WEBVTT - The Sad Tale of Virtual Boy 0:00:04.440 --> 0:00:12.360 Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there, 0:00:12.360 --> 0:00:15.800 and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. 0:00:15.840 --> 0:00:19.200 I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the 0:00:19.320 --> 0:00:22.640 tech are yet, y'all. I didn't really pay attention to 0:00:22.680 --> 0:00:26.560 April Fools this year, which I think of as being 0:00:26.560 --> 0:00:32.800 a little sad. So I tend to be easily amused 0:00:32.880 --> 0:00:36.959 by goofy product announcements and that kind of thing, and 0:00:37.040 --> 0:00:41.280 so I often enjoy the stuff that gets announced on 0:00:41.320 --> 0:00:44.080 April Fool's Day. However, I understand that many of my 0:00:44.240 --> 0:00:48.159 peers in the tech space are totally over it, and 0:00:48.960 --> 0:00:52.360 there's some legit criticism about it, right, like about how 0:00:52.479 --> 0:00:54.920 a lot of companies just put out stuff that isn't 0:00:55.000 --> 0:00:58.040 very funny and instead it just ends up being more 0:00:58.160 --> 0:01:01.480 misleading than it is silly. And I get it, you know, 0:01:01.560 --> 0:01:04.840 comedy is hard and some companies are just terrible at it. 0:01:05.280 --> 0:01:07.880 But one thing that I did see after the fact 0:01:08.160 --> 0:01:11.440 that got a chuckle out of me inspired this episode. 0:01:11.840 --> 0:01:15.840 So it was a video on IGN's YouTube channel that 0:01:16.000 --> 0:01:19.839 supposedly was an announcement for the launch of a new 0:01:20.040 --> 0:01:26.120 Nintendo gaming platform, namely the Virtual Boy pro. So this 0:01:26.319 --> 0:01:31.080 video shows a woman who slots essentially a Nintendo Switch 0:01:31.200 --> 0:01:35.839 handheld gaming system into a headset, and then she puts 0:01:35.840 --> 0:01:38.919 the headset on. Then we're treated to a first person 0:01:39.040 --> 0:01:43.880 perspective of supposedly her experience as her living room is transformed, 0:01:44.040 --> 0:01:47.080 you know, augmented reality style, and it turns into a 0:01:47.200 --> 0:01:50.200 gaming space, and she can you know, play games and 0:01:50.320 --> 0:01:53.680 make things run around her actual furniture, or she can 0:01:53.720 --> 0:01:58.040 place virtual cartoon furniture in her real living room, or 0:01:58.520 --> 0:02:02.160 she can transfer an anger Man into tom Nook from 0:02:02.240 --> 0:02:06.440 Animal Crossing. And at one point she actually sees Luigi 0:02:06.520 --> 0:02:09.240 challenging her to a drag race as she drives around 0:02:09.520 --> 0:02:11.960 with a switch mounted to her face, which is a 0:02:12.000 --> 0:02:14.560 funny gag and also terrifying. It makes me think of 0:02:14.600 --> 0:02:17.600 all those videos of people walking around with the Apple 0:02:17.800 --> 0:02:21.000 headset on, and I'm thinking, just don't do that where 0:02:21.040 --> 0:02:24.920 folks can see you. Anyway. It also reminded me that 0:02:25.000 --> 0:02:28.840 while I have mentioned the Virtual Boy in past episodes, 0:02:29.040 --> 0:02:32.960 I never actually dedicated an entire tech stuff to that product. 0:02:33.240 --> 0:02:36.960 And it's infamous for being one of the biggest products 0:02:37.280 --> 0:02:40.480 that flopped in tech history, at the very least one 0:02:40.480 --> 0:02:42.800 of the biggest flops in the gaming space, and certainly 0:02:42.840 --> 0:02:46.440 one of the biggest for Nintendo. And you know, when 0:02:46.480 --> 0:02:48.960 it came out from Nintendo, it was back in the 0:02:49.040 --> 0:02:52.720 day where Nintendo was an organization that was just knocking 0:02:52.760 --> 0:02:55.160 it out of the park one after the other. Because 0:02:55.160 --> 0:02:57.519 by the time the Virtual Boy came out, you had 0:02:57.520 --> 0:03:01.840 the Nintendo Entertainment System or the Famine, You had the 0:03:02.280 --> 0:03:07.440 Super Nintendo Entertainment System, the SNES or Sness or Super Famicom, 0:03:07.800 --> 0:03:09.919 and then you also had the Game Boy, all of 0:03:09.960 --> 0:03:11.960 which had come out by the time the Virtual Boy 0:03:12.000 --> 0:03:14.760 came out. I mean, Virtual Boy's