (57:00.878)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s just the graphic stuff, I guess. mean, lot of gaming, like, things that goat simulator, what’s up with the goat? I don’t know.

The future is now

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (57:12.652)
Yes. Future goals.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (57:16.942)
Well, when it comes I will try to develop the podcast as I feel that flashback tracks from the past should be something else But I don’t know what it could be I don’t know because we have a fairly small amount of listeners, which means we don’t get that many commentary Also when it comes to the radio station and the podcast I will work pretty much to get them indexed so they’re easier to find because I think we are hard to find when you look for demo scene radio

gaming podcasts and stuff like that. I try to fix that by making sure we’re easier to find. And that’s the main priority I have to make it more visible. So that’s the tactic.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (57:56.64)
If it weren’t gaming music, what other music are you really into?

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (58:00.482)

Here is Threeeee dawg – don’t feed the Yagoai, that’s all…

When it comes to music I’m pretty broad. I can like stuff like traditional jazz from the 20s and 30s and 40s. I mean pretty much if you think about how Fallout sounds, that is good. I also like 60s a lot, Beatles, Rolling Stones, stuff like that. And I like 70s and 80s and some 90s. When it comes to modern music I don’t know much about it to be honest. It doesn’t interest me that much, so that’s kind of where you find me.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (58:26.094)
Something that’s kinda similar to chiptunes and the music you play. I don’t know why I got hooked, why I’m listening to more and more of it, but it’s something called Trance.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (58:36.271)
Yeah, yeah, can get that. That’s kinda 90s sound, isn’t it?

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (58:40.822)
Night, yeah, and kind of similar to chip tunes and…

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (58:45.718)
Yeah, but I think a lot of people that made chiptunes, or as I like to call them, tracker music, sitios, whatever, they were heavily inspired by Euro-Techno, Techno, trance, dance stuff, whatever. So it’s kind of, can see the similarity just because that’s what they listened to when they created their own music.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (59:04.654)
You said you went to Germany Yeah, tell tell me about that tell tell us about the trip to Germany and Maybe some of the other countries you’ve been to

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (59:07.576)
Yes I do.

The road to Saarbrücken and Revision 2026

Evil bot is such a sign of the times, isn’t he?

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (59:16.3)
Alright.

Yeah, well, Germany is cool because it had something called Revision 2026 and that’s a demo party where they compete in music and graphics and everything. It’s not a gaming thing per se, but it’s kind of related. And it was in a little town called Saarbrucken in Western Germany, close to the border of France. And me and a friend called Koreos, is also a co-operator, he cooperates with me in their station, Eric A. Radio. We went there to broadcast live.

So we met up with Senors, he participated in one of the competitions and came on the third place, which is not bad. And it was super cool to see many of those names you hear. Like you say everyone from like Rackon Violet, artists like like Mime Brandon and Jogge Lilljedal and Danko. You could meet them for real here. You only heard them now you can meet them. So that’s kind of why that’s so cool.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:00:19.722)
What? Any other countries you’ve been to besides Germany?

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:00:23.072)
I’ve been to the United States twice, very nice. I was in New York City and I have been in Fort Lauderdale. I have been in Czech Republic, in Prague. I have been in Hungary. I have been in Finland. I’ve been in Denmark, Norway. Yeah, well, Germany, as I said a number of times. Poland. But I want to see, next is probably Great Britain. I have actually missed that. That would be nice.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:00:52.718)
Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:00:57.336)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Artificial intelligence – and human stupidity

As Tom Lehrer sang: “We shall all go together when we go”…

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:01:00.27)
So this has also been a thing lately. AI being a heavy influence in media creation. What’s your thoughts on artificial intelligence creating music?

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:01:16.718)
Well, technically I can’t say we can forbid it per se, but I think it’s bad. I think it’s bad because it kind of removes… When you talk about automation, you want boring stuff, like automation stuff, like cheap factory work to be automated so we can do more creative arts. But AI today does the opposite. It takes away this thing that it means to be human, to create something that has value, meaning, that takes effort and makes it effortless.

and actually quite repetitive. My biggest grief when it comes to AI is that it creates mediocrity. It creates mediocre stuff, not bad, not good, because it can never be as creative as a human being. And that’s my big grief. And when it comes to music, it has something that a friend of mine called something like AI Rock Syndrome. It’s kind of over embellishes everything. When you listen to something that’s been created by an AI, a music song, it seems to live its own life with a lot.

