Speaker 1: Guess what, Mango?
Speaker 2: What's that?
Speaker 1: Well? All right, so I've had this fact waiting to
Speaker 1: use it, and I think today's episode is the right one.
Speaker 1: So did you know that Nintendo almost came out with
Speaker 1: a knitting machine?
Speaker 2: No? No, was that in its earliest days? Are like
Speaker 2: with the Wei No?
Speaker 1: No, Like in the nineteen eighties when they came out
Speaker 1: with the original neees system. You remember this? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I found this old trade ad for it when they
Speaker 1: were considering launching it. And here's how it reads. So
Speaker 1: it says, now you're knitting with power. It's not a game,
Speaker 1: not a toy, not something a young girl can outgrow
Speaker 1: in three to six months or even a year. It
Speaker 1: actually knits sweaters.
Speaker 2: That's so weird and sexist.
Speaker 1: Yeah kind of.
Speaker 2: I mean the technology is kind of forward thinking, I guess.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean you could fashion your own patterns, yarn it up,
Speaker 1: and have it knit for you. I guess I think
Speaker 1: that's how it works. And the guy who was asked
Speaker 1: to demonstrate it for Toys r Us, called it one
Speaker 1: of his least genuinely enthusiastic demos and it basically got
Speaker 1: zero demand. But reading about the Nintendo knitting machine made me,
Speaker 1: wonder you know how long has Nintendo been around, and
Speaker 1: how they survived for this long and such an incredibly
Speaker 1: competitive market, and just how much running and swimming is
Speaker 1: Mario doing in Super Mario Brothers. So that's what we're
Speaker 1: going to find out. Let's dive in. Hey their podcast listeners,
Speaker 1: welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as
Speaker 1: always I'm joined by my good friend man gesh Hot
Speaker 1: Ticketer and on the other side of the soundproof glass
Speaker 1: holding up a paper that says up down, up, down, left, right, left, right,
Speaker 1: be a start. Wow, isn't that the Konami code from Nintendo.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the secret code that gave you all those
Speaker 2: extra lives in contra.
Speaker 1: That is just how thoughtful he is sharing a top
Speaker 1: secret industry code on the airways. It's our friend and
Speaker 1: producer Tristan mc so we're talking Nintendo. Now. Everybody's familiar
Speaker 1: with Nintendo and its flagship characters Mario, Luigi, Zelda, the
Speaker 1: list goes on, but video games are only half of
Speaker 1: the company's one hundred and twenty eight year history, actually
Speaker 1: less than that. So with the holiday season upon us
Speaker 1: and the new Nintendo Switch console topping all kinds of
Speaker 1: hot toy and tech lists. We thought it'd be fun
Speaker 1: to shed some light on the lesser known history of
Speaker 1: the world's most recognizable video game maker, the Nintendo.
Speaker 2: You don't know, right, And I'll do the first admit
Speaker 2: there's so much I didn't know about Nintendo. For example,
Speaker 2: did you know the company actually won Emmy back in
Speaker 2: two thousand and seven?
Speaker 1: I thought Emmy's were just TV shows, So I had
Speaker 1: a video game company wind up with an Emmy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it was actually awarded in recognition of one
Speaker 2: of Nintendo's most famous tech innovations, the D pad or
Speaker 2: the directional pad. Uh huh, So I'm sure you know this,
Speaker 2: but the dpad is the plus sign shape button that
Speaker 2: you see on video game controllers nowadays. And Nintendo introduced
Speaker 2: the new output method back in I think nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 2: and it quickly became a standard in the industry over
Speaker 2: the old joysticks, like you know, the ones where you
Speaker 2: had to use your whole hand to move the controller
Speaker 2: around instead of just a free thumb.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that makes sense. The deepad revolutionized gaming,
Speaker 1: But that doesn't say how they got an Emmy. How
Speaker 1: did they win an Emmy?
Speaker 2: Well, most video games are played on TVs, so there's
Speaker 2: one connection there. But the real reason is that the
Speaker 2: dpad got utilized by most of the remotes in your house,
Speaker 2: whether for your DVD player or streaming device or the
Speaker 2: TV itself.
Speaker 1: That's pretty crazy, all right. Well, it's clear Nintendo isn't
Speaker 1: your typical video game company, and as I was saying earlier,
Speaker 1: Nintendo actually predates video games themselves by almost one hundred years.
Speaker 2: So I've read a little of this before that. Nintendo
Speaker 2: started out as a playing card manufacturer, and this was
Speaker 2: back in eighteen eighty nine when a twenty nine year
Speaker 2: old businessman named Fuzlajiro Yamachi. He saw the chance to
Speaker 2: jumpstart this dormant industry. And as you might know, Japan
Speaker 2: had cut most of its ties with the Western world
Speaker 2: during the seventeenth century. It was like this highly protected
Speaker 2: society and the royalty didn't want invading cultures to the
Speaker 2: country's values and traditions. But as part of this isolationist stance,
Speaker 2: there was this ban on all foreign playing cards, and
Speaker 2: this was to curb the rise in the legal gambling
Speaker 2: and when the Japanese devised their own card games in
Speaker 2: the ensuing centuries, those two became used for gambling, and
Speaker 2: the government banned those as well.
Speaker 1: Pretty interesting art. So it's a bit of a game
Speaker 1: of kind of whack a mole, now right. I mean,
Speaker 1: games pop up, they get extinguished, then they pop up
Speaker 1: somewhere else, and then they get extinguished again, exactly.
Speaker 2: And so this back and forth rise and fall of
Speaker 2: Japanese card games goes on for more than two hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty years, and then in eighteen eighty six, a
Speaker 2: new game called hanafuda and I'm going to mispronounce every
Speaker 2: single Japanese word of this, but it's finally permitted by
Speaker 2: the government. And this game loosely translates as flower cards,
Speaker 2: and they used flowers and animal pictures instead of numbers.
Speaker 1: So it was a little harder to use for gambling, harder,
Speaker 1: I'm guessing, but not impossible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. So wiley gamblers still found ways to
Speaker 2: make money playing Hanafuda. And I mean, the general public
Speaker 2: isn't that interested in playing card games since it's had
Speaker 2: such a bad rep for so long, but this new
Speaker 2: game did catch on quickly among this group of near
Speaker 2: duells known as the yakuza.
