WEBVTT - Video Games I 0:00:04.960 --> 0:00:08.760 Hey, folks, It's hard to believe, but Ephemeral has been 0:00:08.760 --> 0:00:11.840 on the air now or whatever the podcast equivalent terms, 0:00:12.160 --> 0:00:15.680 for almost three years. In that time, our team has 0:00:15.720 --> 0:00:18.680 continued to grow what for me has been a dream 0:00:18.680 --> 0:00:23.160 come true. To that end, this and next episode you'll 0:00:23.160 --> 0:00:27.160 be hearing from our producer, Max Williams, who heretofore has 0:00:27.200 --> 0:00:30.159 been working with Trevor and me behind the scenes. You 0:00:30.240 --> 0:00:34.800 might recognize him from Christmas Special Noel or as the 0:00:34.800 --> 0:00:39.560 on Mike producer of Ridiculous History. Fun fact, Max is 0:00:39.600 --> 0:00:43.159 also my little brother and frankly our family's expert on 0:00:43.240 --> 0:00:52.120 video games. So without further ado, enjoy the episode. Ephemeral 0:00:52.240 --> 0:00:56.600 is production of My Heart three D audio for full 0:00:56.600 --> 0:01:05.559 exposure listen was that phones gaming as a pastime goes 0:01:05.640 --> 0:01:09.400 back at least to ancient Greece, from Olympic tournaments to 0:01:09.520 --> 0:01:14.120 bouts of Aristotelian logic. For millennia, humans have been fascinating 0:01:14.319 --> 0:01:18.839 by the interplay of chance and skills. As games advanced 0:01:18.880 --> 0:01:23.680 alongside technology, The twentieth century brought with it new spaces 0:01:23.720 --> 0:01:27.280 dedicated to gaming. When I was a youngster, I fell 0:01:27.319 --> 0:01:30.920 in love with the arcade business when I visited a 0:01:30.959 --> 0:01:34.679 place called the Casino in the town of Rye, New York. 0:01:35.080 --> 0:01:37.880 I come from the Bronx and we bicycled up there, 0:01:38.680 --> 0:01:41.080 and I just loved the smell of the wood on 0:01:41.120 --> 0:01:45.160 the floor, the games, the noises they made totally unlike 0:01:45.200 --> 0:01:47.480 what we see today when you're going in an arcade 0:01:47.480 --> 0:01:51.640 with the electronic noises beeping and screaming and all of 0:01:51.720 --> 0:01:56.880 the interesting electronic aspects that define today's amusement king Back then, 0:01:56.920 --> 0:02:00.240 it was all mechanical stuff. It ran an electric city, 0:02:00.240 --> 0:02:02.720 of course in most cases, but not all. And we 0:02:02.800 --> 0:02:07.080 had machines like Chicago coins hockey table when you batted 0:02:07.120 --> 0:02:10.880 the ball back and forth underneath the glass, and recording 0:02:10.960 --> 0:02:14.480 studios wherefore a quarter and a dime you could get 0:02:14.560 --> 0:02:17.080 in there with your buddies and do anything you wanted, 0:02:17.120 --> 0:02:19.680 to sing a proper song or maybe use some foul 0:02:19.760 --> 0:02:22.079 language just to hear it played back in et cetera. 0:02:26.000 --> 0:02:31.640 My name is Eddie adlum Um, the publisher of Replay Magazine, 0:02:31.880 --> 0:02:36.480 which is a monthly trade journal. I've been covering that 0:02:36.639 --> 0:02:42.160 industry for approximately fifty four years right now, and I 0:02:42.280 --> 0:02:47.120 have continued to work in this field my whole life. 0:02:48.240 --> 0:02:50.960 And he grew up loving arcades, but he never thought 0:02:50.960 --> 0:02:54.280 he'd devote himself to them professionally. As it turns out, 0:02:54.680 --> 0:02:59.040 he fell into the game's business almost by accident. As 0:02:59.040 --> 0:03:02.520 the years went by, I graduated college. After a period 0:03:02.520 --> 0:03:06.480 of time which look magazine, shoppening pencils, and then the 0:03:06.560 --> 0:03:11.080 US Army, I answered an ad in the New York 0:03:11.120 --> 0:03:16.160 Times for an editorial assistant. It was with cash Box Magazine, 0:03:16.600 --> 0:03:20.200 now a defunct trade paper which largely centered on the 0:03:20.280 --> 0:03:24.240 recording industry, with a small section in its back page 0:03:24.320 --> 0:03:29.040 is devoted to the jukebox and games business. And they 0:03:29.040 --> 0:03:31.040 told me they were looking for somebody to do the 0:03:31.080 --> 0:03:34.120 pages in the back on the games business, and I 0:03:34.160 --> 0:03:36.200 said I needed a job, but I've been doing it 0:03:36.240 --> 0:03:40.800 ever since. We reached other Eddie to talk about video 0:03:41.000 --> 0:03:44.600 in arcade games, but he reminded us that their history 0:03:44.760 --> 0:03:48.680 went back further than most people think, and arcade is 0:03:48.720 --> 0:03:52.040 not unique. The penny arcade, as they were originally called, 0:03:52.120 --> 0:03:55.600 go back practically since the beginning of the twentieth century. 