WEBVTT - Video Game Tech '89 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:07.240 Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios 0:00:07.320 --> 0:00:14.000 How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:16.920 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with 0:00:16.960 --> 0:00:18.960 iHeart Radio and How Stuff Works, and I love all 0:00:19.040 --> 0:00:23.639 things tech. And it's two thousand nineteen at least it 0:00:23.720 --> 0:00:26.560 is when I'm recording this episode, and I thought it 0:00:26.640 --> 0:00:29.280 might be fun, just for the heck of it to 0:00:29.480 --> 0:00:33.160 look back thirty years ago to the latest in video 0:00:33.280 --> 0:00:37.960 game technology, both to walk down memory lane, since I 0:00:38.040 --> 0:00:43.279 was very much around in nine, or also to just 0:00:43.360 --> 0:00:45.920 reflect on how far we've come since then. You know, 0:00:45.960 --> 0:00:48.040 I've come a very far away. I was a teenager 0:00:48.360 --> 0:00:51.159 in nineteen eighty nine. And I should also point out 0:00:51.200 --> 0:00:54.680 I'm framing this episode in the context of North America 0:00:54.800 --> 0:00:58.280 and specifically the United States. I will mention other regions 0:00:58.320 --> 0:01:01.960 as well, but this is largely because of me looking 0:01:02.000 --> 0:01:04.440 back at thirty years ago in the US and what 0:01:04.480 --> 0:01:07.440 was the video game industry like at that point. Now, 0:01:07.480 --> 0:01:11.880 some very important stuff came out in nineteen eighty nine. 0:01:11.959 --> 0:01:14.080 Some of it would set companies on a path of 0:01:14.240 --> 0:01:19.280 unprecedented success, and some would turn out to be massive misfires, 0:01:19.280 --> 0:01:21.639 and some companies would have a little bit of both, 0:01:22.160 --> 0:01:24.400 and there were a few big moves on the business 0:01:24.440 --> 0:01:28.039 side as well. But first let's give some context for 0:01:28.160 --> 0:01:32.000 nineteen eighty nine. So by nineteen eighty nine, the video 0:01:32.000 --> 0:01:36.840 game industry was in a booming renaissance. The first wave 0:01:36.959 --> 0:01:39.480 of home video game tech had really begun in the 0:01:39.560 --> 0:01:42.960 late nineteen seventies, and it ended, at least in North 0:01:43.000 --> 0:01:47.440 America in a crashing halt in nineteen eighty three. Now, 0:01:47.480 --> 0:01:51.000 the reasons for the video game crash are numerous, and 0:01:51.040 --> 0:01:53.440 I've covered them in previous episodes, so we're not going 0:01:53.520 --> 0:01:56.840 to go into it here, but the industry seemed truly 0:01:57.040 --> 0:02:01.960 dead and literally buried. At least that was the literal 0:02:02.000 --> 0:02:05.280 case for many copies of the Atari twenty Game Et 0:02:05.520 --> 0:02:09.000 the Extraterrestrial and a few other titles that were just 0:02:09.240 --> 0:02:13.120 sitting around taking up space. Then they ended up sitting 0:02:13.120 --> 0:02:16.280 around inside a landfill. Then a company known more for 0:02:16.360 --> 0:02:19.520 playing cards than video games made a go of of 0:02:19.560 --> 0:02:23.280 it in North America. That company was Nintendo, which had 0:02:23.320 --> 0:02:27.720 already made some arcade games, but was a brand new 0:02:27.760 --> 0:02:30.680 player in the home video game console market in the 0:02:30.760 --> 0:02:34.200 United States, and unfortunately, due to timing, they're coming in 0:02:34.400 --> 0:02:40.440 just after the video game crash. Initially, retailers resisted shouldering 0:02:40.480 --> 0:02:43.760 the risk of carrying video game systems again, but Nintendo 0:02:43.880 --> 0:02:46.160 won them over, and as I'm sure you're all aware, 0:02:46.680 --> 0:02:51.440 that turned into a huge success. So by nine nine, 0:02:51.680 --> 0:02:56.160 the video game market was established again, and it also 0:02:56.240 --> 0:02:59.560 had several companies competing for customers. Now, back in the 0:02:59.600 --> 0:03:03.320 early nineteen eighties, those companies would include things like Atari 0:03:03.320 --> 0:03:07.600 and Colco and Mattel Electronics, among others. Atari was still 0:03:07.639 --> 0:03:10.880 around nine nine, but it was no longer the dominant force. 