Speaker 1: Get in Touch with Technology textuffm Hey there and welcome
Speaker 1: to text UFF. I'm Jonathan Strickland. With me in the
Speaker 1: studio is Chuck Bryant. We have been here for hours.
Speaker 1: It feels like it. Literally it has been two hours.
Speaker 1: But it's funny but that we were just talking though
Speaker 1: off Mike about how this is a three parter and
Speaker 1: were we could do a whole season on this if
Speaker 1: you really wanted to get into all the details. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, I came across some websites and by all this,
Speaker 1: we're of course talking about the rise and fall of
Speaker 1: Atari things. This was a request from Jeff on Facebook.
Speaker 1: He wanted to know about this. We could go there
Speaker 1: could be seven eight episodes where we talk about all
Speaker 1: the things we're going on. There were incredible political moves
Speaker 1: going on behind the scenes. There were some amazing technological development.
Speaker 1: We haven't really touched on the major competitors with Atari
Speaker 1: that we're causing extra problems for them, like uh, you
Speaker 1: know the early on the in television and Cliko, but
Speaker 1: then later on we're talking Nintendo and Sega and then
Speaker 1: Sony with the PlayStation. I mean by that time Atari
Speaker 1: is pretty much out of the picture. Anyway. But I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just so much to talk about. I found some
Speaker 1: some websites that even broke it down into when Atari
Speaker 1: hired people. And I'm not talking about the big names
Speaker 1: we've mentioned talking about like Marty Accounting exactly. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was phenomenal. The documentation that's out there. So we're
Speaker 1: going to now pick up in UH that tells you
Speaker 1: how detailed we've been. If you haven't heard the first
Speaker 1: two episodes in this series, go back listen to those first.
Speaker 1: It's an amazing story. So is when something happens to
Speaker 1: Atari that redefines everything, and some people consider this yet
Speaker 1: another death of the company. That's when Warner, which had
Speaker 1: purchased Attari from Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari. Warner
Speaker 1: splits Atari into two entities one of it one of
Speaker 1: them is a home computing division, which is called the
Speaker 1: Atari Corporation, and the other is the arcade division, which
Speaker 1: is called Atari Games. And it sells off the home
Speaker 1: computing division. So Atari Corporation gets sold to a man
Speaker 1: named Jack Tramiel. Yeah, he was the original founder of
Speaker 1: Commodore UH in the famous Commodore sixty four computer, which
Speaker 1: was great for its time. Oh, Yeah, fantastic. There's a
Speaker 1: full Tech Stuff episode about Commodore published on February first,
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve. It's good, it was. It was fun
Speaker 1: to talk about that too, to talk about the development
Speaker 1: of the Commodore system. So Tramiel was another another pioneer
Speaker 1: in personal computing and home electronics, and he saw some
Speaker 1: promise in that home computing division of Atari, something that
Speaker 1: after the video game crash of a lot people thought
Speaker 1: had no value whatsoever. Yeah, he renamed it, uh I
Speaker 1: think he renamed it the Atari Corporation. Yeah, Yeah, he
Speaker 1: decided to call it that because obviously, you know, now
Speaker 1: you have two separate entities that both have the Atari
Speaker 1: name in them, Yeah, which is always confusing in the marketplace,
Speaker 1: and it's going to be confusing in this episode because
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about the fate of both of them, right,
Speaker 1: So we're gonna follow both the fate of the Atari
Speaker 1: Corporation and the fate of Atari Games. So Atari Games
Speaker 1: at in nineteen eighty four was still with Warner, not
Speaker 1: not for long, in fact, would be when that changes.
Speaker 1: So some big stuff happens in home video games. That's
Speaker 1: when the Fama com also known as Nintendo Entertainment System
Speaker 1: is released in the United States, which was Tyson's punch
Speaker 1: out right there. Um. Yeah, so that was something that
Speaker 1: convinced people maybe home video games aren't as dead as
Speaker 1: we thought they were. Because the video game crash, we
Speaker 1: pretty much thought that's it. Personal computers are going to
Speaker 1: take over. There won't be any home consoles dedicated video
Speaker 1: games anymore. Because that idea played itself out. Apples on
Speaker 1: the scene at this point, Yeah, making a stink. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, by they're selling the Macintosh because that came
Speaker 1: out four so they Yeah. But the brilliant thing Nintendo
Speaker 1: did was they learned from Attari's mistakes. They said, all right, well,
Speaker 1: we are going to license games like they have to
Speaker 1: be certified by US. You can't develop for Nintendo independently
Speaker 1: without submitting the game for US for certification. That way
Speaker 1: we still have some control over warners wanted, but they
Speaker 1: didn't get out ahead of it in time like Nintendo did.
Speaker 1: No Act Activision pretty much doomed Atari because Activisions set
Speaker 1: that that precedent that a third party developer can can
Speaker 1: create uh cartridges for another platform that they don't own.
Speaker 1: Once that precedent was set and that policy wasn't in place.
Speaker 1: It was. It was game on literally for everybody wanted
Speaker 1: to develop for Atari. Yeah, and pardon my ignorance because
Speaker 1: I'm not a current gamer. I'm still stuck in the eighties.
Speaker 1: Activision still around, right, uh huh, Well it's part of
Speaker 1: something bigger. But yes, but they survived everything and did
Speaker 1: well for them. Well, I mean I could do a
Speaker 1: full episode on what happened Activision too. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like it's kind of like a Tari you know how
Speaker 1: Atari technically still exists today, so at any rate. Um uh.
Speaker 1: Also in that's when Warner Communications sells the arcade division
Speaker 1: of Atari Games to a competitor, Namco. Yes, so that's
Speaker 1: the company that that developed pac Man. Yeah. Namco only
Speaker 1: owned it for about a year, and then some employees
Speaker 1: bought Atari Games from Namco and then uh made a
Speaker 1: few more pretty good arcade games, Paper one, it was
Speaker 1: a big one. Gauntlet, Yeah, Gauntlet was a big one.
Speaker 1: Wizard needs food, good games, so they pumped a little
Speaker 1: more lifeblood into the car Atari Games division. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: also started to develop home games. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: When Warner split it up between uh Atari Corporation and
Speaker 1: Atari games, Atari Corporation had the sole right to sell
Speaker 1: home games under the Atari brand, yeah, which they had
Speaker 1: already proved the struggle post without a really great, solid
Speaker 1: follow up that didn't didn't jump over. Yeah. And then
Speaker 1: you've got Atari Games that was making these these arcade games,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to make home video games, but they
Speaker 1: couldn't do it under the Atari brand because that belonged
Speaker 1: to Atari Corporation. So they created a new brand called
Speaker 1: Tension t E N G E N, which also comes
Speaker 1: from a uh an aspect of the old board game
Speaker 1: Go Atari in Tension the game the board game the
Speaker 1: Japanese for a game Go, or it's great, Yeah, it's um.