Speaker 1: Wait, so it's just like an organized crime syndicate, is
Speaker 1: it there? The early customers of Nintendo were they actually
Speaker 1: like Japanese gangster or.
Speaker 2: Something sort of. So the term yakuza actually started as
Speaker 2: this reference to a losing hand in this game that
Speaker 2: wasn't worth any points. And since the game was popular
Speaker 2: mostly with unsavory types, Yakuza game slang for like useless individuals,
Speaker 2: And we should do a whole episode on the Yukuza
Speaker 2: down the road, But at this point, these useless individuals
Speaker 2: are just kind of outcasts in society. And the wider
Speaker 2: connection to organized crime that comes later. But the moniker
Speaker 2: itself does have a connection to Nintendo, and specifically they're
Speaker 2: Hanafuda cards.
Speaker 1: Huh. All right, well, let's talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: how Ourmanyamachi rises above this shady designation, and basically it
Speaker 1: all comes down to design. The cards of the company
Speaker 1: Nintendo produced included hand painted images, you know, made from
Speaker 1: the bark of mulberry trees, and because they were so
Speaker 1: ornate and super high quality and frankly just eye catching,
Speaker 1: it it actually helped free the cards from that back
Speaker 1: alley stigma, and it wasn't long before Nintendo became the
Speaker 1: top card game company in all of Japan.
Speaker 2: Absolutely so. Over the years and generations, as the government
Speaker 2: relaxed their rules, Nintendo started releasing new types of cards
Speaker 2: and card games. But it's only in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 2: when Yamuchi's great grandson took over the reins, that Nintendo
Speaker 2: started experimenting with some odd ball ideas.
Speaker 1: So what did they do?
Speaker 2: Well, there are a few smart things, like Hiroshi signed
Speaker 2: this deal to feature Disney characters on the card decks,
Speaker 2: specifically to market them to children and families. But he
Speaker 2: also did a few super strange things as well, like
Speaker 2: he dabbled in starting a taxi service and a line
Speaker 2: of instant rice, and for a little while he even
Speaker 2: invested in love hotels, where businessmen could rent rooms by
Speaker 2: the hour, no questions.
Speaker 1: Asked, Oh my gosh, card Shark, gangsters, CD motels. I mean,
Speaker 1: I have to be honest, like this is not the
Speaker 1: house mark.
Speaker 2: Definitely not, definitely, not yet. And while none of those
Speaker 2: ventures worked, they all went belly up quickly. Hiroshi knew
Speaker 2: that playing cards and the playing card market had reached
Speaker 2: the saturation, so if Nintendo was going to survive into
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventies, they'd need to branch out well.
Speaker 1: And also by this point they were already dabbling in
Speaker 1: at least board games, right.
Speaker 2: Mm hm, that's right. But toy companies like Tomy and Bandai,
Speaker 2: Like do you even remember those?
Speaker 1: I mean only vaguely?
Speaker 2: Yeah, me too, So it's worth googling Tomy and Bandai
Speaker 2: games from the nineteen seventies because the titles and photos
Speaker 2: are amazing, like they've got one called the Hamburger Game
Speaker 2: and Run Yourself Ragged and NATSI Tennis like, honestly are
Speaker 2: so intricate and plastic, but they really look fun. But
Speaker 2: Nintendo needed an inn and this they needed some sort
Speaker 2: of new product to catch people's attention and help establish
Speaker 2: it as like a place for fun, not just like
Speaker 2: card and board games.
Speaker 1: I love those names, and I was like, what even
Speaker 1: is like NATSI Tennis run Yourself Ragged? Well, this is
Speaker 1: the part of the Nintendo story that I really love
Speaker 1: because you know, at first, you think, okay, all right,
Speaker 1: here's where video games come in, and the company we
Speaker 1: know starts to take shape. But no, you know, instead,
Speaker 1: the company's first foray into the untapped toy market. It's
Speaker 1: this wacky extending arm thing called the ultra Hand, and
Speaker 1: there's nothing electronic about it. Basically, it's the invention of
Speaker 1: Gunpay Yokoi. He's this low level Nintendo factory worker. He's
Speaker 1: got a little bit of a background in engineering, and
Speaker 1: it's kind of an innovation on Ben Franklin's long arm grabber,
Speaker 1: you know, which he invented in his old age that
Speaker 1: would help him get books high off of shelves.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So Ben Frank's version was obviously just this long
Speaker 2: pull with the tiny gratty thing at the end of it, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's it. But Gunpay designed a prototype grabber claw
Speaker 1: that frankly, you'd almost picture kind of like an inspector
Speaker 1: gadget's hands or something like. It expanded out across the
Speaker 1: room with sort of a metal crisscross pattern, but it
Speaker 1: collapses to a tiny shape. And when Heirohi saw it,
Speaker 1: he fell in love with the idea and got gun
Speaker 1: Paid a mass produce a plastic version by the end
Speaker 1: of that year, and the thing was dubbed the Ultra Hand,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, and the toy was a massive success
Speaker 1: for Nintendo. They sold over a million of them between
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six and nineteen seventy and with that initial success,
Speaker 1: Nintendo made the transition to toy manufacturer, and honestly, they
Speaker 1: never looked back after that.
Speaker 2: So I was just on my phone and I looked
Speaker 2: up the box of the Ultra Hand and it is amazing.
Speaker 2: There's like one version that's a cartoon box and it's
Speaker 2: got two kids happily stealing some sort of money person
Speaker 2: from businessman.
Speaker 1: That's good marketing.
Speaker 2: And there's this other that's like a real life pick
Speaker 2: and it's got a boy in the background using this
Speaker 2: ultrahnd to like maybe grab something off a top shelf,
Speaker 2: while this girl in the foreground seems to be, I
Speaker 2: don't know, passing a tomato across the room to her dad.
Speaker 2: It's amazing. Also, why would you get this for your kids?
Speaker 2: Like it only encourages like theft and mischief.
Speaker 1: I mean, but it does look kind of fun. Those
Speaker 1: pictures are ridiculous though, But thankfully Nintendo brought Gunpay along
Speaker 1: for the ride as they developed more and he was
Speaker 1: promoted from this maintenance engineer to the head of product development,
Speaker 1: and that's where he helped create all these different unusual toys,
Speaker 1: and that includes Nintendo's first feature electronics, and that first
Speaker 1: one was called the.
