WEBVTT - The History of Handheld Gaming Part One 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:07.360 Get in touch with technology with text stuff from half 0:00:07.360 --> 0:00:14.960 stuff works dot com. Either we wanted Welcome to tex Stuff. 0:00:15.000 --> 0:00:18.040 I'm Jonathan Strickler and I'm Lauren Vocam, and today we're 0:00:18.079 --> 0:00:21.520 going to take a look at the history of handheld 0:00:21.800 --> 0:00:26.239 video games and electronic games. And it's um, it's a doozy, 0:00:26.320 --> 0:00:29.120 isn't it, Lauren. Yeah. As it turns out, even though 0:00:29.120 --> 0:00:32.080 this has really only been happening for about forty years now, 0:00:32.840 --> 0:00:37.920 there have been many much developments, many different handheld gaming consoles, 0:00:38.000 --> 0:00:40.360 a lot of different things have come out. This is 0:00:40.400 --> 0:00:42.640 definitely going to be a two parter, but in the 0:00:42.720 --> 0:00:48.160 interests of not going into exhaustive detail about too many things, 0:00:48.200 --> 0:00:51.000 we're gonna we're gonna try to keep it snappy. Yeah, 0:00:51.040 --> 0:00:54.320 And also we've we're not going to mention every single 0:00:54.360 --> 0:00:57.560 handheld device that's ever been made, certainly not that would 0:00:57.640 --> 0:01:01.880 be very boring. It would also take like twenty episodes. Yeah, 0:01:01.920 --> 0:01:03.360 and we're going to try to do like like a 0:01:03.400 --> 0:01:06.160 bird's eye view of some of the technology that was involved. 0:01:06.240 --> 0:01:08.600 But um, but we might branch a little bit of 0:01:08.640 --> 0:01:11.119 the more in depth information about that kind of stuff 0:01:11.120 --> 0:01:13.400 off into a different episode in the future, right, right. 0:01:13.480 --> 0:01:16.440 Some of these, like friends instance, the I'm sure you've 0:01:16.440 --> 0:01:19.840 heard of a little obscure handheld device called the game Boy. 0:01:19.959 --> 0:01:22.759 Some of these could be their own episode from start 0:01:22.760 --> 0:01:25.400 to finish, so easily a two part our episode all 0:01:25.400 --> 0:01:27.800 on its own. So we are really kind of giving 0:01:27.840 --> 0:01:31.880 an idea of how the whole how the whole industry developed, 0:01:31.880 --> 0:01:35.240 how it evolved over time. We'll we'll give some technical 0:01:35.280 --> 0:01:37.399 specs here and there, but really this is more of 0:01:37.600 --> 0:01:41.000 a history lesson than anything else. And also we're going 0:01:41.040 --> 0:01:44.840 to go ahead and skip any of the gaming devices 0:01:44.840 --> 0:01:48.360 out there that were specifically made as unlicensed clones of 0:01:48.480 --> 0:01:51.440 other gaming devices, right, that I think would make an 0:01:51.520 --> 0:01:55.840 interesting sub topic, separate topic. But no, we're not going 0:01:55.880 --> 0:01:58.280 to go into every single thing that has come out 0:01:58.320 --> 0:02:02.080 of China illegally past thirty years. Right. And we have 0:02:02.200 --> 0:02:04.200 talked a little bit about these sort of things, like 0:02:04.240 --> 0:02:07.000 in our our episode about smart watches and digital watches, 0:02:07.040 --> 0:02:10.400 we mentioned a couple that were able to play games. 0:02:10.440 --> 0:02:13.080 One of those will pop up in this discussion, so 0:02:13.240 --> 0:02:16.520 spoiler alert. Yeah, And and if you would like to 0:02:16.639 --> 0:02:19.240 check out that episode about digital watches, it was a 0:02:19.240 --> 0:02:23.440 two parter that we recorded back in July called time 0:02:23.480 --> 0:02:27.280 for smart Watches. You can tell that Jonathan titles these episodes. Uh, 0:02:27.600 --> 0:02:30.280 I got a lot of time on my hands, so 0:02:30.320 --> 0:02:33.880 that's what I do. Also, we are going to, uh 0:02:33.919 --> 0:02:36.519 to have to address one other fact, which is that 0:02:37.320 --> 0:02:42.000 in the beginning, these things were primitive, right, I mean, 0:02:42.040 --> 0:02:45.600 these were not like the kind of advanced graphics you 0:02:45.720 --> 0:02:49.720 would expect with a handheld gaming device back in the day, 0:02:49.840 --> 