WEBVTT - How the Nintendo Entertainment System Changed Gaming Forever 0:00:01.440 --> 0:00:04.240 Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:13.520 Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and 0:00:13.560 --> 0:00:16.720 there's Chuck and Weird ten years old right now, and 0:00:16.760 --> 0:00:20.880 this is stuff you should know. Can I go ahead 0:00:20.920 --> 0:00:25.440 and admit something? Oh? Yes, I'm nervous though, but yes, 0:00:25.520 --> 0:00:29.280 go ahead. Well, I was a little bit old for 0:00:29.440 --> 0:00:34.200 Nintendo the ANYS system. Uh. And that's not to say 0:00:34.200 --> 0:00:36.960 that kids my age weren't playing it, but like it 0:00:37.080 --> 0:00:39.680 really booned in popularity right when I was sort of 0:00:39.680 --> 0:00:43.479 like fifteen sixteen and starting to sort of drive and 0:00:43.520 --> 0:00:47.200 get out in the world. Uh. And I also did 0:00:47.240 --> 0:00:51.200 not own one, so like I never played Mario Kart 0:00:51.360 --> 0:00:57.000 and Zelda and sort of these classic games. Uh. Eventually 0:00:57.200 --> 0:00:59.640 in college, I remember it had to have been a 0:00:59.720 --> 0:01:04.800 Super Nintendo and like my roommate had one, so that's 0:01:04.800 --> 0:01:09.440 where I first started playing Super Mario World. And I 0:01:09.520 --> 0:01:12.200 played stuff like Tetris and Mario and the game Boy 0:01:13.440 --> 0:01:16.000 that my brother had. But I was I've never owned 0:01:16.040 --> 0:01:19.920 a Nintendo. Well, I can tell you that Nintendo came 0:01:19.920 --> 0:01:23.000 out and I was ten eleven years old, not driving yet, 0:01:23.600 --> 0:01:27.280 and it was and I owned one too, so it 0:01:27.400 --> 0:01:30.840 was definitely in my Wheelhouse. Yeah. I mean later in college, 0:01:30.880 --> 0:01:34.479 my um my good friend Clay got a the first 0:01:34.480 --> 0:01:38.120 PlayStation and that's where we started going with Street Fighter 0:01:38.160 --> 0:01:41.680 and Mortal Kombat. And then I got on the PlayStation train. 0:01:41.800 --> 0:01:44.280 But it's just funny reading through this. I was like, 0:01:44.440 --> 0:01:45.920 I played some of these games here and there, but 0:01:45.959 --> 0:01:49.280 I was not Nintendo kid. Yeah, I have to say 0:01:49.280 --> 0:01:51.960 I jumped from Nintendo. I never had a Super Nintendo 0:01:52.040 --> 0:01:54.440 or Sike of Genesis, but I have friends who had those. 0:01:54.960 --> 0:01:58.160 Um went off into the End sixty four world with 0:01:58.240 --> 0:02:01.360 the Golden Eye played back right. My friend John had 0:02:01.360 --> 0:02:03.280 one of those, and I played a lot of that. 0:02:03.280 --> 0:02:05.320 That was so great. And then I got the first 0:02:05.320 --> 0:02:10.040 PlayStation two, the first PlayStation I mean, not to be confusing. Um. 0:02:10.080 --> 0:02:13.440 And at that point I realized that I was thinking 0:02:13.480 --> 0:02:16.280 about how to play games while I was not playing games, 0:02:16.320 --> 0:02:19.240 like when I was just walking around living life. And 0:02:19.320 --> 0:02:21.799 I made a decision, a very faithful decision that I've 0:02:21.840 --> 0:02:24.640 never regretted, that I was going to give up video 0:02:24.639 --> 0:02:27.400 games because I was too addicted to them. This is 0:02:27.639 --> 0:02:30.720 this was college and I it was I never looked back. Wow, 0:02:30.800 --> 0:02:33.520 so you were into him, huh? I was big time 0:02:33.520 --> 0:02:35.760 into him. Yeah, it was. It was like, this is 0:02:36.160 --> 0:02:39.840 if it's reaching out from beyond the time I'm playing it, 0:02:39.960 --> 0:02:41.880 then yes, I was a little too into him, if 0:02:41.880 --> 0:02:44.040 you ask me. I was never a gamer or anything 0:02:44.040 --> 0:02:46.560 like that. I just really enjoyed playing games. Maybe a 0:02:46.600 --> 0:02:49.760 little too much in your favor, uh, in your defense, Rather, 0:02:49.800 --> 0:02:52.720 I would say that I think everyone who's ever played 0:02:52.720 --> 0:02:56.000 like Tetris has Tetris dreams and sees the world as 0:02:56.040 --> 0:03:00.480 like Tetris boards occasionally if you're into it. Yeah, uh, 0:03:00.520 --> 0:03:01.880 and you know my deal is that, you know I 0:03:01.919 --> 0:03:05.960 said before, as I was heavy Atari kid, big time 0:03:06.040 --> 0:03:09.040 arcade kid, and then played this kind of stuff with 0:03:09.120 --> 0:03:12.200 friends here and there, and then now every year I'll 0:03:12.280 --> 0:03:14.120 usually or every couple of years, I'll get two or 0:03:14.160 --> 0:03:17.320 three PlayStation games, play him obsessively for a couple of months, 0:03:17.320 --> 0:03:20.360 and then it sits for nine months to a year. Yeah, 0:03:20.760 --> 0:03:22.680 I'm with ye. I think that's healthy. That's a healthy 0:03:22.680 --> 0:03:25.000 way to play video games. You know. Yeah, I've still 0:03:25.120 --> 0:03:27.839 enjoy it though. It's a lot of fun. Uh. But yeah, 0:03:27.919 --> 0:03:30.600 my my buddy Doug Dillard growing up, had one rich 0:03:30.680 --> 0:03:35.480 friend and he had a television, and so I had 0:03:35.600 --> 0:03:37.720 kind of some fun today watching the old because I 0:03:37.720 --> 0:03:41.120 remember thinking the in television football was really great, and 0:03:41.360 --> 0:03:43.120 when I looked at it today, I mean it's very 0:03:43.200 --> 0:03:45.880 very basic, but it was pretty good still, like your 0:03:45.920 --> 0:03:49.920 calling plays and all the sounds came flooding back. It 0:03:49.960 --> 0:03:54.000 was a big rush of nostalgia. Yeah. Um, it's somehow 0:03:54.040 --> 0:03:57.000 two bit graphics, I think. Yeah, and this, to be clear, 0:03:57.040 --> 0:03:59.960 what we're gonna talk about today is the the original 0:04:00.200 --> 0:04:02.400 any S. This could have been a two parter if 0:04:02.400 --> 0:04:05.120 we would have gone down the road of the sixty four. Like, 0:04:05.120 --> 0:04:07.280 we're not even talking about the music today at all, 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:10.400 so there was plenty more material here. But this is 0:04:10.480 --> 0:04:14.360 just a bit of an homage for the Christmas season, Yeah, 0:04:14.400 --> 0:04:17.359 because I mean it's the holidays, so one of the 0:04:17.400 --> 0:04:20.159 greatest things you can do during the holidays is reminisced 0:04:20.200 --> 0:04:25.640 nostalgically about holiday's past. And I definitely associate the Anyes 0:04:25.920 --> 0:04:28.360 or other I didn't realize this until I started researching it. 0:04:28.440 --> 0:04:32.440 Some people call it the nest. Did you know that? Yeah, 0:04:32.520 --> 0:04:35.320 Some actual like legit gamers call it nest. Other people 0:04:35.360 --> 0:04:38.279 call it any S, and apparently there's some big disagreement. 0:04:38.279 --> 0:04:41.039 I've always called it an e S. But I always 0:04:41.080 --> 0:04:44.479 associate the n E S was a pretty significant portion 0:04:44.560 --> 0:04:47.120 of my life, but like it always is tied to 0:04:47.240 --> 0:04:50.120 Christmas as well. All right, well you're gonna wax nostalgic 0:04:50.160 --> 0:04:52.039 a bit more, even though I did play a little 0:04:52.040 --> 0:04:55.640 bit of Easier and there. Okay, so um. One of 0:04:55.680 --> 0:04:59.800 the things, like the Nintendo Entertainment System has an amazingly 0:05:00.080 --> 0:05:03.799 rate story to it, like it's it's just so fun 0:05:03.800 --> 0:05:07.520 to tell because Nintendo came along at a time when 0:05:08.320 --> 0:05:13.160 the video game market in North America had so totally 0:05:13.200 --> 0:05:17.520 bottomed out that people looked at video games like imagine 0:05:17.560 --> 0:05:20.400 think about how big Autari was. People looked at it. 0:05:20.560 --> 0:05:23.080 It crashed so hard that it was a fad that 0:05:23.160 --> 0:05:26.520 was never coming back, like it had already lived its life. 0:05:26.600 --> 0:05:32.279 And Nintendo walked into this burning um city that was 0:05:32.360 --> 0:05:36.640 the video game industry and said let's give this another shot, 0:05:37.040 --> 0:05:41.159 and they actually managed to succeed. Yeah, I mean Atari 0:05:41.279 --> 0:05:44.240 was dead as disco. We talked a little bit about 0:05:44.279 --> 0:05:47.560 it before, especially in the ET episode, and I did 0:05:47.600 --> 0:05:52.920 a full Attari guest two parter with Strickland. Yeah back 0:05:52.920 --> 0:05:55.640 in the day on tech Stuff. I bet that was 0:05:55.680 --> 0:05:57.960 a fun one. It was a lot of fun. But yeah, 0:05:57.960 --> 0:06:01.839 ET came along and certainly didn't kill Atari, but it 0:06:01.920 --> 0:06:05.080 helped usher in the end of Atari. And it wasn't 0:06:05.160 --> 0:06:08.400 just this one game. It was uh, sort of a 0:06:08.400 --> 0:06:10.400 flash in the pan for a few years, and parents 0:06:10.400 --> 0:06:14.760 were also weighing in and saying, you know, um, I 0:06:14.800 --> 0:06:19.320 don't like my kid playing this much garbage on the television, Like, 0:06:19.720 --> 0:06:22.240 I don't think it's good for their brains. I don't 0:06:22.240 --> 0:06:24.640 think it was a part of this satanic panic necessarily. 