Sound Blaster Live!

But the game was only half the story because to hear it properly, you wanted a new sound card.

Creative's Sound Blaster Live came out at a hundred and forty-nine pounds, roughly three hundred today, and Diamond's Monster Sound MX300 with Aureal's chip inside was due at around a hundred, so about two hundred pounds now.

Three hundred modern pounds just to hear the footsteps behind you is, uh, a big ask, Lee, and that's before anyone's even mentioned the graphics card.

Was it the same story with the pictures as well?

[gunshots]

That's perfectly decent, Lee, and you can follow everything that's going on, but it's quite flat, as if the whole base is one big room and the gunshots stop dead rather than ringing round the walls.

Now, the same spot on a Sound Blaster Live using Creative's EAX effects, which add the echo of the room you're actually in.

Here's the EAX version.