0:03:11.520 --> 0:03:16.440 That designation belonged to squarely to Nintendo, and Nintendo debuted 0:03:16.480 --> 0:03:19.960 a killer product in nineteen eighty nine in the United States. 0:03:20.400 --> 0:03:23.760 The company launched the Game Boy both in Japan and 0:03:23.800 --> 0:03:26.960 in North America in nineteen nine. Japan got it several 0:03:27.000 --> 0:03:32.240 months earlier. It was largely the brainchild of Gunpie Yakoi, 0:03:32.680 --> 0:03:37.280 and I apologize sincerely for butchering names, but he had 0:03:37.320 --> 0:03:40.680 previously led the company on a design for a line 0:03:40.720 --> 0:03:45.200 of portable gaming devices called the Game and Watch. These 0:03:45.280 --> 0:03:47.720 were dedicated to a single title each. They were a 0:03:47.720 --> 0:03:53.120 little handhold, simple game consoles that only had a single 0:03:53.160 --> 0:03:57.520 title programmed hard coded onto the machine. They had a 0:03:57.680 --> 0:04:02.480 very primitive CPU, or really that just primitive microprocessors, and 0:04:02.600 --> 0:04:05.400 they had very very simple graphics compared to something like 0:04:05.440 --> 0:04:08.720 the Game Boy. Now, once technology had advanced to a 0:04:08.720 --> 0:04:12.760 point where more robust and a programmable handheld system would 0:04:12.800 --> 0:04:16.760 become feasible, the company got to work designing the game 0:04:16.800 --> 0:04:22.920 Boy system uh the coin. A designer named Satro Okada 0:04:23.080 --> 0:04:26.799 worked to make this a reality, and Okada's original design 0:04:27.520 --> 0:04:31.080 was a bit more ambitious, but it also would have 0:04:31.120 --> 0:04:35.800 been much more expensive. So while he had initially planned 0:04:35.800 --> 0:04:40.480 for a much more feature robust version of the Game Boy, 0:04:40.640 --> 0:04:44.080 Nintendo executives decided that it was better to cut a 0:04:44.120 --> 0:04:47.680 few features and launch a system that wouldn't cost too 0:04:47.800 --> 0:04:52.520 much and that would help encourage people to adopt the system. 0:04:52.600 --> 0:04:57.719 The handheld game console, the game Boy would revolutionize home gaming. 0:04:58.160 --> 0:05:02.520 Suddenly video games were true le portable. Most handheld games 0:05:02.560 --> 0:05:05.719 preceding the Game Boy were dedicated to a single title, 0:05:05.800 --> 0:05:09.440 like those game and watch games. Many of those handheld 0:05:09.680 --> 0:05:13.599 gaming systems were incredibly primitive. The game Boy brought a 0:05:13.680 --> 0:05:16.839 level of sophistication to portability that was a perfect fit, 0:05:17.240 --> 0:05:20.160 and in North America, this was paired with an amazing 0:05:20.240 --> 0:05:24.040 puzzle game that worked so well with the form factor 0:05:24.080 --> 0:05:28.000 of the Game Boy that it became nearly ubiquitous. That 0:05:28.040 --> 0:05:31.040 game was, of course, Tetris, a game designed by a 0:05:31.120 --> 0:05:34.760 Russian programmer and released earlier in the nineteen eighties, and 0:05:34.800 --> 0:05:37.760 that story alone is fascinating, but I've covered it in 0:05:37.839 --> 0:05:41.560 previous episodes of tech Stuff. The original Nintendo Game Boy 0:05:42.040 --> 0:05:45.120 was an eight bit bit system. That means that it 0:05:45.160 --> 0:05:49.240 had the same processing power as a full Nintendo Entertainment System, 0:05:49.279 --> 0:05:52.159 and I'll go into more detail about eight bit versus 0:05:52.200 --> 0:05:55.000 sixteen bit a little bit later in this episode. But 0:05:55.160 --> 0:05:58.560 like the Nintendo Entertainment System or any GAS, games for 0:05:58.600 --> 0:06:01.920 the Game Boy would appear are on cartridges, just much 0:06:02.000 --> 0:06:05.520 much smaller cartridges than what you would find on the NES. 0:06:06.160 --> 0:06:09.599 So a video game cartridge has the game hard coded 0:06:09.800 --> 0:06:13.520 onto the physical cartridge itself. It's like a circuit board, 0:06:14.000 --> 0:06:16.560 and that limits how much data you can store on 0:06:16.600 --> 0:06:20.080 the card. You're actually talking about physical circuitry. You can 0:06:20.080 --> 