Speaker 1: In fact, there's a great story that uh going way
Speaker 1: back to the first episode we talked about the the
Speaker 1: founders of Atari, they used to play Go in their office,
Speaker 1: which was an office that was originally meant for one person,
Speaker 1: but two people had to share it, so they would
Speaker 1: play games of Go in between actually getting any work done,
Speaker 1: although according to uh Ted, Mr Nolan never really actually
Speaker 1: did any work as far as he could tell. But
Speaker 1: then I remember he had a lot of sour grapes
Speaker 1: for legitimate reasons. So if you notice what's going on
Speaker 1: now is Atari UM the corporation is getting really fractured.
Speaker 1: Um their home computer business with the eight hundred, we're
Speaker 1: doing okay, but they were behind the curve, so to speak,
Speaker 1: and they were playing catch up. They were announcing a
Speaker 1: new computer system, the Atari ST. They did that at
Speaker 1: the Winter SES. I did an episode about CS once
Speaker 1: where I explained this. But once upon a time there
Speaker 1: were two big c S events. One happened in the
Speaker 1: winter and one happened in the summer, and now there's
Speaker 1: only the winter version. But so this this was back
Speaker 1: when there were still two and at Winter c S
Speaker 1: they announced a r S T. The ST stands for
Speaker 1: sixteen slash thirty two, which refers to the microprocessor and
Speaker 1: its internal and external bus connections. But anyway, it had
Speaker 1: five kilobytes of RAM yeah, smoking fast yeah, and uh
Speaker 1: it could be expanded up to four megabytes. So there's that.
Speaker 1: Had a graphical user interface. So jewey uh or gooey
Speaker 1: if you prefer. Once the whole Jeff gift thing came out,
Speaker 1: it messes everything up. I always say gooey because jewey
Speaker 1: does not sound like it's appropriate to me at any rate.
Speaker 1: It we'll go with gooey. I think that's the more
Speaker 1: than more than overwhelming choice. It also had a floppy
Speaker 1: disk drive, and it would be the cartridge drive. Yes,
Speaker 1: so I had both. Yeah, and it would be produced
Speaker 1: up until the early nineteen nineties. Yeah, and it was
Speaker 1: the cheapest sixteen bit computer. Um. And like like you said,
Speaker 1: if it was around to the nine nineties, it did okay. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, in Europe it did pretty well. Here in
Speaker 1: the United States did okay, and in Europe it did
Speaker 1: it did better. Um. And then we've got, uh, the
Speaker 1: Atari Corporation releasing the Atari seventy eight hundred Pro system
Speaker 1: In nine six soft dred had come out, and then
Speaker 1: the seventy eight hundred comes out. It had digital joysticks
Speaker 1: rather than the older analog type, and the seventy hundred
Speaker 1: had a weird little story and that it was manufactured
Speaker 1: and then shelves in a warehouse basically for um, I'm
Speaker 1: not really sure how long. Two years. Yeah, two years.
Speaker 1: They basically were just going to sit on it, and
Speaker 1: then finally they said, well, the decision was really as
Speaker 1: arbitrary as let's just sell these things. Yeah. They released
Speaker 1: like a couple of early models U but in that
Speaker 1: two year period. But they, like you were saying, they
Speaker 1: didn't sell it like it. People talk about it being
Speaker 1: uh uh re debuted or reintroduced, but it never was
Speaker 1: fully introduced in the first place. But one cool thing
Speaker 1: about it was it was backwards compatible with almost all games. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's kind of neat, you know, it's better than
Speaker 1: theft UM and yeah, it ended up uh not really
Speaker 1: competing very well against the Nintendo Entertainment System. It would
Speaker 1: only be produced until or supported until that's when Atari
Speaker 1: announced they would no longer UM produced games or consoles.
Speaker 1: There was also JR companion model to basically that the public.
Speaker 1: At this point, uh, Nintendo Fever had struck and Sega
Speaker 1: started to come out with their systems, and Atari was
Speaker 1: just kind of sadly lost in a shuffle there as
Speaker 1: far as the home systems go. Yeah, if you're if
Speaker 1: your mascot wasn't a little Italian plumber, yeah, you were
Speaker 1: out of luck. So Attari would release the Atari x
Speaker 1: E Video Game System a k a. The Atari x
Speaker 1: E g S, which was based off the eight bit
Speaker 1: computers Attari had previously created. UM. So think of like
Speaker 1: the fifty two hundred was kind of the video game
Speaker 1: console of the four eight hundred bit or four D
Speaker 1: eight hundred Atari computers. This one was the next general
Speaker 1: it was based off the next generation of those same
Speaker 1: home computers. Yeah, those confusion in the marketplace, and I
Speaker 1: think confusion within Atari. I don't think they even knew
Speaker 1: what kind of company they were at this point. No,
Speaker 1: I don't think so. And this one actually had one
Speaker 1: game hard coded into it. So the Atari you could
Speaker 1: play other games, like you could get the disks for
Speaker 1: other games and play them, but it had one game
Speaker 1: that was hard coded into it, and that was Missile Command.
Speaker 1: So it's not a bad choice. But yeah, it was
Speaker 1: again one of those things where you might feel that
Speaker 1: Atari didn't have a clear vision for what its place was.
Speaker 1: Things just some kind of money. And in nine they
Speaker 1: would release the five twenty st E and the ten
Speaker 1: forty STE models of its home computer, which had an
Speaker 1: increased color palette and a graphics processor, right, a dedicated
Speaker 1: coprocessor for the graphics, which is something that's common now
Speaker 1: but at the time was pretty new. Yeah. So, I
Speaker 1: mean they were they were doing some of the right
Speaker 1: things on the home computer front, but there was just
Speaker 1: so much more competition. Now, Yeah, you had you had Apple,
Speaker 1: you had the IBM compatibles, and you had IBM plus.
Speaker 1: The Amiga was still out there. Um you can't forget
Speaker 1: about the Amiga. No. I had a friend who was
Speaker 1: a die hard Amiga fan, and I gotta admit the Amiga.
Speaker 1: The thing I loved about the Amiga was that, well
Speaker 1: before anyone else, it was doing amazing sound and graphics,
Speaker 1: like years before anyone else had managed to do that
Speaker 1: in an affordable way. And uh so, I remember my
Speaker 1: friend had several games for the Amiga that I found
Speaker 1: to be like light years beyond anything I could play
Speaker 1: on my Apple two E or my two eight six
Speaker 1: at home. Um so, but the the CPU on these
Speaker 1: devices had a blistering speed of eight mega hurts. We're
Speaker 1: talking about the multiple Giga hurts now, and it's a
Speaker 1: little a little slow on that and in fact, my
Speaker 1: phone is way faster than that. Um But that's also
Speaker 1: when Atari Corporation acquired the right to manufacture and sell
Speaker 1: a handheld gaming console that had been developed by a
Speaker 1: different company. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the links was really cool.