and stuff that a human wouldn’t put there. that’s where it’s still bad. But even if it gets good, it kinda removes what human creativity is about. That’s what I don’t like.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:02:31.182)
The only thing I… So, AI would be, as far as I’m concerned, if I use AI for anything, it’s just basically when I can’t figure out an answer to a problem, or it’s to kind of give me a crutch when my skill is not as good as somebody else’s.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:02:57.97)
This I can understand, can see use for it, I don’t hate on AI or anything like that. It’s just like when I see, I’m also old so I have nothing to do with schools, but I can read reports that school kids today, they learn to write their essays on AI, they ask sh-

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:03:12.888)
Yeah, that’s a that’s a should be illegal kids have been doing that and it’s like no

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:03:17.175)
What? thing is you can absolutely do good stuff that way. Problem is when you get into work life you have no creativity. You don’t know how to write an essay. And I believe in this society, writing a basic essay, even if that’s just a blog post, that’s civ- that’s common knowledge. You must be able to do that. If you can’t do that, you can’t express yourself. That’s horrible.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:03:43.342)
Although I know there’s a gaming news website called noclip360.com that was almost completely AI generated, but it was kind of their way of, I guess, showing up the established gaming journalism websites that, you know.

You inserted too much of your personal opinion or political stances into your work and this is this what we put up.

creates a neutral news aggregate side and shows that you can be replaced if you’re not, let’s say, putting forth your best work.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:04:31.214)
That is an interesting take on it. Not entirely sure that that may not be a bad idea. Problem is when you do that you’re kind of proving that you want to improve something which I think is cool. But most do it because it’s cheap and when you see text written by AI it’s very very stereotypical. For example if you use words like “explore”, the word explore something. “This discussion, explores the situation of delving into blah blah blah”. That’s AI.

That’s so much AI. It sounds like a copy from an advert. It doesn’t sound like something a real human would be proud to put out. And another thing is like all those icons. If you have icons like emojis in every caption, that’s also a dead giveaway. That’s AI. Or if you have those very long dashes that are, I think they’re called EM something, EM dash or something, that’s also AI. So sometimes it looks cheap.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:05:09.474)
Yeah.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:05:30.36)
Darn cheap.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:05:32.662)
Although, I made my own daggum emotes for this thing. mean, there’s icons here. like… Chat. Let me show this. See? I have icons here.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:05:43.998)
Yeah, but did you know how it looks with AI? It over embellishes it. It’s everywhere. It’s instead of bullet points. There is some weird emoji. Not that I hate you on it. You can remove it. But what I’m saying is it looks cheap. It takes no effort. And also it doesn’t understand the issue. You can have a summary that doesn’t summarize right. And people learn from that. And suddenly they have not understood the message.

or they have understood some kind pre-packaged message instead of learning to think for themselves.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:06:18.22)
Yeah, and sometimes I’m asking Google for help on how to fix a computer problem and most of time it tends to put me in the right direction, but sometimes it leads me astray.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:06:29.614)
But I feel like if you ask it something you could get something like 80 % correct and 20 % wrong But you don’t know what’s what you don’t know right and I said I’m not gonna bother with that if it has anything more than like 1 % wrong I’m not bothering with it and here’s another thing assume that you only use chat GPT or whatever Claude You know and you write an essay mostly by them

Then those lines, those incorrect information gets put back and then crawled and the next AI puts that incorrect text up and say, yeah, this was written by a human being. So let’s go with that. And suddenly the lies become the truth and the quality of the data goes down. This is a problem we have in the future and it’s going to be horrible.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:07:15.818)
Yeah, that’s a great point Now we’re getting some Yeah, we got Yeah, I’m cut biggest concern with AI is it turns it turns the universe into What was depicted? No, the Terminator movies

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:07:35.598)
paperclips.

Yeah, alright. Skynet.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:07:43.394)
ChatGPT is our world’s Skynet.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:07:47.626)
Well, it isn’t yeah, I totally get what you’re saying thing is Skynet is not an AI today We have the distinction AI, AGI and super intelligence AI today means pretty much what chat GPT and others are. They cannot reason but it can find the most commonly held Opinions and answers to common questions and they can summarize and they can do stuff. AGI is an

AI on a human level, it’s self aware, thus it’s a living being. That is not something we can build today, but I know Elon Musk and company says we’re going to build that. So he’s committed to it. We’ll see. We’ll see what’s happening. But then we come to super intelligence. It’s off the scale.

It’s superhuman, it knows more than human intelligence itself. And what is that gonna do? Is it gonna launch nukes at us? Well, Skynet scenario in Terminator says exactly that. But we have a number of things. It could be a benevolent dictator, a nice godlike character, or simply say, I don’t wanna have anything to do with you humans, so I’m out. We don’t know, we don’t know what we’re doing. Or it could say, let’s convert Earth to paperclips, because I don’t know, sounds like a good idea.

Mr. Clippit or Clippy. You were such an annoyance back then. Good no one has invented such stupidity since.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:09:09.166)
Tell us the Microsoft Word mascot!