0:03:55.880 --> 0:03:58.839 A common name would be playland. The common machine would 0:03:58.880 --> 0:04:01.880 be a fortune teller or restraint testing thing that you 0:04:01.960 --> 0:04:06.360 squeezed together but basically only find them in major cities 0:04:06.400 --> 0:04:11.040 like New York, Chicago, Atlanta, and so on. Up until 0:04:11.080 --> 0:04:15.240 the these arcades might have been purely analog games like 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:20.159 ski ball or pinball. But with technology advancements in post 0:04:20.200 --> 0:04:23.160 World War two America, we saw the rise of electro 0:04:23.240 --> 0:04:26.200 mechanical games, and that brought a whole new level of 0:04:26.240 --> 0:04:31.360 popularity to gaming. In the sixties, there were no video games. 0:04:31.360 --> 0:04:34.159 There were electro mechanical games. There was pinball, but I 0:04:34.200 --> 0:04:39.280 really stunk at pinball. But you had Chicago Motor Speedway, 0:04:39.480 --> 0:04:42.200 which was this game where there was a screen that 0:04:42.279 --> 0:04:45.000 had sort of a cartoon of cars on it, and 0:04:45.040 --> 0:04:47.520 then there's a little plastic car and you tried to 0:04:47.560 --> 0:04:50.600 steer that little plastic car to avoid the cars on 0:04:50.640 --> 0:04:54.040 the screen. There was a game called Knife Bomber that 0:04:54.160 --> 0:04:56.159 was very fond of where you looked for a little 0:04:56.200 --> 0:04:59.520 head thing and you'd pressed button and I hope that 0:04:59.560 --> 0:05:03.320 you tie named that the bomb hit different targets. These 0:05:03.360 --> 0:05:07.640 games were very rudimentary. They were quarter gobblers. They were fun. 0:05:09.839 --> 0:05:12.320 My name is Steven L. Kent. I'm the author of 0:05:12.320 --> 0:05:15.479 the Ultimate History Video Games, Volume one and two. Been 0:05:15.520 --> 0:05:18.200 playing games for a long time. Although it doesn't show 0:05:18.240 --> 0:05:23.640 in my skill level. Although Stephen loved arcade gaming, he 0:05:23.680 --> 0:05:26.280 says back in the sixties arcade games were not as 0:05:26.279 --> 0:05:30.760 easy to find. There were pinball machines and electro mechanical 0:05:30.839 --> 0:05:35.800 machines in bowling alleys. Those were pretty safe places to go. 0:05:36.560 --> 0:05:40.279 Then there was pinball and electro mechanical machines. For instance, 0:05:40.320 --> 0:05:42.680 if you went to Vegas or Taho, you might see 0:05:42.680 --> 0:05:46.039 some of those in the hotels. Other than that, you 0:05:46.080 --> 0:05:48.559 saw them in pool halls. And pool halls were actually 0:05:48.600 --> 0:05:54.400 pretty spooky places to go. They were associated with vagrants 0:05:54.400 --> 0:05:58.600 and tough guys um some crime. And then there were 0:05:58.680 --> 0:06:03.480 arcades which were certainly associated with vagrancy and problems. Komy 0:06:03.560 --> 0:06:06.320 Island is the classic one that you always hear and 0:06:06.400 --> 0:06:10.320 they might smell like somebody and urinated just outside. Somebody 0:06:10.400 --> 0:06:14.640 might have vomited. They were places you didn't necessarily want 0:06:14.680 --> 0:06:17.760 to send your five year own. When you see arcade, 0:06:17.800 --> 0:06:20.280 the young folks they have a very different view changed 0:06:20.440 --> 0:06:23.279 with all the redemption games the game for you get 0:06:23.279 --> 0:06:27.240 the tickets that you've been redeemed for a game. When 0:06:27.240 --> 0:06:30.039 you say arcade to old folks, they think of a 0:06:30.279 --> 0:06:33.599 room where cavern, where the lights are almost all out 0:06:33.640 --> 