WEBVTT - The Full Motion Video Era - The Arcade 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:07.200 Get in touch with technology with text Stuff from how 0:00:07.240 --> 0:00:14.040 Stuff Works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:14.040 --> 0:00:17.639 I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm La and uh I see 0:00:18.079 --> 0:00:21.040 on the book of Faces that are a good friend. 0:00:21.079 --> 0:00:25.120 Justin has left us suggestion. Yes, he said, you mentioned 0:00:25.160 --> 0:00:27.360 them in your Predictions episode, but could you do an 0:00:27.400 --> 0:00:30.280 episode on f m V games. I think it would 0:00:30.280 --> 0:00:32.839 be a lot of fun. So fm V that stands 0:00:32.880 --> 0:00:38.080 for full motion video right right, Those games fantastic Well, 0:00:38.080 --> 0:00:40.320 in order to understand what full motion video is all 0:00:40.360 --> 0:00:43.320 about and the role that they played in video games, 0:00:43.560 --> 0:00:46.880 it probably benefit us to just do a quick overview 0:00:47.120 --> 0:00:50.239 of the different types of graphics we saw, particularly in 0:00:50.400 --> 0:00:54.560 early video games. So if you were talking about the 0:00:54.640 --> 0:00:58.120 earliest of computer games, you were limited to either text 0:00:58.200 --> 0:01:02.600 adventures like Zorke that kind of thing, or vector graphics 0:01:02.640 --> 0:01:07.360 two D vector graphics games, which would be more like Asteroids. 0:01:07.720 --> 0:01:10.720 So if you ever played the old Asteroids arcade game, 0:01:11.040 --> 0:01:14.640 everything with these these very simple shapes, Yeah you're talking 0:01:14.640 --> 0:01:17.520 about dots are lines? Yeah, exactly, That's that's what vector 0:01:17.560 --> 0:01:21.199 graphics are. They're based on geometry. You define end points 0:01:21.760 --> 0:01:25.120 and then you have little lines drawn between those end points. 0:01:25.120 --> 0:01:27.520 So it's kind of like think of it like, uh uh, 0:01:27.640 --> 0:01:30.679 you know, connect the dots. That's essentially what you're talking about, 0:01:30.800 --> 0:01:33.520 but in a in a graphics format, so it's pixels 0:01:33.520 --> 0:01:36.679 instead of you know, a solid black line from a 0:01:36.720 --> 0:01:40.080 pencil or something. Sure, and all of that being less 0:01:40.120 --> 0:01:43.760 graphically impressive perhaps than things like in the case of Zork, 0:01:44.040 --> 0:01:49.320 you know, your rich imagination opening entire star fields for you, right, 0:01:49.360 --> 0:01:51.640 you could have any sort of description in a text 0:01:51.680 --> 0:01:55.440 based one, and technically the graphics are only limited by 0:01:55.440 --> 0:02:00.280 your imagination, I guess. But vector graphics, you know, they 0:02:00.320 --> 0:02:05.120 have their their charms. The old old Star Wars arcade 0:02:05.120 --> 0:02:07.320 game where you had a little vector graphics tie fighters 0:02:07.320 --> 0:02:10.040 coming at you still one of my favorite arcade games 0:02:10.040 --> 0:02:11.800 of all time. And it also had the benefit of 0:02:11.840 --> 0:02:15.280 not taking up too much processing power. It didn't require 0:02:15.560 --> 0:02:17.840 you know, a chunky graphics card in order for it 0:02:17.919 --> 0:02:20.560 to produce these pretty simple graphics. Well, that's the whole 0:02:20.560 --> 0:02:22.840 thing with graphics is that they take so much disk 0:02:22.880 --> 0:02:25.960 space and processing power, and that is a problem that 0:02:26.080 --> 0:02:28.200 some of these FMV games that we are going to 0:02:28.840 --> 0:02:33.120 start talking about ran into really hard, yeah, really really hard. 0:02:33.160 --> 0:02:37.040 So so next we have sprites. So sprites, of course 0:02:37.440 --> 0:02:40.480 not a type of soft drink in this case. No, 0:02:41.000 --> 0:02:45.400 also not a whimsical mythological creature. No, though a sprite 0:02:45.520 --> 0:02:48.919 could be a whimsical mythological creature within the context of 0:02:48.919 --> 0:02:50.840 a video game. But you could have a sprite