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Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, we are doing a Northeastern swing for our

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty three tour and which includes one day in

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Speaker 1: dear old Canada. Right, that's right. We're gonna swing it

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Speaker 1: up starting May fourth at the Warner Theater in DC.

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Speaker 1: It's gonna be amazing. May fifth, we're gonna be at

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Speaker 1: the Chevalier, which you have to say with your pinkie

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Speaker 1: in the air. That's in Boston. And then Chuck. May six,

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Speaker 1: we're finishing up in Toronto, Ontario at Massey Hall. It's

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Speaker 1: going to be massive at Massey Hall. That's right. Our

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Speaker 1: first shows went great earlier this year. It's a great

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Speaker 1: topic and we are super super excited to take it

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Speaker 1: to DC, the Boston metro area in Toronto, yep. So

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Speaker 1: go to link tree slash SYSK live for tickets and

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Speaker 1: for you oldsters like us, that's l I n K

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Speaker 1: t R dot E slash SYSK Live. We'll see you

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Speaker 1: guys in May. Welcome to Stuff you should know, a

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Speaker 1: production of Iheartradiot. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,

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Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Jerry's here somewhere running around like

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Speaker 1: a chicken worth or head cut off like headless Mike,

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Speaker 1: and that makes this stuff you should know, Mike, or

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Speaker 1: headless chicken. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, we're immediately reminded me

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Speaker 1: of the mcnaggan. What lets I mentioned that way back then,

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Speaker 1: there's a just look at mcnagan. It's a fried chicken heads.

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Speaker 1: It's a fried chicken head that's slipped into some fried chicken.

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Speaker 1: Oh at a restaurant. Have you ever eaten an h

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Speaker 1: and F home in and finch? Uh? Yeah, yeah, I've

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Speaker 1: had that burger at Pond City Market where we used

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Speaker 1: to have our studios. Oh, if you go to the

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Speaker 1: flagship restaurant, fried chicken heads are on the menu. No, really, yes,

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Speaker 1: And when you eat one, you're like, I've gone too far. This,

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Speaker 1: this dinner has turned into a blood orgy. Basically, I

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Speaker 1: have never am sending you the mcnaggan right now, just

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Speaker 1: because that's the kind of stuff we're doing. Now that's

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Speaker 1: i'll lose. This has gotten here. I'll do a typing

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Speaker 1: sound effect. Do do? All right? Feast your eyes on

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Speaker 1: the mcnoggan, and let's talk about arcades. Ah, yes, let's

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Speaker 1: I'm really excited about this one, Charles, because both of

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Speaker 1: us we're kind of we hit two different sweet spots

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Speaker 1: with this, right. I mean you were in the Golden

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Speaker 1: Era and I was in the Silver Era? Am I correct? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: I mean you you were kind of you probably went

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Speaker 1: to the Golden era time written from going to a

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Speaker 1: little Yeah. Yeah. My mom was like, that's a drug

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Speaker 1: den right, which is funny because I went to a

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Speaker 1: lot of arcades, and I know I was a naive

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Speaker 1: little Baptist boy, but actually, what am I saying? There

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Speaker 1: was probably drugs all over. Yeah, You're like, why are

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Speaker 1: you acting so goofy Todd, geez, get it together. But

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Speaker 1: we're talking about mainly the Golden Age of arcades? What

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Speaker 1: else is it? Dovetail with you? Said Bob for us

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Speaker 1: and what I was part of the Silver Age? Is

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Speaker 1: that with you? Okay? I thought that was one additional

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Speaker 1: thing you were going to say, No, I don't think so. Okay,

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Speaker 1: Well this dovetails nicely, I think with our episode on

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Speaker 1: Nintendo obviously totally and in fact we've had this. Dave

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Speaker 1: Russ helped us out with this one. Dave rus Co,

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Speaker 1: creator of the hit podcast Biblical Timing. But he wrote

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Speaker 1: this a while ago. But I've been sort of sitting

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Speaker 1: on it until Nino the Nintendo stank were off. And

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Speaker 1: did we do one on Atari or not or just

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Speaker 1: the one with Strickland. I think on Atari. No, I

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Speaker 1: definitely did a two parter on tech stuff, but we

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Speaker 1: did not. We did the et game the writer, Yes, yes, Okay,

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Speaker 1: did that one. Yeah. We've talked about the video game

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Speaker 1: Crash of nineteen eighty three like multiple times. And we

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Speaker 1: did pinball. We did do pinball, and that actually kind

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Speaker 1: of factors in remotely. We won't go into it much,

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Speaker 1: but pinball kind of prefigured the video game arcade in

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Speaker 1: a lot of different ways, not the least that it

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Speaker 1: had an unsavory reputation among parents and kids love to

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Speaker 1: go play there. But after pinball kind of stopped being

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Speaker 1: as much of a thing, there was a little bit

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Speaker 1: of a drought until we pick up and I think

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Speaker 1: that say the seventies, the early seventies, late sixties, with

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Speaker 1: a young man, an electrical engineer from University of Utah

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Speaker 1: named Nolan Bushnell. Nolan Bushnell figures into this story as

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Speaker 1: much as you can figure into the birth of the

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Speaker 1: arcade because he was a nerd. He was in all

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Speaker 1: the best ways. He was an e major at Utah,

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Speaker 1: Like you said, and when you were a nerd in

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Speaker 1: university in the late nineteen sixties early seventies, you're gonna

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Speaker 1: start playing very rudimentary computer games and think they are awesome.

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Speaker 1: In that very first game that he played was one

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Speaker 1: in from six two developed an MIT called space War.

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Speaker 1: Yeah with a big fat exclamation yeah, And it spread

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Speaker 1: very quickly among nerds in college all over the country.

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Speaker 1: It was a big deal. Um. But you say that

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Speaker 1: that um Nolan Bushnell was like an important figure, You

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Speaker 1: can actually kind of make an argument that this may

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Speaker 1: have never happened had it not been for him, because,

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Speaker 1: as he kind of recounts later, well, listen, there was

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Speaker 1: no one in the same position that he was in

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Speaker 1: probably in the world, because he had an electrical engineering

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Speaker 1: degree and he played he played games on computers, so

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Speaker 1: he knew about video games like I should say video

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Speaker 1: game because there was basically just one at the time. Yeah. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And then he also um and during summers, and then

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Speaker 1: shortly after he graduated college, he was the games director

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Speaker 1: for an amusement park outside of Salt Lake City called Lagoon.

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Speaker 1: And there's seriously probably no one else on the planet

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Speaker 1: that had that varience with computer games and also with

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Speaker 1: UM arcade games like pinball or ski ball, was one

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Speaker 1: UM who could have kind of synergized them the way

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Speaker 1: that Nolan Bushnell did create Atari. M that's my take.

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Speaker 1: Do you have a thing against Nolan Bushnell? No, But

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Speaker 1: I'll tell you what is Nolan Bushnell still around? I

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Speaker 1: don't know, my friend, he loves you. If he is,

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Speaker 1: I will say that why because you're saying he's the

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Speaker 1: only one that could have done it in the world

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Speaker 1: and that it wouldn't have happened without him. He's like,

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Speaker 1: you can make a h Clark praises right now. Well,

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Speaker 1: Nolan Bushnell, if you're out there, I think that that

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Speaker 1: demands that you get in touch and thank me. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's in some of that arcade money, Josh Way sure,

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Speaker 1: but you are right, and that he had um he

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Speaker 1: had an economic understanding that proved to be pretty key,

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Speaker 1: as in, he uh, he knew what it cost to

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Speaker 1: like build the game in a game cabinet, he knew

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Speaker 1: how much they had to make to make that money

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Speaker 1: back and turn a profit. So just sort of learned

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Speaker 1: knowing the economics of how this stuff worked, and like

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Speaker 1: you said, also being into the games was a It

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Speaker 1: was a key reason this all happened. Yeah, so he

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Speaker 1: saw a real opportunity to do something big and he's

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Speaker 1: alive by the way. Okay, cool, well then yes, please

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Speaker 1: do get in touch Nolan Bushnell. Yeah. Um, he recruited

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Speaker 1: a guy named Ted Dabney who together they went on

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Speaker 1: to found Atari with another guy named al Alcorn. Alan Alcorn,

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Speaker 1: and the three of them created a first a rip

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Speaker 1: off of Space War called computer Space in nineteen seventy one,

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Speaker 1: and a lot of people say, like, it wasn't it

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Speaker 1: wasn't a good It wasn't a good game. It was

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Speaker 1: too hard, because the whole point of creating a game,

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Speaker 1: they found out after this first attempt is to make

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Speaker 1: it just hard enough to keep people interested, but easy

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Speaker 1: enough that you can play it while half drunk. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: like easy to play, hard to master. Yeah, because these

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Speaker 1: these coin operated games, their first targets were bars. So

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Speaker 1: computer Space it's very frequently said it's a commercial failure.

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Speaker 1: But um, Nolan Bushnell, my new friend, he points out

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Speaker 1: that we sold enough of these units that we were

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Speaker 1: able to go on and found Atari. Yeah, so they

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Speaker 1: actually did sell some. It went okay, but again it

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Speaker 1: was supposedly way too hard, and they took that as

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Speaker 1: a lesson learned and they moved on the next year

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Speaker 1: to create Pong. Yeah, they said, all right, you want easy, right,

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Speaker 1: let me introduce you to Pong. And I know I

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Speaker 1: mentioned this on the Strickland's episode, but I had the

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Speaker 1: you know, and I think you were kind of the

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Speaker 1: same and your family sort of you know, middle class

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Speaker 1: folks who a lot of times got the knockoff versions

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Speaker 1: of whatever, whether it was ping, the where those the

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Speaker 1: the not quite eyes odd shirt or the not quite

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Speaker 1: Monga's bike. I had Knights of the round Table knock

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Speaker 1: off polo shirts. Yeah, I had the not quite Pong,

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Speaker 1: which it was I believe the Sears and Roebuck version

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Speaker 1: of Pong it always is. Yeah. I don't know what

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Speaker 1: it was called, but it was essentially the same thing,

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Speaker 1: which is um ping pong or table tennis. It was

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Speaker 1: called ganap. Was it really the Sears version? No, that's Pong?

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Speaker 1: Okay backwards, Oh, I got you, boy. That was slow

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Speaker 1: on the uptake on that one. So okay, there's somebody

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Speaker 1: out there laugh. But Pong was based on a nineteen

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Speaker 1: fifty eight video game um Tennis for two. Did you

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Speaker 1: see video of that game of Tennis for two? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's played on a radar oscillator. Yeah, like the same

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Speaker 1: kind of like round fish eye screen. Yeah, yeah, that

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Speaker 1: you use for like to detect missiles in nineteen fifty.

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Speaker 1: That's how the game is played. But it's actually pretty

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Speaker 1: sophisticated if you watch it. Yeah, there was another game

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Speaker 1: that was on a round screen? Was it the um?

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Speaker 1: Was it computer Space? Did you see that one? I

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Speaker 1: didn't know. Was that a square screen? I don't know. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: something in my memory bank tells me there was another

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Speaker 1: one on a round screen because they just you know,

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Speaker 1: that's what graphic screens were like in the sixties. They

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Speaker 1: were radar screens. Yeah, but I mean this thing was

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Speaker 1: like it's almost like they broke into like a d

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Speaker 1: O d um missile silo and hooked up their controllers

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Speaker 1: and we're playing Tennis for two on it. That's what

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Speaker 1: it looks like in this video. Yeah. Uh. And you know,

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Speaker 1: while we're singing Bushnell's praises for creating Atari and launching

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Speaker 1: the arcade basically the modern arcade. He also was one

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Speaker 1: of the founders of Charles Entertainment Cheese, better known as

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Speaker 1: Chucky Cheese, which is still around. Yeah, have you ever

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Speaker 1: seen I'm sure we've talked about it before, but have

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Speaker 1: you seen the rock Afire Explosion documentary? The what so

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Speaker 1: Chucky Cheese has his band like they have like the

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Speaker 1: live animatronic band at their ch Cheeselo Showbiz Pizza had

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Speaker 1: their own called rock Afire Explosion. I think a Gorilla

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Speaker 1: was like the lead singer, and it's very cute, same

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Speaker 1: thing animatronics. They sang some songs and stuff like that,

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Speaker 1: and they made a documentary about people whose passion in

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Speaker 1: life is finding and rescuing and restoring old rock Afire

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Speaker 1: Explosion setups. Oh wow. It's one of those like really great,

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Speaker 1: like social interest documentaries that like just kind of fly

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Speaker 1: under the radar. But it's like, this is one of

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Speaker 1: the best documentaries I've ever seen in my life. It's

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Speaker 1: just great. Yeah, I gotta check that out. Please do

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Speaker 1: check it out. Its Rockefire Explosion. I think it's mid adds,

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Speaker 1: maybe twenty seven or eight. I love anything where someone

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Speaker 1: takes old stuff and restores it for even if it's

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Speaker 1: just for display or whatever. Okay, well, then I have

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Speaker 1: something else to tell you. I was saving this for

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Speaker 1: the end. But I happened I don't even know how

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Speaker 1: I happened upon this. There's a website called Aussie Arcade

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Speaker 1: and it's almost like a news server, list serve or

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Speaker 1: something like that. But I found a post called Atari

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Speaker 1: Star Wars Cockpit Restoration. So you remember the Atari Star

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Speaker 1: Wars game? Do you remember the sit down version? H yeah? Okay,

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Speaker 1: So a guy in Australia got his hands on one

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Speaker 1: of these that's seen better days and he spent nine

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Speaker 1: months restoring it like and I don't mean the outside,

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Speaker 1: I mean the wiring. He resal soldered the wires, he

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Speaker 1: like electro plated the metal parts. Again, it's one of

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Speaker 1: the most amazing things I've ever seen in my life.

