Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio and How Stuff Works, and I love all
Speaker 1: things tech. And it's two thousand nineteen at least it
Speaker 1: is when I'm recording this episode, and I thought it
Speaker 1: might be fun, just for the heck of it to
Speaker 1: look back thirty years ago to the latest in video
Speaker 1: game technology, both to walk down memory lane, since I
Speaker 1: was very much around in nine, or also to just
Speaker 1: reflect on how far we've come since then. You know,
Speaker 1: I've come a very far away. I was a teenager
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty nine. And I should also point out
Speaker 1: I'm framing this episode in the context of North America
Speaker 1: and specifically the United States. I will mention other regions
Speaker 1: as well, but this is largely because of me looking
Speaker 1: back at thirty years ago in the US and what
Speaker 1: was the video game industry like at that point. Now,
Speaker 1: some very important stuff came out in nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1: Some of it would set companies on a path of
Speaker 1: unprecedented success, and some would turn out to be massive misfires,
Speaker 1: and some companies would have a little bit of both,
Speaker 1: and there were a few big moves on the business
Speaker 1: side as well. But first let's give some context for
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine. So by nineteen eighty nine, the video
Speaker 1: game industry was in a booming renaissance. The first wave
Speaker 1: of home video game tech had really begun in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen seventies, and it ended, at least in North
Speaker 1: America in a crashing halt in nineteen eighty three. Now,
Speaker 1: the reasons for the video game crash are numerous, and
Speaker 1: I've covered them in previous episodes, so we're not going
Speaker 1: to go into it here, but the industry seemed truly
Speaker 1: dead and literally buried. At least that was the literal
Speaker 1: case for many copies of the Atari twenty Game Et
Speaker 1: the Extraterrestrial and a few other titles that were just
Speaker 1: sitting around taking up space. Then they ended up sitting
Speaker 1: around inside a landfill. Then a company known more for
Speaker 1: playing cards than video games made a go of of
Speaker 1: it in North America. That company was Nintendo, which had
Speaker 1: already made some arcade games, but was a brand new
Speaker 1: player in the home video game console market in the
Speaker 1: United States, and unfortunately, due to timing, they're coming in
Speaker 1: just after the video game crash. Initially, retailers resisted shouldering
Speaker 1: the risk of carrying video game systems again, but Nintendo
Speaker 1: won them over, and as I'm sure you're all aware,
Speaker 1: that turned into a huge success. So by nine nine,
Speaker 1: the video game market was established again, and it also
Speaker 1: had several companies competing for customers. Now, back in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen eighties, those companies would include things like Atari
Speaker 1: and Colco and Mattel Electronics, among others. Atari was still
Speaker 1: around nine nine, but it was no longer the dominant force.
Speaker 1: That designation belonged to squarely to Nintendo, and Nintendo debuted
Speaker 1: a killer product in nineteen eighty nine in the United States.
Speaker 1: The company launched the Game Boy both in Japan and
Speaker 1: in North America in nineteen nine. Japan got it several
Speaker 1: months earlier. It was largely the brainchild of Gunpie Yakoi,
Speaker 1: and I apologize sincerely for butchering names, but he had
Speaker 1: previously led the company on a design for a line
Speaker 1: of portable gaming devices called the Game and Watch. These
Speaker 1: were dedicated to a single title each. They were a
Speaker 1: little handhold, simple game consoles that only had a single
Speaker 1: title programmed hard coded onto the machine. They had a
Speaker 1: very primitive CPU, or really that just primitive microprocessors, and
Speaker 1: they had very very simple graphics compared to something like
Speaker 1: the Game Boy. Now, once technology had advanced to a
Speaker 1: point where more robust and a programmable handheld system would
Speaker 1: become feasible, the company got to work designing the game
Speaker 1: Boy system uh the coin. A designer named Satro Okada
Speaker 1: worked to make this a reality, and Okada's original design
Speaker 1: was a bit more ambitious, but it also would have
Speaker 1: been much more expensive. So while he had initially planned
Speaker 1: for a much more feature robust version of the Game Boy,
Speaker 1: Nintendo executives decided that it was better to cut a
Speaker 1: few features and launch a system that wouldn't cost too
Speaker 1: much and that would help encourage people to adopt the system.
Speaker 1: The handheld game console, the game Boy would revolutionize home gaming.
Speaker 1: Suddenly video games were true le portable. Most handheld games
Speaker 1: preceding the Game Boy were dedicated to a single title,
Speaker 1: like those game and watch games. Many of those handheld
Speaker 1: gaming systems were incredibly primitive. The game Boy brought a
Speaker 1: level of sophistication to portability that was a perfect fit,
Speaker 1: and in North America, this was paired with an amazing
Speaker 1: puzzle game that worked so well with the form factor
Speaker 1: of the Game Boy that it became nearly ubiquitous. That
Speaker 1: game was, of course, Tetris, a game designed by a
Speaker 1: Russian programmer and released earlier in the nineteen eighties, and
Speaker 1: that story alone is fascinating, but I've covered it in
Speaker 1: previous episodes of tech Stuff. The original Nintendo Game Boy
Speaker 1: was an eight bit bit system. That means that it
Speaker 1: had the same processing power as a full Nintendo Entertainment System,
Speaker 1: and I'll go into more detail about eight bit versus
Speaker 1: sixteen bit a little bit later in this episode. But
Speaker 1: like the Nintendo Entertainment System or any GAS, games for
Speaker 1: the Game Boy would appear are on cartridges, just much
Speaker 1: much smaller cartridges than what you would find on the NES.