0:06:22.480 only get it so small. But it also tends to 0:06:22.600 --> 0:06:26.400 mean that you have a super fast gaming system. It 0:06:26.440 --> 0:06:29.560 can load games very quickly compared to ones that are 0:06:29.560 --> 0:06:33.440 reading it off, say, an optical disk. The original game 0:06:33.440 --> 0:06:37.120 Boy had a direction pad and to control buttons labeled 0:06:37.120 --> 0:06:39.800 A and B. It also had a select button and 0:06:39.839 --> 0:06:44.000 a start button. Had a monochromatic liquid crystal display or 0:06:44.160 --> 0:06:47.240 l c D. Technically it could show up to four 0:06:47.279 --> 0:06:50.719 shades of gray, and it had a resolution of one 0:06:50.839 --> 0:06:56.000 sixty six by one pixels, so not super high resolution. 0:06:56.040 --> 0:06:58.039 But it was a very tiny screen as well, so 0:06:58.120 --> 0:07:00.960 it didn't matter so much. Games ran on a pretty 0:07:00.960 --> 0:07:03.840 good clip with a frame rate of nearly sixty frames 0:07:03.839 --> 0:07:08.160 per second, and there were control dials for volume and contrast. 0:07:08.440 --> 0:07:10.040 You can change the contrast so you could play the 0:07:10.040 --> 0:07:12.800 game in different levels of light and still see what 0:07:12.880 --> 0:07:15.400 was going on on the screen. In addition to the 0:07:15.480 --> 0:07:19.600 eight bit processor, it had eight kilobytes of RAM that's 0:07:19.720 --> 0:07:23.640 random access memory, and the basic handheld device had four 0:07:23.720 --> 0:07:27.680 channels for sound, but it also only had a single speaker. However, 0:07:28.040 --> 0:07:31.520 you could get stereo sound by plugging in headphones into 0:07:31.600 --> 0:07:35.280 a headphone jack, and Nintendo bundled headphones with the game 0:07:35.320 --> 0:07:38.640 Boys so you could do this. One innovation that the 0:07:38.680 --> 0:07:41.560 game Boy brought in was the ability to link together 0:07:41.680 --> 0:07:45.120 multiple game Boy devices, so you could link to game 0:07:45.160 --> 0:07:48.000 Boys together through their serial ports, or you could use 0:07:48.000 --> 0:07:51.480 special adapters and you could link more game Boy systems together, 0:07:51.480 --> 0:07:55.560 which we become really useful when the Pokemon games started 0:07:55.600 --> 0:07:59.240 coming out. The game Boy relied on four double A 0:07:59.360 --> 0:08:03.960 batteries for power, which Nintendo claimed would provide thirty plus 0:08:04.040 --> 0:08:07.400 hours of game time before you drained all the juice 0:08:07.440 --> 0:08:12.600 from those batteries. More conservative estimates put that playtime closer 0:08:12.640 --> 0:08:16.080 to ten to fourteen hours, so about half of what 0:08:16.240 --> 0:08:19.560 Nintendo was claiming. But the battery life really did set 0:08:19.600 --> 0:08:22.400 it apart from the competitors that would follow the game 0:08:22.440 --> 0:08:25.080 Boy just a little bit later. You could also purchase 0:08:25.240 --> 0:08:29.120 some additional peripherals, such as an AC adapter, and you 0:08:29.120 --> 0:08:31.760 could plug your game Boy into the wall so you 0:08:31.800 --> 0:08:34.640 didn't have to worry about using batteries at all. Of course, 0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:37.120 that also makes it much less portable. Or you could 0:08:37.160 --> 0:08:40.240 buy a rechargeable battery pack to cut down on those 0:08:40.520 --> 0:08:44.240 a A battery purchases, but then of course you would 0:08:44.280 --> 0:08:47.360 have to recharge the battery pack whenever you had drained 0:08:47.400 --> 0:08:50.640 it down. The game Boy would become one of the 0:08:50.720 --> 0:08:56.040 top selling video game systems of all time. That being said, 0:08:56.080 --> 0:08:59.120 it is hard to say exactly how well the original 0:08:59.200 --> 0:09:03.280 game Boy did because Nintendo would lump together the group 0:09:03.360 --> 0:09:07.120 sales figures for the game Boy and the game Boy Color, 0:09:07.480 --> 0:09:11.280 which came out nearly a decade after the original game Boy. 0:09:11.320 --> 0:09:14.520 All of those get lumped into one category. The original 0:09:14.559 --> 0:09:17.800 retail price for the game Boy was