WEBVTT - TechStuff Classic: The History of Handheld Gaming Part One 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:12.000 --> 0:00:14.720 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:14.840 --> 0:00:17.560 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio 0:00:17.600 --> 0:00:20.200 and I love all things tech. And it is a Friday. 0:00:20.239 --> 0:00:23.960 It's time for a classic episode. This episode originally published 0:00:23.960 --> 0:00:27.520 back on March third, two thousand fourteen. It is titled 0:00:27.720 --> 0:00:30.880 The History of Handheld Gaming, Part One. I bet you 0:00:30.880 --> 0:00:33.040 can already guess what the classic episode for next week 0:00:33.120 --> 0:00:36.840 is gonna be. But don't get ahead. I'm looking at you. 0:00:37.680 --> 0:00:41.760 Yeah you, yeah, you wait for it. All right, let's 0:00:41.840 --> 0:00:44.879 let's listen to this classic episode. This is definitely going 0:00:44.920 --> 0:00:47.279 to be a two parter. But in the interests of 0:00:47.320 --> 0:00:52.319 not going into exhaustive detail about too many things, we're 0:00:52.479 --> 0:00:55.080 gonna we're gonna try to keep it snappy. Yeah, and 0:00:55.120 --> 0:00:58.640 also we've we're not going to mention every single handheld 0:00:58.680 --> 0:01:01.680 device that's ever been made, certainly not that would be 0:01:01.800 --> 0:01:05.840 very boring. It would also take like twenty episodes. Yeah, 0:01:05.840 --> 0:01:07.280 and we're going to try to do like like a 0:01:07.319 --> 0:01:10.080 bird's eye view of some of the technology that was involved. 0:01:10.160 --> 0:01:12.520 But um, but we might branch a little bit of 0:01:12.560 --> 0:01:15.040 the more in depth information about that kind of stuff 0:01:15.080 --> 0:01:17.360 off into a different episode in the future, right right. 0:01:17.440 --> 0:01:20.360 Some of these, like friends instance, the I'm sure you've 0:01:20.400 --> 0:01:23.840 heard of a little obscure handheld device called the game Boy. 0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:26.679 Some of these could be their own episode from start 0:01:26.720 --> 0:01:29.320 to finish, so easily a two part our episode all 0:01:29.360 --> 0:01:31.720 on its own. So we are really kind of giving 0:01:31.760 --> 0:01:35.839 an idea of how the whole how the whole industry developed, 0:01:35.840 --> 0:01:39.160 how it evolved over time. We'll we'll give some technical 0:01:39.200 --> 0:01:41.319 specs here and there, but really this is more of 0:01:41.520 --> 0:01:44.920 a history lesson than anything else. And also, we're going 0:01:44.959 --> 0:01:48.760 to go ahead and skip any of the gaming devices 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:52.280 out there that were specifically made as unlicensed clones of 0:01:52.400 --> 0:01:55.440 other gaming devices, right, that I think would make an 0:01:55.440 --> 0:01:59.720 interesting sub topic, separate topic. But no, we're not going 0:01:59.800 --> 0:02:02.240 to go into every single thing that has come out 0:02:02.240 --> 0:02:06.000 of China illegally past thirty years, right. And we have 0:02:06.160 --> 0:02:08.120 talked a little bit about these sort of things, like 0:02:08.160 --> 0:02:10.919 in our our episode about smart watches and digital watches, 0:02:11.000 --> 0:02:14.359 we mentioned a couple that were able to play games. 0:02:14.360 --> 0:02:17.040 One of those will pop up in this discussion, so 0:02:17.160 --> 0:02:20.480 spoiler alert. Yeah, And and if you would like to 0:02:20.560 --> 0:02:23.160 check out that episode, about digital watches. It was a 0:02:23.200 --> 0:02:27.360 two parter that we recorded back in July called Time 0:02:27.400 --> 0:02:30.800 for Smart Watches. You can tell that Jonathan titles these episodes. 