Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from house
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren Vocalbam. And you know,
Speaker 1: there's a news story that broke not too long ago
Speaker 1: that relates back to stuff we've talked about on the
Speaker 1: show before. I'm talking, of course, about one of the
Speaker 1: most important archaeological projects of all time outside of an
Speaker 1: Indiana Jones film. I'm talking about going out to the
Speaker 1: desert in New Mexico and digging yourself up some E
Speaker 1: T and many other Atari games. Yeah. So, for those
Speaker 1: who do not remember, we've talked about this, Like I
Speaker 1: said multiple times, back in n you had a little
Speaker 1: bit of a a glut in the video game market,
Speaker 1: and as a result, Atari had some some extra um
Speaker 1: inventory on its hands. Yeah. Okay, So, so there's been
Speaker 1: this longstanding rumor, elevated to almost myth status in the
Speaker 1: video game industry that that Atari, while it was struggling,
Speaker 1: dumped thousands of video games in this New Mexico landfill. Um.
Speaker 1: The New York Times even ran a short piece on
Speaker 1: it in September three, and it's it's a short piece.
Speaker 1: So I'm just gonna read it out because it's a
Speaker 1: really explains the story and is super indicative of what
Speaker 1: the industry was doing at the time. So here we go.
Speaker 1: With the video game business gone sour, some manufacturers have
Speaker 1: been dumping their excess game cartridges on the market at
Speaker 1: depressed prices. Now, Atari Inc. The leading video game manufacturer,
Speaker 1: has taken dumping one step further. The company has dumped
Speaker 1: fourteen truckloads of discarded game cartridges and other computer equipment
Speaker 1: at the City landfill in Alama Gordon, New Mexico. Guards
Speaker 1: kept reporters and spectators away from the area yesterday as
Speaker 1: workers poured concrete over the dumped merchandise. And Atari spokesman
Speaker 1: said the equipment came from Atari's plant in al Paso, Texas,
Speaker 1: which was used to make video game cartridges but has
Speaker 1: now been converted to recycling scrap. Atari lust three d
Speaker 1: in ten point five million dollars in the second quarter,
Speaker 1: largely because of a sharp drop in video game sales.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, point five million dollars in a quarter. That's
Speaker 1: not that's not a yearly loss. So yeah, as you
Speaker 1: can see, this was a huge deal for Atari, and um,
Speaker 1: you know, there are a lot of different things that
Speaker 1: went into this. We've covered it before, but just as
Speaker 1: a quick kind of refresher, the things that that led
Speaker 1: to this decision involved too many games on the market,
Speaker 1: too many consoles on the market, so you had you
Speaker 1: had way too much product out there. Uh, and way
Speaker 1: too many poor video games that had been kind of
Speaker 1: scrapped together really quickly, right and and and then with
Speaker 1: the the ET cartridge in particular, which is often cited
Speaker 1: as not only the worst video game of all time
Speaker 1: but also the reason for the video game crash. That's
Speaker 1: that's a little too simplistic, but it did big contributor
Speaker 1: because that license cost millions of dollars to Atari, and
Speaker 1: they produced millions of cartridges, something like five million copies
Speaker 1: of this game, and they didn't sell out at all.
Speaker 1: They had they had millions left over. So you just
Speaker 1: had a no win scenario. I mean, no one wanted
Speaker 1: the cartridges. They kept getting marked down and down and
Speaker 1: down in the discount bins at your local toy stores.
Speaker 1: I mean, I remember these days because I had an AT,
Speaker 1: I had ET the Extra Terrestrial. UM, so I had
Speaker 1: the two games that are constantly referred to as being
Speaker 1: the ones that led to the video game Crash, where
Speaker 1: the licensed versions of pac Man and ET the Extra
Speaker 1: Terrestrial on the I had both of those, so I
Speaker 1: can tell you they both were terrible games. They were
Speaker 1: not good representations of their licenses and uh and so
Speaker 1: they both really did contribute. So uh. Anyway, we had
Speaker 1: this big myth about the you know, this huge dumping ground,
Speaker 1: and there was conflicting information for the longest time, like
Speaker 1: is it actually out there or is it is that
Speaker 1: just urban legend? Well, and since concrete had been poured,
Speaker 1: no one was really sure. It made me think for
Speaker 1: a while that maybe the guy who made that decision
Speaker 1: at Atari used to work for the mafia. I want
Speaker 1: it dead. I want to bury it in the ground.
Speaker 1: I want to concrete foundation board over it. How it
Speaker 1: how it goes off in my head anyway, I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe he just really hated it that much. But Yeah,
Speaker 1: we ended up discovering very recently as the recording of
Speaker 1: this podcast, as it turns out that there was truth
Speaker 1: to the yeah myth confirmed. Okay, so in April, hundreds
Speaker 1: of old Atari games, including the infamously terrible ET We're
Speaker 1: We're found in this landfill in New Mexico. The dig
Speaker 1: was part of a documentary series. It's being done by
Speaker 1: director Zach Penn in affiliation with a couple of media companies,
Speaker 1: Fuel Entertainment and Lightbox Entertainment, along with Microsoft's Xbox Entertainment Studios. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's what's funny is that Major Nelson, who is part
Speaker 1: of Xbox Lives. He's like one of the kind of
Speaker 1: a community liais on type guy, So a lot of
Speaker 1: information from Microsoft comes through him and then his communicated
Speaker 1: to the fans. He was actually on the dig site too.
Speaker 1: And uh, I'll talk a little bit more about that
Speaker 1: in just a second when we get to the super
Speaker 1: silly part of the story. I'm not sure which part is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's so many, but this one in particular because it
Speaker 1: all has to do with the way the man wears
Speaker 1: a construction hat. Okay, alright, So so some interesting interesting
Speaker 1: little factoids around this dig. The AP was out there
Speaker 1: and they were talking to folks um and and according
Speaker 1: to them, James Heller, a former Atari manager who's also
Speaker 1: on site for the dig at the invitation of the
Speaker 1: production team, Um said. James Heller said that he was
Speaker 1: charged with finding a cheap way of disposing for seven
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty eight thousand game cartridges. That's that's a
Speaker 1: lot of cartridges. That's more than I had by by
Speaker 1: a long shot. Uh. And he said that after a
Speaker 1: few local kids scavenged games, um, and he started getting
Speaker 1: calls from the media about it, that's when he decided
Speaker 1: to pour the concrete, right, because otherwise you have you
Speaker 1: have a recipe for disaster, and that kids could be
Speaker 1: coming out to a landfill get hurt lawsuits. Yeah. No
Speaker 1: one wants e T on top of being the worst
Speaker 1: game ever to be the most deadly game to have
Speaker 1: caused like tetanus and things like that. Yeah, that would
Speaker 1: have been a terrible, terrible, pr nightmare. Yeah. He's also
Speaker 1: said that he wasn't aware that there was any kind
Speaker 1: of controversy about it, and that he's never come out
Speaker 1: on the record about it because no one ever asked him. Huh.