name is a nod 0:03:15.040 --> 0:03:18.480 to the Game Boy, and all of those systems sold 0:03:18.600 --> 0:03:22.840 like gangbusters. So at that point, Nintendo was almost a 0:03:22.880 --> 0:03:26.120 company that was guaranteed to succeed, so the fact that 0:03:26.160 --> 0:03:30.359 it failed would become huge news. So let's talk about 0:03:30.360 --> 0:03:33.639 the Virtual Boy and its placed in Nintendo history and 0:03:33.800 --> 0:03:37.400 tech in general. Now, first off, some of y'all might 0:03:37.440 --> 0:03:40.800 not even know what the Virtual Boy was. Right, if 0:03:40.840 --> 0:03:43.960 you were born after the mid nineties and you've never 0:03:44.000 --> 0:03:46.720 really been into gaming or anything, you might not have 0:03:46.800 --> 0:03:49.840 ever seen one. So it looked like a pair of 0:03:49.960 --> 0:03:54.240 red binoculars mounted on a little bipod stand like a 0:03:54.280 --> 0:03:58.680 tabletop or desktop stand. Unlike binoculars, there were no lenses 0:03:58.720 --> 0:04:01.280 on the front of the device, or I guess the 0:04:01.320 --> 0:04:03.520 back of the device, depending on if you're looking at 0:04:03.520 --> 0:04:06.120 it from the perspective of someone who's using it, in 0:04:06.120 --> 0:04:07.840 which case it would be the back of the device, 0:04:08.280 --> 0:04:10.000 or someone who's seeing someone else use it, in which 0:04:10.000 --> 0:04:12.880 case it would be what you're looking at the front. Anyway, 0:04:12.880 --> 0:04:15.320 you would stand the Virtual Boy on a table and 0:04:15.400 --> 0:04:18.120 you would have to lean forward to look into the screen, 0:04:18.560 --> 0:04:20.440 so your forehead would go up against it. You'd look 0:04:20.480 --> 0:04:24.080 into it almost like a viewfinder, and you would then 0:04:24.600 --> 0:04:28.880 hold a wired controller that connected directly to the headset 0:04:29.120 --> 0:04:32.320 and you would play games. In many ways, it was 0:04:32.360 --> 0:04:35.839 similar to virtual reality headsets that we would see much 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:39.719 much later. Right, These kind of looks like something like 0:04:39.760 --> 0:04:43.640 an Oculus, except it's very red. It stands out through 0:04:43.640 --> 0:04:46.080 the color. But it looked like an Oculus headset in 0:04:46.560 --> 0:04:50.000 some ways. But again, it was mounted on a bipod 0:04:50.040 --> 0:04:52.599 that you would set on a table. And you have 0:04:52.640 --> 0:04:56.640 to remember Virtual Boy launched in nineteen ninety five, well 0:04:56.680 --> 0:04:59.600 before we would get something like an Oculus. In fact, 0:04:59.600 --> 0:05:03.080 in the middle in nineties, your typical real virtual reality 0:05:03.160 --> 0:05:08.120 headset would be this super heavy head mounted display. Often 0:05:08.240 --> 0:05:10.640 you would need to suspend it from the ceiling with 0:05:10.800 --> 0:05:13.840 cables in order to offset the weight, because otherwise it 0:05:13.839 --> 0:05:16.240 would be far too heavy for someone to wear, at 0:05:16.320 --> 0:05:19.919 least for any real length of time. So the Virtual 0:05:20.000 --> 0:05:24.360 Boy was a big departure from what people had been 0:05:25.040 --> 0:05:28.480 used to if they, in fact had encountered virtual reality 0:05:28.520 --> 0:05:31.960 systems at all. Not many people had. Some folks like 0:05:32.040 --> 0:05:34.520 me were lucky enough to live near a shopping mall 0:05:34.839 --> 0:05:38.320 that had a virtual reality arcade in it, so I 0:05:38.400 --> 0:05:42.240 had had experience with it, but not everybody did. And 0:05:42.279 --> 0:05:45.160 so I guess if you had never used one of 0:05:45.240 --> 0:05:48.480 these big systems, it wouldn't seem like such a huge 0:05:48.520 --> 0:05:51.400 deal that the form factor of the Virtual Boy was 0:05:51.440 --> 0:05:54.560 so small in comparison. But you wouldn't strap the Virtual 0:05:54.560 --> 0:05:56.440 Boy to your head, you know, you couldn't wear it 0:05:56.480 --> 0:05:59.039 around and look at anything. It's not like you could 0:05:59.080 --> 0:06:02.680 wear it like an auction system. And there wasn't head 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:05.920 tracking technology built into the Virtual Boy, although the initial 0:06:06.000 --> 0:06:09.480 plan was to have head tracking incorporated into the device. 