0:02:31.520 --> 0:02:34.200 I got a lot of time on my hands, so 0:02:34.280 --> 0:02:37.680 that's what I do. Also, we are going to uh 0:02:38.000 --> 0:02:41.360 have to address one other fact, which is that in 0:02:41.440 --> 0:02:46.160 the beginning, these things were primitive, right. I mean, these 0:02:46.200 --> 0:02:50.000 were not like the kind of advanced graphics you would 0:02:50.040 --> 0:02:53.640 expect with a handheld gaming device back in the day, 0:02:53.760 --> 0:02:58.120 which was back in the late seventies. We're talking about 0:02:58.600 --> 0:03:03.360 a blip that you in control to get around or 0:03:03.520 --> 0:03:08.840 fight or otherwise compete against other blips. Absolutely, I mean, 0:03:08.880 --> 0:03:13.280 this is the digital equivalent of monkeys banging bones on 0:03:13.320 --> 0:03:15.600 the car. Yeah, it's pretty much like just kind of 0:03:15.600 --> 0:03:18.680 the you know, everyone has to start somewhere, right, So 0:03:18.800 --> 0:03:21.119 if you want to be specific and say, well, what 0:03:21.200 --> 0:03:23.760 was the first handheld game? And keep in mind these 0:03:23.800 --> 0:03:27.360 games were coming into prominence around the same time as 0:03:27.600 --> 0:03:32.840 arcades becoming popular and also home video game consoles becoming popular. 0:03:32.880 --> 0:03:35.320 But here's the thing about a home video game console, Lauren, 0:03:35.880 --> 0:03:38.920 It's not easy to carry around with you. No, especially 0:03:38.960 --> 0:03:43.200 not in that day when miniaturization was not so much 0:03:43.200 --> 0:03:46.080 a thing yet. Yeah, especially since uh, I mean, you 0:03:46.120 --> 0:03:49.120 don't want to carry a TV, especially in nineteen seventies 0:03:49.200 --> 0:03:51.640 TV around with you wherever you go, so you can 0:03:51.640 --> 0:03:53.800 play this game. So these were these were a good 0:03:53.840 --> 0:03:57.000 alternative for people who wanted to have something on the go, 0:03:57.240 --> 0:03:59.800 especially I'll tell you the best use case. I know, 0:04:00.400 --> 0:04:02.560 parents who want to get their kids to shut up 0:04:02.560 --> 0:04:04.960 on long road trips. That's exactly what I was about 0:04:05.000 --> 0:04:10.200 to say. Yes, so what was the very first handheld 0:04:10.240 --> 0:04:14.640 electronic game that we know of? Uh? It was actually 0:04:14.680 --> 0:04:17.479 by Mattel, which is crazy to me. And and it 0:04:17.600 --> 0:04:20.960 was MATEL Electronics Auto Race yep. And in fact, there 0:04:21.000 --> 0:04:23.920 are several different games that came out from Mattel. We'll 0:04:23.920 --> 0:04:26.400 talk about another one in just a second. Uh. And 0:04:26.640 --> 0:04:29.159 some people get the order a little mixed up. But 0:04:29.279 --> 0:04:31.760 if you were to get hold of one of these 0:04:31.800 --> 0:04:35.360 original handheld devices, and there are still some out there 0:04:35.400 --> 0:04:38.120 on eBay, and you know, collectors love these things. On 0:04:38.160 --> 0:04:43.800 the back copyright nine, and it packed a wallop. It 0:04:43.920 --> 0:04:48.560 had five hundred and twelve bytes of memory. That's a 0:04:48.600 --> 0:04:52.640 whole half. Yeah, that's that's what it had to work with. 0:04:53.120 --> 0:04:55.520 If you were to look at a model of these. 0:04:55.520 --> 0:04:57.279 We'll try and get some pictures together so that we 0:04:57.279 --> 0:04:59.280 can share them on social at some point. But this 0:04:59.320 --> 0:05:01.479 one in particular, er it looks kind of like a 0:05:01.480 --> 0:05:04.919 big plastic brick that has, you know, some switches and 0:05:05.040 --> 0:05:07.680 a little slider control on it. And if you were 0:05:07.680 --> 0:05:09.360 to look at the brick and look at the the 0:05:09.480 --> 0:05:12.440 say the upper right hand side of the brick, there's 0:05:12.440 --> 0:05:15.960 a vertical strip that goes down that side. That would 0:05:16.000 --> 0:05:20.720 be three quote unquote lanes of traffic. And so you 0:05:20.760 --> 0:05:23.240 were your job was to drive a car, which in 0:05:23.240 --> 0:05:26.239 this case was a little red blip, and that car 0:05:26.279 --> 0:05:29.840 would gradually move up this vertical strip on that right 0:05:29.880 --> 0:05:32.800 side of the game console um and then these other 0:05:33.040 --> 0:05:36.520 smaller red blips would be coming down the lanes. Those 0:05:36.600 --> 0:05:40.560 represented oncoming traffic, and your job was to steer between 0:05:40.640 --> 0:05:42.800 those blips to try and get to the top of 0:05:42.880 --> 0:05:46.200 your that little thin strip on the right side, and 0:05:46.240 --> 0:05:48.159 then you would reappear at the bottom. And you had 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:49.960 to do this four times. If you could get all 0:05:49.960 --> 0:05:52.240 the way to the top four times, you made four 0:05:52.320 --> 0:05:56.640 quote unquote laps, and your score was how many seconds 0:05:56.680 --> 0:05:58.599 it took you to get there. So a lower score 0:05:58.680 --> 0:06:02.719 was better, and in fact it had some other sophisticated controls. 