Speaker 1: So a video game cartridge has the game hard coded
Speaker 1: onto the physical cartridge itself. It's like a circuit board,
Speaker 1: and that limits how much data you can store on
Speaker 1: the card. You're actually talking about physical circuitry. You can
Speaker 1: only get it so small. But it also tends to
Speaker 1: mean that you have a super fast gaming system. It
Speaker 1: can load games very quickly compared to ones that are
Speaker 1: reading it off, say, an optical disk. The original game
Speaker 1: Boy had a direction pad and to control buttons labeled
Speaker 1: A and B. It also had a select button and
Speaker 1: a start button. Had a monochromatic liquid crystal display or
Speaker 1: l c D. Technically it could show up to four
Speaker 1: shades of gray, and it had a resolution of one
Speaker 1: sixty six by one pixels, so not super high resolution.
Speaker 1: But it was a very tiny screen as well, so
Speaker 1: it didn't matter so much. Games ran on a pretty
Speaker 1: good clip with a frame rate of nearly sixty frames
Speaker 1: per second, and there were control dials for volume and contrast.
Speaker 1: You can change the contrast so you could play the
Speaker 1: game in different levels of light and still see what
Speaker 1: was going on on the screen. In addition to the
Speaker 1: eight bit processor, it had eight kilobytes of RAM that's
Speaker 1: random access memory, and the basic handheld device had four
Speaker 1: channels for sound, but it also only had a single speaker. However,
Speaker 1: you could get stereo sound by plugging in headphones into
Speaker 1: a headphone jack, and Nintendo bundled headphones with the game
Speaker 1: Boys so you could do this. One innovation that the
Speaker 1: game Boy brought in was the ability to link together
Speaker 1: multiple game Boy devices, so you could link to game
Speaker 1: Boys together through their serial ports, or you could use
Speaker 1: special adapters and you could link more game Boy systems together,
Speaker 1: which we become really useful when the Pokemon games started
Speaker 1: coming out. The game Boy relied on four double A
Speaker 1: batteries for power, which Nintendo claimed would provide thirty plus
Speaker 1: hours of game time before you drained all the juice
Speaker 1: from those batteries. More conservative estimates put that playtime closer
Speaker 1: to ten to fourteen hours, so about half of what
Speaker 1: Nintendo was claiming. But the battery life really did set
Speaker 1: it apart from the competitors that would follow the game
Speaker 1: Boy just a little bit later. You could also purchase
Speaker 1: some additional peripherals, such as an AC adapter, and you
Speaker 1: could plug your game Boy into the wall so you
Speaker 1: didn't have to worry about using batteries at all. Of course,
Speaker 1: that also makes it much less portable. Or you could
Speaker 1: buy a rechargeable battery pack to cut down on those
Speaker 1: a A battery purchases, but then of course you would
Speaker 1: have to recharge the battery pack whenever you had drained
Speaker 1: it down. The game Boy would become one of the
Speaker 1: top selling video game systems of all time. That being said,
Speaker 1: it is hard to say exactly how well the original
Speaker 1: game Boy did because Nintendo would lump together the group
Speaker 1: sales figures for the game Boy and the game Boy Color,
Speaker 1: which came out nearly a decade after the original game Boy.
Speaker 1: All of those get lumped into one category. The original
Speaker 1: retail price for the game Boy was eighty nine dollars
Speaker 1: and cents. Nintendo's game Boy got a head start against
Speaker 1: other handheld devices that would launch a little later in
Speaker 1: nineteen beyond, and it was a hit pretty much right
Speaker 1: at the get go. In Japan, Nintendo's sold out of
Speaker 1: its initial production run right away. I g N reports
Speaker 1: that on the first day of sales in North America,
Speaker 1: forty thousand people bought a game Boy, not bad for
Speaker 1: its brand new debut in a brand new market. Nintendo
Speaker 1: did have competitors, though, and most of them were from Japan.
Speaker 1: One of those competitors was ANYC Corporation, which is still
Speaker 1: very much round today and is involved in several high
Speaker 1: tech businesses, but not so much in video games anymore.
Speaker 1: The company wanted to get into this lucrative home video
Speaker 1: game business in the nineteen eighties, and to do that,
Speaker 1: NBC partnered with another Japanese company called Hudson Soft, which
Speaker 1: very much does not exist anymore today as it merged
Speaker 1: with Konami in two thousand twelve. The result was a
Speaker 1: machine that in Japan was called the PC Engine, and
Speaker 1: it came out in Japan in nineteen seven. It would
Speaker 1: take two more years to make its way over to
Speaker 1: North America, and in August it would debut in the
Speaker 1: United States under a different name, the Turbo Graphics sixteen.
Speaker 1: The Turbo Graphics sixteen was the an early console in
Speaker 1: the market that would help bring in the sixteen bit era.