of 0:02:50.840 --> 0:02:53.239 a sprite. Yes, exactly, you could have a sprite of 0:02:53.280 --> 0:02:56.440 a sprite. So it's a two dimensional animation that's integrated 0:02:56.440 --> 0:02:59.080 into a larger scene, that can move around that larger 0:02:59.120 --> 0:03:03.639 scene completely independently, and it doesn't require you to re 0:03:03.639 --> 0:03:07.520 render that background. So I think of this kind of 0:03:07.560 --> 0:03:12.440 like a like a play because I'm a theater gee. 0:03:12.760 --> 0:03:14.200 But if you think of a play, you know, like 0:03:14.280 --> 0:03:16.280 you have a play with a set, and the actors 0:03:16.320 --> 0:03:18.960 can move all around that set that doesn't move. The 0:03:19.000 --> 0:03:21.760 set doesn't move the sexually unless something kind of terrible 0:03:21.800 --> 0:03:24.680 it's going on. In that case, that's an exception, But 0:03:25.840 --> 0:03:28.600 in an ideal situation, when it's not supposed to move, 0:03:28.680 --> 0:03:30.480 it stays. But you can also think of it as 0:03:30.480 --> 0:03:33.240 maybe like a magnet on a fridge or or a 0:03:33.280 --> 0:03:35.960 color form. Yeah, exactly, you can move this this one 0:03:36.000 --> 0:03:40.280 independent piece around without affecting everything else, and that meant 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:43.360 that you only had to render the background the one 0:03:43.440 --> 0:03:46.520 time and then a little two D animated character. That's 0:03:46.560 --> 0:03:48.760 the only thing it really concentrating on. So it didn't 0:03:48.800 --> 0:03:52.400 require too much processing power to develop once we started 0:03:52.400 --> 0:03:55.280 getting into that. Although the early ones were limited as 0:03:55.320 --> 0:03:57.920 to the number of sprites that could be processed on 0:03:58.040 --> 0:04:00.360 screen at the same time, you have an here. The 0:04:00.400 --> 0:04:06.480 Atari hundred only had five, yeah, five moving graphical objects 0:04:06.480 --> 0:04:09.280 on screen at a time. So if you're thinking of 0:04:09.320 --> 0:04:12.160 like I don't know, Donkey Kong Jr. And you're playing 0:04:12.200 --> 0:04:14.880 as the main character, you know, in the Arcade version 0:04:14.920 --> 0:04:17.880 you had all these little bitty uh platforms that could 0:04:17.880 --> 0:04:20.839 go up and down and things like that, or monsters 0:04:20.880 --> 0:04:23.320 that could grab you, And there really wasn't too much 0:04:23.360 --> 0:04:26.640 of a limit because the hardware there was just huge, Yeah, 0:04:26.680 --> 0:04:29.040 and it was just meant to play that game right. 0:04:29.880 --> 0:04:33.520 On the Atari twenty hundred, which had much more strict 0:04:33.560 --> 0:04:37.080 limitations on what the processor could do, you had at 0:04:37.160 --> 0:04:40.280 most five moving graphical objects on screen at any given time. 0:04:41.200 --> 0:04:43.760 One of the examples we could give of that, besides 0:04:43.800 --> 0:04:45.760 the one I just mentioned, a Super Mario Brothers and 0:04:45.839 --> 0:04:49.400 Nintendo game. Now that that one had obviously a greater 0:04:49.839 --> 0:04:54.039 capacity for moving objects. It wasn't limited to the attary model. 0:04:54.400 --> 0:04:58.360 But that is another example of a video game you sprites. Now, 0:04:58.400 --> 0:05:00.400 there is one other type that I'm I can mention 0:05:00.480 --> 0:05:03.960 really quickly, which are video games that use three dimensional models. 0:05:04.000 --> 0:05:08.479 But that goes that's that's after full motion video. So 0:05:08.720 --> 0:05:12.359 three dimensional models very common today, but we're not going 0:05:12.400 --> 0:05:15.200 to talk about that because we're really focusing on fm vs. 0:05:16.160 --> 0:05:19.920 So what is it. It's when you have recorded up 0:05:20.000 --> 0:05:23.680 some sort of video. Whether it is live action, it 0:05:23.720 --> 0:05:28.039 can be animated, doesn't matter, um, but it is recorded 0:05:28.120 --> 0:05:31.600 and plays back as part of the video game experience. 