0:06:25.240 --> 0:06:27.560 It was pre Satanic panic that was more along the 0:06:27.600 --> 0:06:32.040 lines of your riding your brain, right. So, um, I 0:06:32.600 --> 0:06:34.480 was that the thing that triggered it? Or was it 0:06:34.600 --> 0:06:37.960 the terrible terrible games that really triggered the what's called 0:06:37.960 --> 0:06:41.760 the North American video game crash? Of it was the games, 0:06:41.839 --> 0:06:43.479 wasn't it? Well? I mean I think it was a 0:06:43.520 --> 0:06:45.719 two part thing. Like kids got a little less interested 0:06:45.760 --> 0:06:49.440 because the game started to suck quite frankly. Uh, And 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:51.760 then I think you also had parents beating the drum 0:06:51.920 --> 0:06:55.040 of hey, and and Atari wasn't really coming out with 0:06:55.760 --> 0:06:59.360 you know, the new systems weren't that great. The THEFT 0:06:59.720 --> 0:07:03.919 undred came along, I mean, rather followed up, and it 0:07:04.000 --> 0:07:07.560 was just okay. So they needed something needed to happen, 0:07:07.560 --> 0:07:10.440 and that thing that needed to happen was a Nintendo. Yeah. 0:07:10.520 --> 0:07:12.200 And also at the same time, one of the other 0:07:12.280 --> 0:07:16.800 things that had ushered helped usher out video games was, um, 0:07:16.840 --> 0:07:20.640 the personal computers starting to come into the world. And 0:07:20.720 --> 0:07:23.520 with the personal computer you could like do your taxes, 0:07:23.520 --> 0:07:27.320 your kid could like practice math, and they played games 0:07:27.320 --> 0:07:32.880 on floppy disc too, So exactly, yes, I played Wolf. 0:07:32.880 --> 0:07:35.440 It's like, oh, I'm so glad you said that, because 0:07:35.480 --> 0:07:40.480 I was looking at Castlevania on floppy disc and I'm like, like, 0:07:40.520 --> 0:07:43.440 I was definitely playing it before that it was Wolf instead. 0:07:43.600 --> 0:07:46.680 Thank you, man, you just made a really great neural 0:07:46.720 --> 0:07:51.200 pathway circuit, like connect completely in my brain. But I 0:07:51.200 --> 0:07:53.760 saw it described by a guy named Chris Kohler who 0:07:53.760 --> 0:07:56.040 wrote an article on this and Wired back in two 0:07:56.880 --> 0:08:00.600 He said that video games were dead, dead dead, personal 0:08:00.640 --> 0:08:04.000 computers were the future, and anything that just played games 0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:07.920 and couldn't do your taxes was hopelessly backward. That was 0:08:08.120 --> 0:08:10.960 kind of like the premise. So just to get across, 0:08:11.240 --> 0:08:12.960 I don't want to like beat this drump too hard, 0:08:13.000 --> 0:08:16.160 but to get across how huge the crash was. The 0:08:16.240 --> 0:08:20.080 video game crash of North America. UM in nineteen eighty two, 0:08:20.160 --> 0:08:24.440 Atari raked in two billion dollars Atari alone in nineteen 0:08:24.520 --> 0:08:29.320 eighty three they lost five hundred and thirty six million dollars. 0:08:29.320 --> 0:08:32.920 That's a swift fall, yes, but that's how quickly that 0:08:33.040 --> 0:08:36.600 it happened, and so people that basically, if it crashes 0:08:36.640 --> 0:08:39.880 that hard, people hate your product. And I think that's 0:08:39.920 --> 0:08:42.600 kind of where we were at in n Yeah, but 0:08:42.720 --> 0:08:45.319 as you pointed out, this was we need to keep 0:08:45.360 --> 0:08:49.040 pointing out, this was the North American crash. Yeah, good point. 0:08:49.080 --> 0:08:51.679 It did not happen in Japan. UM in nineteen eighty three, 0:08:51.679 --> 0:08:53.720 they were just like, I don't know what you're talking about, 0:08:53.760 --> 0:08:57.800 because we have arcades are we here that are flourishing. Uh. 0:08:57.840 --> 0:09:01.600 We invented Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. It's still 0:09:01.920 --> 0:09:03.680 a lot of fun to play. Those games are still 0:09:03.679 --> 0:09:07.440 fun to play. And in nineteen eighty this was a 0:09:07.480 --> 0:09:10.960 few years before the United States crash, they said, hey, 0:09:11.040 --> 0:09:13.520 you know what, there's this gaming thing going on, home 0:09:13.559 --> 0:09:16.800 gaming going on in America, and maybe we should get 0:09:16.840 --> 0:09:19.560 together a team over here to just sort of poke around. 0:09:19.600 --> 0:09:22.360 Because we're Nintendo. We make a lot of toys, and 0:09:22.400 --> 0:09:24.600 we have for a long time, and we're big in 0:09:24.600 --> 0:09:26.320 the arcade world, but we don't have a really a 0:09:26.360 --> 0:09:31.680 console system going, and that led to a beat. I think. Actually, 0:09:31.720 --> 0:09:35.719 there was a console called the Epoch Cassette Vision in 0:09:35.840 --> 0:09:37.600 nineteen eight one, and it was it was sort of 0:09:37.640 --> 0:09:40.120 the biggest thing in Japan at the time, but well, 0:09:40.120 --> 0:09:41.520 I think it was kind of the only thing in 0:09:41.600 --> 0:09:43.960 Japan at the time too, well, which makes it the biggest. 0:09:43.960 --> 0:09:45.520 I guess you could also say it was the smallest. 0:09:46.720 --> 0:09:50.600 But it was not a Nintendo product, right, No, it 0:09:50.640 --> 0:09:53.600 absolutely wasn't. In fact, it was it was Nintendo came 0:09:53.600 --> 0:09:56.680 along as a rival to to this um Cassette Vision 0:09:56.720 --> 0:10:01.240 epoch Cassette Vision. UM. So the head of Nintendo, Hiroshi 0:10:01.320 --> 0:10:06.880 Yamauchi um He apparently was this driving force. He had 0:10:06.920 --> 0:10:09.679 some really great people working for him in Japan and 0:10:09.720 --> 0:10:13.400 in North America, but he seems to have been this 0:10:13.480 --> 0:10:17.520 person who would be like, um, do this enormous undertaking 0:10:17.520 --> 0:10:19.959 and do it in an hour kind of thing. He 0:10:20.120 --> 0:10:21.839 kind of seems to have had a sense that there 0:10:21.880 --> 0:10:25.679 was a really narrow window that was open right now, 0:10:25.720 --> 0:10:28.280 that could close at any time, and that they needed 0:10:28.280 --> 0:10:30.240 to get this stuff done, but they also needed to 0:10:30.280 --> 0:10:33.520 do it really well and really right, basically out of 0:10:33.520 --> 0:10:36.679 the gate. And they actually managed to because in nineteen three, 0:10:37.160 --> 0:10:39.920 after just a couple of years of research and development, 0:10:40.200 --> 0:10:43.560 they released what's called the Family Colm or the Family Computer, 0:10:44.120 --> 0:10:48.600 which was essentially the direct predecessor of the Nintendo Entertainment 0:10:48.600 --> 0:10:50.800 System that they released a couple of years later in 0:10:50.920 --> 0:10:53.440 North America. Yeah. I mean, it's not very often that 0:10:53.679 --> 0:10:56.480 a head of a company or a boss comes along 0:10:56.520 --> 0:10:59.920 and says, I want to do something better and cheaper 0:11:00.200 --> 0:11:03.840 than what is currently out there, and it actually happened. Uh. 0:11:03.880 --> 0:11:06.079 And listeners at home, if you can look this stuff 0:11:06.559 --> 0:11:09.720 up as you go safely, please do because just seeing 0:11:09.760 --> 0:11:12.320 these all these various units we're going to talk about 0:11:12.440 --> 0:11:15.600 