0:06:37.000 except for maybe some neon lights on the wall. Music 0:06:37.120 --> 0:06:40.640 is playing, maybe a juke box. She's got Benny Davis 0:06:40.720 --> 0:06:44.600 eyes by Kim karn I have the Tiger. Most of 0:06:44.600 --> 0:06:47.000 the light in the room is the low glow coming 0:06:47.080 --> 0:06:49.640 from the arcade machines, and you can hear all those 0:06:49.839 --> 0:06:53.520 iconic little lips and squeaks and things that the different 0:06:53.520 --> 0:06:57.600 machines made, And people are making little rows of quarters 0:06:57.640 --> 0:07:04.520 to say that they're reserving the next game. Eddie says, 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:07.279 there's a reason that kids like Stephen found our kids 0:07:07.279 --> 0:07:12.440 so wonderful despite the grudginess. It's the poor man's country club, 0:07:12.880 --> 0:07:16.280 whereas people with money could go to the literal country 0:07:16.280 --> 0:07:19.560 club and play golf and blah blah blah. People who 0:07:19.720 --> 0:07:23.679 are working class people or youngsters in high school could 0:07:23.680 --> 0:07:27.200 get into a different realm in the head with the 0:07:27.320 --> 0:07:30.600 lights of the machine. The challenge of trying to beat 0:07:30.640 --> 0:07:33.680 it so you get to repeat play or extra innings 0:07:34.280 --> 0:07:38.240 is just a nice way to recreate. The word recreation, 0:07:38.320 --> 0:07:43.440 if it's pronounced properly, is recreated. Although it wasn't yet 0:07:43.440 --> 0:07:47.400 available in ourcades, the first video game was being developed 0:07:47.400 --> 0:07:51.000 behind the scenes in the nineteen fifties. You would have 0:07:51.200 --> 0:07:55.600 to say that the inception of video games was with 0:07:55.640 --> 0:08:01.320 Willie Higgins Boffel, who was working at the Cave in Labs. 0:08:02.280 --> 0:08:05.760 It was a nuclear power facility, but they were having 0:08:05.800 --> 0:08:09.480 an open house. He thought nothing could be more more 0:08:09.640 --> 0:08:11.360 than an open house here, so he took it in 0:08:11.360 --> 0:08:15.200 a selescope and he built an interactive game into it 0:08:15.320 --> 0:08:18.800 called Tennis for two. Really, truly, you have to say 0:08:18.840 --> 0:08:23.840 that's the inception. Tennis for two was literally just a 0:08:23.920 --> 0:08:26.760 dot of light on a screen. They were bounced back 0:08:26.800 --> 0:08:30.120 and forth, prompted by buttons corresponding to each side of 0:08:30.120 --> 0:08:35.280 the screen. From there, It's always been rumored that Ralph Bear, 0:08:35.720 --> 0:08:40.040 who worked for Sanders Associates, which was a military contractor, 0:08:40.320 --> 0:08:45.120 attended that open house and Ralph, while working at Sanders Associates, 0:08:45.200 --> 0:08:48.160 came up with an idea for taking a TV and 0:08:48.240 --> 0:08:50.920 being able to do something more than just watch television 0:08:50.920 --> 0:08:55.760 shows on it. He developed an interactive game, which started 0:08:55.760 --> 0:08:59.160 out really dismally. One of the first things they did 0:08:59.200 --> 0:09:02.000 for it was there was a little box that would 0:09:02.000 --> 0:09:04.199 be red and then you had a pump, and if 0:09:04.200 --> 0:09:09.200 you really pump that pump furiously, the box turn Blue 0:09:09.520 --> 0:09:12.240 represented a house that was on fire and you were 0:09:12.280 --> 0:09:15.120 pumping water into it to put the fire out. They 0:09:15.160 --> 0:09:18.080 came out with a little dot that would travel and 0:09:18.120 --> 0:09:20.040 you had a little toy gun and you would shoot 0:09:20.080 --> 0:09:22.160 at it, and that was supposed to be like shoot 0:09:22.200 --> 0:09:25.000 at clay pigeons. And they came up with the tennis game, 0:09:25.720 --> 0:09:29.240 Uh Sanders Associate supports itself couldn't publish it. They were 0:09:29.320 --> 0:09:32.960 military contractor, but they eventually almost told it to our 0:09:33.040 --> 0:09:35.439 c A and eventually sold it to Magnavox and it 0:09:35.600 --> 0:09:40.440 became Odyssey, the first console. And tomorrow he's sure to 0:09:40.480 --> 0:09:44.439 see all the holiday specialist at your Magnavox dealer. Outstanding 0:09:44.520 --> 0:09:47.960 values and videomatic color televisions that adjust their own picture 0:09:48.080 --> 0:09:52.280 the changing room like automatic an exceptional offer on Odyssey. 