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:08:58.413)
I don’t know if I want to live in a world with a bunch of clippies

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:09:12.142)
Yeah, I know. Looks like you’re writing a letter. Go away! I remember that. I remember that.

What’s up on ericade.radio?

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:09:21.43)
Anything you want to plug, any upcoming events with Ericade.Radio.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:09:25.902)

Happy people from the demo scene!

Yes, absolutely, but it’s not now, but in a few months in July. Ericade will broadcast live from the Edison demo party here in Stockholm, Sweden, Europe. So that’s coming up, it’s gonna be cool. Other than that, it’s just business as usual. I’m trying to cobble together the next podcast which will cover a very famous game that changed the whole gaming industry. But I won’t tell you what it is.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:09:52.482)
The- okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, You’re going to cover a game that changed the video game industry. What it- sheesh, should I guess what it is? Do you know what it is? I want you- I want to see your guess, right- guesses right now. What time frame are we looking at?

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:10:00.226)
Yes.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:10:04.2)
Yes, and if you guess right…

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:10:10.616)
Yes.

We’re looking at the 90s actually.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:10:16.46)
The 90s. Well, Tracy says Pac-Man, that was 1980s.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:10:20.466)
That’s 80s and she’s right, that’s exactly right. Not that the game I’m covering but it’s a very, very important game. But this is the 90s.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:10:31.768)
Mortal Kombat.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:10:33.438)
Should be good but no, no, not good.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:10:36.47)
I would say Super Mario Bros., but no, I would go with Street Fighter II.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:10:41.579)
Those are very very important games, but no none of them and also those are in the 80s. We’re talking 90s now

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:10:48.642)
No, Street Fighter II was 90.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:10:50.91)
Okay, okay, sorry. Okay. Yeah, sorry, but that’s not one

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:10:56.462)
Mmm boy could I could I guess it off the top of my head because there’s so many games over the

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:11:03.414)
Think about this. Think about… Could have been, but think about it. A game that created a new genre of games. That changed everything on how a game is played and what it looks like and the style of games. And have launched a thousand ships. Number of games. Everything from the modern Fallout to pretty much everything Fortnite. Everything is kind of built on this game. Doom is the right answer! What do I win?

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:11:28.109)
Doom!

Come and get some!

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:11:35.586)
Yes! you’re- Yeah, absolutely. Castle Wolfenstein was the first one, but Doom blew the door of its hinges. It kinda was the big one. So that’s what I’m gonna cover.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:11:38.05)
Wolfenstein 3D.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:11:47.948)
Yes, I played Doom back in the day quite a bit. And I know Midwest Gaming Classic, they set up an array of old Macintosh’s run in Doom. I worked together. So. Although lately I’ve seen faceball. 16 terminals running faceball. It’s kind of a similar game, but it predates Wolfenstein.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:12:17.781)
Yeah, actually-

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:12:18.35)
Alright. go ahead.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:12:21.515)
No, no, no, no, sorry.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:12:24.278)
Alright, so radio@ericade.radio. Also the past podcasts for the ericade radio network are on youtube.com slash aircade radio and the other media sites you have.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:12:45.39)
Yeah, well, that’s the important ones you can find if you have a live stream on YouTube with the radio station But you can just as well listen on your media device or your on the site So that’s up to you, but it’s awesome with some nice chiptunes new ones old ones old gaming music Whatever we have it on every K radio. So I think you’re gonna enjoy it. You know what?

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:13:06.816)
I can throw this up here. better show this screen. Share the screen. Here’s the web page. That’s what I should have done much earlier. Here we go. There it is. There’s. Right. There we go. And. You can request music. You can find out the history of Eric Cade in more extensive narrative.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:13:15.586)
Okay.

Yep, that’s the site.

Did I ever look this young? Doubtful. Probably some AI slop.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:13:33.512)
yeah, that’s me, what I looked back in the day.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:13:35.854)
And 97 I wish I was that young again and I’m like in my 50s now. Yeah chasing scores and Winning gaming tiles and all that but this is a pretty long history

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:13:42.485)
Yes, so am I.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:13:50.21)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, she was awesome. She was the Amiga mascot. Everybody know about her because

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:14:00.174)
Yes, and I just rewatched the clip and it’s like, you know what? I kind of remember seeing this before way many years ago where she shows up to the medical click and all the people who stopped to stare at her and have something bad happen.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:14:16.95)
Yeah, and she’s the nurse that have to take care of them afterwards, believe. Yes, yes, I remember that. Yeah. It’s a long winded history, but I’ve written it in a kind of funny way. I think it’s quite funny to read, actually, I hope. I don’t know.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:14:22.616)
Yes.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:14:32.11)
Alright, well, if you ever make it back to the United States, I mean…

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:14:38.082)
Yeah, absolutely. That’s, I would like that.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:14:40.63)
all the way can get out because their cadence see the biggest arcade in the world which as closing in on one thousand one hundred games

I can relate to this guy’s hair style so much nowadays…

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:14:50.754)
That’s awesome. Do you know about LGR? Isn’t he into stuff like that?