Speaker 1: But that's with a few qualifiers. Systems like the Famicom
Speaker 1: better known as the Ninteno entertainment system in the US
Speaker 1: where eight bit systems not sixteen bit systems. Now, let's
Speaker 1: talk about that difference. Remember that a bit is a
Speaker 1: basic unit of information in computer language. It's a zero
Speaker 1: or it's a one, So it's akin to a physical switch,
Speaker 1: either being switched off or switched on. An eight bet
Speaker 1: processor can perform operations on data up to eight bits
Speaker 1: in size, and if you were to write out all
Speaker 1: the different arrangements of eight bits, from having eight zeros
Speaker 1: in a row to eight ones in a row and
Speaker 1: every variation in between. You would count those all up
Speaker 1: and you would find out you have two hundred fifty
Speaker 1: six variations of standing for the numbers of zero to
Speaker 1: two D. A sixteen bit processor can handle data of
Speaker 1: up to sixteen bits in size, and you might at
Speaker 1: first think, oh, it can hold twice as much or
Speaker 1: handle twice as much information, or information that's twice as large,
Speaker 1: but it's actually way way more than that. We're talking
Speaker 1: instead of two hundred fifty six variations, sixty five thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred thirty six variations, and if you're paying attention,
Speaker 1: that's two hundred fifty six squared. This same mathematical relationship
Speaker 1: holds true as you go up bit sizes. So a
Speaker 1: thirty two bit processor can handle data of up to
Speaker 1: thirty two bits and size, which has four billion, two million,
Speaker 1: nine hundred sixty seven thousand, two hundred nine variations, which
Speaker 1: is also sixty thousand, five hundred thirty six squared, and
Speaker 1: so on. So you see, as you increase the bit
Speaker 1: size that a processor can handle, it can handle an
Speaker 1: enormous amount more information. Anyway, back to sixteen bits. What
Speaker 1: this means from a user experience standpoint is that the
Speaker 1: mass seen can process more data in the same amount
Speaker 1: of time as an eight bit machine, which for video
Speaker 1: games tends to most easily be perceived in the form
Speaker 1: of better graphics and sound. But here's where we get
Speaker 1: into some of those qualifiers. The Turbo Graphics sixteen actually
Speaker 1: wasn't a true sixteen bit system. It had an eight
Speaker 1: bit CPU, just like the Nintendo Entertainment System, but it
Speaker 1: also had a sixteen bet video display controller and a
Speaker 1: sixteen bit video color encoder. Now this meant that the
Speaker 1: Turbo Graphics sixteen could spit out better graphics and way
Speaker 1: more colors than an AS could do. The NES was
Speaker 1: limited to sixty four preset colors, and it could only
Speaker 1: display twenty five of those at one time on a screen. Typically,
Speaker 1: the Tobographics sixteen had a palette of five hundred twelve colors,
Speaker 1: which is technically nine bits in size, and it could
Speaker 1: show four eight two of those on screen at once,
Speaker 1: although that was divided into colors that would be in
Speaker 1: the background and colors that were in moving components on
Speaker 1: the screen that we would call sprites. The resolution of
Speaker 1: the Turbo Graphics sixteen might make you wins today, as
Speaker 1: most games used a resolution of two hundred fifty six
Speaker 1: by two hundred thirty nine pixels, essentially the same resolution
Speaker 1: as the NES. Some games would boast a resolution of
Speaker 1: up to five twelve by two pixels, but they were rare.
Speaker 1: There were many variations of the PC Engine slash Turbo
Speaker 1: Graphics sixteen. In fact, there were enough different versions of
Speaker 1: this game system to justify a full episode of tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: An EC released peripherals to augment the system, as well
Speaker 1: as updated versions of that system that incorporated those upgrades
Speaker 1: later on. So one of those was an external CD
Speaker 1: ROM drive. It originally was an additional peripheral you could buy.
Speaker 1: You could hook it up to your Turbo Graphics sixteen
Speaker 1: and then you would have a CD ROM. Later versions
Speaker 1: of the Turbo Graphics sixteen would have it incorporated into
Speaker 1: the design of the overall console. Now I mentioned this
Speaker 1: in this episode because it was released four of the
Speaker 1: Turbo Graphics sixteen in North America in late nine nine,
Speaker 1: So you had the CD ROM system go on the
Speaker 1: market about a month or two after the actual system
Speaker 1: was on sale, and that means that it's something that
Speaker 1: we should talk about in this episode. Now I'm going
Speaker 1: to mention a little bit more about the Turbo Graphics
Speaker 1: sixteen and its fate in just a moment, but first
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. The Japanese design for the
Speaker 1: PC Engine was incredibly efficient and made the PC Engine
Speaker 1: one of the smallest consoles. Ever, it's very compact. The
Speaker 1: original machine ran on artridges called WHO cards, and they
Speaker 1: were about the dimension of a credit card, but thicker,
Speaker 1: and the CD ROM peripheral meant game designers could take
Speaker 1: advantage of the increased storage capacity of the compact disc
Speaker 1: to build longer, more intricate games, though they were still
Speaker 1: limited by the capabilities of the processor and the chips
Speaker 1: and the Turbographics sixteen. It's not like those games can
Speaker 1: magically just be better, uh as far as graphics and
Speaker 1: sound word concern It also had only one game control
Speaker 1: report on the console, though you could purchase a peripheral
Speaker 1: called a Turbo Tap to allow you to plug into
Speaker 1: up to five controllers onto that system. And the Turbo
Speaker 1: Graphics sixteen wasn't nearly as small the US version as
Speaker 1: the Japanese version of that same machine, So the form
Speaker 1: factor for the Turbo Graphics sixteen is different from the
Speaker 1: PC Engine, even though the guts are exactly the same,
Speaker 1: and this was done on purpose. The general full pilosophy
Speaker 1: was that Americans would prefer something bigger and more futuristic
Speaker 1: looking and more that for Americans, you wanted to have
Speaker 1: a bigger console because the perceived uh quality, the perceived
Speaker 1: value of the console would be greater because it was bigger.
Speaker 1: In other words, if you're selling something that was smaller,
Speaker 1: even though it was smaller because it was very well engineered,
Speaker 1: people would think, well, that's not worth the money they're
Speaker 1: asking because look at the size of the thing. They
Speaker 1: were thinking about the size of the form factor, not
Speaker 1: necessarily its performance. The PC engine did quite well in Japan,
Speaker 1: but the Turbographics sixteen really never matched that performance here
Speaker 1: in North America. The console costs one dollars and nine
Speaker 1: cents in the US upon hitting store shelves, making it
Speaker 1: nearly twice as expensive as the ness, and if you
Speaker 1: wanted to add that CD ROM peripheral at the end
Speaker 1: of nineteen nine, you would have to shell out an
Speaker 1: additional three hundred nine dollars and cents. That was a
Speaker 1: heck of a steep price to pay, and very few
Speaker 1: people did it. I mean, you're talking about a peripheral.