is really a lot of fun. Yeah. They teeter on 0:11:15.640 --> 0:11:18.360 the edge of being creepy there, like at that age 0:11:18.400 --> 0:11:21.560 they're not quite wicker wheelchair creepy, but they're getting there 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:23.720 given another decade or so, you know what I mean. Yeah, 0:11:23.840 --> 0:11:25.880 I think they're cool looking at I mean, this is 0:11:25.920 --> 0:11:27.560 the kind of thing that would look cool sitting on 0:11:27.559 --> 0:11:30.200 a shelf. As a collector. These days, I think there's 0:11:30.200 --> 0:11:32.320 a lot of people who have that actually, oh I'm sure, 0:11:32.720 --> 0:11:35.000 um so look at the epoch cassette vision because that's 0:11:35.040 --> 0:11:37.240 kind of fun. But the Famicon was this red and 0:11:37.280 --> 0:11:42.280 white box. Uh. It top loaded, It had two wired controllers, 0:11:42.520 --> 0:11:45.480 and it had very importantly on the control pad. It 0:11:45.520 --> 0:11:48.320 had a had the deepad, It had the directional pad 0:11:48.440 --> 0:11:50.680 on on the left with the up and down, left 0:11:50.679 --> 0:11:53.400 and right arrows, and then an A and B button, 0:11:53.480 --> 0:11:56.200 which no one knew at the time, but that would 0:11:56.360 --> 0:11:59.160 kind of revolutionize the gaming world. As you know, they 0:11:59.200 --> 0:12:00.880 got a little fancy year over the years, but it's 0:12:00.880 --> 0:12:03.240 still sort of that's still the bones of what a 0:12:03.240 --> 0:12:07.280 controller is. Absolutely like it was I can never remember 0:12:07.280 --> 0:12:10.199 the full quote, but somebody said it was like they 0:12:10.240 --> 0:12:13.720 invented the airplane, uh and got it right fully out 0:12:13.760 --> 0:12:17.600 of the gate, like trade tables and everything. Essentially, it 0:12:17.679 --> 0:12:21.040 was like that's what they did with that that controller design. Uh. 0:12:21.080 --> 0:12:23.600 And now you think about it, you look at it, 0:12:23.640 --> 0:12:28.320 like the Nintendo brick and especially the fam Com controllers, 0:12:28.760 --> 0:12:32.439 they looked so old fashioned. But if you can put 0:12:32.480 --> 0:12:37.120 yourself in the mindset of somebody in Japan and if 0:12:37.120 --> 0:12:40.480 you looked around at the other stuff available, it was 0:12:41.080 --> 0:12:43.160 it was just from the future. And that was one 0:12:43.200 --> 0:12:46.000 of the things that Nintendo did really really well during 0:12:46.000 --> 0:12:50.320 this period. They figured out what everyone thought, what the 0:12:50.400 --> 0:12:53.800 future was, what it contained, what it looked like, and 0:12:53.840 --> 0:12:56.600 they gave it to everybody. It was a really like 0:12:56.720 --> 0:12:59.880 exuberant time. It was like the future had been brought 0:13:00.040 --> 0:13:03.120 to the present and it was all thanks to Nintendo basically. 0:13:03.440 --> 0:13:05.560 So it retailed for about a hundred and fifty bucks 0:13:05.600 --> 0:13:09.840 back then, which is what close to five hundred today? Yeah, 0:13:09.880 --> 0:13:12.320 four hundreds something like that, all right, So I mean 0:13:12.720 --> 0:13:15.319 kind of on par with you know, the range of 0:13:16.280 --> 0:13:19.040 even modern gaming. Mean, what's the new PlayStation like five? 0:13:19.120 --> 0:13:22.120 Maybe I don't know, I'm not sure. I think it's 0:13:22.120 --> 0:13:24.440 somewhere in there five or six hundred bucks. Do you 0:13:24.440 --> 0:13:27.760 remember that PlayStation ad that was like for PlayStation seven, 0:13:27.760 --> 0:13:29.720 It was just people running around the real world. It 0:13:29.760 --> 0:13:33.000 was all like VR and augmented reality. I don't remember that. 0:13:33.360 --> 0:13:34.880 It was pretty cool because it came out in like 0:13:34.960 --> 0:13:37.880 the nineties and you're like, whoa, and we're pretty close 0:13:37.920 --> 0:13:40.560 to that now already, you know for sure? Uh. They 0:13:40.760 --> 0:13:44.600 they bundled the Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Junior games 0:13:44.600 --> 0:13:48.160 and the Popeye games, which uh, we're basically about the 0:13:48.160 --> 0:13:50.920 same quality as you would get at the arcade. And 0:13:50.920 --> 0:13:52.560 it was huge. It was a huge deal. I mean, 0:13:52.640 --> 0:13:56.760 especially if you grew up playing Atari. Uh I loved Atari, 0:13:56.840 --> 0:13:59.640 but Atari was Atari, and it had a lot of limits. 0:13:59.640 --> 0:14:01.680 And this was you know, you went to the arcade 0:14:01.720 --> 0:14:03.480 so you could play games better than it's aori. Now 0:14:03.600 --> 0:14:06.000 you could do it at home, right, Yeah, so that 0:14:06.080 --> 0:14:08.800 was an enormous progression. But it wasn't just like the 0:14:08.840 --> 0:14:12.080 graphics the quality of the look of it. It was 0:14:12.160 --> 0:14:14.679 also the game play too, Like it was way more 0:14:14.760 --> 0:14:16.719 fun than most of the games you were going to 0:14:16.840 --> 0:14:19.440 play on an atar. It was just funner to play 0:14:19.600 --> 0:14:22.800 some of these um fam com games. Um and it 0:14:22.800 --> 0:14:25.400 it took off like a rocket. Uh. It knocked the 0:14:25.480 --> 0:14:28.800 epoch um cassette vision right off of the top place 0:14:28.880 --> 0:14:32.520 into the history books basically essentially. Yeah, they sold half 0:14:32.560 --> 0:14:36.560 a million units in two months after its release. I 0:14:36.600 --> 0:14:38.920 think by the end of nine they'd sold two and 0:14:38.920 --> 0:14:41.960 a half million units, so in about a year or so. 0:14:42.520 --> 0:14:45.760 And they were like, Okay, I think we're definitely onto something. 0:14:46.400 --> 0:14:50.320 And they had enough Hubris enough I guess at least 0:14:50.320 --> 0:14:54.680 self assurance that they set their sights on North America again, 0:14:54.960 --> 0:14:58.480 which was a tattered, burning ruin as far as video 0:14:58.560 --> 0:15:01.400 games were concerned. It's a great spot for a break. 0:15:02.000 --> 0:15:24.520 I think so too, all right. I think where we 0:15:24.680 --> 0:15:27.680 left off the United States was a version of Core 0:15:27.800 --> 0:15:32.800 mc McCarthy's The Road Yeah and the Walking Dead. And 0:15:32.880 --> 0:15:35.360 Nintendo came along and said, we are going to save 0:15:35.440 --> 0:15:38.840 you and bring you into the future. And it was 0:15:38.880 --> 0:15:40.960 a tough sell at first in the US because, like 0:15:41.040 --> 0:15:44.960 you said, the video game uh craze for lack of 0:15:45.000 --> 0:15:48.800 a better word, had kind of come and gone. This parents, 0:15:49.280 --> 0:15:51.560 we're still not you know. They were like, I'm glad 0:15:51.600 --> 0:15:54.440 that went away, basically, and now we have these PCs 0:15:54.440 --> 0:15:56.560 in our homes and my kid can play Oregon Trail 0:15:56.680 --> 0:16:00.400 or whatever. And they seem happy enough with that. And uh, 0:16:00.520 --> 0:16:02.600 Nintendo knew all this was going on. They knew it 0:16:02.600 --> 0:16:04.240 was going to be a tougher cell that they knew, 0:16:04.440 --> 0:16:06.840 so they knew they had to come up with something awesome. 0:16:07.240 --> 0:16:10.160 And their first crack at that was something called the 0:16:10.160 --> 0:16:13.440 the a v S, the Advanced Video System, and they said, well, 0:16:13.480 --> 0:16:15.600 give it a keyboard so it looks like a computer. 