eighty nine dollars 0:09:17.880 --> 0:09:23.240 and cents. Nintendo's game Boy got a head start against 0:09:23.280 --> 0:09:26.120 other handheld devices that would launch a little later in 0:09:26.200 --> 0:09:32.560 nineteen beyond, and it was a hit pretty much right 0:09:32.559 --> 0:09:35.240 at the get go. In Japan, Nintendo's sold out of 0:09:35.280 --> 0:09:39.120 its initial production run right away. I g N reports 0:09:39.160 --> 0:09:41.480 that on the first day of sales in North America, 0:09:41.840 --> 0:09:46.400 forty thousand people bought a game Boy, not bad for 0:09:46.440 --> 0:09:50.480 its brand new debut in a brand new market. Nintendo 0:09:50.600 --> 0:09:54.240 did have competitors, though, and most of them were from Japan. 0:09:55.080 --> 0:09:59.440 One of those competitors was ANYC Corporation, which is still 0:09:59.600 --> 0:10:02.320 very much round today and is involved in several high 0:10:02.320 --> 0:10:05.760 tech businesses, but not so much in video games anymore. 0:10:06.320 --> 0:10:09.720 The company wanted to get into this lucrative home video 0:10:09.760 --> 0:10:12.400 game business in the nineteen eighties, and to do that, 0:10:12.800 --> 0:10:17.920 NBC partnered with another Japanese company called Hudson Soft, which 0:10:18.160 --> 0:10:22.120 very much does not exist anymore today as it merged 0:10:22.160 --> 0:10:25.640 with Konami in two thousand twelve. The result was a 0:10:25.679 --> 0:10:30.440 machine that in Japan was called the PC Engine, and 0:10:30.520 --> 0:10:33.720 it came out in Japan in nineteen seven. It would 0:10:33.720 --> 0:10:35.400 take two more years to make its way over to 0:10:35.440 --> 0:10:39.480 North America, and in August it would debut in the 0:10:39.559 --> 0:10:43.840 United States under a different name, the Turbo Graphics sixteen. 0:10:44.520 --> 0:10:49.360 The Turbo Graphics sixteen was the an early console in 0:10:49.400 --> 0:10:52.320 the market that would help bring in the sixteen bit era. 0:10:52.880 --> 0:10:57.360 But that's with a few qualifiers. Systems like the Famicom 0:10:57.440 --> 0:11:00.559 better known as the Ninteno entertainment system in the US 0:11:00.920 --> 0:11:05.360 where eight bit systems not sixteen bit systems. Now, let's 0:11:05.400 --> 0:11:08.880 talk about that difference. Remember that a bit is a 0:11:08.920 --> 0:11:13.520 basic unit of information in computer language. It's a zero 0:11:13.800 --> 0:11:17.599 or it's a one, So it's akin to a physical switch, 0:11:17.920 --> 0:11:21.920 either being switched off or switched on. An eight bet 0:11:21.960 --> 0:11:26.280 processor can perform operations on data up to eight bits 0:11:26.320 --> 0:11:28.959 in size, and if you were to write out all 0:11:29.080 --> 0:11:34.360 the different arrangements of eight bits, from having eight zeros 0:11:34.360 --> 0:11:36.920 in a row to eight ones in a row and 0:11:37.120 --> 0:11:40.440 every variation in between. You would count those all up 0:11:40.440 --> 0:11:42.600 and you would find out you have two hundred fifty 0:11:42.679 --> 0:11:46.360 six variations of standing for the numbers of zero to 0:11:46.440 --> 0:11:51.480 two D. A sixteen bit processor can handle data of 0:11:51.559 --> 0:11:55.360 up to sixteen bits in size, and you might at 0:11:55.360 --> 0:11:57.520 first think, oh, it can hold twice as much or 0:11:57.600 --> 0:12:01.640 handle twice as much information, or information that's twice as large, 0:12:02.080 --> 0:12:05.080 but it's actually way way more than that. We're talking 0:12:05.480 --> 0:12:10.319 instead of two hundred fifty six variations, sixty five thousand, 0:12:10.360 --> 0:12:14.840 five hundred thirty six variations, and if you're paying attention, 0:12:15.360 --> 0:12:20.920 that's two hundred fifty six squared. This same mathematical relationship 0:12:21.160 --> 0:12:24.240 holds true as you go up bit sizes. So a 0:12:24.360 --> 0:12:27.480 thirty two bit processor can handle data of up to 0:12:27.559 --> 0:12:32.920 thirty two bits and size, which has four billion, two million, 0:12:33.240 --> 0:12:37.400 nine hundred sixty seven thousand, two hundred nine variations, which 0:12:37.480 --> 0:12:42.199 is