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:14:56.142)
LGR was at the Midwest Gaming Classic.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:14:59.73)
Ooh nice! Yeah I watched him a lot a few years ago so yeah. Also 8-bit guy? 8-bit guy perhaps?

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:15:12.469)
Maybe I don’t know which one it is. They’ll jr. I am familiar with all right Eric I wanna oh he organized the Kong off In the UK apparently I think and they just had the call off You have to have Tracy tell me what how the how that turned out but anyway

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:15:12.898)
Okay.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:15:25.929)
Okay, okay, okay

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:15:40.342)
Yes?

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:15:41.76)
eric what thank you for committed on the car case tonight and it’s not time for you it’s still take time for me but well thank you for coming in on the sunday and still in this extra podcast to celebrate i guess my one hundred Crimeycade.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:16:04.95)
Congratulations, congratulations, really nice work. Thanks for having me.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:16:10.562)
Alright, hope to see you around the arcade soon and keep on gaming.

Alright, a good night.

That was Eric. Eric, Gosh, now I forgot how pronounce his name again. Let me throw him back on here. How do I pronounce your name again?

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:16:31.977)
That would be “Zalitis”.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:16:34.176)
Zaleeetees, thank you.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:16:36.243)
That’s cool, I know, no one gets it right.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:16:40.418)
I’ll just call you DJ Daemon and then from now on that’ll be easier. Alright, thanks. You have a good night. Alright. That will do it for the Crimey Cave podcast tonight. Yes, Happy 100. Do want to share a few more items before I get out of here. I gotta stop sharing. Bring back the slideshow.

Erik Zalitis (DJ Daemon) (01:16:45.004)
Go ahead.

And here is the outro

Upcoming stuff! Cool!

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:17:07.278)
So in the next few weeks, yes, I just got out of wild wrestling show. Good grief.

my goodness. So I’m to go see my mom shortly because it’s Mother’s Day where I live and let me bring this back up although I already showed these slides. Anyway, two weeks Combo Breaker at the Schomburg Convention Center starting Friday of Memorial Day weekend going through Sunday.

I will make it up there May 22nd through the 24th. I will make it up there Run a view with Tracy who says she is going to be going up there Kind of an arcade convention not just the fighting games you can but there’s a lot of There’ll be a lot of watching other people Ballad out on the big screen and I can’t hang with those guys

My chances will be better if at the Tekken Tag Tournament, Sunday May 31st at 3pm at the Galveston Arcade, BWT returns after taking almost a year off and going after trying to find whatever happened to JP Pitts. Following that weekend, the Illinois GameCon June 6th, 2026 at

The Air State Center in Bloomington, Illinois. And also that weekend, CourseCon, Columbus, Ohio’s first video game convention. It’s been around for, gosh, 18 years. Wild.

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:19:07.566)
It’s not showing up. Wow, there we go. Wonder why the chests were not showing up real quick. Missouri Game Con, Greensfelder Recreation Complex in Manchester, Missouri. And on the 25th, I’ll be there for that. Midwest Gaming Classic has been scheduled for 2027, April 23rd through 25th. Next Thursday’s guest.

as I will be the curators of Chicago a Game Space. Jonathan Kinkley and Ethan Johnson. We will talk about their museum, some of the stuff they exhibit there, and some of the early gaming. At the Midwest Gaming Classic, had the exhibit detailing Nuttington Associates and some of the early

Bally Midway Games.

at the con so and they got a location in the chicago area it’ll be a 9 pm start time on may 14th so be aware of that uh starting it later so they can both uh get in uh on time because they have a lot of stuff going on during the day that they’re busy with so they will stop in at 9 pm

Alright, happy Mother’s Day to everybody And I’m good. Yeah, my weekends winding down and I’m trying to recover so you know anyway looks like I got some work to do out and I will be reading a channel who’s gonna be Who’s writing who’s a streaming this afternoon?

Steven Lucas (Mad Conservative Crimefighter) (01:21:06.766)
actually not very many of the people I typically follow but Charlie far I’ll give it to him because he is streaming moonwalker for the sake of Genesis so until next time I am the mad conservative cry better see you around the arcade soon have good night everybody.

If you want to hear the whole thing…

Intereviewer and guest. How podcasts have been made since 1832.

Listen to it here