Speaker 2: Love Tester, so I thought we were past the more
Speaker 2: questionable bits of Nintendo's history.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, although this was aimed at a slightly
Speaker 1: older crowd, the Love Tester was a whole lot tamer
Speaker 1: than those pay by the hour hotels you mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1: That's just so discussing. Was this small device that kind
Speaker 1: of looked like a vault meter with two wires sticking
Speaker 1: out of it, and there was this small silver disc
Speaker 1: at the end of each wire, and the idea was
Speaker 1: that a couple would hold hands while each person held
Speaker 1: one of the discs, and so they had this resulting
Speaker 1: level of love that would then be displayed on the screen.
Speaker 1: And it used the scale from zero to one hundred.
Speaker 2: So, I mean, it's clearly a cute, gimmicky item. But
Speaker 2: when'd the love Tester actually test love Mango?
Speaker 1: You don't believe this really worked. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: most likely the electric conductivity of the couple. I don't know,
Speaker 1: like if their palms were sweaty, it would affect it.
Speaker 1: But you know, the specifics really didn't matter that much,
Speaker 1: at least not to the target customers. There's this great
Speaker 1: site I found as we were doing our research called
Speaker 1: Before Mario, and it explains that dating culture in Japan
Speaker 1: during the nineteen sixties was actually still pretty strict, so
Speaker 1: really any excuse to hold hands and strike up conversation
Speaker 1: was welcome.
Speaker 2: That's interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And so that's why the Love Tester was
Speaker 1: such a success. It was a really smart idea for
Speaker 1: that time, and because it made Nintendo so much money,
Speaker 1: the company continued to dabble in electronic toys, you know,
Speaker 1: when video games were just starting to make their debut.
Speaker 2: Sure, so, I mean we're talking about the late seventies here,
Speaker 2: when our kids just started to take off.
Speaker 1: That's right. But you know, gun Pays an extraordinary thinker
Speaker 1: because he actually had his sight set on a different market.
Speaker 1: The one day, while riding a commuter train to work,
Speaker 1: he noticed this other businessman playing with his calcul later
Speaker 1: just to kind of keep himself busy, I guess, and
Speaker 1: this gave Gunpay the idea for a new line of
Speaker 1: handheld video games. You know that maybe would use the
Speaker 1: same LCD screen and that display technology that a calculator
Speaker 1: would use, except in this case the graphics would be
Speaker 1: used to create characters and then maybe objects that could
Speaker 1: be set against this pre printed background. Scene, and so
Speaker 1: you'd have this built in controller buttons on either side
Speaker 1: of the screen that would allow the player to move
Speaker 1: a character around, you know, to complete basic task, I guess.
Speaker 1: And so one early model of these Nintendo game and
Speaker 1: watch systems had the player control this deep sea diver.
Speaker 1: He just had to go from one side of the
Speaker 1: screen to the other side of the screen and he
Speaker 1: would claim a sunken treasure chest there and all the
Speaker 1: while he was avoiding the moving tentacles of this grabby octopus.
Speaker 1: How captivating is this game?
Speaker 3: Though?
Speaker 2: I mean, I actually vaguely remember those games as kids
Speaker 2: and really wanting one, but they were so expensive. And
Speaker 2: of course that actually brings us full circle because it's
Speaker 2: actually these game and watch systems where the dpad was
Speaker 2: used for the first time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, although I just had a memory. Do
Speaker 1: you remember when we took that computer science one oh
Speaker 1: one class and we had to make a fish tank
Speaker 1: where the fish would just go one side the other.
Speaker 1: We're basically computer science geniuses, that's right. But back to
Speaker 1: the D pad, you know, it was another little master
Speaker 1: stroke from Gunpay, and he'd run into problems while trying
Speaker 1: to adapt Nintendo's successful Donkey Kong arcade game for the
Speaker 1: handheld market, and unlike most handheld games at the time,
Speaker 1: which only had the player moving left to right, Donkey
Speaker 1: Kong was pretty different because it had them moving along
Speaker 1: both the X and the Y axis, which we both
Speaker 1: understand what that means as computer science.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it is funny, like you run along
Speaker 2: the platforms, but you also have to climb the ladders
Speaker 2: and reach the top where Donkey Kong's keeping your kidnapped girlfriend,
Speaker 2: right right. But I went to a pizza place this
Speaker 2: weekend with my kids in town here and they had
Speaker 2: a few old school nesas setup while you're waiting, and
Speaker 2: my four year old was actually trying to play Donkey
Speaker 2: Kong and she had no idea what she was doing,
Speaker 2: and she was really angry that this ape was like
Speaker 2: tossing barrels.
Speaker 1: That's pretty great, all right. Well, here's where I'm gonna
Speaker 1: hand the baton off to you, because it sounds like
Speaker 1: Gunpey was the guy at the forefront of electronic gaming,
Speaker 1: but actually someone else came up with the games like
Speaker 1: Donkey Kong and Mario and Zelda.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that's true. So credit for those goes to
Speaker 2: Shigeru Miyamoto, also known as the father of modern video games.
Speaker 2: Like his creativity and attention to detail was this massive
Speaker 2: part of Nintendo's success when it transitioned into home consoles
Speaker 2: in the eighties.
Speaker 1: All right, well, we should definitely talk about what he
Speaker 1: brought to the table and how it affected the video
Speaker 1: game industry going forward from there. But before we do that,
Speaker 1: why don't we take a quick break. You're listening to
Speaker 1: Part Time Genius and we're talking about how Nintendo made
Speaker 1: the transition from Playing card manifest to video game icon.
Speaker 1: All right, Mango, So, Shagero Miyamoto is the mastermind behind
Speaker 1: Super Mario Brothers and that whole series and really kind
Speaker 1: of a gaming legend. But how did he wind up
Speaker 1: working at Nintendo in the first place?
Speaker 2: So, I mean, to be honest, there might have been
Speaker 2: a little nepotism involved, because Miyamoto's father was able to
Speaker 2: line up an interview for him right out of college
Speaker 2: and he had some connections with Nintendo. But once Miyamoto
Speaker 2: had his foot in the door, the young designer impressed everyone,
Speaker 2: like he had all these great toy ideas, and he
Speaker 2: started out as kind of a staff artist for the
Speaker 2: company's planning department. And this was in nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 2: and he's still with the company today. I mean, that's
Speaker 2: forty years since Nintendo hired him, and he's never worked
Speaker 2: a single day for any other company. It's pretty incredible.
