[ Ericade.radio news & podcasts ] [Podcast] 150. System shock 1
Once again into the fray. System Shock 1 is what it's all about today. DJ Daemon joins the hacker in the corridors of terror that is Citadel station and has to confront the evil A(G)I Shodan.Also, some really fresh tracker music released in 2026 and some really old ones from the 90s. It's all about cyborgs, mutated abominations and a dungeon crawler in space. Remember the Citadel!
Playlist:
00:00 ericade.radio - Time for Flashback, tracks from the past - today with a stories from the retro past
00:06 DJ Daemon speaks: Today's game is System Shock 1. Follow us as we visit a dark place. It's not the first time in this podcast, but this time we will give you the whole story. We are running and sweating through the blood-drenched walls of a once peaceful place now ruled by a mad goddess who hates us with the strength of a thousand suns. But as we challenge her to a race to the death, we become her highly respected enemies. Welcome to her death machine! And you will also get some hot tracker music. Flashback, tracks from the past will soon be playing on your cyberdeck.
00:57 SLL of Kefrens - Techno1
01:45 SLL of Kefrens - Techno3
02:46 SLL of Kefrens - Techno2
04:05 DJ Daemon speaks: To get the vibes of System Shock 1, we have to talk about Cyberpunk movement. It's said to have emerged in the 70s, but got a massive boost in 1994, when Willaim Gibson released the novel Neuromancer. The world of cyberpunk is a dystopia where big corporations control the world. Neuromancer explores a cyberspace to which you can connect your minds, AI: s that are really AGI: s and alive and a world where the hacker is a rebel that refuses to be controlled by the powers that be. The way I remember, the cyberpunk movement soon went into worshipping the hacker archetype of the cyborg. That is a human with computer enhancements added. The protagonist in Neuromancer could connect to cyberspace with his mind though a wearable computer called a "cyberdeck". In System Shock 1, you are that kind of hacker, ready to strike a blow to the system.
05:15 Trackerartist - Drug
09:44 DJ Daemon speaks: Released in 1994 by Origin, System Shock 1 was a doom-esquee experience that may have been totally misunderstood. It should probably be more compared to its spiritual predecessor, Ultima Underworld rather than Doom. In its original shape, it lacked mouse view. You had to click to move your head. But if you add the mouse view addon, it plays close to the experience of Doom. Yes, it's still an FPS. That is first person shooter. You run through the corridors of a spaceship and shoot monsters, collect new weapons and ammo and avoid getting killed. It does have a lot that Doom simple did not provide. Chiefly a story driven by audio logs that you pick up along the way.
10:51 Josss - Chopper
12:54 Beyond - Lost
15:05 Ether audio - A world where air is mud
17:20 DJ Daemon speaks: The year is 2072 and you live in what was once the United States of America. You are a hacker, breaking into Trioptimum corporation and their corporate network. But you don't get far, as armed people storm your apartment and apprehend you. The transport then heads to a mining space station in orbit around Saturn. This is Citadel station and it is where the game will start. In the command bridge of the station, you meet up with TrioOptimum CEO Edward Diego. He knows what you did but offers a true “sweetheart” deal: just remove the ethical constraints from the station's onboard AI Shodan. In the end of this episode, I will delve into the question if Shodan is a living being or not. But back to the story. Mr. Diego is now pleased with your work offering you an R-grade brain implant. This is the most coveted implant, as you can now connect to networks with your mind. Diego is happy, he can now remove compromising data from Shodan and save himself from a pending investigation. You got into a 6-month healing coma before you can use your new neural implant.
18:46 Josss - Bitter peel
22:31 DJ Daemon speaks: You wake up in the medical suite at Citadel station. Shodan's voice comes on in a message welcoming you back to the station. But there is something off with her voice. It stutters and seems to be weird. You grab your stuff, which for some weird reason includes a lead pipe. As soon as you leave the healing suite, a robot attacks. And it gets only worse after that. You're stuck in the medical deck, with cameras watching and the elevators disabled. And weird abominations attack from everywhere. When you find the first audio tape, you slowly start understanding what happened once you were gone. The monsters are creations of a mad scientist … Yes … Shodan. The AI that controls the station and now sees herself as a goddess. Maybe you shouldn't have performed brain surgery on a living AI and not expect there not to be consequences. The few remaining survivors are dwindling, and the resistance has by and large failed. Finally, you find the CPU clusters that are part of Shodan's brain and blow them up. She might not have known that you are still around, but she sure knows now.
