Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I am your host, Jonathan Strickland, senior writer for how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. And as I record this, my
Speaker 1: email is starting to fill up with messages about E three.
Speaker 1: That's the big computer and video game trade show that
Speaker 1: happens in Los Angeles every year. This year, it's a
Speaker 1: little different from previous years. This year, for the first
Speaker 1: time in Ages, E three is going to open up
Speaker 1: its doors to the general public. You can actually attend
Speaker 1: E three as a member of the general public. I
Speaker 1: think you have to purchase a ticket to go. I'm media,
Speaker 1: so it's different for me. I'm covering the event. I'm
Speaker 1: not attending it the way other folks are. But this
Speaker 1: is the first time in the Ages that the general
Speaker 1: public has been allowed to go to E three. Before,
Speaker 1: it's been one of those things where you had to
Speaker 1: be an industry professional or part of the media in
Speaker 1: order to get uh in there, or you just had
Speaker 1: to know somebody and kind of leverage those personal relationships
Speaker 1: in order to get access to it. So it should
Speaker 1: be a really interesting show. But it does mean that
Speaker 1: things are starting to get real busy. In my email inbox,
Speaker 1: I do plan on going to E three. I plan
Speaker 1: on recording at least one show about what I see
Speaker 1: out there if I can, if I can manage it.
Speaker 1: Uh And I thought, in honor of all that, in
Speaker 1: honor of E three and video games, I would do
Speaker 1: a show in which I talk about some of the
Speaker 1: best selling games of all time, and some of these
Speaker 1: might get a more thorough treatment in a future episode
Speaker 1: of Tech Stuff. I might dedicate a full episode either
Speaker 1: to a specific video game franchise or more likely the
Speaker 1: company that created the franchise. In some cases, I might
Speaker 1: talk about a specific video game designer. Uh. So it's
Speaker 1: very possible that some of these that I mentioned today
Speaker 1: I will revisit in some future episode. But today, let's
Speaker 1: take a stroll down memory lane and talk about popular
Speaker 1: video and computer games. And I'm really gonna cover sort
Speaker 1: of all the major eras of video game and computer
Speaker 1: game history. Now, one thing I have to mention early
Speaker 1: on is that video games sales were very different in
Speaker 1: the early days than they are today. Today we talk
Speaker 1: about dozens of millions of units sold for a truly
Speaker 1: blockbuster game, but back in the day that was way
Speaker 1: too big a number to even dream about. Uh, it
Speaker 1: was more of a niche market in the early eighties
Speaker 1: when computer games and video games were really first starting
Speaker 1: to take off. So with today's world, where you've got
Speaker 1: pre sales and you've got these these digital delivery systems
Speaker 1: where it means you don't even have to go to
Speaker 1: a store to buy the thing anymore, the numbers obviously
Speaker 1: are very very different. Also, video games are much more
Speaker 1: mainstream now than they were in the eighties. You know,
Speaker 1: it was a bustling industry back then, but it was
Speaker 1: still very much a niche industry. Back in those good
Speaker 1: old days, when you were happy to have eight bits
Speaker 1: to rub together in order to make a game, things
Speaker 1: were a little different. And I'm not going to cover
Speaker 1: every console or every system because that would take way
Speaker 1: too much research, honestly, to have to look at the
Speaker 1: different sales figures for every single platform that was out there.
Speaker 1: But I covered all the major ones, including the major
Speaker 1: ones of the past. Um and to start with, we'll
Speaker 1: take a look at the good old at now is
Speaker 1: not the only early video game console. There was Collique Vision,
Speaker 1: there was in television. There were other Atari models like
Speaker 1: but they is what I think of when I think
Speaker 1: of classic home video game market. It was the big
Speaker 1: daddy out of all the systems that were out there,
Speaker 1: at least as far as a dedicated video game console,
Speaker 1: and it was one of the most successful ones of
Speaker 1: that time. So let's take a look at the top
Speaker 1: ten titles featured on that system. And I want to
Speaker 1: tell you right now that when I talk about the
Speaker 1: ones at the very end of the list, or really
Speaker 1: the beginning of the list, because I started ten and
Speaker 1: work my way down, you could substitute a few different
Speaker 1: names for the top numbers ten, nine, and eight and
Speaker 1: seven or so like those those top four. You could
Speaker 1: probably switch this out with some others because these sales
Speaker 1: were very similar, like around a million units each. So
Speaker 1: that is something to keep in mind when I'm talking
Speaker 1: about these top selling ones. They were so close that
Speaker 1: if you were to look at a different list of
Speaker 1: top ten best selling games for the attor, I would
Speaker 1: bet the last few entries on the list would be
Speaker 1: a little different than the ones I have. But I'm
Speaker 1: the one running this show, so I get to pick
Speaker 1: which ones end up on the list. Since they were
Speaker 1: all so close that it really is kind of a
Speaker 1: judgment call in the first place, and I wanted ten
Speaker 1: because that's a nice round number. So number ten, depending
Speaker 1: upon the version that you're looking at, was Kaboom. Kaboom
Speaker 1: was a game from Activision, so that was a third
Speaker 1: party developer for games on the Autar and in Kaboom,
Speaker 1: you used a paddle style controller to move a bucket
Speaker 1: or sometimes a series of buckets back and forth across
Speaker 1: the base of the screen. At the top of the
Speaker 1: screen was a naughty little man, the mad Bomber, dropping
Speaker 1: a series of bombs down and your job was to
Speaker 1: catch the bombs before they could hit the ground. So
Speaker 1: you would slide your bucket back and forth using this
Speaker 1: paddle controller to catch the bombs. Pretty simple gameplay, Very
Speaker 1: compelling though, because it was fast paced and it got
Speaker 1: much more challenging the longer you played. Most of these games,
Speaker 1: that's the way they worked. The difficulty would increase the
Speaker 1: longer you played the game. This one came out and
Speaker 1: sold more than a million copies. Number nine was one
Speaker 1: of the games that I would argue ranks among the
Speaker 1: best that ever came out for the at In fact,
Speaker 1: I would probably put this as a tie for number
Speaker 1: one of my favorites, and it was called River Raid.
Speaker 1: River Raid was a top down shooter in which you
Speaker 1: would control a jet and you flew back and forth.
Speaker 1: It would scroll vertically, so you're flying over a river,
Speaker 1: uh and the screen would change scrolling from the top
Speaker 1: down to the bottom. Meanwhile, you're flying back and forth
Speaker 1: shooting down boats and also helicopters, and and you would
Speaker 1: end up destroying stuff in order to try and find
Speaker 1: fuel because as you flew, you would actually consume the
Speaker 1: fuel that you were using, meaning that if you didn't
Speaker 1: pick up more fuel, your jet would eventually crash. Even
Speaker 1: if you were able to avoid all the enemy fire
Speaker 1: coming at you, you would still need to pick up
Speaker 1: more fuel. So this was another game from Activision. Activision
Speaker 1: produced lots of games for the Atari. A lot of
Speaker 1: the big successful ones came out of Activision, and I
Speaker 1: thought that River Raid was one of the more exciting
Speaker 1: and interesting games on there. It was the one of
Speaker 1: the ones that got closest to replicating the sort of
Speaker 1: experience you might have at an actual arcade. The graphics
Speaker 1: weren't arcade level graphics, but the action was similar to
Speaker 1: what you would find in an arcade machine. Number eight
Speaker 1: was a game called Adventure, one of the best known
Speaker 1: games of the era. I have played Adventure, but I
Speaker 1: did not own it. I did have an Atari twenty
Speaker 1: when I was a kid. Sometimes people say the Adventure
Speaker 1: was one of the earliest, if not the very first
Speaker 1: action adventure game. I think that might be going a
Speaker 1: bit far, but I see where they're coming from. It
Speaker 1: came straight from Atari, so it was the first party game.
Speaker 1: It didn't come from a third party developer, and it
Speaker 1: required you to navigate a maze searching for a chalice
Speaker 1: while simultaneously trying to avoid three naughty little dragons and
Speaker 1: a little action adventure game. You go through these different
Speaker 1: maze like areas finding components that would allow you to
Speaker 1: get access to the chalice, and if you could then
Speaker 1: you could win the game, essentially win that level more
Speaker 1: or less. Also, this game has the honor of being
Speaker 1: the first video game that anyone was able to point
Speaker 1: to and say, there's an Easter Egg in that video game,
Speaker 1: and the easter Egg was the name of the developer.
Speaker 1: So back in those days, Atari did not allowed developers
Speaker 1: to include their names on either the packaging or the
Speaker 1: game itself. Atari didn't want developers to have any connection.
Speaker 1: They didn't want this to become a personality thing. They
Speaker 1: wanted to be known as just a company that produced
Speaker 1: great games, and they didn't really see the value of
Speaker 1: allowing developers their chance to claim any of the credit,
Speaker 1: and this caused a lot of consternation in the video
Speaker 1: game developer world. So in this case, the developer decided
Speaker 1: that it might be a little cheeky and fun to
Speaker 1: hide his name inside the game itself, and if you
Speaker 1: knew the right place to go in the game, you
Speaker 1: could go down an invisible go through an invisible door,
Speaker 1: down a corridor into a room that had the developers
Speaker 1: name in it. And uh. Eventually, a Tori stance on
Speaker 1: not allowing developers to include their names attached to games
Speaker 1: would lead to a lot of people leaving Atari to
Speaker 1: form their own company. That's how Activision got its start, actually,
Speaker 1: was that there are people who are working for Atari
Speaker 1: who got tired of the fact that they could not
Speaker 1: claim any credit to the games they developed, and so
Speaker 1: they left to form their own company where they could
Speaker 1: make their own policies. So it's actually a policy that
Speaker 1: would ultimately hurt Atari in the long run. The seventh
Speaker 1: best selling game for the hundred is a title that
Speaker 1: tech Stuff once declared the worst video game of all time,
Speaker 1: though to be fair, that was actually the result of
Speaker 1: a poll that we put out among tech stuff listeners.