Speaker 1: Clearly someone who does not go to the big video
Speaker 1: game forums. It's clearly not from the internet. Um. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: So the city that houses the landfill is giving up
Speaker 1: tofty of the cartridges to the team, and we'll be
Speaker 1: selling the rest. So if you would like your own,
Speaker 1: you can get some real New Mexico dirt packed in
Speaker 1: with your your various cartridges. They're they're apparently still playable,
Speaker 1: some of them, I mean some of them are crushed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know that. When they first found it, they tested
Speaker 1: one out almost lee and then said, we're not going
Speaker 1: to tell you whether or not it worked. We're going
Speaker 1: to save that for the documentary. But but but these
Speaker 1: are these are hard, hardwired cartridges. I mean they're not
Speaker 1: They're not optical discs or anything like that. So as
Speaker 1: long as you haven't had too much detritus get into
Speaker 1: the cartridge, which we all know how to solve that problem, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you're good. Yeah, as long as that's not
Speaker 1: the case, then it should work. And I understand that
Speaker 1: there was another person who was talked to about this
Speaker 1: whole thing, a man who may you might say, was
Speaker 1: burdened with terrible responsibility. Uh So the ap for for
Speaker 1: this article that they did also called et S game
Speaker 1: designer one Howard Scott Warshaw about the entire debacle um
Speaker 1: and he said that he actually doesn't mind his game
Speaker 1: being called the worst game ever. He said that he
Speaker 1: was only given five weeks to design, right and test
Speaker 1: this game after legal matters held it up in production
Speaker 1: of for Getting That Life since and the holiday shopping
Speaker 1: deadlines began looming. He said furthermore that it's and I
Speaker 1: quote a tremendous honor that, you know, even though it's
Speaker 1: the worst video game ever, that's still being talked about. Well,
Speaker 1: he also was the guy who made the biggest selling
Speaker 1: original game for Atari, which was Yars Revenge. Uh so,
Speaker 1: Yours Revenge was a kind of crazy little game where
Speaker 1: it's almost impossible to explain. Back then, video games were
Speaker 1: not nearly as simple in a way, like even though
Speaker 1: the the graphics were simple and the gameplay was simple,
Speaker 1: the concepts were really high concept crazy things. And these days,
Speaker 1: you know, when you see video games, they tend to
Speaker 1: be variations on very similar themes, like it's a sandbox
Speaker 1: game like Grand Theft Auto or the Saints Rose series,
Speaker 1: or it's a racing game, or it's a gun game
Speaker 1: like those are shooter and adventure you know, right back
Speaker 1: in the days of the early arcades. Well, first you
Speaker 1: play as a donkey who's out delivering pizza such what,
Speaker 1: but that was normal. So anyway, Ours Revenge hard to
Speaker 1: explain it easily, but um, anyway, one of the most
Speaker 1: popular games of atari ever. So it's kind of interesting
Speaker 1: that the same guy was behind both titles. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The other thing I wanted to mention, we're going to
Speaker 1: we're going to have a nice little flashback in a minute,
Speaker 1: but before we do that. Uh, something else I think
Speaker 1: is really entertaining is that there's some conspiracy theories around this,
Speaker 1: Like there were some things popping up on the Internet
Speaker 1: suggesting that perhaps this whole dig was a manufactured story
Speaker 1: and in fact, no one had gone to New Mexico
Speaker 1: and no one had actually found the cartridges because they
Speaker 1: were never really put there in the first place, and
Speaker 1: the whole thing is just a complete cover up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's like a tari truthis now. This is great. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So uh, And there was a picture of Major Nelson,
Speaker 1: this is what I was referring to earlier in the podcast,
Speaker 1: who was at the site and wearing a hard hat,
Speaker 1: and the hard hat, you know, sat pretty high up
Speaker 1: on his head, which led some people to say, oh,
Speaker 1: it's been photoshopped on top of him. He was clearly
Speaker 1: this was a picture of Major Nelson that's been placed
Speaker 1: so that it's on a desert background and he's got
Speaker 1: this hard hat photoshopped on because it's not saying flat,
Speaker 1: you know, snug against his head. But here's the thing
Speaker 1: about hard hats. They actually have like a little kind
Speaker 1: of harness that sits on your head, and they're raised
Speaker 1: up over the harness so that if something does impact
Speaker 1: the hard hat, there's that shot. Yeah. So it doesn't
Speaker 1: kill you, you see, just having something hard. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it doesn't. It doesn't help you if you're
Speaker 1: wearing something hard on your head if the force hitting
Speaker 1: it is still enough to cause you injury. So uh,
Speaker 1: it's you know, it may have been that the little
Speaker 1: harness part was a little small for Major Nelson's noggin.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I don't know. Personal Yeah, it doesn't.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to call him a fat head, No,
Speaker 1: neither am I. But but it does mean that I
Speaker 1: think some people mistakenly, either mistakenly or perhaps jokingly. It
Speaker 1: could have been that they were joking about it being
Speaker 1: photoshopped and and other people proportion in the internet is
Speaker 1: oh sure sure. And also some of the very first
Speaker 1: photos that came out of the dig site um were
Speaker 1: taken on you know, low quality cell phones, and I
Speaker 1: think that everyone I mean, I mean, I was reluctant
Speaker 1: to believe the story until I clicked a few links
Speaker 1: through and really checked around about it, because I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's fake. Yeah, well there's so many stories. I assume
Speaker 1: that everything on this fake on the internet except the
Speaker 1: hell stuff works where everything is amazing. But yeah, no, no,
Speaker 1: I totally understand what you where you're coming from on
Speaker 1: that one. So we wanted to take this opportunity to
Speaker 1: actually have a little look back on an episode that
Speaker 1: that was recorded years ago, back in two thousand eleven. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so so of course Chris Palette is going to be
Speaker 1: joining us from the vaults of history, right, So this
Speaker 1: is this is what some people would call a rerun,
Speaker 1: because we wanted to talk about the discussion that kind
Speaker 1: of led into this whole thing when we asked our listeners.
Speaker 1: This was like crowdsourced episode, which we haven't really we
Speaker 1: haven't done many of those. We've asked for a listener
Speaker 1: mail and gotten responses, and we've done some episodes based
Speaker 1: upon suggestions, but this was purely crowdsourced where I put
Speaker 1: out the question what's the worst video game of all time?
Speaker 1: And then we had our listeners, right, in and we
Speaker 1: tabulated all the votes and it was it was wide open,
Speaker 1: and this is the result. Uh and spoiler alert, the
Speaker 1: video game that we just talked about being Dug Up
Speaker 1: in the Desert, ends up being number one. So but
Speaker 1: it's an entertaining episode. Listen to it, and we'll have
Speaker 1: a little bit more to talk about once the episodes
Speaker 1: over with some other kind of bad video game wrap up,
Speaker 1: so enjoy. So, hey, guys, you know you might remember
Speaker 1: that Chris and I wanted to do a crowdsourced episode
Speaker 1: where we asked our listeners to submit to us the
Speaker 1: worst video game of all time. And uh, we didn't
Speaker 1: give an real parameters about that. We said it could
Speaker 1: be on any platform, it just had to be a
Speaker 1: video game. And because of that, it meant that our
Speaker 1: listeners could literally, uh nominate any game ever made. So
Speaker 1: it's a miracle at all that we had enough votes
Speaker 1: for any particular title to have this this podcast. But
Speaker 1: we actually have the top ten or perhaps bottom ten
Speaker 1: worst video games as voted on by you the listener,
Speaker 1: So please keep in mind this is not the opinions
Speaker 1: of Jonathan and Chris, although maybe we'll talk about some
Speaker 1: of the bad games we've played in the past two
Speaker 1: This isn't our opinion, this is your opinion. We're just
Speaker 1: reporting it. Well, I have to say that one one
Speaker 1: person did right in and ask us why we would
Speaker 1: bother recording an episode on this, and uh, the simple
Speaker 1: answer is because it's fun. Yeah. This was actually really
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. It was a lot of work
Speaker 1: because we had to collect votes from multiple sources. We
Speaker 1: collective votes from email, Facebook, Twitter, and people left votes
Speaker 1: on my Google Plus account too, so um, I actually
Speaker 1: did separate out all the votes in a big spreadsheet,
Speaker 1: so I knew how many votes came in from which,
Speaker 1: uh particular source and that that actually was kind of
Speaker 1: interesting too, just to see, you know, what our listeners
Speaker 1: prefer to use in order to get information to us.
Speaker 1: That was pretty fascinating. That was not my intent, by
Speaker 1: the way, when I came. I came up with this
Speaker 1: idea on the spur of the moment and sprung it
Speaker 1: on Chris just before we started recording, and Chris was like,
Speaker 1: do I have to do I have to record all
Speaker 1: the votes? I said no, He said, all right, let's
Speaker 1: do it. So you know, I'm easy like that. Let's
Speaker 1: let's start off with what would be number ten, but
Speaker 1: actually it was a tie for ninth place. So the
Speaker 1: first two games we're gonna talk about received the same
Speaker 1: number of votes, and the first one that we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about is dragons Lair the arcade games specifically,
Speaker 1: So for those of you who, uh who missed out
Speaker 1: on the early eighties and the great arcade culture of
Speaker 1: the early eighties, you may not be too familiar with
Speaker 1: this game. But it was groundbreaking. Yeah, it was. It
Speaker 1: was a an innovative way of presenting a video game
Speaker 1: that had not been attempted before Dragon's Layer. Yep. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Previously we were talking about the different well the difference
Speaker 1: in in vector and raster graphics and and you know
Speaker 1: there was there were blocky graphics for the most part
Speaker 1: at the time, and they had limited animation, limited sound um.
Speaker 1: But but Dragon's Layer actually featured uh, animation from one
Speaker 1: of the industry giant animators, Don Bluth, former Disney animator
Speaker 1: UM who has gone on to you know, with his
Speaker 1: own company, to do many many other titles. In fact,
Speaker 1: I have Don Bluth title on my iPad. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: one the new version of Tapper features Don Bluth artwork.
Speaker 1: So yeah, because he Also you may know some of
Speaker 1: his work from from movies like The Secrets and the
Speaker 1: Secret of Nim Yes, and Before Time series, Before Time
Speaker 1: it was was it the Five Old Movies too? Yes? Um,
Speaker 1: those were Don Bluth films, so somewhere out there, yes,
Speaker 1: thank you. So Dragon's Lair was featured animation from Don
Speaker 1: Bluth and it was published by Cinematronics. Yeah. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: but but how you might say exactly was this great
Speaker 1: leap in graphics and sound? Because the sound was awesome too.
Speaker 1: How how is that possible? Because you know, you're looking
Speaker 1: at other games like Donkey Kong, which you know I
Speaker 1: loved Donkey Kong, but you would not call the graphics
Speaker 1: advanced or state of the art. Well for the time,
Speaker 1: they were, but not now ye crazy? Yeah, well they
Speaker 1: they accomplished this by using the laser disc video format,
Speaker 1: which we've talked about before. So the entire game was
Speaker 1: on laser disc, and there was an actual laser disc
Speaker 1: player inside the cabinet of this arcade game. Now, the
Speaker 1: fact that there it was on laser disc was both
Speaker 1: its its biggest strength and its biggest weakness. The weakness
Speaker 1: is that you couldn't create too much interactivity for the
Speaker 1: player and the game. The you know, you couldn't have
Speaker 1: complete control over the main character who do you remember?
Speaker 1: The guy's name Dirk the Daring, and he was rescuing
Speaker 1: a princess Daphne from a dragon named Singe. And so
Speaker 1: you couldn't just control Dirk the Daring, You couldn't just
Speaker 1: make him run around and jump and stuff. Instead, what
Speaker 1: you would do is you would initiate a video sequence.