also sixty thousand, five hundred thirty six squared, and 0:12:42.240 --> 0:12:45.960 so on. So you see, as you increase the bit 0:12:46.760 --> 0:12:50.760 size that a processor can handle, it can handle an 0:12:50.920 --> 0:12:55.880 enormous amount more information. Anyway, back to sixteen bits. What 0:12:56.040 --> 0:12:59.720 this means from a user experience standpoint is that the 0:12:59.720 --> 0:13:02.520 mass seen can process more data in the same amount 0:13:02.559 --> 0:13:05.360 of time as an eight bit machine, which for video 0:13:05.440 --> 0:13:09.240 games tends to most easily be perceived in the form 0:13:09.320 --> 0:13:12.240 of better graphics and sound. But here's where we get 0:13:12.280 --> 0:13:16.880 into some of those qualifiers. The Turbo Graphics sixteen actually 0:13:16.920 --> 0:13:20.320 wasn't a true sixteen bit system. It had an eight 0:13:20.360 --> 0:13:24.280 bit CPU, just like the Nintendo Entertainment System, but it 0:13:24.360 --> 0:13:28.120 also had a sixteen bet video display controller and a 0:13:28.160 --> 0:13:32.280 sixteen bit video color encoder. Now this meant that the 0:13:32.320 --> 0:13:36.040 Turbo Graphics sixteen could spit out better graphics and way 0:13:36.120 --> 0:13:39.839 more colors than an AS could do. The NES was 0:13:39.920 --> 0:13:43.640 limited to sixty four preset colors, and it could only 0:13:43.679 --> 0:13:48.319 display twenty five of those at one time on a screen. Typically, 0:13:48.640 --> 0:13:52.560 the Tobographics sixteen had a palette of five hundred twelve colors, 0:13:52.920 --> 0:13:56.520 which is technically nine bits in size, and it could 0:13:56.520 --> 0:13:59.720 show four eight two of those on screen at once, 0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:02.240 although that was divided into colors that would be in 0:14:02.280 --> 0:14:05.600 the background and colors that were in moving components on 0:14:05.640 --> 0:14:08.840 the screen that we would call sprites. The resolution of 0:14:08.880 --> 0:14:12.640 the Turbo Graphics sixteen might make you wins today, as 0:14:12.679 --> 0:14:15.120 most games used a resolution of two hundred fifty six 0:14:15.200 --> 0:14:18.880 by two hundred thirty nine pixels, essentially the same resolution 0:14:18.920 --> 0:14:22.480 as the NES. Some games would boast a resolution of 0:14:22.520 --> 0:14:27.120 up to five twelve by two pixels, but they were rare. 0:14:28.000 --> 0:14:32.480 There were many variations of the PC Engine slash Turbo 0:14:32.480 --> 0:14:36.160 Graphics sixteen. In fact, there were enough different versions of 0:14:36.160 --> 0:14:39.240 this game system to justify a full episode of tech Stuff. 0:14:39.960 --> 0:14:43.520 An EC released peripherals to augment the system, as well 0:14:43.560 --> 0:14:48.720 as updated versions of that system that incorporated those upgrades 0:14:49.160 --> 0:14:52.480 later on. So one of those was an external CD 0:14:52.800 --> 0:14:56.560 ROM drive. It originally was an additional peripheral you could buy. 0:14:56.760 --> 0:14:58.760 You could hook it up to your Turbo Graphics sixteen 0:14:59.240 --> 0:15:01.800 and then you would have a CD ROM. Later versions 0:15:01.800 --> 0:15:06.080 of the Turbo Graphics sixteen would have it incorporated into 0:15:06.160 --> 0:15:09.960 the design of the overall console. Now I mentioned this 0:15:10.120 --> 0:15:13.920 in this episode because it was released four of the 0:15:13.920 --> 0:15:17.800 Turbo Graphics sixteen in North America in late nine nine, 0:15:17.960 --> 0:15:20.800 So you had the CD ROM system go on the 0:15:20.840 --> 0:15:24.160 market about a month or two after the actual system 0:15:24.280 --> 0:15:29.120 was on sale, and that means that it's something that 0:15:29.160 --> 0:15:31.760 we should talk about in this episode. Now I'm going 0:15:31.800 --> 0:15:34.600 to mention a little bit more about the Turbo Graphics 0:15:34.640 --> 0:15:37.600 sixteen and its fate in just a moment, but first 0:15:37.920 --> 0:15:48.440 let's take a quick break. The Japanese design for the 0:15:48.480 --> 0:15:53.000 PC Engine was incredibly efficient and made the PC Engine 0:15:53.040 --> 0:15:58.160 one of the