Exploring Dead Games 3 

40:04 AIN'T NO WAY

"Blockland survivor" here. Seeing it described as a dead game is heartbreaking to be honest. A small community and servers still persist, but I still really miss the old days.

39:30 Lol, I really glad you liked my basement with all the books I had given custom titles to. It took like a week to get them all working. Sorry for the explosive one..

It's possible that the Master Sword server ran out of storage. Throughout all those years, the server may have been quietly writing log files until it ran out of space. Then when you delivered the quest, it tried to write *one more piece of data* and... well, it couldn't. Well done. Thanks for the vid.

Dude the memorial for Active World members isn't even sad, that is the most beautiful shit I have ever seen. RIP DMC2U.

Some say blockland 1892 will only stop when the sun burns out, I say they will outlive it

44:10 Blockland Soccer ⚽ We've held soccer tournaments every summer since 2014, along with other smaller events throughout the year. All of our matches have been recorded live with commentary, and are available to watch, no soup or tea necessary!

Ah, I'm so glad you played Speedkart Remastered in blockland, I did the announcer voice! I love hearing my own voice blare across someone else's speakers when they win/lose lol

The tribute to DMC2U and all the others who helped to build and foster the Active Worlds community into what it was-- that's gotta be one of the most tasteful beats I've ever seen in a RU-vid video.

In a sense, would this be considered a form of Digital Archeology? Just because the cities aren't made of brick and stone, it doesn't mean there weren't hundreds, if not more, that at some point called these spaces home.

Is it just me, or is he an amazing comfort youtuber? Both his voice and editing style are so soothing.

man there are a lot of these kinds of "exploring dead game" videos but yours are always way more comfier and it's like you try to tell a story in them, they're great

That "Heat" game was exactly what I imagine it would be like to be the last human on earth. You spend your whole day doing dumb eccentric stuff to forget the loneliness. That scene of you going into the empty white house, sitting down in the presidents chair and declaring yourself as the president was too perfect!

NO WAY

blockland, my beloved... for a time it seemed to be possible competition for roblox, but in its heyday, the creator released one fatal update: v21, which saw the removal of rooms. in v20 and earlier, there were maps one could select for their server which would be the rooms of a house, in addition to custom-made maps and the flat plain seen in the video, atop which one would build with legos. the twist: you're lego-sized. the rooms were MASSIVE, and filled with hidden passageways and secrets, such as the bedroom window being breakable, allowing you to go outside, or the secret entrance into the cabinets in the kitchen. god knows why badspot chose to remove these, but they turned out to be so integral to the game's spirit and image that, combined with a total halt of subsequent updates, it set in motion a long decay of popularity until the sad death that has taken so many multiplayer games. what a tragedy.

The TFC segment sent me for a wild nostalgia trip. I used to religiously play it when I was younger on an old PC that was shared with my siblings and eventually when that died I played on my brother’s laptop. Three of the servers you visited are some of the servers I believe I used to frequent as they were semi active back then, and I would play climb maps if no one was on and would always try to do the escape maps but didn’t usually succeed as myself and the other handful of people couldn’t figure them out or weren’t skilled enough. My favorite memories are probably from the “conc” jumping maps as I befriended a guy from Switzerland named “Quaid” and he taught me to his best ability to “conc” jump, and I was constantly trying to get on the same time as him, and eventually he stopped playing as I think he was set to do military duty or something like that😭 I miss ya buddy, you were a great teacher and gave me tons of memories when I didn’t have the resources to buy newer games. I love your videos so much and wanted to thank you for providing such amazing content, sorry for the wall of text just remembered some great moments of my childhood.

That entire HEAT section was like a fever dream

12:30 a lot of webcams in the 90s were not webcam streams like we have today - it was basically a webcam taking a picture every 10/20/30 seconds and uploading it.

Your Comprehensive History of Internet Horror was the video I saw of yours and you immediately became one of my favourite RU-vidrs. Your delivery and editing is really really good and this series is so much fun. Thanks for all your hard work!