0:09:52.320 --> 0:09:58.400 The exciting electronic game. The Magnufox Odyssey was released in 0:09:58.520 --> 0:10:03.960 nineteen sevente well very rudimentary, it was also revolutionary. The 0:10:04.040 --> 0:10:06.560 Odyssey was the first game system that you could hook 0:10:06.600 --> 0:10:10.000 up to a TV at home. Families who are content 0:10:10.080 --> 0:10:13.560 to let television do its things often find themselves at 0:10:13.600 --> 0:10:17.080 its mercy for a choice of entertainment. Wild people who 0:10:17.080 --> 0:10:21.280 want television to do their things entertain themselves with Odyssey, 0:10:22.720 --> 0:10:25.080 and it caught the eye of someone else who was 0:10:25.120 --> 0:10:29.680 also developing games at that time. Nolan Bushnell came across 0:10:29.720 --> 0:10:32.160 it because he happened to be going to school at 0:10:32.160 --> 0:10:35.319 the University of Utah, which was one of the great 0:10:35.360 --> 0:10:37.640 schools and computers of the time. There was m I T, 0:10:38.160 --> 0:10:43.240 there was Stanford, and there was the University of Utah. 0:10:43.679 --> 0:10:46.600 No One. Bushnell had just released a game called computer Space, 0:10:47.120 --> 0:10:50.480 developed with a company called Nutting Industries. The game was 0:10:50.520 --> 0:10:53.599 only moderlly successful, but it helped bush now make a 0:10:53.679 --> 0:10:58.640 name for himself. It's a big, tall, well animated showman. 0:10:59.200 --> 0:11:01.800 Because it was an twenties then I also got to 0:11:01.800 --> 0:11:05.600 see this machine, which my immediate reaction was, is nobody's 0:11:05.640 --> 0:11:08.400 going to buy this? And it didn't do well at all. However, 0:11:08.480 --> 0:11:11.520 the next year, Nolan had left nothing and gone into 0:11:11.559 --> 0:11:15.000 business for himself with a name he picked called Atari. 0:11:20.160 --> 0:11:22.440 Nolan hired a guy by the name of al al 0:11:22.600 --> 0:11:26.080 Corn to design a game based upon a Magnavox game. 0:11:28.160 --> 0:11:31.240 That Magnavox game was the tennis game mentioned earlier, as 0:11:31.280 --> 0:11:35.520 released on the Odyssey in nineteen seventy two. Tori's first 0:11:35.520 --> 0:11:39.840 product was Palm, which was of course very closely based 0:11:39.880 --> 0:11:44.240 on Odyssey. It was battened the image of a ball 0:11:44.400 --> 0:11:47.400 on a TV screen from left to right, left to right, 0:11:47.480 --> 0:11:50.600 left to right, and Nolan told al make me a 0:11:50.640 --> 0:11:55.280 coin machine version of this. Nolan Bush No wentl Corn 0:11:55.559 --> 0:11:58.760 described the Odyssey game he had seen at that trade 0:11:58.760 --> 0:12:01.120 show and said, can you make something like that? And 0:12:01.200 --> 0:12:03.720 all Corn went to work and not only made it, 0:12:03.760 --> 0:12:07.080 but made it a lot better than the Odyssey. I 0:12:07.120 --> 0:12:09.360 first started about it over the telephone when I was 0:12:09.400 --> 0:12:12.680 working at cash Box that in the West Coast. This 0:12:12.760 --> 0:12:16.280 machine had been put down into locations, bars, et cetera, 0:12:16.520 --> 0:12:20.680 and made nothing but money. They got it all done 0:12:21.160 --> 0:12:25.040 and they thought, okay, a Torii doesn't manufacture the games. 0:12:25.040 --> 0:12:28.679 Attari creates the games then sells it to other companies, 0:12:28.760 --> 0:12:35.000 to pinball companies like Williams, Valley, Midway, Sterns. And so 0:12:35.559 --> 0:12:38.720 Nolan went off to Chicago to try and sell Palm 0:12:39.000 --> 0:12:44.160 to one of the established manufacturers. While he's gone, alal 0:12:44.240 --> 0:12:47.480 Corn gets a call from Andicapps Tavern, which is the 0:12:47.600 --> 0:12:50.280 place where they had a demo unit out to see 0:12:50.280 --> 0:12:53.800 how people would react. It's a call from the manager saying, 0:12:54.000 --> 0:12:57.000 can you come out here? The machine's