Speaker 1: We asked our listeners to nominate what they thought was
Speaker 1: the worst video game of all time, and the number
Speaker 1: one response, not the only response, but the one that
Speaker 1: got the most votes was ET the Extra Terrestrial for
Speaker 1: the Atari dred and that is the number seven best
Speaker 1: selling game on the at now. I don't really think
Speaker 1: it deserves the title of worst video game of all time.
Speaker 1: I think there are way worse games there than ET.
Speaker 1: But man, it was not a great game. It had
Speaker 1: a lot of problems. It was also really expensive for
Speaker 1: Atari to produce because they had to pay for the
Speaker 1: license to get ET so they could make a game
Speaker 1: about it. Uh And it sold a lot of copies.
Speaker 1: It was on number seven on this list, but Atari
Speaker 1: produced way more copies and they were actually able to sell,
Speaker 1: and a lot of those would end up buried in
Speaker 1: a landfill. And you can learn more about that story.
Speaker 1: There's a documentary called Atari Game Over. You can actually
Speaker 1: watch that, and it has the whole journey of of
Speaker 1: identifying the landfill where supposedly these games were dumped, and
Speaker 1: then they do a dig to see if they can
Speaker 1: actually find the games. And I don't want to spoil anything,
Speaker 1: but it's a good documentary, so you should check that
Speaker 1: out if you're interested in this story. And a lot
Speaker 1: of people point to ET as being an expensive mistake
Speaker 1: that ultimately contributed to Atari's collapse. Uh, and that seems
Speaker 1: pretty fair. Atari into up over committing on these big,
Speaker 1: big projects and then not selling enough units, and they
Speaker 1: took a math on it. They they suffered losses as
Speaker 1: a result that ultimately led to a massive crash in
Speaker 1: the home video game market. This is one of those
Speaker 1: games I had as a kid. I had E. T. D. Extraterrestrial,
Speaker 1: so I experienced this pain firsthand. I played it and
Speaker 1: it was one of those things where in my mind
Speaker 1: I had never really completed the game, but then when
Speaker 1: I watched the play through, I realized I had completed
Speaker 1: the game on numerous occasions. I just kind of blocked
Speaker 1: it out of my mind. It helps to remember that
Speaker 1: the game developer, Howard Scott Warshaw, it was working under
Speaker 1: a crazy deadline. He was given something like five weeks
Speaker 1: to develop this game from start to finish. So he
Speaker 1: really had an impossible task ahead of him when it
Speaker 1: came down to making this game, and that should give
Speaker 1: you at least some sympathy for him, and it explains
Speaker 1: why the game turned out the way it did. He
Speaker 1: didn't have enough time to develop, you know, a more
Speaker 1: well rounded, interesting game, and everything in the game works.
Speaker 1: It's just not particularly fun to play. So there are
Speaker 1: other games that don't even have components that completely work,
Speaker 1: So that that alone tells me this is not the
Speaker 1: worst game ever developed. Uh. Then we've got a game
Speaker 1: called Atlantis, which was the first game on this list.
Speaker 1: I actually don't remember ever playing or seeing played. So
Speaker 1: in this game, you would protect the city of Atlantis
Speaker 1: from enemy aircraft flying overhead, and you had a set
Speaker 1: of three cannons that you could use. You can control
Speaker 1: with the joystick, so you could switch between the cannons
Speaker 1: using the joystick, and then you would fire with the
Speaker 1: button and tried to shoot down the aircraft that flew overhead.
Speaker 1: As the aircraft would pass overhead, they would get a
Speaker 1: little lower on their subsequent passes, and at certain points,
Speaker 1: once they reached an altitude, they would start firing down
Speaker 1: and destroying your cannons, so it became a race to
Speaker 1: destroy the aircraft before your can ends were destroyed, similar
Speaker 1: to another game that's on this list called Missile Command.
Speaker 1: UH also kind of tied with Atlantis around this same area,
Speaker 1: so technically I guess there are eleven items on this list.
Speaker 1: Was a game called Demon Attack, which I had heard about,
Speaker 1: but I also never played this one. I didn't know
Speaker 1: Demon Attack. This one came from a company called The
Speaker 1: Magic and was launched in two Now. Atari had actually
Speaker 1: sued a Magic over this game, saying that they had
Speaker 1: copied another game called Phoenix. And if you look at
Speaker 1: Phoenix and you look at Demon Attack, they do, in
Speaker 1: fact look extremely similar to one another, although Phoenix is
Speaker 1: a faster paced game than Demon Attack is Demon Attack
Speaker 1: you play a little cannon that can move back and
Speaker 1: forth across the bomb of the screen, kind of similar
Speaker 1: to Space Invaders, and you fire up at these three
Speaker 1: flying objects that are at different levels of altitude. So
Speaker 1: there's one in the low position, one a middle position,
Speaker 1: and one in the high position and UH, and your
Speaker 1: job is to destroy wave after wave of these three things.
Speaker 1: And each time you complete one wave, you get a
Speaker 1: new set of three, and they might have slightly different abilities,
Speaker 1: like the kind of projectiles they fire change a little bit,
Speaker 1: and eventually get to a point where when you destroy one,
Speaker 1: they'll it'll split into two smaller entities that can swoop
Speaker 1: down at you and also shoot at you. Interesting note,
Speaker 1: if you do ever play this game and you want
Speaker 1: to look like a total pro playing it, only the
Speaker 1: bottom most creature can actually shoot at you. So if
Speaker 1: you concentrate on destroying the bottom most creature in each
Speaker 1: wave and and they do respawn, but they only respond
Speaker 1: a certain number of times per wave. If you destroy
Speaker 1: that lowest level one, you can take all the time
Speaker 1: in the world to destroy the next two because they
Speaker 1: will never shoot you ever. Uh. The only difference is
Speaker 1: that if you get to the levels where you shoot
Speaker 1: one and it splits into creatures, those that pair of
Speaker 1: creatures will move down levels until they're at that lowest level,
Speaker 1: and at that point they can shoot at you and
Speaker 1: swoop at you, but in their big form, they'll just
Speaker 1: like you can set your controller down and go order
Speaker 1: a pizza. You're fine. They'll never shoot you. Spoiler, I
Speaker 1: guess if you're talking about a game that came out
Speaker 1: in the early eighties that is on an obsolete system,
Speaker 1: but interesting that it was one of those where Atari
Speaker 1: would actually take another company to court. By the way,
Speaker 1: the case was settled out of court, but yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was. It caused some consternation. Next on the list,
Speaker 1: number five, since that was kind of a tie. Is
Speaker 1: a real classic in arcade game history Space Invaders. So
Speaker 1: similar to what I was just saying before. Space Invaders.
Speaker 1: Of course, very very successful arcade game uh A debuted Japan.
Speaker 1: The arcade version debut in Japan in nine. Now a
Speaker 1: company called Tito created Space Invaders, and then Bally's Midway
Speaker 1: division would end up licensing it and distributing it here
Speaker 1: in the United States and in Europe. The Attori version
Speaker 1: of Space Invaders came out in nineteen eighties, so two
Speaker 1: years after the game had come out in arcades, and
Speaker 1: they sold around two million copies, which was a huge
Speaker 1: number for home video games at this stage. Two million
Speaker 1: is enormous. Space Invaders was one of those titles that
Speaker 1: helped sell consoles because people remembered how much fun they
Speaker 1: had playing it in the arcade and they wanted to
Speaker 1: have that experience at home. So it's a known quantity
Speaker 1: and you'll often see games come out where people will
Speaker 1: say that's that's the the killer app or that's the
Speaker 1: one that will sell consoles because it creates a an
Speaker 1: experience that people want to have or that they associate
Speaker 1: with being fun. So in this case, Space Invaders was
Speaker 1: a really popular game in the arcades and it really
Speaker 1: helps sell some Atari consoles um and it was more
Speaker 1: or less the same game on the Atari twenty hundred.
Speaker 1: It wasn't as colorful or as a uh you know,
Speaker 1: the graphics weren't as good, which is weird to say
Speaker 1: when you look at the graphics of Space Invaders, but
Speaker 1: it's true. But it had the basic game elements fairly
Speaker 1: well represented in the twenty version. Number four is was
Speaker 1: Missile Command. This is the game I was talking about
Speaker 1: earlier when I was talking about Atlantis. Missile Command came
Speaker 1: out in nineteen eighty, with the Atari twentyre port debuting
Speaker 1: the following year, so was when the arcade version came out,
Speaker 1: and the arcade version had a roller ball control, but
Speaker 1: the Atari version used the basic joystick. It still was
Speaker 1: a big hit with the with fans. They bought two
Speaker 1: and a half million units of this thing. So it's
Speaker 1: very successful gameplay for Missile Command if you've never played.
Speaker 1: It involves moving a little set of crosshairs over the
Speaker 1: horizon as missiles are coming in towards a city, and
Speaker 1: you can fire anti missile projectiles and what happens is
Speaker 1: they'll they'll fly out, and then at the point where
Speaker 1: you designated with your crosshairs, the anti missile projectile will
Speaker 1: explode in a little circle. Any missiles that make connection
Speaker 1: with that circle will disappear. They're nullified. So the game
Speaker 1: becomes one of fast reflexes and also just strategy figuring
Speaker 1: out where you can place these anti missile projectiles to
Speaker 1: take out as many different enemy missiles as possible, because
Speaker 1: you have a limited number of shots per level, so
Speaker 1: you want to make sure that you get two or
Speaker 1: three per level instead of trying to dedicate one for
Speaker 1: one thing. You would run out of time before you
Speaker 1: it take down all the missiles and you would start
Speaker 1: losing parts of your city. But anyways, again another one
Speaker 1: of those games that had very simple gameplay, but it
Speaker 1: was compelling. It It encouraged people to keep playing and
Speaker 1: keep trying to get better and beat that high score.