0:05:31.720 --> 0:05:35.080 Some people refer to games that were really really super 0:05:35.120 --> 0:05:40.240 heavy on fm V as interactive movies, because here's the thing. 0:05:40.279 --> 0:05:42.440 If I record something ahead of time and then I 0:05:42.520 --> 0:05:45.360 present it to somebody, that person is not going to 0:05:45.440 --> 0:05:47.520 have a whole lot of say in what happens. Yeah, 0:05:47.560 --> 0:05:50.200 you've got a limited amount of interactivity that can happen 0:05:50.279 --> 0:05:53.880 when right, it's already it's already gone. Yeah exactly. So 0:05:54.000 --> 0:05:57.159 if I were to have a kind of a choose 0:05:57.160 --> 0:05:59.200 your own adventure game, let's say it that way, because 0:05:59.240 --> 0:06:01.279 that's a that's a perfect example something I would work 0:06:01.279 --> 0:06:03.760 with this, But choose your own adventure books, same sort 0:06:03.760 --> 0:06:05.919 of thing. Right, You're limited to the choices that the 0:06:05.960 --> 0:06:09.400 book lays out, and you're limited to the to the consequences, 0:06:09.800 --> 0:06:14.279 which for me invariably involved dying to hold my finger 0:06:14.320 --> 0:06:16.400 back on a previous page and say, all right, I 0:06:16.400 --> 0:06:18.240 want to try a different way. Now. I have a 0:06:18.240 --> 0:06:20.120 whole series of bookmarks whenever I have a choose you 0:06:20.160 --> 0:06:23.320 an adventure, but I always I resented the ones where 0:06:23.320 --> 0:06:26.200 you would get to the point where you either choice 0:06:26.240 --> 0:06:28.480 that you had presented to you would result in your 0:06:28.520 --> 0:06:30.640 death and think, no, now I have to go back 0:06:30.680 --> 0:06:33.440 to spots. Oh no, that's my favorite. It's it's the 0:06:33.560 --> 0:06:37.160 branching thing. But that's what a full motion video game, 0:06:37.240 --> 0:06:40.040 I mean, like a serious FMV video game was, like 0:06:40.240 --> 0:06:42.000 all right, And I think that when most people think 0:06:42.000 --> 0:06:45.080 of full motion video games, they are thinking of live 0:06:45.120 --> 0:06:48.080 action video Yeah. But but some of them, as we 0:06:48.120 --> 0:06:51.679 will discuss, yeah, are actually in fact the earliest ones, 0:06:51.720 --> 0:06:53.720 well not the earliest, but some of the earliest ones 0:06:53.800 --> 0:06:56.919 really had a lot of animation involved. Yeah, And most 0:06:56.960 --> 0:07:00.640 of these games use optical disc technology, either CDs or 0:07:00.720 --> 0:07:03.760 laser discs and uh. And although I think that the 0:07:03.800 --> 0:07:07.240 production on laser discs, the research for it today right 0:07:07.279 --> 0:07:09.960 went back to the nineteen fifties, they weren't really a 0:07:09.960 --> 0:07:13.760 commercial format until the nineteen seventies. Uh. And even then 0:07:13.760 --> 0:07:16.160 they weren't really very much of a commercial format. I mean, 0:07:16.240 --> 0:07:18.520 even even in the nineteen eighties when you started to 0:07:18.640 --> 0:07:21.560 really get into the home theater world, laser disc was 0:07:21.560 --> 0:07:24.080 one of those things that that cool person with way 0:07:24.120 --> 0:07:26.560 more money than you had, uh, they owned one, but 0:07:26.640 --> 0:07:29.360 you did not. Um. I mean I remember going to 0:07:29.560 --> 0:07:33.600 parties with with my family. My parents would take me 0:07:33.640 --> 0:07:36.520 to some party with some other science fiction or fantasy 0:07:36.520 --> 0:07:39.160 authors throwing a weird bash, and they happen to have 0:07:39.200 --> 0:07:41.920 a laser disc and they would put on a laser 0:07:41.920 --> 0:07:44.520 disc of one of these full motion video games where 0:07:44.520 --> 0:07:47.400 it would just play out the game as if you 0:07:47.440 --> 0:07:50.520 were making all the right choices, so that you could 0:07:50.520 --> 0:07:52.400 actually see it from start to finish, and you really 0:07:52.440 --> 0:07:54.440 did watch it like a movie. It wasn't even interactive 0:07:54.440 --> 0:07:56.640 at that point. It was just a movie. And then 