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:05.000 It hadn't start and reset, but it was really on 0:06:05.120 --> 0:06:07.559 and off. And then I had a gear switch, which 0:06:07.640 --> 0:06:10.560 was gears one through four, which really just meant that's 0:06:10.560 --> 0:06:13.520 how fast the oncoming blips would come at you. You know, 0:06:13.680 --> 0:06:16.880 the higher the gear, the faster they would approach. And 0:06:16.960 --> 0:06:19.080 I actually watched the video of a guy saying, here's 0:06:19.120 --> 0:06:22.640 the strategy to this game. You position your thumb so 0:06:22.680 --> 0:06:25.839 that you do an upward motion that hits on and 0:06:25.880 --> 0:06:29.000 then immediately switches the gears from one to four because 0:06:29.000 --> 0:06:30.760 you couldn't just start in four, you had to start 0:06:30.760 --> 0:06:33.640 in one. So if you could do it at one 0:06:33.720 --> 0:06:37.080 smooth motion, then you would immediately be in that fourth 0:06:37.160 --> 0:06:39.800 gear going as fast as you possibly can. And that's 0:06:39.839 --> 0:06:42.240 how you would cut down on your on your time. 0:06:42.640 --> 0:06:45.080 And they were making like times of thirty five or 0:06:45.080 --> 0:06:47.919 forty seconds and saying, I'm really bad at this game. 0:06:47.960 --> 0:06:52.080 And I'm thinking, you know, it's a simple premise, but 0:06:52.240 --> 0:06:55.520 I don't think I don't have the reflexes. Oh sure, 0:06:55.560 --> 0:06:58.720 sure that sounds like like my horror version of Frogger. 0:06:58.960 --> 0:07:04.279 Um uh, this the entire display was just red led um. 0:07:04.320 --> 0:07:07.240 And if you're thinking that this sounds like, well, that's 0:07:07.240 --> 0:07:11.120 only one game. How is this a a portable gaming system? 0:07:11.160 --> 0:07:14.240 A lot of these early ones were a single game 0:07:14.440 --> 0:07:18.119 per system. Yeah. Yeah. And just like the earliest game 0:07:18.160 --> 0:07:21.600 consoles for your home television set, like the Odyssey that 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:25.520 was essentially Pong. Might it might be like ten different 0:07:25.640 --> 0:07:28.920 versions of Pong, but they're all ultimately Pong. Yeah. And 0:07:28.800 --> 0:07:32.080 it was just hard coded directly onto the computer system. 0:07:32.280 --> 0:07:34.720 So and that was all it would ever do. Now 0:07:34.800 --> 0:07:40.600 nine marks the debut of a second game from Mattel Electronics. 0:07:40.680 --> 0:07:44.400 And this is one that I've actually played. I don't 0:07:44.560 --> 0:07:47.320 know if I owned it or not, because you're talking 0:07:47.360 --> 0:07:49.239 about a time in my childhood when I was quite 0:07:49.280 --> 0:07:52.480 young and Lauren didn't exist yet I did not. So 0:07:52.720 --> 0:07:57.280 this is Mattel Electronics Football, one of the really popular games. 0:07:57.280 --> 0:07:59.800 Effects so popular that they made a sequel called wait 0:07:59.840 --> 0:08:03.960 for it, Football Too, and uh it had six control 0:08:04.040 --> 0:08:06.880 buttons and again you would control a little red dot 0:08:07.000 --> 0:08:09.680 that represented a football player and you had to try 0:08:09.720 --> 0:08:13.520 and work your way across the yardage the massive amount 0:08:13.520 --> 0:08:16.760 of yardage by that, I mean nine yards to try 0:08:16.800 --> 0:08:20.360 and score against the other team, and um it was 0:08:20.440 --> 0:08:23.800 interesting because there was a great interview with one of 0:08:23.840 --> 0:08:26.680 the guys who was behind the building of these things 0:08:26.720 --> 0:08:29.360 that I ran across, and he was talking about why 0:08:29.520 --> 0:08:33.120 the football players like little bitty red dashes. Everything in 0:08:33.160 --> 0:08:35.439 that day looked like little bitty red dashes. It's because 0:08:35.440 --> 0:08:39.760 they were using calculator microprocessors, and in fact, those processors 0:08:39.800 --> 0:08:42.840 are designed to show things like little digital numbers, right, 0:08:43.240 --> 0:08:46.920 So so those dots were like the segment of a number. Yeah, 0:08:47.000 --> 0:08:50.680 specifically the number eight. So yes, you were actually playing 0:08:50.720 --> 0:08:54.000 as a segment of the number eight and you were 0:08:54.000 --> 0:08:56.960 going up against other segments of the number eight, and 0:08:57.240 --> 0:09:01.800 uh yeah. Eventually, uh Tell would end up contracting with 0:09:01.920 --> 0:09:05.000 a company called National Semiconductor, which have you've been listening 0:09:05.000 --> 0:09:06.520 to tech stuff for a long time, you've heard us 0:09:06.520 --> 0:09:09.320 talk about that company, and it was to get sea 0:09:09.360 --> 0:09:12.559 moss chips rather than old calculator chips. And then they 0:09:12.559 --> 0:09:15.480 contracted with another company called Rockwell International to do the 0:09:15.559 --> 0:09:20.000 actual hard coding programming onto those chips. So that's where 0:09:20.040 --> 0:09:24.439 they started to uh kind of make more advanced versions 0:09:24.480 --> 0:09:29.000 of these early games. Now these games were not exactly 0:09:29.440 --> 0:09:33.480 um well, they had some trouble early on. See the 0:09:34.000 --> 0:09:38.719 agreement here was between Mattel and the department store Sears, right, 0:09:38.800 --> 0:09:41.280 and Sears completely doubted that they were going to be 0:09:41.360 --> 0:09:45.600 popular and therefore halted production at only a hundred thousand units. Yep. 0:09:45.760 --> 0:09:50.200 But it turned out that Sears had grossly underestimated the 0:09:50.320 --> 0:09:55.360 demand for home you know, portable electronic games, and they 0:09:55.840 --> 0:09:59.400 were so popular. Series immediately realized they had made the 0:09:59.440 --> 0:10:03.280 wrongest vision. So by mid January of nineteen seventy eight, 0:10:03.280 --> 0:10:06.000 Now keep in mind Football came out in ninety seven, 0:10:06.320 --> 0:10:07.880 so these things have been on the market for a 0:10:07.880 --> 0:10:10.360 couple of years. Yeah, yeah, just kind of stagnating exactly. 0:10:10.400 --> 0:10:12.199 And it wasn't really It's one of those things where 0:10:12.280 --> 0:10:14.400 no one was really sure how to market them, and 0:10:14.679 --> 0:10:16.959 but now they were taking off. So by mid January 0:10:17.040 --> 0:10:21.240 night Sears said they wanted two hundred thousand units per week, 0:10:22.200 --> 0:10:25.120 not not a hundred thousand total, two hundred thousand every week. 0:10:25.320 --> 0:10:28.319 And then by February they said, you know, we were wrong, 0:10:28.440 --> 0:10:33.640 five hundred thousand per week. So Mattel said, huh, I 0:10:33.679 --> 0:10:36.000 think we know how to make money now. Yeah, that's 0:10:36.000 --> 0:10:39.000 when they started producing a whole bunch of different games. 0:10:39.040 --> 0:10:43.520 That's sequel football to UM and also like Armor Attack, Subchase, 0:10:43.640 --> 0:10:45.640 Missile Attack. UM. I think there was a Dungeons and 0:10:45.720 --> 0:10:48.160 Dragons game there was. I took a look at it. 0:10:48.160 --> 0:10:51.440 It was um, you know, again, fairly primitive. Now now, 0:10:51.679 --> 0:10:54.320 at this point they were starting to work not just 0:10:54.480 --> 0:10:58.480 with l E ED displays, but also l c D displays, 0:10:58.520 --> 0:11:01.720 liquid crystal displays. So this is what a lot of 0:11:01.760 --> 0:11:04.400 you if you've ever had one of those um little 0:11:04.440 --> 0:11:08.120 handheld games, maybe it was licensed after an existing arcade 0:11:08.120 --> 0:11:11.080 game or a cartoon or movie or something you're probably 0:11:11.080 --> 0:11:12.760 familiar with. These are also the ones that you would 0:11:12.760 --> 0:11:15.880 see on watches a lot of times. Uh, super cheap 0:11:15.960 --> 0:11:20.320 to produce, very limited in their animation, very limited in 0:11:20.360 --> 0:11:23.720 what they could actually display, but still compared to a 0:11:23.760 --> 0:11:26.160 little blip on an l e ED screen, just a 0:11:26.160 --> 0:11:32.120 little dot, incredibly sophisticated and much less eye bleedy. LED 0:11:32.240 --> 0:11:36.360 displays tend to give me terrible headache. Yeah I can't 0:11:36.400 --> 0:11:40.000 at that rate. I also just have nightmares. Remember remembering 0:11:40.040 --> 0:11:44.200 the sound effects from football and football too, and yeah, 0:11:44.360 --> 0:11:48.240 they're they're they're not all pleasant memories. But yeah, ninety nine, 0:11:48.280 --> 0:11:50.920 that's when we see the first like Mate looks. I 0:11:51.040 --> 0:11:55.520 was amazed to learn that this particular technology goes all 0:11:55.559 --> 0:11:59.600 the way back to nine, right, and we're talking now 0:11:59.640 --> 0:12:03.680 about rom cartridges. Yeah, so keep in mind those games 0:12:03.679 --> 0:12:07.000 we just talked about, like Laurence said, they were hard coded. 0:12:07.040 --> 0:12:09.559 You could not change those games out. What you bought 0:12:09.679 --> 0:12:12.679 was what you bought. But that was not the way 0:12:12.679 --> 0:12:15.960 of the future. Milton Bradley Company, Yeah, one of the 0:12:16.280 --> 0:12:18.920 one of the competitors of Mattel, especially at the time 0:12:19.000 --> 0:12:23.440 and in the gaming or not gaming but well board industry, right, 0:12:24.280 --> 0:12:27.600 produced this thing called the Microvision. Right, So they decided 0:12:27.679 --> 0:12:30.199 we're gonna do something similar to what some of the 0:12:30.280 --> 0:12:32.560 home video game consoles were starting to do, like the 0:12:32.600 --> 0:12:37.160 Atari system was was doing this creating a system that 0:12:37.160 --> 0:12:40.680 could play cartridges, so you could switch out what game 0:12:40.760 --> 0:12:44.040 you were playing. So now you weren't buying a single game, 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:47.079 you were buying a platform upon which to play games, 0:12:47.080 --> 0:12:49.160 which is the way most of us are familiar with 0:12:49.200 --> 0:12:51.440 games today, right. I mean, when I go out and 0:12:51.440 --> 0:12:53.800 buy a game system, I expect I'm going to play 0:12:53.840 --> 0:12:56.440 more than just one game, more than just the Xbox 0:12:56.559 --> 0:13:00.200 at any rate. So this Microvision had a monoch from 0:13:00.320 --> 0:13:03.880 l c D, which was a a screaming big sixteen 0:13:03.880 --> 0:13:07.640 by sixteen pixel yeah resolution. Yeah, I mean at that resolution, 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:10.240 you just you could pick out every single detail on 0:13:10.280 --> 0:13:15.160 that block that was yeah. Um. Also it had a 0:13:15.200 --> 0:13:19.000 pad on it that had nine sections of interactivity on it, 0:13:19.240 --> 0:13:22.840 which was which you didn't you didn't actually just use 0:13:22.920 --> 0:13:25.959 the naked pad. That's not how this game worked, right, 0:13:26.000 --> 0:13:28.080 That the cartridges that snapped in and out of the 0:13:28.080 --> 0:13:31.320 game would include their own buttons to overlay on top 0:13:31.360 --> 0:13:33.760 of that path exactly. So you can think of the 0:13:33.800 --> 0:13:37.280 cartridges as being half cartridge half case, and then you 0:13:37.320 --> 0:13:39.800 would pop the case open and put a new case 0:13:39.880 --> 0:13:41.199 on it in order to play a new game. That 0:13:41.240 --> 0:13:44.199 would also include overlays, which were a big thing back 0:13:44.240 --> 0:13:48.600 in the seventies and eighties, which would increase the playability 0:13:48.640 --> 0:13:53.280 by giving you would have a different, um superficial layer 0:13:53.360 --> 0:13:56.120 on top of the game. So it's permanent because it's 0:13:56.120 --> 0:13:58.880 an overlay, it's doesn't change at all, but it gives 