Speaker 1: It had been developed by a company called Epics E
Speaker 1: P y X but Epics had entered financial difficulty and
Speaker 1: it owed a lot of money to various companies. The
Speaker 1: largest that it owed money too was Atari. Actually the
Speaker 1: largest amount it owed was to Atari, and so they
Speaker 1: had this kind of settlement to say, like, well, how
Speaker 1: are we going to make good on this because Epics
Speaker 1: is on the verge of just disappearing, And as part
Speaker 1: of the deal, essentially they signed over this this handheld
Speaker 1: gaming system they had been developing, and that became the
Speaker 1: Atari Links. And the Links was great. I remember I
Speaker 1: had a couple of friends I had it. It um.
Speaker 1: It was released around the same time as the Game Boy,
Speaker 1: but it had full color graphics. It looked better, it
Speaker 1: sounded better. You could link them together. Yeah, you could
Speaker 1: link them together. It was it was sort of large. Um.
Speaker 1: It was had a horizontal UM I guess body UM.
Speaker 1: So it was big, which wasn't great. It was a
Speaker 1: little ungainly. The battery life would only last four to
Speaker 1: five hours, so that was kind of frustrating because this
Speaker 1: is this is not the era of rechargeable batteries for
Speaker 1: most people. You were popping out old ones and replacing
Speaker 1: them with new ones, so that could get really frustrating.
Speaker 1: But the one thing Links did not have was a
Speaker 1: game called Tetrish, and that is what basically was the
Speaker 1: death blow was just such a huge deal. It was
Speaker 1: the killer app. It was the killer app, and it's
Speaker 1: what made game Boy what it was. And I got
Speaker 1: the game Boy. Yeah, and then and then like you
Speaker 1: would think that, well, maybe if they can stick it out,
Speaker 1: then the Links will have a chance because the Nintendo
Speaker 1: game Boy, once everyone's got that, they'll see that the
Speaker 1: Lynx has got uh better stats, and maybe I'll go
Speaker 1: with that. But then in Sega came out with the
Speaker 1: game Gear, and Sega was already doing really good business too,
Speaker 1: and that just that just meant that the Links had
Speaker 1: no place in that competition. I feel bad for a
Speaker 1: try at this point, because they're coming up with superior products.
Speaker 1: In certain cases, it still can't get market. It's either
Speaker 1: bad timing or it's a combination of bad timing and
Speaker 1: a lack of a compelling library to these games. It
Speaker 1: really shows how you need to have strong launch titles
Speaker 1: to move a console. Yeah, there's a lot more to
Speaker 1: it than just like this has the best graphics. In fact,
Speaker 1: you know, going into personal account here, I don't own
Speaker 1: a current generation game. I love gaming. I consider myself
Speaker 1: to be a gamer. I'm not a hardcore gamer, and
Speaker 1: certainly I'm sure any of my listeners listening could beat
Speaker 1: me at any game of their choice. So I don't
Speaker 1: want to I don't want to put that out there,
Speaker 1: but but I will say that I love gaming. But
Speaker 1: I haven't purchased an Xbox One or a PS four
Speaker 1: because we're finally at a point now where it's different.
Speaker 1: But for the longest time, the libraries weren't compelling enough
Speaker 1: for me to make that investment. Right, so I would think, yes,
Speaker 1: it's clearly superior to the system I have now, but
Speaker 1: the games aren't games that I want to play yet.
Speaker 1: I want to wait until there are enough games that
Speaker 1: I want to play to justify that expense, and now
Speaker 1: we're at that point. I just haven't well. For one thing,
Speaker 1: I'm not allowed to have a present for another year
Speaker 1: and a half. I have a two year two year
Speaker 1: period where I can't get presents, or at least my
Speaker 1: wife won't buy me presence. For a good reason, and
Speaker 1: it's not a bad one. It's that I made a
Speaker 1: substantial donation to a nonprofit and in return, the agreement
Speaker 1: was two years no presence, you're a good man. Here's
Speaker 1: my deal with gaming now is I uh played Nintendo
Speaker 1: and stuff through the through the sixty in college, was
Speaker 1: way into it and then sort of dropped out for
Speaker 1: a long time until my stepfather, I'm sorry, my father
Speaker 1: in law gave me his PS three a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago because he just didn't want it. And since then,
Speaker 1: I buy like I just look up once a year
Speaker 1: and buy like the two best reviewed games of the year,
Speaker 1: and I'll play those for about a month and then
Speaker 1: that's it. Well, we don't have the time to go
Speaker 1: to gaming three years old, you know, to fix up
Speaker 1: my house. I know, I've got a house, I got
Speaker 1: a puppy, I got four animals. Yeah, we've gotten to
Speaker 1: a white We're obviously getting a little off topic, but
Speaker 1: it's true, like we we just have reached the point
Speaker 1: in our lives where now you just can't game like
Speaker 1: anymore about about the last of us. Fantastic game, fantastic game.
Speaker 1: But see, I still have that gamer in me because
Speaker 1: I was addicted to this game. Yeah. Um, and then
Speaker 1: I bought one of the bio BioShock BioShock, but the
Speaker 1: steam Punk win, right, so BioShock Infinite. Yeah, that one,
Speaker 1: and I played that one through and that was really great.
Speaker 1: The music in that game is amazing. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: the extent of my gaming. Now I hear two years,
Speaker 1: I'll buy the best two games. Although after the last
Speaker 1: of us, I don't I mean, I don't see how
Speaker 1: you can get any better. It was a very emotionally
Speaker 1: impactful game. I mean, right at my stories. Uh so, yeah,
Speaker 1: back to the get back to No, I love doing this.
Speaker 1: I would just totally continue on that conversation otherwise. But No,
Speaker 1: there's only one thing I have to mention, which is
Speaker 1: that Atari Corporation released the Atari t T zero three
Speaker 1: zero or zero thirty. Never heard of it. It's workstation
Speaker 1: three Mega hurts processor workstation. So they were still staying
Speaker 1: in the home computer business at that point. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: they're trying to hang in there. Uh. And I don't
Speaker 1: have any notes for ninety one, but in yeah, in
Speaker 1: ninety two, Atari Corporation would release the Falcon, which would
Speaker 1: be the last of its computer systems. The Falcon was
Speaker 1: the last time they tried to do a home computer,
Speaker 1: and then they made the decision to switch back to
Speaker 1: trying to do video game consoles. Again. So that's why
Speaker 1: we see the release of the Atari jag Jagua if
Speaker 1: you want to go with the British pronunciation jack again,
Speaker 1: Atari is doing the right thing there ahead of the curve.