0:16:16.280 --> 0:16:19.200 It'll have a little cassette disk drive. It'll be able 0:16:19.240 --> 0:16:22.200 to do some stuff. It'll but you know, they bundled 0:16:22.200 --> 0:16:24.240 it with all kinds of fun stuff. It had a joystick, 0:16:24.360 --> 0:16:27.520 had a keyboard like a musical keyboard, and it had 0:16:27.560 --> 0:16:30.800 this wireless which is well explain on how all this 0:16:30.800 --> 0:16:32.600 works in a little bit. It's pretty cool. But it 0:16:32.600 --> 0:16:36.320 had a little ray gun, a little zapper. Yeah, and 0:16:36.480 --> 0:16:39.320 you really said a mouthful with the word wireless. Man, 0:16:39.400 --> 0:16:43.400 this was and this advanced video system came out with 0:16:43.520 --> 0:16:48.360 wireless controllers like it was. That's really impressive, and it 0:16:48.400 --> 0:16:52.160 was really slick looking to like, really futuristic looking. But 0:16:52.280 --> 0:16:56.960 also yes, they put enough computer um peripherals in it 0:16:57.240 --> 0:16:59.960 that it did it didn't look like a video game system, right, 0:17:00.440 --> 0:17:03.320 So they took it to c e S. The January 0:17:03.640 --> 0:17:07.440 UM version I think even back then was in Vegas UM. 0:17:07.480 --> 0:17:11.480 But it's sorry, it's the Consumer Electronics Show, right. Yeah, 0:17:11.520 --> 0:17:14.360 I've never been to that of you, no, huh. Strickland 0:17:14.400 --> 0:17:16.520 has great stories from it them. Yeah, he goes every year, 0:17:16.520 --> 0:17:20.040 I think I think so. But at CS in January 0:17:20.960 --> 0:17:23.440 they're like, here you go, everybody, here's the future of 0:17:23.520 --> 0:17:28.560 the advanced video system and no one cared at all 0:17:28.600 --> 0:17:31.359 about it. They didn't even get people coming over to play, 0:17:31.440 --> 0:17:35.520 to mess around. No one could have cared less about 0:17:35.560 --> 0:17:38.760 that thing. Yeah, which is a little bit surprising looking back, 0:17:39.880 --> 0:17:42.960 because the games were good and they knew that. I 0:17:42.960 --> 0:17:45.199 guess they were just a little gun shy, but it 0:17:45.240 --> 0:17:48.480 seems like Atari made so much money. I'm surprised there 0:17:48.480 --> 0:17:51.960 wasn't someone that was like, hey, maybe round two is 0:17:51.960 --> 0:17:53.680 going to be a real thing. But you know, it 0:17:53.680 --> 0:17:56.080 didn't work. They didn't get any response. No, And I 0:17:56.119 --> 0:17:58.560 think that really goes to just kind of underlined just 0:17:58.680 --> 0:18:02.879 how bad a reppy tasition video games had, because you know, 0:18:03.040 --> 0:18:07.159 Dave points out that, um, the consoles that have been 0:18:07.200 --> 0:18:09.600 going for like a hundred a hundred and fifty dollars 0:18:10.000 --> 0:18:13.000 the year before, these retailers were stuck with them and 0:18:13.000 --> 0:18:15.280 they were selling them for like forty bucks, which is 0:18:15.320 --> 0:18:17.560 how much the games used to go for. Now the 0:18:17.600 --> 0:18:20.520 games were like four dollars. So the retailers have been 0:18:20.560 --> 0:18:22.840 so badly burned. I think they all got caught with 0:18:22.880 --> 0:18:25.360 these hot potatoes when the crash happened that they were 0:18:25.359 --> 0:18:29.040 like never again. And that's what Nintendo was working against, 0:18:29.240 --> 0:18:31.760 which is as Dave Dave. Again, Dave helped us with this. 0:18:31.840 --> 0:18:34.400 As he points out, you were either a very foolish 0:18:34.440 --> 0:18:37.520 company to try this or a very smart one because 0:18:37.640 --> 0:18:40.360 again it had a terrible reputation, but that also meant 0:18:40.359 --> 0:18:45.720 that there was no competition in this enormous market right now. Yeah, absolutely, 0:18:45.960 --> 0:18:48.680 Uh So they knew they had to have almost like 0:18:48.720 --> 0:18:51.320 a trick to get their foot in the door, and 0:18:51.440 --> 0:18:54.800 they came up with one, and um day found this. 0:18:54.960 --> 0:18:57.480 Uh is Gaming Historian? Is it a I know it 0:18:57.560 --> 0:18:59.600 had a YouTube channel, but is it also just a 0:18:59.600 --> 0:19:02.560 full web site? I don't know. All I know is 0:19:02.600 --> 0:19:05.280 that the the YouTube channel where they make really high 0:19:05.359 --> 0:19:08.840 quality YouTube videos that are really interesting. It's good stuff. 0:19:08.840 --> 0:19:10.840 But someone at Gaming Historian came up with this very 0:19:10.840 --> 0:19:13.600 apt metaphor about a trojan horse, and that's kind of 0:19:13.600 --> 0:19:15.720 what they were looking for, was a way to get 0:19:15.720 --> 0:19:19.480 these things in the home by almost tricking parents into 0:19:19.480 --> 0:19:22.199 thinking it wasn't a gaming system and it was more 0:19:22.280 --> 0:19:24.720 just sort of like a toy because kids still gotten 0:19:24.960 --> 0:19:27.560 bought or you know, received toys and stuff. It's not 0:19:27.600 --> 0:19:30.600 like they shut down the toy industry. It was just 0:19:30.800 --> 0:19:33.440 home video games. So what they invented was the ROB 0:19:33.520 --> 0:19:36.560 the r O B the Robotic Operating Buddy, which is 0:19:36.600 --> 0:19:40.480 a very sweet name. You should totally go look at 0:19:40.640 --> 0:19:44.760 ROB online and especially YouTube videos of ROB in action 0:19:45.560 --> 0:19:52.520 and just be prepared for the speed of ROB. Right. 0:19:53.400 --> 0:19:57.000 But the thing is ROB was a robot. He moved 0:19:57.040 --> 0:19:59.680 and he functioned, he interacted with the games that they 0:19:59.720 --> 0:20:03.800 came up very slowly, right, very slowly. But this was 0:20:03.840 --> 0:20:06.199 a time where like, robots were kind of hard to 0:20:06.240 --> 0:20:08.600 come by. If they were not like that, it was 0:20:08.640 --> 0:20:10.800 not an easy thing to get your hands on. And 0:20:10.800 --> 0:20:12.840 now all of a sudden there's this company saying like, hey, 0:20:12.880 --> 0:20:15.200 we have this whole thing and it has a robot too, 0:20:15.560 --> 0:20:18.320 and it was one of the greatest strokes of of 0:20:18.440 --> 0:20:20.959 marketing genius that any company has ever come up with. 0:20:21.040 --> 0:20:23.359 As we'll see, Yeah, I mean what they ended up 0:20:23.400 --> 0:20:27.680 with was a robot that didn't I mean, it functioned 0:20:27.720 --> 0:20:30.000 as it should, but like I said, it's super super slow. 0:20:30.400 --> 0:20:32.240 They only ended up having a couple of games where 0:20:32.240 --> 0:20:34.480 you could use the robot, and it was just sort 0:20:34.480 --> 0:20:37.800 of a sneaky way to get these uh consoles in 0:20:37.800 --> 0:20:40.159 the door. And because it was all part of the 0:20:40.200 --> 0:20:43.719 same system and and that's how it worked. They managed 0:20:43.760 --> 0:20:46.040 to get the little Trojan horse robot through the door. 0:20:46.640 --> 0:20:52.080 And uh thanks to a guy named uh Lance Bar Uh. 0:20:52.119 --> 0:20:54.159 He helped design a lot of this stuff. He designed 0:20:54.160 --> 0:20:56.119 the Zapper ray gun, which we'll talk a little bit 0:20:56.200 --> 0:20:58.679 more about in a sec but he designed it as 0:20:58.720 --> 0:21:01.720 a front loading system, which made sort of people think 0:21:01.760 --> 0:21:04.840 of VCRs. It was also a very um they called 0:21:05.000 --> 0:21:07.800 zero four solution, so there wasn't a lot of wear 0:21:08.160 --> 0:21:11.320 on the on the cartridges and it, you know, just 0:21:11.400 --> 0:21:14.600 worked really well. Plus it it looked like you said, 0:21:14.640 --> 0:21:16.959 it looked like a VCR. Those were wildly popular at 0:21:17.000 --> 0:21:19.520 the time, and um, I don't think we said chuck. 0:21:19.600 --> 0:21:23.240 So that January c e S was um just a 0:21:23.400 --> 0:21:27.320 complete like catastrophe for Nintendo. They'd spent all this time 0:21:27.359 --> 0:21:31.040 coming up with the advanced video system and it got 0:21:31.119 --> 0:21:33.840 it went nowhere. So again, the head of the company, 0:21:33.920 --> 0:21:38.399 Hiroshi Yamauchi, told a couple of people like, hey, redesigned 0:21:38.480 --> 0:21:40.600 this in an hour, and they did. And Lance bar 0:21:40.800 --> 0:21:42.760 was the guy who did it, and he knocked it 0:21:42.840 --> 0:21:45.840 out of the park because that any yes, is a debut. 