Speaker 1: So while these games were simplistic, especially compared to today's games.
Speaker 1: What they had was some sort of hook that latched
Speaker 1: on to that reward center in our brains, that lizard
Speaker 1: part of our brains that wants to achieve something, and
Speaker 1: it just gently presses that button saying good job. And
Speaker 1: if it presses that button just frequently enough, not so
Speaker 1: frequently that you get tired of it, but not so
Speaker 1: infrequently that you get frustrated by it, it becomes a
Speaker 1: compelling game. Number three was another classic port Asteroids. Asteroids
Speaker 1: was one of the very first arcade games, especially one
Speaker 1: of the first successful arcade games, and the port came
Speaker 1: out in ninety one and it would go on to
Speaker 1: sell just shy of four million copies, again a huge
Speaker 1: number in those days. This game involves controlling a spaceship
Speaker 1: that has to blast asteroids before they collide with the spaceship.
Speaker 1: If you collide with an asteroid, your spaceship is destroyed.
Speaker 1: But when you shoot an asteroid, it splits into smaller
Speaker 1: asteroids until they get to such a level that they
Speaker 1: just are disintegrated. So it then becomes a game of
Speaker 1: shooting asteroids to break them apart, but not shooting too
Speaker 1: many big asteroids, because otherwise you just have a huge
Speaker 1: field of smaller ones you have to maneuver around. The
Speaker 1: Arcade game was really challenging because all it had were
Speaker 1: buttons to control your spaceship. You can control the direction
Speaker 1: you were facing, your thrust, and your rate of fire
Speaker 1: as was a little hyperspace button, whereas the Arcade the
Speaker 1: the Atari version used it all as a controller, so
Speaker 1: you would control your spaceships orientation and thrust with the
Speaker 1: joystick part and then the fire with a button. So
Speaker 1: it made a little sim blur, but I still thought
Speaker 1: it was really fun back in those days. Um number
Speaker 1: two is the only game on this list that I
Speaker 1: think is as good as River Raid, which was Pitfall.
Speaker 1: Number two. Best selling hunter game was Pitfall. It was
Speaker 1: an early platform er, so platform ring games were not
Speaker 1: a thing, uh from the get go. Like a lot
Speaker 1: of the early games were war games or strategy games
Speaker 1: or puzzle games. This was a platform er and you
Speaker 1: control a little dude named Harry. And you have Harry
Speaker 1: running through the jungle, swinging over ponds, jumping on alligators,
Speaker 1: dodging scorpions, and picking up random treasures to generate the points.
Speaker 1: And you had a timer so you had to try
Speaker 1: and get as many treasures within that timer as possible,
Speaker 1: or you know, obviously if you ran into enemies you
Speaker 1: could lose lives, so your your game was over either
Speaker 1: when the timer ran out or more likely when you
Speaker 1: died three times. Pitfall also was well known for the
Speaker 1: fact that when you had Harry jump on a rope
Speaker 1: a vine and swing, he made a little Tarzan like noise,
Speaker 1: although it was the eight bit version of a Tarzan
Speaker 1: like noise, so not exactly perfect audio, but it was
Speaker 1: really charming and it was another reason why people really
Speaker 1: liked it, And it was a glorious eight bit sound
Speaker 1: that I still love to this day. And that game
Speaker 1: sold four million copies, so very popular. The number one
Speaker 1: a game I think goes neck and neck with the
Speaker 1: worst game for the ATY. I think this one in
Speaker 1: some ways is worse than et It is pac Man.
Speaker 1: So it was a port of an arcade game, a
Speaker 1: very popular arcade game, one of the iconic arcade games
Speaker 1: in the early eighties, late seventies early eighties pac Man.
Speaker 1: The version was ugly compared to the arcade version. Things
Speaker 1: that were nice and smooth and round were blocky instead
Speaker 1: of pellets, you were eating dashes. The ghosts were flickering
Speaker 1: in the Utari version because the sprites wouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to stay solid. It was a mess. The sound effects
Speaker 1: were terrible and and clangy, and it just wasn't It
Speaker 1: didn't represent what pac Man was like in arcades, so
Speaker 1: it was a bad port in many ways. However, it
Speaker 1: sold seven million copies. Unfortunately, Atari had produced twelve million copies,
Speaker 1: so five million copies went unsold. That's a huge investment
Speaker 1: that they did not see a return on. So this
Speaker 1: is another example of Atari making a big, bold move
Speaker 1: that would end up costing the money, and ultimately it's
Speaker 1: what helped push the entire industry toward a crash, although
Speaker 1: there were a lot of other factors there too. Um So,
Speaker 1: it sold more copies than any other Atari game, but
Speaker 1: not as many as what Atari was hoping for, and it,
Speaker 1: along with a lot of third party games that had
Speaker 1: very little quality control, help sink the home video game
Speaker 1: industry in um let's talk about that just for a second. Now.
Speaker 1: I've done episodes about the video game crash of three,
Speaker 1: so I'm not going to go into a whole lot
Speaker 1: of detail here, but basically, What you had was a
Speaker 1: huge amount of competition with lots of different consoles trying
Speaker 1: to make their their spot in consumer electronics. So you
Speaker 1: had hundred the Collique of Vision, the Intellivision, You had
Speaker 1: countless other video game consoles. You had hundreds of titles
Speaker 1: from third party developers, some of which were really good games.
Speaker 1: Some of the best games of that time came from
Speaker 1: third party developers. But some of them were terrible. They
Speaker 1: were buggy, they were not fun, some of them barely worked,
Speaker 1: and they were being sold side by side with first
Speaker 1: party game titles, and so you were diluting the product
Speaker 1: over time. This is what eventually got consumers fed up
Speaker 1: with home video game since what led to that huge crash. Now,
Speaker 1: in our next segment, we're going to talk about the
Speaker 1: company that helped resurrect the home video game industry after
Speaker 1: this massive crash. But before we get to that very
Speaker 1: special company, let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: All Right, it is time to talk Nintendo. The Nintendo
Speaker 1: Entertainment System gets a lot of credit for resurrecting the
Speaker 1: home video game market after that crash, and it should
Speaker 1: get that credit. The previous incarnation of the video game
Speaker 1: industry had collapsed in on itself due to its own
Speaker 1: massive bulk, and consumers were completely sick of it. They
Speaker 1: felt like they had been burned by home video games,
Speaker 1: and the rise of the personal computer meant that people
Speaker 1: were starting to take more attention um and pay more
Speaker 1: attention toward personal computers than to video game consoles. So
Speaker 1: it was a big deal to get into that game
Speaker 1: after the entire industry had collapsed. But luckily, not really luckily,
Speaker 1: due to hard work, Nintendo had a compelling product that
Speaker 1: was running compelling games, and it was enough to get
Speaker 1: people interested in it even after they had lost all
Speaker 1: faith in the industry because of the issues I had
Speaker 1: just talked about. That is a huge thing. Uh, And
Speaker 1: if you've listened to my podcasts on Nintendo, you know
Speaker 1: the history of the company. It started off as a
Speaker 1: playing card money so to get to a point where
Speaker 1: it became a video game company, that's a huge journey there,
Speaker 1: and I recommend you listen to those if you're not
Speaker 1: familiar with them. They were a lot of fun to record.
Speaker 1: So Nintendo saw where some of these problems were with
Speaker 1: the home video game industry, and one of the things
Speaker 1: they said was we want to make sure the quality
Speaker 1: of the games is at our level of standards, so
Speaker 1: we're gonna have a certification program. People will have to
Speaker 1: submit their games to us and we can certify them,
Speaker 1: Otherwise we will not allow them to run on our consoles. Eventually,
Speaker 1: people would develop workarounds to that. They would develop adapters
Speaker 1: that would allow you to play games that were not
Speaker 1: Nintendo certified on Nintendo hardware. But initially, what this meant
Speaker 1: was it gave Nintendo a very clear level of control
Speaker 1: for their games, and you could argue because of that,
Speaker 1: the quality of the games was much a step better
Speaker 1: than what you had seen in the previous generation of
Speaker 1: video game consoles. Then s game Nintendo Entertainment System game
Speaker 1: that sold the most copies was a launch title. Uh,
Speaker 1: not a big surprise. Most of the titles that you
Speaker 1: will see that are the top selling title for a
Speaker 1: video game console tend to also be the ones that
Speaker 1: were bundled with the console when it was initially sold.
Speaker 1: Of course, not all consoles came with a bundled game,
Speaker 1: and in those cases it could be a very different result.
Speaker 1: But in this case, we're talking about Super Mario Brothers,
Speaker 1: one of the most popular platform or games of all time,
Speaker 1: one of the most popular games of all time period.
Speaker 1: It sold more than forty million copies. Forty million. I
Speaker 1: was just talking about seven million being a big number.