broken down. So 0:12:57.080 --> 0:13:00.280 he comes out in the morning and the manager is him. 0:13:00.280 --> 0:13:03.040 You know, it's the strangest thing. Normally we don't get 0:13:03.080 --> 0:13:06.000 any traffic at all early in the morning, but these 0:13:06.040 --> 0:13:08.760 days I come out to open the tavern and there's 0:13:08.760 --> 0:13:11.200 a line and they're not here to drink. They're walking 0:13:11.240 --> 0:13:15.280 over and playing Palm. Al opens the machine to see 0:13:15.320 --> 0:13:18.200 what's wrong with this and Quarters poor out. It was 0:13:18.480 --> 0:13:22.920 overflowing with Quarters. That's what's going wrong. So he called 0:13:23.000 --> 0:13:25.600 Nolan and told him, and Nolan decided on the spot, 0:13:25.800 --> 0:13:28.240 a Torii isn't going to just design the machines. A 0:13:28.360 --> 0:13:32.480 Torii is gonna start making. Nolan, working with Ted Dabney, 0:13:32.920 --> 0:13:36.840 figured out how to take this game that will only 0:13:36.840 --> 0:13:39.920 play on a thirty computer and replicate it on a 0:13:39.960 --> 0:13:45.240 relatively inexpensive technology that people could play in ourcades. And 0:13:45.280 --> 0:13:53.280 the result was Ahead. You say, what is ahead? Machines 0:13:53.320 --> 0:13:55.760 cost money. If you have a machine, let's say in 0:13:55.840 --> 0:13:59.400 the bar, where the commission to the bar owner is 0:13:59.480 --> 0:14:02.920 generally of the take, and you have two hundred dollars 0:14:02.920 --> 0:14:05.000 in the cash game in that machine, when you come 0:14:05.040 --> 0:14:08.079 to make collections, you net a hundred dollars. You need 0:14:08.160 --> 0:14:11.200 a lot of plays to just pay for the machines, 0:14:11.559 --> 0:14:15.200 and I they're paid in a respectable length of time, 0:14:15.440 --> 0:14:18.360 and then continue to make good revenue. You've got a hit. 0:14:20.400 --> 0:14:25.520 Pong officially launched a video game sensation, although as Eddie 0:14:25.560 --> 0:14:30.440 tells us, that term was still the making. The phrase 0:14:30.520 --> 0:14:33.800 video game was coined by myself when in the early 0:14:33.880 --> 0:14:36.720 days of covering it for cash Box, I got tired 0:14:36.760 --> 0:14:40.880 of calling them TV games television games. We were coming 0:14:40.960 --> 0:14:43.080 up with all kinds of names to call this class 0:14:43.080 --> 0:14:45.560 of amusement game. And one day I was sitting at 0:14:45.560 --> 0:14:49.960 the typewriter writing another story about somebody's machine, and I says, 0:14:50.080 --> 0:14:54.240 I remember we used to call the movie jukeboxes audio 0:14:54.600 --> 0:14:59.480 video machines. I says, hey, video game, and I started 0:14:59.520 --> 0:15:13.360 to do it the rest of that his history. With 0:15:13.440 --> 0:15:17.720 the release of Pong, video games quickly became a burgeoning industry. 0:15:18.680 --> 0:15:20.960 So Pong barely came out, and then all of a sudden, 0:15:21.000 --> 0:15:23.520 everyone starts making Pongo likes because they can see the 0:15:23.640 --> 0:15:26.720 writing on the wall. Pong is huge. Pong is also 0:15:26.920 --> 0:15:30.640 cheaper to make than a pinball machine, much easier to 0:15:30.680 --> 0:15:34.680 maintain than a pinball machine. Plus it's more popular. So 0:15:35.160 --> 0:15:37.760 Williams and Midway and everyone else started coming out with 0:15:37.840 --> 0:15:41.520 their own versions of Pong, and new companies came out 0:15:41.520 --> 0:15:44.200 of nowhere to do it as well. That you are 0:15:44.280 --> 0:15:46.600 watching the most exciting game you will ever see on 0:15:46.640 --> 0:15:50.200 your TV set till start by Kalico with three different 0:15:50.240 --> 0:15:54.960 games tell Star Tennis with digital scoring, variable speeds. But 0:15:55.120 --> 0:15:59.880 the first real competition came from Key Games. Key Games 0:16:00.040 --> 0:16:02.720 was a bunch of Atari ex patriots who went off 0:16:02.760 --> 0:16:05.720 and trying to compete. Only it turns out that that 0:16:05.800 --> 0:16:10.240 was a lie. Atari owned Key Games. Attari always owned 0:16:10.320 --> 0:16:13.560 Key Games, but they pretended like they