Speaker 1: It's the first sixty four bit system. Yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: so it is graphically and as far as the processor
Speaker 1: goes more powerful than any of the competitors on the
Speaker 1: market at that Yeah, and had had a couple of
Speaker 1: success successful titles that think the Aliens Predator, that's one
Speaker 1: that's considered to be one of the best titles for
Speaker 1: that system. Tim This two thousand that was the other one,
Speaker 1: was really good, um, but the controller on it was terrible. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was huge and it was unwieldy, um, and didn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of software support. Right to the titles
Speaker 1: that we just mentioned are pretty much I was like, well,
Speaker 1: beyond that, I can't really justify buying this. It says
Speaker 1: there were sixty seven games ever released, and I don't
Speaker 1: think more than ten of them registered on the radar.
Speaker 1: You read over the them and you're just like, well,
Speaker 1: I never heard of this there. That's got to be
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why this Jaguar never took off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well in the sixty four was just awesome and they
Speaker 1: had good games, and then you had the PlayStation coming on,
Speaker 1: like when Sony starts really throwing down then it really
Speaker 1: this was like a last like a star in the
Speaker 1: just reaching for that rope at the end of the rope,
Speaker 1: trying to grab ahold of it and Nintendo and Sonny
Speaker 1: was just pulling the rope higher. So we haven't talked
Speaker 1: about Tory Games for a little bit. That's the that's
Speaker 1: the branch that did the Arcade Ursians not and also
Speaker 1: produced some home video under home video games under tension. Uh,
Speaker 1: Time Warner Communications. Just in case you didn't know, Warner
Speaker 1: and Time merged in nine, just a little bit of
Speaker 1: a merger. Yeah, Time Warner Communications purchased controlling interest in
Speaker 1: Atari Games, so Atari Games would get consolidated with other
Speaker 1: properties in nine and become known as Time Warner Interactive.
Speaker 1: So Atari Games was part of Time Warner Interactive. But
Speaker 1: this means that part of Atari is back with Warner.
Speaker 1: Remember Warner was the one that sold it off, So yeah,
Speaker 1: Warner had sold it off to Namco. Then employees bought
Speaker 1: it back from Namco and then Time Warner Communications buys it,
Speaker 1: and it's just this is why it gets really hard
Speaker 1: to talk about the end of Atari UM. And in
Speaker 1: another confusing thing, uh, JT Storage was a hard disc manufacturer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: JT has merges with Atari Corporate Shian So this is
Speaker 1: the home computer one, not the Atari games one. So
Speaker 1: JTS merges with Atari Corporation. But JTS was in a
Speaker 1: tough spot because it was already had a cash flow problem,
Speaker 1: and so it was looking for a way to avoid
Speaker 1: going into bankruptcy and thought that by acquiring Atari, which
Speaker 1: had lots of cash, but not a whole lot of
Speaker 1: market share because most of the cash from Attari was
Speaker 1: actually coming from lawsuits like they were going after other companies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they weren't making money off their products as much
Speaker 1: as they were off some of the lawsuits. So JTS
Speaker 1: comes in, acquires Atari, then fires almost all of the
Speaker 1: former Atari employees and liquidates the remaining Atari inventory as
Speaker 1: a means of helping stave off this impending disaster, which
Speaker 1: it did not do. Two years after that has bro
Speaker 1: Interactive UM by JTS for five million bucks. Yeah, essentially
Speaker 1: it bought the Atari Corporation from JTS for five million
Speaker 1: JTS actually went bankrupt that year. It essentially bought the
Speaker 1: Atari name for five million. Yeah, because at that point
Speaker 1: there really was nothing left, right because and at this
Speaker 1: point in the name, it's like your your drunk uncle
Speaker 1: who was he was a big shot in high school.
Speaker 1: That's what Atari is at this point. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: you know, stumbling around in the alley, you know, don't
Speaker 1: you know who I am? And around the same time,
Speaker 1: to make matters worse. Okay, So that that's Atari Corporation, right,
Speaker 1: getting acquired for five million by Hasbro Interactive. Meanwhile, around
Speaker 1: that same time, Atari Games was split off from Time
Speaker 1: Warner Interactive, so it didn't stay at Time Warner very
Speaker 1: long either, like three years it was gone. It splits
Speaker 1: off and is purchased by w m S Industries, which
Speaker 1: was the parent company or Williams and Bally Midway. Right,
Speaker 1: So now we're seeing a consolidation of the big games that,
Speaker 1: you know, twenty years earlier have been the defining names
Speaker 1: in in arcade entertainments. So they purchase Atari Games. Uh,
Speaker 1: And meanwhile you've got Hasbro Interactive that's acquired the Atari Corporation.
Speaker 1: So at that point, yeah, that's true, but don't get
Speaker 1: ahead of me. So at that point, when when Hasbro
Speaker 1: gets hold of Atari Corporation, w MS Industries doesn't want confusion.
Speaker 1: You know, they just purchased Atari Games earlier. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're already confused. So what they do is they rename
Speaker 1: Atari Games. Atari Games gets renamed into Midway Games West.
Speaker 1: So now when I talk about Atari Games, I'm actually
Speaker 1: talking Midway Games West. Don't worry, we'll come back around
Speaker 1: to make things more confusing later. So yeah, so now
Speaker 1: we get to two thousand, that's when the dot com
Speaker 1: bubble bursts. Poor Atari because through two bubble bursts, right,
Speaker 1: the video game bubble and then the dot com bubble.
Speaker 1: Man So they probably had were affected by the real
Speaker 1: estate bubble in some way too. Probably I was affected
Speaker 1: by the dot com bubble. I worked for a human
Speaker 1: resources management consulting firm at the time, and most of
Speaker 1: our clients were dot com companies. Yeah, suddenly our client
Speaker 1: lists got a lot smaller. Yeah, but look where you
Speaker 1: are now. Yeah, it was a long road, but I'm
Speaker 1: glad I'm here. Uh so Hasbro, because Hasbro Interactive was
Speaker 1: hit hard by this dot com verse. Everyone was right,
Speaker 1: you mean, you just had this. It was another market
Speaker 1: correction that was then devastated a lot of companies and lives.
Speaker 1: So Hasbro decides to sell off Hasbro Interactive, including the
Speaker 1: intellectual property from Atari Corporation. Remember that's the home computing one.