Speaker 1: Because again this is recorded on laser disc. There's only
Speaker 1: so many variations of Dirk's movements that can be recorded
Speaker 1: on a single laser disc. So what your input into
Speaker 1: the arcade Sheen would translate to is, was that the
Speaker 1: correct button to press or direction on the joystick to
Speaker 1: push in order to trigger the next sequence to further
Speaker 1: the storyline. Yeah, so you, for example, you might be
Speaker 1: having to jump, and you did have to jump at
Speaker 1: one point, and if you, you know, move up, that
Speaker 1: might be the right thing to do. If you move left,
Speaker 1: you die. If you do nothing, you die. If you
Speaker 1: if you push the sword button, you die if you
Speaker 1: push Yeah. So, in other words, there'll be one correct
Speaker 1: response to a particular moment in the story. And sometimes, uh,
Speaker 1: there'd be like a little flash that would indicate this
Speaker 1: is when you do something. So for a lot of
Speaker 1: the game, you're you're just watching, You're just you're you're
Speaker 1: watching a movie. And then occasionally in the movie there's
Speaker 1: a moment where you have a chance to put in
Speaker 1: an input, and if you put in the wrong one,
Speaker 1: the movie's over. And so that was probably what cost
Speaker 1: a lot of people to vote for Dragons Layers, that
Speaker 1: it almost feels like less of a game and more
Speaker 1: a film. It's just a film that you don't get
Speaker 1: to see the end of it unless you happen to
Speaker 1: shift in your seat at just the right moment so
Speaker 1: the film will continue. And also I would like to
Speaker 1: point out this was one of the first games I
Speaker 1: can remember that cost two credits or fifty cents to play.
Speaker 1: And also remember that a lot of them had two
Speaker 1: monitors because they were so popular that people would try
Speaker 1: and gather and cram around the system. Because if someone
Speaker 1: knew how to play it, if someone had memorized the
Speaker 1: sequence of movements they had to do to get through
Speaker 1: a particular part of the game, you know, most people
Speaker 1: didn't have the time or energy or change to learn
Speaker 1: all that, so they just like to watch the game,
Speaker 1: because again, it was like a movie. I saw a
Speaker 1: lot of our kids that would put a second monitor
Speaker 1: that was mounted on the top of the cabinet so
Speaker 1: that you could see what was going on without having
Speaker 1: to be right up on whoever is playing the game.
Speaker 1: So anyway, that was tied for ninth place. Uh. And
Speaker 1: the other one was a game on the Nintendo Entertainment
Speaker 1: System which was Back to the Future. And I have
Speaker 1: never played this because I didn't own an any s.
Speaker 1: From what I read, we're going from beautiful graphics and
Speaker 1: and and sort of poor gameplay to horrible graphics. And yeah,
Speaker 1: Back to the Future is just one example of a
Speaker 1: licensed title, and by licensed, I mean it's something that
Speaker 1: already existed that a video game publisher purchases a license
Speaker 1: from the license owner to be able to create a
Speaker 1: game based on that. And as far as Back to
Speaker 1: the Future goes, the basis was really pretty uh difficult
Speaker 1: to spot, especially in that first stage. Like in the
Speaker 1: very first stage, you are going down a street, and
Speaker 1: the way the view is it's an over the head view. Um,
Speaker 1: the street is laid out so that the top of
Speaker 1: the screen is where your head to the bottom of
Speaker 1: the screen is where you are and you're moving your
Speaker 1: your character around Marty McFly. You're moving Marty McFly down
Speaker 1: the street. You're trying to avoid enemies and pick up
Speaker 1: little alarm clocks and it's only by picking up enough
Speaker 1: alarm clocks that you're allowed to move to the next stage.
Speaker 1: And so you're also you also have a timer, so
Speaker 1: if you don't pick up enough alarm clocks within the
Speaker 1: time limit, then you lose. If you get hit by
Speaker 1: an enemy, you lose. If you run into an obstacle,
Speaker 1: you lose. Um. You would eventually be able to pick
Speaker 1: up a bowling ball, which would let you shoot enemies
Speaker 1: because of course you remember that great scene and Back
Speaker 1: to the Future where Marty McFly picked up a bowling
Speaker 1: ball and then shot someone with it. Um, who could
Speaker 1: forget that scene that never happened, uh, And then you
Speaker 1: could also get a skateboard, which at least that was
Speaker 1: featured in the film. But with a skateboard, what that
Speaker 1: would mean is that you would move through the the
Speaker 1: you would move through the level faster, which meant the
Speaker 1: poor gameplay became excruciating. The poor gameplay because you're going
Speaker 1: so ask you can't even react um, and then if
Speaker 1: you got through that, you would hit a mini game.
Speaker 1: And some of the mini games included a diner stage
Speaker 1: where you're behind the counter and Biff and his bullies
Speaker 1: are coming in after you and you have to throw
Speaker 1: milkshakes at them to stop them. But it was really
Speaker 1: hard to line up your character so that you were
Speaker 1: throwing the milkshake at the right plane in order to
Speaker 1: hit the enemy. Like the enemy is coming at you
Speaker 1: from the left side of the screen. You're on the
Speaker 1: right side of the screen, and you've got a bar
Speaker 1: between you and the enemy. You just have to figure
Speaker 1: out exactly where, like vertically you need to align yourself
Speaker 1: and you you'd be like, oh, that's clearly, that's it.
Speaker 1: That's that's the sweet spot, and you push the button
Speaker 1: and the milkshake flies like three ft over the bully's
Speaker 1: head and he reaches the bar and throws you against
Speaker 1: the wall. Um. It was a little rough. And then
Speaker 1: there was another stage where you had the block kisses
Speaker 1: that were sent to you from Lorraine. Because you're playing
Speaker 1: Marty McFly and his Marty's mother. You know, he's back
Speaker 1: in time and he's met the teenage version of his
Speaker 1: Um and so you would have to block her kisses
Speaker 1: to you. And then there was another one where you
Speaker 1: had to position a guitar just right so that you
Speaker 1: were playing music so that Lorraine and George, your your
Speaker 1: mom and dad would actually kiss. And the very final
Speaker 1: stage involved driving the DeLorean, the time travel device, through
Speaker 1: the street at night, dodging enemies, dodging obstacles, trying to
Speaker 1: get up to eighty eight miles per hour um. It
Speaker 1: looked awful. Oh and Bob Gayle, who was a screenwriter
Speaker 1: for Back to the Future, called it one of the
Speaker 1: worst games ever made. Heavy Yeah, yeah, why do people
Speaker 1: keep saying, is there's some problem with gravity in the future?
Speaker 1: So that moves us up to our eighth worst game.
Speaker 1: Do you wanna unveil what this one is? Well, it
Speaker 1: certainly has a tough road to ho yes it does.
Speaker 1: But it is extremely popular. It's something you may have
Speaker 1: seen once or twice on Facebook, at least once or
Speaker 1: twice a minute on Facebook only if you follow people
Speaker 1: who play this, and how could you not. It's Farmville
Speaker 1: from Zinga. Now Farmville has had a lot of criticism
Speaker 1: directed toward it. It's one of those games. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a freemium game, and that means that you can
Speaker 1: play the game for free, but if you want to
Speaker 1: have the most advantageous stuff in the game, you have
Speaker 1: to pay real money to get it um and which
Speaker 1: is a perfectly valid business plan. You know, there's no
Speaker 1: reason I'm not. I don't want to say that that's
Speaker 1: a bad thing to do. I mean people should be
Speaker 1: compensated for the work they do in order for them
Speaker 1: to make more work. Otherwise, no one has any incentive
Speaker 1: to do anything. You know, well, you know it's it's
Speaker 1: got millions of fans, yes, um something like. I once
Speaker 1: heard a statistic that something like ten of all people
Speaker 1: who use Facebook play this. And I have. I played,
Speaker 1: I played it in some of the other Zinga games,
Speaker 1: but I don't it's funny though, I don't think of
Speaker 1: it as a game. I think if it is more
Speaker 1: of a toy, but because there's no objective that you're
Speaker 1: trying to accomplish to win the game, basically you're trying
Speaker 1: to if you've never seen or or played it. Um.
Speaker 1: The point is to grow your farm, so you know,
Speaker 1: at some point you you add little plots of land
Speaker 1: on which you can grow your crops and you can
Speaker 1: choose which crops to grow. Um. You know, each time
Speaker 1: you plant something, you have several choices to you know,
Speaker 1: you could say corn or tomatoes or you know, you know,
Speaker 1: potatoes or something else. Um. And each crop costs a
Speaker 1: certain amount of money and your you know, your fake
Speaker 1: gold money. Actually it's their their dollars, I think farm coins,
Speaker 1: farm coins and uh you also it's been a while
Speaker 1: since I played. And each crop takes a certain amount
Speaker 1: of time to grow, and if you leave the game
Speaker 1: for more than that amount of time a reasonable amount
Speaker 1: of time, once it's grown, the crop will wither and die.
Speaker 1: So the point is to I mean, it's not just crops.
Speaker 1: You also add you know, a surround your your garden,
Speaker 1: and you add a farmhouse and what kind do you want?
