I'm late. Really late, so bloody late that we're already half-way through the week (that'd be mid-week where I come from) and trash day is just around the corner. So what better time to roll out issue number 5 of this lil' ‘ol column. Pardon my French folks but I got the living liver kicked out of me this weekend and played overtime at the Mad Onion Benchmarking Boot camp, which went really well. If you had to turn to other sources and use other means to substitute/supplement your Rear View low-cholesterol, fat-free and sugar coated iceberg diet then please send all your nastigrams to Kyle at www.hardocp.com, Dave/Marco (real Italian stallions!) at www.hothardware.com and Andre at www.rageunderground.com. If any of you want/dare or really, really need to see just why we were late, our buddy Andre over at www.rageunderground.com has posted some extremely self-explanatory pictures right here. Viewer discretion is advised as always when the SE staff is out on the town mingling with a bunch of heavy-duty fellow web masters. With the customary long-winded and extremely waffle-filled intro almost out of the way (yeah I read H.G Wells, bully for me) let's step into the Tardis/Delorean and step back in time. Going back the usual two years, to a time when Sharky Extreme was but a flicker of the almighty corporate conglomerate multinational (and lingual) super-extra saucy web site that it, for some unknown reason, has grown into today.

Back then we knew how to spell colour, and even say punk, Hugh Grant, bonnet, dustbin, bangers and mash with a extremely posh English country garden plum in our mouths.

I remember October 1998 like it was yesterday. Some things never change, Tottenham Hot Spurs were well into their annual early season loss of form and were, for want of a better term, shite. The Raiders were on the verge of a great season, except that someone forgot to let them know that a win could go a long way into actually making it so, and best of all, everyone was saying the Internet was an “untapped resource.” My my… In the meantime we had our heads down and were working on cranking out those video card reviews.

Here's a favorite in the form of a company called Skywell:

Traveling was just so much fun! Discovering those hot, stuffy and sweaty flights on SouthWest, the world's least-favorite airline, from LAX to San Jose was the best ride this side of the Atlantic (which doesn't include Friday nights at the Roxy in Clapham Essex). In the same vein as hitting the Roxy, SE had a purpose (or mission if you like) when flying up to San Jose. Taking a stroll around the vast plains of Silicon Valley devoid of anything remotely more interesting than a 3-hour stint in front of the telly watching Thigh Master Sommers-cise meant we got to go and visit two companies and put the SE curse on them. I say curse because back in the day, we visited Diamond and a promising company called Metabyte. Diamond Multimedia showed us their roadmap and planned product release schedule which for me, was almost as exciting as dancing with Shazza, Traci and [insert a third slapper of your choice here] at the Roxy till 4am. We got to meet the CEO, go to his house, listen to some sounds on an MX300 sound card and check out the RIO.

Then there was the-then talk of the town, Metabyte, who probably taught those fine Fins at Bitboys Oy! all they'll ever need to know: First, come up with some extra-saucy donkey poo of a story. Let it out to the unassuming press until it hardens in the spotlight and then begins to reek of pungent odors that in the end give the end users some indication of “we are bullshit and we're proud.” Other than those silly 3D specs, nothing extraordinary ever really came out of Wicked 3D, apart from a Voodoo2 product. Nevertheless we bit into the BS and gave you the low-down on some 3D specs, a Banshee product and something strange involving some hacked drivers, a couple of TNTs, a completely flawed business model and technology that peeved off everyone from 3dfx all the way to Creative Labs- TNT SLI. Nobody ever bought into the $10 million required to get the TNT SLI project off the ground.

Not only am I a slacker and really late with this weekly thingamajig but now I've also been relieved of my gaming duties. That's right, due to no demand whatsoever there will now be a weekly Rear View for games written by some other poor Sharky Extreme sod. Watch this space.

Finally let's wrap things up with a useless little contest. Nobody got last week's references to Jaws (not even you, Redwood!) so I'll go a little lighter on you folks this week and be a lot less cryptic. Here's an easy one for you, “Rule No.1, Karate is for defense only. Rule No. 2, first learn rule number one.” First one with the correct answer gets a free game unless they live in Botswana where the duty tax is a little on the encroaching side of the thin red line.

I hope you've enjoyed this trip down memory lane. I know I have. A healthy dose of “boy, were you so wrong” should be a requirement in this job. So give me your feedback and hit the forums. Let us all know if we've changed for the better or worse and in the true spirit of yesteryear, I'm writing via a stream of consciousness so chill out, ok? Cheers for tuning in all this time. And if you're new to all of this and have not a bloody clue of what I'm talking about, don't fret. Just join the rest of the queue…

Alex “Sharky” Ross
Editor-in-Chieftan

A new feature? What? No sarky (“sarky” is used in the East end of London as colloquial term for sarcastic you little blighters) comments about the title/theme of this either… The weekend is once again upon us and even after two years of doing this thing we do, I still can't believe how much the industry has changed. Thus the thought of dedicating a new weekend feature to see just what we were saying back in the day, I felt, would be fitting. You'll see where we/I went right, where we got egg on our faces and where we went so far off road that we ended up southeast of Pluto.

Two years ago we were a slightly different outfit. Language was a little more risqué (parental discretion is advised), testing methods were very different, system specs were by today's standards a snails pace and best of all we had those charts with the bubble background (hey, they were “in” in '98!).