0:06:09.520 --> 0:06:12.080 We'll talk about that. So this was really just a 0:06:12.120 --> 0:06:16.200 stationary console system that had sort of a viewfinder form 0:06:16.240 --> 0:06:18.760 factor that you would use, and even that was limited 0:06:18.760 --> 0:06:22.279 because it was monochromatic. But that's the quick description of 0:06:22.320 --> 0:06:25.039 the physical product. But let's go down memory lane to 0:06:25.080 --> 0:06:28.040 talk about its development, and first we have to consider 0:06:28.120 --> 0:06:31.880 a couple of big components. Really one is the most important, 0:06:31.920 --> 0:06:35.000 and that is the rise of virtual reality and culture 0:06:35.240 --> 0:06:38.080 in the nineteen nineties, because that's what would drive a 0:06:38.080 --> 0:06:41.960 lot of the excitement, at least at Nintendo initially for 0:06:42.040 --> 0:06:44.240 the development of the Virtual Boy. We also have to 0:06:44.240 --> 0:06:47.839 remember the length of a development cycle for a new 0:06:48.040 --> 0:06:51.360 console system and how much things can change in those 0:06:51.440 --> 0:06:54.880 linky development cycles. Right when a game system comes out, 0:06:54.880 --> 0:06:57.000 we have to keep in mind that's the product of 0:06:57.080 --> 0:07:00.640 years of work. Sometimes a company is working on the 0:07:00.680 --> 0:07:04.599 next generation of a system while it has yet to 0:07:04.680 --> 0:07:08.120 release the most recent generation. Right like, if you're getting 0:07:08.160 --> 0:07:11.520 a PS four, you can bet that Sony was hard 0:07:11.520 --> 0:07:14.840 at work already on the PS five. So let's really 0:07:14.880 --> 0:07:18.240 think about virtual reality first. Now, the history of VR 0:07:18.600 --> 0:07:23.560 stretches back pretty darn far. Where you start largely depends 0:07:23.640 --> 0:07:26.240 upon what you think of as being the most important 0:07:26.280 --> 0:07:30.160 component of virtual reality. And you could argue that you 0:07:30.280 --> 0:07:35.920 go back to like stereoscopic camera systems from the nineteenth century. 0:07:36.000 --> 0:07:37.960 I think that's going too far. We're just going to 0:07:38.000 --> 0:07:41.920 start back in the nineteen fifties when Morton Heilig created 0:07:41.960 --> 0:07:46.000 a pretty gimmicky device called the Sensorama. So the Sensorama 0:07:46.400 --> 0:07:48.920 was housed in a cabinet sort of similar to an 0:07:49.040 --> 0:07:52.320 arcade machine, and you would sit down in a chair 0:07:52.720 --> 0:07:55.600 at a like a little console, and your head would 0:07:55.640 --> 0:07:58.680 essentially be enveloped by this cabinet like you were leaning 0:07:58.720 --> 0:08:00.520 in in the sides of the case, and it would 0:08:00.520 --> 0:08:04.040 block your peripheral vision. The device would attempt to engage 0:08:04.320 --> 0:08:07.600 all of your senses to create a really immersive experience. 0:08:07.880 --> 0:08:10.160 So there was a screen that you would look at, 0:08:10.280 --> 0:08:12.360 there were speakers that were designed to play kind of 0:08:12.360 --> 0:08:16.040 a surround sound experience to you. There were fans that 0:08:16.120 --> 0:08:19.840 could blow air on you. There were canisters containing stuff 0:08:20.160 --> 0:08:24.400 with strong smells, strong sense to kind of create a 0:08:24.480 --> 0:08:27.840 smell of vision sort of experience, and the chair that 0:08:27.920 --> 0:08:31.680 you sat in would vibrate then give you some haptic feedback. 0:08:32.160 --> 0:08:36.040 Hilig made several short films to showcase his invention and 0:08:36.080 --> 0:08:38.120 what it was capable of, and I really wish I 0:08:38.120 --> 0:08:40.400 could experience one of those, just to get a first 0:08:40.400 --> 0:08:42.880 hand feel for what it was like. Apparently there were 0:08:42.920 --> 0:08:46.160 like half a dozen different titles, and I don't care 0:08:46.200 --> 0:08:48.319 which one it was. I would just like to really 0:08:48.440 --> 0:08:51.240 find out what it felt like to watch something in 0:08:51.280 --> 0:08:53.280 one of these and to have all the different effects 0:08:53.360 --> 0:08:55.959 go off. But I don't know of any that are working. 