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Speaker 1: And he chronicled it exhaustively. So if you want to

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Speaker 1: like spend an hour just being impressed, go look for

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Speaker 1: Atari Star Wars Cockpit Restoration by Womble Wombles, the guy

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Speaker 1: who did it on Aussi Arcade, and you'll just be wowed.

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Speaker 1: All Right, I'm gonna I know what I'm doing for

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Speaker 1: the rest of the day. Now at least you'll like it, Chuck,

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Speaker 1: I promise. And it's not a video, it's just it's

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Speaker 1: photos and like explanations and stuff. Okay, all right, So

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Speaker 1: back to Ellen alcorn in. Pong Pong was a huge hit.

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Speaker 1: They put the very first one in a bar and Sunnyvale,

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Speaker 1: California called Andicaps, which is kind of fun, one little

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Speaker 1: historical footnote and a couple and this is like the

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Speaker 1: movie version. Two weeks later they called and said, hey,

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Speaker 1: it just sing's not working anymore. And they go over

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Speaker 1: and then I was like, here's your problem, and they

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Speaker 1: opened the coin catcher and like a million dollars spills out.

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Speaker 1: But that's how the story goes. It was basically so

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Speaker 1: popular it was jammed with quarters, and they sold eight

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Speaker 1: thousand pong cabinets in the face of knockoffs because it

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Speaker 1: took a year to get the patent for pong, so

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Speaker 1: they were knockoffs being sold and they still ended up

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Speaker 1: selling thirty five thousand total pong cabinets. Yeah, they sold

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Speaker 1: eight thousand just the first year, and that was with

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Speaker 1: six people building them. That's in a pong cabinet in

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Speaker 1: a bar in today's dollars could bring in close to

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Speaker 1: one hundred grand in quarters. Wow, every single year. If

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Speaker 1: you had one of those in your bar. I think

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Speaker 1: they were saying it was bringing close to in today's

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Speaker 1: stellars about two hundred and seventy dollars. And of course

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Speaker 1: that's if it's played every day. Of course you can

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Speaker 1: be closed on Christmas. Sure, Oh you did the math?

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Speaker 1: Is that where you got it? I did the math,

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Speaker 1: but I sort of round it up still. I'll bet

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Speaker 1: Andy Kapps was open Christmas. But it was also a

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Speaker 1: good place to meet somebody if you were interested in them,

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Speaker 1: because it was a good way to have a conversation.

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Speaker 1: You played side by side. It was a social lubricant

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Speaker 1: because you were drinking at a fern bar, a Harvey wallbanger,

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Speaker 1: playing pong, and you know, meeting some ladies down at

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Speaker 1: the Regal Beagle exactly. So this was nineteen seventy three. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three. So Atari went from not existing you're

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Speaker 1: coming out with its first game in nineteen seventy one,

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Speaker 1: to having a smash hit and actually creating stand up

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Speaker 1: coin operated arcade video games as an industry, from nothing

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Speaker 1: to in nineteen seventy three to nineteen seventy four selling

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Speaker 1: out to a tar to Warner Brothers or Warner Communications

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Speaker 1: for twenty eight million, which is almost one hundred and

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Speaker 1: fifty million today and sorry, in six years. That's crazy. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean that's definitely worth singing the praises. Yeah, absolutely,

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Speaker 1: And you know, Dave argues that the golden Age was

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Speaker 1: seventy eight to eighty two. I would argue it trickled

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Speaker 1: into eighty three and people were still going into arcades

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Speaker 1: in eighty four and eighty five. But I think he's

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Speaker 1: probably pretty close because eighty three, as we'll see later,

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Speaker 1: is if you look at data, is when gross profits

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Speaker 1: you know, really kind of didn't bottom out. But we're

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Speaker 1: a lot less than during those previous four years. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think it was like eighty four, maybe especially eighty four,

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Speaker 1: but probably in the eighty five it was like a

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Speaker 1: dead man walking. You didn't know it. Yeah, but yeah,

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Speaker 1: people were still I mean, those those video arcades that

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Speaker 1: started to spring up like mushrooms all across the country.

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Speaker 1: I think in nineteen eighty two there were thirteen thousand

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Speaker 1: arcades in the US and let's just get the straight

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Speaker 1: five six years before there were probably zero, and all

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Speaker 1: of a sudden there were thirteen thousand arcades. There were

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Speaker 1: tons of companies that were getting into creating and designing

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Speaker 1: and building these stand up cabinets that were sent to

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Speaker 1: all of these thirteen thousand arcades in the United States,

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Speaker 1: and it was just the thing. It was the biggest

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Speaker 1: thing around at the time. Yeah, I mean, I can,

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Speaker 1: off the top of my head, I can think of

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Speaker 1: four arcades that were within twelve minute a twelve minute

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Speaker 1: drive from my house in suburban Atlanta, I see. I

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Speaker 1: The only one I could come up with was the

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Speaker 1: one at Southwick Mall and Toledo that I wasn't allowed

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Speaker 1: to go to. It was called Red Barns And Okay,

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Speaker 1: I don't even remember what it looked like inside. I

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Speaker 1: saw pictures of the old sign. I was like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's it. I just remember it being dark. And I

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Speaker 1: think I met gone in there once as a slightly

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Speaker 1: older kid, after I was like allowed to do whatever

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Speaker 1: I want, you know, like age twelve. Yeah, and um

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Speaker 1: and uh, it was, you know, kind of like this

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Speaker 1: neat place that I wasn't allowed to go to before.

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Speaker 1: But it kind of missed, you know what I mean. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you know, if I wish one thing for you, it

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Speaker 1: would be that so that you were just a little

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Speaker 1: bit older. Yeah, and then and then you could take

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Speaker 1: those years off because I don't want you to be

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Speaker 1: my age. I want you to be my age in

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Speaker 1: the eighties. That would be really neat. I wonder when

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Speaker 1: we'll start doing that, we'll start playing with age and

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Speaker 1: experience like that. I have an idea. I want to

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Speaker 1: tell you this. I think this is so cool. I

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Speaker 1: there's no way I can possibly do this, so I'll

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Speaker 1: just share it with the universe and maybe somebody can

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Speaker 1: do it. Okay. Imagine, so we've got like AI that's

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Speaker 1: starting to get pretty smart all of a sudden, and

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Speaker 1: if you listen to the End of the World with

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Speaker 1: Josh Clark, that may not be a good thing I'm saying,

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Speaker 1: but they're the AI that's starting to be deployed is

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Speaker 1: getting smarter and smarter and more and more humanlike and

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Speaker 1: more and more capable. And one thing I thought would

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Speaker 1: be really cool as if the AI that's out there

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Speaker 1: today could study the different stats and footage of every

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Speaker 1: NBA player that ever existed. Okay, and then eventually you

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Speaker 1: can say, I want the eighty eight Lakers to play

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Speaker 1: the twenty fifteen heat and the AI would play a

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Speaker 1: simulated game that would play out probably exactly like it

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Speaker 1: would have played out in real life if you could

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Speaker 1: actually do that. I mean they do those simulated games

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Speaker 1: now for like this the big game for super Bowl. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I thought we weren't allowed to say that was the

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Speaker 1: super Bowl. Police can come get us. Uh. Yeah, they

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Speaker 1: played those those um computer sims. But I don't know

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Speaker 1: if it's as like robust as you're probably thinking. And

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Speaker 1: I don't know if they have done like matching up

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Speaker 1: classic teams, because that would be pretty fun because that,

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Speaker 1: especially in the NBA, that's a big argument of like

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00:19:15,200 --> 00:19:19,800
Speaker 1: you know which era was best or whatever. Um So anyway,

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Speaker 1: the arcades, I had four that I can think of

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Speaker 1: off the dome that we're within fifteen minute drive. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Kids in the eighties were Ferrell basically, Um, if you're

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Speaker 1: a younger person and you watch Stranger Things and you think, like,

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Speaker 1: was it really like that? Yes, it was really like that.

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Speaker 1: You would you would come home. My mom was at home,

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Speaker 1: but I would basically come home and immediately leave again

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Speaker 1: most times and not come back until after dark. Latchkey.

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Speaker 1: Kids would come home to an empty house and then

347
00:19:51,960 --> 00:19:54,200
Speaker 1: go somewhere else or have friends over, or go straight

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Speaker 1: to a friend's house, and we just didn't have oversight

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00:19:58,240 --> 00:20:02,879
Speaker 1: um somehow, you know, most of us did, okay, at

350
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Speaker 1: least me and my friends did. Like there were no

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Speaker 1: I'm sure there were plenty of tragedies, but not in

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Speaker 1: my room. We all did fine. Yeah, I mean there

353
00:20:10,840 --> 00:20:12,760
Speaker 1: would be a tragedy once in a while, it would

354
00:20:12,800 --> 00:20:16,000
Speaker 1: make sure and scare everybody, but it was so few

355
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Speaker 1: and far between at the time. Yeah. But one thing

356
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Speaker 1: I wanted to get into with Dave. He kept saying,

357
00:20:22,440 --> 00:20:26,840
Speaker 1: like quarters, quarters, quarters. In the early days of arcades,

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Speaker 1: at least at the ones I went to, there were

359
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Speaker 1: not quarters. There were tokens. Oh yeah, yeah, and you

360
00:20:33,720 --> 00:20:36,080
Speaker 1: they had deals going like a game didn't cost a quarter.

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Speaker 1: A game cost depending on the deal that day. If

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00:20:38,960 --> 00:20:41,240
Speaker 1: you went on like a Tuesday, you would get like

363
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Speaker 1: twenty tokens for a dollar or something like that, like

364
00:20:45,320 --> 00:20:48,880
Speaker 1: they would have like double token day, and a game

365
00:20:49,000 --> 00:20:51,600
Speaker 1: was never a quarter, so you could play and play

366
00:20:51,600 --> 00:20:55,760
Speaker 1: and play forever for five bucks because games ran on

367
00:20:55,800 --> 00:20:57,879
Speaker 1: tokens that were not the value of a quarter. And

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00:20:57,920 --> 00:21:00,960
Speaker 1: then eventually, of course quarters or maybe in some places

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00:21:00,960 --> 00:21:04,000
Speaker 1: they already used them, but then the quarter became like

370
00:21:04,040 --> 00:21:06,560
Speaker 1: a fifty cent game was like whoa like, are you

371
00:21:06,640 --> 00:21:09,280
Speaker 1: kidding me? And now when you go to like a

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Speaker 1: Dave and Busters, you get a pay fifty dollars for

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00:21:13,080 --> 00:21:16,040
Speaker 1: some card and you didn't even know how much you're

374
00:21:16,080 --> 00:21:18,040
Speaker 1: paying per game unless you read the fine print. You

375
00:21:18,119 --> 00:21:21,120
Speaker 1: just buzz your card. It's you know, it's over. It's

376
00:21:21,119 --> 00:21:23,800
Speaker 1: several dollars probably, yeah, for sure, I'm sure probably five

377
00:21:23,800 --> 00:21:26,480
Speaker 1: bucks a game maybe, and some for the big, big ones.