0:21:46.000 --> 0:21:49.440 Later on in in North America was essentially what he 0:21:49.560 --> 0:21:51.520 came up with in that one hour that he was 0:21:51.600 --> 0:21:55.399 given to do it. UM, so they had they did 0:21:55.480 --> 0:21:59.159 all this and had it done in time for the 0:21:59.359 --> 0:22:03.760 July c e s like six months after that huge, 0:22:03.840 --> 0:22:06.560 colossal failure, they went back to the drawing board and 0:22:06.680 --> 0:22:10.439 came back in six months with the Nintendo Entertainment System 0:22:10.760 --> 0:22:16.040 fully fleshed out, including Robot and Zapper Gun, well notably Robot, 0:22:16.080 --> 0:22:19.160 because that's what it all. Anyone cared about it first. Yeah, 0:22:19.240 --> 0:22:22.040 for sure, like et CE S, the the NES system 0:22:22.080 --> 0:22:24.520 was sort of to the side, and everyone was just 0:22:24.560 --> 0:22:28.760 trying to get their hands on Rob and play gyro Mite, 0:22:29.840 --> 0:22:32.080 which I'm telling you, you gotta just spend five minutes 0:22:32.119 --> 0:22:36.639 watching Rob play this game because it shows the split 0:22:36.760 --> 0:22:39.440 screen of the the TV screen of what's happening on 0:22:39.520 --> 0:22:42.399 the game, which really isn't much. And then Rob just 0:22:42.840 --> 0:22:48.040 very slowly picking up these spindle tops and making them spin. Yeah, 0:22:48.040 --> 0:22:52.320 and I wasn't the UM the game historian video that 0:22:52.640 --> 0:22:54.520 that really kind of went into detail about how Rob 0:22:54.680 --> 0:22:57.080 played and setting up his accessories and everything. I watched 0:22:57.119 --> 0:22:59.159 a bunch of them. Yeah, I'm okay, I think it 0:22:59.320 --> 0:23:00.840 was that one. If out it was another one I 0:23:00.880 --> 0:23:04.399 saw where they really kind of showed, like the idea 0:23:04.440 --> 0:23:08.040 of Rob was pretty ingenious. Like he he was player two, 0:23:08.119 --> 0:23:11.840 but you were actually playing together, like you in gyro Might. 0:23:11.960 --> 0:23:14.320 You were kind of running through this maze and there 0:23:14.359 --> 0:23:17.199 were like pillars that you couldn't get past. You had 0:23:17.240 --> 0:23:19.879 to get robbed to do it for you. And again 0:23:20.080 --> 0:23:24.879 he was so slowly. Yeah, get get an eye exam 0:23:24.960 --> 0:23:27.440 and your glasses made in an hour or two, um, 0:23:27.520 --> 0:23:29.600 And then yeah, he would have completed that and you 0:23:29.680 --> 0:23:32.080 could advance to the next column or whatever. It was 0:23:32.119 --> 0:23:34.440 a great idea. It was a cool concept, but it's 0:23:34.440 --> 0:23:38.080 just the execution was terrible. But he essentially just pushed 0:23:38.080 --> 0:23:40.440 the buttons on the player to controllers. So if you 0:23:40.520 --> 0:23:43.000 got tired and frustrated of waiting for Rob, you could 0:23:43.040 --> 0:23:45.480 just push the buttons on the player to controller yourself 0:23:45.840 --> 0:23:48.639 and play gyro Mte that way. But the point was 0:23:49.880 --> 0:23:53.160 they don't seem in retrospect to have really thought Rob 0:23:53.280 --> 0:23:56.480 was going to take off. Um. In fact, the games 0:23:56.560 --> 0:23:59.920 that that they he came with in North America were 0:24:00.080 --> 0:24:02.480 the Japanese versions. They hadn't even bothered to make the 0:24:02.560 --> 0:24:05.200 North American version of these. They just put like kind 0:24:05.240 --> 0:24:07.920 of this like um like fix on it that made 0:24:08.000 --> 0:24:11.920 it compatible with the North American system. But when you 0:24:12.119 --> 0:24:16.159 loaded up gyro Mite, the the um the intro screen 0:24:16.640 --> 0:24:20.160 showed the Japanese name for it at the very beginning 0:24:20.240 --> 0:24:21.960 of it. I feel like I saw other games that 0:24:22.040 --> 0:24:26.240 had Japanese writing and stuff. Yeah, I don't know, maybe 0:24:26.280 --> 0:24:28.480 it's a memory um. It may have just been like 0:24:28.600 --> 0:24:32.680 boot up screens or something. So they decide, uh, it 0:24:32.880 --> 0:24:35.280 was such a you know, I grabber at cs that 0:24:35.680 --> 0:24:38.280 they decided, all right, let's go to New York City 0:24:38.320 --> 0:24:41.119 and let's test it out there in one city, roll 0:24:41.200 --> 0:24:46.720 it out, see what happens. The New York retailer said, hey, buddy, 0:24:46.760 --> 0:24:48.760 I got look at this. I got a warehouse full 0:24:48.760 --> 0:24:50.879 of Atari's over here that I can't even give away, 0:24:51.480 --> 0:24:54.000 like I don't know about a new gaming system. And 0:24:54.080 --> 0:24:56.640 they said, all right, here's what we'll do. We will 0:24:56.880 --> 0:25:00.680 ship them to your store from Japan for free. We will. 0:25:01.359 --> 0:25:03.479 You can just sell what you sell and pay us 0:25:03.520 --> 0:25:06.760 for those. Whatever you don't sell, you can return to us. 0:25:06.840 --> 0:25:10.080 We'll take them back. We'll send over a team in 0:25:10.320 --> 0:25:13.879 your store to set up these big marketing interactive marketing displays. 0:25:14.680 --> 0:25:16.520 And we'll we'll take on all of the risk, and 0:25:16.600 --> 0:25:19.080 all you guys gotta do is try and sell some 0:25:19.200 --> 0:25:23.480 of these. And they went, yeah, all right, that was 0:25:23.560 --> 0:25:27.240 a great Joe Pesci by the way, Joe bet So. Yeah. 0:25:27.280 --> 0:25:29.520 They did this in five hundred stores. And normally, when 0:25:29.600 --> 0:25:32.040 you when you did the kind of a soft test 0:25:32.160 --> 0:25:35.800 release of something like this, you might choose like Topeka, Kansas. 0:25:35.880 --> 0:25:38.199 There's somewhere that no one cares about, right, But they 0:25:38.280 --> 0:25:42.040 went full bore and hit New York City. And I 0:25:42.200 --> 0:25:44.480 think I've seen it, you know, mentioned a few times 0:25:44.560 --> 0:25:47.399 that like it was based on that that Frank Sinatra song, 0:25:47.480 --> 0:25:49.080 the idea that you if you made it in New York, 0:25:49.160 --> 0:25:51.960 you can make it anywhere, and they did make it 0:25:52.040 --> 0:25:55.520 in New York. Um. Oh, I can't remember. I want 0:25:55.560 --> 0:26:01.320 to rock, okay, um, I want to run. I want 0:26:01.320 --> 0:26:04.280 to hear that version. Man, I've got that MP three 0:26:04.440 --> 0:26:07.399 is so good it still holds up if I want 0:26:07.440 --> 0:26:09.920 to rock. Yeah, the Twisted Sister song. You got that 0:26:10.080 --> 0:26:16.040 MP three or MP four, I don't know what. I 0:26:16.200 --> 0:26:20.760 bought it at toys R. Very cool. So um. They 0:26:20.960 --> 0:26:24.159 they didn't knock it out of the park necessarily. They 0:26:24.200 --> 0:26:27.000 sold about half the units that they had produced for 0:26:27.240 --> 0:26:30.520 this test market in New York. Um, I think like fifty. 0:26:31.240 --> 0:26:33.880 But it was enough for Yamauchi to say, let's give 0:26:33.920 --> 0:26:35.920 this a try. Let's let's roll out to the rest 0:26:35.920 --> 0:26:39.280 of the country. Another bold move because normally after your 0:26:39.320 --> 0:26:43.680 first test um, uh, like run your first test market, 0:26:43.960 --> 0:26:47.080 you do like four or five more. And he said, now, 0:26:47.200 --> 0:26:49.200 let's skip that, Let's just go right to the rest 0:26:49.240 --> 0:26:51.760 of the country. And he did. And that was the 0:26:52.080 --> 0:26:57.280 Christmas season too, So I get the feeling that they were, Um, 0:26:58.240 --> 0:27:01.840 they weren't super disappoin in it, but they weren't super 0:27:01.880 --> 0:27:04.359 pumped either. It felt like it was right in the area. 0:27:04.600 --> 0:27:07.359 And it's funny looking back historically, like it was right 0:27:07.440 --> 0:27:09.040 in that zone where it was just enough to keep 0:27:09.080 --> 0:27:12.040 it going. And you wonder kind of the sliding doors 0:27:12.119 --> 0:27:15.240 pathways that the gaming world would have taken had it 0:27:15.359 --> 0:27:19.440 sold thirty units, you know. Yeah, for sure, I saw 0:27:19.520 --> 0:27:23.119 somebody say, like the Nintendo. Had Nintendo not been successful, 0:27:23.200 --> 0:27:26.240 like the games as we know them today would definitely 0:27:26.320 --> 0:27:29.040 not exist. We'd still be playing checkers like a bunch 0:27:29.080 --> 0:27:34.119 of dopes. Yeah, and going outside. Who needs it? So 0:27:34.640 --> 0:27:41.280 that was holiday season. Um, night by six, they clear 0:27:41.400 --> 0:27:43.280 they hit on something else. So like one of the 0:27:43.359 --> 0:27:45.520 things that they did was take a poll of that 0:27:46.000 --> 0:27:48.360 people in the test market who had bought the Nintendo 0:27:48.880 --> 0:27:51.399 and I think like the vast majority of them said 0:27:51.920 --> 0:27:55.159 that UM rob the Robot was the reason they had 0:27:55.200 --> 0:27:58.160 