0:08:56.000 --> 0:08:59.160 There might be one or two in different museums or whatever, 0:08:59.280 --> 0:09:02.680 but I've never come across one. Clearly. Though, the Cincerama 0:09:02.720 --> 0:09:05.679 didn't become a best selling product, however, it did illustrate 0:09:05.720 --> 0:09:09.360 that there was something really compelling about immersive technology that 0:09:09.400 --> 0:09:12.280 engaged multiple senses. Kind of like that. So in the 0:09:12.360 --> 0:09:16.280 nineteen sixties you had engineers at the pill Co Corporation 0:09:16.360 --> 0:09:19.600 who developed a head mounded display that had motion tracking 0:09:19.600 --> 0:09:23.200 technology incorporated into it. That was a big, big step 0:09:23.200 --> 0:09:26.040 for VR. Now, this device was meant to give the 0:09:26.120 --> 0:09:29.360 wearer a real time view through a closed circuit camera. 0:09:29.720 --> 0:09:32.720 So this is actually more like an augmented reality or 0:09:32.760 --> 0:09:37.480 remote viewing technology rather than virtual reality. Remember, virtual reality 0:09:37.520 --> 0:09:41.000 is when you have all the images and sounds that 0:09:41.040 --> 0:09:44.839 you encounter generated by a computer. So augmented reality is 0:09:44.880 --> 0:09:49.199 when you're using technology to enhance or augment your experience 0:09:49.679 --> 0:09:53.120 moving through a real space. This is kind of more 0:09:53.280 --> 0:09:56.360 like a virtual presence because again it gave you a 0:09:56.480 --> 0:10:00.160 chance to control a camera just by looking around. The 0:10:00.200 --> 0:10:05.840 intent of this particular technology was to allow humans to 0:10:05.960 --> 0:10:09.440 navigate through an environment that would be risky for humans 0:10:09.440 --> 0:10:12.880 to move through normally. It was a military technology, so 0:10:13.360 --> 0:10:17.320 you could imagine using something like this to diffuse a bomb, perhaps, 0:10:17.760 --> 0:10:21.160 or to scope out a war zone situation or something 0:10:21.240 --> 0:10:23.640 like that. So turning your head would send a command 0:10:23.720 --> 0:10:26.199 to the connected camera, and the camera would then turn 0:10:26.320 --> 0:10:29.880 to reflect the way you were looking, and it would 0:10:29.920 --> 0:10:32.760 give you a new view of whatever situation you were in. 0:10:32.880 --> 0:10:35.520 So it wasn't strictly a VR application, but the head 0:10:35.520 --> 0:10:39.360 tracking technology would become a very important component in future 0:10:39.520 --> 0:10:43.880 VR applications. In the late nineteen sixties, Ivan Sutherland, who 0:10:43.920 --> 0:10:48.319 had already proposed an idea called the Ultimate Display. He 0:10:48.400 --> 0:10:51.240 theorized that you could create a display that would make 0:10:51.280 --> 0:10:55.400 such a compelling immersive experience that for the viewer it 0:10:55.440 --> 0:10:59.800 would be indistinguishable from reality like that was his sort 0:10:59.840 --> 0:11:05.000 of premise that he was proposing. Well, he didn't create 0:11:05.160 --> 0:11:07.880 the ultimate display, that was more like a thought experiment. 0:11:08.120 --> 0:11:10.880 What he did do was he helped build technologies that 0:11:10.960 --> 0:11:15.440 would get us closer incrementally toward his vision. One of 0:11:15.440 --> 0:11:18.480 those was a head mounted display that was sometimes called 0:11:18.480 --> 0:11:21.439 the Sword of Damocles because like the sort of Damoicles, 0:11:21.440 --> 0:11:25.120 it was suspended again from the ceiling. So this display 0:11:25.160 --> 0:11:29.000 connected to a computer system and not a camera, so 0:11:29.040 --> 0:11:31.960 instead of controlling a camera and getting a video view, 0:11:32.320 --> 0:11:35.800 you were truly getting a virtual environment that you could 0:11:35.840 --> 0:11:38.920 look around. But the sort of Damicles was huge. It 0:11:39.040 --> 0:11:42.320 was very bulky, very heavy. Again, it had to be 0:11:42.360 --> 0:11:44.920 