Speaker 1: And you know, bales of hay and you basically you
Speaker 1: you add in size to the farm, and you add
Speaker 1: different plots, and you upgrade your stuff. And there's also
Speaker 1: a social factor where you can interact with your friends
Speaker 1: farms and they can interact with yours, which is why
Speaker 1: you see, like all these notifications pop up on Facebook
Speaker 1: until you get fed up with it and block them.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean you can visit your friends farm
Speaker 1: and fertilizer crops so they grow faster, or unwer them
Speaker 1: when they've gone bad, and to help them you can
Speaker 1: send them gifts and they can send you gifts, and
Speaker 1: that that can be kind of fun. But the thing is, it's,
Speaker 1: like Jonathan pointed out, uh, Zinga is really hoping that
Speaker 1: you'll invest some actual cash into this and you can
Speaker 1: get uh, certain kinds of crops or certain kinds of
Speaker 1: decorations for your farm if you fork over some real
Speaker 1: coin um. And that's kind of annoying for people like
Speaker 1: me who are cheap and don't want to give them
Speaker 1: any money. And the thing is, at a certain point,
Speaker 1: the game or software toy, it's like, like I said,
Speaker 1: don't like to call it is sort of semi unplayable
Speaker 1: because there's a point at which everything to make it
Speaker 1: fun you really need to give them money for it
Speaker 1: really doesn't change, and it's the point of which you go, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm really don't want to do this. And
Speaker 1: the game also encourages you to try and loop your
Speaker 1: friends into the games. Yeah, so yeah, that's that's probably
Speaker 1: I'm guessing that's why people voted for it, because it
Speaker 1: feels almost invasive um when you're on Facebook, unless you
Speaker 1: you go so far as to block it. And we
Speaker 1: had other Facebook games like games that are similar to
Speaker 1: this UH nominated as well, but Farmville was the one
Speaker 1: that actually got the most votes. And also I think
Speaker 1: has been accused of sort of copying earlier game called
Speaker 1: farm Town that had very similar game mechanics. Some people
Speaker 1: would say similarity to the point of identity. But well, this,
Speaker 1: this model has UH has extended across face Book and
Speaker 1: and other venues as well. I mean, there are some
Speaker 1: iPad games UM that I've you know, tried out on
Speaker 1: my tablet that basically they're the same kinds of things
Speaker 1: at your friends. Otherwise you're not going to get very
Speaker 1: far in this game. I'm like, I don't know anybody
Speaker 1: else who's playing this. Plus I don't want to spam
Speaker 1: everybody with email blasts saying joined my game. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: if Jonathan's playing and I'm playing, then yeah, I'll send
Speaker 1: Jonathan a note, Hey, send me a free chicken. But
Speaker 1: I don't want to send that to everybody on my
Speaker 1: list because you know, it's annoying. Yes, it would, So
Speaker 1: let's move on to our next nomination. Now, this, this
Speaker 1: next nomination is interesting because it's a terrible, terrible game
Speaker 1: that was designed to be a terrible terrible game, and
Speaker 1: it's called Desert Bus. Now, Desert Bus was actually a
Speaker 1: mini game that was part of a larger package of
Speaker 1: games for a product that never saw full production. It
Speaker 1: was for the Sega c D system. Gosh, barely remember
Speaker 1: that the whole system was a failure. Not just this game,
Speaker 1: but it was a mini game that was included in
Speaker 1: Penn and Teller's Smoke and Mirrors. Um. A lot of
Speaker 1: the stuff that was in Penn and Teller's Smoke and
Speaker 1: Mirrors ended up being used in other Penn and Teller
Speaker 1: products like Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends and things like that.
Speaker 1: But this one idea, which supposedly came from Eddie Gorades
Speaker 1: debt Ski, who is a producer in Hollywood. Uh, this
Speaker 1: one idea was to create an and ultra realistic and
Speaker 1: by that I mean boring game in which you drive
Speaker 1: a bus from Tucson, Arizona, to Las Vegas, Nevada, in
Speaker 1: real time and the buses top speed is around forty
Speaker 1: five miles per hour and there's no scenery, there's there's
Speaker 1: no traffic, there are no passengers on the bus. It's
Speaker 1: just you driving this bus to Las Vegas. And uh
Speaker 1: in real time, that takes, by the way, about eight hours.
Speaker 1: And if you get all the way to Las Vegas,
Speaker 1: you get a point and then you have to drive back.
Speaker 1: But what happens if you need to you know, stop
Speaker 1: and eat dinner, go to the bathroom. Well, the game
Speaker 1: does not have a pause function, so the time would
Speaker 1: just keep going. Also, the bus, you might say, why
Speaker 1: don't you just set it up so that the bus
Speaker 1: drives automatically, like, you know, just put something on the
Speaker 1: up arrow key on the pedal. Yeah. Uh, Well, the
Speaker 1: bus also has a problem with its suspension and it
Speaker 1: pulls to the right, so you have to constantly adjust
Speaker 1: the bus so that it will it will be on
Speaker 1: the road. Now, there is a port of this game
Speaker 1: on the web. You can play a web based version
Speaker 1: of Desert Bus if you want to. Now you might ask,
Speaker 1: why would you want to, Well, some of it's just
Speaker 1: kind of like grousing slash bragging rights that you know,
Speaker 1: you actually bothered to take eight hours of your life
Speaker 1: and get this virtual bus from Tucson to Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: But another group called Loading Ready Run had an interesting idea.
Speaker 1: UM that's a four person comedy group, and they decided
Speaker 1: to hold a desert bus marathon session as a fundraising
Speaker 1: effort to raise money for the charity child Child's Play.
Speaker 1: Child's Plays a charity that gets a lot of attention
Speaker 1: particularly around Penny Arcade Expo or packs because the PAXs
Speaker 1: guys also hold um auctions for Child's Play and it's
Speaker 1: it's providing video games and other kinds of stuff like
Speaker 1: that to kids who are in hospitals and who are
Speaker 1: recovering or suffering from serious illnesses and conditions as a
Speaker 1: nice charity, to do something nice for the kids, right,
Speaker 1: So these four members of Loading Ready Run took shifts
Speaker 1: at driving the desert bus UM they ended up driving
Speaker 1: for more than four and a half days. The first time,
Speaker 1: which was in two thousand and seven, that they drove
Speaker 1: for around four and a half days, and they scored
Speaker 1: six points in that four and a half days driving
Speaker 1: the bus back and forth. Uh. And since then they've
Speaker 1: held the marathon several more times and have raised more
Speaker 1: than four hundred thousand dollars collectively. That's impressive, yeah for
Speaker 1: Child's Play, which is pretty impressive. Um, but yeah, the
Speaker 1: game is online, so if you just do a search
Speaker 1: for Desert Bus, you can find a web based version
Speaker 1: of this game and play it yourself. Should you hate yourself?
Speaker 1: Apparently our number six game. It's also a game for
Speaker 1: people who are into really not happy driving experience. Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, this game is probably it's amazing to me
Speaker 1: that this game was ever released, because it is it
Speaker 1: is as unfinished a game as I have ever seen.
Speaker 1: And I've seen the reviews for this game, like I've
Speaker 1: seen video reviews of this game that show the problems,
Speaker 1: and it's you can't believe that such a product was
Speaker 1: ever released to the public. I guess we should say
Speaker 1: what it is. Well, racing games are so popular, and
Speaker 1: you know that you can race just about anything in
Speaker 1: all kinds of video games, so you would imagine that
Speaker 1: one that would allow you to race tractor trailers would
Speaker 1: be fun. But big rigs over the road racing for
Speaker 1: the for the PC isn't. It was a two thousand
Speaker 1: three third person racing game. So you're outside the truck
Speaker 1: looking at the truck and let's see if we can
Speaker 1: figure out where some of the problems of this game
Speaker 1: may reside, shall we? What's a racing game in which
Speaker 1: you don't really race anyone else? Right? Well, first, the
Speaker 1: first problem is that it was build as a game
Speaker 1: where the object was that you were transporting illegal goods
Speaker 1: uh and you were being chased by police. So it
Speaker 1: was built as a game where you had to drive
Speaker 1: fast and evade the cops. What cos right, So when
Speaker 1: you actually get the game, it turns out there's nothing
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with any of that. Instead, it
Speaker 1: was supposed to be, at least once you've got the
Speaker 1: game going, it was supposed to be a racing game
Speaker 1: where you're racing against other competitors. But um, the game
Speaker 1: developer never actually bothered to put artificial intelligence competitors in there,
Speaker 1: so they they never leave the starting line. It's a
Speaker 1: race where all the other people racing don't do anything.
Speaker 1: They just sit there. So you're you're running and they're
Speaker 1: behind you and they don't do anything. Beyond that, though,
Speaker 1: it gets worse than that. Well, what about the realistic physics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there weren't any um you could drive over anything like
Speaker 1: driving on the road or driving off the road, or
Speaker 1: driving through a building. None of that made any difference.
Speaker 1: You you traveled at the same speed unless you were
Speaker 1: backing up, in which case you would accelerate infinitely until
Speaker 1: you let off the the reverse button. Yeah, I understand
Speaker 1: why again I didn't play this one, but I understand
Speaker 1: too that stopping was hyper realistic too, Like if you
Speaker 1: had perfect breaks, you just let up on the accelerator
Speaker 1: and you stop. Yeah, exactly, you just go to go
Speaker 1: to that. Yeah, there's there's no sense of momentum or inertia.