Speaker 1: So more than five times as many as Atari's top
Speaker 1: selling game forty million. Now that's largely because the nes
Speaker 1: was such a huge success and because the game was
Speaker 1: bundled with it, but still that's just such a huge,
Speaker 1: huge number. If you're not familiar with Super Mario Brothers,
Speaker 1: welcome to the modern world. I hope that you are
Speaker 1: comfortable out from beneath the rock you were under. Just kidding,
Speaker 1: I know not everyone's interested in video games. So maybe
Speaker 1: you don't know about Super Mario Brothers, or you've heard
Speaker 1: the name but you don't know what it's about. Well,
Speaker 1: Super Mario Brothers. Here's how the game works. It's a
Speaker 1: got either one player mode or two player mode. In
Speaker 1: one player mode, you're playing as Mario. In two player,
Speaker 1: one person plays as Mario, the other person plays as Luigi.
Speaker 1: You are a jumpy little plumber and Mario had previously
Speaker 1: appeared in other games like Donkey Kong, although at the
Speaker 1: time he was just called jump Man and Mario Brothers.
Speaker 1: There was a game just called Mario Brothers, which involved
Speaker 1: running around in a little level that was to be
Speaker 1: like a sewer and you would knock turtles on their
Speaker 1: backs and kick them over because those turtles were bad anyway.
Speaker 1: They You also had a Donkey Kong Jr. Where Mario
Speaker 1: was technically the bad guy in that game, but in
Speaker 1: Super Mario Brothers, your job was to navigate a world
Speaker 1: filled with various little monsters and things that could hurt
Speaker 1: you so that you could get to the correct castle
Speaker 1: after visiting a series of incorrect castles and rescue Princess
Speaker 1: Peach from the clutches of the Evil Bowser. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of jumping and running involved. That's what a platform
Speaker 1: er is called called a platform er because you typically
Speaker 1: are jumping from one platform to another platform, and you're
Speaker 1: trying to get the timing rights that you avoid gaps,
Speaker 1: you avoid enemies, you avoid enemy fire, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Other games that also sold well for the Nintendo Entertainment
Speaker 1: System included Duck Hunt. Now, Duck Hunt was a light
Speaker 1: gun game, and it became packaged with the Light Gun system.
Speaker 1: So again not a big surprise that it's sold really well,
Speaker 1: but uh, it was. It was a big seller. Like
Speaker 1: there were many millions of copies of it sold. The
Speaker 1: first two sequels to Super Mario Brothers also sold very well,
Speaker 1: so the Super Mario Brothers two and three did extremely well.
Speaker 1: Just shy of the top five slot for the best
Speaker 1: selling video games of the Nintendo Entertainment System was the
Speaker 1: Legend of Zelda. That was the sixth best selling game
Speaker 1: for the NES. The Legend of Zelda was the first
Speaker 1: game and another beloved Nintendo franchise. And you're gonna start
Speaker 1: seeing things as I go through these Nintendo games where
Speaker 1: a lot of the names start popping up over and
Speaker 1: over again. Nintendo, more than any other company, I would argue,
Speaker 1: depends heavily upon it's franchises that it created, more so
Speaker 1: the third party games that were developed for Nintendo. The
Speaker 1: first party franchises are what get Nintendo fans excited and
Speaker 1: it's what sells Nintendo consoles. So with Nintendo Super Mario Brothers,
Speaker 1: anything Mario Brothers related, that's obviously one of the top performers.
Speaker 1: Also Zelda another top performer, and Legend of Zelda was
Speaker 1: the first of many mini games in that franchise. That
Speaker 1: particular version Legend of Zelda sold six and a half
Speaker 1: million copies. So this is number six on our list, right,
Speaker 1: and it hits six and a half million copies. Remember
Speaker 1: number one of Atari hits seven million, So we're already
Speaker 1: talking about a totally different industry at this point. Metroid,
Speaker 1: which is another franchise people love with Nintendo, got edged
Speaker 1: out of the top ten, just barely. It was number
Speaker 1: eleven on the best Selling Games of Nintendo and it
Speaker 1: sold two point seven million copies. So yeah, popular system.
Speaker 1: The success user to the Nintendo Entertainment System was, of course,
Speaker 1: the Super Nintendo Entertainment System or the Super Famicom. The
Speaker 1: Famicon was the name of the NES in Japan, and
Speaker 1: then the Super Famicon was the next one, so we
Speaker 1: called it the Super Nintendo Entertainment System or the s
Speaker 1: NES or SNEES, depending upon the circles you run in.
Speaker 1: The top selling game for that one, again not a
Speaker 1: big surprise. It was a bundled to launch title was
Speaker 1: Super Mario World, sometimes referred to as Super Mario Brothers four. Now,
Speaker 1: you could argue that Nintendo's reliance on franchises like the
Speaker 1: Mario Brothers franchise was cemented by the fact that these
Speaker 1: were the best selling games in consoles and their consoles history,
Speaker 1: but in many cases these were games that were also
Speaker 1: bundled with the actual system, So it's it's it's like
Speaker 1: you can't really do apples and apples because the game
Speaker 1: comes of the console, than just buying a console means
Speaker 1: you I have become a customer of that game. Even
Speaker 1: if you were to never put the game in the
Speaker 1: system and you weren't really interested in it, you still
Speaker 1: technically bought one. So it's a little complicated. But Super
Speaker 1: Mario World sold more than twenty million copies, already half
Speaker 1: of what the NES sold. So even though the NES
Speaker 1: ushered in a new era of video games of home
Speaker 1: video games, it didn't mean that we were immediately just
Speaker 1: going to keep on building with each new system selling
Speaker 1: even more copies than the one before it. It got
Speaker 1: a little more complicated than that. Other top performers in
Speaker 1: the Super Nintendo Entertainment System World included Donkey Kong Country,
Speaker 1: in which you took control of the former villainous Donkey
Speaker 1: Kong that was the bad guy in the game Donkey Kong,
Speaker 1: where you played Mario slash jump Man. Uh. He was
Speaker 1: also the captor our captive rather in Donkey Kong Junior,
Speaker 1: you played as Donkey Kong Junior and you were trying
Speaker 1: to rescue your dad, but Donkey Kong Country meant that
Speaker 1: you were actually controlling Donkey Kong himself. Uh. Super Mario
Speaker 1: Kart was also a top seller and would become another
Speaker 1: franchise within Nintendo. Super Mario Kart, of course, is a
Speaker 1: kart racing games, So you're playing like go karts, uh,
Speaker 1: and you're playing as various iconic Nintendo characters, typically from
Speaker 1: the Super Mario world, and you can pick up a
Speaker 1: little power ups and use them to completely infuriate all
Speaker 1: of your fellow players. And if you hit me with
Speaker 1: another BLUESLL so help me, you get no more Cheetos
Speaker 1: you know I'm talking to Well. These were or that
Speaker 1: that joined the Donkey Kong franchise, the Mario franchise, and
Speaker 1: the Metroid and Zelda franchises to come yet another longstanding
Speaker 1: franchise with Nintendo. You could argue it's a spinoff because
Speaker 1: it's the Super Mario characters, but the Mario Kart franchise
Speaker 1: is really kind of its own things, sort of like
Speaker 1: the way Super Smash Brothers is its own thing. But again,
Speaker 1: It really showed how Nintendo would rely heavily on these
Speaker 1: franchises in order to make big sales because that's what
Speaker 1: their fans loved. You could tell because those were the
Speaker 1: games that were selling the best, So we might as
Speaker 1: well stick with Nintendo. Other console systems were coming out
Speaker 1: the same time as the S and E s and
Speaker 1: shortly thereafter, but we might as well focus on one
Speaker 1: company at a time. So next would be the Nintendo
Speaker 1: sixty four or in sixty four, which was the system
Speaker 1: I really loved it was the system was the last
Speaker 1: of the home console systems Nintendo would sell that was
Speaker 1: a cartridge based system. The other ones would become disc based.
Speaker 1: This was a cartridge based system. I never owned a
Speaker 1: Nintendo or Super Nintendo, but I did have a Nintendo
Speaker 1: sixty four, and I thought it was pretty keen. The
Speaker 1: top selling game was Super Mario sixty four, which did
Speaker 1: not necessarily come within Nintendo sixty four, So actually this
Speaker 1: one is legitimately a top seller because I never had
Speaker 1: that game. I always wanted it. It was also one
Speaker 1: that even years and years and years after it came out,
Speaker 1: you could not find it for a real discounted price
Speaker 1: because there were still a demand for it. That's how
Speaker 1: how highly regarded this game was. Super Mario sixty four
Speaker 1: always was pretty expensive, even if you were trying to
Speaker 1: buy a used copy. This was eleven point nine million
Speaker 1: units sold. So again you look at the story, the
Speaker 1: nes top selling games sold forty million copies, the S
Speaker 1: and E s twenty million, and then the n sixty
Speaker 1: four eleven point nine million. So you see there's this
Speaker 1: trend of decreasing diminishing returns, if you will, which would
Speaker 1: end up being a little troubling and more so in
Speaker 1: future generations of Nintendo consoles. But not too far behind
Speaker 1: Super Mario sixty four was Mario Kart sixty four, which
Speaker 1: firmly established the Mario Kart franchise as a thing in
Speaker 1: its own right. And third place was unusually a licensed game,
Speaker 1: not a Nintendo first party game, but a licensed game.