The post-zinger dancing in HEAT had me crying every single time 😂.

the 1892 in blockland1892 is when he started racing

hey I'm Zeustal from that Blockland map, I DID NOT expect to see my bot show up at all!!! that map was a repurposed version of a significantly better map called Skill4life's pirate adventure, the Blockland community is still somewhat alive so I'd implore you to revisit us sometime.

I love these exploring online game videos man. The length you go to on covering each one makes it feel like a compilation of really succinct videos and i find myself forgetting there are other games coming up next im so lost in it.

I spent HOURS upon HOURS in ActiveWorlds as a kid. I was absolutely obsessed just exploring words - but when I bring it up to people no one ever knows what I'm talking about! I remember there was one world in particular that seemed to go on forever. I would spent days running from one build through seemingly endless empty landscape until I would randomly come across another build (usually half-finished). Then I would repeat the process.

Master Sword felt weirdly existential by the end. You just innocently jump into some dead game, only to accidentally destroy the only working server. All those NPCs that had sat in limbo for years, finally serving their purpose by engaging with you, and then their entire world just flashes out of existence.

this man’s voice is so comforting

Oh, hey, old man here. I grew up with TFC and remember mooncheese. It was a pretty interesting map that had a unique spin to the normal gameplay. If I recall correctly, it was 3-4 teams of countries all racing to prime a rocket and get in it to get to the moon. I think you won if you got there first and got to, well, the moon cheese. That's why you were downloading anthems. Shame it didn't work. Also, entmod felt like a weird proto gmod, it let you spawn and move entities around. I remember begging on a server to get access to it so I could mess around. Have to imagine none of those maps work because that mod is probably mega-broken these days.

All these Killer7 sounds and music, man. This is the third time you brought tears to my eyes. So much nostalgia from these items, some of the terms, the decoration and the brushwork... Thank you for your work man. From the bottom of my heart.

My new favorite type of humor is people finding unfortunate references to the Twin Towers pre 9/11. Active Worlds give me such nostalgia for early Second Life. I played that game for almost 20 years, over half of my life lol

The dichotomy of going from the memorial to "I'm the president now let's ride a bear across the country" is golden.

So happy to be hearing coverage of Master Sword! It may seem dead but there's a new version called Rebirth that is actively fixing bugs and has a pretty active community. Been enjoying the game and excited to see what's in store. Thank you for your hard work in this video, awesome seeing these old games being covered and given another chance of being known :)

Anyone showing up for the 2026 performance??

12:20 I operated some webcams in the late 90s/early 2000s and the way they worked back then is that they uploaded a still .jpg file via FTP to a webserver very often. In the early days it was usually every 60 or 30 seconds, later people tried to crank it up to every 10- 5 seconds. On the viewer side you just needed a webpage with code to embed the image and auto-reload itself every x seconds which was very compatible with most browsers and worked without installing extra stuff. Since active worlds seems to have a way to embed webpages, it's totally possible to have webcam images on there back then. It most likely wasn't a live video feed as the tech just barely wasn't there yet, more like a fast updating still image.

Man, I played Blockland for literally a decade back in the 2000's. It feels so weird knowing it's a dead game these days. I miss the community and all the fun times we had. Thanks for showcasing it, it brought back a lot of memories.

That VR company working with the Army makes sense. Their Tac-Eye thing looks very similar to the Land Warrior stuff that army was playing with during the early 2000s. It's basically a heads up display thing that clips onto your glasses and connects to other soldiers.

Thanks for covering TFC, that gave me some nice nostalgia particularly the conc jumps, I actually totally forgot that used to be a thing and felt sooooo old. I like these videos a lot thanks for making them

The moment I saw Animyst I was like "hey, it's that game Josh Strife Hayes played once!" and right at the end of the segment he gets mentioned by someone else in game lol

Wow, that memorial for DMC2U was genuinely beautiful, Active Worlds really had a dedicated community that cared about it’s people. That’s something you don’t see at all anymore, RIP DMC2U and all the active world players that made a impact in that community.