were arrivals, and 0:16:13.680 --> 0:16:17.240 that's pushed the industry further. If you take a look 0:16:17.280 --> 0:16:21.520 at what Atari did. They made Pong the first sports game, 0:16:21.560 --> 0:16:24.720 They made Gotcha, the first maze chase game. They had 0:16:24.880 --> 0:16:31.080 Grand Track and Sprint, the first racing games. As the 0:16:31.160 --> 0:16:35.520 leader in the industry, Attari grew rapidly. In nineteen seventies six, 0:16:35.840 --> 0:16:39.360 They're at least a video arcade game, Breakout, which was 0:16:39.440 --> 0:16:44.760 partially designed by two famous Steves, Steve Jobs Steve Wasniac. 0:16:44.880 --> 0:16:48.520 Did you try and break Out? Did you try and 0:16:48.560 --> 0:16:52.080 break out, and it would sort of a return to 0:16:52.160 --> 0:16:56.960 bomb and only now you're not playing horizontally. You're playing vertically. 0:16:57.640 --> 0:16:59.520 And at the top of the screen there are bricks, 0:16:59.560 --> 0:17:02.560 and when you're ball hits those bricks, the bricks disappear, 0:17:02.560 --> 0:17:04.920 and you're trying to beat your way through one wall, 0:17:04.960 --> 0:17:07.320 and then there's another wall, and then there's another wall. 0:17:07.720 --> 0:17:10.560 No one bush Nell says he designed the game. Other 0:17:10.600 --> 0:17:13.359 people have said that other people designed, and who knows 0:17:13.440 --> 0:17:15.520 for sure, but one thing is certain. There was a 0:17:15.680 --> 0:17:18.320 young Atari engineer who was involved in all of this. 0:17:19.080 --> 0:17:22.840 His name was Steve Jobs. When you design a game, 0:17:23.440 --> 0:17:26.720 every chip in that game is gonna cost you, over 0:17:26.760 --> 0:17:29.240 the life of the game, tens of thousands of dollars. 0:17:29.520 --> 0:17:31.800 Let's see you make ten thousand copies of that game, 0:17:32.080 --> 0:17:36.359 the chip costs five bucks. That's fifty dollars. Bush Nell asked, 0:17:36.720 --> 0:17:39.480 who can redesign this game to get some of the chipstell. 0:17:39.960 --> 0:17:44.479 Steve Jobs was not an engineer, but he was working 0:17:44.560 --> 0:17:49.040 on a small homebrew computer package was a good friend 0:17:49.160 --> 0:17:52.800 named Steve Woznia. He was quite the engineer. I think 0:17:52.800 --> 0:17:56.440 he was viewed pretty roundly as the most brilliant engineer 0:17:56.440 --> 0:17:59.879 in Silicon Valley at the time. Jobs was also not 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:04.399 a huge video game player. Wasn'tiac was So Jobs asked 0:18:04.440 --> 0:18:07.280 Wasniac to come over and gave him pizza, let him 0:18:07.280 --> 0:18:09.800 play whatever game he wanted for a while, and then 0:18:09.800 --> 0:18:13.520 when everyone was gone, said could you redesign this game 0:18:13.560 --> 0:18:16.119 for us and get some of the chips out. The 0:18:16.359 --> 0:18:20.439 story goes that his redesign worked perfectly, but it was 0:18:20.560 --> 0:18:23.760 so brilliant and he had taken so many chips out 0:18:24.040 --> 0:18:29.639 that they couldn't replicate. Famously, Steve Jobs told Steve Wasniac 0:18:29.800 --> 0:18:31.359 that he was only in a portion of what he 0:18:31.400 --> 0:18:35.480 really was getting, and he pocketed the rest. According to 0:18:35.520 --> 0:18:39.440 Bushnell and according to anyone who would know, Steve Jobs 0:18:39.960 --> 0:18:43.040 then plowed all the rest of the money directly into Apple, 0:18:43.480 --> 0:18:47.840 but he didn't mislead Wasniac, and that was pretty much 0:18:47.840 --> 0:18:53.480 the end of their friendship. Meanwhile, companies in Japan was 0:18:53.520 --> 0:18:56.760 starting to jump on the video game bandwagon, the first 0:18:56.800 --> 0:19:00.440 of which was Namco. You have to look in Japan 0:19:00.560 --> 0:19:03.400 of the time to understand their success. First of all, 0:19:04.240 --> 0:19:09.520 Japan loves technology, and Japan loves storytelling, Japan loves glitz, 0:19:09.720 --> 0:19:12.640 and video games were all of those things right from 0:19:12.640 --> 0:19:19.159 the start. Japan at the time was better at renovating 0:19:19.280 --> 0:19:24.440 than innovating, so they took this idea of video games 0:19:24.520 --> 0:19:27.520 that American companies would come up with, and they found 0:19:27.600 --> 0:19:31.600 ways to change it to make it more fun. Video 0:19:31.640 --> 0:19:36.399 games became incredibly popular in so incredibly popular that there 0:19:36.480 --> 0:19:40.320 was no keeping up with the math. Pretty soon, Tito 0:19:40.560 --> 0:19:44.080 creates a game which Midway imports and adds the changes. 