0:07:56.640 --> 0:07:58.400 at the end it would show you all the wrong 0:07:58.520 --> 0:08:02.840 choices and all the consequences thereof. But anyway, the the 0:08:02.920 --> 0:08:05.880 effect of fm V was really impressive because it allowed 0:08:06.080 --> 0:08:11.680 for much much more intense, realistic graphics, sometimes, like we said, 0:08:11.760 --> 0:08:16.040 live action video, which was a huge difference from the 0:08:16.480 --> 0:08:19.440 state of the art in vector and sprite graphics. So 0:08:19.520 --> 0:08:21.840 you know, if you were to go into a video 0:08:21.920 --> 0:08:25.520 game arcade we used to have those back in the day. Kids, 0:08:26.280 --> 0:08:28.520 If you were to go into an arcade and you 0:08:28.600 --> 0:08:32.360 saw something like pac Man, which would look impressive next 0:08:32.400 --> 0:08:35.959 to something like Asteroids, but then you saw dragons Layer, 0:08:36.240 --> 0:08:40.120 you think this game must come from the future, because 0:08:40.200 --> 0:08:42.400 look at it compared to these other games. I need 0:08:42.400 --> 0:08:44.600 to put my quarters in that thing, even though it's 0:08:44.600 --> 0:08:47.079 twice as many quarters as any of the other machines 0:08:47.120 --> 0:08:50.480 in this room. So yeah, the but the idea here 0:08:50.520 --> 0:08:53.200 is that that not only did we have this incredible 0:08:53.480 --> 0:08:58.440 graphical uh interface, this this this gorgeous display of whether 0:08:58.520 --> 0:09:01.559 it was video or an you know, live video or animation, 0:09:02.320 --> 0:09:05.120 it also meant that, like we said, you had that 0:09:05.600 --> 0:09:08.360 you had to give up some interactivity. And so there 0:09:08.440 --> 0:09:11.600 was this constant battle between what is what's the right 0:09:11.600 --> 0:09:15.000 balance where should we have an interactive element versus a 0:09:15.760 --> 0:09:17.920 you know, a really dramatic element. We'll be talking about 0:09:17.920 --> 0:09:20.920 that throughout the rest of this sure, and and creating 0:09:20.920 --> 0:09:23.880 game design around that sort of problem is probably tricky 0:09:23.920 --> 0:09:26.480 for the for the best of game designers. And I'm 0:09:26.520 --> 0:09:29.080 not going to say for the record that all of 0:09:29.120 --> 0:09:32.480 the best game designers were always working on these problems. 0:09:32.320 --> 0:09:35.600 It's a hard thing. And also game designers perhaps are 0:09:35.600 --> 0:09:39.400 not known for their video production quality. Yes, it's also 0:09:39.679 --> 0:09:41.640 an important thing to remember that, you know, someone who 0:09:41.720 --> 0:09:44.920 can make a good game may not be someone who 0:09:44.960 --> 0:09:50.400 can direct a compelling sequence, right, So that's hard, y'all, Yeah, 0:09:50.480 --> 0:09:53.520 especially if you're talking about using live actors who you know. 0:09:53.880 --> 0:09:56.480 The nice thing about animated characters, if you don't like 0:09:56.559 --> 0:09:59.520 their performance, you can throw them away. That's what that's. 0:09:59.559 --> 0:10:02.959 That's pair phrasing what Hitchcock said about Disney. The Disney 0:10:03.000 --> 0:10:05.240 was fortunate that if he was displeased with the performance, 0:10:05.240 --> 0:10:06.880 he could just crumple it up and throw it away, 0:10:06.960 --> 0:10:10.840 whereas Hitchcock was somewhat limited by the law on what 0:10:10.880 --> 0:10:13.320 he could do. It's I think he did a little 0:10:13.320 --> 0:10:15.679 bit of that here and there anyway, but certainly psychologically 0:10:15.840 --> 0:10:18.720 that's a totally different episode. So we're going to talk 0:10:18.760 --> 0:10:22.240 now that's a tech stuff episode and probably not. We 0:10:22.280 --> 0:10:26.720 can talk about some actual examples, including the earliest one 0:10:26.880 --> 0:10:29.280 I could find. I'm not saying this is the first 0:10:29.920 --> 0:10:33.719 f m V. Let's call it video amusement, because that's 0:10:33.760 --> 0:10:35.440 what they referred to it as, or at least one 0:10:35.480 --> 0:10:38.360 of the