Speaker 1: That's two hundred dollars more than the base console that
Speaker 1: it is augmenting. Now, what this meant for developers was
Speaker 1: that there were so few people who are buying the
Speaker 1: CD ROM peripheral, it didn't make sense to dedicate resources
Speaker 1: in a game development studio to build games for that peripheral,
Speaker 1: so it would become a very expensive add on to
Speaker 1: a video game console that was largely unsupported. So gamers
Speaker 1: tend to blame the failure of the Turbographics sixteen in
Speaker 1: the US on several factors, such as a lackluster video
Speaker 1: game library. Nintendo was really busy working with deals uh
Speaker 1: on third party developers into what amounted to exclusivity deals,
Speaker 1: like the developers weren't really able to develop for other platforms,
Speaker 1: there was no real marketing support in the United States,
Speaker 1: and there was also the debut of another system I'll
Speaker 1: get to in just a moment that was technically superior
Speaker 1: to the Turbographics sixteen. By nine, NC decided that enough
Speaker 1: was enough and discontinued production of the console. The company
Speaker 1: would go on to produce a thirty two bit successor
Speaker 1: called the PCFX, but that was only ever released in
Speaker 1: Japan in n One other thing to add, there is
Speaker 1: a Turbo Graphics sixteen mini consoles scheduled to come out
Speaker 1: in March twenty with fifty seven games those Some of
Speaker 1: those games are the English and Japanese versions of the
Speaker 1: same title, so you get a couple of duplicates, but
Speaker 1: they are you know, one of them has been regionalized
Speaker 1: for the United States and probably has slightly different content
Speaker 1: than the original Japanese version. But if you were ever
Speaker 1: curious about the Turbo Graphics sixteen, you can actually pick
Speaker 1: up one of these Turbo Graphics sixteen minis and for
Speaker 1: about a hundred bucks to try it out. Now let's
Speaker 1: shift gears and talk about the Sega Genesis launch in
Speaker 1: North America. This is a console that had also already
Speaker 1: premiered in Japan. This one came out nineteen under its
Speaker 1: original name, which was the Sega Mega Drive, but it
Speaker 1: was brand new over here in the United States nineteen nine.
Speaker 1: Over Here we called it the Genesis, and pretty much
Speaker 1: everywhere else in the world it remained the Mega Drive. Also,
Speaker 1: this is where we get another qualifier for that Turbo
Speaker 1: Graphics sixteen see In Japan, the PC Engine, also known
Speaker 1: as the Turbo Graphics sixteen launched first, but in North America,
Speaker 1: the Genesis or the Mega Drive released on August fourteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine, and the Turbographics sixteen least on August
Speaker 1: twenty nine of that same year, so here in the States,
Speaker 1: the first sixteen bit game system really goes to the Genesis.
Speaker 1: More on that in a second. Sega had previously attempted
Speaker 1: to compete with Nintendo and also a flailing Atari, with
Speaker 1: the Sega Master System a few years earlier, but that
Speaker 1: console didn't get a whole lot of lo from the
Speaker 1: gaming community at large in the United States. It did
Speaker 1: much better in places like Europe, and in Brazil it
Speaker 1: became a dominant video game console. There was an even
Speaker 1: earlier Sega video game console called the SG one thousand,
Speaker 1: but that one never launched in North America at all. Now,
Speaker 1: the story goes that Sega originally intended the Mega Drive
Speaker 1: or Genesis to be another eight bit video game system
Speaker 1: like the Nintendo Entertainment System, but then Sega executives heard
Speaker 1: rumor that Nintendo was developing the next generation of video
Speaker 1: game hardware, and they didn't want to trade behind the
Speaker 1: dominant company in home video games. On a technical level, Again,
Speaker 1: they didn't want to have to try and catch up.
Speaker 1: They definitely didn't want to release an eight bit system
Speaker 1: just a year or two before a sixteen bit system
Speaker 1: from Nintendo. So they set a big goal, and that
Speaker 1: was to be the first to market with a true
Speaker 1: sixteen bit video game system. Unlike the Turbographics sixteen, the
Speaker 1: CPU and the Sega Genesis is a real, honest to
Speaker 1: goodness sixteen bit CPU. So not only did it come
Speaker 1: out first in the States, it could also boast being
Speaker 1: more technologically advanced than the console that released right after
Speaker 1: it came out. In addition to the more powerful CPU,
Speaker 1: the Genesis had seventy two kilobytes of RAM and sixty
Speaker 1: four kilobytes of video RAM. It had a color palette
Speaker 1: of five hundred twelve colors and was able to show
Speaker 1: up to sixty one on screen at once, so in
Speaker 1: that way, it was actually lagging by hind the Turbographics sixteen,
Speaker 1: which could show more colors on screen at a single moment.
Speaker 1: One feature that I don't think was widely known in
Speaker 1: the US was that the Sega Genesis was also backwards
Speaker 1: compatible with the Sega Master System. That was, if you
Speaker 1: bought the peripheral called the power Base Converter, which makes
Speaker 1: it sound like a video game peripheral that Luke Skywalker
Speaker 1: would use. The original game bundled with the Sega Genesis
Speaker 1: was Altered Beasts, which is a pretty trippy game that
Speaker 1: I used to play in the arcades. And unlike the
Speaker 1: NBC launch of the Turbographics sixteen, which seemed anemic from
Speaker 1: a marketing perspective in the US, Sega North America came
Speaker 1: out like guns a blazon to promote the Genesis, including
Speaker 1: commercials with celebrity appearances, and that helped push the Genesis
Speaker 1: into a solid second place behind Nintendo Entertainment System, even
Speaker 1: though the NES was still an eight bit system. The
Speaker 1: Turbo Graphics sixteen became and also ran in the United
Speaker 1: States and didn't make much of a dent. Now. While
Speaker 1: the Genesis did not immediately overtake Nintendo's market share in
Speaker 1: North America, that would change with the introduction of a
Speaker 1: certain speedy, little blue guy called Sonic a couple of
Speaker 1: years later. That's when we saw Sega on top in
Speaker 1: the console wars for a short while, and it didn't
Speaker 1: hurt that. At the same time, the company dropped the
Speaker 1: price for the Sega Genesis console, so it shot ahead
Speaker 1: for at least a short while in the United States.