0:02:54.120 which was back in the late seventies. We're talking about 0:02:54.680 --> 0:02:59.400 a blip that you would control two get around, or 0:02:59.600 --> 0:03:04.919 fight or otherwise compete against other blips. Absolutely, I mean, 0:03:04.919 --> 0:03:09.360 this is the digital equivalent of monkeys banging bones on 0:03:09.400 --> 0:03:11.640 the card. Yeah, it's pretty much like just kind of 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:14.320 the the You know, everyone has to start somewhere, right, 0:03:14.600 --> 0:03:17.000 So if you want to be specific and say, well, 0:03:17.000 --> 0:03:19.520 what was the first handheld game? And keep in mind 0:03:19.600 --> 0:03:22.840 these games were coming into prominence around the same time 0:03:23.200 --> 0:03:28.040 as arcades becoming popular and also home video game consoles 0:03:28.120 --> 0:03:30.440 becoming popular. But here's the thing about a home video 0:03:30.440 --> 0:03:34.360 game console, Lauren, It's not easy to carry around with you. No, 0:03:34.520 --> 0:03:38.960 especially not in that day when miniaturization was not so 0:03:39.080 --> 0:03:41.640 much a thing yet. Yeah, especially since uh, I mean 0:03:42.120 --> 0:03:44.720 you don't want to carry a TV, especially in nineteen 0:03:44.800 --> 0:03:47.560 seventies TV around with you wherever you go, so you 0:03:47.560 --> 0:03:49.680 can play this game. So these were these were a 0:03:49.680 --> 0:03:52.840 good alternative for people who wanted to have something on 0:03:52.880 --> 0:03:55.480 the go, especially I'll tell you the best use case 0:03:55.600 --> 0:03:57.920 I know of parents who want to get their kids 0:03:57.960 --> 0:04:00.680 to shut up on long road trips. Exactly what I 0:04:00.720 --> 0:04:05.040 was about to say. So, what was the very first 0:04:05.680 --> 0:04:10.240 handheld electronic game that we know of? Uh? It was 0:04:10.320 --> 0:04:13.440 actually by Mattel, which is crazy to me. And and 0:04:13.480 --> 0:04:16.839 it was MATEL Electronics Auto Race yep. And in fact, 0:04:16.880 --> 0:04:19.799 there are several different games that came out from Mattel. 0:04:19.839 --> 0:04:22.240 We'll talk about another one in just a second. Uh. 0:04:22.279 --> 0:04:25.120 And some people get the order a little mixed up. 0:04:25.160 --> 0:04:27.560 But if you were to get hold of one of 0:04:27.600 --> 0:04:31.240 these original handheld devices, and there are still some out 0:04:31.240 --> 0:04:34.040 there on eBay, and you know, collectors love these things. 0:04:34.080 --> 0:04:39.720 On the back copyright nine and uh, it packed a wallop. 0:04:39.800 --> 0:04:44.560 It had five hundred and twelve bytes of memory. That's 0:04:44.560 --> 0:04:48.240 a whole half. Yeah, that's that's what it had to 0:04:48.360 --> 0:04:51.279 work with. If you were to look at a model 0:04:51.320 --> 0:04:53.120 of these, We'll try and get some pictures together so 0:04:53.160 --> 0:04:55.040 that we can share them on social at some point. 0:04:55.080 --> 0:04:57.440 But this one in particular, it looks kind of like 0:04:57.440 --> 0:05:00.520 a big plastic brick that has, you know, some switches 0:05:00.920 --> 0:05:03.599 and a little slider control on it. And if you 0:05:03.640 --> 0:05:05.359 were to look at the brick and look at the 0:05:05.360 --> 0:05:07.760 the say the upper right hand side of the brick, 0:05:08.279 --> 0:05:11.760 there's a vertical strip that goes down that side. That 0:05:11.800 --> 0:05:16.320 would be three quote unquote lanes of traffic. And so 0:05:16.680 --> 0:05:19.200 you were your job was to drive a car, which 0:05:19.200 --> 0:05:21.960 in this case was a little red blip, and that 0:05:22.040 --> 0:05:25.560 car would gradually move up this vertical strip on that 0:05:25.720 --> 0:05:28.640 right side of the game console um and then these 0:05:28.640 --> 0:05:32.320 other smaller red blips would be coming down the lanes. 