378
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Speaker 1: But it's a different I mean, I went to a

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Speaker 1: Dave and Busters recently with Ruby, and it's not a

380
00:21:32,840 --> 00:21:38,720
Speaker 1: ton of just regular old arcade games, big things and cranes,

381
00:21:38,760 --> 00:21:44,560
Speaker 1: grabbing stuffed toys and interactive stuff. It's fine, it's fun. Yeah,

382
00:21:44,640 --> 00:21:47,200
Speaker 1: it's just not a video arcade. A video arcade. And yeah,

383
00:21:47,320 --> 00:21:49,320
Speaker 1: late some of these and early eighties was a very

384
00:21:49,440 --> 00:21:54,119
Speaker 1: specific space. It was dark, there was very few people

385
00:21:54,200 --> 00:21:58,360
Speaker 1: over the age of eighteen or nineteen in there. It

386
00:21:58,480 --> 00:22:02,520
Speaker 1: was just it was a kid's place. And like you said,

387
00:22:02,560 --> 00:22:05,560
Speaker 1: kids were ferrel at the time, and you could your

388
00:22:05,560 --> 00:22:08,160
Speaker 1: parents didn't know where you were, so you could spend

389
00:22:08,160 --> 00:22:09,960
Speaker 1: as much time as you wanted or as much money

390
00:22:09,960 --> 00:22:13,159
Speaker 1: as you had at the arcade or out in the

391
00:22:13,200 --> 00:22:18,879
Speaker 1: woods or doing whatever, and so because that this was

392
00:22:18,920 --> 00:22:21,840
Speaker 1: like a new thing. Like kids were I think allowed

393
00:22:21,840 --> 00:22:24,720
Speaker 1: to like kind of roam free in the mid seventies

394
00:22:24,720 --> 00:22:28,119
Speaker 1: for sure, and definitely before that too, but they didn't

395
00:22:28,160 --> 00:22:31,440
Speaker 1: have this place to go to. Maybe a pinball arcade

396
00:22:31,480 --> 00:22:34,040
Speaker 1: was there or something like that, but nothing like this.

397
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Speaker 1: And the difference between a pinball machine and at nineteen

398
00:22:39,640 --> 00:22:43,800
Speaker 1: seventy nine stand up art video arcade machine is just

399
00:22:44,440 --> 00:22:47,919
Speaker 1: mind boggling, especially if you're playing this thing in nineteen

400
00:22:47,960 --> 00:22:51,560
Speaker 1: seventy nine and your only exposure previously was two things

401
00:22:51,560 --> 00:22:55,760
Speaker 1: like pinball machines. Yeah, should we take a break? Yeah,

402
00:22:55,800 --> 00:22:57,439
Speaker 1: all right, we'll take our first break and we'll be

403
00:22:57,600 --> 00:23:21,640
Speaker 1: right back, all right. So we've established that the peak

404
00:23:21,680 --> 00:23:24,240
Speaker 1: of parents not caring about their children was in the eighties.

405
00:23:24,440 --> 00:23:29,320
Speaker 1: The early nineteen eighties, arcades came along to squeeze dollars

406
00:23:29,320 --> 00:23:33,840
Speaker 1: out of us, and they started getting better games, you know,

407
00:23:33,920 --> 00:23:36,320
Speaker 1: the games at first, you know, I started looking at

408
00:23:36,359 --> 00:23:37,600
Speaker 1: these and we're going to talk about some of the

409
00:23:37,720 --> 00:23:42,240
Speaker 1: iconic games, and what I realized is the iconic games

410
00:23:42,240 --> 00:23:47,280
Speaker 1: of the era almost all still hold up today. Maybe

411
00:23:47,280 --> 00:23:49,440
Speaker 1: not with the graphics. It may be a little rudimentary,

412
00:23:50,080 --> 00:23:55,400
Speaker 1: but most of these iconic games are still the gameplay

413
00:23:55,560 --> 00:23:58,719
Speaker 1: is still challenging, and that's why I think it holds up.

414
00:23:59,560 --> 00:24:03,439
Speaker 1: The one that aren't that don't hold up as far

415
00:24:03,480 --> 00:24:08,520
Speaker 1: as gameplay goes, or games like pole Position, which was

416
00:24:08,560 --> 00:24:11,040
Speaker 1: the first three D car racing game where you were

417
00:24:11,040 --> 00:24:14,280
Speaker 1: sort of position right behind the car, and Pole Position

418
00:24:14,400 --> 00:24:17,000
Speaker 1: was a huge game in nineteen eighty two that really

419
00:24:17,200 --> 00:24:20,760
Speaker 1: brought on driving games. But Pole Position didn't hold up

420
00:24:20,760 --> 00:24:23,960
Speaker 1: because the gameplay is not that great in addition to

421
00:24:24,040 --> 00:24:27,160
Speaker 1: not looking great. But if you go play misspac Man

422
00:24:27,280 --> 00:24:31,960
Speaker 1: or Space Invaders or Centipede or Yeah, or Galagha or Asteroids,

423
00:24:32,200 --> 00:24:34,800
Speaker 1: these games are still challenging and fun to play. Yeah,

424
00:24:34,840 --> 00:24:38,200
Speaker 1: and Galagha, I will put money that it still looks

425
00:24:38,240 --> 00:24:42,320
Speaker 1: good just about anybody. Yes, it is bitmapped because it's

426
00:24:42,359 --> 00:24:45,320
Speaker 1: a bit it's like eight or sixteen or whatever bit graphics,

427
00:24:45,320 --> 00:24:47,679
Speaker 1: But it still looks good and it moves well, and

428
00:24:47,760 --> 00:24:50,240
Speaker 1: it's just a it's a cool looking game. It is

429
00:24:50,640 --> 00:24:55,639
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one. Shout out to Shagira Yoko Yama for

430
00:24:55,720 --> 00:25:00,440
Speaker 1: designing Galagha on the heels of Galaxian, their previous this game,

431
00:25:01,520 --> 00:25:05,119
Speaker 1: which was not as good Galagha and both were inspired,

432
00:25:05,119 --> 00:25:08,120
Speaker 1: of course, by Space Invaders, which was the next biggest

433
00:25:08,160 --> 00:25:11,359
Speaker 1: game after Pong to come along in nineteen seventy eight. Yeah,

434
00:25:11,359 --> 00:25:14,680
Speaker 1: so Pong just put video games on the map. And

435
00:25:14,720 --> 00:25:17,680
Speaker 1: then the next up was Japan, who said, oh yeah,

436
00:25:17,720 --> 00:25:20,399
Speaker 1: I'll hold our sake, and they came up with Space

437
00:25:20,440 --> 00:25:22,920
Speaker 1: Invaders in nineteen seventy eight, and it became such an

438
00:25:23,000 --> 00:25:26,760
Speaker 1: overnight success in Japan that people rented empty commercial spaces

439
00:25:26,760 --> 00:25:29,600
Speaker 1: and just put Space Invaders in there and created like

440
00:25:29,640 --> 00:25:32,679
Speaker 1: these kind of pop up arcades that were opened twenty

441
00:25:32,680 --> 00:25:34,639
Speaker 1: four hours a day and had a line out the

442
00:25:34,680 --> 00:25:38,800
Speaker 1: door at all times. Apparently, the legend goes that there

443
00:25:38,880 --> 00:25:42,560
Speaker 1: was a nationwide shortage of one hundred yen coins because

444
00:25:42,720 --> 00:25:46,080
Speaker 1: these storefronts with the Space Invader machines were sucking them

445
00:25:46,160 --> 00:25:50,440
Speaker 1: up crazy pretty cool. I will say that David Busters

446
00:25:50,480 --> 00:25:56,040
Speaker 1: had a like a probably probably ten foot tall Space

447
00:25:56,040 --> 00:25:59,160
Speaker 1: Invaders that you can play, which is kind of cool.

448
00:25:59,440 --> 00:26:01,920
Speaker 1: Ten what's the point of it being ten feet tall?

449
00:26:02,000 --> 00:26:04,320
Speaker 1: Is the screen like that big? Yeah? That's how big

450
00:26:04,320 --> 00:26:06,560
Speaker 1: the screen? H Okay, I got you. Well, it's pretty

451
00:26:07,000 --> 00:26:09,920
Speaker 1: Does it look good though? Yeah? It looks awesome. So

452
00:26:10,440 --> 00:26:13,560
Speaker 1: Space Invaders is the reason we have all those space

453
00:26:14,119 --> 00:26:18,600
Speaker 1: fighting or space shooter themed games that are so clustered

454
00:26:18,640 --> 00:26:22,040
Speaker 1: in like the early eighties, late seventies. That was the one.

455
00:26:22,160 --> 00:26:25,480
Speaker 1: But um the next game that came out that really

456
00:26:25,560 --> 00:26:28,399
Speaker 1: kind of shook that up. That was the trend forever.

457
00:26:29,119 --> 00:26:31,920
Speaker 1: There was one I saw a chuck called Starfire from

458
00:26:32,000 --> 00:26:34,879
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine. I don't remember that one. It was

459
00:26:35,359 --> 00:26:38,000
Speaker 1: by UM, I can't remember who it was, but it

460
00:26:38,119 --> 00:26:41,560
Speaker 1: was this um this company, this games company that just

461
00:26:41,640 --> 00:26:44,639
Speaker 1: kept pushing the envelope. But anyway, Starfire, if you watch

462
00:26:44,680 --> 00:26:47,640
Speaker 1: the gameplay, it has the same exact font as Star

463
00:26:47,680 --> 00:26:53,560
Speaker 1: Wars and interesting you are unambiguously shooting tie Fighters. But

464
00:26:53,640 --> 00:26:55,879
Speaker 1: it was in no way, shape or form license from

465
00:26:55,960 --> 00:26:58,120
Speaker 1: Star Wars. It was just that big of a rip off.

466
00:26:59,200 --> 00:27:01,640
Speaker 1: So that was like the big trend was space fighters

467
00:27:01,760 --> 00:27:04,520
Speaker 1: until pac Man came along in nineteen eighty and said

468
00:27:04,800 --> 00:27:09,200
Speaker 1: boom yeah. Pac Man was the first. It was a

469
00:27:09,320 --> 00:27:12,679
Speaker 1: Namco game, a Japanese gaming company, and it was the

470
00:27:12,720 --> 00:27:16,440
Speaker 1: first game to have a mascot, like a little character.

471
00:27:17,400 --> 00:27:19,800
Speaker 1: Previous to this, you know, you had your little shooter

472
00:27:19,920 --> 00:27:25,440
Speaker 1: ship with space invaders and your little triangular spaceship with asteroids,

473
00:27:26,160 --> 00:27:29,240
Speaker 1: and not even a ship with games like Missile Command.

474
00:27:29,280 --> 00:27:31,320
Speaker 1: But which actually that may have been after pac Man.

475
00:27:31,520 --> 00:27:35,360
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, but pac Man was the first mascot.

476
00:27:35,400 --> 00:27:39,399
Speaker 1: It was designed explicitly to not be violent. It was

477
00:27:39,480 --> 00:27:43,800
Speaker 1: designed explicitly to a feel appeal to young girls because

478
00:27:43,800 --> 00:27:45,639
Speaker 1: they were trying to make more money, and you know,

479
00:27:45,640 --> 00:27:47,760
Speaker 1: it was it was sort of a boys thing at

480
00:27:47,760 --> 00:27:49,160
Speaker 1: the time. They were like, we need to get girls

481
00:27:49,160 --> 00:27:52,239
Speaker 1: in here, and pac Man comes along and they were

482
00:27:52,280 --> 00:27:54,639
Speaker 1: into it. The boys were into it, and it became

483
00:27:54,760 --> 00:27:58,000
Speaker 1: a worldwide sensation. It was I had a pac Man

484
00:27:58,119 --> 00:28:01,439
Speaker 1: lunchbox and matching thermis that I was like, one of

485
00:28:01,480 --> 00:28:04,560
Speaker 1: my prize possessions, the pac Man cartoon. This is about

486
00:28:04,560 --> 00:28:07,840
Speaker 1: when I came in pac Man cartoon was I think

487
00:28:07,880 --> 00:28:11,200
Speaker 1: it's probably still good. There's a song pac Man Fever.