Speaker 1: Speaking of price, when the Genesis first went on the market,
Speaker 1: it would set you back one eighty nine dollars, making
Speaker 1: it just a hundred dollars more than a Nintendo Game
Speaker 1: Boy at that same time. Not long after both the
Speaker 1: Genesis and the Turbo Graphics sixteen hit the market, another
Speaker 1: system went gold in North America, and this was a
Speaker 1: system from an established American name in video games. It
Speaker 1: came on the former heavyweight champion of home gaming, Atari,
Speaker 1: and it was poised to revolutionize handheld gaming. The system
Speaker 1: was the Atari Links, which actually didn't start out as
Speaker 1: an Atari handheld system at all. Instead, it began as
Speaker 1: a project at a company called Epics E P y
Speaker 1: X in eighty six or early seven. A couple of
Speaker 1: the designers, Dave Needle and R. J. Michael, had worked
Speaker 1: on the original Amiga computer system design. Like Nintendo, they
Speaker 1: wanted to bring handheld gaming into the next era, and
Speaker 1: their design was much more ambitious than the game Boy was.
Speaker 1: And keep in mind this was being developed at the
Speaker 1: same time that the game Boy was being developed. This
Speaker 1: was called the Handy in epics. It was the code
Speaker 1: name for it. The less said about that, the better,
Speaker 1: I think. But it was a beefy handheld system. If
Speaker 1: you're familiar with the Amiga, then that statement probably doesn't
Speaker 1: come as much of the surprise because the Amiga was
Speaker 1: known as a computer with superior graphics and sound at
Speaker 1: the time of its production. The handheld console called the
Speaker 1: Handy would follow a similar path. So the CPU and
Speaker 1: the Handy slash Links was an eight bit processor like
Speaker 1: that of the Turbographics sixteen and the No Entertainment System,
Speaker 1: but it also had two coprocessors nicknamed Suzie and Mikey,
Speaker 1: and these were custom built sixteen bit chips running at
Speaker 1: a clock speed of sixteen mega hurts. It also had
Speaker 1: a math coprocessor. These chips gave the future Links the
Speaker 1: ability to create sophisticated, colorful gaming experiences. In fact, the
Speaker 1: device would be able to display up to four thousand,
Speaker 1: ninety six colors total, though it could only show sixteen
Speaker 1: simultaneous colors per scan line on the screen. The standard
Speaker 1: resolution was one hundred sixty pixels by one hundred two pixels,
Speaker 1: with a sort of faux high resolution mode capable of
Speaker 1: displaying a picture of up to four hundred eighty by
Speaker 1: one hundred two pixels. The screen itself measured just three
Speaker 1: and a half inches on the diagonal, so again, at
Speaker 1: that small of a screen, the resolution was pretty darn good,
Speaker 1: and it could display up to a hundred eight on
Speaker 1: screen sprites at the same time and could support a
Speaker 1: frame rate of up to seventy frames per second. It
Speaker 1: was a much bigger than the Game Boy when it
Speaker 1: came out, almost twice as wide as the Game Boy
Speaker 1: was tall, and like the Game Boy, it was a
Speaker 1: cartridge based system, and it also had a D pad
Speaker 1: for control and two pairs of buttons in the original
Speaker 1: build out for the device, so there was an A
Speaker 1: button and a B button, and then there was another
Speaker 1: A button and a B button yep, but had two
Speaker 1: sets of A B buttons. One set was at the
Speaker 1: top right side aid which had the A and the
Speaker 1: B upside down from the viewers perspective, and one set
Speaker 1: at the bottom right side, And this was so that
Speaker 1: you could, with the push of a couple of other
Speaker 1: system buttons, flipped the device around so you can actually
Speaker 1: control the D pad with your right hand instead of
Speaker 1: your left hand, and you can use your left hand
Speaker 1: to control the buttons, so it was an ambidexterous device.
Speaker 1: As a left hander, I appreciate that design decision. Now,
Speaker 1: like the game Boy, you could also link a bunch
Speaker 1: of these together if you had the right cables and
Speaker 1: had the standard volume dial, had a brightness dial, and
Speaker 1: had a few control buttons to go through game menus
Speaker 1: and stuff. It had a headphone jack and had a
Speaker 1: power jack, and it also had a speaker on the
Speaker 1: right side of the device where the buttons were. There
Speaker 1: was a whole lot of unused space inside the links
Speaker 1: build out of the system, and that's because executives at
Speaker 1: Atari thought the public would want a larger form factor.
