Game:

Interstate '76 (1997)

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9

REAL HARDWARE CAPTURE IN 4:3 ASPECT RATIO.

Enter the realm of funk in this video covering the setup application for Interstate '76 (Activision, 1997)! This video demonstrates the process of starting the AutoPlay splash screen app and the full installation procedure following it. It features some really sweet concept art sketches and a fun mock radio broadcast giving some insight into the setting/world of the game. The help file is also surprisingly extensive, providing a long list of computer-related information, troubleshooting tips and contact details for various companies to assist the customer.

The version of Interstate '76 being installed in the video is the original software rendered CD-ROM release from March 1997. This version predates the 3D acceleration and Aureal A3D features of the Nitro Pack and Gold edition releases. While the readme.txt file does mention the Orchid Righteous 3D (the first consumer-grade 3Dfx Voodoo card), it doesn't relate to any kind of 3D acceleration context. It might be referring to the video signal pass-through solution used to output video from both the 2D card and Voodoo card simultaneously on the same monitor.

To minimize stalls in the audio track that plays during installation, all the contents of CD 1 have been copied to the hard disk drive prior to starting the setup program.

Interstate '76 (in case you aren't already familiar with it) is a vehicular combat driving/simulation game where you customize car weaponry, armor and parts to duke it out across several story (Trip) missions and multiplayer (Auto Melee) battles. It's a cool premise that tells a counterfactual/alternative historical tale of auto vigilantes fighting against crime and corruption in an apocalyptic version of North America where the oil crisis of 1973 never went away. The game was made as a love letter to the automobiles and overall style of the 1970s, with a lovingly created soundtrack that uses period-correct instruments, amplifiers and mastering equipment to deliver that authentic sound.

This footage and audio was captured from the following computer:
Dell OptiPlex GXPro case and motherboard (manufactured in July 1996 according to case label)
Intel 440FX chipset
Intel Pentium Pro 200 Mhz (256KB L2 cache) processor (manufactured around the same time as motherboard; shortly before July 1996)
Matrox Millennium IS-STORM/MGA-2064W (2MB) video card (manufactured in late 1995)
NEC PC 3DEngine (NEC PowerVR PCX1) accelerator card (NEC serial number starts with 6Y, with the first character denoting year and second one the month (1-9 = Jan to Sept and X/Y/Z = Oct/Nov/Dec), meaning that it's from November 1996)
Orchid Righteous 3D (3dfx Voodoo) accelerator card (Rev C, board manufactured week 40 1996)
Creative Labs Sound Blaster AWE32 (CT3900) sound card (manufactured week 15 1995)
128 MBs of EDO DRAM/memory (not quite contemporary in age but I'm working on finding some)
Microsoft Windows 95 (OSR 2.0 OEM) operating system

The capturing was done with VCS (VisionRGB Capture Scaler) and OBS Studio using a Datapath VisionRGB-E1S PCI-Express capture card plugged into the following system: ASUS Maximus IV Extreme motherboard, Intel Core i7-2600K CPU, 8 GBs DDR3 SDRAM, nVidia GTX 580 video card. A VGA-to-DVI cable is connected between the source computer and the Datapath capture card to enable video capturing. Audio capture was done by feeding a 3.5mm stereo jack cable into the line in on the motherboard from the sound card of the vintage computer. Resizing/upscaling of the raw original 640x480 capture to 2560x1920 was done using VirtualDub2.

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