Love these videos so much man, thank you. Always good to see stuff like Active Worlds being covered. I just love going on there and wandering around, just seeing what I can find. The memorials always hit harder than I expect. You're not going to get that experience in many games! ...and the Killer 7 clip 😩chef's kiss. Happily subscribing, thanks again.

The section on Blockland is quite something. Those servers you checked out are definitely odd balls, Quenenard is someone who has hosted New Years parties for Blockland since 2010, and Floran is like the only person still persistently hosting a server that's mainly death run and minigames. The game itself won't die on it's own, there's a few dedicated players who refuse to leave, grow out of it, or switch to Brickadia, the newer game that took major inspiration from Blockland, and was created by Blockland players. That game would be a major reason why people have left the game, but there's still those who refuse and stay with the classic. Sadly, the game won't ever be updated anymore. Before it was updated to "Shaders" in V21, it had MAPS. Lots of maps, lots of players, all sorts of servers. That is where the prime of this game was. Now, it's just desolate, and I personally blame the creator Badspot for it.

Oi nice.. checking in for EntCity RP at 56:15 -- so this was actually made for The Specialists mod for Roleplay servers in combination with EntMod, where players can build their own house piece by piece, and could save, load, and place it again anew anywhere they wanted. If you go back and revisit these EntMod maps, enable noclip and go underground, you will find hundreds of objects that can be copied and manipulated with, but you'll need EntMod setup to use them. I still have my server setup so if you want we could go take a deeper dive on all the many curious Ent maps.

babe wake up PEAK RU-vid content has just dropped

was liking the video very much already- heard pseudoregalia ost in the background and literally turned on my computer so i could go subscribe. really enjoyed your active worlds coverage and glad that what remains can also live here to some degree

Hey again - good to see you revisited AW! A few things of note: - The Bingo worlds are more or less dead and relied on a bot, so they don't work anymore - that and Activeworlds retired the paid citizenships years ago as it declined in relevance compared to SL and VRChat. - The reason a lot of the stuff is missing images is because back then, content was hotlinked from other sites that hosted websites and images, that have long since either changed their policies on hotlinking, or are defunct. - For a time I actually used to call abc my home world.. primarily because of the fact a house played a MIDI version of Blur's Song 2. - Regarding PKToons -- Rip Veger (IIRC the owner of PKToons), I guess, lmao - Memorials are prominent and have been a part of Activeworlds' history for years. I have seen many of my fellow citizens, and even in my days in Second Life, many residents, as we call ourselves - pass away. I should go to pay respects to the fallen soon, in all honesty. Thanks for coming by again, Redlyne.

The Heat segment was genuinely one of the funniest things I've watched in a long time. You've got a talent for comedic editing, Red!

I love these videos and was so excited to see a new one show up! Your voice is also very relaxing so I use these to fall asleep sometimes I enjoyed the narrative of the heat section a lot as well

man I truly love these videos, like no joke I love them. keep up the good work

I've been posting Master Sword ambience type videos on my channel recently! This is actually the old version, Master Sword: Continued. There is a new project, Master Sword: Rebirth and an associated discord bringing out new content and bugfixes still in the works! It's in a weird transition period from the original dev team over to open source, this is why there was only the one buggy server for the old version. Rebirth is still moderately active.

Didn't expect to see TFC in one of these, but it's cool that you covered it. The game's 25th anniversary is coming up in a few weeks. 57:48: Entmaps were used in EntMod, which was sort of a proto-Garry's Mod. Players (usually admins) would be able to move and manipulate entity objects (walls, floors, crates, etc.) around a map in real time. So, you'd use an entmap as a sandbox for creating a map rather than do so using a traditional map editor. 1:01:03 LeeW is Lee Wakefield, who created this map. He created many other TFC maps as well, including several "social"-type maps featuring houses or rooms for people in the community. His maps were often played on Axl's TFC server, which was one of the most popular servers for custom maps.