mounted to the ceiling to offset the weight, so that 0:11:45.040 --> 0:11:46.880 meant that it was really limited in what you could 0:11:46.920 --> 0:11:48.840 do with it. Right, It's not like it was a 0:11:48.920 --> 0:11:51.840 portable device that you could just set up anywhere, but 0:11:51.920 --> 0:11:54.640 it did have head tracking technology included, so you could 0:11:54.720 --> 0:11:57.439 turn and look around inside a virtual environment, and again 0:11:57.800 --> 0:12:01.200 that would become a key component for V. Now we're 0:12:01.200 --> 0:12:04.840 gonna skip way ahead, but clearly tons of people were 0:12:04.840 --> 0:12:08.040 innovating in the space and they were generating ideas that 0:12:08.080 --> 0:12:11.400 would find their way into later iterations of VR technology. 0:12:11.520 --> 0:12:14.640 Now at this stage, VR was largely a thing happening 0:12:14.760 --> 0:12:18.439 in research laboratories, and it wasn't something that was reflected 0:12:18.440 --> 0:12:22.479 in consumer products. In fact, the mainstream public remained blissfully 0:12:22.640 --> 0:12:25.520 unaware of virtual reality unless they also happened to be 0:12:25.600 --> 0:12:29.559 science fiction fans, in which case they may have read 0:12:29.679 --> 0:12:33.240 about these concepts relating to VR in various stories and novels, 0:12:33.280 --> 0:12:35.319 but chances are they had never had any first hand 0:12:35.400 --> 0:12:37.840 experience because again, it was mostly in R and D 0:12:38.000 --> 0:12:42.320 departments in various tech companies. Now, one element that would 0:12:42.360 --> 0:12:47.040 become critical for the Virtual Boy itself was its LED display, 0:12:47.120 --> 0:12:50.040 which was somewhat infamous. It was a display that would 0:12:50.040 --> 0:12:54.240 only show red images on a black background. When we 0:12:54.360 --> 0:12:57.640 come back, I will talk about where that idea got 0:12:57.679 --> 0:13:01.720 its start, and it wasn't at Nintendo. But before we 0:13:01.760 --> 0:13:04.680 get into all that, let's take a quick break to 0:13:04.760 --> 0:13:16.880 thank our sponsors. We're back, and before the break, I 0:13:17.040 --> 0:13:21.040 was talking about the Virtual Boys LED display, which would 0:13:21.240 --> 0:13:24.720 show you red images on a black background. Well, that 0:13:24.800 --> 0:13:28.080 all began with an engineer named Alan Becker, who was 0:13:28.120 --> 0:13:31.000 trying to invent a display that would boast a high 0:13:31.000 --> 0:13:34.280 resolution and a suitable amount of brightness. So that you 0:13:34.280 --> 0:13:37.600 could do some computing in an environment, such as if 0:13:37.640 --> 0:13:40.560 you were sitting in an airplane seat, right Like, The 0:13:40.640 --> 0:13:43.520 problem was that a lot of portable computers and I 0:13:43.640 --> 0:13:46.959 used the term lightly because in this time, in the 0:13:47.040 --> 0:13:50.440 nineteen eighties, portable computers were very rare, and they were 0:13:50.600 --> 0:13:53.880 very heavy and bulky and didn't have a very good 0:13:53.880 --> 0:13:56.400 battery life. But if you did happen to have one, 0:13:56.640 --> 0:13:59.880 chances are it was using a liquid crystal display, and 0:14:00.679 --> 0:14:05.280 those weren't necessarily you know, they weren't backlit, so if 0:14:05.320 --> 0:14:08.120 you were in a dimly lit environment, it'd be really 0:14:08.160 --> 0:14:10.640 hard to read anything that was on the screen. So 0:14:10.960 --> 0:14:13.280 what Becker wanted to do was to create a display 0:14:13.440 --> 0:14:18.440 that would be bright, high resolution, and inexpensive to manufacture. 