historical sites I visited refers to it as 0:10:38.360 --> 0:10:41.559 a video amusement. You wouldn't really call it a game necessarily, 0:10:42.200 --> 0:10:44.480 but it was came out towards the end of nineteen 0:10:44.520 --> 0:10:46.320 eight one or the beginning of nineteen eighty two, and 0:10:46.320 --> 0:10:50.440 it's called quarter horse quarter horse, quarter horse because he'd 0:10:50.440 --> 0:10:52.600 give it quarters. That'd be part of it, but it's 0:10:52.640 --> 0:10:55.920 also because it would be a quarter horse race, so 0:10:56.080 --> 0:10:59.040 it was a horse race game. So imagine that you 0:10:59.080 --> 0:11:02.000 walk up to an arcade. It's got two screens on it. 0:11:02.320 --> 0:11:05.520 One screen has like the video betting stuff on it, 0:11:05.559 --> 0:11:07.480 and it gives you like the odds of all the 0:11:07.520 --> 0:11:10.480 different horses that are going to run next race, and 0:11:10.520 --> 0:11:13.080 so you can choose which horse you want to bet on. 0:11:13.160 --> 0:11:15.160 You can put how many credits you bet on that 0:11:15.200 --> 0:11:18.200 particular horse, and then once you're ready to go, you 0:11:18.240 --> 0:11:20.360 place the bet, and then you hear that that all 0:11:20.400 --> 0:11:25.160 that and they show the video of an actual horse 0:11:25.240 --> 0:11:28.040 race that happened in the past, and then one of 0:11:28.080 --> 0:11:29.920 the horses wins, and you find out whether or not 0:11:30.000 --> 0:11:32.400 one of the horses you you bet on one, and 0:11:32.400 --> 0:11:35.400 if you did win, you get more credits. I don't 0:11:35.440 --> 0:11:38.080 know that it actually paid out, so I don't know 0:11:38.120 --> 0:11:40.920 if you ever could really like win money off this thing, 0:11:41.000 --> 0:11:43.600 or if it was simply credits that you can play with. 0:11:44.720 --> 0:11:46.280 So in other words, you just keep playing the game 0:11:46.360 --> 0:11:49.160 until you're out of credits. I'm not sure if amusement 0:11:49.360 --> 0:11:53.320 is the correct word to attach to video in this case. 0:11:54.240 --> 0:11:57.079 It's a video something yeah, something, I mean, maybe I'm 0:11:57.120 --> 0:12:01.400 not maybe I share yeah exactly. So you might first say, well, 0:12:01.440 --> 0:12:03.920 wait a minute, if it's if it's video of an 0:12:03.960 --> 0:12:08.200 actual horse race, how do you not know which horse wins? 0:12:08.280 --> 0:12:10.520 And the way that works out is that they would 0:12:10.559 --> 0:12:14.400 assign different names to the horses that were in the race, 0:12:14.880 --> 0:12:17.400 so and it would change each time. So so you 0:12:17.440 --> 0:12:20.280 wouldn't know that, you know, the horse with the jockey 0:12:20.360 --> 0:12:23.560 on it that's, you know, wearing the little red outfit, 0:12:23.640 --> 0:12:25.960 you wouldn't know what his name was unless you're a 0:12:26.080 --> 0:12:30.439 very serious horse race afficionado. It wouldn't even matter. I mean, 0:12:30.440 --> 0:12:32.160 it would all be based on the odds, because what 0:12:32.240 --> 0:12:33.719 the way this scheme was supposed to work was it 0:12:33.760 --> 0:12:36.640 would actually look at the odds for any given horse, 0:12:37.559 --> 0:12:41.360 simulate a race, and then say, all right, here's who won. 0:12:41.720 --> 0:12:44.280 And sometimes the long shot wins. You know, that's the 0:12:44.320 --> 0:12:47.160 funny thing about statistics. Okay, alright, so so it's not 0:12:47.440 --> 0:12:51.120 it's not whoever won literally in the video. It's okay, 0:12:51.160 --> 0:12:54.480 it's an algorithm and the yeah, exactly exactly, so that like, 0:12:54.720 --> 0:12:57.720 you know, the horse's identities were in fact, the video 0:12:57.760 --> 0:13:01.000 was superfluous. The video doesn't matter. Really. What you're doing 0:13:01.080 --> 0:13:03.720 is you're betting on statistics. So you're sitting you're kind 0:13:03.720 --> 0:13:05.840 of betting on a on a random roll of the 0:13:05.880 --> 0:13:08.360 dice in a in a sense, and you say, I 0:13:08.400 --> 0:13:10.160 bet that