0:19:44.200 --> 0:19:47.600 They enhanced it with a computer was the first game 0:19:47.640 --> 0:19:51.080 to have a computer processor in it. That game was Gunfight. 0:19:59.040 --> 0:20:01.560 But that wasn't even the most impressive trick that Tito 0:20:01.600 --> 0:20:05.240 had up their sleeves. In nineteen they would turn the 0:20:05.280 --> 0:20:16.800 industry upside down by releasing Space Invaders. Where and whereas 0:20:16.880 --> 0:20:19.439 Pond made a big hit in the USA and some 0:20:19.520 --> 0:20:24.840 other places, Space Invaders absolutely hit the entire world. It 0:20:24.960 --> 0:20:26.960 was a great game and it still is a fun 0:20:27.000 --> 0:20:29.880 game to play. They may know, but three hundred thousand 0:20:29.920 --> 0:20:34.360 of these machines, which is unheard of. All of a sudden, 0:20:34.400 --> 0:20:38.119 you have a battle going, especially seventy nine. All of 0:20:38.160 --> 0:20:42.160 a sudden, you have Space Invaders and a Tory football 0:20:42.400 --> 0:20:46.199 exploding on the American public. And a Tory football that 0:20:46.280 --> 0:20:48.640 was the one with this big old track ball. People 0:20:48.680 --> 0:20:51.720 would be slapping until they had blisters on their hands. 0:20:52.080 --> 0:20:55.520 Their hands are numb. Sometimes your skin got caught in 0:20:55.640 --> 0:20:58.480 the little circle that held the track ball in place, 0:20:58.760 --> 0:21:01.880 so people got cuts. But they loved that game. They 0:21:01.920 --> 0:21:05.480 played that game silly until January when the Super Bowl 0:21:05.560 --> 0:21:08.800 took place, and then they moved on because football season 0:21:08.840 --> 0:21:14.760 and with Space Invaders that didn't happen. Space Invaders season 0:21:15.200 --> 0:21:24.520 never added. Reacting to Space Invaders, nam could develops some 0:21:24.600 --> 0:21:28.320 big hits of their own, including pac Man and Rallyatts. 0:21:30.560 --> 0:21:35.240 Also around this time, a small Japanese company named Nintendo 0:21:35.840 --> 0:21:45.359 started to make games. Nintendo did okay in Japan, it 0:21:45.600 --> 0:21:48.880 really floundered than the United States. They had a game 0:21:48.960 --> 0:21:51.640 called Radar Scope that was like the third biggest game 0:21:51.680 --> 0:21:53.880 in Japan in the year came out and they thought 0:21:53.880 --> 0:21:56.879 it would be big here, but it wasn't, and so 0:21:57.000 --> 0:21:59.560 they created a conversion get to make it a new 0:21:59.640 --> 0:22:02.480 game they thought might be able to save the company, 0:22:02.520 --> 0:22:11.720 and that new game was Donkey Kong. And he calls 0:22:11.720 --> 0:22:14.960 this period the Golden years of the games. It was 0:22:15.000 --> 0:22:19.800 almost entirely fueled by Japanese companies. It was known and 0:22:20.000 --> 0:22:23.240 is known to the general playing public as the pac 0:22:23.320 --> 0:22:31.720 Man Days, Defender Days, Donkey Kan Days, Centipede, Millipede by Atari. 0:22:33.040 --> 0:22:37.000 The just classics of that period captured the attention and 0:22:37.080 --> 0:22:40.600 the devotion of kids and even some grown ups all 0:22:40.640 --> 0:22:43.320 over the country and all over the world. During the 0:22:43.359 --> 0:22:46.639 Golden Years, which really started with the Space Invaders, that's 0:22:46.640 --> 0:22:49.919 the Japanese machine. Pac Man and Mrs pac Man are 0:22:50.040 --> 0:22:54.400 Japanese machines. Donkey Kan is the Japanese machine. Now you're 0:22:54.400 --> 0:22:57.400 looking to some of the classics, and they deserved everything 0:22:57.520 --> 0:23:02.000 they got over here. The so called Golden Years of 0:23:02.119 --> 0:23:05.800 video games change commerce across the entire