Speaker 1: You just the universe would would would halt around you. Um,
Speaker 1: you could drive off the edge of the map and
Speaker 1: into gray nothingness. So it made it kind of a
Speaker 1: metaphysical philosophical game at that point. I've done that before,
Speaker 1: and we've known plenty of metaphysical philosophical truck drivers, and
Speaker 1: that's really not a dig. We really do know quite
Speaker 1: a few of them. Um. But yeah, it was just,
Speaker 1: you know, no collision detection to speak of. Uh. There
Speaker 1: were five tracks listed in the game, only four of
Speaker 1: them were playable. I don't know how that would be
Speaker 1: a disappointment considering how horrible the game was, Like, oh great,
Speaker 1: you mean I can't play this other terrible track that
Speaker 1: I would never love, And uh, explays Morgan Webb. She
Speaker 1: she refused to rate this game because Explay has a
Speaker 1: rating system of one to five stars. There's no zero,
Speaker 1: there's no zero, and she refused to even give it
Speaker 1: one star, so she would not review it. She played it,
Speaker 1: she just wouldn't give it a review. So yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's pretty bad. So that was a that was a
Speaker 1: two thousand three game. But we're gonna go a little
Speaker 1: further back for our next one, right right, Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a a port of a very popular arcade game.
Speaker 1: Um and for this is when I've played back on
Speaker 1: when I had an a tart Wactually I still have
Speaker 1: an at when I had it hooked up the TV,
Speaker 1: but I didn't actually own this one. Um so shall
Speaker 1: we Yeah, this is fifth place, by the way, for
Speaker 1: those of you keeping count, So in fifth place is
Speaker 1: pac Man. Yeah, pac Man, so reported the Namco Giant.
Speaker 1: It's often called the worst coin op port. Ever. Donkey
Speaker 1: Kong wasn't great, Oh no, not, I don't just agree,
Speaker 1: but pac Man was. Honestly, it was terrible. Yeah, at
Speaker 1: least Donkey Kong remotely resemble the game that it was
Speaker 1: based on. Yet pac Man. Some people have said that
Speaker 1: if it had not been called pac Man. If it
Speaker 1: if it hadn't been referred to as that, and it
Speaker 1: had a slightly different appearance for the character that you play,
Speaker 1: that people probably wouldn't be quite so hard on it
Speaker 1: because the puzzle, the mazes were a little challenging to
Speaker 1: get through, and you know, the gameplay worked properly, like
Speaker 1: you know, you press left on the joystick and pac
Speaker 1: Man would go left. You know, it wasn't like you know,
Speaker 1: Big Rigs what we just talked about. That was a
Speaker 1: game that was just pure broken, right. There was no
Speaker 1: literally no way to play that game. It ended up
Speaker 1: being like a weird sandbox game, but it wasn't intended
Speaker 1: to be one. Pac Man played the way it was
Speaker 1: supposed to more or less. It's just that it was
Speaker 1: such a poor translation of what of a game that
Speaker 1: people were really familiar with that it was it could
Speaker 1: be nothing more than a disappointment to anyone who bought it.
Speaker 1: And in fact, pac Man is one of the titles
Speaker 1: that people often will use as an example when they
Speaker 1: talk about why the video game industry collapsed in nine
Speaker 1: in North America. Well, they made so many copies of this,
Speaker 1: anticipating that people would want to play it at home,
Speaker 1: but when they actually got their hands on it and moved,
Speaker 1: I mean, pac Man is a game where you actually
Speaker 1: need reflexes and you need to pay attention to what's
Speaker 1: going on in Pacman on the move so much more slowly,
Speaker 1: and the graphics were poor. The sound wasn't as good.
Speaker 1: I remember when it came out for the R and
Speaker 1: it looked so much better except a non centering joystick,
Speaker 1: which makes playing in a four direction may is very
Speaker 1: very difficult. So that just didn't help anything it which
Speaker 1: is such a huge flop at home. Right, Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was a terrible, terrible game. And uh, I completely
Speaker 1: agree with this being on on a list for bad
Speaker 1: video games because it you know, even if you even
Speaker 1: if you say that the game play was hey, the
Speaker 1: effect it had in the industry was so terrible that
Speaker 1: by definition it's a bad video game because it helped
Speaker 1: bring the industry to its knees in n and it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be until Nintendo launched the NES in North America
Speaker 1: that we would see a recovery of that market. Um
Speaker 1: So now next we have a tie for third place.
Speaker 1: You know, normally we go from fifth to fourth, but
Speaker 1: we have the same number of votes came in for
Speaker 1: our our third and fourth place, so tie for third,
Speaker 1: and these two are more modern. Yeah, we we did
Speaker 1: an entire episode about one of these, Duke Newcombe Forever. Now,
Speaker 1: we did do a full episode about Duke nukembe Forever.
Speaker 1: So we're not going to spend too much time right
Speaker 1: now talking about it because now granted when we did
Speaker 1: the episode, it was before the game had come out,
Speaker 1: hotly anticipated for a decade, more than a decade, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. Yeah, it was originally announced as a title
Speaker 1: for the PC. It was a a sequel to Duke
Speaker 1: Nukemb three d um. It was originally announced in seven,
Speaker 1: but it didn't launch until twenty eleven. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: long time for to wait for a video game, right,
Speaker 1: I mean vapor awards right up there with DAO sex. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Wired gave it the Vaporware of the Year award multiple
Speaker 1: years in a row. In fact that it got discontinued
Speaker 1: from the voting because and then it was brought back
Speaker 1: because it wasn't just that it was vaporware, it was
Speaker 1: that just when you were prepared to say Duke Nukem
Speaker 1: Forever was never going to come out. There would be
Speaker 1: some sort of rumble from three D Realms that would
Speaker 1: say no, no, no, no no, no, it's really gonna come out,
Speaker 1: and then you'd have to say, well, now we have
Speaker 1: to put it back on the list, because you know,
Speaker 1: we were ready to write it off forever. But they
Speaker 1: say it's coming out, So of course they the rights
Speaker 1: to the game passed into other people's hands once Three
Speaker 1: D Realms collapsed. Yeah, and they did. Yeah, they they
Speaker 1: finished it. Um. They did not receive wide acclaim when
Speaker 1: it launched. A lot of peo both panned this game,
Speaker 1: which of course explains why it's on our list and
Speaker 1: how many people voted for it. UM. A lot of
Speaker 1: the criticisms about the game said that it was it
Speaker 1: just looked dated. It was it was like a first
Speaker 1: person shooter designed for the late nineties. You know, it
Speaker 1: didn't have the elements that you expect in the first
Speaker 1: person shooter today. And uh that even even for one
Speaker 1: in the nineties, it would have been great because like
Speaker 1: in the nineties, you would have a lot of fast
Speaker 1: paced action and you would have a ton of different
Speaker 1: weapons at your disposal. Duke Knukem Forever was more plodding
Speaker 1: and Uh, well, there's no way for me to word
Speaker 1: this in a way that's not negative. It was a slow,
Speaker 1: slow game. It could be boring at times, it could
Speaker 1: be ages between one encounter with an enemy and another,
Speaker 1: and you can only carry two weapons at a time.
Speaker 1: So it took away some of the stuff that made
Speaker 1: those games in the nineties so much fun and uh,
Speaker 1: and didn't replace it with anything better. And also the
Speaker 1: juvenile humor in the Duke Knwcomb series, I think it
Speaker 1: may have worn a little thin. It's just people don't
Speaker 1: find it as amusing as it used to be, partially
Speaker 1: because we've had other games come out that have much
Speaker 1: more biting satire and uh, and you know, they're they're
Speaker 1: just as edgy as Duke Newcomb was, but they're more relevant.
Speaker 1: Like the Grand Theft Auto series is known for its
Speaker 1: dark humor. The Fallout three series or the Fallout series
Speaker 1: in general is known for its dark humor. And so
Speaker 1: you get to do Newcomb and you're just like, well,
Speaker 1: this feels like you're in a uh you know, you're
Speaker 1: in a locker room with a bunch of really really
Speaker 1: immature guys, and that that's the level of humor. And
Speaker 1: it just never gets above that, and so I think
Speaker 1: all of those things contributed to it being ranked on
Speaker 1: our list. But what about our next game that's also
Speaker 1: tied for third place. You think that a game written
Speaker 1: by um an Oxford professor of bioethics might actually rank
Speaker 1: up there, But Bennett Foddies game QW O P or
Speaker 1: wop UM got a lot of negative votes. Actually, I
Speaker 1: saw this profiled and wired before I ever tried to
Speaker 1: play it. Um. There's a neat little article about him. Uh,
Speaker 1: and I do mean little. It's very short, um. But basically,
Speaker 1: in this game, you are using the keys Q, W,
Speaker 1: O P, hence the name, to move the legs of
Speaker 1: a runner on a track. Yeah, runner named quap for
Speaker 1: a hundred dash, And that's important to know. It's not
Speaker 1: It's supposed to be a Olympic runner on the hundred
Speaker 1: meter dash, and the Q and W keys control the
Speaker 1: runners thighs, and the O n P keys control the
Speaker 1: runners calves, and you're supposed to try and coordinate these
Speaker 1: movements in such a way as to propel the runner
Speaker 1: down the hundred meters. By the way, this runner has
Speaker 1: apparently no upper body control whatsoever, and if if the
Speaker 1: runner gets even a little bit off balance, it's time
Speaker 1: to tip over. And I have seen so many people
Speaker 1: play this game and get negative scores because they would
Speaker 1: just start tipping backwards almost instantaneously. And as soon as
Speaker 1: you touch the ground, that's where you're that's that's your score.