the dice are going to come up like this, 0:13:10.480 --> 0:13:12.920 which you know sounds kind of crazy when you first 0:13:12.920 --> 0:13:15.600 described like that, except you realize that the game Craps 0:13:15.800 --> 0:13:20.080 is all about that concept. So at any rate, this 0:13:20.200 --> 0:13:22.760 was the first example I could find of a video 0:13:23.120 --> 0:13:26.760 amusement using fm V. The next one is probably the 0:13:27.000 --> 0:13:29.440 most famous f m V. I've already referred to it 0:13:29.520 --> 0:13:32.199 once in this podcast. Yeah, it came out and it 0:13:32.320 --> 0:13:36.679 is Dragon's Layer. Yeah, Dragon's Layer from Cinematronics. Uh. Now, 0:13:36.720 --> 0:13:40.160 this was created with animation from Don Bluth, who was 0:13:40.200 --> 0:13:43.360 a former Disney animator. I want to say Oliver and 0:13:43.400 --> 0:13:45.760 Company was one of his, but he also did the 0:13:45.800 --> 0:13:49.800 Five Old Movies, the Five West um and Secrets and 0:13:49.880 --> 0:13:53.080 them I think as well. So he he was the 0:13:53.160 --> 0:13:55.280 guy who did all the animation for this. You play 0:13:55.360 --> 0:14:00.439 as Dark the Daring a night in shining armor. Uh, 0:14:00.440 --> 0:14:04.720 and you're rescuing the Princess Daphne, who is in a 0:14:04.800 --> 0:14:08.760 teeny tiny little outfit. This this game probably didn't do 0:14:08.800 --> 0:14:13.200 a whole lot for you know, the portrayals, portrayal of 0:14:13.200 --> 0:14:15.880 women in video games. Yeah, I think several of the 0:14:15.920 --> 0:14:19.200 things on our list didn't do a whole lot. Yeah, 0:14:19.400 --> 0:14:23.240 we're gonna cover some more that are a little to 0:14:23.440 --> 0:14:30.280 varying degrees of being upsetting and nineties yeah and today. 0:14:30.480 --> 0:14:34.720 So anyway, Yeah, this this gameplay was limited to a 0:14:34.800 --> 0:14:38.000 joystick and button where you would have prompts on the 0:14:38.040 --> 0:14:40.600 screen and you would have to hit the joystick in 0:14:40.600 --> 0:14:42.280 the right direction or press the button at the right 0:14:42.320 --> 0:14:45.640 time in order for you to progress in the story. 0:14:45.920 --> 0:14:47.760 So you can think of it in a sense as 0:14:47.880 --> 0:14:50.840 every little segment is a chapter break on like you 0:14:50.840 --> 0:14:53.440 know a DVD, and this is a laser disc game. 0:14:53.480 --> 0:14:56.240 It was on laser disc. And if you hit the 0:14:56.400 --> 0:14:58.840 right button on your on your remote control on your 0:14:58.880 --> 0:15:00.960 DVD player, you get to watch the next part of 0:15:00.960 --> 0:15:03.240 the movie, and if you hit the wrong button, it stops. 0:15:03.560 --> 0:15:06.080 That's essentially what this was, except that the you know, 0:15:06.120 --> 0:15:08.280 you had four buttons as in the four directions of 0:15:08.280 --> 0:15:11.560 your joystick, and then the actual button buttons, So five buttons. 0:15:11.600 --> 0:15:16.320 Total exciting stuff, right, And um, I've actually seen some 0:15:16.440 --> 0:15:18.960 versions of this where they had the prompts turned off, 0:15:19.280 --> 0:15:23.120 so you had to have memorized it. Totally not fair. 0:15:23.760 --> 0:15:25.720 I don't know how you can just watch something with 0:15:25.800 --> 0:15:27.680 no prompts and say, oh, I bet I'm supposed to 0:15:27.720 --> 0:15:30.880 hit left right now. Um. But anyway, that was the 0:15:30.920 --> 0:15:35.320 basics for dragons Layer. Uh. And again, you could only 0:15:35.400 --> 0:15:39.360 do the actions when the prompts came up. You couldn't 0:15:39.800 --> 0:15:42.520 swing your sword at any given time. You couldn't make 0:15:42.560 --> 0:15:44.400 Dirk run to the left or run to the right 0:15:44.800 --> 0:15:48.120 because all of that had already been animated. So you can't. 0:15:48.280 --> 0:15:51.520 You can't control something that's already been set down. However, 0:15:51.600 --> 0:15:53.800 it did allow those graphics, as you said before, to 0:15:53.840 --> 0:15:56.480 be very impressive for the time. Yeah, and the story 0:15:56.520 --> 0:16:00.280 itself was, you know, this kind of cute ce fantasy story. 