0:14:18.840 --> 0:14:21.280 All of these things were really important if you wanted 0:14:21.320 --> 0:14:26.960 to make a good display that could be a practical product. Obviously, 0:14:27.000 --> 0:14:29.200 if it was really expensive, then you would price yourself 0:14:29.200 --> 0:14:32.440 out of the market. So Becker thought you could use 0:14:32.600 --> 0:14:35.760 LEDs to draw images many times a second and then 0:14:35.880 --> 0:14:38.640 count on the persistence of vision to kind of do 0:14:38.760 --> 0:14:41.040 the rest of the work. And he invented a device 0:14:41.080 --> 0:14:45.640 that used an oscillating mirror to reflect LED images towards 0:14:45.680 --> 0:14:48.320 the viewer, and it worked. He named his invention the 0:14:48.440 --> 0:14:53.560 scanned linear array. A line of these LEDs would do 0:14:53.600 --> 0:14:58.040 all the light. The mirror reflection would essentially draw the 0:14:58.080 --> 0:15:02.160 images in front of your eyes, and it worked, and 0:15:02.240 --> 0:15:05.640 the components he used weren't terribly expensive, So his hope 0:15:05.680 --> 0:15:08.400 was that he could make this something that could be 0:15:08.720 --> 0:15:11.280 put into mass production. But he would need to have 0:15:11.320 --> 0:15:13.960 a partner to be able to do that, because while 0:15:14.120 --> 0:15:18.360 he had invented this technology, he needed to have a 0:15:18.400 --> 0:15:21.800 fully fledged product for it to be something that could 0:15:21.840 --> 0:15:24.720 be sold on the market. So this was just a 0:15:24.920 --> 0:15:30.360 step toward a goal. One of the components that he used, 0:15:30.400 --> 0:15:34.960 one that would become completely linked with Virtual Boy years later, 0:15:35.280 --> 0:15:40.080 were red LEDs. So these were LEDs light emitting diodes 0:15:40.360 --> 0:15:43.880 that only would emit red light. It's not some multicolored 0:15:43.960 --> 0:15:47.400 diode here. And the reason why he used red LEDs, 0:15:47.480 --> 0:15:50.600 why he was restricted to just using red was the 0:15:50.640 --> 0:15:54.240 result of a partnership he formed with a manufacturing company 0:15:54.320 --> 0:15:57.800 that made printers, and the printers that the company made 0:15:58.320 --> 0:16:02.360 used red LEDs, so that's what Becker had access to. 0:16:02.800 --> 0:16:04.960 He could use the same sort of LEDs that were 0:16:04.960 --> 0:16:08.560 found inside this company's printers, and thus his displays could 0:16:08.600 --> 0:16:12.160 only show red light on a black background. And anyone 0:16:12.200 --> 0:16:15.200 who's used a Virtual Boy will be familiar with that 0:16:15.360 --> 0:16:17.960 description because it's very much the same thing you would 0:16:17.960 --> 0:16:20.560 get with a virtual Boy. It had a monochromatic screen 0:16:20.640 --> 0:16:23.880 that could only display red on black. So Becker would 0:16:23.960 --> 0:16:29.000 later start a company called Reflection Technology, thus referencing the 0:16:29.160 --> 0:16:32.120 oscillating mirror in his device, and he would hire on 0:16:32.360 --> 0:16:35.080 other engineers to work with him. And one other thing 0:16:35.160 --> 0:16:38.960 that they created was a much smaller display that, when 0:16:39.000 --> 0:16:42.440 you held it close to your eyes, could replicate a 0:16:42.520 --> 0:16:45.400 much larger display, which is a fancy way of saying 0:16:45.440 --> 0:16:48.120 stuff looks bigger the closer you are to it. So 0:16:48.160 --> 0:16:50.640 if you hold a small display up very close to 0:16:50.680 --> 0:16:53.240 your eyes, you know it still ends up filling up 0:16:53.280 --> 0:16:57.160 most of your visual field. So this too, would be 0:16:57.200 --> 0:17:00.480 an important development for the Virtual Boy. Later on, they 0:17:00.520 --> 0:17:04.080 called this new product Private Eye, and I think that's 0:17:04.080 --> 0:17:07.840 pretty cute. The Private Eye and Becker's innovations would become 0:17:07.920 --> 0:17:10.840 well known in certain tech circles, as the company would 0:17:10.840 --> 0:17:14.000 demonstrate its technology at conferences and such, and it would 0:17:14.080 --> 0:17:17.560 play into the development of stuff like wearable computers, like 0:17:17.600 --> 0:17:21.199 this whole idea of computational systems that don't take the 0:17:21.240 --> 0:17:25.040 traditional form factor of a desktop or laptop. Okay, we're 0:17:25.040 --> 0:17:28.119 going to leave off with reflecting technology for the moment. 