Speaker 2: That is pretty incredible.
Speaker 1: And obviously he's an insane talent, and we'll find out
Speaker 1: why the company wanted to keep him. But what kind
Speaker 1: of stuff was he working on in those early days.
Speaker 1: I mean, he couldn't have come up with Mario right
Speaker 1: out of the gate.
Speaker 2: Right well, I mean yes and no. So in the
Speaker 2: early nineteen eighties, Nintendo tried to expand into the North
Speaker 2: American arcade scene, but one of their earliest efforts, which
Speaker 2: was this sci fi shooting game called Radarscope, it failed
Speaker 2: to find an audience outside of Japan. So one of
Speaker 2: Miyamoto's first assignments was to build a new, low cost
Speaker 2: game using the existing tech and this engine of Radarscope.
Speaker 2: And that way the company could you know, rejigger and
Speaker 2: convert the thousands of arcade cabinets they already had into
Speaker 2: something fresh. And Miyamoto was eager to prove himself, so
Speaker 2: under the mentorship of gunpay. He came up with this
Speaker 2: idea for Donkey Kong. Wow, and you should explain what
Speaker 2: that has to do with Mario though, right, so nothing
Speaker 2: at first. Originally the game was going to be based
Speaker 2: on Popeye the Sailorman, but when the license for that
Speaker 2: property fell through, Miamoto redesigned the game to include original characters.
Speaker 2: So the British villain of Bluto became this gorilla named
Speaker 2: Donkey Kong, their perpetual damsel in distress, Olive Oil, became
Speaker 2: a woman named Pauline, and Popeye got turned into this
Speaker 2: carpenter named Jumpman. And since Jumpman is the catchiest of
Speaker 2: names today, he goes by Mario.
Speaker 1: And so it's the same character definitely.
Speaker 2: So according to the story, the president of Nintendo of
Speaker 2: America noticed the similarity between the Italian landlord they had,
Speaker 2: the one they'd been renting warehouse space from, and the
Speaker 2: mustachio Jumpman, and the Nintendo crewe nicknamed the character Mario
Speaker 2: in his honor, and by the time the carpenter turned
Speaker 2: a plumber and was ready for his breakout role into
Speaker 2: his own series, the nickname it stuck.
Speaker 1: Oh that's pretty great, and it actually reminds me of
Speaker 1: another story about early Nintendo, or at least the video
Speaker 1: game phase. So apparently, Donkey Kong was a big hit
Speaker 1: for the company, pulling in over one hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: million dollars in just a year after its release. Eighty
Speaker 1: million dollars then, I mean, that's a lot of money.
Speaker 1: But with all that success came the attention of Universal Studios,
Speaker 1: who now believed that the game was infringing on its
Speaker 1: King Kong copyright, and the studio made some pretty tough demands,
Speaker 1: insisting that Nintendo destroy all unsold copies of the game
Speaker 1: and hand over every penny they had made along the way.
Speaker 2: So I mean, I'm guessing Nintendo didn't go for any
Speaker 2: of that.
Speaker 1: No, not so much. Instead, they lawyered up and proved
Speaker 1: that not only did the game have nothing to do
Speaker 1: with the events of the movie, but Universal's copyright had
Speaker 1: long since expired. Anything that actually meant King Kong was
Speaker 1: now in the public domain. How crazy is That's amazing
Speaker 1: which we had snapped it up, But that isn't the
Speaker 1: craziest part. Actually, it turns out that Universal had allowed
Speaker 1: Tiger Electronics to create this game based on King Kong,
Speaker 1: and it was actually kind of a knockoff of Donkey Kong.
Speaker 1: So in the end, the court ruled in Nintendo's favor
Speaker 1: and Universal was made to pay the company millions in damage.
Speaker 2: That's amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, actually, Nintendo's lawyer, John Kirby, he was given
Speaker 1: this brand new sailboat as a thank you gift, and
Speaker 1: of course he christened it the Donkey Kong. But that
Speaker 1: name may sound familiar, because the best part is he
Speaker 1: also got a character named after him, and that is
Speaker 1: the character Kirby.
Speaker 2: Oh I love that. I like that. Not only did
Speaker 2: he get this new boat, but he also got video
Speaker 2: game immortality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no kidding.
Speaker 2: So I'm glad you mentioned knockoff games because that speaks
Speaker 2: to something I don't think a lot of people remember,
Speaker 2: and that's that America's video game industry was in really
Speaker 2: bad shape in the early eighties. In fact, it was
Speaker 2: almost on the verge of total collapse. So companies like
Speaker 2: Calico and Atari, they've made a killing in their early days,
Speaker 2: but their lack of foresight left them with no way
Speaker 2: to keep unlicensed games from being designed and released for
Speaker 2: the systems. So as a result, there were tons of cheap,
Speaker 2: low quality software and games out there, and frustrated buyers
Speaker 2: and all these parents and kids who were disappointed in
Speaker 2: the quality of the products.
Speaker 1: Well, and that had to be a huge headache for Nintendo, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, they released their first home game console in
Speaker 1: Japan in nineteen eighty three, so of course the next
Speaker 1: logical step was bringing it to the Western market. But
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, the rug gets pulled out
Speaker 1: from under them and it starts to look like video
Speaker 1: games will never make it out of the arcade in
Speaker 1: the US exactly.
Speaker 2: But the company couldn't afford to let a whole market
Speaker 2: fall by the wayside, so they came up with this
Speaker 2: new battle plan. So first Nintendo developed a lockout chip
Speaker 2: to prevent companies from releasing unauthorized games, and then they
Speaker 2: redesigned the system itself to avoid any bad connotations that,
Speaker 2: you know, home video game systems might have developed among consumers.
Speaker 1: Wait, but so how do you make a video game
Speaker 1: system not look like a video game system.
Speaker 2: By making it look more like a VCR Apparently? Oh okay, Yeah,
Speaker 2: So in Japan, Nintendo's first system was known as the
Speaker 2: Famicon or a family computer, and it loaded from the top,
Speaker 2: so the games were inserted vertically. The way, you know,
Speaker 2: you'd put a game in an old atari. But for
Speaker 2: the US release, the system was given this like flip
Speaker 2: up panel where cartridges would be inserted like a VHS tape.