0:13:58.920 --> 0:14:02.840 the games a certain uh personality. Yeah, and also would 0:14:02.880 --> 0:14:05.200 cut down on the work that the processor would have 0:14:05.240 --> 0:14:08.160 to do. You know, you give you more space to 0:14:08.160 --> 0:14:12.360 to play with your little blips and blobs exactly, and 0:14:12.679 --> 0:14:15.480 the system itself did have a little built in analog 0:14:15.679 --> 0:14:18.280 control knobs so that you could have some some basic 0:14:18.360 --> 0:14:21.080 functionality without using the other buttons, or in addition to 0:14:21.120 --> 0:14:23.400 the other buttons that any particular game would come with. 0:14:24.080 --> 0:14:27.120 We have more to say about handheld gaming systems in 0:14:27.160 --> 0:14:29.400 just a moment, but first let's take a quick right. 0:14:36.840 --> 0:14:39.600 I love the site this this Little this Little caveat 0:14:40.080 --> 0:14:43.320 about how it had serious electronics problems, including a lack 0:14:43.360 --> 0:14:46.960 of proper Faraday installation, which means that aesthetic charge could 0:14:47.080 --> 0:14:50.920 render your microvision inoperable, basically useless, or or at least 0:14:50.920 --> 0:14:53.320 permanently damaged in a way that it would never come 0:14:53.360 --> 0:14:55.600 back from. Same same sort of idea that when you're 0:14:55.600 --> 0:14:57.800 putting together a computer, you want to make sure that 0:14:57.840 --> 0:15:01.760 you discharge you yeah, yeah, the same, which makes sense 0:15:01.800 --> 0:15:04.400 because when you took the cartridge off, then you have 0:15:04.440 --> 0:15:09.000 a naked Yeah, so that would be um, yeah, good 0:15:09.400 --> 0:15:12.960 good tip, thanks Lauren. Yeah, And that's that is probably 0:15:13.000 --> 0:15:15.200 one of the reasons why even though the system where 0:15:15.200 --> 0:15:18.400 it was moderately popular, Milton Bradley did stop producing it 0:15:18.520 --> 0:15:22.960 only two or three years later. One furthermore, only thirteen 0:15:23.000 --> 0:15:26.760 games were ever produced for the Microvision. Wait a minute, 0:15:26.800 --> 0:15:30.520 I only could find twelve games that my oht one 0:15:30.560 --> 0:15:33.920 was only available in European markets, correct, which is a 0:15:33.920 --> 0:15:37.720 pretty common weird wiggie thing that happens, especially in these 0:15:37.720 --> 0:15:41.000 early days, although although still modernly like like, different games 0:15:41.000 --> 0:15:43.960 and different systems will only be available in Europe, or 0:15:44.040 --> 0:15:49.040 in the US or in Japan. Really frequently only in Japan. Yeah, yeah, 0:15:49.120 --> 0:15:51.640 you'll get You'll get entire systems that are available only 0:15:51.680 --> 0:15:54.120 in a single region. But even within the ones that 0:15:54.320 --> 0:15:57.680 span multiple regions. There are some titles. Sometimes game publishers 0:15:57.720 --> 0:15:59.880 say this title is never going to do well in 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:04.600 ex country for why reasons, right, and until basically these days, 0:16:04.600 --> 0:16:06.920 the Internet proves the wrong and someone actually spends the 0:16:06.920 --> 0:16:10.280 money to port it over, yeah, or pirate it more 0:16:10.360 --> 0:16:14.040 likely that right. So by by now we're getting right 0:16:14.080 --> 0:16:17.280 into the very beginning of the eighties, and that's when 0:16:17.320 --> 0:16:20.000 we start seeing l c D technology becoming so cheap 0:16:20.080 --> 0:16:23.120 that uh that LED displays become kind of a thing 0:16:23.160 --> 0:16:25.720 in the past. So you know, company has already been 0:16:25.760 --> 0:16:29.840 kind of experimenting with it, but now it was something 0:16:29.840 --> 0:16:33.200 that they could do without having to charge huge amounts 0:16:33.200 --> 0:16:37.600 of money for relatively limited devices. So we start seeing 0:16:38.120 --> 0:16:42.160 better displays and fewer of those little blip ones, which, 0:16:42.160 --> 0:16:46.600 by the way, we're still treasured by collectors. Absolutely, miniaturization 0:16:46.680 --> 0:16:50.520 was also reaching the point that we were seeing, I mean, 0:16:50.600 --> 0:16:54.560 it was a lot cheaper to produce things, and uh yeah, 0:16:54.720 --> 0:16:56.840 and and it also meant that we can make smaller 0:16:56.840 --> 0:16:59.640 and smaller things, so you no longer had this giant, 0:16:59.680 --> 0:17:02.720 bulky brick for everything, at least not anything that was basic. 