Speaker 1: We're again getting into that perceived value philosophy, the idea
Speaker 1: that if this console looks small, people are not gonna
Speaker 1: think it's worth paying a premium price for it, so
Speaker 1: you've got to make it big and clunky. That turned
Speaker 1: out to be a mistake and one of the reasons
Speaker 1: for the links to redesign that would follow a short
Speaker 1: time later. All this power and versatility came with a cost,
Speaker 1: and that cost was battery life. The handy slash links
Speaker 1: required six double a batteries, so two more double as
Speaker 1: than the game Boy used, or you could get a
Speaker 1: special battery pack for it, or you could use an
Speaker 1: AC adapter and plug it into the wall. If you
Speaker 1: were using the regular double A batteries, those batteries drained
Speaker 1: very quickly. Now, remember the game Boy might last more
Speaker 1: than twelve or fourteen hours on a set of double
Speaker 1: A batteries, and again into that was claiming up to
Speaker 1: thirty hours. The links would go through six double a's
Speaker 1: in about four hours of play. A redesign that links
Speaker 1: to that would come a little bit later, would actually
Speaker 1: improve that power consumption a little bit, making it more
Speaker 1: of a five hour run time instead of four. Now,
Speaker 1: this was made doubly frustrating due to some games having
Speaker 1: a full run time of like an hour and a half,
Speaker 1: and there was no way to save your progress when
Speaker 1: you're playing a game. So if you start a game
Speaker 1: and your intent is I'm gonna play this game, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get to the end of this game, and it
Speaker 1: takes you an hour and a half to play through,
Speaker 1: it meant you needed to be sure that you had
Speaker 1: fresh batteries in your links when you started the game,
Speaker 1: or else you could end up losing an entire session
Speaker 1: just as things were getting good because the batteries would
Speaker 1: drain and the console would just turn off in the
Speaker 1: middle of your game. Um, more likely you're going to
Speaker 1: plug it in, but that kind of defeats the whole
Speaker 1: purpose of the portable, so it right well. During the
Speaker 1: design and development process, Epics had run into some financial
Speaker 1: problems and lack the resources needed to go into full
Speaker 1: production on a new device, so the company approached a
Speaker 1: couple of different possible partners. Stories mentioned companies like Nintendo
Speaker 1: and Sega, but that didn't go anywhere, and it would
Speaker 1: be Atari that would jump in and try to snatch
Speaker 1: this opportunity to produce a really cool handheld gaming system. Now,
Speaker 1: at the time, Atari was trailing way behind in the
Speaker 1: video game market as an console manufacturer anyway, and the
Speaker 1: story goes that Atari agreed to produce the rebranded handy
Speaker 1: officially rebranded as The Links, possibly as far back as seven,
Speaker 1: but it would actually be two years before it finally
Speaker 1: released The Links. Now, I've seen other sources that dispute
Speaker 1: this and suggest that Atari really only got involved as
Speaker 1: late as January nineteen nine, which makes more sense because
Speaker 1: that would say that the company didn't really sit on
Speaker 1: the design. Instead, that time was taken up redesigning the
Speaker 1: handy into the links. But it was definitely Attari that
Speaker 1: told the engineers to make the form factor larger again
Speaker 1: to give that perceived value UH added into the Console Boy.
Speaker 1: The eighties, fun times, clunky times. I've got more to
Speaker 1: say about nine and video games, and I'll do that
Speaker 1: after we take this quick break back to the Atari Links.
Speaker 1: The original retail price for the Atari Links was one
Speaker 1: seventy nine dollars cents, so just ten dollars shy of
Speaker 1: being both a cool Benjamin more than the Game Boy,
Speaker 1: or the same price as a Sega Genesis. But look
Speaker 1: at what you got for all that extra money. You'd
Speaker 1: have a full color screen on a handheld portable device.
Speaker 1: You have this innovative, ambidexterous design. But then again, the
Speaker 1: device was so large that it couldn't fit into the
Speaker 1: pockets of even the jinkiest of Jinko jeans. If you
Speaker 1: don't know what Jinkos are, you need to look them up.
Speaker 1: It's j N c O S. Do an image search
Speaker 1: and you can thank me later. Plus, with the batteries
Speaker 1: draining in a few hours of play and made this
Speaker 1: portable system even less portable. It was less of a
Speaker 1: hassle to just play it well. Was plugged into a
Speaker 1: power source in a wall, so that took that whole
Speaker 1: portability factor out of the picture pretty much. While Atari
Speaker 1: launched the Links in time for the holiday shopping season,
Speaker 1: it was a hard sell compared to the Game Boy,
Speaker 1: Nintendo's handhold console was cheaper the man he had a
Speaker 1: better reputation in home video games than Atari did. At
Speaker 1: that point, there were about twenty games available for the
Speaker 1: Game Boy, whereas the Links only had five. The price
Speaker 1: difference between the systems played a huge part in the
Speaker 1: decision making process, as did the battery life, and over time,
Speaker 1: the Links library would grow to include ports of some
Speaker 1: of the most popular arcade titles in Natari's library. Uh
Speaker 1: those were largely viewed as being decent games, but the
Speaker 1: same can't be said of many of the original titles
Speaker 1: that were developed specifically for the Links. Many of those
Speaker 1: were seen as being substandard games. But the Game Boy
Speaker 1: also had a really good head start and it never
Speaker 1: led up. Plus, Sega would come out with its own
Speaker 1: full color handheld system like a little bit later and
Speaker 1: complement it with a pretty large library of games. So
Speaker 1: on top of that, Links never launched in Japan at all,
Speaker 1: and it only got limited production runs for European markets,
Speaker 1: so Atari had really limited where it could succeed with
Speaker 1: the Links. To make matters worse, Atari executives decided to
Speaker 1: discontinue the Links after a couple of years in order
Speaker 1: to focus on other console systems that it was going
Speaker 1: to put out, and ultimately those other console systems failed
Speaker 1: in the market. So some people say that's possible that
Speaker 1: if Attari had just stuck with the Links a little
Speaker 1: bit longer, it might have carved out a solid spot
Speaker 1: with a larger gaming audience, particularly after the system redesign
Speaker 1: that produced a slightly smaller game system with slightly better
Speaker 1: battery life. The Links proved that the tech was there
Speaker 1: to make a pretty sophisticated handheld gaming system, something definitely
Speaker 1: beyond what the game Boy was doing. But it also
Speaker 1: helped establish that Nintendo's philosophy regarding technical sophistication could hold true.
Speaker 1: See for many years, Nintendo has focused more on the
Speaker 1: gamer experience as a whole rather than on technical specifications
Speaker 1: and technical superiority, and you can definitely see this in
Speaker 1: modern consoles like the Nintendo Switch versus the Xbox One
Speaker 1: or the Sony PlayStation four. The Switch can't measure up
Speaker 1: to the text specs of either of those other consoles,
Speaker 1: but it does have innovative mechanics and a foreign factor
Speaker 1: that allows players to experience games in a different way
Speaker 1: than they would with those other consoles. All right, October,
Speaker 1: that was a heck of a month for video gamers.