0:16:00.400 --> 0:16:02.920 So it had a lot of appeal. And it certainly 0:16:02.960 --> 0:16:04.480 was one of those things that if you saw someone 0:16:04.480 --> 0:16:06.840 who was really good at this, like they had memorized 0:16:06.880 --> 0:16:09.000 the sequence and they were they were able to get 0:16:09.040 --> 0:16:12.920 really far, was entertaining to watch. I. You know, I 0:16:12.920 --> 0:16:15.040 could never get past a single screen in this game, 0:16:15.080 --> 0:16:17.440 so I never really got into it. But then I 0:16:17.480 --> 0:16:19.960 was also fairly young back in nineteen eight three. It 0:16:20.000 --> 0:16:23.840 did happen once upon time, folks, now you being young. Yes, 0:16:24.400 --> 0:16:28.920 Also in bally NFL football came out yep, same thing 0:16:29.000 --> 0:16:32.000 as uh in a in a sense as the horse 0:16:32.120 --> 0:16:35.080 racing game, and that they took footage from an actual 0:16:35.320 --> 0:16:39.800 football game Raiders versus Chargers, and that was what you 0:16:39.880 --> 0:16:43.840 got to watch as plays were carried out, and you 0:16:43.920 --> 0:16:46.160 played the part of a coach. So in other words, 0:16:46.200 --> 0:16:50.160 you're not controlling any football players, but based upon where 0:16:50.200 --> 0:16:52.760 your team is, like whether they're on offense or defense, 0:16:53.040 --> 0:16:55.920 you would pick the plays that they would do next exactly, 0:16:55.960 --> 0:16:57.760 so you would say, all right, well, based upon this 0:16:57.880 --> 0:17:00.680 position and based upon the players I have, I want 0:17:00.760 --> 0:17:03.520 this play to come next, and then you choose the play, 0:17:03.720 --> 0:17:05.960 and then you'd get a little video of one of 0:17:05.960 --> 0:17:09.040 the plays being carried out, and then you have another 0:17:09.080 --> 0:17:12.760 choice to make afterwards, but either either you continue or 0:17:12.800 --> 0:17:15.760 you know, there might be a turnover whatever. But there 0:17:15.840 --> 0:17:18.760 was something like eight hundred different video combinations for the 0:17:18.760 --> 0:17:22.360 whole game, because they used all these different film segments 0:17:22.400 --> 0:17:26.840 that could be interchanged based upon whichever play you had selected, 0:17:26.880 --> 0:17:30.000 and then it would show you the right uh, the 0:17:30.119 --> 0:17:34.040 right video play. And it was also supposed to really 0:17:34.080 --> 0:17:37.560 take into account statistics as well, so in other words, 0:17:37.600 --> 0:17:41.760 you couldn't just memorize a working strategy and play it 0:17:41.880 --> 0:17:44.359 and and impress all your friends, say watch this, and 0:17:44.359 --> 0:17:46.040 then you just do the exact because if you did 0:17:46.040 --> 0:17:51.600 the exact same pathway, you might have yeah. Um. Also, 0:17:51.720 --> 0:17:55.600 these early ones were not on optical disc technology, were they? 0:17:55.760 --> 0:17:58.879 This one in particular was not. The Dragonslayer was on 0:17:58.880 --> 0:18:02.080 the laser disc, but but bally NFL was on a 0:18:02.280 --> 0:18:07.440 video disc also known as a capacitance electronic disc or ceed. 0:18:07.680 --> 0:18:11.399 Now these used a needle to read that they actually 0:18:11.400 --> 0:18:16.040 were grooved, like the vinyl record. Ask your parents, actually 0:18:16.040 --> 0:18:18.520 those are back, now, are they are? They are all 0:18:18.520 --> 0:18:20.920 the hipster kids like them. Yeah, all right, that's fair. 0:18:21.000 --> 0:18:24.160 I never stopped liking them. That makes me even more 0:18:24.280 --> 0:18:29.800 hipster or cool. Yeah, but I like them when they 0:18:29.800 --> 0:18:31.520 were cool, and then when they weren't cool, and when 0:18:31.520 --> 0:18:34.600 they were cool again. But a capacitance electronic disc. I 0:18:34.640 --> 0:18:36.680 also had one of those, or my family did when 0:18:36.680 --> 0:18:38.520 I was a kid. Uh. We had one that was 0:18:38.520 --> 0:18:42.000 a