Speaker 1: That's pretty interesting. Actually, it reminds me this is kind
Speaker 1: of unrelated, but it's a little bit like how Subway
Speaker 1: realized if you compared their sandwiches to other sandwiches, you've
Speaker 1: got this mediocre proposition. But when you compare a sandwich
Speaker 1: to other fast foods, suddenly it seems like you know,
Speaker 1: this helped the idea exactly.
Speaker 2: So they reframed this as modern family entertainment, and it
Speaker 2: was also renamed as the Nintendo Entertainment System or the NES,
Speaker 2: to further obscure its role as a piece of gaming hardware.
Speaker 2: And then they played with the color scheme, so instead
Speaker 2: of being like bright red and white like the Japanese
Speaker 2: version was, they muted it down to this two tone
Speaker 2: gray color scheme.
Speaker 1: So the strategy for the US was to kind of
Speaker 1: make it duller. Did that end up working?
Speaker 2: Yeah it did, but consumers were only part of the hurdle.
Speaker 2: Like Nintendo also had to deal with retailers, and when
Speaker 2: it was time to launch the NES, in nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 2: most stores were hesitant to devote any shelf space to another,
Speaker 2: you know, slow selling video game system. So to solve
Speaker 2: that problem, Nintendo came up with this robotic accessory that
Speaker 2: they dubbed ROB. It was the Robotic Operating Buddy, and
Speaker 2: when the marketing push for the NES began, Rob the
Speaker 2: Robot was front and center, helping to assure parents and
Speaker 2: store owners that the NES was this worthy investment.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of funny to think that this
Speaker 1: physical toy robot being a selling point for a video game.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just the opposite. Now, most kids would
Speaker 1: pick an eye iPad over an action figure any day.
Speaker 2: I would think, Yeah, I mean, that's definitely true. And honestly,
Speaker 2: ROB was never a hot item, like the robot was
Speaker 2: this last minute edition solely designed to move units, so
Speaker 2: his interaction with the system was limited to a few
Speaker 2: week titles that you know, hardly anyone remembers today, but
Speaker 2: none of that really mattered. Like ROB was basically this
Speaker 2: trojan horse. It was a way of sneaking a quality
Speaker 2: video game system into American society without much notice, and
Speaker 2: once he was there, people were able to play like
Speaker 2: Super Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt and kid Icarus or whatever.
Speaker 2: At that point, like nobody was complaining, and in fact,
Speaker 2: the rules worked so well that by nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 2: over six million NES consoles and more than thirty three
Speaker 2: million games had been sold in the US. And the
Speaker 2: systems weren't cheap either.
Speaker 1: Oh that's pretty crazy. Yeah, when you're talking about Duck Hunt,
Speaker 1: these additions to the games. I remember playing that game
Speaker 1: and just how close the gun would be to the
Speaker 1: TV screen, like it was basically touching the screens. Cheating,
Speaker 1: but it felt good, you know, to win. That was
Speaker 1: That's the most experience I had with Hunting, but I
Speaker 1: was pretty good. And when it gets out, but this
Speaker 1: was definitely some smart strategy. And I guess robots were
Speaker 1: super popular back then. I mean that's right around the
Speaker 1: time when you know, Transformers and Voltron and short Circuit
Speaker 1: we're popular.
Speaker 2: Short Circuit two.
Speaker 1: Short Circuit two was so good. But you know, I
Speaker 1: do like how the story kind of shows Nintendo drawing
Speaker 1: on its experience as a toy company, you know, because
Speaker 1: I actually think there's a case to be made for
Speaker 1: still thinking of Nintendo as a toy maker first, rather
Speaker 1: than maybe it's a video game company.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I think that's an interesting line of
Speaker 2: thinking and I definitely want to hear more about what
Speaker 2: you want to say about that. But uh, why don't
Speaker 2: we take a little break first?
Speaker 1: Okay, Mango, it's quiz time.
Speaker 3: Are you ready?
Speaker 1: Mm hm? Well, I guess we're not the ones that
Speaker 1: really have to be ready. We're gonna we're gonna play
Speaker 1: a quiz because we're talking Nintendo today, and we decided
Speaker 1: to bring on one of our friends from here and
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works, also the producer of the always brilliant
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff Ramsey. You welcome to part time genius. Glad
Speaker 1: to be here, all right, are you nervous about this quiz?
Speaker 3: Very nervous?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 1: But before we do the quiz, you are a big
Speaker 1: video game fan. So, so what's your go to console
Speaker 1: and video game now?
Speaker 3: It is actually a PlayStation four? Okay, but I grew
Speaker 3: up playing pretty much most of the consoles. I still
Speaker 3: have my Atari twenty six hundred console that still works
Speaker 3: nice and collection of games for that. But it's definitely
Speaker 3: not attached to television because it's a process.
Speaker 4: Okay, but you had an original Nintendo as well?
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I did.
Speaker 4: All right, well that qualifies you to play this.
Speaker 2: Game, right, Okay, all right, that's right.
Speaker 4: So mengo, what game are we playing with Ramsey today?
Speaker 2: It's called real unpopular Nintendo game or something we just
Speaker 2: made up.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're right. So we're going to give you the
Speaker 1: name of a game and a quick description and you
Speaker 1: just have to tell if it's real or if it's
Speaker 1: something that we made up.
Speaker 2: And some of them are a Nintendo game, some of
Speaker 2: them are Super Nintendo games.
Speaker 4: Oh oh, before we get hate mail, all right.
Speaker 1: Question number one baby Boomer, And here's the description. A
Speaker 1: game where a baby escapes his crib and you have
Speaker 1: to use the duck hunt gun to shoot birds, cobras,
Speaker 1: and other annoyances out of the way. Is this a
Speaker 1: real game or something we made up?
Speaker 3: I'm gonna say it is a real game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a real game, just like real life. Or
Speaker 2: use a gun to shoot things out of your baby's way.
Speaker 1: I forgot that was your style.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Number two, TV Tag the game and here's the description.
Speaker 1: This trivia slash skill game was set in a retirement
Speaker 1: community where you wheeled around your grandfather in a game
Speaker 1: of TV tag Whenever you got tagged, You answer TV
Speaker 1: trivia to unfreeze yourself with the occasional help of your
Speaker 1: daughtering grandfather. Is this real or something we made up?
Speaker 3: I'm gonna say that is something you made up?
Speaker 2: It sounds real.
Speaker 3: Is real?