Speaker 1: They sell it to a French company that I always
Speaker 1: misspelled because I always think that the name is a typo.
Speaker 1: Yeah in in info Games. Yeah, I keep thinking it's
Speaker 1: Info Games. It's info gram because it's spelled like info
Speaker 1: Games but with an extra are there right after the
Speaker 1: ga the French that was in two thousand Yeah, and
Speaker 1: uh So Hasbro Interactive becomes info Grams Interactive and in
Speaker 1: two thousand three, unless you have anything between two thousand
Speaker 1: and two thousand three, thank goodness. So in two thousand three,
Speaker 1: Info Grams Interactive is renamed Atari Interactive, and Infograms creates
Speaker 1: a subsidiary called Atari Incorporated, which has its own listing
Speaker 1: on NASDAC. Yeah, they still saw value in that Atari
Speaker 1: name despite the pummeling it took over the years. And
Speaker 1: keep in mind that by this point there's nothing left
Speaker 1: of the original Atari attached to the Satari name. The
Speaker 1: Atari name is a name and an idea, but it's
Speaker 1: no longer associated with the original company at all. So
Speaker 1: the European branch of Infograms became known as Atari Europe
Speaker 1: and Infograms Australia became Atari Australia Infograms the UK became
Speaker 1: Atari u K. Yeah, And there were re releases of
Speaker 1: some of the classic games. There were some newer games.
Speaker 1: One called Alone in the Dark in two thousand and
Speaker 1: eight was supposed to be pretty good. I never played it.
Speaker 1: Fantastic good. So they had some successes, but again that
Speaker 1: was just confusing because they were, you know, a publisher
Speaker 1: and a distributor, and they really didn't really know what
Speaker 1: they were doing completely with the Atari name. Right. Infogrums
Speaker 1: in particular was into this like acquisition mania, like they
Speaker 1: were they were buying up properties left and right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is always a little dangerous, yeah, because it can
Speaker 1: lead to a lack of focus, which is exactly what
Speaker 1: happened in this case. I mean, obviously hindsight tells us that, right,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't necessarily know that otherwise, But it is the
Speaker 1: case Midway Games in two thousand three, Midway Games West,
Speaker 1: I should say, what used to be Atari Games. Now
Speaker 1: Midway Games West disbands, So now Atari Games is just
Speaker 1: a name. In fact, there was a holding company that
Speaker 1: was still called Midway Games West, but it was just
Speaker 1: a whole in company. There was no nothing else to it.
Speaker 1: It was not an office, no that secretary, no games
Speaker 1: coming out of it, nothing, So it only exists as
Speaker 1: a name. Literally. At this point, two thousand four, the
Speaker 1: Atari Flashback launches. Now the Flashback is a dedicated console
Speaker 1: with games that are hard baked into it, so it
Speaker 1: doesn't use cartridges as a selection of games. It looked
Speaker 1: like except for some added buttons here and there. Um,
Speaker 1: I bought. I don't know who made it, but I bought.
Speaker 1: At one point someone was selling the joystick plugs directly
Speaker 1: into the Yeah, that had like twenty games or something
Speaker 1: on it. Um, and that was I played the heck
Speaker 1: out of that thing. Oh yeah, I did too. I
Speaker 1: have one of those at home. But I have one
Speaker 1: of those at home right next to my TV. So
Speaker 1: not trying to brag or anything. I mean, I realized
Speaker 1: that almost everyone out there probably has a larger TV,
Speaker 1: so please don't mind me feel badly about myself. But
Speaker 1: the Flashback did okay, And they came out with different
Speaker 1: versions of that thing exactly like the first one, did
Speaker 1: not have ver eate and it's so that just did
Speaker 1: not fly with me. Yeah, but it's all for the
Speaker 1: nostalgia crowd. Yeah. So that came out with models in
Speaker 1: two thousand four, two thousand five, two thousand eleven, and
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve. Different companies would produce it over the years,
Speaker 1: but they were all licensed by Atari. And by Atari
Speaker 1: I mean Atari Home Computing, which means uh infograms as
Speaker 1: opposed to Midway Games West, which is I know, really
Speaker 1: two thousand five. Okay, seriously, has Bro, what the heck
Speaker 1: are you doing? Has Bro buys back some intellectual property
Speaker 1: from Atari s A, which is the info Grams version,
Speaker 1: the home computer version also known as Atari Inc. As
Speaker 1: the subsidiary of Atari, say, for sixty five million dollars. See,
Speaker 1: that's what's confusing. Yeah, that's crazy that Hasbro got out
Speaker 1: of the game and then literally got back into it,
Speaker 1: you know for that. Yeah, clearly that dot com bubble
Speaker 1: scared everybody, and then once we started seeing recover are
Speaker 1: people wanted to get back into it. The ones that
Speaker 1: were still around anyway. Now, now At is not your
Speaker 1: drunk uncle, it's just the abused, like confused, I don't
Speaker 1: even know which which way is up at this point.
Speaker 1: This is this is the this is the person who's
Speaker 1: just wandering the street and talking about how you know,
Speaker 1: the trees are convincing them to buy Dorito's. That's what
Speaker 1: this is. That now we're at that point. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: in two eight, Infograms offers to buy out Atari Incorporated
Speaker 1: shares to make Infograms the sole owner of Atari Incorporated
Speaker 1: again because they had listed Atri Incorporated on NASDAC, so
Speaker 1: they sold shares to other parties, making it a publicly
Speaker 1: traded company. But now they're saying, well, we need to
Speaker 1: fix Atari like this, this brand is not doing what
Speaker 1: we needed to do. We think that this brand, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we think this brand could save us because Infograms as
Speaker 1: a whole was having a lot of issues. We want
Speaker 1: to be able to rebrand ourselves. But in order to
Speaker 1: do that, we first need to get all of Atari
Speaker 1: back belonging to us. So they offered to buy it out.
Speaker 1: It's accepted, and Infograms reacquires Atari uh completely, so now
Speaker 1: it totally belongs to Infograms uh. Atari meanwhile had acquired
Speaker 1: another company called Cryptic Studios, which developed a game called
Speaker 1: City of Heroes. It's an online multiplayer game where you
Speaker 1: create a superhero um and you an original superhero that
Speaker 1: you can play. It was one that I always wanted
Speaker 1: to get into it, but I never I never had
Speaker 1: the time to dedicate to those massive online games and
Speaker 1: their monthly subscription base. For well, now they're mostly free
Speaker 1: to play, but back then they were all monthly subscriptions,
Speaker 1: and you're busy creating your own real life superhero persona.
Speaker 1: That's true, but you know that's a that's an alter
Speaker 1: ego thing that we need to steer away from. So
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, good grief, could this story get more ridiculous?
