T3 at 30 LIVE: the gadgets, games and tech launches that made the last 30 years so magical

Let's start at the beginning...

Hi, it's news editor Rik Henderson here kicking things off with a quick look back at something that launched around the same time as T3 magazine – something that was actually reviewed in the first issue, in fact.

I was but a humble reader back in 1996, presenting on a TV show for Channel 4 at the time – GamesMaster. But as such the launch of the Nintendo 64 was a massive deal to me, not least thanks to Super Mario 64. It was the title that changed platformers forever and still holds up as one of the best games ever made.

The original, disc-based PlayStation had already been kicking about for around a year, but Nintendo's dogged persistence with cartridges continued to pay off for the gaming giant. The N64 is many people's favourite console from the era, and for good reason.

The rise of DVD

As well as reviewing the N64, the first ever issue of T3 (then sub-titles Tomorrow's Technology Today) featured a piece on the launch of DVD. Yes, we were on the brink of a tech revolution in home entertainment – one that effectively changed our viewing habits forever.

Apart from Laser Disc, which was an expensive format adopted almost exclusively by home cinema enthusiasts, watching movies in the home relied on VHS tapes. The quality was poor, the tapes themselves took up an extraordinary amount of shelf space, and the equipment that played them often developed quirks and faults.

DVD was something altogether different. It gave us surround sound, far better picture performance, and extras (if you cared for such a thing). And it was easily stackable in thing sleeves. We're sadly heading towards the end of physical media, but we'll always fondly remember our DVD collections.

Where would we be without the iPod?

While the iPhone and its apps arguably altered smartphones forever, the iPod was Apple's first real game-changing device. Launched 25 years ago almost to the day, the digital music player swiftly became a product everybody wanted.

It wasn't as if this was the first MP3 player by any stretch of the imagination, but its 5GB of internal storage seemed enormous at the time. Being able to carry around 1,000 songs in your pocket (2,000 on the 10GB model that soon followed) was mind-boggling,

And let's not forget the design – it as iconic today as it was back then. I never owned the first-gen iPod myself, I jumped on board with a gold iPod mini a few years later, but as soon as I did it went everywhere with me. There's no surprise that the younger generation is back to coveting old school iPods and iPod-alikes today.

Checkmate

As well as the birth of T3, chess world champion Garry Kasparov took on the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue in a six match series in 1996 that shook the world. While Kasparov ultimately won the series, the computer became the first ever to beat a world champion in tournament conditions.

Deep Blue went one better the following year – it won the whole series 3½ to 2½ proving that AI was capable of learning from its own mistakes and correcting them.

To be fair, even my toaster could probably beat me at chess these days.

Are you entertained yet?

While Space Jam, Star Trek: First Contact and Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet were arguably the most well-known movies released around the same time T3 first hit newsstands, the film that grossed the most at the box office has largely been forgotten.

Starring Mel Gibson and directed by Ron Howard, Ransom was a fairly standard thriller that I remember seeing but couldn't tell you anything about it without resorting to IMDB.

In terms of music, the Spice Girls' debut album, Spice, was by far and away the biggest release of the month. While it was the first appearance of another female icon that lit up the games market – Lara Croft arrived in the first Tomb Raider for the PlayStation.

A read through issue 1

It's always interesting reading old issues of T3 to see how the tech has changed, but reading through issue 1 from November 1996, is a special experience. I didn't quite realise how much of the biggest tech was on the verge of existence back then. Digital cameras, next-gen consoles, DVDs and even electric cars.

We've put together a brief summary of issue 1 for you, pulling out some of the highlights. But you'll also find a link to read the full issue for yourself at the bottom of the page.

The birth of broadband

Where would we be if it wasn't for broadband internet. While dial-up services were available from the early 90s, it wasn't until the advent of broadband around the turn of the Millennium that the web really took off.

As with many others T3's website was around for a couple of years beforehand, but when NTL first offered Broadband services in the UK, its speeds of up to 512 kbps really changed the game.

That's nothing in comparison to the 1-gig speeds of today (and faster), but it enabled websites to use more pictures, while video streaming was finally achievable.

T3 at 30 – day two

Welcome back! It's news editor Rik again kicking us off on day two of our 30th anniversary celebrations here on T3. We'll again be looking at other significant events and devices through the day.

Personally, I received my pre-ordered iPhone Duo late yesterday and it had me thinking back to my first flip phone. I always thought the Motorola Razr V3 was the first clamshell I owned (was definitely my first 3G phone), but it was actually the Nokia 9210 Communicator I now remember.