0:17:28.160 --> 0:17:30.159 We will come back to them. Let's get back to 0:17:30.200 --> 0:17:33.240 the evolution of VR at the time. So we didn't 0:17:33.280 --> 0:17:37.399 even get the term virtual reality until nineteen eighty seven, 0:17:37.800 --> 0:17:41.199 So this is after reflecting technology has already started to 0:17:41.240 --> 0:17:45.200 innovate in that space. And nineteen eighty seven was when 0:17:45.320 --> 0:17:49.959 a guy named Jarn Lanier, famous in VR circles, proposed 0:17:50.040 --> 0:17:52.439 the phrase, or at the very least elevated its use, 0:17:52.440 --> 0:17:55.560 because there's some who say he didn't coin the term, 0:17:55.680 --> 0:18:00.080 but he popularized the term. Either way, Lanier has a 0:18:00.080 --> 0:18:03.400 lot of the responsibility for VR kind of taking off 0:18:03.480 --> 0:18:07.359 as a concept in the late eighties into the early 0:18:07.560 --> 0:18:11.560 and mid nineties. Okay, now we're going to switch over 0:18:11.600 --> 0:18:14.560 and talk about the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Nintendo 0:18:14.640 --> 0:18:18.760 company for a second, because the NES would actually introduce 0:18:18.800 --> 0:18:23.040 a peripheral that had some VR elements to it, even 0:18:23.040 --> 0:18:25.440 though it ultimately is not a device that was made 0:18:25.440 --> 0:18:28.480 by Nintendo itself. But you know, I've done full episodes 0:18:28.480 --> 0:18:30.760 about Nintendo. We're not going to go over the entire 0:18:30.880 --> 0:18:34.399 history of the company, besides which Nintendo is more than 0:18:34.440 --> 0:18:37.760 a century old. It actually has its origins connected to 0:18:38.440 --> 0:18:41.720 playing cards back in Japan. But the important part for 0:18:41.800 --> 0:18:45.240 our purposes is that Nintendo swept into the home video 0:18:45.280 --> 0:18:47.879 game market at a time when in America at least 0:18:48.359 --> 0:18:50.919 it was in a shambles. That is, the market was 0:18:50.920 --> 0:18:54.119 in a shambles. The early nineteen eighties saw an explosion 0:18:54.200 --> 0:18:57.080 in video game consoles and titles, some of which were 0:18:57.119 --> 0:19:01.680 clearly rush jobs. They were just terrible games or very 0:19:01.720 --> 0:19:05.080 poorly made. The glood of systems and games got dumped 0:19:05.080 --> 0:19:07.640 on a market that just couldn't sustain all that stuff, 0:19:07.760 --> 0:19:11.160 and eventually everything just collapsed sometime around nineteen eighty three, 0:19:11.400 --> 0:19:14.160 and when the dust cleared, companies like Atari, which had 0:19:14.160 --> 0:19:16.960 been a dominant force in home video games, were all 0:19:16.960 --> 0:19:20.160 but obsolete. In the wake of that crash, retailers were 0:19:20.200 --> 0:19:23.800 really wary of carrying another home system, so the general 0:19:23.880 --> 0:19:27.280 wisdom was that consoles were kind of over as a thing, 0:19:27.280 --> 0:19:29.719 at least in North America, and the way the future 0:19:29.840 --> 0:19:33.679 was actually the personal computer. Then we get Nintendo now 0:19:34.119 --> 0:19:38.080 the company had launched its first full video game console system, 0:19:38.119 --> 0:19:41.439 called the Famicom or family computer, back in Japan in 0:19:41.520 --> 0:19:44.520 nineteen eighty three, the same year where video games crashed 0:19:44.600 --> 0:19:48.879 in North America. Nintendo executives had aspirations of entering the 0:19:48.880 --> 0:19:51.800 American market, but they really faced an uphill battle because 0:19:52.040 --> 0:19:54.840 of the disaster that was that video game crash. However, 0:19:54.920 --> 0:19:58.520 in nineteen eighty five, the Nintendo Entertainment System would debut 0:19:58.600 --> 0:20:01.399 in a few test markets to great success and with 0:20:01.480 --> 0:20:05.280 some very clever marketing by Nintendo, which implied the NAEs 0:20:05.480 --> 0:20:08.359 was really, in fact a computer system and not a 0:20:08.440 --> 0:20:12.160 video game console. The very much video game console would 0:20:12.200 --> 0:20:16.600 find itself carried in American stores from late nineteen eighty 0:20:16.600 --> 0:20:22.040 five through the rest of that decade, Nintendo was a powerhouse. 