Speaker 1: Is shooting the things in the way of your baby?
Speaker 4: Yeah? All right?
Speaker 1: Number three? Oh this is good? All right? Bill Lambier's
Speaker 1: Combat Basket Mango is La Lakers fans as kids like,
Speaker 1: we couldn't stand okay, Bill Lambier's Combat Basketball. And here's
Speaker 1: the description. This game is set in a dystopian future
Speaker 1: where the Pistons player runs an ultra violet b ball
Speaker 1: league where players use armor mines and spinning blades to
Speaker 1: get to the hoop. Is this real or something we
Speaker 1: made up?
Speaker 3: I'm gonna say yes. I think I remember seeing some
Speaker 3: reat style basketball game, like you could pick weapons and
Speaker 3: then go out and play basketball.
Speaker 2: It's curious why this wasn't a big seller, but it
Speaker 2: might have something to do with the fact that Bill
Speaker 2: Lambier was the start.
Speaker 1: I couldn't stand Bill Lambier. Number four he is what
Speaker 1: three out of three?
Speaker 3: Three? Three?
Speaker 1: He got two left? Stuart the goat Herder And the
Speaker 1: description In this game, Stuart, the terrible goat herder, tries
Speaker 1: to prove his family wrong by hurting a flock of
Speaker 1: goats through increasingly difficult challenges, from walking them one by
Speaker 1: one across the river to trying to use various skills
Speaker 1: to lure them away from a Pebo Bryson concert. Is
Speaker 1: this real or something we made up?
Speaker 3: This sounds like the worst game ever. I'm going to
Speaker 3: say it's something you made up because I'm hoping nor
Speaker 3: last one.
Speaker 4: You got to get this for the big prize?
Speaker 1: Okay, all right? Number five Home Improvement Power Tool Pursuit
Speaker 1: and the description in this super nes game you shoot
Speaker 1: dinosaurs and mummies with a nail gun while trying to
Speaker 1: get through a giant TV studio? Is this real or
Speaker 1: something we made up?
Speaker 3: I mean, if ten Allen's name was attached to it,
Speaker 3: I imagine, yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: It's true. It's a real game.
Speaker 1: No way, is this really?
Speaker 2: And the confusing game came with no instructions because real
Speaker 2: men don't need instructions.
Speaker 1: Are you serious? This is a super game?
Speaker 3: Was it based off the TV show? Or I mean?
Speaker 2: Ish?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: All right, so Ramsey went what five for five?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: So what does that entitle him to.
Speaker 2: So Ramsey's going to get a part time genius official
Speaker 2: Certificate of Genius, and we'll be delivering it along with
Speaker 2: a hearty congratulations. Congratulations sounds great, Thank you, thanks so
Speaker 2: much for joining us.
Speaker 3: Appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, so clue me in, why should we think
Speaker 2: of Nintendo as a toy company instead of a video
Speaker 2: game company? And if we do, why is that a
Speaker 2: good thing?
Speaker 1: Well, the second part depends on who you ask. So
Speaker 1: the gaming industry has gone through major changes since Nintendo's
Speaker 1: heyday and the eighties and the early nineties, and adult
Speaker 1: gamers make up a much larger portion of the market
Speaker 1: than they once did, and both the types of games
Speaker 1: being made and the gaming culture as a whole have
Speaker 1: changed really to reflect that new demographic. So, for example,
Speaker 1: a gamer in their early twenties who mostly plays these
Speaker 1: realistic and third person shooter games like Call of Duty,
Speaker 1: they might not think that Nintendo being a toy company
Speaker 1: is such a positive thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's one thing I noticed a lot while researching.
Speaker 2: Like the other big names and video games I'm talking about,
Speaker 2: like Microsoft and Sony, they're largely known for their computing
Speaker 2: power and that makes them really intense immersive gaming experiences,
Speaker 2: but Nintendo is seen is almost like this quirkier, more playful,
Speaker 2: almost this underpowered option.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the interesting thing to me is that the
Speaker 1: difference you're noting is completely intentional.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Thanks to the video game bust in the mid eighties,
Speaker 1: Nintendo had a clear playing field when they arrived on
Speaker 1: the scene, but when Sega began releasing their own rival consoles,
Speaker 1: soon to be followed by Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo quickly
Speaker 1: found itself locked into a graphical arms race.
Speaker 2: Really sure, so this is when the so called console
Speaker 2: wars raging, and each company tried to outdo the other
Speaker 2: with a faster, more powerful hardware that promised to like
Speaker 2: redefine gaming. And after the Game Boys, something's like the
Speaker 2: Super Nintendo, the N sixty four, more buttons on the controllers,
Speaker 2: more immersive graphics. I mean, it seems like Nintendo kept
Speaker 2: pace for a while, but in the end it was
Speaker 2: just like a battle they couldn't win.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, that's kind of the thing. I don't
Speaker 1: think Nintendo lost so much as it just bowed out.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's almost like the company woke up one
Speaker 1: day and remembered that it would just much rather be
Speaker 1: playing games than fighting wars.
Speaker 2: So what prompted that epiphany, Well, the company was.
Speaker 1: Forced to face some harsh truths back in the early
Speaker 1: two thousands. Its latest console was the GameCube.
Speaker 2: If you remember, I had forgotten about the cube. I mean,
Speaker 2: why were cubes so popularly? Like Apple came out with
Speaker 2: the cube computer too, right, just.
Speaker 1: The shape I guess nobody had ever recognized before. I
Speaker 1: really have no idea, but the Nintendo's GameCube definitely underperformed.
Speaker 1: I mean, it had to compete with Sony's PlayStation two
Speaker 1: and Microsoft's Xbox. And it was during this time that
Speaker 1: new leadership came to Nintendo in the form of Saturo Iwata,
Speaker 1: and he was the first Nintendo president who actually wasn't
Speaker 1: a member of the founding Yamachi family. So a lot
Speaker 1: of shook things up by placing the focus on software
Speaker 1: rather than hardware. Instead of building the most powerful console
Speaker 1: they could and then working backwards to figure out what
Speaker 1: kind of games would take advantage of that power. A
Speaker 1: lot of encourage designers to think up fun and unique
Speaker 1: game concepts first and then create the console to run them,
Speaker 1: which is just a very different way of thinking about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that shift in perspective led to brand new toys
Speaker 1: and to the way video games were played. You think
Speaker 1: about things like the Nintendo DS, which really was built
Speaker 1: off the Game Boy but had this dual touch screen system,
Speaker 1: or maybe the motion controlled home console, the Nintendo Wii,
Speaker 1: and then you have the WE fit so several new
Speaker 1: ideas well.