Speaker 1: The Atari Links was just one piece of gaming technology
Speaker 1: to debut that month. Another is one of those iconic
Speaker 1: video game peripherals in the nineteen eighties, one that I
Speaker 1: actually had a chance to play with because a buddy
Speaker 1: of mine owned one, and it's one that I would
Speaker 1: argue was much better in concept than execution, and that
Speaker 1: be the Nintendo Power Glove. And I really should do
Speaker 1: a whole episode on this because the history is fascinating,
Speaker 1: but I'll have to give a super shortened version of
Speaker 1: it for this episode. And the history does not begin
Speaker 1: with Nintendo. In fact, Nintendo was not involved in producing
Speaker 1: the Power Glove apart from granting its licensing. It was
Speaker 1: the toy company Mattel that was responsible for bringing the
Speaker 1: Power Glove to market, But even Mattel doesn't factor into
Speaker 1: this story until much later in its In its progression,
Speaker 1: the story of the power glove really begins in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen seventies. There was a guy named Thomas Zimmerman
Speaker 1: who was daydreaming about a computer interface that would allow
Speaker 1: a user to interact with a program through just your controls.
Speaker 1: And he was largely inspired to do this because as
Speaker 1: a kid, he always liked to imagine himself conducting an
Speaker 1: orchestra when he was listening to music. So, you do
Speaker 1: like this air conducting, Well, what if you could do
Speaker 1: that real? You would have to have a software program
Speaker 1: that can create orchestral sounds, and you would have to
Speaker 1: have some sort of interface to interpret hand movements and
Speaker 1: gestures in order to control the program. So Zimmerman was
Speaker 1: mulling this over for a few years, and eventually he
Speaker 1: met up with another guy, famous guy named Jaron Lanier,
Speaker 1: and he met with him in the nineteen eighties. The
Speaker 1: two of them would work a little bit with Atari,
Speaker 1: and Lanier is the guy who coined the phrase virtual reality.
Speaker 1: There's been an important figure in the world of tech
Speaker 1: and futurism for ages. The two of them eventually created
Speaker 1: a company called Visual Programming Language. Zimmerman had created a
Speaker 1: prototype glove and even patented it, and it used an
Speaker 1: LED tube and a detector and it would use these
Speaker 1: to detect finger motions. To sense motions of the different
Speaker 1: fingers inside the glove, Zimmerman created a program that allowed
Speaker 1: users to spell out letters using finger spelling, and then
Speaker 1: the letters that they were spelling with their fingers would
Speaker 1: appear on computer screen. Well Atari offered to purchase the
Speaker 1: intellectual property for Zimmerman's glove device for ten thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: but Zimmerman wisely turned down that offer. With Lanier, Zimmerman
Speaker 1: created numerous demos for the device, now called the Data Glove,
Speaker 1: and Zimmerman kept working on the design of the glove itself.
Speaker 1: He switched to ultrasonic sensors to detect glove positions and
Speaker 1: multiple dimensions that allowed for a three D representation of
Speaker 1: a hand in a virtual space. NASA soon became a customer,
Speaker 1: as the agency was exploring the possibilities of using VR
Speaker 1: for all sorts of stuff with their various projects. Now
Speaker 1: the Data Glove was a hit for very specific use
Speaker 1: cases with large companies and organizations. Because it cost ten
Speaker 1: thousand dollars to buy one, just one. Remember, Atari was
Speaker 1: going to give ten thousand dollars for the rights to
Speaker 1: the technology. Turned out that Zimmerman and Lanier were able
Speaker 1: to sell the data glove to agencies and companies for
Speaker 1: ten thousand dollars a pop. So this minute was not
Speaker 1: exactly ready for the home market. But Lanier thought there
Speaker 1: could be potential for leveraging that type of technology for
Speaker 1: a consumer product with some real heavy tweaking, and then
Speaker 1: he reached out to a company called Abraham's Gentile Entertainment
Speaker 1: or a GE to look for consumer applications of the
Speaker 1: underlying technology. And it was a GE that was able
Speaker 1: to convince Mattel to take this idea and create a
Speaker 1: video game system peripheral from it, essentially a video game
Speaker 1: controller in glove form. Now, at the pitch meeting for Mattel,
Speaker 1: the team brought in a data glove and a computer
Speaker 1: system that allowed them to hook up the computer system
Speaker 1: to a Nintendo entertainment system. So it was a very
Speaker 1: Yankee way to create the data glove as a control
Speaker 1: system for the Nintendo. They had the CEO of Mattel,
Speaker 1: a woman named Jill Barad, try this glove on and
Speaker 1: then she played a game of Nintendo Punch Out. So
Speaker 1: she goes up against glass Joe. That's the first opponent
Speaker 1: you face in this video game, and according to the story,
Speaker 1: Barad knocked out Joe cold, which surprised her because she
Speaker 1: wasn't really a video games kind of person. But she
Speaker 1: was immediately convinced that this was a killer product. But
Speaker 1: this was also a super high tech version of that product.
Speaker 1: This was a ten thousand dollar piece of equipment hooked
Speaker 1: up to a computer system that also costs several thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: So they were gonna have to figure out a way
Speaker 1: of taking this concept and turning it into a video
Speaker 1: game console peripheral with the materials cost of just maybe
Speaker 1: sixteen to twenty six dollars, because any more than that
Speaker 1: and Mattel would not see a decent enough profit when
Speaker 1: selling it at its full retail price. So they had
Speaker 1: to figure out, how can we take this idea and
Speaker 1: make it affordable, and we can't do it the way
Speaker 1: that it was done for the data glove. Mattel licensed
Speaker 1: the patent and their engineers got to work. It wasn't
Speaker 1: Lanier and Zimmerman who were working on it. This was
Speaker 1: Mattel's people, and they had a very short time frame
Speaker 1: to turn this around because broad really wanted the device
Speaker 1: ready for the nineteen eighty nine holiday season, and it
Speaker 1: was when Mattel had made the decision to move on this.