Speaker 1: It was Golden I Double O seven And anyone who
Speaker 1: had an in sixty four and played Golden Eye, I
Speaker 1: guarantee you right now they have a big smile on
Speaker 1: their face. Why because this game was awesome. You played
Speaker 1: as James Bond, and the game loosely followed plot lines
Speaker 1: that were inspired by the film Golden I. It was
Speaker 1: cool because you got to run around different levels as
Speaker 1: James Bond and try and defeat various enemies and make
Speaker 1: sure you didn't get shot in the process. But even
Speaker 1: better than that, you could argue, was the multiplayer. You
Speaker 1: could a first person shooter multiplayer against friends in a
Speaker 1: split screen environment, and it was one of the earliest
Speaker 1: console based multiplayer first person shooters that I can think of,
Speaker 1: and it did it really well. The controls were fun,
Speaker 1: the weapons were fun, the maps were fun, and it
Speaker 1: was hilarious to listen to a group of people play
Speaker 1: this game because they would come up with some very
Speaker 1: creative curse words to yell at each other as they
Speaker 1: would get shot while trying to shoot someone else. One
Speaker 1: of my favorite games to play and favorite games to
Speaker 1: watch people play. Fourth place for the Nintendo sixty four
Speaker 1: would go to the Legend of Zelda the ok Arena Time,
Speaker 1: which sold seven point six million copies, so fourth place
Speaker 1: seven point six million. First place was eleven point nine.
Speaker 1: You're seeing less of a drop off from one to
Speaker 1: two to three to four, which is good. Out of
Speaker 1: all the versions of Zelda I've played, and I've only
Speaker 1: played a few of them, There are a lot more
Speaker 1: out there that I haven't touched, but all of all
Speaker 1: the ones I have played, Oak are Enough Time is
Speaker 1: my favorite. Then we come to the Nintendo GameCube. The
Speaker 1: best selling game for the game Cube was Super Smash
Speaker 1: Brothers Melee. This was a game that our franchise that
Speaker 1: had previously been established with just Super Smash Brothers. This
Speaker 1: one involves playing various iconic Nintendo characters, and you're playing
Speaker 1: on on levels against other players, typically other human players,
Speaker 1: although you can play against computer controlled ones too, and
Speaker 1: the object is to knock your opponents off of the
Speaker 1: platforms that you can stand on, so you want to
Speaker 1: be the last character standing in a free for all Melee. Ah,
Speaker 1: this one did really well. The other ones had done well,
Speaker 1: but not as good as this that they sold more
Speaker 1: than seven million units. However, that means that you also
Speaker 1: see another drop from eleven point nine million as the
Speaker 1: top one of the inn sixty four to seven million
Speaker 1: for the game Cube. I shall also point out that
Speaker 1: I'm concentrating on platform exclusives here for the most part.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind some games would appear on multiple platforms,
Speaker 1: and that means that they might do well overall. When
Speaker 1: you add up all the different platforms they were sold on,
Speaker 1: but because you could play them on various different consoles,
Speaker 1: it was they rarely reached the top five for most
Speaker 1: game platforms because you've diluted it by allowing people to
Speaker 1: buy it on whichever console they most prefer. It's the
Speaker 1: console exclusives that tend to be in the top five
Speaker 1: simply because that's the only place you can buy them,
Speaker 1: it's the only place you can play them. Rather, the
Speaker 1: rest of the top five for the game Cube includes
Speaker 1: the usual suspects. Another kart racing games again, other Mario
Speaker 1: Kart game in there. You have another Super Mario game
Speaker 1: with like Super Mario Sunshine. You had another Zelda game
Speaker 1: in there, and you had Metro Prime. So again, the
Speaker 1: top selling games for Nintendo are the franchises that they established.
Speaker 1: The Golden I Double O seven was kind of a
Speaker 1: exception to the rule, and now we're back to the rule,
Speaker 1: which is Nintendo depends very heavily on the intellectual property
Speaker 1: they have created. It's also one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: they were very reluctant to have that stuff appear on
Speaker 1: other platforms, because clearly those are the titles that sell consoles.
Speaker 1: They're the ones that have the highest sales rates. So
Speaker 1: that explains why Nintendo is never really eager to put
Speaker 1: their stuff on a different platform. Doesn't mean that people
Speaker 1: haven't done it. Obviously. They've got the Mario Jump game
Speaker 1: for iPhone, but that didn't do as well as what
Speaker 1: Nintendo was hoping and kind of reinforce their idea that
Speaker 1: their intellectual property works best on their own platforms. The
Speaker 1: Nintendo WE tells a slightly different story than the Predace sessors.
Speaker 1: Louise most popular game was WE Sports because it was
Speaker 1: bundled with the console, although to be fair, it's also
Speaker 1: a very fun game, so I'm not here to suggest
Speaker 1: that it's a bad game, just that if you bought
Speaker 1: a WE you got WE Sports is one of your games,
Speaker 1: at least early on. Initially, it's sold eighty two point
Speaker 1: eight million copies. Now that is mind blowing, eighty two
Speaker 1: point eight million, more than twice as many as the
Speaker 1: nes Super Mario Brothers game, and that helps illustrate how
Speaker 1: the Nintendo WE had become a huge powerhouse in the industry,
Speaker 1: at least temporarily. It had a big impact on the
Speaker 1: video game industry. It was insanely popular, you couldn't find
Speaker 1: them anywhere when they first came out, because they would
Speaker 1: be bought as soon as they would hit store shelves.
Speaker 1: But when you start looking down the list of the
Speaker 1: top performing games, you see that there's an issue because
Speaker 1: number two on that list was Mario Kart We and
Speaker 1: that one sold thirty six point eight three million copies,
Speaker 1: so less than half of number one. What that tells
Speaker 1: you is that the console was what was popular, and
Speaker 1: then gamers differed on which games they felt were the best.
Speaker 1: Because you see a huge drop from number one to
Speaker 1: number two. Number one sells more than eighty million copies,
Speaker 1: number two sells thirty six million. It's an enormous gap. Uh.
Speaker 1: Nintendo had several big hits for the Weed, but nothing
Speaker 1: that approached the level of interest for the console itself.
Speaker 1: So once you get the tenth place, which was We Party,
Speaker 1: you're talking about nine million copies sold, which is still
Speaker 1: a lot. I don't mean to take anything away from it,
Speaker 1: but remember we started at eighty million, So you go
Speaker 1: from eighty million at number one to nine million at
Speaker 1: number ten. That shows that there were not any standout
Speaker 1: games that really demanded a huge push from the consumer level.
Speaker 1: And that was an issue. You got to see more
Speaker 1: and more players kind of put their Nintendo we to
Speaker 1: the side and allow it to gather dust, and they
Speaker 1: would only take it out if they had a group
Speaker 1: of people over to play party games or group games.
Speaker 1: The WU is even more jury story. The top selling
Speaker 1: title on the WU was Mario Kart eight and the
Speaker 1: sales were hitting around eight million units. So the number
Speaker 1: one selling game of the Weiu sold fewer units than
Speaker 1: the number ten for the Wei itself. That's not a
Speaker 1: great story, and in fact, if I were to talk
Speaker 1: specifically about the WEU, it would be a pretty sad
Speaker 1: story from beginning to end, particularly because I think the
Speaker 1: WU was a very innovative approach. It just didn't have
Speaker 1: the games or the experiences that were compelling enough to
Speaker 1: really push it into a success. Switching over to handhelds,
Speaker 1: just briefly, the top selling title on the Game Boy
Speaker 1: is one that I'm going to chat about later. And
Speaker 1: I'm sure a lot of you will guess what the
Speaker 1: top selling title for game Boy was, but again I'll
Speaker 1: i'll address that one in a little bit. So apart
Speaker 1: from the number one spot, Pokemon Rules the Land for
Speaker 1: the original game, Boy, the Pokemon games Red, Blue, Gold,
Speaker 1: and Silver made up nearly fifty million units sold. That's
Speaker 1: collectively the four games fifty million units, huge number. The
Speaker 1: Game Boy Advance continued that trend with Pokemon Ruby, Sapphire, Fire,
Speaker 1: Red Leaf, Green, and Emerald, which collectively accounted for more
Speaker 1: than thirty million units, which tells me that Pokemon fans
Speaker 1: love their games. Then you have the Nintendo DS. That's
Speaker 1: top game was the New Super Mario Brothers, followed by
Speaker 1: An ten Dogs and then Mario Kart DS. The three
Speaker 1: DS returned the title to Pokemon, with Pokemon X and
Speaker 1: Y leading the charge with more than sixteen million units sold.
Speaker 1: And I guess someday I'm just gonna have to do
Speaker 1: a full Pokemon episode. She means, I'm gonna have to
Speaker 1: understand it. Pity me. Before I take another quick break,
Speaker 1: I thought it'd be cool to chat about the top
Speaker 1: selling games for some of the consoles that weren't nearly
Speaker 1: as popular as the Nintendo line. And we're talking about
Speaker 1: the Vegas Sega systems here, So what were the top
Speaker 1: games on those systems. It's a little tricky because most
Speaker 1: of them didn't really hit a full million units and
Speaker 1: that's what you need to show up on a lot
Speaker 1: of lists. The Sega Genesis, which was better known as
Speaker 1: the Mega Drive and other parts of the world, had
Speaker 1: Sonic the Hedgehog as its top performing title with fifteen
Speaker 1: million units sold. It's another title that got bundled with
Speaker 1: the Sega Genesis in most cases. Sonic two came in
Speaker 1: second place with six million units uh, which is much
Speaker 1: more modest than the fifteen million that Sonic One sold,
Speaker 1: and third place went to Disney's Aladdin, which was another
Speaker 1: licensed game, and it managed to buck the trend that
Speaker 1: trend being a licensed game that ends up being pretty lousy.
Speaker 1: I'm sure any video gamers out there are familiar with
Speaker 1: tons of different games based on licenses that just were
Speaker 1: not fun or we're a bad representation of whatever the
Speaker 1: license was. But Aladdin was a fun platform or that
Speaker 1: a lot of people liked, so it did really well
Speaker 1: on the Sega Genesis. Uh. Following that up, We're the
Speaker 1: Game's NBA Jam, one of the few sports related games
Speaker 1: to a show up on our lists so far, although
Speaker 1: NBA Jam is a very arcady version of sports and
Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat to our first fighting game besides, uh yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's our first one first fighting game where it's kind
Speaker 1: of like Street Fighter sort of stuff, Mortal Kombat too.