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers Entertainment purchases the Midway intellectual property, including the
Speaker 1: name Atari Games. So for the third time, Warner Warner
Speaker 1: owns something called Atari. Yeah nuts, three times buying and selling.
Speaker 1: I don't know. So meanwhile, Namco Bandai acquires Atari Europe
Speaker 1: from Infograms. Infograms itself changes its name to Atari Essay
Speaker 1: to create a united company, and it also has the
Speaker 1: Atari Group, which is a collection of divisions from around
Speaker 1: the world, like Atari Italia, that kind of thing. Um
Speaker 1: that still have the Atari brand name. Here's a name
Speaker 1: we haven't heard for a while. Bushnell. He comes back.
Speaker 1: He actually because of an acquisition ends up on the
Speaker 1: board of directors for Atari, so Atari Incorporated specifically, so
Speaker 1: they brought him back for that very reason, right to
Speaker 1: sort of get some attention again, I imagine. So yeah,
Speaker 1: because this is again one of those things where you've
Speaker 1: got the name but otherwise there's no connection. But now
Speaker 1: you've got the guy who founded the company. So that's
Speaker 1: big news. And it definitely did get a lot of
Speaker 1: people writing about it at the time, although if you
Speaker 1: look at two now you realize not a whole lot
Speaker 1: has will remind you of the old golden age of
Speaker 1: Atari um So. In eleven, Atari Incorporated sells off Cryptic Studios,
Speaker 1: the one that they had bought the City Heroes one.
Speaker 1: And in ten Atari Incorporated files for bankruptcy January. Oh
Speaker 1: so remember this is the This was formally Infograms Atari
Speaker 1: Incorporated was formerly part of Infograms, now part of Ataria. Say.
Speaker 1: Atari Incorporated files from bankruptcy partly to escape the debt
Speaker 1: accrued by its parent company h and In. In an
Speaker 1: effort to pay off the debt, they attempt to sell
Speaker 1: off the portfolio of more than two video games, but
Speaker 1: they received fifteen preliminary bids and none of them approach
Speaker 1: the price that Atari was hoping for, so they don't
Speaker 1: accept any of them. Instead, they decide they'll sell bits
Speaker 1: and pieces off rather than rather than sell everything off
Speaker 1: at a price too low, They're going to sell bits
Speaker 1: and pieces off and try and get themselves through it.
Speaker 1: And it works. I mean they sell some stuff, not everything,
Speaker 1: but they sell some stuff, and then by the end
Speaker 1: often they emerged from bankruptcy December. So like the entire
Speaker 1: year of Ati Incorporated is in bankruptcy, the saddest year.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's hard, I mean, there's a lot of competition
Speaker 1: for that time that titleen Finally last year, that's when
Speaker 1: we have the documentary that we talked about previously, the
Speaker 1: one that went out to the desert to dig up
Speaker 1: to find out if et really was beneath it the cartridge,
Speaker 1: not the character, and that kind of resurrected a little
Speaker 1: bit of interest in Attari again. Yeah. Yeah, there was
Speaker 1: a lot of talk about there were a lot of
Speaker 1: people wondering whether or not they were actually gonna find
Speaker 1: to anything, if they would just find scraps as opposed
Speaker 1: to entire cartridges, And as we mentioned in the previous episode,
Speaker 1: they did find cartridges. So Um. Yeah. The whole story
Speaker 1: behind that is they manufactured four million cartridges. They were
Speaker 1: unable to move three and a half million of those.
Speaker 1: Man So they had only a couple of choices. Do
Speaker 1: you store this and hope that you can one day
Speaker 1: sell it, because keep in mind, storing stuff costs money, right,
Speaker 1: you can't. It's not like there's just a magical space
Speaker 1: like that. It's gonna occupy space that you would otherwise
Speaker 1: use for something else. Or do you call it a
Speaker 1: loss and throw it away? And they chose option number two.
Speaker 1: And so what's amazing to me about the whole et
Speaker 1: debacle is that, um, word got it. I mean this
Speaker 1: is pre Internet and word still got around that fast.
Speaker 1: From Johnny telling his neighbor Billy how bad it sucked,
Speaker 1: and Billy telling his neighbors there wasn't copies. There was
Speaker 1: no like kataku for him or something for people to
Speaker 1: say like this is still in cul the sex Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then and then scoffing over bargain bins at your
Speaker 1: local toy store. Um. And so what's going on with
Speaker 1: a Try now, Well, it's focusing on developing games for
Speaker 1: social platforms like Facebook and for mobile devices primarily, although
Speaker 1: they're looking at some other stuff as well. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a former employee name Fred Uh, I don't know how
Speaker 1: to pronounce that. C H E s in a I S.
Speaker 1: I believe is one of the French fellows from info Grams.
Speaker 1: Perhaps perhaps he's now the CEO. And he said that
Speaker 1: he is going to try and be relevant in the
Speaker 1: PC world again with a few different things. Uh, notably gambling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: real casino gambling and just for fun casino gambling. So
Speaker 1: I think this would be like if you walked into
Speaker 1: a casino, you know how you see all those licensed
Speaker 1: slot machines like Lord of the Rings. That one, by
Speaker 1: the way, treats me really well. So I love the
Speaker 1: Lord of the Ring slot machine, but I can see
Speaker 1: like the Centipe slot machine, and then some of the game.
Speaker 1: They're gonna do both. They're gonna have a licensing program
Speaker 1: and they're gonna have an actual online casino social casino
Speaker 1: with virtual money, and so the gambling thing and licensing
Speaker 1: and games. They said, the flashback they're gonna keep around. Uh.
Speaker 1: They have one idea for they're going to create some
Speaker 1: new I p s. One is for the LGBT community
Speaker 1: called pride Fest, and um, he said, they're developing a
Speaker 1: new Asteroids game that is a PC game where you
Speaker 1: will actually be surviving on the asteroid itself. So turn
Speaker 1: things around a little bit. They're trying, Um he thinks
Speaker 1: that they can capitalize on that Atari name and get
Speaker 1: it back to relevance again. But I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know, it's whether or not we see anything
Speaker 1: coming out of this division. Also, keep in mind the
Speaker 1: the Atari games that was purchased by Warner Brothers Entertainment. Know,
Speaker 1: the story is not necessarily over for Atari, although you
Speaker 1: could argue that as far as the original company is concerned,
Speaker 1: that story has been over since the eighties. So uh,
Speaker 1: it's an interesting and and sometimes upsetting story, the rise
Speaker 1: and fall of the of Atari and it all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and there's people I remember reading things like could
Speaker 1: the video game crash happen again? And if you look,
Speaker 1: there is a large number of different providers that are
Speaker 1: all trying to clamor for attention. Now, when we think
Speaker 1: of consoles, we think Nintendo, Sony an Xbox. Some people
Speaker 1: would say just Sony an Xbox. They don't even think
Speaker 1: of Nintendo. Um, but then we have the mobile game market,
Speaker 1: we have computers, PC gaming is hitting a resurgence. So uh,
Speaker 1: and then there are people like me who hold back
Speaker 1: from buying current generation consoles because we don't necessarily see
Speaker 1: the value in them or the reason to upgrade, or
Speaker 1: I was given one by my father in law. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The ending by one, we get to that point where
Speaker 1: we think, you know, it's it is possible. You can't
Speaker 1: never say that you're too big to fail. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a rookie massake Kip, Pride comes before the fall. That
Speaker 1: that's true. So we have completed the story of Attari.