0:20:22.119 --> 0:20:25.439 It was seen as being unbeatable. It helped resurrect the 0:20:25.440 --> 0:20:28.400 home video game market in North America. The company put 0:20:28.440 --> 0:20:31.639 out tons of great games that delighted folks all around 0:20:31.680 --> 0:20:34.080 the world. And so now we're going to skip up 0:20:34.119 --> 0:20:36.760 to nineteen eighty nine. So this is just two years 0:20:36.840 --> 0:20:40.840 after Jaron Lanier had started to popularize the phrase virtual reality, 0:20:41.160 --> 0:20:44.600 and that's when Nintendo introduced a controller peripheral for the 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:49.399 NES called the Power Glove. Now, as the name implies, 0:20:50.000 --> 0:20:52.520 it was a controller that was in a glove or 0:20:52.760 --> 0:20:56.240 gauntlet form factor and on the back of the forearm 0:20:56.280 --> 0:20:59.119 of this clove was a variant of the standard NES 0:20:59.200 --> 0:21:02.360 controller had some extra buttons and stuff on it that 0:21:02.560 --> 0:21:06.159 really complicated the interface. But the idea was that this 0:21:06.280 --> 0:21:10.760 glove could take on specific hand motions and reinterpret those 0:21:10.800 --> 0:21:14.240 as various commands that you could program the glove to 0:21:15.000 --> 0:21:18.520 let you control a video game with your hand without 0:21:18.720 --> 0:21:21.760 having to hold a controller and you know, push the 0:21:21.800 --> 0:21:24.359 direction pad and the buttons and stuff. It was a 0:21:24.359 --> 0:21:26.800 cool concept. I mean, it had a high learning curve 0:21:27.040 --> 0:21:29.600 because just figuring out how to program the thing was 0:21:29.640 --> 0:21:32.240 a bit of a challenge. It also had a really 0:21:32.280 --> 0:21:35.600 cool look depending upon your esthetic, but you know, kind 0:21:35.600 --> 0:21:37.880 of a chunky, science fiction look to it. You can 0:21:38.119 --> 0:21:40.399 easily see pictures of it. If you're not familiar with 0:21:40.480 --> 0:21:42.320 the Power Glove, you can just do a quick search 0:21:42.320 --> 0:21:45.000 and see lots of pictures of the Power Glove. Now, 0:21:45.080 --> 0:21:49.040 the Nintendo itself wasn't responsible for the development of the 0:21:49.080 --> 0:21:52.600 Power Glove. There was another company called the Abrams Gentile 0:21:52.880 --> 0:21:58.240 entertainment or age that developed this device, this peripheral. They 0:21:58.280 --> 0:22:02.480 modeled it after other wearable control systems that were more 0:22:02.840 --> 0:22:07.040 expensive and complicated and had more features that were being 0:22:07.119 --> 0:22:10.000 used in research and development labs, but were not meant 0:22:10.040 --> 0:22:13.840 to be consumer products. So they partnered here in North 0:22:13.880 --> 0:22:17.960 America with Mattel to manufacture the peripheral in the United States. 0:22:18.000 --> 0:22:20.600 There were other companies that would be manufacturers in other 0:22:20.640 --> 0:22:24.199 parts of the world. Obviously, the developers really had to 0:22:24.240 --> 0:22:28.119 reduce the complexity and utility of the form factor in 0:22:28.240 --> 0:22:30.040 order to get the device to a level that could 0:22:30.080 --> 0:22:34.080 be mass produced for a reasonable price. So while it 0:22:34.200 --> 0:22:38.560 was based off similar technologies that were kind of transforming 0:22:38.720 --> 0:22:42.879 virtual reality research and development in various labs, it was 0:22:43.119 --> 0:22:47.560 a much more modest peripheral. Now, the power Glove sold 0:22:47.840 --> 0:22:52.760 pretty well. It wasn't a blockbuster like the Nintendo Entertainment System, 0:22:52.800 --> 0:22:55.119 but it did okay, and I would argue it was 0:22:55.200 --> 0:22:58.080 one element that would elevate the concept of VR among 0:22:58.080 --> 0:23:00.680 the general public, even though the power Glove really meant 0:23:00.680 --> 0:23:03.840 as a replacement for a standard controller and nothing more 0:23:03.880 --> 0:23:06.880 than that. While the sales figures were good for the gadget, 0:23:07.040 --> 0:23:11.199 the reviews were decidedly mixed to negative, which is being kind. 0:23:11.520 --> 0:23:14.560 Though interestingly, folks in the VR space would end up 0:23:14.920 --> 0:23:18.080 using the power Glove devices later in the nineteen nineties 0:23:18.320 --> 0:23:21.840