Speaker 1: The Sega Saturn had only a few titles top more
Speaker 1: than a million sold. That would include Virtua Fighter Too,
Speaker 1: which was another fighting game kind of like Mortal Kombat
Speaker 1: or Street Fighter or tech In or one of those,
Speaker 1: and Sega Rally Championship, a racing game. The Dreamcast, which
Speaker 1: is still one of my favorite consoles of all time,
Speaker 1: had Sonic Adventure as its top selling title, followed by
Speaker 1: the fighting game Soul Caliber. Soul Caliber is kind of
Speaker 1: like more more like Mortal Kombat, I would argue than
Speaker 1: Street Fighter because you have a lot of weapons involved.
Speaker 1: There are also other elements of gameplay that we're not
Speaker 1: common to Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat. I spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time playing Soul Caliber on the Dreamcast trying
Speaker 1: to unlock all the different stuff. My favorite character was Servantes,
Speaker 1: who was a pirate yar. Anyway, Third place would go
Speaker 1: to a Crazy Taxi, which sold a little bit more
Speaker 1: than one point two million units. Now, I would take
Speaker 1: time to talk about the top selling Turbo Graphics six
Speaker 1: team games, but those didn't get to sales figures large
Speaker 1: enough for me to find in a really reliable source.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that certain games did pretty well, but none
Speaker 1: of them were breakout successes. So you might find a
Speaker 1: game like Ninja Spirit or Legendary Acts or BOMBERMANE that
Speaker 1: did pretty well, but again couldn't find any sells figures
Speaker 1: that made it stand out. Now, in our next section,
Speaker 1: I'll take a look at the top games on Sony
Speaker 1: and Xbox consoles, as well as the big names in
Speaker 1: PC games. But before that, let's take another quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. All right, let's talk about Sony now.
Speaker 1: Sony's PlayStation was the first console to seriously give Nintendo
Speaker 1: a run for its money, and it also ushered in
Speaker 1: a new era of big say hills in video games.
Speaker 1: The original PlayStation's top selling game was Grand Tarismo, which
Speaker 1: was a racing game and a driving simulator. Still is
Speaker 1: a racing game and a driving simulator. It didn't magically
Speaker 1: transform over the last few years, but Grand Tarismo was
Speaker 1: the number one selling title for the original PlayStation. And
Speaker 1: I find this interesting since we didn't really see any
Speaker 1: actual driving simulators in our other lists. Really, we saw
Speaker 1: some arcady things like Mario Kart, but this was an
Speaker 1: honest to goodness driving simulator and a race car simulator.
Speaker 1: Other big PS one games included Final Fantasy seven, so
Speaker 1: a video game role playing game, one of the most
Speaker 1: popular of the Final Fantasy franchise, and Grand Tarismo too.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, Grand Turismo really was dominating PlayStation one.
Speaker 1: Fourth place went to tech In three, which was another
Speaker 1: fighting game. But then let's take a look over at
Speaker 1: PS two. So the PlayStation two's top game was Grand
Speaker 1: Theft Auto San Andreas. So this is an action adventure
Speaker 1: game and the first sandbox style game on our list. Now,
Speaker 1: to be fair, consoles really didn't have the power to
Speaker 1: give you a sandbox kind of experience. And basically a
Speaker 1: sandbox game means that you get dumped into a game
Speaker 1: world and you have a lot of freedom of choice
Speaker 1: as to what you do next. You can wander around,
Speaker 1: try and do different things. You don't have to go
Speaker 1: down a linear pathway in order to complete the game
Speaker 1: right away. You can do a lot of side missions.
Speaker 1: You can explore the world uh to to greater or
Speaker 1: lesser degree. Grand Theft Auto series tends to have things
Speaker 1: that keep you in certain areas at least to a
Speaker 1: certain point of the game before it opens up the
Speaker 1: next area, but you still can explore large portions of
Speaker 1: the game right away as soon as the game starts.
Speaker 1: So Grand Theft Auto San Andreas takes place in a
Speaker 1: fictional version of Los Angeles. Then you play a cominal,
Speaker 1: as you do in all the Grand Theft Auto games.
Speaker 1: You play a criminal who is going on a series
Speaker 1: of missions in order to pursue specific goals, which usually
Speaker 1: involved becoming more and more powerful in the crime scene
Speaker 1: of whatever area you are in, as well as eliminating
Speaker 1: various enemies and rivals that you encounter throughout the story.
Speaker 1: And you're playing a specific character in each of these games,
Speaker 1: different characters for each game, but a specific one. You're
Speaker 1: not able to create a character, at least not in
Speaker 1: the single player version. So Grand Theft Auto San Andreas
Speaker 1: sold seventeen million copies, and again we see a nice
Speaker 1: big number here, much bigger than than the lagging we
Speaker 1: numbers were later um which actually happened later at this point,
Speaker 1: because we're still talking about the PS two. But then
Speaker 1: Grand Rismo three and four take second and third place, respectively.
Speaker 1: So the driving racing games, those were still really popular
Speaker 1: in Sony's world. This is kind of interesting to me
Speaker 1: because I would argue that by looking at the top
Speaker 1: selling games of each console, you start to get kind
Speaker 1: of a profile of what the hardcore fans of those
Speaker 1: consoles really liked. So it's Sony, you're getting the Grand
Speaker 1: Theft Auto games, these sandbox games, and the Grand Turismo games,
Speaker 1: the race card games that seted apart from something like
Speaker 1: Nintendo that was looking at things like the Super Mario franchise,
Speaker 1: the Zelda franchise, or other companies as well. When we
Speaker 1: get the Xbox, we'll see that they have a different
Speaker 1: style of games that are the most popular, and you
Speaker 1: get a little bit of a feeling of the personality
Speaker 1: for each console in a way. The next two games
Speaker 1: on the list after Grand Tourism three and four were
Speaker 1: other Grand Theft Auto games. Actually, so this is still
Speaker 1: for the PS two. So number four on the list
Speaker 1: for top five p US two selling games was Grand
Speaker 1: Theft Auto Vice City, which sets you in a fictional
Speaker 1: version of Miami during the nineteen eighties, and number five
Speaker 1: was Grand Theft Auto three, which puts you in a
Speaker 1: fictional version of New York City. So three Grand Theft
Speaker 1: Auto games and two Grand Thereismo games took the top
Speaker 1: five spots for PS two, not a whole lot of
Speaker 1: variety there. The PS three would continue this trend with
Speaker 1: Grand Theft Auto five raking up twenty one million units sold,
Speaker 1: and that game would take you back to San Andreas,
Speaker 1: that fictional version of Los Angeles as well as surrounding areas.
Speaker 1: It was a much larger map than the one for
Speaker 1: Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. Second place would go to
Speaker 1: Grand Thereismo five, So again, no surprise, you're still having
Speaker 1: Grand Theft Auto and Grand Theresmo dominating the top of
Speaker 1: the charts for the Sony PlayStation line. Really sinsing a
Speaker 1: trend here, but third place would change things up a bit.
Speaker 1: Third place went to Battlefield three, which is first person
Speaker 1: shooter games set in modern day, a fictional version of
Speaker 1: modern day, and it had both single and multiplayer modes
Speaker 1: that made it very popular. Slots four and five would
Speaker 1: go to Uncharted three and Uncharted two, respectfully respectively. I
Speaker 1: should say not respectfully. I'm sure they do respect it,
Speaker 1: but that's neither here nor there. Uncharted three and to
Speaker 1: carry on the series of Uncharted, which follows the exploits
Speaker 1: of a character named Nathan Drake who's kind of a
Speaker 1: mix between Laura Croft the tomb Raider and Indiana Jones.
Speaker 1: He's a treasure hunter who gets in trouble, gets in
Speaker 1: over his head all the time, and they has to
Speaker 1: try and escape, usually ends up escaping without whatever the
Speaker 1: treasure was he was going after it gets lost to
Speaker 1: all time or something along those lines. Um very cinematic
Speaker 1: style games, very popular for the PS three. Now, one
Speaker 1: game I was surprised didn't show up on the Best
Speaker 1: Selling Games for the p S three was The Last
Speaker 1: of Us, which is a post apocalyptic zombie survival style game,
Speaker 1: although I guess you could argue they're not really zombies.
Speaker 1: They are humans that have been infected by some sort
Speaker 1: of fungal um infection for lack of a better word,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be repetitive and redundant here that makes them
Speaker 1: go crazy and attack people. So The Last of Us
Speaker 1: is a great game, but is not on the Best
Speaker 1: Selling Games for the p S three. However, the remastered
Speaker 1: version would end up being number eight for PS four,
Speaker 1: but was on the top of PS four's list. All
Speaker 1: The top selling game for PS four is Uncharted four
Speaker 1: that just seemingly concludes Nathan Drake's storyline in the Uncharted series,
Speaker 1: although never say never. Number two is a game called
Speaker 1: Horizon zero Dawn, one of the more recent games on
Speaker 1: this list in this entire episode, really is Horizon zero
Speaker 1: Don's interesting post apocalyptic science fiction game that I recommend
Speaker 1: checking out because it's kind of cool. Third place, we
Speaker 1: go to kill Zone shadow Fall, which is a first
Speaker 1: person shooter game, and then would you would have Blood Born,
Speaker 1: which is an action role playing game. In fourth place
Speaker 1: and fifth place, we go to Drive Club, which was
Speaker 1: the only racing game to make the top five of
Speaker 1: Sony's most recent console. So that is kind of a departure,
Speaker 1: partly because of delays with Grand Tarismo series, but it
Speaker 1: is a departure from the Sony h appeal because you
Speaker 1: saw in the earlier consoles that Grand Treismo was always
Speaker 1: taking a top place in those those top fives. Now,
Speaker 1: those who know me, and they know me well, they
Speaker 1: know that I'm an Xbox guy. I'm not a PlayStation person.