Speaker 1: They essentially had about nine months to develop the technology
Speaker 1: and make it work and get it raid for market,
Speaker 1: and that's super crunch time. The data glove relied on
Speaker 1: fiber optic lines, but those would not hold up to
Speaker 1: the type of use that video game kid would put
Speaker 1: this glove through, so they had to find a different
Speaker 1: way to achieve the same outcome. The team found a
Speaker 1: work around by using milar sheets and Flexible inc. To
Speaker 1: create bend sensors for the fingers, and it did this
Speaker 1: by measuring changes in electrical resistance. As the material would bend,
Speaker 1: its electrical resistance would change, and so that's what would
Speaker 1: indicate to the micro controller on the glove that a
Speaker 1: finger was being moved it was moving into a bending position.
Speaker 1: The team also had to figure out how they should
Speaker 1: size the glove to fit the largest number of potential customers.
Speaker 1: If they made it too small or too big, then
Speaker 1: they could ruin their market. They also decided not to
Speaker 1: make a left handed version since the sinister people among us,
Speaker 1: including myself, only make up about ten of the population anyway,
Speaker 1: so why should we get any of the cool stuff?
Speaker 1: Though in retrospect, I guess it's okay with the Nintendo
Speaker 1: Power gloves. By the way, there was once a left
Speaker 1: handed Nintendo Power glove shown in marketing material because the
Speaker 1: poster for The Wizard the movie The Wizard had Fred
Speaker 1: Savage wearing a Nintendo Power Glove on his left hand. Anyway,
Speaker 1: like the Attari links, the engineers found that they needed
Speaker 1: to find a form factor that gave the device this
Speaker 1: perceived value because their original design, which was lighter and
Speaker 1: less bulky, apparently didn't look like it was worth that
Speaker 1: premium price. A Mattel executive said, nope, no one's gonna
Speaker 1: pay eighty or ninety bucks for this thing. So by
Speaker 1: the time they got to the final form factor and
Speaker 1: they began giving early demos, there was already a lot
Speaker 1: of excitement behind the scenes. Other retail companies were starting
Speaker 1: to get excited and starting to put in orders. And
Speaker 1: this was way before launch, so it already looked like
Speaker 1: it was going to be a huge hit. And this
Speaker 1: was before any customers got their chance to get their
Speaker 1: hands in one, and the power Glove also really would
Speaker 1: benefit from the popularity of the nes and also that
Speaker 1: movie The Wizard helped, you know, popularize the idea of
Speaker 1: the power glove, so Mattel would end up selling these
Speaker 1: things like crazy. Now. Unfortunately, when it came to actually
Speaker 1: using the power Glove to control a video game, the
Speaker 1: performance of the glove really didn't match the marketing. The
Speaker 1: motion controls typically had latency issues, specifically when the glove
Speaker 1: had not been calibrated properly, and as it turns out,
Speaker 1: it was not easy to calibrate, particularly not for kids
Speaker 1: who just wanted to slide on that cool glove and
Speaker 1: play some games. So it's hard to figure out where
Speaker 1: the center of the screen was in relation to the
Speaker 1: physical space in front of you. So it was hard
Speaker 1: for you to figure out where should I put my
Speaker 1: hand in order to do something like grab something on
Speaker 1: screen or block an incoming attack, or whatever it might be.
Speaker 1: It was hard to know where you needed to easically
Speaker 1: position your hand in relation to the screen you're looking at.
Speaker 1: You were looking at a two D representation in a
Speaker 1: three D control environment, so the tech just wasn't terribly
Speaker 1: easy to use, and it created a frustrating experience. The
Speaker 1: Power Glove got a reputation for being a cool idea
Speaker 1: that just didn't work very well, and that wasn't helped
Speaker 1: by the fact that there was a shortage of games
Speaker 1: that had been designed for the Power Glove, and not
Speaker 1: even that many that have been optimized for the Power Glove.
Speaker 1: So trying to play a game that was designed for
Speaker 1: a traditional Nintendo controller with a non traditional Power Glove
Speaker 1: controller made it frustrating, and Mattel would discontinue production in
Speaker 1: nineteen nine, just a year after they introduced it. So
Speaker 1: there you go. Those were the major video game products
Speaker 1: to launch in nineteen nine. Thirty years ago in the
Speaker 1: United States, the landscape was very different from what it
Speaker 1: is today. Now we see Sony dominating in the current
Speaker 1: generation with the PS four. Nintendo still depends heavily on
Speaker 1: loyal fans of its consoles plus innovative design choices. Microsoft,
Speaker 1: which did pretty well with the Xbox three sixty era,
Speaker 1: has been lagging a bit in the age of the
Speaker 1: Xbox One, but before long we're going to get a
Speaker 1: new generation of video game consoles. Meanwhile, we're seeing PC
Speaker 1: games doing quite well, particularly on Steam, and Steam itself
Speaker 1: is being challenged by other platforms like Epic and I
Speaker 1: guess in another thirty years I'll have to do a
Speaker 1: retrospective of what the state of video games was like
Speaker 1: in But between now and then, I think I have
Speaker 1: a few more shows I can do, so if you
Speaker 1: have any suggestions on what those shows could be about,
Speaker 1: you can send me a message. The email addresses tech
Speaker 1: Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or pop on
Speaker 1: over to our website that's tech stuff podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: You'll find an archive of all of our pasts. You'll
Speaker 1: find links to where we are on social media. You'll
Speaker 1: find a link to our online store, where every purchasing
Speaker 1: make goes to help the show, and we greatly appreciate it,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Hext Stuff
Speaker 1: is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.