I spent years in ActiveWorlds, as the owner of a few "Pokéworld" servers, where a dice roll bot was customized into a sort of battle between our posters of chosen 'mons. We all built gyms, but the world hosting costs back in '02 were more than my allowance. I wandered the ice caves of X-Files 2 so many times, and I think it just goes around in circles.

absolutely love this series and am glad you're continuing it

that HEAT presidential arc was amazing

I really liked AW you can tell the devs wanted the community to be creative, compared to other games it doesn't have paid imvu like items and crap.

For anyone interested, the music playing in Master Sword is an Overclocked Remix, #129 Tristram (WetGrass) by IAmEviL.

This series is incredible. I genuinely hope you continue making these.

BlockLand1892 Patriarch of the BlockLand Family

something about this video being chock full of yakuza references JUST as i get into the series is just perfect. i lost it when you started making Nishiki in the club cooee game. perfect, no notes

Your videos have such a calm charm to them, my absolute fav to just watch and listen while chilling in bed sometimes falling asleep, please never stop these videos my absolute comfort channel and i appreciate the content you make! Great job sir

X-Files ice cave is a reference to the first (and only?) X-Files movie where the alien ship was in the ice.

MR PRESIDENT GET DOWN mr president: "THE BOOGIE DOESNT STOP TILL I SAY IT STOPS GOTDANGIT"

i love the way these videos are made, super impressive stuff as always. Your voice is really calming, feels like i’m watching AsumSaus

This is one of my favourite series and your voice and delivery is amazing. Please keep making content in general

Nothing like chilling out to an algorithm recommended video and finding your own game in it.

58:43 the assets for this map is from the hl mod called Afraid Of Monsters. Massive recommend, awesome horror mod with insanely cool atmosphere and great mapping

Not only is it fascinating to see your exploration of these relic worlds, it's entertaining since you play up these characters as you try to wholeheartedly engage.

I really love this series. It's perfect to just cozy up to with some snacks and relax.

Wow, Blockland brings me back. Haven't played it in probably a decade but I put so much of my time into that game when I was younger. Pretty nostalgic hearing all of those sounds and seeing the unique visuals.

Nice you got to see a little bit of Blockland new years 2024 server after the festivities were over. Fun new years 2024 server stats. Highest player peak was 120 players. Total 381 unique players

the first half hour of this video is really a rollercoaster of emotions. Well done sir!

Oh my lord, Blockland. Me and my friends would get on every few weeks to mess around and play speedykart. Adam (Alex? something) Speedykart server was the place to be- And by "place to be" even in 2014 it was the only server with more than 5 players. The highest player count for that server was probably about 15. Just about every map is burned into my brain. The first course Red showed was probably my favorite. The two worst were this ice map, you'd slide across parts of the map and fall into the water. The other was a volcano island map with tiny pathways, it had a blind jump that killed a majority of racers. By far the funniest was a harbor where you had to dodge sharks trying to eat you, it also had these little worker dudes who would actively try to punch you out of your kart if you got stuck. The final map I played on was a city with a long, winding bridge to a small island bunker. It was so flat towards the end it was possible to stop just before the finish line, get out of your kart, and punch people out of their karts and to death just before they made it to the finish. It was hard to pull off, but possible.

"Mr President get down" segment KILLED me

hands down one of the most fun series on youtube for me

one of my favourite series on youtube rn i love these videos so much

In the source engine "Ent" is probably short for "Entity" which is modder talk for an object with scripted functionality. Such as the health dispensers in HL2 for instance. Chances are that the missing pieces originally had some kind of code attached that gave them enhanced functionality, and that the scripts failed to load for some reason. So the entmap castle was probably at one point a map with a cool castle that had moving parts or sound effects or something.