Speaker 2: I mean, we all know how that worked out for them,
Speaker 2: right like that. We was such a smash hit with
Speaker 2: just about everybody. And I remember seeing all these Weimbledon
Speaker 2: tournaments at retirement homes and folding tournaments too. It was
Speaker 2: really built for everybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we made video games accessible to this wider audience,
Speaker 1: and much wider than it had ever been before. And
Speaker 1: it did so by returning the focus to these simple
Speaker 1: joys of play. So suddenly you've got families gathering in
Speaker 1: their living rooms to play video games together, and not
Speaker 1: just kids, but parents and grandparents. Like you mentioned, this
Speaker 1: is what Awata described as a blue ocean, which was
Speaker 1: this new market free of rivals. The idea was that
Speaker 1: if the offerings were innovative enough, it could spark the
Speaker 1: interest and enthusiasm of anyone looking to have fun. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I actually love that me too. And apparently there were
Speaker 1: a lot of people looking to have fun because the
Speaker 1: We became Nintendo's best selling home console to date actually
Speaker 1: sold over one hundred million units in its lifespan.
Speaker 2: That's pretty incredible. Okay, so clearly Nintendo went its own
Speaker 2: way in terms of creative and business models. But how
Speaker 2: does that make them more of a toy company than
Speaker 2: a video company? And how do you see the difference?
Speaker 1: Well, I really think it comes down to the intention
Speaker 1: behind the product. I mean, when Nintendo changed direction and
Speaker 1: became a toy company in the sixties and seventies, there
Speaker 1: was this sense of freedom and discovery to their products,
Speaker 1: and I think it's because they were experimenting. You know,
Speaker 1: they were dreaming up weird ideas and turning them into
Speaker 1: silly gadgets that were appealing not just because they were
Speaker 1: using the latest and greatest technology, but because they were
Speaker 1: just fun to play with a lot to help the
Speaker 1: return the company to that mindset and the one they
Speaker 1: had when they were just a toy company.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's interesting, and it makes sense that a company
Speaker 2: with that kind of history would have a completely different
Speaker 2: culture and ethos than other video game giants. I mean,
Speaker 2: Sony is really a consumer electronics company first, and it's
Speaker 2: a video games as a new revenue stream. And Microsoft
Speaker 2: is this like, you know, digital PC and electronics company first,
Speaker 2: and they figured, we already made computers. What's a game
Speaker 2: console if not a specialized computer. But what's cool is
Speaker 2: that it sounds like Nintendo is leaning into those differences now.
Speaker 1: Oh, definitely. So I found this speech that Miamoto and
Speaker 1: say we should devote an episode to just Miamoto because
Speaker 1: he's such a genius and how he came up with
Speaker 1: Mario and Zelda and so many other games over Nintendo's
Speaker 1: lifespan is definitely worth exploring. But back to the talk.
Speaker 1: He was giving a talk to a group of investors
Speaker 1: a few years back, and there's one that really shows
Speaker 1: how the company is playing to its strengths. So he said,
Speaker 1: Nintendo is known as a video game company, but in
Speaker 1: fact it's also a toy company. Toys make consumers feel
Speaker 1: a sense of wonder. When it comes to video game hardware,
Speaker 1: companies tend to take the similar and rather unified course
Speaker 1: of aiming to beef up the machines functionalities in our
Speaker 1: efforts to differentiate our hardware from others. I believe it's
Speaker 1: important that users experience that feeling that they have played
Speaker 1: with a new toy.
Speaker 2: Well, speaking of that sense of wonder that comes from
Speaker 2: a new toy, have you heard about the secret tribute
Speaker 2: to Iwata that Nintendo hid in its.
Speaker 1: New console in the Switch or what is it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So, unfortunately, the man who helped Nintendo return to
Speaker 2: its roots passed away in twenty fifteen. He had complications
Speaker 2: from her tumor. But it was especially tough because Iwata
Speaker 2: helped shepherd the new Switch console through its development, and
Speaker 2: suddenly the company was faced with this grim prospect of
Speaker 2: launching it without him. But earlier this year, it was
Speaker 2: discovered that the Nintendo team had actually done something a
Speaker 2: little sneaky. They secretly embedded this digital copy of an
Speaker 2: old nes Golf game within the firmware of every Switch console,
Speaker 2: and the only way to access the game is by
Speaker 2: holding a controller in each hand and replicating a signature
Speaker 2: hand gesture that Iwata used to use in his promotional
Speaker 2: videos for the company.
Speaker 1: Oh that's pretty sweet and a little bit odd. I
Speaker 1: guess why did they choose a golf game?
Speaker 2: Well, the nes Golf was one of the first games
Speaker 2: a Wata program for Nintendo, so it kind of held
Speaker 2: a special significance. And more broadly, it's possible the game
Speaker 2: was meant as this omamori, which is it's kind of
Speaker 2: like the special charm that's traditionally left that Japanese shrines
Speaker 2: to offer protection to departed spirits. So, as one gamer
Speaker 2: put it, Nintendo embedded Iwata's game. I did to watch
Speaker 2: over every unit.
Speaker 1: Are you trying to make me tear up over a video.
Speaker 2: Game right now? But it really does go back to
Speaker 2: what we've been saying about Nintendo, right It's not your
Speaker 2: typical company. It's got this long and weird and complicated history,
Speaker 2: and the childlike approach to game design that it's adopted
Speaker 2: has made sure of that. And the result of it
Speaker 2: is that you end up, whether you call them toys
Speaker 2: or video games, Nintendo products have a level of sincerity
Speaker 2: and heart that separates them from everything else.
Speaker 1: Well. I don't know about you, but all this talk
Speaker 1: of gaming has made me feel kind of competitive, honestly,
Speaker 1: So what do you say we go head to head
Speaker 1: and a little two player backed up?
Speaker 3: I'm in.