488
00:28:11,680 --> 00:28:14,800
Speaker 1: There's an article we really need to shout out on

489
00:28:15,560 --> 00:28:20,199
Speaker 1: the Verge by Laura June from back in twenty thirteen,

490
00:28:20,760 --> 00:28:25,240
Speaker 1: and she points out in this article that the pac

491
00:28:25,280 --> 00:28:30,399
Speaker 1: Man Fever sold a million records in nineteen eighty two,

492
00:28:30,800 --> 00:28:33,240
Speaker 1: and survivors I Have the Tiger, which was the number

493
00:28:33,280 --> 00:28:36,919
Speaker 1: one hit of nineteen eighty two, only sold a million

494
00:28:36,960 --> 00:28:41,200
Speaker 1: more that's how big pac Man Fever was. Yeah, Buckner

495
00:28:41,280 --> 00:28:44,880
Speaker 1: and Garcia that the singers of pac Man Fever terrible song?

496
00:28:45,760 --> 00:28:50,240
Speaker 1: Was it link in the tune of a cat scratch Fever? No? Okay,

497
00:28:50,240 --> 00:28:53,080
Speaker 1: well that was just the Simpsons that screwed me up. No, no,

498
00:28:53,080 --> 00:28:55,400
Speaker 1: no good. Listen to Pacman Fever. It's it's awful. But

499
00:28:55,680 --> 00:28:58,600
Speaker 1: you know those guys, hats off to them. They made it.

500
00:28:58,720 --> 00:29:01,760
Speaker 1: Sold a million records? Ever done that? Yeah? I never

501
00:29:01,800 --> 00:29:08,719
Speaker 1: sold one record, although we may soon. Oh yeah, man' uh.

502
00:29:09,240 --> 00:29:12,480
Speaker 1: Cinipede was another watershed game in nineteen eighty. It was

503
00:29:12,520 --> 00:29:15,480
Speaker 1: the first game um Co designed by a woman named

504
00:29:15,760 --> 00:29:19,200
Speaker 1: Donna Bailey, and she was the only woman working at Aitari,

505
00:29:19,240 --> 00:29:22,480
Speaker 1: at least the only designer, and she picked out that

506
00:29:22,520 --> 00:29:27,400
Speaker 1: track ball in Cinipede. Again, gameplay holds up still very

507
00:29:27,640 --> 00:29:30,120
Speaker 1: very hard game to play. Yeah. I was watching gameplay

508
00:29:30,160 --> 00:29:33,200
Speaker 1: on YouTube of Centipede and I was getting anxious. Just

509
00:29:33,200 --> 00:29:36,440
Speaker 1: done like the second second level. Yeah, these games are

510
00:29:36,520 --> 00:29:39,320
Speaker 1: are fun and hard. Um. I don't think we mentioned

511
00:29:39,360 --> 00:29:41,800
Speaker 1: that Asteroid I think was the first game to untether

512
00:29:42,560 --> 00:29:45,880
Speaker 1: the ship. Um Like Space Invaders and Galagha all those games.

513
00:29:45,920 --> 00:29:47,960
Speaker 1: You can move left and right at the bottom. Yeah,

514
00:29:48,160 --> 00:29:51,080
Speaker 1: but you're shooting upward towards the top of the screen. Yeah.

515
00:29:51,120 --> 00:29:54,719
Speaker 1: What made Asteroids really really hard was once you were

516
00:29:54,760 --> 00:29:57,920
Speaker 1: brave enough to hit that throttle button and start flying

517
00:29:57,920 --> 00:29:59,720
Speaker 1: around a little bit like it was, it's a very

518
00:29:59,760 --> 00:30:03,640
Speaker 1: tough game. And then I think um was a Defender. Yeah.

519
00:30:03,760 --> 00:30:07,200
Speaker 1: Defender was a really cool one that still holds up

520
00:30:07,240 --> 00:30:10,840
Speaker 1: two that you could shoot left or right, and so

521
00:30:10,880 --> 00:30:14,760
Speaker 1: it was a scrolling game, whereas with some of the

522
00:30:14,800 --> 00:30:17,040
Speaker 1: other ones, they were like yes, whereas some of the

523
00:30:17,080 --> 00:30:18,880
Speaker 1: other ones they were just or all the other ones

524
00:30:18,920 --> 00:30:21,400
Speaker 1: they were just a new level, which basically was like, oh,

525
00:30:21,400 --> 00:30:23,480
Speaker 1: these shapes are now in a different location in their

526
00:30:23,520 --> 00:30:26,880
Speaker 1: purple rather than green. Yeah. However, were they scrolled vertically,

527
00:30:27,000 --> 00:30:29,600
Speaker 1: but this is definitely the first horizontal scroll. Yes, and

528
00:30:29,680 --> 00:30:31,640
Speaker 1: it was cool. That's another one that really holds up

529
00:30:31,640 --> 00:30:36,680
Speaker 1: to Defender. Yeah. Miss pac Man far superior to pac

530
00:30:36,720 --> 00:30:41,120
Speaker 1: Man in nineteen eighty two. Was I mean, I feel

531
00:30:41,160 --> 00:30:43,280
Speaker 1: like it was just as popular probably as pac Man.

532
00:30:44,240 --> 00:30:48,160
Speaker 1: It may as far as like play goes, I would

533
00:30:48,200 --> 00:30:51,360
Speaker 1: guess it's Eclipse pac Man, but as far as like

534
00:30:51,600 --> 00:30:54,640
Speaker 1: pop culture goes, yeah, pac Man might have Miss pac

535
00:30:54,680 --> 00:30:56,360
Speaker 1: Man beat I think they were kind of hand in

536
00:30:56,400 --> 00:31:00,240
Speaker 1: hand appropriately, you know, Yeah, you're right, Um want to

537
00:31:00,240 --> 00:31:02,640
Speaker 1: shout out a few more games just quickly that I

538
00:31:02,640 --> 00:31:05,800
Speaker 1: feel like we're sort of game changers. The game Tron,

539
00:31:06,440 --> 00:31:09,600
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that was good, just on the heels of

540
00:31:09,600 --> 00:31:13,080
Speaker 1: the movie Tron. It was great because it had four

541
00:31:13,880 --> 00:31:17,280
Speaker 1: different sub games within the game, and that light Cycle

542
00:31:17,320 --> 00:31:19,480
Speaker 1: game was like one of the coolest things you'd ever

543
00:31:19,480 --> 00:31:22,080
Speaker 1: played when you played it so hard to at least

544
00:31:22,360 --> 00:31:24,560
Speaker 1: like a six or seven year old. It was very

545
00:31:24,560 --> 00:31:26,680
Speaker 1: well and as it as it progressed, those first levels

546
00:31:26,680 --> 00:31:28,560
Speaker 1: are kind of easy and they just get harder and harder.

547
00:31:29,560 --> 00:31:33,280
Speaker 1: And then for me personally, the game Tempest, the game

548
00:31:33,400 --> 00:31:37,360
Speaker 1: Joust in the game battle Zone, where all three like big,

549
00:31:37,400 --> 00:31:40,360
Speaker 1: big games. For me, I always loved Cubert. Anywhere there

550
00:31:40,400 --> 00:31:43,120
Speaker 1: was a Cubert that I would play that. Yeah, Cubert's fun.

551
00:31:43,160 --> 00:31:45,440
Speaker 1: And that makes sense because you were younger and sort

552
00:31:45,480 --> 00:31:48,280
Speaker 1: of a skewed toward younger kids. I think what was

553
00:31:48,320 --> 00:31:52,760
Speaker 1: the one where it was like Hamburger or something like that, Oh,

554
00:31:53,440 --> 00:31:57,960
Speaker 1: Burger Time, Yes, Burger Time, Burger Timelay dig dug was good.

555
00:31:58,200 --> 00:32:00,280
Speaker 1: And then still to this day, I went and looked

556
00:32:00,280 --> 00:32:03,480
Speaker 1: at Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Junior, and that was

557
00:32:03,520 --> 00:32:07,840
Speaker 1: way too hard for me at the time. It's still hard, yeah,

558
00:32:07,840 --> 00:32:10,320
Speaker 1: but it's it's some of the best like graphics and

559
00:32:10,400 --> 00:32:14,360
Speaker 1: like colorful, like movement, and it's just just such a

560
00:32:14,360 --> 00:32:16,880
Speaker 1: beautiful game still to this day. And that one came out.

561
00:32:16,920 --> 00:32:19,640
Speaker 1: Donkey Kong came out in nineteen eighty one. Yeah, and

562
00:32:19,680 --> 00:32:22,280
Speaker 1: I don't think we covered in the Nintendo episode the

563
00:32:22,400 --> 00:32:26,560
Speaker 1: name Donkey Kong, did we We did, because remember, somebody

564
00:32:26,600 --> 00:32:29,000
Speaker 1: tried to file suit. I think ourca tried to soothe

565
00:32:29,040 --> 00:32:31,880
Speaker 1: them and they were like, now this is that's long gone.

566
00:32:31,880 --> 00:32:34,920
Speaker 1: That ship is sailed. Oh okay, because for some reason

567
00:32:34,960 --> 00:32:37,760
Speaker 1: it didn't ring a bell. Because I had never really

568
00:32:37,800 --> 00:32:40,080
Speaker 1: stopped to wonder why in the world it was called

569
00:32:40,120 --> 00:32:45,040
Speaker 1: Donkey Kong. It's such a weird name, but apparently they

570
00:32:45,080 --> 00:32:47,440
Speaker 1: were looking for an English word that meant stubborn, like

571
00:32:47,480 --> 00:32:51,440
Speaker 1: a donkey, and then just combine that with King Kong yep,

572
00:32:51,760 --> 00:32:54,040
Speaker 1: and Mario. I don't think we talked about this. Mario

573
00:32:54,160 --> 00:32:58,320
Speaker 1: was originally known as jump Man, one word not even hyphenated.

574
00:32:59,480 --> 00:33:03,440
Speaker 1: We should have been dragons Layer. Briefly, it's a game

575
00:33:03,440 --> 00:33:05,120
Speaker 1: that came out in nineteen eighty three. I don't know

576
00:33:05,160 --> 00:33:09,000
Speaker 1: if you remember dragons Layer much. Yeah, it was. It

577
00:33:09,040 --> 00:33:11,280
Speaker 1: was the first game that used and kind of the

578
00:33:11,320 --> 00:33:16,560
Speaker 1: only one that used LaserDisc technology to basically where you

579
00:33:16,600 --> 00:33:20,480
Speaker 1: were playing a Disney cartoon. Yep. And it was from

580
00:33:20,520 --> 00:33:24,400
Speaker 1: Don Bluth, an ex Disney animator. He did um an

581
00:33:24,480 --> 00:33:27,280
Speaker 1: American Tale, I think, Okay, I think he was like

582
00:33:27,320 --> 00:33:30,440
Speaker 1: the lead on that. Maybe I gotcha, But here was

583
00:33:30,480 --> 00:33:33,440
Speaker 1: a deal with dragons Layer. It looked cool, and it

584
00:33:33,480 --> 00:33:36,760
Speaker 1: looked different than anything you'd ever seen, and way better

585
00:33:36,840 --> 00:33:40,760
Speaker 1: than like the sixteen bit technology graphics wise at the time.

586
00:33:41,480 --> 00:33:45,440
Speaker 1: But the gameplay was terrible. You basically just push buttons

587
00:33:46,080 --> 00:33:49,520
Speaker 1: at key moments to advance the story, and like you

588
00:33:49,560 --> 00:33:52,640
Speaker 1: weren't really playing. You didn't have control of the character. No,

589
00:33:52,840 --> 00:33:57,120
Speaker 1: so let's say a single minute of this this movie

590
00:33:57,440 --> 00:34:03,560
Speaker 1: was chopped up into five different segments. Yeah, over the

591
00:34:03,600 --> 00:34:06,000
Speaker 1: course of this whole minute that played out, you would

592
00:34:06,080 --> 00:34:07,920
Speaker 1: move that thing like five times, and the rest of

593
00:34:07,920 --> 00:34:10,960
Speaker 1: the time you were just standing there waiting. It was terrible.

594
00:34:11,000 --> 00:34:13,040
Speaker 1: I never played dragons Layer. I was suckered into it

595
00:34:13,040 --> 00:34:15,680
Speaker 1: at first because it looked amazing, yes, and then I

596
00:34:15,719 --> 00:34:18,239
Speaker 1: was like this is bad. Yeah, it really was, and

597
00:34:18,320 --> 00:34:21,040
Speaker 1: which sort of just reinforces my point about the gameplay.