bought the whole system to get that robot. That's how 0:27:58.480 --> 0:28:02.320 that's how well that mark getting employee worked. So UM 0:28:03.040 --> 0:28:05.600 Robin kind of served as purpose. Though everyone knew he 0:28:05.680 --> 0:28:08.200 was slow, they weren't releasing more games for them, so 0:28:08.320 --> 0:28:11.960 they came up with UM. Originally, the way you bought 0:28:12.040 --> 0:28:16.400 Nintendo it was the Nintendo Entertainment System console, two controllers, 0:28:16.720 --> 0:28:20.119 the zapper gun, Robbed the Robot, and all of Rob 0:28:20.320 --> 0:28:23.960 the Robots accessories, and then two games, one of which 0:28:24.040 --> 0:28:28.199 was Gyro Might that game you play with rob Right? Okay, 0:28:28.640 --> 0:28:30.480 that's a lot of stuff, and of course it was 0:28:30.680 --> 0:28:33.760 pretty expensive at the time, so for the national rollout 0:28:33.800 --> 0:28:36.520 they kept the deluxe set, but they also came up 0:28:36.560 --> 0:28:39.680 with something called the NES Control Deck, which was just 0:28:39.880 --> 0:28:45.560 the console to UM controllers and very very importantly Super 0:28:45.880 --> 0:28:50.240 Mario Brothers. And that was bucks and they sold those 0:28:50.320 --> 0:28:53.240 things as fast as they could make them for the 0:28:53.320 --> 0:28:57.000 holidays that year. Yeah, you really can't overstate the importance 0:28:57.040 --> 0:28:59.720 of Super Mario Brothers. That was a game that came 0:29:00.400 --> 0:29:05.280 along and uh with actually with a famicon, and it 0:29:05.440 --> 0:29:08.640 was just it was the most advanced looking game and 0:29:08.760 --> 0:29:12.840 playing game that any kid had ever seen. Uh. It was, 0:29:13.800 --> 0:29:15.720 as day points out. It was the first game that 0:29:15.800 --> 0:29:19.840 you could play and and have fun playing for forever, 0:29:20.320 --> 0:29:23.560 Like you could go on and on finding the hidden worlds, 0:29:23.840 --> 0:29:28.240 finding the easter eggs, dropping down pipes into other sections 0:29:28.320 --> 0:29:31.400 that you and other levels that you never even knew existed, 0:29:32.360 --> 0:29:35.880 banging away hidden bricks, like there were so many discoveries 0:29:36.000 --> 0:29:39.880 and places to go. And Super Mario Brothers they created, Um, 0:29:41.240 --> 0:29:44.320 it's sort of a new way of gaming, which was like, hey, 0:29:44.440 --> 0:29:47.160 how would you like to be little Josh Clark? How 0:29:47.360 --> 0:29:50.560 but put your cigarette down? How would you like to 0:29:50.600 --> 0:29:53.160 play a video game the same one for the next 0:29:53.320 --> 0:30:04.200 seven hours? Hot Dog? And that really hot Dog. It 0:30:04.360 --> 0:30:06.240 was a whole new deal though, because even when I played, 0:30:06.280 --> 0:30:09.160 it'sary like we played for hours at a time, but 0:30:09.920 --> 0:30:12.840 I don't know, you played a game for five minutes 0:30:12.880 --> 0:30:14.400 and you pop in another and that's why you had 0:30:14.440 --> 0:30:18.440 like forty games in your in your controller box because 0:30:18.720 --> 0:30:20.600 none of them you could play for hours and hours 0:30:20.640 --> 0:30:23.120 and hours in a row and not eventually be like, Okay, 0:30:23.240 --> 0:30:26.040 this is getting a little bit old, even as a kid. Yeah, 0:30:26.160 --> 0:30:29.080 So the gameplay was just light years ahead of anything 0:30:29.600 --> 0:30:34.240 I've Almost every single source that I've seen on the 0:30:34.280 --> 0:30:37.400 Internet that talks about how Super Mario Brothers changed things 0:30:37.680 --> 0:30:40.800 uses the word light years ahead of everything else, because 0:30:40.800 --> 0:30:44.280 it really was. Um. There was a guy named Shigeru Miyamoto. 0:30:44.520 --> 0:30:47.960 He designed the game very famously. He's he obviously became 0:30:48.000 --> 0:30:50.920 a legend overnight because of it. They were also smart 0:30:51.000 --> 0:30:55.040 enough to do some really savvy marketing moves which uh 0:30:55.120 --> 0:30:57.120 kind of rolled out in a few different ways. They well, 0:30:57.120 --> 0:30:59.360 they had a lot of advertising money that was sort 0:30:59.400 --> 0:31:02.000 of a given. They about twenty million bucks uh to 0:31:02.080 --> 0:31:04.040 spend off the bat, which is a ton of money 0:31:04.080 --> 0:31:08.600 for advertising now and then. But they created a call center. Uh. 0:31:08.680 --> 0:31:12.080 They trained these UH players and these gamers basically to 0:31:12.240 --> 0:31:15.560 master these games and sit on the phone and you 0:31:15.640 --> 0:31:18.440 could call a number if you got stuck and talk 0:31:18.520 --> 0:31:20.920 to a human being that could like walk you through 0:31:20.960 --> 0:31:23.840 a level that you couldn't get through. Uh. They had 0:31:23.960 --> 0:31:27.080 Nintendo power magazine, which is a very big deal. And 0:31:27.280 --> 0:31:31.959 they created the first you know, gaming championships where uh 0:31:32.040 --> 0:31:34.360 and these are still just huge, you know where kids 0:31:34.760 --> 0:31:37.200 and adults alike. You know, now adults from all over 0:31:37.240 --> 0:31:40.280 the world come together to battle each other out. And 0:31:40.400 --> 0:31:43.960 the very first ones were created by Nintendo with the 0:31:44.320 --> 0:31:48.920 Grand Championships at Universal Studios, Hollywood. Yeah. I hadn't thought 0:31:48.920 --> 0:31:50.560 about that, but yeah, you can make the case that 0:31:50.640 --> 0:31:53.600 they created the sports phenomena. They lead the groundwork for 0:31:53.680 --> 0:31:56.480 it to come at least, right I would think, So, yeah, 0:31:56.600 --> 0:31:59.200 that's pretty cool. So um. There was a poll of 0:31:59.320 --> 0:32:03.120 Nintendo years after the national rollout um that found that 0:32:04.440 --> 0:32:07.200 of teams polled said that they recommended the n e 0:32:07.400 --> 0:32:10.360 s to their friends, and I think three percent of 0:32:10.400 --> 0:32:15.080 adults and of little kids. That is eye popping, and 0:32:15.360 --> 0:32:17.960 that means that they were successful. They used rob to 0:32:18.040 --> 0:32:19.960 get their feet in the door, and they knew that 0:32:20.040 --> 0:32:22.800 if they just got their console in the hands of Americans, 0:32:23.040 --> 0:32:25.600 they would change their minds forever about video games. And 0:32:25.720 --> 0:32:29.800 that's exactly what happened. And they avoided the Atari mistake, 0:32:29.920 --> 0:32:32.920 which was uh, they did their best to try and 0:32:33.080 --> 0:32:35.880 keep bad games from being able to play it on 0:32:35.920 --> 0:32:38.520 their system, and that's what happened with the game's got 0:32:38.880 --> 0:32:42.800 so bad. I mean they're hundreds and hundreds. We talked 0:32:42.840 --> 0:32:46.360 about this in the ET game episode, like ET gets 0:32:46.760 --> 0:32:49.800 unfairly piled upon because it was just such a big release, 0:32:50.480 --> 0:32:54.640 But there were far worse games released on the ATR 0:32:54.680 --> 0:32:57.760 A system, hundreds and hundreds of really really bad games 0:32:57.800 --> 0:33:00.680 that just no one even remembers. And Tendo saw this 0:33:00.760 --> 0:33:04.000 play out in America and knew that they couldn't let 0:33:04.080 --> 0:33:08.520 that happen to them, so they designed a proprietary system 0:33:08.920 --> 0:33:12.120 where you could only play officially licensed any S games. 