0:05:32.400 --> 0:05:36.159 Those represented oncoming traffic, and your job was to steer 0:05:36.240 --> 0:05:38.719 between those blips to try and get to the top 0:05:38.760 --> 0:05:41.760 of your that little thin strip on the right side, 0:05:42.200 --> 0:05:44.120 and then you would reappear at the bottom. And you 0:05:44.120 --> 0:05:45.880 had to do this four times. If you could get 0:05:45.920 --> 0:05:48.080 all the way to the top four times, you made 0:05:48.120 --> 0:05:52.279 four quote unquote laps, and your score was how many 0:05:52.360 --> 0:05:54.360 seconds it took you to get there, So a lower 0:05:54.400 --> 0:05:57.640 score was better, And in fact, it had some other 0:05:57.800 --> 0:06:00.480 sophisticated controls. It had start and rees at but it 0:06:00.520 --> 0:06:02.599 was really on and off. And then I had a 0:06:02.640 --> 0:06:05.760 gear switch which was gears one through four, which really 0:06:05.800 --> 0:06:08.720 just meant that's how fast the oncoming blips would come 0:06:08.760 --> 0:06:11.320 at you. You know, the higher the gear, the faster 0:06:11.400 --> 0:06:14.279 they would approach. And I actually watched the video of 0:06:14.320 --> 0:06:17.159 a guy saying, here's the strategy to this game. You 0:06:17.200 --> 0:06:20.279 position your thumb so that you do an upward motion 0:06:20.560 --> 0:06:24.279 that hits on and then immediately switches the gears from 0:06:24.320 --> 0:06:26.120 one to four because you couldn't just start in four, 0:06:26.160 --> 0:06:29.080 you had to start in one. So if you could 0:06:29.080 --> 0:06:32.440 do it at one smooth motion, then you would immediately 0:06:32.440 --> 0:06:34.440 be in that fourth gear going as fast as you 0:06:34.480 --> 0:06:36.960 possibly can, and that's how you would cut down on 0:06:37.040 --> 0:06:40.280 your on your time. And they were making like times 0:06:40.279 --> 0:06:42.960 of thirty five or forty seconds and saying, I'm really 0:06:43.000 --> 0:06:46.200 bad at this game. And I'm thinking, you know, it's 0:06:46.200 --> 0:06:49.840 a simple premise, but I don't think I don't have 0:06:49.880 --> 0:06:52.920 the reflexes. Oh sure, sure that sounds like like my 0:06:53.279 --> 0:06:58.240 horror version of Frogger. Um. Yeah, this the entire display 0:06:58.360 --> 0:07:01.919 was just red led. And if you're thinking that this 0:07:02.000 --> 0:07:04.680 sounds like, well, that's only one game. How is this 0:07:04.880 --> 0:07:08.159 a a portable gaming system. A lot of these early 0:07:08.240 --> 0:07:12.200 ones were a single game per system. Yeah yeah, And 0:07:12.280 --> 0:07:16.320 just like the earliest game consoles for your home television set, 0:07:16.680 --> 0:07:20.280 like the Odessey that was essentially Pong, might be might 0:07:20.320 --> 0:07:23.200 be like ten different versions of Pong, but they're all 0:07:23.280 --> 0:07:26.200 ultimately palm. Yeah. And and it was just hard coded 0:07:26.200 --> 0:07:29.480 directly onto the computer system, and that was all it 0:07:29.520 --> 0:07:33.720 would ever do. Now, nineteen seven marks the debut of 0:07:33.760 --> 0:07:37.480 a second game from Mattel Electronics. And this is one 0:07:37.560 --> 0:07:41.920 that I've actually played. I don't know if I owned 0:07:41.920 --> 0:07:44.040 it or not, because you're talking about a time in 0:07:44.040 --> 0:07:46.720 my childhood when I was quite young and Lauren didn't 0:07:46.760 --> 0:07:51.240 exist yet I did not. So this is Mattel Electronics Football, 0:07:51.720 --> 0:07:54.320 one of the really popular games. Effect so popular that 0:07:54.320 --> 0:07:57.760 they made a sequel called wait for it, Football Too, 0:07:58.440 --> 0:08:01.360 And it had six control buttons, and again you would 0:08:01.440 --> 0:08:04.560 control a little red dot that represented a football player 0:08:04.560 --> 0:08:07.960 and you had to try and work your way across 0:08:08.000 --> 0:08:10.720 the yardage the massive amount of yardage by that, I 0:08:10.760 --> 0:08:15.280 mean nine yards to try and score against the other team. 0:08:15.400 --> 0:08:18.480 And um, it was interesting because there was a great 0:08:18.520 --> 0:08:21.840 interview with one of the guys who was behind the 0:08:21.880 --> 0:08:23.800 building of these things that I ran across, and he 0:08:23.840 --> 0:08:27.160 was talking about why the football players like little bitty 0:08:27.200 --> 0:08:30.520 red dashes. Everything in that day looked like little bitty 0:08:30.520 --> 0:08:34.520 red dashes. It's because they were using calculator microprocessors, and 0:08:34.520 --> 0:08:37.240 in fact, those processors are designed to show things like 0:08:37.320 --> 0:08:40.960 little digital numbers, right, So so those dots were like 0:08:41.080 --> 0:08:44.400 the segment of a number. Yeah, specifically the number eight. 