The HEAT section might be your best work yet

The up to date war room was the best part lol

I love this series. Please keep making these

I love these video's too man never stop making them yheyre so entertaining genuinely the only hour long videos on youtube i can watch fully through

58:29 I think this map is meant to be a reference to the 'Afraid of Monsters' mod for Half-Life, made by the same group that did Cry of Fear. I can't say for certain though.

Fun fact about Blockland: the reason why it was so popular back then wasn't because of the game itself, but because of the Blockland forums since it was more a forum about Internet gossip than about the game.

The TFC entmap servers are sort of like the precursor to vanilla gmod servers. There should've been spawn menus for you to spawn "entities" to build with - walls, doors, ramps, etc. You could build a base or a house or whatever. You could even make things move, I remember building a base with a sliding wall as an entrance. I spent some time in those back when TFC could still get a couple people in those servers, probably around 2011 or 2012. I remember playing mooncheese too. It had a very janky shuttle that would take you from earth to the moon. GoldSource wasn't really great at handling moving objects, especially not ones with people in them. It was just a box sliding on a predetermined path with a model slapped onto it, and the entity and model would desync all the time so you'd be flying to the moon way ahead or way behind of the shuttle model you can actually see. One of the game modes you sort of touched on with the Smurf map is the escape/adventure maps - there was a LOT of these, many of them way way better than the Smurf map. Lots of them had real stories, needed teamwork to progress through, there was a lot of pretty great ones. There's still videos on youtube of people playing through these, I remember watching a playthrough of a Titanic escape map not too long ago. It's sad to see TFC included in this video as a dead game, as it was the first "real" game I could play due to growing up poor and having a computer that couldn't even run HL2 without bluescreening. I played it when it was already well past its prime, around 2010, but it still had a healthy playercount then. There were several full servers on multiple maps and gamemodes around that time.

I love how you can tell some time around the 50 minute mark during the creation of this video our narrator watched a lot of Jerma985

LET'S FUCKKINGG GOOO!!!!! I live for these videos from this channel. Literally freak out whenever I get the notification

Yo! Thanks for playing Blockland. I have so many memories of that game from my youth. I literally had to mail cash to the developer to buy it because I didn't have any way to purchase it digitally lmao. Blockland is definitely dead thanks to neglect and shitty updates from the developers. It's an actual shell of what it used to be

Loving the sheer amount of Yakuza / RGG music in this one, always nice being able to recognize the background tunes.

Your sense of humor and edits are great. Keep it up big man

I've been playing active worlds for a few months now, but I remember discovering it like 15 years ago while my grandfather's computer. Your last video where you showed off active worlds was what sparked my memory. I have been playing it every single day since and it's legitimately the best exploration game.

1:36 I'm so glad the mall music in Dead Rising has become the go to for background audio when showing malls lol

you know it's a good day when redlyne uploads a part three to this series

Exceptionally relaxing. Joe Pera talks about dead games 3. Love it

the memorials in active worlds are so SOOO lovely :( rip

I was about to clean out the garage, but I sure as hell ain't gonna ignore a new video.

This my first time here and immediately subscribed. Great content!!!

the map at 58:29 comes from a half-life mod called afraid of monsters, it's made by the same person who created cry of fear

i love that you are preserving history so these dead games can live on even if they are shut down, thank you for making these videos! also it's really cool how you handled the AW memorial part, I was never there but still RIP to all those who helped make a community a better place

Blockland was my jam as a child! Especially liked the creeper gamemode, where you had to fight off some goop eating all the blocks.

Genuinely one of the best channels that I have found in all my years on RU-vid. Your voice soothes the soul and the media you cover is melancholy yet calming.

And so the crownless king returns to give us another hour long banger. Thanks for always giving us quality stuff. Even if you don’t upload as fast as some people, it’s worth the wait every time

my little brother and i used to play SO MUCH blockland, i love these videos but it was the first time i actually got to first hand engage with the nostalgia factor and it was awesome

Cant believe i missed this dropping. I love the Trigun track ya use man.