0:33:12.160 --> 0:33:15.320 He created a lock chip on their circuit board and 0:33:15.600 --> 0:33:19.960 only Nintendo officially licensed games or manufactured games had the 0:33:20.040 --> 0:33:23.320 lot key or the key chip uh to unlock it. 0:33:23.680 --> 0:33:27.600 And that really kept quality control, you know, under their wing. 0:33:27.720 --> 0:33:29.880 They said even to third parties, they said, you can 0:33:29.920 --> 0:33:33.280 only make two of these games a year, like, don't 0:33:33.440 --> 0:33:35.640 come at us with two hundred games, Like make something 0:33:35.720 --> 0:33:38.480 really really good that will approve of and we will 0:33:38.520 --> 0:33:41.680 put the Nintendo sealo of quality on the front of 0:33:41.720 --> 0:33:45.560 the cover. Yeah. And then like they were really nitpicky too, 0:33:45.640 --> 0:33:47.840 Like as you were developing the game, you needed to 0:33:48.000 --> 0:33:53.040 send Nintendo, like, um, explanations of the game play, the characters, 0:33:53.120 --> 0:33:55.480 the design, all that stuff, and Nintendo would make notes 0:33:55.560 --> 0:33:58.360 and send it back and make you change stuff. Um. 0:33:58.560 --> 0:34:01.040 And that that's what you could do if you had 0:34:01.120 --> 0:34:04.400 eight of the market as far as video games were, 0:34:04.520 --> 0:34:07.160 because people had to come to you. And then it 0:34:07.320 --> 0:34:09.920 was really smart for them to just kind of protect 0:34:10.040 --> 0:34:13.279 their intellectual property like that because it was so good. 0:34:13.880 --> 0:34:18.760 But um, they were basically so um heavy handed about 0:34:18.800 --> 0:34:21.640 it that they were actually investigated by the FTC at 0:34:21.719 --> 0:34:25.720 one point for their licensing practices. Yeah. I mean, anytime 0:34:25.760 --> 0:34:27.560 you control that much of a market, the FTC is 0:34:27.560 --> 0:34:30.839 gonna sniff around. Uh. And there were other companies out 0:34:30.840 --> 0:34:34.120 there trying to bootleg games. Uh. Still there was one 0:34:34.200 --> 0:34:37.400 called tin Gin that had a few license games, but 0:34:37.520 --> 0:34:40.640 they wanted more money, and so they went to the 0:34:40.680 --> 0:34:43.480 patent office and said, hey, can we take a look 0:34:43.480 --> 0:34:45.719 at that patent for these lock and key chips? And 0:34:45.800 --> 0:34:49.319 they said, sure, here it is and so they, uh, 0:34:50.400 --> 0:34:54.520 I guess illegally because they ended up getting sued and 0:34:54.680 --> 0:34:57.480 Nintendo one. So I mean, I don't know how all 0:34:57.560 --> 0:34:59.880 that patent law works. I wasn't I'm surprised that you 0:35:00.000 --> 0:35:01.799 could just go get a patent and rip it off. 0:35:02.760 --> 0:35:06.560 Well you you're supposed to improve upon it. They seem 0:35:06.640 --> 0:35:08.759 to have just ripped it off. But I think it's 0:35:08.760 --> 0:35:10.760 one of those things that it was like gray illegal, 0:35:10.840 --> 0:35:15.200 gray area that wouldn't be decided anywhere outside of court. Okay, 0:35:15.719 --> 0:35:17.920 you know what I mean. So they just tank and 0:35:18.160 --> 0:35:23.279 rolled the dice and they lost essentially, I think. So 0:35:23.800 --> 0:35:25.920 I've see I've actually heard it both ways. I just 0:35:26.000 --> 0:35:28.080 wanted to fill it out by saying it the other way. 0:35:28.360 --> 0:35:31.960 So there's this YouTuber named Ninten Drew and he has 0:35:32.000 --> 0:35:34.680 a video called ten Weird ny S Facts, and he 0:35:34.800 --> 0:35:38.080 talks about that that key chip thing where people were 0:35:38.080 --> 0:35:40.600 trying to get around it, and he said other companies 0:35:41.120 --> 0:35:43.960 UM didn't even bother to come up with a chip. 0:35:44.200 --> 0:35:47.719 They just used a low voltage spike to scramble the 0:35:47.800 --> 0:35:51.560 brains of the lock chip UM so that it wouldn't 0:35:51.600 --> 0:35:54.000 work anymore. And now the game could be played. And 0:35:54.160 --> 0:35:56.840 as an example he used to UM he used a 0:35:57.120 --> 0:36:01.160 game from the developer Tree and it was a Bible Adventures. 0:36:02.880 --> 0:36:05.360 But Bible no, I've never even heard of it. But 0:36:05.440 --> 0:36:07.759 if you put Bible Adventures in your ny S. It 0:36:07.800 --> 0:36:10.680 would scramble its brain so that you could play Bible Adventures. 0:36:11.000 --> 0:36:13.359 I would think some of these might endanger the game 0:36:13.719 --> 0:36:17.680 console itself. You'd think, so, yeah, it's pretty pretty reckless. 0:36:18.320 --> 0:36:23.400 Jesus killed my Nintendo, right. Uh so rob did not 0:36:23.520 --> 0:36:26.520 work out. Poor rob um did its job and got 0:36:26.600 --> 0:36:28.480 its foot in the little robotic foot in the door. 0:36:29.160 --> 0:36:32.319 But kids, uh, we're like, this is not so fun 0:36:32.440 --> 0:36:35.399 playing these games. These two games with Rob isn't where 0:36:35.440 --> 0:36:39.000 it's at. It's really Super Mario and all these other games. Um, 0:36:39.080 --> 0:36:41.760 and so rob you know, Dave kind of funnily points 0:36:41.760 --> 0:36:44.880 out Rob inevitably ended up kind of in the closet 0:36:44.920 --> 0:36:47.680 of every kid that probably owned one, and it just 0:36:47.920 --> 0:36:51.640 became about that any S system. But that's not to 0:36:51.680 --> 0:36:55.480 say all those peripheries were not a success, because that 0:36:55.719 --> 0:36:59.040 zapper uh and the game Duck Hunt were both big 0:36:59.160 --> 0:37:03.320 deals that kids love to play. Yeah, and um, I 0:37:03.520 --> 0:37:07.239 did not realize this, but the laser gun, the what 0:37:07.440 --> 0:37:10.800 was it called the zapper? It was not It didn't 0:37:10.960 --> 0:37:13.279 shoot anything at your TV because if you stop and 0:37:13.320 --> 0:37:15.200 think about, your TV is not set up to accept 0:37:15.280 --> 0:37:17.480 that kind of thing, or your TV screen certainly isn't. 0:37:17.760 --> 0:37:20.360 So what happened instead is it was a light detector. 0:37:20.960 --> 0:37:24.399 So when you pulled the trigger on the zapper, your 0:37:24.480 --> 0:37:29.040 screen and just a nanosecond, maybe a little slower than that, 0:37:29.239 --> 0:37:31.840 but still faster than you could register it. The screen 0:37:31.920 --> 0:37:34.200 went black and whatever ducks are on the screen turned 0:37:34.200 --> 0:37:38.440 into white squares. And if you had the zapper pointing 0:37:38.680 --> 0:37:41.480 at the duck when you took the shot, the zapper 0:37:41.560 --> 0:37:44.400 would register that white flash of light that was a 0:37:44.480 --> 0:37:47.719 duck that square, and it would register it as a hit. 0:37:48.160 --> 0:37:52.239 That's how the zapper worked, which is pretty ingenious. Very ingenious. Uh, 0:37:52.600 --> 0:37:54.360 and the kid thinks it's a laser gun because they 0:37:54.360 --> 0:37:56.800 don't know how that stuff works exactly. There is no 0:37:57.280 --> 0:38:00.200 kid who picked up the zapper and did and go 0:38:02.400 --> 0:38:04.200 all right, I guess here a minute forty, we'll take 0:38:04.239 --> 0:38:07.880 our second break, and we'll come back and talk a 0:38:07.960 --> 0:38:32.680 little bit about what happened next. Okay, chuck so um. 0:38:33.280 --> 0:38:35.480 There were a couple of other peripherals that came along 0:38:36.200 --> 0:38:39.840 that were as mad as rob was, maybe even a 0:38:39.880 --> 0:38:43.000 little mayor. One was the power pad, the other was 0:38:43.080 --> 0:38:45.640 the power glove. And again these were things that were 0:38:45.680 --> 0:38:48.880 really cool and helped advance any system and made a 0:38:48.920 --> 0:38:51.600 bunch of money for everybody, but when you played with them, 0:38:51.640 --> 0:38:54.920 they weren't very good. Yeah. The power pad is uh, 0:38:55.440 --> 0:38:57.320 it was a pad. It was that it had another 0:38:57.480 --> 0:39:00.440 use from another company. It was called a fun fitness 0:39:00.480 --> 0:39:04.520 pad from Bandai, and Nintendo bought them out and basically 0:39:04.600 --> 0:39:07.640 repackaged it and said, hey, now you can do like 0:39:07.760 --> 0:39:10.480 track and field games by running on this dumb thing. 0:39:11.200 --> 0:39:14.040 And that technology is still very popular, like if you 0:39:14.080 --> 0:39:17.879 go to arcades, those dance games, uh, and they're still 0:39:18.000 --> 0:39:19.880 like I played one not too long ago with my 0:39:19.960 --> 0:39:22.879 daughter David Busters where you do like track and field 0:39:22.920 --> 0:39:26.480 stuff is still around. But at home a kid isn't 0:39:26.480 --> 0:39:29.759 gonna do like they're inside kids because they don't want 0:39:29.760 --> 0:39:32.000 to be outside running around. They want to be on 0:39:32.040 --> 0:39:34.080 the couch. And so the power pad didn't go so well. 0:39:34.200 --> 0:39:37.800 It ended up in the closet with Rob I almost 0:39:37.800 --> 0:39:42.080 called him rod. Uh. And then that glove though, the 0:39:42.160 --> 0:39:46.200 power glove, it was really cool and it looks cool today, 0:39:46.320 --> 0:39:49.600 like if imagine people buy these just for Halloween costumes 0:39:50.160 --> 0:39:52.919 because it looks kind of neat. But Punch Out, which 0:39:53.000 --> 0:39:56.839 is a great boxing game, Uh, power Glove was kind 0:39:56.880 --> 0:39:59.560 of the only game where you really maximized what you 0:39:59.600 --> 0:40:03.120 could get out of the glove, right. I also saw 0:40:03.200 --> 0:40:06.239 there's a scene in the um Fred Savage movie The 0:40:06.320 --> 0:40:08.759 Wizard where this kid pulls out a power glove and 0:40:08.800 --> 0:40:12.240 plays rad Racer. So he's using it like he's he's steering. 