0:08:44.920 --> 0:08:48.000 So yes, you were actually playing as a segment of 0:08:48.080 --> 0:08:51.080 the number eight, and you were going up against other 0:08:51.120 --> 0:08:55.640 segments of the number eight, and uh yeah. Eventually, uh 0:08:55.960 --> 0:09:00.319 Mattel would end up contracting with a company called National Semiconductor, which, 0:09:00.360 --> 0:09:02.079 of you've been listening to tech stuff for a long time, 0:09:02.080 --> 0:09:04.640 you've heard us talk about that company, and it was 0:09:04.720 --> 0:09:07.920 to get sea Moss chips rather than old calculator chips. 0:09:08.120 --> 0:09:11.160 And then they contracted with another company called Rockwell International 0:09:11.200 --> 0:09:15.359 to do the actual hard coding programming onto those chips. 0:09:15.400 --> 0:09:19.120 So that's where they started to uh kind of make 0:09:19.320 --> 0:09:23.160 more advanced versions of these early games. Now these games 0:09:23.640 --> 0:09:28.720 were not exactly um well, they had some trouble early on. 0:09:28.840 --> 0:09:33.160 See the agreement here was between Mattel and the department 0:09:33.240 --> 0:09:36.920 store Sears, right, and Sears completely doubted that they were 0:09:36.960 --> 0:09:40.120 going to be popular and therefore halted production at only 0:09:40.200 --> 0:09:43.160 a hundred thousand units. Yep. But it turned out that 0:09:43.240 --> 0:09:48.880 Sears had grossly underestimated the demand for home you know, 0:09:49.080 --> 0:09:53.679 portable electronic games, and they were so popular. Sears immediately 0:09:53.760 --> 0:09:57.440 realized they had made the wrong decision. So by mid 0:09:57.520 --> 0:10:00.640 January of nineteen seventy eight, Now keep in mind Football 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:03.360 came out in nineteen seven, so these things have been 0:10:03.360 --> 0:10:04.960 on the market for a couple of years. Yeah, yeah, 0:10:05.040 --> 0:10:07.360 just kind of stagnating exactly. And it wasn't really It's 0:10:07.440 --> 0:10:09.280 one of those things where no one was really sure 0:10:09.280 --> 0:10:11.960 how to market them, and but now they were taking off. 0:10:12.000 --> 0:10:15.160 So by mid January night, Sear said they wanted two 0:10:15.200 --> 0:10:19.600 hundred thousand units per week, not not a hundred thousand total, 0:10:19.600 --> 0:10:22.680 two hundred thousand every week. And then by February they said, 0:10:22.720 --> 0:10:26.400 you know, we were wrong, five hundred thousand per week. 0:10:27.080 --> 0:10:30.480 So Mattel said, huh, I think we know how to 0:10:30.520 --> 0:10:33.480 make money now. Yeah. That's when they started producing a 0:10:33.559 --> 0:10:36.880 whole bunch of different games that sequel football to um 0:10:36.960 --> 0:10:40.760 and also like armor Attack, sub Chase, missile attack. Um, 0:10:40.800 --> 0:10:42.920 I think there was a Dungeons and Dragons game there was. 0:10:43.200 --> 0:10:46.120 I took a look at it. It was, you know, again, 0:10:46.200 --> 0:10:49.560 fairly primitive. Now now, at this point they were starting 0:10:49.559 --> 0:10:52.599 to work not just with l e ED displays, but 0:10:52.679 --> 0:10:56.840 also l c D displays, liquid crystal displays. So this 0:10:56.920 --> 0:10:58.720 is what a lot of you if you've ever had 0:10:58.760 --> 0:11:02.760 one of those little handheld games, maybe it was licensed 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:05.680 after an existing arcade game or a cartoon or movie 0:11:05.760 --> 0:11:08.280 or something you're probably familiar with. These are also the 0:11:08.280 --> 0:11:10.880 ones that you would see on watches a lot of times. Uh, 0:11:11.200 --> 0:11:15.959 super cheap to produce, very limited in their animation, very 0:11:15.960 --> 0:11:19.240 limited in what they could actually display, but still compared 0:11:19.280 --> 0:11:21.920 to a little blip on an l e ED screen 0:11:22.000 --> 0:11:26.800 just a little dot, incredibly sophisticated and much less eye bleedy. 