It looked like a normal mobile phone on the outside (albeit with considerable chonk), but it opened up to reveal an additional display and full QWERTY keyboard. The battery though was appalling and I always needed to charge it at my desk when I got to work.

Hopefully, the iPhone Duo turns out to be a bit different.

A digital phone network

When I first started reading T3 I was heading off to university, and to make sure I could keep in contact with parents and friends back home I bought myself a mobile phone. Back in 1997, digital phone networks were still relatively new and were slowly replacing the analogue (1G) network, due to privacy concerns.

My very first phone was the Nokia 3110 and it was a beast. This thing wouldn't fit in your pocket, but did offer a belt clip. Text messaging was still in its infancy, and limited by the fact you had to pay for each one. It's strange seeing how far we've come in 30 years.

Steve Jobs vs. the touchscreen MacBook Pro

Apple recently unveiled its first ever touchscreen Mac – the MacBook Pro with PROLED Display and Touch. However, back in 2010 Steve Jobs denounced touch technology for laptops:

"We thought about this years ago. We've done tonnes of user testing on this and it turns out it doesn't work," he said during a launch event at the time.

"Touch surfaces don't want to be vertical... after a short time you start to fatigue, and after an extended period of time, your arm wants to fall off.

"It doesn't work. It's ergonomically terrible!"

It looks like time can change opinions – at Apple, at least.

The funniest tech launch ever!!!

CES press launches have often been spectacular affairs, with the bigger companies having big-name guests helping them announce their new products, but nothing could have prepared the tech industry for what happened at Samsung's event during CES 2014.

To highlight the cinematic quality of its new ultra-wide TV (remember them?), the Korean brand employed the services of the director of Transformers, Bad Boys and Pearl Harbor, Michael Bay.

All he had to do is read the teleprompter, declare the new TV a triumph for watching movies on, and leave... only one of those things happened, however.

The prompter didn't work and Bay froze in one of the funniest moments during a presentation we've had in the tech industry. You couldn't help feel sorry for Bay but only in-between fits of laughter as he just looked confused, couldn't even remember what he did for a living and walked off again. All within about 45 seconds.

Never work with children and animals... and directors unless the teleprompter is working.

T3 at 30 – day three

We're into day three of our T3 at 30 celebrations and it strikes me that we haven't yet talked much about the iPhone or Android handsets yet. Apple announced its first phone in 2007 and we haven't looked back since.

After essentially redefining the term "smartphone" the initial iPhone essentially introduced us to apps and once it was joined by the first Android handset – the HTC Dream in 2008 – it seemed every device with a screen was to incorporate the concept.

Smart TVs adopted apps, tablets (of course), and even our watches are now smothered in them. There 100s of thousands of different apps available for multiple platforms these days, but we probably each only use a handful of favourites.

If it wasn't for the early iPhones and Android equivalents though, we might not even have had those.

Lets talk about the PlayStation 2

Although the first DVD player arrived in November 1996 – the same time as T3 – it wasn't until 2000 that the format really took off. That's because that was the year the PlayStation 2 arrived, and by including a full DVD player Sony ensured that millions of households now had access to movie disc playback too.

It was a very decent games console too – let's not forget that – with the likes of God of War, Grand Theft Auto III (and then San Andreas), and Final Fantasy X being particular favourites. But its DVD playing prowess made it a more all-round machine that families happily had in the living room.

The fall and rise of vinyl

By the time T3 was launched, vinyl records had almost died completely. Thanks to the popularity of CDs (and to a much lesser degree, MiniDisc), vinyl sales had plummeted from over 340 million per annum in the late '70s to less than a million by 1996.

However, a decade later the format started to pick up again, even with MP3s and eventually streaming taking over the music industry. The vinyl resurgence is thought to have begun in 2006 and, by 2025, the market had grown to over 50 million global sales again.

We've since seen a rise in other physical formats too, such as cassettes and even VHS tapes (no, really), showing that a tangible object is still highly desirable even though the quality is technically worse.

Black to the future

Black Friday has become an essential sales period for snagging tech bargains, with deals on just about every category of consumer electronics, but it hasn't always been that way.

While Black Friday has been going in the US in some form or another since the 1980s, it only really kicked off in the UK in 2010. Amazon is credited as the first to bring it over here, but now every major retailer takes part. And not just on Black Friday itself, but all through November,

Amazon is still thought to be the biggest winner on Black Friday in the UK though, even though it hosts its own sales events too. It is believed that the Amazon Fire TV Stick is the device that has been bought more times by UK consumers during the Black Friday sales – not least thanks to its enormous discounts each year.