video player. Wasn't a video game, just a video player, 0:18:42.200 --> 0:18:44.080 and I remember we had Singing in the Rain and 0:18:44.160 --> 0:18:46.280 Raiders Raiders of the Lost arc as two of the 0:18:46.280 --> 0:18:50.159 movies that would play on this thing. Um. Again, very 0:18:50.200 --> 0:18:52.719 similar to laser disc in the sense that whatever's on 0:18:52.760 --> 0:18:56.919 the disc obviously can't change. It's read only, so it 0:18:57.000 --> 0:19:01.080 was it was a different way of achieving the same goal. 0:19:01.840 --> 0:19:07.560 Then we get Space Ace. That was another Don Bluth game, 0:19:07.800 --> 0:19:10.600 another cinematronic Don Bluth game. You played as Ace, who, 0:19:10.880 --> 0:19:13.280 at the beginning of the game, before anything bad happens, 0:19:13.359 --> 0:19:16.639 is a big, old, brawny you know, Flash Gordon style 0:19:17.119 --> 0:19:21.120 space faring adventurer type uh. And then there's a bad 0:19:21.160 --> 0:19:26.240 guy named Commander Bof Bof who shoots him with a 0:19:26.240 --> 0:19:30.760 an infanto ray and turns him into a a adolescent 0:19:30.800 --> 0:19:34.919 as squeaky voiced, scrawny adolescent, and then he has to 0:19:35.080 --> 0:19:38.800 rescue his girlfriend. Yes, and occasionally he could transform back, 0:19:38.840 --> 0:19:42.360 at least briefly, into Ace. This one actually had some 0:19:42.920 --> 0:19:46.600 interesting inner activity in the sense that you could choose 0:19:46.680 --> 0:19:49.919 to become Ace and then move through a level, or 0:19:50.000 --> 0:19:52.320 you could choose to remain the scrawny guy and move 0:19:52.359 --> 0:19:55.359 through a level. But depending upon whether you were a 0:19:55.440 --> 0:19:58.800 sort of the scrawny guy, you had very different strategies. Uh, 0:19:58.960 --> 0:20:01.159 strategies in the sense of, you know what prompts you 0:20:01.200 --> 0:20:04.600 hit when. But Ace obviously would charge headlong into danger, 0:20:04.600 --> 0:20:08.880 whereas the scrawny version of him going around Yeah, exactly, 0:20:09.119 --> 0:20:12.879 But again you were limited to whatever had been prerecorded, 0:20:13.000 --> 0:20:15.399 just like the other versions. It was faster paced than 0:20:15.480 --> 0:20:17.600 Dragon's Lair, so a lot of people said it was 0:20:18.160 --> 0:20:21.400 even more challenging since I never got anywhere with Dragon's Lair. 0:20:21.400 --> 0:20:24.760 I didn't even bother with Spaces, but I admired the animation, 0:20:25.560 --> 0:20:28.640 and then uh, the next one, I have is one 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:31.040 I never saw. I didn't even know it existed until 0:20:31.080 --> 0:20:34.879 I looked into it on online and I tried watching 0:20:34.880 --> 0:20:37.760 a video of it, and it was baffling. It's called 0:20:37.920 --> 0:20:41.760 bad Lands. This one was from Konami yep, and it's 0:20:41.800 --> 0:20:44.679 Western themed, as you would imagine with that title. You 0:20:44.720 --> 0:20:47.879 played as Buck, who was a cowboy whose family had 0:20:47.920 --> 0:20:51.800 been murdered by bad guys, so you're on a revenge mission. 0:20:52.720 --> 0:20:55.000 And it was done in a style that looked very 0:20:55.080 --> 0:20:59.040 much like um uh eneme you know. Uh. Back when 0:20:59.080 --> 0:21:02.040 I was when I would have played this, uh, it 0:21:02.080 --> 0:21:05.119 would have been an interesting experience at a science fiction 0:21:05.119 --> 0:21:07.199 convention because I could see this fitting right next to 0:21:07.240 --> 0:21:11.840 the anime room. It is so evocative of that style. 0:21:12.560 --> 0:21:16.280 But it had a single control, which was a giant button, 0:21:17.280 --> 0:21:20.199 just just one button, and you had to hit that 0:21:20.200 --> 0:21:22.639 button exactly when you needed to. And this one didn't 0:21:22.680 --> 0:21:25.400 have prompts and no, you just had to know when 0:21:25.440 --> 0:21:27.040 to hit it and if you hit it too early, 0:21:27.080 --> 0:21:28.840 you died, and if you hit it too late, you died. 0:21:29.160 --> 0:21:33.240