Speaker 1: But now we've got a little time to talk about
Speaker 1: some personal reflections beyond the stuff that we've talked about
Speaker 1: in the previous episodes. So, Chuck, what are some of
Speaker 1: your fond memories of Atari in general? Uh? Well, buying
Speaker 1: pac Man on Christmas Day? You know it's stunk. The
Speaker 1: buying was great. Yeah, and actually, man, I actually enjoyed
Speaker 1: playing it as um a twelve year old. Um. I
Speaker 1: didn't realize how bad it's stunk at the time because
Speaker 1: it was pac Man in my house. Um. And you know,
Speaker 1: as a little kid, you're not like, oh, this doesn't
Speaker 1: look just like it and sound just like it. I
Speaker 1: think older kids probably were a little more like that,
Speaker 1: but um, I was young enough to where I enjoyed
Speaker 1: it adventure. Like we talked about man um the imagination
Speaker 1: playing adventure well, the fact that they incorporated things like
Speaker 1: the bat mechanic, which meant that you could never expect
Speaker 1: the same gameplay experience two times in a row, which
Speaker 1: was pretty interesting. Like a lot of these games, like
Speaker 1: the early games, it involved memorizing patterns, and if you
Speaker 1: memorize the pattern, you could play definitely, but that didn't
Speaker 1: work for games that actually would uh introduce some sort
Speaker 1: of element that could at least be perceived as random. Yeah,
Speaker 1: River Raid fantastic, huge game to me, that holds up
Speaker 1: still today. Yeah, it's a good game. I think out
Speaker 1: of all the shooter games. That's like by shooter, I
Speaker 1: mean like you're controlling a ship that's moving around and
Speaker 1: shooting things. In this case, it's a it's a jet,
Speaker 1: it's flying over a river. Uh, that one. I didn't
Speaker 1: own River Raid, but a friend of mine from down
Speaker 1: the street owned it, and I would go over to
Speaker 1: his house all the time to play it because it
Speaker 1: was the one title on Atari that I really did
Speaker 1: but did not have. Well, actually, No, there were two
Speaker 1: river Raiate and Pitfall. I never owned either of those,
Speaker 1: but I played the heck out of them. I think
Speaker 1: river Raid was the first top scroll game. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: Pitfall was huge and that kind of introduced the platforming
Speaker 1: genre of video games. Yeah, and Warlords. Uh man. I
Speaker 1: had a ton of Oh, Frogger. I mean, I know
Speaker 1: that was sort of a kids game, but I still
Speaker 1: like Frogger. It's still challenging. I liked Frogger as well.
Speaker 1: I remember I had some games that I wish had
Speaker 1: been better, Like I had Donkey Kong Jr. That really
Speaker 1: was it didn't measure up nearly as well to the
Speaker 1: arcade version. I had Popeye, which also didn't measure up
Speaker 1: very well to the arcade version. Um, but I mean
Speaker 1: it was. It was like I had a lot of
Speaker 1: those those games licensed games and stuff as well. Uh yeah.
Speaker 1: I I also have really fond memories of arcades, Like, oh, dude,
Speaker 1: you know, there were there were times where I would
Speaker 1: just go to the arcade to um, you know, spend
Speaker 1: a dollar or whatever, and you know, you always try
Speaker 1: and find the game that you figure you're gonna get
Speaker 1: the most value for your money. Like I can play
Speaker 1: this one for a long time. I'm going to play
Speaker 1: this one. Um. And luckily there were also a lot
Speaker 1: of them made by Atari that were really fun. I mean,
Speaker 1: Star Wars is still like I love the Star Wars
Speaker 1: trilogy game that came out that was modeled after closer
Speaker 1: after the movies, like with better graphics and everything. But
Speaker 1: there's still a place in my heart for that vector
Speaker 1: graphics Star Wars game. And I wasn't kidding when I
Speaker 1: said that I would actually consider purchasing one of those
Speaker 1: because that was, um such an such a fond memory.
Speaker 1: Like the two Arcade games I went back to over
Speaker 1: and over, We're We're Star Wars and Spy Hunter. Um No,
Speaker 1: Spy Hunter was not an Atari game, but oddly enough,
Speaker 1: I think Spy Hunter two ended up being distributed under Ratari,
Speaker 1: even though Atari had nothing to do with the original
Speaker 1: Spy Hunter. But that just shows another way that the
Speaker 1: Stari story makes no sense when you look at the
Speaker 1: whole thing. Yeah, and you know, I hate to sound
Speaker 1: like the old guy, but um, I'm really thankful that
Speaker 1: we grew up in that generation. There was something really
Speaker 1: special about seeing something invented for us, uh, right in
Speaker 1: front of our very eyes created out of nowhere, like
Speaker 1: we talked about in I think episode two, when there
Speaker 1: were three TV stations or you know, five or six
Speaker 1: TV stations and crappy handheld games and it was just
Speaker 1: it blew my mind. And I spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time in the arcade, and the games today are amazing,
Speaker 1: but the mind blow isn't there like it was back then,
Speaker 1: because it's all building on what happened before it, and
Speaker 1: this was building on out of thin air. And it also,
Speaker 1: I mean, it was an era where a single person
Speaker 1: could develop a game from beginning to finish. You know,
Speaker 1: now we have companies that have entire divisions dedicated to that.
Speaker 1: It was also an era where people were making weird games,
Speaker 1: like weird games that could be a lot of fun
Speaker 1: but had nothing to do with it. Like you look
Speaker 1: at yours Revenge, I dare you to tell me what
Speaker 1: that's supposed to be. It is bizarre, but it's awesome,
Speaker 1: and there are a lot of really fun games. Yeah, huge,
Speaker 1: huge risks right both in the arcade and in the
Speaker 1: home video game market, just people saying let's create some
Speaker 1: a fun experience. It doesn't matter if it quote unquote
Speaker 1: makes sense or whatever. These days, you look at video
Speaker 1: games and a lot of the companies tend to get
Speaker 1: hung up on creating franchises. They want they want to
Speaker 1: create a title that they can make essentially clones of
Speaker 1: with modifications. Yeah, and then that way they have built
Speaker 1: in a built an audience they've got. All right, these
Speaker 1: are the people who are Call of Duty players. So
Speaker 1: let's put out a Call of Duty game every single year.