598
00:34:21,080 --> 00:34:24,239
Speaker 1: If it's it's good, it holds up. Yep. No one,

599
00:34:24,400 --> 00:34:27,439
Speaker 1: No one's playing dragons Layer these days. Um I want

600
00:34:28,719 --> 00:34:31,279
Speaker 1: I'll bet there's somebody out there that's like dragons Layer

601
00:34:31,320 --> 00:34:35,040
Speaker 1: for life. Yeah, maybe I want to. Yeah, I want

602
00:34:35,040 --> 00:34:38,240
Speaker 1: to shout out to from my youth, my super youth. Um.

603
00:34:38,840 --> 00:34:41,120
Speaker 1: There was one called Comanche, which is like a Wild

604
00:34:41,120 --> 00:34:43,839
Speaker 1: West shoot him up. I never played that, I remember it.

605
00:34:43,880 --> 00:34:47,239
Speaker 1: Do you remember? I cannot find any documentation of it

606
00:34:47,600 --> 00:34:50,600
Speaker 1: anywhere online, just can't find it. But I'm glad that

607
00:34:50,640 --> 00:34:52,239
Speaker 1: you verified that. I used to play that at the

608
00:34:52,239 --> 00:34:55,400
Speaker 1: little Putt put on Kataba Island by where my family

609
00:34:55,480 --> 00:34:59,000
Speaker 1: used to vacation in summers. Nice. And then the other

610
00:34:59,040 --> 00:35:02,520
Speaker 1: one was, Um, it just escaped me, chuck because I

611
00:35:02,560 --> 00:35:07,480
Speaker 1: was talking about Camanche. Paperboy. No, I don't remember. I'll

612
00:35:07,520 --> 00:35:09,279
Speaker 1: shouted out, Oh, come to me later and I'll just

613
00:35:09,360 --> 00:35:11,959
Speaker 1: interrupt you with it. Okay, do you remember battle Zone?

614
00:35:12,080 --> 00:35:13,960
Speaker 1: The one I mentioned is that the one it was

615
00:35:14,000 --> 00:35:17,960
Speaker 1: like a destroyer. Now. Battle Zone was the one where

616
00:35:18,080 --> 00:35:22,120
Speaker 1: you put your face in what kind of you would

617
00:35:22,120 --> 00:35:25,440
Speaker 1: think now is like a VR thing, like a like

618
00:35:25,480 --> 00:35:31,400
Speaker 1: a submarine periscope, and you had these two levers and

619
00:35:31,600 --> 00:35:34,520
Speaker 1: you were a tank basically, and it was all like, um,

620
00:35:35,160 --> 00:35:36,759
Speaker 1: I don't know the technical name, but when it's just

621
00:35:36,800 --> 00:35:39,600
Speaker 1: like the green lines and like a grid layout like

622
00:35:39,640 --> 00:35:42,600
Speaker 1: those were the graphics, but it was it was kind

623
00:35:42,640 --> 00:35:45,400
Speaker 1: of had like a three D effect. Yeah, and was

624
00:35:45,480 --> 00:35:47,839
Speaker 1: really pretty rap. I'll but it knocked your socks off

625
00:35:47,840 --> 00:35:50,399
Speaker 1: back then, Yeah, it did. I thought it. The other

626
00:35:50,440 --> 00:35:53,880
Speaker 1: one and another one okay, the one I was thinking

627
00:35:53,880 --> 00:35:56,760
Speaker 1: of was Empire City. I think it's Empire City nineteen

628
00:35:56,800 --> 00:36:00,600
Speaker 1: forty two or something. You're like a gangster shooting other gangsters. Okay,

629
00:36:00,600 --> 00:36:03,640
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. And then the other one was Spy Hunter.

630
00:36:03,680 --> 00:36:06,280
Speaker 1: Remember Spy Hunter. Yeah, that was that was a pretty

631
00:36:06,280 --> 00:36:08,520
Speaker 1: good driving game. That was because you put like that

632
00:36:08,600 --> 00:36:11,120
Speaker 1: oil slick and people would spin out who were chasing you.

633
00:36:11,200 --> 00:36:13,880
Speaker 1: It's just yeah, very neat. I knew this episode is

634
00:36:13,920 --> 00:36:16,160
Speaker 1: gonna go like this. Yeah. We just took fistfuls of

635
00:36:16,280 --> 00:36:20,560
Speaker 1: member barries before we did this one. Kill screens we

636
00:36:20,600 --> 00:36:26,040
Speaker 1: should talk about because there was a technological limitation to

637
00:36:26,080 --> 00:36:30,200
Speaker 1: these arcade games that were based on eight bit processors.

638
00:36:30,239 --> 00:36:33,480
Speaker 1: The hardware was and an eight bit processor can only

639
00:36:33,520 --> 00:36:37,319
Speaker 1: store two hundred and fifty six total values. So if

640
00:36:37,320 --> 00:36:40,160
Speaker 1: you got good enough at some of these games, you

641
00:36:40,160 --> 00:36:43,279
Speaker 1: could get up to screen two fifty five, and when

642
00:36:43,280 --> 00:36:46,160
Speaker 1: you hit screen two fifty six, the game would sort

643
00:36:46,160 --> 00:36:48,200
Speaker 1: of skits out on you and stop, and that was

644
00:36:48,239 --> 00:36:51,840
Speaker 1: called a kill screen. Yeah, they were the game was

645
00:36:51,880 --> 00:36:55,280
Speaker 1: trying to reset to zero, but there wasn't a level zero,

646
00:36:56,040 --> 00:36:59,040
Speaker 1: so the game would just do some weird stuff. But

647
00:36:59,160 --> 00:37:02,000
Speaker 1: what's interesting does that mean? Then? For like pac Man

648
00:37:02,040 --> 00:37:04,840
Speaker 1: in particular is very famous to have that two fifty

649
00:37:04,920 --> 00:37:08,719
Speaker 1: six value curse, and you can only get to two

650
00:37:08,880 --> 00:37:13,200
Speaker 1: fifty five. But if they just had named level one

651
00:37:13,520 --> 00:37:17,080
Speaker 1: level zero, would I wonder if the game would just

652
00:37:17,080 --> 00:37:19,120
Speaker 1: just start over again and you could just play it

653
00:37:19,160 --> 00:37:23,680
Speaker 1: in an infinite loop. Donkey Kong had one two. They

654
00:37:23,680 --> 00:37:26,640
Speaker 1: had the same problem with the two hundred and sixty

655
00:37:26,719 --> 00:37:29,600
Speaker 1: or two hundred and fifty six value curse. At level

656
00:37:29,640 --> 00:37:32,640
Speaker 1: twenty two, you should have two hundred and sixty seconds

657
00:37:32,680 --> 00:37:37,040
Speaker 1: to complete the level, but because the eight bit processors, like,

658
00:37:37,040 --> 00:37:38,560
Speaker 1: I don't know what two hundred and sixty is, so

659
00:37:38,600 --> 00:37:41,200
Speaker 1: let's just call it four. You have four seconds to

660
00:37:41,239 --> 00:37:45,920
Speaker 1: complete so in theory it goes beyond level twenty two,

661
00:37:45,960 --> 00:37:49,719
Speaker 1: but in reality, in practicality, it stops there because no

662
00:37:49,719 --> 00:37:53,000
Speaker 1: one can beat that screen in four seconds, not even

663
00:37:53,040 --> 00:37:55,680
Speaker 1: Billy Mitchell. I'll bet an AI in the future, Kim.

664
00:37:56,320 --> 00:37:58,000
Speaker 1: All right, So I say we talked about a few

665
00:37:58,000 --> 00:38:01,439
Speaker 1: of these little tidbits, and then we'll take a break

666
00:38:01,480 --> 00:38:04,920
Speaker 1: and then talk about what killed the arcade? Good. Yeah,

667
00:38:04,960 --> 00:38:07,640
Speaker 1: these are kind of fun because you know, if you

668
00:38:07,640 --> 00:38:10,399
Speaker 1: were a kid at that age or heck, I still

669
00:38:10,480 --> 00:38:16,120
Speaker 1: enjoy entering my initials as when I kid high score.

670
00:38:16,360 --> 00:38:19,480
Speaker 1: Anyone else is going to say that. The very first

671
00:38:19,480 --> 00:38:22,239
Speaker 1: game to even display a high score at all was

672
00:38:22,280 --> 00:38:25,719
Speaker 1: called Seawolf from nineteen seventy six. Do you remember that game?

673
00:38:26,160 --> 00:38:28,040
Speaker 1: I do. I don't think I really played it, but

674
00:38:28,080 --> 00:38:31,560
Speaker 1: I remember it so everybody. It was. It was a

675
00:38:31,600 --> 00:38:35,200
Speaker 1: submarine game, so you just shot torpedoes at ships, but

676
00:38:35,320 --> 00:38:40,360
Speaker 1: the joystick was a periscope. It's so cool looking still today.

677
00:38:41,520 --> 00:38:44,040
Speaker 1: Oh I remember that. Yeah, And it had great like

678
00:38:44,120 --> 00:38:46,520
Speaker 1: graphics on the cabinet. It was just an all around

679
00:38:46,600 --> 00:38:49,040
Speaker 1: NIAT game. The I don't know about the game play

680
00:38:49,080 --> 00:38:52,040
Speaker 1: and the graphics like in the game weren't top notch

681
00:38:52,120 --> 00:38:55,839
Speaker 1: or anything, but just the periscope alone was very cool. No,

682
00:38:55,920 --> 00:38:58,879
Speaker 1: I totally remember that. It just kind of came out

683
00:38:58,920 --> 00:39:02,239
Speaker 1: and then came down, right, But that was the comparscope does, right.

684
00:39:02,480 --> 00:39:04,240
Speaker 1: But that was the first one that had a high score.

685
00:39:04,239 --> 00:39:07,120
Speaker 1: You said, that's the first one that just registered a

686
00:39:07,200 --> 00:39:12,200
Speaker 1: high score. The first one that I believe stored the

687
00:39:12,280 --> 00:39:15,759
Speaker 1: high score was pac Man. I thought it was Space Invaders.

688
00:39:16,239 --> 00:39:19,840
Speaker 1: No, no no, no, what I say, pac Man? Yeah, I

689
00:39:19,880 --> 00:39:23,640
Speaker 1: do Space Invaders and seventy eight, but you still didn't

690
00:39:23,680 --> 00:39:27,080
Speaker 1: have the initials. That was Starfire in seventy nine that

691
00:39:27,200 --> 00:39:30,960
Speaker 1: let you put your initials, and then Asteroids was the

692
00:39:30,960 --> 00:39:34,480
Speaker 1: first one that showed like the top ten or whatever. Yeah,

693
00:39:34,520 --> 00:39:37,839
Speaker 1: And the problem with Space Invaders was that if you

694
00:39:38,000 --> 00:39:42,959
Speaker 1: unplugged the cabinet, the high score was gone forever, which

695
00:39:43,040 --> 00:39:46,120
Speaker 1: was very richly portrayed in that Seinfeld episode The Frogger,

696
00:39:46,360 --> 00:39:50,200
Speaker 1: Remember that one, right where George like his only legacy

697
00:39:50,320 --> 00:39:52,200
Speaker 1: is he still had the high score at the pizza

698
00:39:52,200 --> 00:39:53,879
Speaker 1: place that he used to hang out at in high

699
00:39:53,920 --> 00:39:57,480
Speaker 1: school on the Frogger and he tried to keep it going,

700
00:39:57,520 --> 00:40:00,480
Speaker 1: and of course it didn't work out for George. Yeah,

701
00:40:00,480 --> 00:40:02,600
Speaker 1: I forgot to shout out Frogger. That's another game that's

702
00:40:02,640 --> 00:40:05,759
Speaker 1: still fun and still hard. I totally forgot about it too,

703
00:40:05,760 --> 00:40:08,239
Speaker 1: and it really is. I like, I even looked up

704
00:40:08,239 --> 00:40:10,560
Speaker 1: that episode. I still didn't think that, like, oh yeah,

705
00:40:10,560 --> 00:40:13,680
Speaker 1: Frogger was a great game, but absolutely was. And that's

706
00:40:13,680 --> 00:40:16,400
Speaker 1: actually really good point, real quick, Chuck. If you played

707
00:40:16,400 --> 00:40:19,480
Speaker 1: Frogger on the arc like a stand up arcade, it

708
00:40:19,560 --> 00:40:23,839
Speaker 1: was exponentially better looking. It played better than what your

709
00:40:23,880 --> 00:40:25,960
Speaker 1: friend was playing at his house at home on the

710
00:40:26,000 --> 00:40:29,000
Speaker 1: Atari twenty six hundred. And that was another big draw

711
00:40:29,320 --> 00:40:32,400
Speaker 1: that even when the controllers and the home consoles came out,

712
00:40:32,800 --> 00:40:35,360
Speaker 1: there was still reason to go like put your tokens

713
00:40:35,400 --> 00:40:39,480
Speaker 1: in at the arcade. No, absolutely, um, I would argue

714
00:40:39,560 --> 00:40:43,200
Speaker 1: that Frogger was one that translated pretty well to the Atari.