Speaker 1: And uh and we keep in mind it's a hundred
Speaker 1: meter dash. Um. I've never seen anyone complete this in
Speaker 1: fewer than twenty minutes. But the furthest I've gotten is
Speaker 1: twelve point eight ms. Didn't you send me a video
Speaker 1: of somebody who had finished in about four minutes. I
Speaker 1: think they sped it up. What they what they ended
Speaker 1: up doing was they used it so that they made
Speaker 1: Quop do a split and then they just kind of
Speaker 1: jimmied it until he finally like he literally inched down
Speaker 1: a hundred meters and and at fifty by the way,
Speaker 1: you are you aren't you encounter your first obstacle hurdle.
Speaker 1: And at a hundred meters there's a long jump. But
Speaker 1: you can go through the hurdle like you don't have to.
Speaker 1: You don't have to actually jump the hurdle. You can
Speaker 1: keep going as long as you're able to land on
Speaker 1: your feet or however you're getting across. Um, you can
Speaker 1: can pretty much ignore the hurdle and the long jump
Speaker 1: is completely uhum optional. Yes, if you just have to
Speaker 1: cross that finish line. If you're if your experience with
Speaker 1: video game running is track and field from the eighties
Speaker 1: where you just had to pound buttons as fast as
Speaker 1: you could. Um, you will not win at this game. Now,
Speaker 1: this game is This game is really, really, really hard,
Speaker 1: which I think is why it got a lot of votes.
Speaker 1: It's it's frustrating, and it seems it seems after you've
Speaker 1: played it for about a minute, it seems completely pointless. Oh,
Speaker 1: we should say it's web based. It's a web based game,
Speaker 1: so you can find it on Foddy's side. He wrote
Speaker 1: this in two thousand and eight and it's still up,
Speaker 1: so if you want to give it a shot, go ahead.
Speaker 1: It's it's kind of and it's kind of fun. And
Speaker 1: it also gives you an idea of how well your
Speaker 1: brain is controlling your walking movements, because if you were
Speaker 1: trying to walk with your you know, control your own
Speaker 1: legs with your fingers, you may I don't know that
Speaker 1: I would do any better, but it takes a lot
Speaker 1: of coordination to be able to like, even when I
Speaker 1: got twelve point eight meters was mostly luck. I was
Speaker 1: timing it just right. But even as I was playing,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, I should have I should have
Speaker 1: let up on the calf muscle and continued on the
Speaker 1: thigh muscle for a split second longer, and I would
Speaker 1: have been able to get a little further. I can
Speaker 1: never do that when I'm actually playing. Like, when I'm
Speaker 1: actually playing, I'm like, press these two buttons, now, switch
Speaker 1: through these two buttons, now switch back to those two buttons.
Speaker 1: And that's that's my tactic. It's probably why I've only
Speaker 1: gotten twelvets in. Maybe you should get onto a girp
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I've played that one too, which is his
Speaker 1: mountain climbing game, and apparently it's very very similar. It's
Speaker 1: actually that one I can play really well. I've gotten
Speaker 1: pretty far in girp Um. That one makes more sense
Speaker 1: to me. I've got better coordination with that one. But
Speaker 1: the but yeah, quop is really hard. So um, you
Speaker 1: know who's really good at controlling their legs? Who's the he?
Speaker 1: But someone who doesn't have to use them? Is this
Speaker 1: going into our second place? Yes? Because I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: if you can fly. Yeah, then why would you need
Speaker 1: to use your legs? Yes, I'm talking about our second play,
Speaker 1: Superman the New Superman Adventures yea, also known as Superman
Speaker 1: sixty four. It wasn't its official name, right, It's good
Speaker 1: that it wasn't Superman the New Batman Adventures. That would
Speaker 1: or like Superman My Little Pony that it would be weird.
Speaker 1: It might have been a better game than though. This
Speaker 1: was released in the Nintendo sixty four and probably shouldn't
Speaker 1: have been. And again this we're talking about licensed character
Speaker 1: you know we talked about with Back to the Future.
Speaker 1: There we're gonna make some money. The history of licensed characters, actually,
Speaker 1: we're going to get to that again very shortly. The
Speaker 1: history of licensed characters in video games is a pretty
Speaker 1: ugly one. There are a few games that stand out
Speaker 1: as being remarkable, like truly good games that use licensed characters.
Speaker 1: But the general rule of thumb is that if it's
Speaker 1: a licensed character game, it's it's got a good that
Speaker 1: the odds are against it, right, just based on the
Speaker 1: number of bad games that use licensed characters. Now, there
Speaker 1: are other games like you know, Arkham Asylum, which are fun.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a Batman game. And that's a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. I thought you were going to bring up
Speaker 1: Golden Eye. Golden Eye fantastic one of the best games
Speaker 1: ever made, also made for the Nintendo sixty four, one
Speaker 1: of the top first person shooter games of that era.
Speaker 1: Fantastic games. Superman not so much so. The story behind
Speaker 1: this game, the actual story in the game, that is,
Speaker 1: is that you play the part of Superman who has
Speaker 1: been tricked, as he often is, by Lex Luthor to
Speaker 1: enter into a virtual representation of Metropolis, and you have
Speaker 1: to complete these different tasks and puzzles that Lex sets
Speaker 1: up for you in order to escape and beat the
Speaker 1: tar out of him. Tank I need an exit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So the first test of your skills involves flying through
Speaker 1: a series of hoops, because Superman often that's yeah, I
Speaker 1: remember his epic battle with Doomsday where he had to
Speaker 1: fly through about fourteen hoops before. No, that doesn't make
Speaker 1: any sense, and I jumped through hoops every day after that.
Speaker 1: You might have to pick up a car and throw it,
Speaker 1: because again that's what Superman would do in Metropolis. Is
Speaker 1: that you know, you're thinking like you're driving down with
Speaker 1: your family, you're having a nice day out. You might
Speaker 1: be going to go see the Metropolis Museum of Art
Speaker 1: and the next thing you know, some jerk has just
Speaker 1: flown over, picked up your car and thrown at forty blocks.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's that will ruin your whole day. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so you would also have to do things like fight
Speaker 1: famous Superman villains. But the controls were really sluggish, the
Speaker 1: gameplay was incredibly repetitive, and it has been ranked as
Speaker 1: one of the worst video games of all time, not
Speaker 1: just by our listeners, but by other publications. I mean
Speaker 1: it has multiple I hesitate to use the word awards,
Speaker 1: but multiple notifications of it being the worst, one of
Speaker 1: the worst video games. And in fact, in one ranking
Speaker 1: I saw was ranked as the number one and our
Speaker 1: number one was number two. So now I guess we
Speaker 1: should move on to what our listeners have voted. And
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've already guessed it based upon what has
Speaker 1: already been listed, but what yourur listeners have voted as
Speaker 1: the worst video game of all time? And I should
Speaker 1: point out this received twenty nine percent of the overall
Speaker 1: votes we received. And keep in mind you could nominate
Speaker 1: any title at all, and and I'm I have a
Speaker 1: small concern. That's because we've mentioned it as a terrible
Speaker 1: game that that you all thought that we were coaching
Speaker 1: you to vote for this time. We did. We have
Speaker 1: talked about this game being a terrible game before, but
Speaker 1: when when we actually asked for votes, I made sure
Speaker 1: we didn't mention any particular title. I didn't want to
Speaker 1: change anyone's mind or put in a suggestion. I'm sure
Speaker 1: that happened anyway, based upon some of the comments and everything.
Speaker 1: But our worst video game is of all time, Chris
Speaker 1: do the honors e T. The Extraterrestrial for the nWo
Speaker 1: game published by Atari in about ten minutes. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: keep in mind that Atari went the route where they
Speaker 1: were allowing all sorts of developers to create games for there.
Speaker 1: It didn't have to be vetted through Atari. Yeah right,
Speaker 1: Nintendo had the whole certification process. Atari did not. But
Speaker 1: this there's no excuse here because Atari was the publisher
Speaker 1: behind this game in the first place. Uh yeah. So
Speaker 1: then this game, you take the role of e. T.
Speaker 1: The Extraterrestrial from the beloved Steven Spielberg documentary of the
Speaker 1: same name, and your task was to locate three pieces
Speaker 1: of an interstellar telephone so that you could assemble them
Speaker 1: and phone home, which would summon a spaceship that would
Speaker 1: rescue you. Uh, you did this just like in the movie.
Speaker 1: I mean, we all remember that scene in the movie
Speaker 1: where Et had to walk into a field of pits,
Speaker 1: raise his head up, look for the flash, and descend
Speaker 1: into the pit to retrieve a piece of the Interstellar Phone.
Speaker 1: I mean you remember that scene right as probably no,
Speaker 1: that scene did not exist. But in the game, you
Speaker 1: would walk into one of the screens, actually a couple
Speaker 1: of the screens would have several pits on the screen.