entertainment industry. In 0:23:05.840 --> 0:23:10.040 the late seventies and into the early eighties, all of 0:23:10.119 --> 0:23:14.960 a sudden, it's not just boollyon alleys and pool halls 0:23:15.000 --> 0:23:18.080 that have video games. People are seeing that you can 0:23:18.119 --> 0:23:21.800 attract people to your business with video games. Business owners 0:23:21.800 --> 0:23:24.240 and managers are seeing that you can even make money 0:23:24.240 --> 0:23:28.880 with video games. The game's only lasted most of them, 0:23:28.920 --> 0:23:31.679 so people were crowding, and all of a sudden, grocery 0:23:31.680 --> 0:23:38.720 stores and drug stores malls are just putting up video 0:23:38.760 --> 0:23:47.160 game areas and arcades are appearing everywhere. By eighty arcades 0:23:47.200 --> 0:23:51.760 are a big thing. And the money that went into 0:23:51.840 --> 0:23:55.520 those machines, which by the way, we're popping up everywhere, 0:23:55.840 --> 0:23:58.520 including in the funeral home in one case, was so 0:23:59.080 --> 0:24:03.080 large that it hurt the recording industry. It hurt the 0:24:03.080 --> 0:24:06.520 movie industry. It became the number one form of entertainment, 0:24:08.000 --> 0:24:11.720 but it didn't last. The reason it didn't last was 0:24:11.760 --> 0:24:15.360 it again, something developed by Nolan Bushnell. It was what 0:24:15.400 --> 0:24:19.640 we call consumer video. You could play Pong on your 0:24:19.640 --> 0:24:23.320 home TV set using this little gizmo. I think it 0:24:23.359 --> 0:24:27.560 was called the Atari twenty four D the Atari twenty 0:24:28.040 --> 0:24:30.600 DRED because if you've got Matari you can play pac Man, 0:24:31.359 --> 0:24:34.600 Bang Out, Spice Invitas with free with the Atari Movie 0:24:34.600 --> 0:24:37.560 EA gmes in any other system. With Alligator clips, you 0:24:37.640 --> 0:24:39.760 could clip it onto something in the back of your 0:24:39.800 --> 0:24:43.120 TV set at home and play Pong for free. And 0:24:43.359 --> 0:24:48.480 that was the beginning of the end of the boom days. 0:24:48.520 --> 0:24:51.960 Just like how Palm started the video games industry, it 0:24:52.119 --> 0:24:55.800 also birthed the home video game market. The home version 0:24:55.840 --> 0:24:59.160 of Pong was released in nineteen and although it would 0:24:59.200 --> 0:25:02.520 be a few more years before home consoles fully grab hold, 0:25:02.680 --> 0:25:05.960 people liked the convenience, so some companies started to make 0:25:06.080 --> 0:25:10.560 more consoles. First there was the fair Child channel left 0:25:10.640 --> 0:25:13.040 and that was as I recall was the first console 0:25:13.240 --> 0:25:16.680 that used cartridges. I had never heard of. I think 0:25:16.680 --> 0:25:20.440 his name was Gerald Lawson, the gentleman who invented the cartridges. 0:25:20.800 --> 0:25:24.960 Until he came around, consoles pretty much had one or 0:25:24.960 --> 0:25:28.480 two or three hardware games and the loss and changed 0:25:28.560 --> 0:25:30.320 all that all of a sudden. Now you can play 0:25:30.359 --> 0:25:35.720 completely different games. So ATRII sees that and picks it 0:25:35.800 --> 0:25:39.720 up with the twenties six hundred. I'd like a system, please, 0:25:39.720 --> 0:25:42.560 and everything that goes with everything everything. I want everything 0:25:42.640 --> 0:25:44.720 you gotta do, low price after thirty dollars, a rebate 0:25:44.760 --> 0:25:47.119 office and that everything. He's got everything you can do 0:25:47.240 --> 0:25:49.680 nearly think on your different company. Yes, not think something, 0:25:49.800 --> 0:25:51.840 but it's not everything will be a voice do a 0:25:51.920 --> 0:25:55.160 track bowl, remote and rol joysticks and the commute amazing. 0:25:55.200 --> 0:25:57.440 It's amazing, but it's not everything, not everything. They will 0:25:57.440 --> 0:26:03.160 be educational games. Prease at everything to every thing. My 0:26:03.320 --> 0:26:07.520 favorite home console of the eighties was actually the Collico Vision. 0:26:07.800 --> 0:26:13.399 Now bring the arcade experience home because your visions vision, 0:26:14.400 --> 0:26:18.520