715
00:40:43,320 --> 00:40:46,120
Speaker 1: Sure it just didn't be good. Yeah, they didn't look

716
00:40:46,120 --> 00:40:48,480
Speaker 1: as good. And but some games did not translate at all,

717
00:40:48,520 --> 00:40:54,160
Speaker 1: like the infamously bad pac Man for Atari. Oh yeah

718
00:40:54,200 --> 00:40:56,600
Speaker 1: it was bad. I was very, very excited to get

719
00:40:56,600 --> 00:40:58,560
Speaker 1: this game. It was the biggest thing in the world

720
00:40:59,000 --> 00:41:00,560
Speaker 1: and I got it for my birth day, and it

721
00:41:00,600 --> 00:41:04,080
Speaker 1: was just it didn't sound right. It went don don

722
00:41:04,239 --> 00:41:07,320
Speaker 1: don don donk like when it was eating the things

723
00:41:07,520 --> 00:41:10,640
Speaker 1: at the mouth. It just none of it worked. It

724
00:41:10,760 --> 00:41:12,960
Speaker 1: was just a bad game. And by the way, the

725
00:41:13,000 --> 00:41:15,880
Speaker 1: thing I couldn't remember about battle Zone it's the vector graphics,

726
00:41:16,360 --> 00:41:18,880
Speaker 1: oh yeah, which apparently I don't know a lot about it.

727
00:41:18,880 --> 00:41:23,160
Speaker 1: But it's you can render way more a way higher

728
00:41:23,200 --> 00:41:28,600
Speaker 1: resolution graphics with less processing power somehow. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah,

729
00:41:28,640 --> 00:41:33,319
Speaker 1: all right, so let's take that break, yeah, and we'll

730
00:41:33,360 --> 00:41:35,319
Speaker 1: come back and talk about what killed the arcade right

731
00:41:35,320 --> 00:42:00,560
Speaker 1: after this. All right, Chuck, what killed the arcade? Ronald

732
00:42:00,600 --> 00:42:06,359
Speaker 1: Reagan kinda he did not? He probably, yeah, right, Well,

733
00:42:06,400 --> 00:42:08,840
Speaker 1: a couple of things killed the helped kill the arcade,

734
00:42:10,080 --> 00:42:12,800
Speaker 1: one of which was kind of what happened with Atari

735
00:42:13,000 --> 00:42:17,160
Speaker 1: in a way, and that it got so popular that

736
00:42:17,400 --> 00:42:21,120
Speaker 1: people just started making terrible games to try and cash in,

737
00:42:21,200 --> 00:42:23,799
Speaker 1: and that that was true for the stand up and

738
00:42:23,840 --> 00:42:27,160
Speaker 1: sit down cabinet arcade games as well. They just started

739
00:42:27,320 --> 00:42:29,080
Speaker 1: making too many of them, and a lot of them

740
00:42:29,080 --> 00:42:32,520
Speaker 1: weren't good, and a lot of these arcade owners, like

741
00:42:33,120 --> 00:42:35,719
Speaker 1: you know, borrowed money to get the latest games in

742
00:42:35,760 --> 00:42:39,399
Speaker 1: there that ended up stinking, and that that bit him

743
00:42:39,400 --> 00:42:43,600
Speaker 1: in the rear end. Yeah, I mean, like Anyboddy, any

744
00:42:43,640 --> 00:42:47,319
Speaker 1: small business entrepreneur could open an arcade because all of

745
00:42:47,320 --> 00:42:51,120
Speaker 1: those manufacturers had programs where they would they would give

746
00:42:51,160 --> 00:42:53,160
Speaker 1: you these machines on credit and you could pay them

747
00:42:53,160 --> 00:42:55,959
Speaker 1: back in quarters if you wanted to. But, like you said,

748
00:42:56,000 --> 00:42:59,040
Speaker 1: when you couldn't tell what game was good and what

749
00:42:59,120 --> 00:43:01,680
Speaker 1: game was bad because the marketing and the graphics and

750
00:43:01,719 --> 00:43:04,840
Speaker 1: everything made it look so cool no matter how bad

751
00:43:04,880 --> 00:43:08,160
Speaker 1: the game was, that you would end up with a

752
00:43:08,280 --> 00:43:10,080
Speaker 1: room full of duds and all of a sudden, all

753
00:43:10,120 --> 00:43:12,520
Speaker 1: your customers are gone and you would go under. And

754
00:43:12,560 --> 00:43:15,560
Speaker 1: that happened over and over and over again. So those

755
00:43:15,600 --> 00:43:19,640
Speaker 1: thirteen thousand arcades just dripped down to very very few

756
00:43:19,680 --> 00:43:22,360
Speaker 1: by the mid eighties. Yeah, And I bet you, and

757
00:43:22,480 --> 00:43:24,759
Speaker 1: this is just me speculating, but I bet you a

758
00:43:24,800 --> 00:43:28,719
Speaker 1: lot of those arcade owners weren't like really into the games.

759
00:43:28,760 --> 00:43:30,879
Speaker 1: They were They're like, you know, I've got three car

760
00:43:30,920 --> 00:43:35,360
Speaker 1: washes and an arcade. Well yeah, and they also like

761
00:43:35,480 --> 00:43:38,240
Speaker 1: made a pretty good sideline on selling little kids drugs.

762
00:43:41,120 --> 00:43:43,879
Speaker 1: H the other and this is um from that Verge

763
00:43:44,000 --> 00:43:49,480
Speaker 1: article you mentioned. They list another big reason, which was

764
00:43:49,560 --> 00:43:54,960
Speaker 1: that there was a cultural backlash. Just you know, that's

765
00:43:55,000 --> 00:43:57,239
Speaker 1: sort of sort of always been the story from Pinball,

766
00:43:57,280 --> 00:44:01,640
Speaker 1: like you mentioned early on, to you know, Grand Theft Auto.

767
00:44:01,760 --> 00:44:07,480
Speaker 1: Now is parents and politicians saying, hey, these games are

768
00:44:07,520 --> 00:44:11,640
Speaker 1: not only um robbing our children of like potential homework

769
00:44:11,680 --> 00:44:14,520
Speaker 1: time or interacting with the world and with their friends

770
00:44:14,600 --> 00:44:18,600
Speaker 1: or being in nature, but they're they're corrupting them yeah right,

771
00:44:18,640 --> 00:44:23,719
Speaker 1: like um, Like they're not only being corrupted like physically

772
00:44:24,040 --> 00:44:28,000
Speaker 1: in the arcades by potential drug dealers and kids who

773
00:44:28,040 --> 00:44:30,400
Speaker 1: want to teach them how to skip school more efficiently

774
00:44:30,440 --> 00:44:33,040
Speaker 1: and that kind of stuff, um, but also by the

775
00:44:33,080 --> 00:44:36,800
Speaker 1: games themselves, like they're being turned into zombies at best.

776
00:44:37,360 --> 00:44:40,520
Speaker 1: At worst, they're being taught to enjoy things like violence,

777
00:44:40,560 --> 00:44:43,359
Speaker 1: which is starting to become more of a thing. Um

778
00:44:43,640 --> 00:44:49,040
Speaker 1: they are who knows what hidden messages somehow, Um Black

779
00:44:49,120 --> 00:44:52,520
Speaker 1: Sabbath worked into some video game. It was the same

780
00:44:52,600 --> 00:44:55,319
Speaker 1: kind of moral panic that that it was. It was, Yeah,

781
00:44:55,320 --> 00:44:58,560
Speaker 1: it was within the same bubble that anything that was

782
00:44:58,680 --> 00:45:02,600
Speaker 1: that parents didn't fully understand that kids were really into

783
00:45:02,920 --> 00:45:05,880
Speaker 1: was suspect and dangerous and probably you just needed to

784
00:45:05,920 --> 00:45:08,560
Speaker 1: keep your kids away from it. Yeah, which is really

785
00:45:08,600 --> 00:45:12,239
Speaker 1: ironic because these are the same parents who let us

786
00:45:12,840 --> 00:45:16,359
Speaker 1: be feral children right right, because the thing down their

787
00:45:16,440 --> 00:45:18,759
Speaker 1: high horse about these games that we played that we

788
00:45:18,800 --> 00:45:21,319
Speaker 1: really enjoyed, well, I think they could understand that in

789
00:45:21,360 --> 00:45:22,840
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. Like if you were out in

790
00:45:22,880 --> 00:45:26,200
Speaker 1: the woods building a tree fort, like your parents had

791
00:45:26,239 --> 00:45:28,239
Speaker 1: done that before, they understood it. They knew what it

792
00:45:28,320 --> 00:45:31,600
Speaker 1: was like, you know what I'm saying. These arcades, they

793
00:45:31,600 --> 00:45:34,800
Speaker 1: didn't have that experience, or if they did, they remembered

794
00:45:34,800 --> 00:45:37,120
Speaker 1: what they got into when they were playing pinball back

795
00:45:37,120 --> 00:45:39,680
Speaker 1: in like the forties or something like that as little kids,

796
00:45:40,080 --> 00:45:41,960
Speaker 1: and they were like, oh, yeah, I forgot I learned

797
00:45:41,960 --> 00:45:43,799
Speaker 1: how to skip school there. I should probably keep my

798
00:45:43,840 --> 00:45:45,879
Speaker 1: kid from doing that. And then I think also there's

799
00:45:45,920 --> 00:45:49,760
Speaker 1: just like a it's just a generational gap that inevitably develops.

800
00:45:49,800 --> 00:45:52,239
Speaker 1: Like I kind of understand where the parents were coming

801
00:45:52,280 --> 00:45:54,799
Speaker 1: from at age forty six now, whereas if you had

802
00:45:54,840 --> 00:45:56,560
Speaker 1: asked me ten years ago, I would have been like,

803
00:45:56,680 --> 00:46:01,160
Speaker 1: that is so lame. Parents just suck in general, you know. Um, yeah,

804
00:46:01,200 --> 00:46:03,759
Speaker 1: I think that those all those things put together like

805
00:46:03,880 --> 00:46:08,160
Speaker 1: kind of kind of just people. I think all those

806
00:46:08,160 --> 00:46:11,920
Speaker 1: things kind of came together to kill video games. Yeah. Um,

807
00:46:13,080 --> 00:46:15,160
Speaker 1: the irony of what we were just talking about too,

808
00:46:15,320 --> 00:46:16,760
Speaker 1: is like, you know what goes on in the woods,

809
00:46:16,800 --> 00:46:20,040
Speaker 1: do That's where I learned to smoke cigarettes, Like nothing

810
00:46:20,160 --> 00:46:23,440
Speaker 1: was going on, and that's good. In the woods. You

811
00:46:23,480 --> 00:46:25,040
Speaker 1: found all kinds of things in the woods, you know

812
00:46:25,040 --> 00:46:27,160
Speaker 1: what I mean. That's that's as far as I'm going

813
00:46:27,200 --> 00:46:31,359
Speaker 1: as the cigarettes thing, as far as recollections. But at

814
00:46:31,400 --> 00:46:33,320
Speaker 1: this notion that we were all just out there playing,

815
00:46:33,360 --> 00:46:37,640
Speaker 1: you know, playing nature kid. I learned a lot of

816
00:46:37,680 --> 00:46:39,440
Speaker 1: things in the woods as a kid. I was playing

817
00:46:39,480 --> 00:46:43,480
Speaker 1: nature kid. I was just smoking while I was doing it. Right, Man,

818
00:46:43,640 --> 00:46:47,080
Speaker 1: you had this thing where, um, I kept a bar

819
00:46:47,160 --> 00:46:50,800
Speaker 1: of soap that I'd stolen from my parents' house out

820
00:46:50,960 --> 00:46:53,200
Speaker 1: at our tree for it where I would smoke cigarettes,

821
00:46:53,600 --> 00:46:55,960
Speaker 1: and I would I would go out to the golf

822
00:46:56,000 --> 00:46:59,360
Speaker 1: course pond that was like right adjacent to the woods

823
00:46:59,400 --> 00:47:01,640
Speaker 1: and wash my hands off first and then put the

824
00:47:01,680 --> 00:47:04,960
Speaker 1: soap back and then go back home. As if that

825
00:47:05,080 --> 00:47:07,840
Speaker 1: like got rid of the cigarette smell from me. You

826
00:47:07,880 --> 00:47:10,719
Speaker 1: would have scared the hell out of me, because I

827
00:47:10,840 --> 00:47:13,880
Speaker 1: was not If I would have seen a kid my

828
00:47:14,000 --> 00:47:17,160
Speaker 1: age or god forbid, like five or six years younger

829
00:47:17,160 --> 00:47:19,520
Speaker 1: than me smoking, yeah, I would have just run in

830
00:47:19,560 --> 00:47:22,080
Speaker 1: the other direction. Did I ever tell you the cigarette

831
00:47:22,160 --> 00:47:26,319
Speaker 1: buying story from when I was like twelve? Was this?