0:11:27.920 --> 0:11:31.599 LED displays tend to give me a terrible headache. Yeah 0:11:31.240 --> 0:11:34.920 I can't at that rate. I also just have nightmares. 0:11:35.080 --> 0:11:39.200 Remember remembering the sound effects from football and football too, 0:11:39.240 --> 0:11:43.360 and yeah, they're they're they're not all pleasant memories. But yeah, 0:11:43.480 --> 0:11:45.560 nineteen seventy nine, that's when we see the first like 0:11:46.160 --> 0:11:49.920 mate looks I was amazed to learn that this particular 0:11:49.960 --> 0:11:54.520 technology goes all the way back to ninety nine, right, 0:11:54.640 --> 0:11:58.880 and we're talking now about rom cartridges. Yeah, so keep 0:11:58.880 --> 0:12:01.800 in mind those games we us talked about, like Laurence said, 0:12:01.880 --> 0:12:04.920 they were hard coded. You could not change those games out. 0:12:05.000 --> 0:12:08.200 What you bought was what you bought. But that was 0:12:08.280 --> 0:12:11.600 not the way of the future. Milton Bradley Company, Yeah, 0:12:11.640 --> 0:12:14.439 one of the one of the competitors of Mattel, especially 0:12:14.440 --> 0:12:17.040 at the time and in the gaming or not gaming 0:12:17.080 --> 0:12:22.640 but board industry, right, produced this thing called the Microvision. Right, 0:12:22.760 --> 0:12:25.680 so they decided we're gonna do something similar to what 0:12:25.800 --> 0:12:28.360 some of the home video game consoles were starting to do, 0:12:28.440 --> 0:12:32.720 like the Atari system was was doing this creating a 0:12:32.760 --> 0:12:36.040 system that could play cartridges, so you could switch out 0:12:36.160 --> 0:12:39.160 what game you were playing. So now you weren't buying 0:12:39.360 --> 0:12:42.480 a single game, you were buying a platform upon which 0:12:42.520 --> 0:12:44.280 to play games, which is the way most of us 0:12:44.320 --> 0:12:47.079 are familiar with games today, right. I mean, when I 0:12:47.120 --> 0:12:49.360 go out and buy a game system, I expect I'm 0:12:49.360 --> 0:12:51.439 going to play more than just one game, more than 0:12:51.480 --> 0:12:54.720 just the Xbox at any rate. So this Microvision had 0:12:54.920 --> 0:12:58.080 a a monochrome l C D which was a a 0:12:58.320 --> 0:13:02.439 screaming big as six team a sixteen pixel yeah resolution. Yeah, 0:13:02.520 --> 0:13:04.800 I mean at that resolution, you just you could pick 0:13:04.840 --> 0:13:10.559 out every single detail on that block that was um Also, 0:13:10.640 --> 0:13:13.520 it had a pad on it that had nine sections 0:13:13.720 --> 0:13:17.600 of interactivity on it, which was which you didn't you 0:13:17.600 --> 0:13:20.600 didn't actually just use the naked pad. That's not how 0:13:20.640 --> 0:13:23.640 this game worked, right. That the cartridges that snapped in 0:13:23.679 --> 0:13:26.160 and out of the game would include their own buttons 0:13:26.240 --> 0:13:29.240 to overlay on top of that path exactly. So you 0:13:29.280 --> 0:13:32.360 can think of the cartridges as being half cartridge half case, 0:13:32.920 --> 0:13:35.120 and then you would pop the case open and put 0:13:35.160 --> 0:13:36.839 a new case on it in order to play a 0:13:36.880 --> 0:13:39.200 new game. That would also include overlays, which were a 0:13:39.280 --> 0:13:42.600 big thing back in the seventies and eighties, which would 0:13:43.440 --> 0:13:47.319 increase the playability by giving you would have a different, 0:13:47.559 --> 0:13:51.199 um superficial layer on top of the game. So it's 0:13:51.240 --> 0:13:53.920 permanent because it's an overlay, it's doesn't change at all, 0:13:54.240 --> 0:13:58.120 but it gives the games a certain personality, uh yeah, 0:13:58.120 --> 0:14:00.920 and also would cut down on the that the processor 0:14:00.960 --> 0:14:03.440 would have to