Speaker 1: They'll buy it. We we we know they'll buy it because
Speaker 1: they are Called of Duty fans, as opposed to saying
Speaker 1: what kind of cool experience can we create, which is
Speaker 1: sort of given rise to the independent developer community. So
Speaker 1: in a way, those early Atari days are very similar
Speaker 1: to what we see with the independent game community these days, except,
Speaker 1: of course, the independent game developers are are not, as
Speaker 1: you know, not as organized in a sense, they're nonder
Speaker 1: an umbrella like Atari was. But other than that, they're
Speaker 1: they're operating in a very similar way. You look at
Speaker 1: those early days of Attari, it really did sound a
Speaker 1: lot like what an Internet startups sounds like today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you were defining what you did and so there weren't
Speaker 1: rules because no one had done it before. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: talking earlier so man needs to get on that Atari movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: We talked about the possibility of you know, someone needs
Speaker 1: to do a documentary about this, like take this idea
Speaker 1: of the rise and Fall, the three episodes that we
Speaker 1: have done, um, and really look into it and make
Speaker 1: it a film to document what happened and explain the
Speaker 1: processes and uh, because it does get so so convoluted
Speaker 1: and complex towards the end of its existence. And of
Speaker 1: course we could argue that by that time, it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's saying the name Atari is meaningless because again it's
Speaker 1: just a word at that point, um, which is sad. It.
Speaker 1: It did have such an important part in my childhood.
Speaker 1: I mean, I I played so much both in the
Speaker 1: arcade and blister my hand. Oh yeah, oh no, yeah,
Speaker 1: you would get like I remember because by the way
Speaker 1: I would hold the joystick, um in the in between
Speaker 1: my thumb and forefinger, where I would I would grip
Speaker 1: the thumb stick, I would have a blister right there,
Speaker 1: and um. Yeah. It also was one of those things
Speaker 1: that would frustrate me because I'm a left hander, and
Speaker 1: so I I ended up Yeah, I coped well enough,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it was a little if I guess it
Speaker 1: kind of helped with my precision of my right hand.
Speaker 1: Otherwise I probably would just be flailing around the office
Speaker 1: on fire all the time. So I thank Atari for
Speaker 1: that as well. Yeah, but yeah, it's funny because I
Speaker 1: never owned you know, when the Atari crap video game
Speaker 1: crash happened. Atari was the only video game console I
Speaker 1: owned at the time of video game consoles being being built. Right,
Speaker 1: So I got in television, but that was after in
Speaker 1: television had was no longer a thing that was. That
Speaker 1: was a hand me down. I didn't get a Nintendo.
Speaker 1: I never had roommate had one, so I didn't buy
Speaker 1: one of those. You see. I what I did was
Speaker 1: I transitioned over to computers, and I got I became
Speaker 1: one of those snooty computer gamers because the games on
Speaker 1: computers were deeper, more sophisticated. They didn't have the arcady
Speaker 1: kind of graphics that dedicated video game consoles could have,
Speaker 1: but they did have a richer game experience in my mind,
Speaker 1: and so I became a computer gamer. Now it's funny
Speaker 1: because now I'm a console gamer again, although I'm now
Speaker 1: transitioning back the computer gamer, and that's because of services
Speaker 1: like Steam, which allowed me to buy games and have
Speaker 1: them download directly to my computer, and I don't have
Speaker 1: to go to a store. I don't have to buy
Speaker 1: a box. I get the game delivered straight to my
Speaker 1: computer and I can play it off of there. So
Speaker 1: it's funny because I keep going back and forth. I
Speaker 1: went console to PC two console. In fact, I was
Speaker 1: consoled for a long time with the uh In sixty four, GameCube,
Speaker 1: the PS two, the PS three, the Xbox, the Xbox
Speaker 1: three sixty I have all of those and the Dreamcast.
Speaker 1: I've got a Dreamcast too. I'm thinking back now, I've
Speaker 1: never bought a console. You've only been given was Christmas.
Speaker 1: My college roommate had the first Nintendo, had the Super Nintendo.
Speaker 1: Another college roommate had the sixty four. My friend in
Speaker 1: l A had the Xbox. Who lived next door to
Speaker 1: men who bought me the or gave me the three.
Speaker 1: Not all of us can walk outside and expect consoles
Speaker 1: to rain down from the heaven. Never bought one. Just
Speaker 1: occurred to me, to be fair, some of those word
Speaker 1: gifts to me. Actually, the Dreamcast was given to me
Speaker 1: after Dreamcast had already folded and uh my wife bought
Speaker 1: it like a used Dreamcast and then we just got
Speaker 1: like a folder full of games that that came out
Speaker 1: for it. By the way, I should do a full
Speaker 1: episode just on the Dreamcast some point, because that was
Speaker 1: also an amazing system, uh that died unnecessarily like it
Speaker 1: it was. It was kind of like the Jaguar and
Speaker 1: that it came out and it was clearly superior to
Speaker 1: it's it's uh competitors in space, but because of bad
Speaker 1: timing and a bad library early on, it never took off,
Speaker 1: at least not to a point that could sustain a company.
Speaker 1: Um So, Yeah, a lot of warning messages in this
Speaker 1: in this series too, But Chuck, I gotta thank you
Speaker 1: for joining me on this. This was so much fun.
Speaker 1: Who knew it was going to be an epic three
Speaker 1: part started out? Yeah, thanks for having men. Thank you.
Speaker 1: We've been in this studio for nearly three hours a
Speaker 1: little bit. Yeah, it turns out dude soup in this uh,
Speaker 1: because we we've got first of all, I think at
Speaker 1: six pm they turn off the air conditioning system because
Speaker 1: I'm reading it and says off on it, and yeah,
Speaker 1: there's just three of us in this tiny little room.
Speaker 1: But thank you for joining me. Remember you can find
Speaker 1: Chuck's stuff over at stuff You should know a phenomenal show.
Speaker 1: If you have not subscribed to that, well join the
Speaker 1: rest of the human race. Come on, you gotta check
Speaker 1: it out. Josh and Chuck are phenomenal. They break down
Speaker 1: topics in a way that's accessible and funny and informative.
Speaker 1: Check it out. Thank you, my friend. You are welcome.
Speaker 1: And if you have any questions, comments, you've got a
Speaker 1: suggestion for a future episode, write me. My address is
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