832
00:47:26,520 --> 00:47:28,480
Speaker 1: I know, Emily got a note from her mom to

833
00:47:28,520 --> 00:47:31,080
Speaker 1: buy her cigarettes and that was legal. It's pretty awesome.

834
00:47:31,280 --> 00:47:33,200
Speaker 1: It wasn't that, was it? No, this is me buying

835
00:47:33,200 --> 00:47:35,520
Speaker 1: for myself and my friends. We all pulled our money

836
00:47:35,520 --> 00:47:37,640
Speaker 1: together and came up with I think like twenty dollars

837
00:47:37,680 --> 00:47:40,200
Speaker 1: between us, which is like ten packs of cigarettes at

838
00:47:40,200 --> 00:47:44,680
Speaker 1: the time. And I rode my bike to this convenience store,

839
00:47:45,280 --> 00:47:47,560
Speaker 1: like lean the bike up against the wall in full

840
00:47:47,680 --> 00:47:51,000
Speaker 1: view of the clerk and walk in and I'm like,

841
00:47:51,360 --> 00:47:53,520
Speaker 1: I'd like ten packs of cigarettes. Let's see. It was

842
00:47:53,600 --> 00:47:55,720
Speaker 1: kind of like when you're at a donut shop ordering

843
00:47:55,719 --> 00:47:58,240
Speaker 1: a dozen donuts, but I was doing that with cigarettes.

844
00:47:58,239 --> 00:48:01,080
Speaker 1: I like, I'll have those cools and those Marborough's of

845
00:48:01,160 --> 00:48:04,440
Speaker 1: a couple of Winstons, how about some Virginia slims. And

846
00:48:04,560 --> 00:48:06,120
Speaker 1: the guy sold him to me, put him in a

847
00:48:06,160 --> 00:48:08,680
Speaker 1: back for me to drive or ride home on my

848
00:48:08,680 --> 00:48:12,640
Speaker 1: bike more efficiently with that is amazing. It really was

849
00:48:12,680 --> 00:48:18,120
Speaker 1: a beautiful time. It really was h so um Dave

850
00:48:18,160 --> 00:48:20,160
Speaker 1: posits and he's kind of right in a lot of ways.

851
00:48:20,280 --> 00:48:23,319
Speaker 1: Is one of the death Knells was in nineteen eighty

852
00:48:23,320 --> 00:48:27,000
Speaker 1: two in a very sort of offan comment from See

853
00:48:27,040 --> 00:48:29,279
Speaker 1: Everett Coop, who was a surgeon general at the time,

854
00:48:30,880 --> 00:48:34,400
Speaker 1: had given a speech in Pittsburgh and this was in

855
00:48:34,440 --> 00:48:37,560
Speaker 1: the Q and A afterward. There was a question about

856
00:48:37,640 --> 00:48:40,799
Speaker 1: video game effects and he just sort of tossed out, yeah,

857
00:48:40,880 --> 00:48:42,680
Speaker 1: and you know, I think these kids were becoming addicted

858
00:48:43,160 --> 00:48:45,840
Speaker 1: body and soul. And then you know, this was the

859
00:48:45,880 --> 00:48:48,520
Speaker 1: surgeon general. This is when people knew who that person was.

860
00:48:48,880 --> 00:48:52,000
Speaker 1: Trusted what they said, Yeah, he was big, and uh,

861
00:48:52,960 --> 00:48:56,640
Speaker 1: that just sort of became the media narrative. The National

862
00:48:56,719 --> 00:49:01,560
Speaker 1: PTA leapt on this, issued a report and I'm glad

863
00:49:01,560 --> 00:49:05,280
Speaker 1: that day puts reporting quotes because they weren't really basing

864
00:49:05,280 --> 00:49:07,719
Speaker 1: it on hard data or really great studies. It was

865
00:49:07,760 --> 00:49:11,120
Speaker 1: more like a lot of speculation on how bad these

866
00:49:11,120 --> 00:49:13,799
Speaker 1: games were for kids, right, and that was all you

867
00:49:13,840 --> 00:49:15,759
Speaker 1: need to hear. PTA put their seal on it, and

868
00:49:15,800 --> 00:49:19,120
Speaker 1: parents were like, okay, it's official between them and see

869
00:49:19,120 --> 00:49:22,920
Speaker 1: if Ritt Coop like this needs to end. Also, there

870
00:49:23,040 --> 00:49:25,359
Speaker 1: was a part of it too, It wasn't necessarily the

871
00:49:25,400 --> 00:49:29,600
Speaker 1: game consoles um. The author of the Verge article, Laura

872
00:49:29,840 --> 00:49:33,960
Speaker 1: June points out that game consoles were around before the

873
00:49:34,000 --> 00:49:37,720
Speaker 1: demise of the video arcade, and it really wasn't until

874
00:49:37,760 --> 00:49:40,040
Speaker 1: like nineteen eighty five, like we talked about in our

875
00:49:40,800 --> 00:49:43,480
Speaker 1: Nintendo episode, that they got even bigger. But I would

876
00:49:43,480 --> 00:49:46,879
Speaker 1: say still early eighties Atari was still pretty big. Yeah,

877
00:49:46,920 --> 00:49:49,319
Speaker 1: so it was around at the time. But I think

878
00:49:49,400 --> 00:49:54,680
Speaker 1: parents let that live in order to let video arcades die,

879
00:49:54,840 --> 00:49:56,640
Speaker 1: because at the very least, you could keep an eye

880
00:49:56,640 --> 00:49:58,600
Speaker 1: on your kid while they were playing the games at home, right,

881
00:49:59,080 --> 00:50:01,640
Speaker 1: you know, you could ignore them in the basement rather

882
00:50:01,680 --> 00:50:04,960
Speaker 1: than ignore them out on the wild. Yeah. It's much

883
00:50:05,000 --> 00:50:07,000
Speaker 1: tougher to smoke cigarettes in the basement than it is

884
00:50:07,040 --> 00:50:11,680
Speaker 1: in the wood. There was an early nineties renaissance when

885
00:50:12,040 --> 00:50:15,759
Speaker 1: Street Fighter to the World Warrior came out, followed by

886
00:50:15,920 --> 00:50:20,680
Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat and Teken in the early nineties, so people

887
00:50:21,040 --> 00:50:23,560
Speaker 1: crept back. And this was like my early college days.

888
00:50:24,000 --> 00:50:26,440
Speaker 1: I remember we would go to the Bowling Alley and

889
00:50:26,520 --> 00:50:29,319
Speaker 1: Athens to play Street Fighter and stuff, and then the

890
00:50:30,280 --> 00:50:33,280
Speaker 1: whenever the first I guess it was the first PlayStation

891
00:50:33,360 --> 00:50:37,200
Speaker 1: maybe is when we you know, started really playing heavily

892
00:50:37,239 --> 00:50:40,560
Speaker 1: at home with Mortal Kombat. Yeah, with Mortal Kombat and

893
00:50:40,680 --> 00:50:43,600
Speaker 1: Street Fighter. So, um, you were into this because this

894
00:50:43,680 --> 00:50:45,920
Speaker 1: is where I was at my peak as far as

895
00:50:46,040 --> 00:50:49,120
Speaker 1: video arcades go. Yeah, I was in. I was more

896
00:50:49,200 --> 00:50:50,880
Speaker 1: into because, like I said, I was in college. So

897
00:50:50,920 --> 00:50:53,200
Speaker 1: we would make the occasional trip to the bowling Alley,

898
00:50:53,200 --> 00:50:56,040
Speaker 1: but it was mainly playing with my friends Clay and

899
00:50:56,120 --> 00:50:59,600
Speaker 1: Jason and Brett and Bill playing at their house. I

900
00:50:59,600 --> 00:51:02,840
Speaker 1: had a friend named Tony Tony Appy actually, who I

901
00:51:02,880 --> 00:51:06,560
Speaker 1: went to high school with, and he was like seventeen

902
00:51:06,600 --> 00:51:10,480
Speaker 1: at the time and managed an entire Mountasia somehow. That's

903
00:51:10,480 --> 00:51:15,160
Speaker 1: how responsible he was. A Mountasia it's like a family

904
00:51:15,400 --> 00:51:20,480
Speaker 1: fun park where there's likes mini golf, huge arcade, yeah,

905
00:51:20,560 --> 00:51:22,120
Speaker 1: golf and stuff. Yeah, it was a lot of fun.

906
00:51:22,680 --> 00:51:25,799
Speaker 1: Um and Tony was seventeen and managed the place and

907
00:51:25,880 --> 00:51:28,919
Speaker 1: he would give us that unlimited coins, so we would

908
00:51:28,920 --> 00:51:31,840
Speaker 1: go in and play all these games. And when you

909
00:51:31,920 --> 00:51:34,479
Speaker 1: have unlimited free coins, like you're really willing to try

910
00:51:34,480 --> 00:51:37,280
Speaker 1: out all sorts of games. But we had a really

911
00:51:37,280 --> 00:51:40,240
Speaker 1: good time there at Mountasia in the early mid nineties.

912
00:51:40,880 --> 00:51:43,359
Speaker 1: Oh well, I know I mentioned what was sort of

913
00:51:43,360 --> 00:51:46,120
Speaker 1: the pinnacle of my childhood life at one point was

914
00:51:46,160 --> 00:51:49,400
Speaker 1: when through something as my dad being principal. They had

915
00:51:49,400 --> 00:51:55,160
Speaker 1: a free night at Charles Entertainment geez, and it was

916
00:51:55,719 --> 00:51:58,120
Speaker 1: I think just the educators and their their kids got

917
00:51:58,120 --> 00:52:00,759
Speaker 1: to go. But it was just one free night at

918
00:52:00,840 --> 00:52:03,200
Speaker 1: Chucky Cheese and everything was free that you just ordered

919
00:52:03,200 --> 00:52:05,400
Speaker 1: pizza when he wanted, and the first thing he did

920
00:52:05,440 --> 00:52:07,840
Speaker 1: when you walk in was gave you a little a

921
00:52:07,840 --> 00:52:11,600
Speaker 1: little cloth sack full of tokens. And the idea of

922
00:52:11,600 --> 00:52:15,680
Speaker 1: that being free was just mind blowing to like, it's

923
00:52:15,719 --> 00:52:18,160
Speaker 1: two a ten year old, Oh, I can imagine two

924
00:52:18,280 --> 00:52:22,719
Speaker 1: free pizza, free games, free coke. Yeah, I mean, you

925
00:52:22,760 --> 00:52:24,480
Speaker 1: just got to play games for free all night long.