Speaker 1: You push a button which would raise ET's head and
Speaker 1: he would do a sound like this, and then one,
Speaker 1: if you were lucky, one of the pits would flash,
Speaker 1: which would indicate that one of the pieces of the
Speaker 1: phone was in that pit, and you would walk over
Speaker 1: to the pit, fall in, pick up the piece of phone,
Speaker 1: and then you would press the button which would raise
Speaker 1: ET's head wall and you would levitate up the pit. Now,
Speaker 1: most of the game is an overhead view, but when
Speaker 1: you were in a pit, it was a side view
Speaker 1: like a cut of and you would you would levitate
Speaker 1: to the top of the pit and then immediately fall
Speaker 1: in again because it was really hard that once you
Speaker 1: get to the top of the pit, the screen would
Speaker 1: change so that you were looking at the overhead view again,
Speaker 1: and you had to manipulate et all over to the
Speaker 1: edge of the pit so that you were on the
Speaker 1: ground again. Right, so you're you go from a side
Speaker 1: view to an overhead view. And I can't tell you
Speaker 1: how many times I fell down a pit over and
Speaker 1: over and over again because I thought it was clear.
Speaker 1: But and every time you fall, and every time you
Speaker 1: use your powers, you use up energy. You have a
Speaker 1: limited amount of energy, and after you use it all up,
Speaker 1: you die. Yeah, Well, you have to find dots pieces pieces.
Speaker 1: You had a little square pixel which would be represent
Speaker 1: one Reese's pieces, and you would eat that and that
Speaker 1: would give you a little more energy. They would also
Speaker 1: had doctors who would walk around and if they found you,
Speaker 1: they'd pick you up and move you to a different
Speaker 1: screen and you would lose a little time. Or worse,
Speaker 1: you would find an FBI guy and he would chase
Speaker 1: you down and if he touched you, he would take
Speaker 1: away your phone and you had to start over again.
Speaker 1: And so you would do this over and over again
Speaker 1: to you had the three pieces of phone. Then you
Speaker 1: could go to one part of the game, the one
Speaker 1: section where there's an icon on the screen that tells
Speaker 1: you you can make your phone call here, and you
Speaker 1: had to find it because it wasn't always in the
Speaker 1: same place you would make your phone call, and then
Speaker 1: you had to make it to a different screen where
Speaker 1: the spaceship would actually land because apparently you can't make
Speaker 1: a phone call at the landing site. Oh no, that'd
Speaker 1: be too easy. So then you have to make your
Speaker 1: way to the other screen and get in the little
Speaker 1: spaceship and you would then start the game over at
Speaker 1: the same difficulty level immediately. And this game was awful, terrible,
Speaker 1: terrible game, so bad that people the word got out
Speaker 1: about how disappointed this game was, that people stopped buying it.
Speaker 1: And uh Attari had produced thousands of cartridges because the
Speaker 1: movie was so successful. So Attari goes out and makes
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of copies of each The reviews come in,
Speaker 1: people hate it, copies go unsold. Eventually, stores start to
Speaker 1: send their unsold copies of ET back to Atari, and
Speaker 1: Atari grinds them up and then trucks them out into
Speaker 1: New Mexico and buries them. You know, um, you know
Speaker 1: what they did with that what's up? They used it
Speaker 1: to pave a road and then you drive this bus
Speaker 1: right across the desert and you get one point every
Speaker 1: time you run over et. Yeah, it was. And then
Speaker 1: you fall on a pit and then physics in that
Speaker 1: game are terrible. But anyway, Yeah, so that was. This
Speaker 1: was again just like pac Man. This is another one
Speaker 1: of those games that was pointed to as being one
Speaker 1: of the reasons the video game industry crashed in Now.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of the games that came out
Speaker 1: for there were these games made by independent developers that
Speaker 1: were just terrible. But it was because, you know, the
Speaker 1: market was flooded with terrible games. Attari was not helping
Speaker 1: itself out by publishing some of them itself. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: had some of those games too, and I had and
Speaker 1: you know, I've mentioned it before. I was actually surprise
Speaker 1: that nobody voted for the sword Quest series. But my
Speaker 1: guess is that Ataria was in such decline that none
Speaker 1: of our listeners actually bought that but me, since they
Speaker 1: didn't even finish the last game on the series. But
Speaker 1: we didn't. A couple of people did vote for some
Speaker 1: games that were patently offensive. We didn't mention that before,
Speaker 1: and we didn't. We weren't including those specifically because we
Speaker 1: were talking about games that were just horrible games now
Speaker 1: that were offensive, and these were games that were meant
Speaker 1: to be enjoyable. They didn't have an ulterior motive, right right,
Speaker 1: there are some of those two. But yeah, the games
Speaker 1: that had an ulterior motive where the whole purpose was
Speaker 1: to perpetuate hatred or to make a joke out of
Speaker 1: uh inhumane acts, we didn't include those because really, I mean,
Speaker 1: first of all, I refus us to give them any
Speaker 1: more publicity than they've already had. And second of all,
Speaker 1: I I was the spirit of the thing was to
Speaker 1: think of games that were meant to be enjoyable, fun
Speaker 1: games that just weren't for one reason or another. Um,
Speaker 1: let's talk about some of the really quickly, because we're
Speaker 1: we've we're already getting pretty far up there, but we
Speaker 1: have to talk about some of the other games that
Speaker 1: got on got some votes that I was surprised didn't
Speaker 1: get more votes. But again, since you had every single
Speaker 1: game open to you, you know, one of those was
Speaker 1: Aquaman Battle for Atlantis. This game is nigh unplayable. It
Speaker 1: again had one of the worst reviews ever. Explay did
Speaker 1: an amazing hysterical review of this game. Um I think
Speaker 1: they called it like Power of the Mullet or something
Speaker 1: like that in their in their review, but it was terrible.
Speaker 1: And games that, um, we're specifically designed to be marketing
Speaker 1: tools for for brands, so stuff like I actually had
Speaker 1: the kool Aid game for the Oh Yeah, oh no,
Speaker 1: and then they had the Avoid the Annoyed game for Dominoes.
Speaker 1: There were all the Burger King games that came out
Speaker 1: for the Xbox. There was a McDonald's game as well.
Speaker 1: We got we got votes for those, but they were
Speaker 1: it was usually like one, like one vote for one
Speaker 1: of those titles, so there wasn't a lot of but
Speaker 1: I think that that deserves mentioned. Games that are specifically
Speaker 1: just marketing employees tend to get hate hated by gamers,
Speaker 1: which you know, that kind of makes sense, like gamers
Speaker 1: won a game that was designed just to create enjoyment,
Speaker 1: be fun and challenging, not a game that's designed to
Speaker 1: make you want to go out and buy a pizza.
Speaker 1: Teenager Ninja Turtles also falls into that category. I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1: So and then there were some of the games that
Speaker 1: were on the list that we we were a little
Speaker 1: surprised to see votes for uh. And in some cases
Speaker 1: I think it's people were voting on games that either
Speaker 1: they're just tired of seeing or they don't They are
Speaker 1: not particularly would at that game, and they find it frustrating,
Speaker 1: and other people like it and that's why they hate it,
Speaker 1: because it's a game that they personally just don't get. Um.
Speaker 1: But some of those titles include things like Angry Birds,
Speaker 1: which I think probably that's a saturation thing, right, It's
Speaker 1: just because it's everywhere, people are going to be tired
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, Uh, we fit, we fit. I don't
Speaker 1: even think if we fit as a game. And that's
Speaker 1: why I didn't really like that. That's not really a
Speaker 1: game so much. I mean, there's a game element to it,
Speaker 1: but it's not I don't call it a game. Halo,
Speaker 1: which I think a lot of people would argue as
Speaker 1: one of the better first person shooters for a console system,
Speaker 1: keeping in mind that PC based first person shooters are
Speaker 1: much more sophisticated and require a totally different skill set
Speaker 1: than a console one. I've heard computer first person shooter
Speaker 1: players refer to console first person shooters as kind of
Speaker 1: dumbing down the whole thing, and I kind of get that,
Speaker 1: but it's it's a different, you know, kind of different mode.
Speaker 1: And I personally love the Halo series. I can see
Speaker 1: your Halo. Thank you Pitfall for the that was a
Speaker 1: classic title like that, along with River Radar, two of
Speaker 1: my favorite titles, But there were people who didn't like
Speaker 1: it because it had a repetitive gameplay activisions early days
Speaker 1: they're super Mario sixty four another game that got great reviews.
Speaker 1: But we got some votes for that Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator,
Speaker 1: which again I don't really think of as a game
Speaker 1: flight simulator, and flight simulators, by their very nature tend
Speaker 1: to be very, very complex, and sometimes overwhelmingly so, because
Speaker 1: they are trying to be so true to life, and
Speaker 1: yet you're using a different interface to control that vehicle
Speaker 1: than you would if you were in the cockpit, so
Speaker 1: there's an extra layer of complexity, you know. So that
Speaker 1: got the votes. Also, we got some votes for Call
Speaker 1: of Duty and Modern Warfare, which that was kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: Um So not everybody agrees, obviously on what is the
Speaker 1: worst game of all time? Although overwhelmingly ET ran away
Speaker 1: with this like it was it wasn't even close ET
Speaker 1: have way more votes than all the others combined. But
Speaker 1: like I said, all the votes that were we received
Speaker 1: for everything went to ET. He galloped everywhere he walked.
Speaker 1: Did you Yes, it's true, Yeah, that's true. Did you
Speaker 1: have any game? Well? You mentioned the what was the series?
Speaker 1: As that there was supposed to be a contest if
Speaker 1: you solved all four parts of it, and the fourth
Speaker 1: part never came out in the third one got limited distribution.