Speaker 1: I do own a p S three, but I do
Speaker 1: not own a PS four. I like the PS three
Speaker 1: just fine, and I like the games that I played
Speaker 1: on it really well. I like the Uncharted series, but
Speaker 1: I just tend to be more of an Xbox player
Speaker 1: than a PlayStation player. I do fully recognize that each
Speaker 1: generation the PlayStation is a more powerful console than the Xboxes,
Speaker 1: but I just prefer the Xbox ecosystem. I prefer the controller.
Speaker 1: I in large part prefer the games that are exclusive
Speaker 1: to the Xbox, although they are not that many of them,
Speaker 1: only a few. Most of them are multi platform games, um,
Speaker 1: but you know, just interest of full disclosure so I
Speaker 1: can get that bias out of the way. For the
Speaker 1: original Xbox, the best selling game is Halo two, which
Speaker 1: I find really interesting. I would have thought the first
Speaker 1: Halo would take the top spot, but it's actually in
Speaker 1: second place. Halo two is the best selling game on
Speaker 1: the original Xbox, with Halo following suit. The Halo series
Speaker 1: follow you playing the role of a hero called master
Speaker 1: Chief who's fighting off aliens and various fun guy that
Speaker 1: are infecting aliens and humans alike. So it's the first
Speaker 1: person shooter. You're blasting aliens a lot. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of science fiction e plot around it, but the important
Speaker 1: thing is you're blasting aliens a lot unless you're playing multiplayer,
Speaker 1: in which case you're blasting other master chiefs a lot,
Speaker 1: and uh, it's it's a first person shooter game with
Speaker 1: a really popular multiplayer feature, at least starting with Halo two.
Speaker 1: It's a really popular multiplayer feature. The first Halo, if
Speaker 1: you had a whole bunch of people over at your
Speaker 1: house or you were going to a land party, it
Speaker 1: was popular. But Halo two was when you started getting
Speaker 1: this over into the actual internet world. Um So, Halo
Speaker 1: two and Halo take spots one and two in the
Speaker 1: top five for Xbox. What's number three? That would be
Speaker 1: a game called Fable, which sold three million units, So
Speaker 1: you're already seeing that the number of units is significantly
Speaker 1: lower than that for the PlayStation. But Fable is a
Speaker 1: fantasy role playing game that it was supposed to depend
Speaker 1: heavily upon the players choices. In other words, the actions
Speaker 1: you took as a player were supposed to have a
Speaker 1: huge impact on the game world. But you could argue
Speaker 1: that as the game got closer to release, more and
Speaker 1: more of those features got removed, so that your impact
Speaker 1: on the game world was actually kind of minimal. It
Speaker 1: wasn't as big a deal as it was made out
Speaker 1: to be in the development process. It disappointed some fans,
Speaker 1: although it's still kind of a cool game. Fourth place
Speaker 1: was splinter Cell. That's a franchise where you play a
Speaker 1: special ops stealth operative and you have to stealthily make
Speaker 1: your way through various levels and and achieve special mission
Speaker 1: goals while not being spotted. You can either go super
Speaker 1: stealthy or you can go loud, although it's very difficult
Speaker 1: to do so. Very popular series, and the first one
Speaker 1: was one of the top selling games for the original
Speaker 1: Xbox and the fifth slot went to Project Gotham Racing,
Speaker 1: which sold two point one million units. Again, a racing
Speaker 1: game made it into the top five for the original Xbox,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't selling nearly the number of units that
Speaker 1: you would see Grand Turismo on the PlayStation now. One
Speaker 1: thing Microsoft has been really really good at, something they
Speaker 1: do amazingly well is naming its consoles and following a
Speaker 1: strategy that makes perfect sense because you have your original Xbox,
Speaker 1: followed by the Xbox three sixty, and then after that
Speaker 1: you get the Xbox One, So yeah, that makes sense anyway.
Speaker 1: The top selling game for the Xbox three sixty was
Speaker 1: actually Connect Adventures. It's a sports game that moved twenty
Speaker 1: four million units. I suspect because it was bundled with
Speaker 1: the Connect, so if you bought a Connect, you got
Speaker 1: a copy of that game. Second place for the Xbox
Speaker 1: three sixty was Grand Theft Auto five, so again we
Speaker 1: see the Grand Theft Auto franchise making a big impact
Speaker 1: on consoles. It was popular on Microsoft's console, just as
Speaker 1: it had been over at Sony, and it sold nearly
Speaker 1: eighteen million units. That's a lot. Halo three would come
Speaker 1: in third place with fourteen and a half million units,
Speaker 1: and then followed by Minecraft with thirteen million units. And
Speaker 1: I've done a full episode about Minecraft, so I don't
Speaker 1: feel like I need to go into it very much.
Speaker 1: Here you can listen to that, although I have been
Speaker 1: told I need to update my episode on Minecraft, so
Speaker 1: keep an ear out because eventually I will update that
Speaker 1: episode and I will release a new version. But no
Speaker 1: need to go into it here. And then in fifth
Speaker 1: place you had Call of Duty Black Ops, a first
Speaker 1: person shooter style game that sold twelve million units. So
Speaker 1: while their numbers weren't as big as some of the
Speaker 1: PlayStation numbers, they were grouped more closely together, which could
Speaker 1: tell you that your hardcore group of game mers are
Speaker 1: buying similar games because they're all you know, they they
Speaker 1: seem to be hitting the same spread because those those
Speaker 1: are pretty consistent numbers. You don't have a huge gap
Speaker 1: between one and two and two and three. In other words,
Speaker 1: So now we've got Xbox one and seriously, Microsoft, I
Speaker 1: know everyone has criticized you for this nonsensical naming strategy
Speaker 1: that you've been employing, but what the heck man? Come on? Anyway,
Speaker 1: the top selling game for the Xbox One so far
Speaker 1: is Halo five Guardians with five million units sold. So yeah,
Speaker 1: top selling game, but fewer copies than what you would
Speaker 1: see in previous UH console generations, and it shows that
Speaker 1: the Xbox One hasn't been performing at nearly the same
Speaker 1: level as the SONYPS four. Second place would go to
Speaker 1: Dead Rising three, which is a survival horror game with
Speaker 1: some weird comedic undertones. It's set in a zombie infested California.
Speaker 1: Third and fourth place went to two entries in the
Speaker 1: four motorsport racing series UH for for the Motorsports five
Speaker 1: and then six, So again we see racing games starting
Speaker 1: to make a big impact on the top one sold
Speaker 1: and fifth place spot went to Gears of War Ultimate Edition,
Speaker 1: which is a third person science fiction based shooter. And
Speaker 1: this brings us to the PC, which is interesting, Like,
Speaker 1: there was a time where I was devoted to gaming
Speaker 1: on personal computers because I felt that they gave a
Speaker 1: superior experience to consoles. Then I felt that consoles were
Speaker 1: superior for a while because you didn't have to upgrade
Speaker 1: a console after you bought it. All the games you
Speaker 1: bought for your console were guaranteed to run on it
Speaker 1: more or less as opposed to a PC game that
Speaker 1: you might buy and it ends up being incompatible with
Speaker 1: your video card or you need a new three D
Speaker 1: based video card in order to play it, and you
Speaker 1: have to upgrade your computer over and over again. Eventually
Speaker 1: we get to a point where now I feel like
Speaker 1: PC gaming has overtaken console again. I think PC gaming
Speaker 1: is out on top. So let's talk about some of
Speaker 1: the top selling PC games of all time. Number one
Speaker 1: with a bullet is Minecraft. It has sold more than
Speaker 1: any other PC game. But next after that is World
Speaker 1: of Warcraft, which is a fantasy based massively multiplayer online
Speaker 1: role playing game or m m O RPG. Uh kind
Speaker 1: of like Dungeons and Dragons, but on the computer, you
Speaker 1: play a character that's part of one of two sides,
Speaker 1: and those two sides are in opposition to one another,
Speaker 1: and you can't really push the story forward too far,
Speaker 1: but you can advance within the world and feel like
Speaker 1: you're playing a part in this bigger story. Third place
Speaker 1: was Diablo three, which is a dungeon crawler and that
Speaker 1: will end up wearing out your mouth button faster than
Speaker 1: anything else. A hacking slash style game where you keep
Speaker 1: on clicking that mouse button trying to whack enemies before
Speaker 1: they whack you. After that as counter Strike, which is
Speaker 1: a game that came out but it really found its
Speaker 1: legs with the moderate community, as in people who modify games.
Speaker 1: There are tons of different modifications for Counterstrike and that
Speaker 1: made it last much longer than other games of its ilk.