smallest consoles. Ever, it's very compact. The 0:15:58.160 --> 0:16:03.280 original machine ran on artridges called WHO cards, and they 0:16:03.280 --> 0:16:06.400 were about the dimension of a credit card, but thicker, 0:16:07.160 --> 0:16:10.760 and the CD ROM peripheral meant game designers could take 0:16:10.800 --> 0:16:13.880 advantage of the increased storage capacity of the compact disc 0:16:14.200 --> 0:16:17.560 to build longer, more intricate games, though they were still 0:16:17.680 --> 0:16:20.760 limited by the capabilities of the processor and the chips 0:16:20.800 --> 0:16:23.480 and the Turbographics sixteen. It's not like those games can 0:16:23.520 --> 0:16:27.120 magically just be better, uh as far as graphics and 0:16:27.240 --> 0:16:30.760 sound word concern It also had only one game control 0:16:30.800 --> 0:16:34.320 report on the console, though you could purchase a peripheral 0:16:34.360 --> 0:16:37.240 called a Turbo Tap to allow you to plug into 0:16:37.360 --> 0:16:41.000 up to five controllers onto that system. And the Turbo 0:16:41.040 --> 0:16:45.840 Graphics sixteen wasn't nearly as small the US version as 0:16:45.920 --> 0:16:50.000 the Japanese version of that same machine, So the form 0:16:50.120 --> 0:16:53.600 factor for the Turbo Graphics sixteen is different from the 0:16:53.680 --> 0:16:56.760 PC Engine, even though the guts are exactly the same, 0:16:57.560 --> 0:17:00.840 and this was done on purpose. The general full pilosophy 0:17:01.040 --> 0:17:06.000 was that Americans would prefer something bigger and more futuristic 0:17:06.040 --> 0:17:11.480 looking and more that for Americans, you wanted to have 0:17:11.560 --> 0:17:17.080 a bigger console because the perceived uh quality, the perceived 0:17:17.560 --> 0:17:21.439 value of the console would be greater because it was bigger. 0:17:21.840 --> 0:17:24.840 In other words, if you're selling something that was smaller, 0:17:24.880 --> 0:17:27.520 even though it was smaller because it was very well engineered, 0:17:28.680 --> 0:17:31.200 people would think, well, that's not worth the money they're 0:17:31.200 --> 0:17:34.320 asking because look at the size of the thing. They 0:17:34.359 --> 0:17:36.840 were thinking about the size of the form factor, not 0:17:36.880 --> 0:17:42.439 necessarily its performance. The PC engine did quite well in Japan, 0:17:42.920 --> 0:17:47.800 but the Turbographics sixteen really never matched that performance here 0:17:47.800 --> 0:17:52.840 in North America. The console costs one dollars and nine 0:17:53.359 --> 0:17:56.800 cents in the US upon hitting store shelves, making it 0:17:56.880 --> 0:18:00.960 nearly twice as expensive as the ness, and if you 0:18:01.000 --> 0:18:04.199 wanted to add that CD ROM peripheral at the end 0:18:04.200 --> 0:18:06.959 of nineteen nine, you would have to shell out an 0:18:06.960 --> 0:18:11.720 additional three hundred nine dollars and cents. That was a 0:18:11.800 --> 0:18:14.760 heck of a steep price to pay, and very few 0:18:14.800 --> 0:18:18.160 people did it. I mean, you're talking about a peripheral. 0:18:18.280 --> 0:18:22.119 That's two hundred dollars more than the base console that 0:18:22.280 --> 0:18:26.800 it is augmenting. Now, what this meant for developers was 0:18:26.840 --> 0:18:29.080 that there were so few people who are buying the 0:18:29.119 --> 0:18:33.320 CD ROM peripheral, it didn't make sense to dedicate resources 0:18:33.359 --> 0:18:37.359 in a game development studio to build games for that peripheral, 0:18:38.320 --> 0:18:41.480 so it would become a very expensive add on to 0:18:41.640 --> 0:18:45.880 a video game console that was largely unsupported. So gamers 0:18:45.920 --> 0:18:49.000 tend to blame the failure of the Turbographics sixteen in 0:18:49.040 --> 0:18:53.440 the US on several factors, such as a lackluster video 0:18:53.480 --> 0:18:59.800 game library. Nintendo was really busy working with deals uh 0:19:00.119 --> 0:19:05.200 on third party developers into what amounted to exclusivity deals, 0:19:05.240 --> 0:19:08.720 like the developers weren't really able to develop for other platforms, 0:19:09.320 --> 0:19:11.920 there was no real marketing