do. You know, you give you more 0:14:03.559 --> 0:14:06.560 space to to play with your little blips and blobs, 0:14:08.200 --> 0:14:11.000 and the system itself did have a little built in 0:14:11.080 --> 0:14:13.920 analog control knobs so that you could have some some 0:14:14.000 --> 0:14:17.040 basic functionality without using the other buttons, or in addition 0:14:17.080 --> 0:14:20.000 to the other buttons that any particular game would come with. Yeah, 0:14:20.040 --> 0:14:22.600 and I see here. I didn't actually see that this 0:14:22.640 --> 0:14:24.760 note that you had added until just now. But I 0:14:24.800 --> 0:14:28.160 love the site. This, this little this little caveat about 0:14:28.200 --> 0:14:31.200 how it had serious electronics problems, including a lack of 0:14:31.240 --> 0:14:35.160 proper Faraday installation, which means that aesthetic charge could render 0:14:35.200 --> 0:14:39.160 your microvision inoperable, basically useless, or or at least permanently 0:14:39.240 --> 0:14:41.280 damaged in a way that it would never come back 0:14:41.320 --> 0:14:43.320 from the same same sort of idea that when you're 0:14:43.320 --> 0:14:45.520 putting together a computer, you want to make sure that 0:14:45.600 --> 0:14:49.520 you discharge you Yeah, so the same which makes sense 0:14:49.520 --> 0:14:52.160 because when you took the cartridge off, then you have 0:14:52.200 --> 0:14:56.160 a naked platform. Yeah, so that would be um yeah, 0:14:56.240 --> 0:15:00.040 good good tip, thanks Lauren. Yeah, and that's the It 0:15:00.160 --> 0:15:02.400 is probably one of the reasons why, even though the 0:15:02.400 --> 0:15:06.160 system was moderately popular, Milton Bradley did stop producing it 0:15:06.240 --> 0:15:11.080 only two or three years later. Furthermore, only thirteen games 0:15:11.160 --> 0:15:14.680 were ever produced for the Microvision. Wait A minute, I 0:15:14.720 --> 0:15:18.240 only could find twelve games that my look, oh one 0:15:18.280 --> 0:15:21.640 was only available in European markets, correct, which is a 0:15:21.680 --> 0:15:25.480 pretty common weird wiggie thing that happens, especially in these 0:15:25.480 --> 0:15:28.720 early days, although although still modernly like like, different games 0:15:28.720 --> 0:15:31.720 and different systems will only be available in Europe, or 0:15:31.760 --> 0:15:36.840 in the US or in Japan, really frequently only in Japan. Yeah, yeah, 0:15:36.880 --> 0:15:39.400 you'll get you'll get entire systems that are available only 0:15:39.440 --> 0:15:41.840 in a single region. But even within the ones that 0:15:42.040 --> 0:15:45.440 span multiple regions. There are some titles. Sometimes game publishers 0:15:45.440 --> 0:15:47.680 say this title is never going to do well in 0:15:48.040 --> 0:15:52.320 X country for why reasons, right, and until basically these days, 0:15:52.360 --> 0:15:54.640 the Internet proves them wrong and someone actually spends the 0:15:54.680 --> 0:15:59.240 money to port it over. Yeah, pirated, well more likely that, right. 0:15:59.600 --> 0:16:02.400 So by by now we're getting right into the very 0:16:02.720 --> 0:16:05.600 beginning of the eighties, and that's when we start seeing 0:16:05.720 --> 0:16:09.120 l c D technology becoming so cheap that uh that 0:16:09.360 --> 0:16:11.560 LED displays become kind of a thing of the past. So, 0:16:11.920 --> 0:16:15.160 you know, company has already been kind of experimenting with it, 0:16:16.080 --> 0:16:18.760 but now it was something that they could do without 0:16:19.080 --> 0:16:24.440 having to charge huge amounts of money for relatively limited devices. 