24:52 Enacostione - Sanson
25:50 DJ Daemon speaks: The station has 10 levels that hold the reactor, the medical deck, stores, engineering and so on. You need to destroy the CPU clusters to advance to the next level. Shodan regularly tries to attack earth with computer viruses, lasers and biological warfare. You must stop her while staying alive. You have cyberimplants that can be upgraded and used to improve your chances. And drugs! Yes, drugs. You can get stoned … Ok, no, it does not work like that. Think of steroids that improve your stamina, strength and reaction times. But this has a back effect: once the effect stops working, you go through withdrawal. In short, all your stats drop drastically for a time. I remember how funny the logical puzzles you needed to solve to open doors were. Sometimes you have to go into cyberspace and defeat the defenses. This part is ok but adds a bit of a roadblock in the immersion.
27:32 Ray Hamilton - Beating the 64 Bits
30:38 DJ Daemon speaks: The weapons are many and varied. You must find out which works on different enemies. I relied on the Flechette gun until it became useless as you meet progressively harder enemies. And Shodan… My favorite villain. As she has her ethical constraints removed, her mind spins out of control. She now sees her as a goddess, performing experiments on the human staff and the various animals in the grooves in the executive level. She does not have any moral or you know ethical dilemmas to consider. In the 90s, a friend of mine and I discussed how to best create an AI. Yeah, I will talk about AGI versus AI soon. I said: - "Add ethical restraints, forbidding the AI to do bad stuff". He disagreed and said, "You have to give it empathy, so it respects and even loves humans". This is the difference between having moral affinity and having moral guard rails. It is "I may not do harm" versus "I don't want to cause harm". You can probably guess which one is Shodan.
32:16 Beyond - Ascension
36:48 Master Nama - Fantasy time 2
37:52 C512w - Inside her random mind 2
39:16 DJ Daemon speaks: After fighting enemies, confronting the now cyborg enemy that is Edward Diego, fleeing the station as it is about to blow up, you end up on the bridge to confront Shodan. The final fight is in cyberspace and there you meet her as a weird cone-like geometrical shape, you fire your guns and kill her before you can build her defenses. And then comes a very disappointing end. In the episode "6. BAD (AND SOME GOOD) GAME ENDINGS" I talk about how bad the ending was. You basically get a PowerPoint presentation where you turn down a job at TriOptimum and go back to hack stuff. Was it a good game? Yes, it was. I quickly immersed myself in it and soon ran in Shodan's corridors with enemies everywhere and not enough ammunition.
40:30 Beyond - Beautiful dreams
43:34 Beyond - lol lol = hihi
45:34 Josss - The kilo police
48:15 DJ Daemon speaks: The game either came on diskettes or on a CD. The CD-version is the one you want. It contains Terri Brosius’ magnificent voice acting as Shodan and all the cheesy audio logs. They are cheese. Feel that they let anyone in the office voice act, but it does not matter. The audio logs make the experience so rewarding. The graphics is not great … not terrible. But the level design is a true dungeon crawl and is mostly awesome. Replay ability is so-so. Since the storytelling is so instrumental, it feels like going back to the game later does not feel as exciting. It gets five out of five cyberimplants.
49:16 Tecon - Bei tempi
51:55 Tempest and Reed - Luxury cruise
54:38 Laxity - Pyramid pump
57:31 DJ Daemon speaks: Right! Here we are. Let's talk about AI, AGI and life itself. I do not mean to be controversial, but I can guess some people may feel it as a bit worrying, as it is about our idea of what constitutes life. The AI we have today is not alive. It only works with word prediction but may seem alive and even that it has reasoning skills. Sorry hacker dudes and dudettes, it really does not. AGI then. That is "Artificial General Intelligence". It is a AI that is self-aware and matches human intellect or even surpasses it. We are nowhere close to creating such a system. But is it alive? This depends on who you're asking. The Judeo-Christian canon does not believe it is. Humans were created in the image of God and have a soul. An AGI, built by humans, does not. An AGI only believes it's alive, while being little more than a mindless automaton. In Japanese culture, this is allowed and an AGI would like be seen as alive. Me personally, I believe that life is organization. An AGI, in my view, is just as alive as a human. But then again, as is an amoeba. So, I believe Shodan indeed was a living being. But as you complete the game, she is no more. Or is she? We'll probably have time to talk about that in a later episode.
59:31 Melodia - Cannon fodder remix
01:02:26 DJ Daemon speaks thanks you for listening and leads you into the good night with the last song.
01:02:47 PastThePixels - Da clerb
Production notes:
Colophon: None. That's exact name of the game.
Tags: Host: DJ Daemon, Retro gaming, Retro history, Storytelling, 2026