support in the United States, 0:19:12.080 --> 0:19:14.400 and there was also the debut of another system I'll 0:19:14.440 --> 0:19:17.359 get to in just a moment that was technically superior 0:19:17.480 --> 0:19:23.000 to the Turbographics sixteen. By nine, NC decided that enough 0:19:23.080 --> 0:19:27.320 was enough and discontinued production of the console. The company 0:19:27.359 --> 0:19:30.960 would go on to produce a thirty two bit successor 0:19:31.480 --> 0:19:35.080 called the PCFX, but that was only ever released in 0:19:35.160 --> 0:19:39.280 Japan in n One other thing to add, there is 0:19:39.320 --> 0:19:43.080 a Turbo Graphics sixteen mini consoles scheduled to come out 0:19:43.119 --> 0:19:46.840 in March twenty with fifty seven games those Some of 0:19:46.880 --> 0:19:50.480 those games are the English and Japanese versions of the 0:19:50.560 --> 0:19:53.560 same title, so you get a couple of duplicates, but 0:19:53.800 --> 0:19:56.520 they are you know, one of them has been regionalized 0:19:56.600 --> 0:19:59.600 for the United States and probably has slightly different content 0:19:59.720 --> 0:20:02.600 than the original Japanese version. But if you were ever 0:20:02.680 --> 0:20:05.320 curious about the Turbo Graphics sixteen, you can actually pick 0:20:05.359 --> 0:20:08.760 up one of these Turbo Graphics sixteen minis and for 0:20:08.800 --> 0:20:12.800 about a hundred bucks to try it out. Now let's 0:20:12.800 --> 0:20:16.520 shift gears and talk about the Sega Genesis launch in 0:20:16.600 --> 0:20:20.480 North America. This is a console that had also already 0:20:20.520 --> 0:20:25.080 premiered in Japan. This one came out nineteen under its 0:20:25.119 --> 0:20:28.879 original name, which was the Sega Mega Drive, but it 0:20:29.040 --> 0:20:32.240 was brand new over here in the United States nineteen nine. 0:20:32.760 --> 0:20:35.600 Over Here we called it the Genesis, and pretty much 0:20:35.600 --> 0:20:38.960 everywhere else in the world it remained the Mega Drive. Also, 0:20:39.000 --> 0:20:41.320 this is where we get another qualifier for that Turbo 0:20:41.359 --> 0:20:46.160 Graphics sixteen see In Japan, the PC Engine, also known 0:20:46.200 --> 0:20:51.320 as the Turbo Graphics sixteen launched first, but in North America, 0:20:51.760 --> 0:20:56.680 the Genesis or the Mega Drive released on August fourteenth, 0:20:56.760 --> 0:21:01.240 nineteen eighty nine, and the Turbographics sixteen least on August 0:21:01.320 --> 0:21:04.360 twenty nine of that same year, so here in the States, 0:21:04.800 --> 0:21:08.760 the first sixteen bit game system really goes to the Genesis. 0:21:09.400 --> 0:21:12.800 More on that in a second. Sega had previously attempted 0:21:13.000 --> 0:21:17.320 to compete with Nintendo and also a flailing Atari, with 0:21:17.480 --> 0:21:20.439 the Sega Master System a few years earlier, but that 0:21:20.520 --> 0:21:22.480 console didn't get a whole lot of lo from the 0:21:22.520 --> 0:21:25.520 gaming community at large in the United States. It did 0:21:25.600 --> 0:21:28.720 much better in places like Europe, and in Brazil it 0:21:28.760 --> 0:21:32.879 became a dominant video game console. There was an even 0:21:32.880 --> 0:21:36.440 earlier Sega video game console called the SG one thousand, 0:21:36.760 --> 0:21:40.320 but that one never launched in North America at all. Now, 0:21:40.320 --> 0:21:44.240 the story goes that Sega originally intended the Mega Drive 0:21:44.560 --> 0:21:48.240 or Genesis to be another eight bit video game system 0:21:48.320 --> 0:21:52.720 like the Nintendo Entertainment System, but then Sega executives heard 0:21:52.840 --> 0:21:56.320 rumor that Nintendo was developing the next generation of video 0:21:56.359 --> 0:22:00.800 game hardware, and they didn't want to trade behind the 0:22:00.840 --> 0:22:04.840 dominant company in home video games. On a technical level, Again, 0:22:05.400 --> 0:22:07.160 they didn't want to have to try and catch up. 0:22:07.359 --> 0:22:10.200 They definitely didn't want to release an eight bit system 0:22:10.280 --> 0:22:13.320 just a year or two before a sixteen bit system 0:22:13.359 --> 0:22:16.760 from Nintendo. So they