0:16:24.480 --> 0:16:28.200 So we start seeing better displays and fewer of those 0:16:28.200 --> 0:16:31.520 little blip ones, which by the way, are still treasured 0:16:31.560 --> 0:16:36.480 by collectors. Miniaturization was also reaching the point that we 0:16:36.480 --> 0:16:39.320 were seeing I mean, it was a lot cheaper to 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:43.480 produce things, and uh yeah, and and it also meant 0:16:43.520 --> 0:16:46.200 that we could make smaller and smaller things, so you 0:16:46.240 --> 0:16:48.920 no longer had this giant, bulky brick for everything, at 0:16:48.960 --> 0:16:51.800 least not anything that was basic. And it even led 0:16:51.880 --> 0:16:54.440 to one of the things we're gonna talk about in 0:16:54.480 --> 0:16:59.240 just a second, the the infamous digital watch games. So 0:16:59.600 --> 0:17:01.440 something you've got to keep in mind is that this 0:17:01.520 --> 0:17:04.359 is the this is the era where everybody got into this. 0:17:04.440 --> 0:17:09.320 Mattel had shown they had struck gold with this idea. Also, consoles, 0:17:09.359 --> 0:17:12.800 home consoles were very popular at this time, so so 0:17:12.840 --> 0:17:15.200 it was a huge industry. Everyone was saying, we gotta 0:17:15.240 --> 0:17:18.000 get in on this. So here's just a quick list 0:17:18.040 --> 0:17:20.320 and not even an exhaustive list, but a quick list 0:17:20.320 --> 0:17:24.480 of some some game companies that got really famous for 0:17:24.600 --> 0:17:27.720 the handheld devices they produced. And you're probably gonna recognize 0:17:27.720 --> 0:17:35.080 some of these names. Acclaim, Atari, Bondai, cass Eo, Colico, Galube, Kinner, Konami, Namki, 0:17:35.200 --> 0:17:38.320 Parker Brothers, Tandy, Texas Instruments, Tighter, and many many more. 0:17:38.680 --> 0:17:41.119 I like that was alphabetized. Yeah, well I took it 0:17:41.160 --> 0:17:43.120 from an alphabetized list and I was too lazy to 0:17:43.160 --> 0:17:46.720 mix them up. Uh. In nineteen eighty, that's when we 0:17:46.760 --> 0:17:49.760 get the Casio game ten, which was one of the 0:17:49.800 --> 0:17:52.760 watches we mentioned I believe in our Digital Watch smart 0:17:52.760 --> 0:17:56.399 Watch episodes. Yeah, it was the first video game watch. 0:17:56.920 --> 0:17:59.359 It had a version of space invaders, yes, and it 0:17:59.400 --> 0:18:01.680 was like three lines of dashes that you could shoot 0:18:01.680 --> 0:18:04.600 with your little dot. But again you use buttons on 0:18:04.640 --> 0:18:07.760 the side of the watch to control your your little 0:18:07.960 --> 0:18:10.960 your little ship and fight off against these space invaders, 0:18:10.960 --> 0:18:13.240 which again were just sort of dashes. Oh and also 0:18:13.400 --> 0:18:17.480 very important it also told the time. Yes. Important side 0:18:17.480 --> 0:18:23.440 note about this watch. Um. Also in Nintendo started releasing 0:18:23.440 --> 0:18:27.919 this entire series of of hard coded handheld video games 0:18:27.920 --> 0:18:31.080 called called Game and Watch, and the very first one 0:18:31.560 --> 0:18:36.440 was Ball Yeah really fancy. Yeah. You played as a juggler, 0:18:36.480 --> 0:18:40.439 which I appreciate being a juggler myself. Um. And the object, 0:18:40.520 --> 0:18:43.200 of course was to keep multiple objects in the air 0:18:43.280 --> 0:18:45.280 and not let any of them drop. And you had 0:18:45.520 --> 0:18:49.399 two controls which essentially controlled the juggler's arms arms. Okay, 0:18:49.520 --> 0:18:51.160 and that's one other thing I was going to mention 0:18:51.200 --> 0:18:54.080 also was that these hard coded games. You may wonder, 0:18:54.320 --> 0:18:57.240 how did they stick around long after we started getting 0:18:57.240 --> 0:18:59.720 these cartridge bass systems. One of the ways they stuck 0:18:59.760 --> 0:19:03.040 around on is that they could have specific controls for 0:19:03.119 --> 0:19:06.479 that game that are unique, you know, not just your 0:19:06.480 --> 0:19:09.520 little direction pad and buttons. Sure you and you don't 0:19:09.520 --> 0:19:12.040 have to recode the buttons for it every time that 0:19:12.080 --> 0:19:13.680 you want to play a different game or learn a 0:19:13.720 --> 0:19:17.680 new controller schematic. It's just that thing specialized. So it's 0:19:18.000 --> 0:19:20.159 very specific. Yeah. So that way it ended up filling 0:19:20.160 --> 0:19:23.720 a niche that your generic, you know, cartridge based systems 0:19:23.720 --> 0:19:26.119 couldn't because the game control is always going to be 0:19:26.160 --> 0:19:29.560 the same unless you buy some sort of crazy peripheral 