Speaker 1: And then fifth place would go to The Sims, which
Speaker 1: is a family or life simulator game which really drives
Speaker 1: home the notion that no matter what you want, you
Speaker 1: cannot do all the things you need to do in
Speaker 1: a day, like exercise, eat well, do your job, find
Speaker 1: time for entertainment, hygiene. Something's got to give you, guys,
Speaker 1: know where your priorities are. I'm not making any commentary here. Now,
Speaker 1: just for funzies, I thought i'd take a look at
Speaker 1: how some classic computer games measure up in sales. So
Speaker 1: modern games you can get massive numbers of sales, millions
Speaker 1: and millions of units, particularly on day one of a
Speaker 1: game hitting the virtual shells, because of digital delivery and
Speaker 1: pre game or pre sales. I should say that's not
Speaker 1: the case with classic games. Let's take a good old classic,
Speaker 1: Zorke one. Zorke was a text based adventure game, meaning
Speaker 1: that the whole game plays out almost like a choose
Speaker 1: your own adventure book, and you would type in what
Speaker 1: you would want your character to do, and as long
Speaker 1: as you were typing in commands that the game recognized,
Speaker 1: you would continue on through the game until you got
Speaker 1: eaten by a group. One of the most popular games
Speaker 1: of the early computing era, one that a lot of
Speaker 1: people have heard about, and it sold a grand total
Speaker 1: of around four hundred thousand copies, so not even half
Speaker 1: a million, which is kind of crazy to me because
Speaker 1: I think of zork is being synonymous with early PC gaming,
Speaker 1: But it does show you that it was a very
Speaker 1: small niche market back in the day. Or how about
Speaker 1: the Bard's Tale, which is a very popular dungeon crawler
Speaker 1: or fantasy game again kind of like Dungeons and Dragons,
Speaker 1: very similar to other games of the same style, like Wizardry.
Speaker 1: So how did it do? It's sold three hundred thousand units.
Speaker 1: Or Ultimate four, which is a game that changed up
Speaker 1: computer role playing games by requiring the player to not
Speaker 1: act like a complete psychopath. One of the issues that
Speaker 1: Richard Garriott, who created the Ultimate series, had with computer
Speaker 1: role playing games is that the computer role playing games
Speaker 1: were not very good at inspiring players to make ethical choices.
Speaker 1: Most of the time, there were very few consequences if
Speaker 1: you did something unethical, like if you tried to steal
Speaker 1: money from the good guys, or you just started to
Speaker 1: slaughter good guys for no reason. Often there'd be very
Speaker 1: few consequences to that. With Ultimate four, he designed a
Speaker 1: game that you could not win unless you played a
Speaker 1: model ethical character. You had to become the avatar, someone
Speaker 1: who embodied the the virtues of this fantasy world, which
Speaker 1: meant that you had to play as a super duper
Speaker 1: goody two shoes, and in parts of the game it
Speaker 1: was actually really challenging because it felt like two different
Speaker 1: virtues were at slight odds with one another, so you
Speaker 1: had to figure out how to navigate your way through
Speaker 1: situations in order to actually achieve what you needed to
Speaker 1: in order to win. The game sold three copies, So
Speaker 1: the Ultimate Series is one of the more popular franchises
Speaker 1: in the early PC gaming era. But you're still talking
Speaker 1: about sales that amounted to less than half a million
Speaker 1: in most cases. So remember when I say something like
Speaker 1: six million units, isn't that much? It's all a matter
Speaker 1: of context. Obviously, six million units back in the early
Speaker 1: days of PC gaming would have been a huge number,
Speaker 1: an unimaginably huge number. Oh and what was the greatest
Speaker 1: video game or best selling video game of all time?
Speaker 1: Not greatest video game, but best selling video game of
Speaker 1: all time. Well, it's sold more than four million units
Speaker 1: across all the different platforms that appeared on. But it
Speaker 1: was That's the reason why it sold so well, as
Speaker 1: it's on multiple platforms, not just a console or a
Speaker 1: family of consoles or PCs, It's on pretty much everything.
Speaker 1: It's one of the most addictive puzzle arcade games of
Speaker 1: all time, and the original game Boy version had a
Speaker 1: killer soundtrack. I am, of course talking about the one
Speaker 1: the only Tetris, in which blocks of different shapes fall
Speaker 1: down a board and it's your job to arrange them
Speaker 1: into to complete layers so that they disappear. Otherwise the
Speaker 1: board just keeps filling up with shapes until you get
Speaker 1: to the top and your game is over. Well, the
Speaker 1: story of Tetris is interesting in its own right, and
Speaker 1: I could probably do a full episode just about the
Speaker 1: Tetris story, but I'm gonna give you kind of the
Speaker 1: cliffs notes version here. There was a software developer named
Speaker 1: Alexey paget Nov, and I apologize for butchering the name,
Speaker 1: but my Russian is yet. That just means my Russian
Speaker 1: is no. That's how bad my Russian is. It's not
Speaker 1: just not good, it's just no. Alexey pat paget Nov
Speaker 1: created the game in four and he was a citizen
Speaker 1: of what is now Russia, but at the time was
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union, and those young uns among you might
Speaker 1: not know how chilly relations were between the U S
Speaker 1: SR and the good old USA back in those days,
Speaker 1: but suffice it to say we were not besties. The
Speaker 1: name of the game he took from the Latin prefix tetra,
Speaker 1: which generally means four and his favorite sport, which was tennis,
Speaker 1: and he had Tetris. And the reason he chose four
Speaker 1: is because every block in Tetris is made up of
Speaker 1: four smaller blocks. So if you have a long piece,
Speaker 1: that's actually four small blocks in a row. If you
Speaker 1: have a box, that's a two by two square of blocks.
Speaker 1: So if you look at any shape in your standard
Speaker 1: Tetris game, you'll see that's made up of four of
Speaker 1: these little blocks. In some configuration or another. The Soviet
Speaker 1: Union was keeping a really firm grasp on what could
Speaker 1: leave its country legally, and that included money, and included
Speaker 1: physical goods, and it included software. So this game that
Speaker 1: was made in eight four, it might have just stayed
Speaker 1: in the Soviet Union. It may not have ever gotten
Speaker 1: beyond that, except that paget Noov was able to show
Speaker 1: it off at a software symposium in Hungary. And someone
Speaker 1: else who attended that was a guy named Robert Stein,
Speaker 1: who owned his own software company in the UK, and
Speaker 1: he was able to secure an agreement with the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union that he would be able to license Tetris to
Speaker 1: distributors in the United Kingdom and in the United States,
Speaker 1: but only for a computer version. Of Tetris. In other words,
Speaker 1: it couldn't go to video game consoles, it couldn't go
Speaker 1: to arcades, It could only be computer based versions. What
Speaker 1: Stein started to do was talk up Tetris to other
Speaker 1: entities and say, hey, I'm gonna work on getting these
Speaker 1: other deals in place so that we can also make
Speaker 1: arcade games or make versions for home video game consoles.
Speaker 1: So go ahead and get to work on that. I'll
Speaker 1: take care of the the bureaucratic nonsense. This really upset
Speaker 1: government officials in the Soviet Union. They had not given
Speaker 1: him any authority to do this, and so it had
Speaker 1: a had a the opportunity to potentially shut all this down.
Speaker 1: But then a second software developer was able to smooth
Speaker 1: things out. His name was Hank Rogers, and he was
Speaker 1: able to convince the Soviet Union to license this over
Speaker 1: to Nintendo and they put it out for the Game
Speaker 1: Boy uh and that once the Game Boy edition came out,
Speaker 1: it really caught fire, and from that point forward it
Speaker 1: was one of the most popular games. In fact, it
Speaker 1: was the most popular game in video game history. Sad
Speaker 1: side note Pageantanov didn't profit from this. He didn't get
Speaker 1: to collect profits from these sales that was pretty much
Speaker 1: going to the Soviet Union government. Paget Nov, even though
Speaker 1: he built the thing, wasn't getting rewarded for it. Eventually,
Speaker 1: hink Rogers would travel to Moscow and actually argue that
Speaker 1: paget Nov should be reawarded the rights to the game
Speaker 1: he himself had developed. But by then it was so
Speaker 1: you're talking about more than a decade and a half
Speaker 1: of sales where the so Union had been benefiting from this, uh,
Speaker 1: this piece of software, and paget Nov had not. So
Speaker 1: kind of an interesting story and maybe one day I'll
Speaker 1: do a full episode on Tetris to really dive into
Speaker 1: that and give you like a blow by blow of
Speaker 1: how that played out, because it's interesting political story as
Speaker 1: well as a technological one. But for now, it's time
Speaker 1: to wrap this up and say goodbye. So here's a
Speaker 1: question for some of you guys. Have you any of
Speaker 1: you played any of the games that I've mentioned here,
Speaker 1: Are any of them like really stand out games? You
Speaker 1: would say that makes sense that that's on that best
Speaker 1: selling list because as that game is amazing, or were
Speaker 1: there any games that you feel should have been on
Speaker 1: the best selling list? But for some reason, I have
Speaker 1: been overlooked. Are there games that you wish got more
Speaker 1: attention because you think that they were really, really good,
Speaker 1: but they just never got that mainstream adoption that would
Speaker 1: have put them as a best seller. Let me know.
Speaker 1: Or if you have suggestions for future episodes of tech
Speaker 1: Stuff or guests I should have on the show, anything
Speaker 1: like that, send me an email. The address for the
Speaker 1: show is text stuff at how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: or you can drop me a line on Twitter or Facebook.
Speaker 1: The handle for the show at both of those locations
Speaker 1: is tech Stuff hs W. Remember I live stream tech
Speaker 1: Stuff now, so if you ever want to watch me
Speaker 1: record one of these shows live on camera like people
Speaker 1: are doing at this very second that I'm recording this,
Speaker 1: not when you're listening. That wouldn't make sense, go to
Speaker 1: twitch dot tv slash tech Stuff. My schedule is up
Speaker 1: on the website. I live stream on Wednesdays and Fridays,
Speaker 1: so check that out. I would love for you to
Speaker 1: join us, and I will talk to you guys again
Speaker 1: really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Is it how staff works dot com.