set a big goal, and that 0:22:16.840 --> 0:22:19.200 was to be the first to market with a true 0:22:19.359 --> 0:22:24.280 sixteen bit video game system. Unlike the Turbographics sixteen, the 0:22:24.359 --> 0:22:27.840 CPU and the Sega Genesis is a real, honest to 0:22:27.920 --> 0:22:32.080 goodness sixteen bit CPU. So not only did it come 0:22:32.080 --> 0:22:35.320 out first in the States, it could also boast being 0:22:35.359 --> 0:22:40.080 more technologically advanced than the console that released right after 0:22:40.200 --> 0:22:44.280 it came out. In addition to the more powerful CPU, 0:22:44.359 --> 0:22:47.720 the Genesis had seventy two kilobytes of RAM and sixty 0:22:47.800 --> 0:22:51.760 four kilobytes of video RAM. It had a color palette 0:22:51.760 --> 0:22:54.520 of five hundred twelve colors and was able to show 0:22:54.640 --> 0:22:58.040 up to sixty one on screen at once, so in 0:22:58.080 --> 0:23:01.920 that way, it was actually lagging by hind the Turbographics sixteen, 0:23:02.000 --> 0:23:05.119 which could show more colors on screen at a single moment. 0:23:05.800 --> 0:23:08.879 One feature that I don't think was widely known in 0:23:08.920 --> 0:23:12.720 the US was that the Sega Genesis was also backwards 0:23:12.720 --> 0:23:16.600 compatible with the Sega Master System. That was, if you 0:23:16.760 --> 0:23:21.400 bought the peripheral called the power Base Converter, which makes 0:23:21.440 --> 0:23:24.199 it sound like a video game peripheral that Luke Skywalker 0:23:24.240 --> 0:23:28.320 would use. The original game bundled with the Sega Genesis 0:23:28.400 --> 0:23:31.919 was Altered Beasts, which is a pretty trippy game that 0:23:31.960 --> 0:23:34.720 I used to play in the arcades. And unlike the 0:23:34.880 --> 0:23:39.720 NBC launch of the Turbographics sixteen, which seemed anemic from 0:23:39.720 --> 0:23:43.760 a marketing perspective in the US, Sega North America came 0:23:43.800 --> 0:23:48.359 out like guns a blazon to promote the Genesis, including 0:23:48.400 --> 0:23:52.399 commercials with celebrity appearances, and that helped push the Genesis 0:23:52.520 --> 0:23:57.360 into a solid second place behind Nintendo Entertainment System, even 0:23:57.359 --> 0:24:00.080 though the NES was still an eight bit system. The 0:24:00.080 --> 0:24:03.639 Turbo Graphics sixteen became and also ran in the United 0:24:03.680 --> 0:24:06.280 States and didn't make much of a dent. Now. While 0:24:06.280 --> 0:24:09.560 the Genesis did not immediately overtake Nintendo's market share in 0:24:09.600 --> 0:24:13.040 North America, that would change with the introduction of a 0:24:13.080 --> 0:24:16.720 certain speedy, little blue guy called Sonic a couple of 0:24:16.800 --> 0:24:20.080 years later. That's when we saw Sega on top in 0:24:20.160 --> 0:24:23.240 the console wars for a short while, and it didn't 0:24:23.280 --> 0:24:25.879 hurt that. At the same time, the company dropped the 0:24:25.920 --> 0:24:30.640 price for the Sega Genesis console, so it shot ahead 0:24:30.960 --> 0:24:33.479 for at least a short while in the United States. 0:24:34.240 --> 0:24:37.200 Speaking of price, when the Genesis first went on the market, 0:24:37.240 --> 0:24:40.960 it would set you back one eighty nine dollars, making 0:24:41.000 --> 0:24:43.879 it just a hundred dollars more than a Nintendo Game 0:24:43.920 --> 0:24:47.359 Boy at that same time. Not long after both the 0:24:47.440 --> 0:24:51.480 Genesis and the Turbo Graphics sixteen hit the market, another 0:24:51.560 --> 0:24:54.560 system went gold in North America, and this was a 0:24:54.600 --> 0:24:59.600 system from an established American name in video games. It 0:24:59.680 --> 0:25:04.360 came on the former heavyweight champion of home gaming, Atari, 0:25:04.840 --> 0:25:09.480 and it was poised to revolutionize handheld gaming. The system 0:25:09.680 --> 0:25:13.639 was the Atari Links, which actually didn't start out as 0:25:13.640 --> 0:25:18.520 an Atari handheld system at all. Instead, it began as 0:25:18.560 --> 0:25:21.960 a project at a company called Epics E P y 0:25:22.400 --> 0:25:26.800 X in eighty six or early seven. A couple of 0:25:26.840 --> 0:25:31.240