0:17:03.120 --> 0:17:05.919 And it even led to one of the things we're 0:17:05.960 --> 0:17:09.040 gonna talk about in just a second, the the infamous 0:17:09.359 --> 0:17:12.840 digital watch games. So something that you've got to keep 0:17:12.880 --> 0:17:14.600 in mind is that this is the this is the 0:17:14.640 --> 0:17:18.160 era where everybody got into this. Mattel had shown they 0:17:18.160 --> 0:17:22.320 had struck gold with this idea. Also, consoles, home consoles 0:17:22.520 --> 0:17:25.359 were very popular at times, so so it was a 0:17:25.440 --> 0:17:27.760 huge industry. Everyone was saying, we got to get in 0:17:27.840 --> 0:17:30.520 on this. So here's just a quick list and not 0:17:30.600 --> 0:17:33.360 even an exhaustive list, but a quick list of some 0:17:33.359 --> 0:17:37.760 some game companies that got really famous for the handheld 0:17:37.760 --> 0:17:40.159 devices they produced. And you're probably gonna recognize some of 0:17:40.200 --> 0:17:47.320 these names. Acclaim, Atari, Bondai, Cassio, Colico, Galube, Kinner, Konami, Namco, 0:17:47.440 --> 0:17:50.560 Parker Brothers, Tandy, Texas Instruments, Tiger, and many many more. 0:17:50.920 --> 0:17:53.399 I like that was alphabetized. Yeah, well I took it 0:17:53.400 --> 0:17:55.359 from an alphabetized list, and I was too wazy to 0:17:55.400 --> 0:17:59.000 mix them up. Uh. In nineteen eighty, that's when we 0:17:59.040 --> 0:18:02.000 get the Casio game ten, which was one of the 0:18:02.040 --> 0:18:05.000 watches we mentioned I believe in our Digital Watch smart 0:18:05.000 --> 0:18:08.719 Watch episodes. Yeah, it was the first video game watch. 0:18:09.160 --> 0:18:11.640 It had a version of space invaders, yes, and it 0:18:11.680 --> 0:18:13.920 was like three lines of dashes that you could shoot 0:18:13.960 --> 0:18:16.879 with your little dot. But again you use buttons on 0:18:16.880 --> 0:18:20.000 the side of the watch to control your your little 0:18:20.200 --> 0:18:23.199 your little ship and fight off against these space invaders, 0:18:23.240 --> 0:18:25.480 which again were just sort of dashes. Oh and also 0:18:25.640 --> 0:18:29.720 very important it also told the time. Yes, important side 0:18:29.760 --> 0:18:35.680 note about this watch. Um. Also in Nintendo started releasing 0:18:35.720 --> 0:18:40.400 this entire series of hard coded handheld video games called 0:18:40.680 --> 0:18:43.919 called Game and Watch, and the very first one was 0:18:44.359 --> 0:18:48.680 Ball Yeah really fancy. Yeah. You played as a juggler, 0:18:48.720 --> 0:18:52.760 which I appreciate being a juggler myself. Um. And the object, 0:18:52.760 --> 0:18:55.480 of course was to keep multiple objects in the air 0:18:55.560 --> 0:18:57.520 and not let any of them drop. And you had 0:18:57.760 --> 0:19:01.639 two controls which essentially controlled the juggler arms arms. Okay, 0:19:01.760 --> 0:19:03.399 and that's one other thing I was going to mention 0:19:03.440 --> 0:19:06.359 also was that these hard coded games. You may wonder 0:19:06.560 --> 0:19:09.480 how did they stick around long after we started getting 0:19:09.520 --> 0:19:12.040 these cartridge based systems. One of the ways they stuck 0:19:12.080 --> 0:19:15.560 around is that they could have specific controls for that 0:19:15.680 --> 0:19:19.000 game that are unique, you know, not just your little 0:19:19.040 --> 0:19:21.879 direction pad and buttons. Sure you and you don't have 0:19:21.920 --> 0:19:24.359 to recode the buttons for it every time that you 0:19:24.400 --> 0:19:26.120 want to play a different game or learn a new 0:19:26.160 --> 0:19:31.240 controller schematic. It's just that thing specialized. So it's very specific. Yeah. 0:19:31.280 --> 0:19:33.159 So that way it ended up filling a niche that 0:19:33.359 --> 0:19:36.879 your generic, you know, cartridge based systems couldn't because the 0:19:36.960 --> 0:19:39.480 game control is always going to be the same unless 0:19:39.480 --> 0:19:42.080 you build buy some sort of crazy peripheral that can 0:19:42.119 --> 0:19:45.320 also plug into it. Anyway, the Game and Watch series 0:19:45.359 --> 0:19:49.840 was incredibly popular. They produced sixty different games under that brand. 