Speaker 1: But I couldn't see the point of doing what you
Speaker 1: were supposed to be doing, right, I mean, I just
Speaker 1: really couldn't follow the sequence. Yeah, I think I have
Speaker 1: to say that out of all the ones I've I've mentioned,
Speaker 1: e T is probably the the one I think of
Speaker 1: as the worst that I've ever personally played. I played
Speaker 1: a lot of really bad games, but I tend to
Speaker 1: forget them because I have access to more games now,
Speaker 1: so if I play a really bad one, I just
Speaker 1: switch and go to a good one so it doesn't
Speaker 1: leave as big an impression on me. Back when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, my options were somewhat limited, and so
Speaker 1: I would play a bad game over and over because
Speaker 1: it's what I had. Ah. I know here I am
Speaker 1: complaining about video games. Poor me game, Um, yeah, don't
Speaker 1: cry for me, Argentina. Did you enjoy? That was what
Speaker 1: I told you to do. So, yeah, that was our
Speaker 1: episode on the worst video games of all time. You
Speaker 1: guys pick some doozies. Maybe someday we'll do another like
Speaker 1: follow up to that, because of course, there have been
Speaker 1: lots of video games released since two thousand eleven, certainly,
Speaker 1: and some of you may have very strong opinions, like, wait,
Speaker 1: there was this other game that was even worse than
Speaker 1: all the ones you mentioned, and you didn't talk about it, So, uh,
Speaker 1: we might try it again, I said at the time.
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll do a more concentrated approach, because when you
Speaker 1: leave it wide open, you get you know, five people responding,
Speaker 1: and a hundred of them all give a vote for
Speaker 1: an obscure title. But that's one vote per obscure title,
Speaker 1: so they don't amountain an evening. So we'll figure something out.
Speaker 1: But we want to talk a little bit about some
Speaker 1: of the worst video games we've ever played. So Lauren,
Speaker 1: you know, since you weren't available to talk about the
Speaker 1: worst video games of all time, did you have any
Speaker 1: that you wanted to add to the discussion. Yeah, okay. So,
Speaker 1: so there were two that I've played personally that stand
Speaker 1: out in my mind as being particularly terrible. Um. The
Speaker 1: first is Back to the Future parts two and three
Speaker 1: for the ne S. That's the original Nintendo Entertainment System.
Speaker 1: Um and okay, both of the things that I'm going
Speaker 1: to mention our uh film or otherwise, you know other
Speaker 1: media titles that have been port which is never really
Speaker 1: a recipe for Yeah, there's only a few examples of
Speaker 1: ones like Batman Arkham Asylum, like that's an example of
Speaker 1: a great licensed game, but there's so few of those.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah and okay. So so this one was
Speaker 1: developed by Beam Software and released by l j N
Speaker 1: and it was rated unforgiving in game Facts. Um. It was.
Speaker 1: It was just basically impossible to play. The music was terrible,
Speaker 1: the graphics were terrible. There were some parts of it
Speaker 1: that were just just meaningless. Yeah. Yeah, So what's the
Speaker 1: other one. The other one is the X files game
Speaker 1: that's for the PC and or the PS one or
Speaker 1: PS X uh. Wow. Yeah, I remember seeing video reviews
Speaker 1: of that. I never played it myself. I want to
Speaker 1: hear more about your experience here, all right. So, so
Speaker 1: this one was developed by UM and I think this
Speaker 1: is how you pronounce it Hyperbowl Studios, not hyperbole. Not hyperbole, Yeah,
Speaker 1: hyper Bowl that's how it's spelled. Um. It was released
Speaker 1: by Fox Interactive makes sense of the twenty century Foxes
Speaker 1: doing the X Files in and or ninety nine, depending
Speaker 1: on which system you bought it for. UM. So this
Speaker 1: was largely an f m v A full yeah, and
Speaker 1: and it wasn't even starring Molder and Scully is the problem, Like,
Speaker 1: because the actors were busy, you know, doing their TV show,
Speaker 1: so they had to get this other dude to kind
Speaker 1: of interact very occasionally with Molder and Scully. And the
Speaker 1: puzzles were just terrible, Like it wasn't it wasn't thought
Speaker 1: out very well in terms of game design, Like I
Speaker 1: think the first puzzle in the game was you sit
Speaker 1: down at your office being you being this uh this
Speaker 1: this other agent character, and the first thing you have
Speaker 1: to figure out is what your computer passport is, as
Speaker 1: though you wouldn't know what your own computer I mean, actually,
Speaker 1: to be fair, I guess I forget my own passwords
Speaker 1: about once a week, but that's still that's I mean,
Speaker 1: how you can't be more secure, right, like you know
Speaker 1: your you know your system secure when even you are
Speaker 1: not aware of what your passwords are. Wow. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was trying to think of any others I want to add,
Speaker 1: because again, we recorded that first episode back in two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven, and you know, I've played games since then.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing is that the way I tend
Speaker 1: to play games these days, I tend to buy them
Speaker 1: well after they've had their initial run, simply because I
Speaker 1: don't have a whole lot of time on my hands.
Speaker 1: So I'm often playing a game that came out, you know,
Speaker 1: a year earlier or or somewhere around that time. Uh
Speaker 1: still while other games are coming out, and because I
Speaker 1: haven't finished that game, I don't just immediately jump on
Speaker 1: the other. So like Skyrim, I didn't get that till
Speaker 1: almost a year after it had come out, maybe maybe
Speaker 1: seven or eight months, and people have perhaps vetted the
Speaker 1: fact that it's worth your while by the time you purchase,
Speaker 1: and yeah, by that time people have played it, I've
Speaker 1: seen reviews, I've heard buzz about it, and I've decided
Speaker 1: whether or not it's for me. It's very rare when
Speaker 1: I'll go out and get a game like the day
Speaker 1: it comes out One of the examples of one where
Speaker 1: I did do that was a Grand Theft Auto of five,
Speaker 1: and I wouldn't call it the worst game of all
Speaker 1: time or anything close to that. The actual single player
Speaker 1: experience is pretty phenomenal if you like those kind of games.
Speaker 1: If you don't like those kind of games, office, obviously
Speaker 1: you're not gonnathing. But I really enjoyed the game. I
Speaker 1: enjoyed the story, I like the characters. I didn't think
Speaker 1: it was necessarily groundbreaking. It wasn't nearly as dark as
Speaker 1: Grand Theft Auto four was, but uh I I enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: But the online part, which was released two weeks after
Speaker 1: the game came out, you know, they had a lot
Speaker 1: of promises of what was going to come, and some
Speaker 1: of those promises, as of the recording of this podcast,
Speaker 1: have yet to be delivered upon, like being able to
Speaker 1: do heists in multiplayer. Heists in the single player game
Speaker 1: were fantastic. They were you had to coordinate between three
Speaker 1: different characters. You could swap between the characters during the
Speaker 1: highest each one is doing something specific, really kind of
Speaker 1: complicated stuff, like you could actually determine which of two
Speaker 1: pathways you would want to take, whether you wanted to
Speaker 1: go the subtle route or just kick the doors open
Speaker 1: and exactly. So it was really a fun, dynamic thing
Speaker 1: in the single player game. So everyone's really looking forward
Speaker 1: to it, but it hasn't come out for multiplayer again
Speaker 1: as of the recording of this podcast, and that has
Speaker 1: been a pretty big disappointment. So the single player fantastic
Speaker 1: multiplayer was one of those things where people got tired
Speaker 1: of it. In fact, I don't know how many people
Speaker 1: are still playing multiplayer. I know there are, but I
Speaker 1: don't know how many of them there are because a
Speaker 1: lot of people just got they were able to do
Speaker 1: everything you could do, and you're like, well, it's more
Speaker 1: between the promise and the follow through that kind of situation,
Speaker 1: and it was. It was because it was really an
Speaker 1: ambitious project and just didn't quite live up to it
Speaker 1: when it launched. Not to say that they won't eventually
Speaker 1: get there. I just wonder how big a population they'll
Speaker 1: have once they finally do. But yeah, I don't have
Speaker 1: sadly don't have a whole lot of stories about terrible
Speaker 1: video games I've played. I mean even some of them.
Speaker 1: That's not really sad, that's that's kind of okay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess it is okay. I mean, it's just it's
Speaker 1: sad for podcasting because they don't have any great stories.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so guys, we will do some more crowdsource
Speaker 1: kind of stuff in the future and just wanted to
Speaker 1: take this look back to kind of celebrate the whole
Speaker 1: et news. But if you have any ideas for things
Speaker 1: that we should crowdsourcely, maybe we should do an episode
Speaker 1: on what's the best video game of all time? We
Speaker 1: talked about that we never did um, so it maybe
Speaker 1: we crowdsource that, or maybe even something else, something like
Speaker 1: you know, uh, what is the best computer or worse computer.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that people have something right right, like you know,
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff like that. If you have any
Speaker 1: ideas for something and you think, hey, you should pull
Speaker 1: your your listeners about this subject, let us know. Send
Speaker 1: us an email our addresses, text stuff at Discovery dot com,
Speaker 1: or drop us a line on Facebook, Twitter or Tumbler.
Speaker 1: Our handle us text stuff hs W and we'll tap
Speaker 1: you again really soon. For more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics, How Stuff works dot com