926
00:52:24,560 --> 00:52:27,600
Speaker 1: And I remember going home that night being tired and

927
00:52:28,280 --> 00:52:31,000
Speaker 1: just dreamy in my head, thinking this is the best

928
00:52:31,080 --> 00:52:35,759
Speaker 1: night of my life. So things came back in the

929
00:52:35,760 --> 00:52:38,840
Speaker 1: early nineties and the parents stepped up again and said no, no, no,

930
00:52:39,840 --> 00:52:42,080
Speaker 1: everything we were saying before in nineteen eighty three that

931
00:52:42,120 --> 00:52:45,040
Speaker 1: didn't apply now really does apply. Like the violence is

932
00:52:45,080 --> 00:52:49,520
Speaker 1: just outrageous and outlandish, Like in Mortal Kombat you could

933
00:52:49,600 --> 00:52:53,359
Speaker 1: very memorably pull your opponent's final calum out. It's fun

934
00:52:53,400 --> 00:52:54,960
Speaker 1: I mean, looking back, it didn't look that great, so

935
00:52:55,000 --> 00:52:57,440
Speaker 1: it's kind of funny. Now that they're in uproar. But

936
00:52:57,520 --> 00:52:59,800
Speaker 1: if they were an uproar over the violence from Space

937
00:52:59,840 --> 00:53:02,520
Speaker 1: and Vaders, you can imagine what Mortal Kombat did to them,

938
00:53:02,560 --> 00:53:05,160
Speaker 1: So that kind of killed that comeback as well. And

939
00:53:05,239 --> 00:53:08,680
Speaker 1: plus also home consoles just kept getting better and better

940
00:53:08,719 --> 00:53:12,520
Speaker 1: and better. Yeah, and that's the story of the arcade.

941
00:53:12,520 --> 00:53:14,320
Speaker 1: I mean you can still go now. You know, they're

942
00:53:14,320 --> 00:53:17,520
Speaker 1: the sort of there's the daven Busters type places, which again,

943
00:53:17,640 --> 00:53:20,680
Speaker 1: like I said, are you know they've retrofitted. They have

944
00:53:20,719 --> 00:53:23,399
Speaker 1: the Giant Space Invaders. They have this huge pac Man

945
00:53:23,440 --> 00:53:25,799
Speaker 1: game where multiple people can be pac Man at the

946
00:53:25,800 --> 00:53:28,520
Speaker 1: same time. So they've kind of like tried to bring

947
00:53:28,560 --> 00:53:30,440
Speaker 1: some of these into the modern era. But if you

948
00:53:30,480 --> 00:53:34,799
Speaker 1: really want that throwback experience, in most cities they have

949
00:53:34,920 --> 00:53:37,799
Speaker 1: some kind of a barcade style thing where they have

950
00:53:37,840 --> 00:53:40,239
Speaker 1: the classic games and you can you can get a

951
00:53:40,280 --> 00:53:42,200
Speaker 1: beer or something in play. I've not been to one,

952
00:53:42,520 --> 00:53:46,839
Speaker 1: have you. I went to one at one point, and

953
00:53:46,880 --> 00:53:50,080
Speaker 1: then when I was living in La there was an

954
00:53:50,160 --> 00:53:52,640
Speaker 1: arcade like an old school regular arcade. It wasn't some

955
00:53:52,920 --> 00:53:56,960
Speaker 1: retro beer places within walking distance of my first apartment,

956
00:53:57,000 --> 00:53:58,920
Speaker 1: so I would go down there and play or go

957
00:53:59,000 --> 00:54:01,520
Speaker 1: to the Bowling The Big Lebowski Lanes had some good

958
00:54:01,600 --> 00:54:05,359
Speaker 1: arcade games. Conceptually speaking, it just makes sense why not

959
00:54:05,520 --> 00:54:09,359
Speaker 1: put like fun activities into a bar rather than just

960
00:54:09,800 --> 00:54:13,200
Speaker 1: booze and you know, hopefully good conversation with whoever you're with.

961
00:54:13,360 --> 00:54:15,600
Speaker 1: So I totally get that. Seems like it would be

962
00:54:15,600 --> 00:54:19,080
Speaker 1: fun if everybody like followed all the unwritten rules about

963
00:54:19,160 --> 00:54:23,120
Speaker 1: playing games. You know, Yeah, I'll try. I'll take you

964
00:54:23,200 --> 00:54:27,040
Speaker 1: meet on a barcade date someday. You got anything else,

965
00:54:27,600 --> 00:54:31,320
Speaker 1: I got nothing else. Well, that means everybody that arcades

966
00:54:31,320 --> 00:54:33,160
Speaker 1: are done, Chuck, I feel like we burned through a

967
00:54:33,200 --> 00:54:36,879
Speaker 1: really great live show topic here. Oh that's all right, Yeah,

968
00:54:36,960 --> 00:54:39,320
Speaker 1: people don't come to our shows that have been to arcades.

969
00:54:40,000 --> 00:54:43,279
Speaker 1: That's true. That's a good point, man. And since Chuck

970
00:54:43,320 --> 00:54:45,040
Speaker 1: just made a good point, that means it's time for

971
00:54:45,080 --> 00:54:50,000
Speaker 1: a listener me. I'm gonna call this hamburger steak follow

972
00:54:50,080 --> 00:54:54,560
Speaker 1: up from LORI. Hey, guys, heard the discussion of the

973
00:54:54,560 --> 00:54:56,880
Speaker 1: hamburger steak and thought, hey, that's all's my problem on

974
00:54:56,960 --> 00:54:59,640
Speaker 1: what to cook for supper. But then Chuck said that

975
00:54:59,680 --> 00:55:02,760
Speaker 1: hamburg your steak was just hamburger pressed into a steak shape.

976
00:55:04,080 --> 00:55:06,239
Speaker 1: I had to stop and step back to make I

977
00:55:06,239 --> 00:55:09,200
Speaker 1: sure I heard that correctly. But try this maybe to

978
00:55:09,280 --> 00:55:11,640
Speaker 1: juice up your hamburger steak. I think you'll like it better.

979
00:55:12,280 --> 00:55:14,480
Speaker 1: Mix that hamburger with about a half a pack or

980
00:55:14,560 --> 00:55:19,040
Speaker 1: less of lipped an onion soup mix. That's a that's

981
00:55:19,080 --> 00:55:22,800
Speaker 1: an all time great hat for hamburgers and turkey burgers.

982
00:55:22,800 --> 00:55:27,560
Speaker 1: Period keeps some very choicy and very flavorable. Add some

983
00:55:27,640 --> 00:55:31,800
Speaker 1: bread crumbs and even egg if you want. This is meatloaf,

984
00:55:32,600 --> 00:55:35,080
Speaker 1: and then cook it completely. Remove it from the skillet.

985
00:55:35,600 --> 00:55:37,640
Speaker 1: Place the rest of the soup mix that you didn't

986
00:55:37,719 --> 00:55:41,080
Speaker 1: use and water in the skillet. You cook a burger

987
00:55:41,120 --> 00:55:45,480
Speaker 1: in and basically thicking that into a gravy. Wow, you

988
00:55:45,480 --> 00:55:47,680
Speaker 1: could add some flour or corn starch to thicken it

989
00:55:47,760 --> 00:55:51,879
Speaker 1: up and then add the burger back in. And then

990
00:55:51,880 --> 00:55:56,120
Speaker 1: this is how Lourie signs her email. You can use

991
00:55:56,160 --> 00:56:02,399
Speaker 1: my name Comma Lorie. Yeah, that's from Lorie. Michael Good.

992
00:56:02,480 --> 00:56:04,160
Speaker 1: That sounds like a good recipe to me. That is

993
00:56:04,160 --> 00:56:06,319
Speaker 1: a great recipe, Laurie. Thank you for that. I'm going

994
00:56:06,360 --> 00:56:08,880
Speaker 1: to try that post taste, and it actually brings to

995
00:56:08,960 --> 00:56:11,359
Speaker 1: mind another thing I just came up, chuck, since we're

996
00:56:11,560 --> 00:56:18,680
Speaker 1: talking about kitchen HACKSA Have you ever taken the water

997
00:56:18,800 --> 00:56:21,960
Speaker 1: that you boil the spaghettian and then add a little

998
00:56:21,960 --> 00:56:26,120
Speaker 1: bit to your sauce. No, okay, I never had before

999
00:56:26,200 --> 00:56:28,400
Speaker 1: until the other night, and apparently we've been doing it

1000
00:56:28,400 --> 00:56:32,120
Speaker 1: wrong all along. You have to do that. And the

1001
00:56:32,160 --> 00:56:35,640
Speaker 1: reason why is it actually counterintuitively thickens your sauce a

1002
00:56:35,680 --> 00:56:38,880
Speaker 1: little bit because of the carbs that are still floating

1003
00:56:38,880 --> 00:56:40,919
Speaker 1: around in the water, and just a little bit, just enough.

1004
00:56:41,600 --> 00:56:43,680
Speaker 1: And then the other thing it does is it's when

1005
00:56:43,719 --> 00:56:47,439
Speaker 1: you put the spaghetti drained spaghetti into your sauce, which

1006
00:56:47,440 --> 00:56:49,120
Speaker 1: is what you're supposed to do. We won't put it

1007
00:56:49,160 --> 00:56:52,440
Speaker 1: on top of the spaghetti. You stir it around, toss it.

1008
00:56:52,440 --> 00:56:55,239
Speaker 1: It actually makes the sauce stick to the spaghetti more.

1009
00:56:55,880 --> 00:56:58,560
Speaker 1: It is I can rapport. Really, you should never make

1010
00:56:58,600 --> 00:57:02,399
Speaker 1: spaghetti any other way, all right, Okay, I'm gonna leap

1011
00:57:02,400 --> 00:57:05,920
Speaker 1: prog off of that because this is along those same lines.

1012
00:57:05,960 --> 00:57:09,279
Speaker 1: If you make homemade mashed potatoes like I do, and

1013
00:57:09,360 --> 00:57:13,839
Speaker 1: you chop up raw potatoes and then boil that, then

1014
00:57:13,920 --> 00:57:16,880
Speaker 1: you strain the water out, save some of that water

1015
00:57:16,920 --> 00:57:19,920
Speaker 1: and add it back in instead of just going right

1016
00:57:19,960 --> 00:57:21,880
Speaker 1: to like milk or cream or whatever you want to

1017
00:57:21,960 --> 00:57:24,960
Speaker 1: use as your liquid, put some of that starchy water

1018
00:57:25,000 --> 00:57:29,480
Speaker 1: back in first, and I think it has a similar effect. Nice. Yeah, starchy,

1019
00:57:29,520 --> 00:57:32,640
Speaker 1: That's why I was after, not carbi. Yeah. And finally,

1020
00:57:32,960 --> 00:57:35,560
Speaker 1: just at a correction, or not a correction, but a tip.

1021
00:57:36,400 --> 00:57:39,000
Speaker 1: Your butter bell you mentioned was getting moldy. We had

1022
00:57:39,080 --> 00:57:41,040
Speaker 1: quite a few people right in that say to use

1023
00:57:41,040 --> 00:57:43,600
Speaker 1: salted butter and your butterbell will not get mold Yeah.

1024
00:57:43,680 --> 00:57:46,960
Speaker 1: I don't. I'd like to salt my own butter. I

1025
00:57:47,000 --> 00:57:52,040
Speaker 1: don't buy it pre salted. I'm not a communist. Okay. Yeah,

1026
00:57:52,080 --> 00:57:54,040
Speaker 1: I'm sure that was part of it too. And also

1027
00:57:54,080 --> 00:57:56,480
Speaker 1: I think I may have fudged slightly when I said, yes,

1028
00:57:56,520 --> 00:57:59,200
Speaker 1: I did change the water every three days. I think

1029
00:57:59,200 --> 00:58:00,880
Speaker 1: I did from time to time, but I think that

1030
00:58:00,960 --> 00:58:03,120
Speaker 1: probably had something to do with it. But it's nice

1031
00:58:03,160 --> 00:58:04,760
Speaker 1: to know that wasn't the entire thing that I was

1032
00:58:04,880 --> 00:58:08,440
Speaker 1: using unsalted. All right, Well, if anyone's still listening, now,

1033
00:58:08,480 --> 00:58:11,240
Speaker 1: these are great Yeah kitchen tips. Yeah, for sure, I

1034
00:58:11,280 --> 00:58:13,160
Speaker 1: think we should probably get a move on. So thanks

1035
00:58:13,200 --> 00:58:16,440
Speaker 1: Lorie for that awesome recipe. Thank you for your tip,

1036
00:58:16,640 --> 00:58:19,560
Speaker 1: Thank me for my tip. As well, and if you

1037
00:58:19,560 --> 00:58:20,920
Speaker 1: want to get in touch with us to give us

1038
00:58:20,960 --> 00:58:23,240
Speaker 1: a tip of any sort, you can email us at

1039
00:58:23,280 --> 00:58:29,200
Speaker 1: stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know

1040
00:58:29,320 --> 00:58:32,800
Speaker 1: is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,

1041
00:58:33,080 --> 00:58:36,479
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listening

1042
00:58:36,560 --> 00:58:37,520
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.