0:19:50.640 --> 0:19:53.000 Only one of those was one you could not buy. 0:19:53.080 --> 0:19:54.639 It was actually a prize. You had to win it 0:19:54.640 --> 0:19:57.240 in a in a contest type thing, uh and um. 0:19:57.280 --> 0:20:00.320 And they would release several different models of the over 0:20:00.320 --> 0:20:05.360 the years. Eventually, starting in nine two, they started releasing 0:20:05.400 --> 0:20:08.679 games that had two screens set up in this clamshell 0:20:08.800 --> 0:20:12.480 kind of thing that looks bloody exactly like the Nintendo DS. 0:20:12.480 --> 0:20:14.040 It really does. And you know, you look at this 0:20:14.080 --> 0:20:16.920 and you're like, huh. All the way back in two 0:20:16.960 --> 0:20:19.879 they had this idea and uh, and it was you know, 0:20:19.960 --> 0:20:22.040 it was one of those that ended up really paying 0:20:22.040 --> 0:20:24.040 off down the line. So they had a lot of 0:20:24.040 --> 0:20:27.479 different models, a lot of different designs. Um they also 0:20:27.880 --> 0:20:31.280 they're under different names, like you have the Silver, uh, 0:20:31.040 --> 0:20:34.080 you have the Gold, Uh, you had the multi screen, 0:20:34.520 --> 0:20:37.440 et cetera. And then he had tabletop and the tabletop. 0:20:37.520 --> 0:20:41.040 They introduced those in three. They look like teeny tiny 0:20:41.359 --> 0:20:45.480 arcade machines. So I had a friend who had Pac Man. 0:20:45.520 --> 0:20:47.720 I think it was either pac Man or Donkey Kong, 0:20:48.240 --> 0:20:50.000 one of the two. But it looks like a little 0:20:50.040 --> 0:20:54.160 mature arcade. It's probably Donkey Kong now I think about 0:20:54.160 --> 0:20:56.520 because it's a Nintendo. So yeah, a little like tiny 0:20:56.560 --> 0:20:59.159 little arcade machines. So it's really a tabletop, not so 0:20:59.240 --> 0:21:02.359 much a handheld, but you could have held it in 0:21:02.359 --> 0:21:04.120 your hands. You just wouldn't be able to control both 0:21:04.200 --> 0:21:07.720 the joystick and the buttons very easily. But um but 0:21:07.800 --> 0:21:09.760 it was you know again one of those they only 0:21:09.800 --> 0:21:12.320 produced four, So Donkey Kong Jr. That's the one I 0:21:12.400 --> 0:21:14.960 was because they didn't do Pacman. It was Donkey Kong Jr. Snoopy, 0:21:15.000 --> 0:21:21.480 Mario's Cement Factory, and Popeye. So um yeah, mostly notable 0:21:21.480 --> 0:21:26.600 because they had this very evocative form factor. Unfortunately, ine 0:21:26.960 --> 0:21:29.040 that that was also the year that the video game 0:21:29.320 --> 0:21:33.399 console industry crashed. Yeah, we all know the story. You know. 0:21:34.160 --> 0:21:37.560 The market was flooded with with game games and game 0:21:37.680 --> 0:21:41.000 systems that ranged in quality from pretty good to abysmal. 0:21:41.440 --> 0:21:46.040 And unfortunately, there were a lot of the abysmal category, uh, 0:21:46.080 --> 0:21:49.760 including the infamous pac Man Atari Port and the e 0:21:49.960 --> 0:21:54.480 T the Extraterrestrial Game. So it ended up crashing that 0:21:54.480 --> 0:21:59.199 that whole industry. However, handheld games fared better than the 0:21:59.280 --> 0:22:02.119 video game cons did one because they're less expensive and 0:22:02.160 --> 0:22:06.560 too they fulfill a different need than the home video 0:22:06.600 --> 0:22:11.400 game console. So very interesting. And then we also saw 0:22:11.440 --> 0:22:15.399 at this time some experimentation with cartridge based systems similar 0:22:15.440 --> 0:22:19.399 to what Microvision had tried. They included game systems like 0:22:19.440 --> 0:22:22.400 the Intexts select a game, which I think only had 0:22:22.480 --> 0:22:25.080