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 1: Well, for all the talk of Nintendo's sweetness and sincerity,
Speaker 1: they didn't always abandon their gambling or yakuza rude. So
Speaker 1: did you know that in nineteen ninety one, they tried
Speaker 1: to bring online gambling into homes. According to Kataku, they
Speaker 1: teamed up with the state of Minnesota to create this
Speaker 1: gaming system and a cartridge that you could spend ten
Speaker 1: dollars a month for this subscription gambling service. They sort
Speaker 1: of gamified the lottery with the system. But Nintendo quickly
Speaker 1: realized that maybe creating this gambling game that kids might
Speaker 1: access it wasn't a great idea for their brand, and
Speaker 1: they decided to kill the project before political and religious
Speaker 1: groups could voice their opinions about it.
Speaker 2: That's pretty wild. Did you know that Shigeru Miyamoto is
Speaker 2: considered so valuable to the company that it's in his
Speaker 2: contract that he's not allowed to bike to work. I mean,
Speaker 2: the sixty something designer used to love Viking, but as
Speaker 2: Business Insider put it, the company's too afraid he might
Speaker 2: go the way of Frogger.
Speaker 1: I did not know that. Well, do you know that
Speaker 1: Nintendo used to own the Seattle Mariners. Apparently Nintendo's Japanese
Speaker 1: CEO didn't really care about baseball, but when the team
Speaker 1: was going to move to Saint Petersburg, Florida. Yumochi decided
Speaker 1: to buy the team as a goodwill gesture to the
Speaker 1: city of Seat. Nintendo's American operation is located not far
Speaker 1: from there in the city of Redmond.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's kind of amazing. And it was
Speaker 2: apparently super controversial at the time because people were worried
Speaker 2: about a foreign entity owning an American baseball team, which
Speaker 2: is crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is.
Speaker 2: Did you know the original Super Mario Brothers was all
Speaker 2: drawn on graph paper and it was all colored in
Speaker 2: and when the designers were happy with a certain level,
Speaker 2: that's when they'd send it off to code. Eventually, the
Speaker 2: team started using this internal software to design the games,
Speaker 2: but their tool became so fun to play with that
Speaker 2: that's actually what they released to the public as Super
Speaker 2: Mario Maker.
Speaker 1: Well, speaking of Mario, rpal Nick Green figured this out
Speaker 1: and I love this so much, so he wanted to
Speaker 1: figure out how much Mario runs and swims in Super
Speaker 1: Mario Brothers. If you take out all the bonuses and shortcuts,
Speaker 1: and if you run from the start all the way
Speaker 1: to the castle, he only does about three point four miles.
Speaker 1: And as for the swimming, if you isolate that he
Speaker 1: only actually does about seven and a half laps and
Speaker 1: an Olympic sized pool.
Speaker 2: I mean, Nickorean's a genius, but I do think he's
Speaker 2: discounting how many turtles he's jumping over and how much
Speaker 2: parkore he basically has to do along the way.
Speaker 1: So he's got that six pack.
Speaker 2: So Tristan held up the Konami code in the beginning
Speaker 2: of the show, and I've been waiting to talk about this.
Speaker 2: It's obviously used in pop culture. I mean you find
Speaker 2: it on Archer The Family Guy as an inside joke,
Speaker 2: but from time to time you find it as an
Speaker 2: easter egg on various sites. So a while back, when
Speaker 2: you fired up the code into Google Reader, a bunch
Speaker 2: of cartoon ninjas would pop out onto your screen. I
Speaker 2: don't know if you remember this. It was really fun
Speaker 2: to watch. And when the code was used on ESPN
Speaker 2: dot com, it would bring up all these sparkly unicorns.
Speaker 2: Basically it was a unicorn infestation, and whenever you clicked
Speaker 2: a new sparkle pony would pop up up. That's pretty great,
Speaker 2: But the craziest to me was when Newsweek got in
Speaker 2: on the action, because if you typed in the code.
Speaker 2: The lead article was about zombies attacking parts of the
Speaker 2: East Coast, but I also had these tips for the
Speaker 2: zombie apocalypse, like aim for their heads. And Newsweek only
Speaker 2: partially owned the correction, like a spokesperson said, now we've
Speaker 2: all had laugh, we will be removing it right own
Speaker 2: up to that one.
Speaker 1: All right, well, I feel like we can't finish an
Speaker 1: episode without talking about Nintendo Power. You know, the magazine
Speaker 1: and all the tips about games and hyped up the
Speaker 1: new games. And I know we were both subscribers at
Speaker 1: one point, but they also published high scores, and apparently
Speaker 1: Steve Wozniak, you know, the co founder of Apple.
Speaker 2: Was a huge fan.
Speaker 1: He used to keep submitting his scores for Tetris month
Speaker 1: after month, and eventually the magazine had to ask him
Speaker 1: to stop submitting because they couldn't keep printing his name.
Speaker 1: So he finally agreed to it, but not before sending
Speaker 1: in one last entry, Avet's canezo w or his name backwards.
Speaker 2: That's pretty great. I mean that the WAWS was like
Speaker 2: and subscriber to Nintendo Power is just so insane. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you've got to take the crown for that.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, thank you so much, and thank you
Speaker 1: guys for listening. That's it for today's episode. If we
Speaker 1: forgot any of your favorite facts about Nintendo or anything
Speaker 1: related to video games, feel free to send those to us.
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear those facts. You can always email
Speaker 1: us part Time Genius at HowStuffWorks dot com or call
Speaker 1: our twenty four to seven fact hotline. That's one eight
Speaker 1: four four pt Genius. It is still twenty four to
Speaker 1: seven mangos That right, Yes, Okay, that's excellent news. You
Speaker 1: can also hit us up on Facebook or Twitter. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much for listening, Thanks again for listening. Part Time
Speaker 1: Genius is a production of How Stuff Works and wouldn't
Speaker 1: be possible without several brilliant people who do the important
Speaker 1: things we couldn't even begin to understand.
Speaker 2: Tristan McNeil does the editing thing.
Speaker 1: Noel Brown made the theme song and does the mixy
Speaker 1: mixy sound thing.
Speaker 2: Jerry Roland does the exact producer thing.
Speaker 1: Gabe Luzier is our lead researcher, with support from the
Speaker 1: research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams
Speaker 1: and Eve.
Speaker 2: Jeff Cook gets the show to your ears. Good job,
Speaker 2: Eves if.
Speaker 1: You like what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe. If
Speaker 1: you really really like what you've heard, maybe you could leave.
Speaker 2: A good review for us. Do we forget Jason?
Speaker 1: Jason who