0:19:29.600 --> 0:19:32.320 that can also plug into it. Anyway, the game and 0:19:32.400 --> 0:19:36.640 Watch series was incredibly popular. They produced sixty different games 0:19:36.760 --> 0:19:39.960 under that brand. Only one of those was one you 0:19:40.000 --> 0:19:42.000 could not buy. It was actually a prize who had 0:19:42.040 --> 0:19:43.880 to win it in a in a contest type thing, 0:19:44.160 --> 0:19:47.479 uh and um. And they would release several different models 0:19:47.480 --> 0:19:53.120 of these over the years. Eventually starting they started releasing 0:19:53.160 --> 0:19:56.440 games that had two screens set up in this clamshell 0:19:56.560 --> 0:20:00.199 kind of thing that looks bloody exactly like the Nintendo DS. 0:20:00.240 --> 0:20:01.760 It really does. And you know, you look at this 0:20:01.840 --> 0:20:04.600 and you're like, huh. All the way back in two 0:20:04.680 --> 0:20:07.600 they had this idea and uh, and it was you know, 0:20:07.720 --> 0:20:09.800 it was one of those that ended up really paying 0:20:09.800 --> 0:20:11.800 off down the line. So they had a lot of 0:20:11.800 --> 0:20:15.200 different models, a lot of different designs. Um they also 0:20:15.600 --> 0:20:18.720 they're under different names, like you have the Silver, uh, 0:20:18.800 --> 0:20:21.840 you have the Gold, Uh, you had the multi screen, 0:20:22.280 --> 0:20:25.200 et cetera. And then he had tabletop and the tabletop. 0:20:25.240 --> 0:20:28.800 They introduced those in three. They look like teeny tiny 0:20:29.080 --> 0:20:33.160 arcade machines. So I had a friend who had pac Man. 0:20:33.280 --> 0:20:35.480 I think it was either Pac Man or Donkey Kong, 0:20:36.000 --> 0:20:37.760 one of the two. But it looks like a little 0:20:37.760 --> 0:20:41.560 mature arcade captain. It was probably Donkey Kong now I 0:20:41.560 --> 0:20:43.800 think about because it's a Nintendo. So yeah, look like 0:20:43.800 --> 0:20:46.640 a tiny little arcade machines. So it's really a tabletop, 0:20:46.680 --> 0:20:49.840 not so much a handheld, but you could have held 0:20:49.880 --> 0:20:51.240 it in your hands. You just wouldn't be able to 0:20:51.280 --> 0:20:55.359 control both the joystick and the buttons very easily. But um, 0:20:55.400 --> 0:20:57.199 but it was you know, and again one of those 0:20:57.240 --> 0:20:59.760 they only produced four, So Donkey Kong Jr. That's the 0:20:59.800 --> 0:21:01.800 one was because they didn't do Pacman. It was Donkey 0:21:01.840 --> 0:21:08.440 Kong Jr. Snoopy, Mario's Cement Factory, and Popeye. So um yeah, 0:21:08.480 --> 0:21:13.280 mostly notable because they had this very evocative form factor. Unfortunately, 0:21:13.320 --> 0:21:16.080 in three that that was also the year that the 0:21:16.200 --> 0:21:20.119 video game console industry crashed. Yeah, if we all know 0:21:20.200 --> 0:21:23.760 the story, you know, the market was flooded with with 0:21:23.880 --> 0:21:27.320 game games and game systems that ranged in quality from 0:21:27.359 --> 0:21:31.439 pretty good to abysmal. And unfortunately, there were a lot 0:21:31.520 --> 0:21:36.160 of the abysmal category, uh, including the infamous pac Man, 0:21:36.160 --> 0:21:40.200 Atari Port and the e T the Extraterrestrial game. So 0:21:40.600 --> 0:21:44.760 it ended up crashing that that whole industry. However, handheld 0:21:44.760 --> 0:21:48.280 games fared better than the video game consoles did one 0:21:48.359 --> 0:21:52.040 because they're less expensive and too they fulfill a different 0:21:52.600 --> 0:21:58.080 need than the home video game console. Absolutely so very interesting. 0:21:58.160 --> 0:22:00.800 And then we also saw at this time some experimentation 0:22:01.160 --> 0:22:04.920 with cartridge based systems, similar to what Microvision had tried. 0:22:05.600 --> 0:22:08.800 They included game systems like the Intexts Select a game 0:22:09.119 --> 0:22:11.480 which I think only had five or six game titles 0:22:11.560 --> 0:22:15.679 ever come out, the v Tech Variety, Palm Text, super Micro, 0:22:16.160 --> 0:22:20.240 and the Epoch game pocket Computer. And if you haven't 0:22:20.280 --> 0:22:23.119