0:40:12.360 --> 0:40:16.040 But it just they didn't really develop any games specifically 0:40:16.120 --> 0:40:19.839 for the power Glove, so it was a little bit 0:40:20.000 --> 0:40:23.800 because um they Dave likens it to we Eventually Nintendo 0:40:23.880 --> 0:40:26.400 came out with the Wee system, which used essentially the 0:40:26.520 --> 0:40:29.640 same kind of technology, but yeah, it was ahead of 0:40:29.680 --> 0:40:31.360 its time, so it ended up in the closet with 0:40:31.400 --> 0:40:37.640 the power pad and rob closets exactly. But as as 0:40:37.920 --> 0:40:40.680 kind of clunky as those were, that that controller we 0:40:40.760 --> 0:40:44.960 talked about that was revolutionary. Yeah. There's a writer, a 0:40:45.040 --> 0:40:47.000 game pro named Ti k Kim who came up with 0:40:47.080 --> 0:40:50.440 this cool analogy that they found, which is that what 0:40:50.640 --> 0:40:54.200 Nintendo had landed on with that controller was what uh 0:40:54.880 --> 0:40:59.160 Kim referenced as the language of console gaming, and that 0:40:59.320 --> 0:41:01.839 really of locks it down as to what they did. 0:41:02.000 --> 0:41:04.439 Like you know, we were talking earlier about that first 0:41:04.640 --> 0:41:07.759 nes brick. You know, it was all kind of there, 0:41:07.880 --> 0:41:13.040 like they grew and morphed, but that directional pad was revolutionary. Uh, 0:41:13.280 --> 0:41:16.400 those buttons were revolutionary, and they landed on the idea 0:41:16.680 --> 0:41:21.200 of a kid holding something in their two hands and 0:41:21.560 --> 0:41:25.600 mainly using their thumbs to operate it. Uh thumbs and 0:41:25.680 --> 0:41:28.800 pointer fingers, I guess now, but mainly thumbs. Yeah, because 0:41:28.840 --> 0:41:31.279 with the Atari joystick you would use your thumb for 0:41:31.360 --> 0:41:34.320 the red button, but you used your whole hand to 0:41:34.680 --> 0:41:37.879 to move the joystick. This was just totally different, um. 0:41:38.160 --> 0:41:41.440 And it was really simple, It was really sleek. Everything 0:41:41.560 --> 0:41:44.520 was laid out just right, and it was it was 0:41:44.600 --> 0:41:46.800 just so perfectly made out of the gate that, like 0:41:46.920 --> 0:41:50.120 you're saying, it just laid the groundwork for all of 0:41:50.239 --> 0:41:54.399 the console controllers to come even today. Still it's based 0:41:54.480 --> 0:41:57.239 on those Yeah, they had, Um, it didn't start there. 0:41:57.280 --> 0:42:00.520 They had initially on this handheld game called the Game 0:42:00.560 --> 0:42:02.719 and Watch, which if you look this it looks like 0:42:02.800 --> 0:42:05.480 it's sort of the predecessor to the Game Boy. Uh. 0:42:05.560 --> 0:42:07.799 And it's called a Game and Watch because it had 0:42:07.840 --> 0:42:11.759 a clock on it, so it told told the time 0:42:11.800 --> 0:42:13.480 and it was a game, So they call it the 0:42:13.520 --> 0:42:15.239 Game and Watch. But that's where the D pad came 0:42:15.320 --> 0:42:19.560 from and uh, Donkey Kong is a game that really 0:42:20.080 --> 0:42:24.920 took great advantage of of the D pad, and um 0:42:25.120 --> 0:42:28.239 it was it just seemed like the natural. And now 0:42:28.320 --> 0:42:32.080 they make the little mini joysticks which are which are great, 0:42:32.520 --> 0:42:35.680 but uh, some I think the uh I think the 0:42:35.920 --> 0:42:39.080 Xbox they have joysticks or do they still use that dpad? 0:42:39.719 --> 0:42:42.200 I I don't know remember addicted? So I gave it up. 0:42:43.080 --> 0:42:47.640 So you never played in Xbox? No, no, no, I've 0:42:47.680 --> 0:42:50.560 seen ads for it, but I can't recall the controller. Yeah, 0:42:50.600 --> 0:42:54.120 I played a lot of my same friend John Pendell, 0:42:54.280 --> 0:42:57.279 who you know John backstage in New York. John he 0:42:57.760 --> 0:43:00.960 had the in sixty four. He was my Golden Eye partner. 0:43:01.040 --> 0:43:04.160 But he also got an Xbox and we were both 0:43:04.160 --> 0:43:08.439 addicted to the Tony Hawk skating game for about a year. 0:43:09.960 --> 0:43:12.080 Oh yeah, that was a good game. And that was 0:43:12.120 --> 0:43:13.839 a game that carried with you in real life because 0:43:13.840 --> 0:43:16.239 if you played enough Tony Hawk, you would just someone 0:43:16.280 --> 0:43:18.279 who had never skateboarded. You would be walking around in 0:43:18.280 --> 0:43:20.360 the world and going like I could totally grind that 0:43:20.520 --> 0:43:24.960 gutter on top of that that roof, right, It's pretty funny. 0:43:25.600 --> 0:43:29.279 So the another thing that those controllers did was give 0:43:29.360 --> 0:43:32.040 us the cheek code. I guess you could conceivably do 0:43:32.160 --> 0:43:35.000 on like an entire joystick. But they really came along 0:43:35.120 --> 0:43:38.759 thanks to the ny Yes, because there was a developer 0:43:38.840 --> 0:43:42.160 who was trying to turn the arcade game Gradius into 0:43:42.200 --> 0:43:45.920 a Nintendo game, and it was really hard, so he 0:43:46.120 --> 0:43:49.279 created this cheak code to make it easier to kind 0:43:49.320 --> 0:43:51.080 of game test for him so he wouldn't have to 0:43:51.120 --> 0:43:56.799 start over every time, and is extraordinarily famous. Up up, down, down, left, right, left, right, 0:43:56.880 --> 0:44:00.439 be a start. And that's called the Konami code because 0:44:00.440 --> 0:44:02.800 the guy worked for Konami and it worked for Gradius, 0:44:02.840 --> 0:44:05.280 but it became much more famous with the game Contra. 0:44:05.920 --> 0:44:07.719 I never, I guess you played a lot of Contra, 0:44:07.840 --> 0:44:10.279 probably high for sure. Now what was Contra? I don't 0:44:10.280 --> 0:44:14.600 even know. It was a really kind of groundbreaking shooter 0:44:14.719 --> 0:44:18.040 game where um I saw it described well as like 0:44:18.560 --> 0:44:23.320 a cross between Rambo and Aliens. Um. So, if I 0:44:23.400 --> 0:44:25.960 remember correctly, you're in some sort of weird other world 0:44:26.000 --> 0:44:28.080 and you and your buddy are kind of like buff 0:44:28.120 --> 0:44:31.600 and where like headbands, and you have like spiky blonde hair. 0:44:32.640 --> 0:44:34.560 Um but and you just shoot all sorts of stuff 0:44:34.600 --> 0:44:36.440 and it's really neat because you get different kinds of 0:44:36.480 --> 0:44:39.560 weapons at shooting different ways. And now you're like, this 0:44:39.719 --> 0:44:42.239 is clunky and old. But at the time it was, 0:44:42.400 --> 0:44:45.120 there was just again nothing like it on the market, 0:44:45.600 --> 0:44:47.720 Like a lot of the games that we understand today 0:44:48.320 --> 0:44:51.839 originated on the n S. Yeah, for sure, I think 0:44:51.880 --> 0:44:54.520 I've seen contract that sounds familiar. But if you did 0:44:54.600 --> 0:44:56.480 the up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, be 0:44:56.600 --> 0:44:59.160 a start with contra. If you did it at the 0:44:59.280 --> 0:45:03.120 intro screen, um, right before the game started, you would 0:45:03.120 --> 0:45:05.960 get thirty extra lives which you could use to great effect. 0:45:06.960 --> 0:45:11.359 Oh that's great. Uh, they ended up it's a staggering number, 0:45:11.440 --> 0:45:14.520 still considering that they were kept a sort of a 0:45:14.600 --> 0:45:17.120 heavy hand on the amount of games being produced, but 0:45:17.840 --> 0:45:20.840 they ended up with close to seven hundred games for 0:45:20.960 --> 0:45:27.040 the original NES and I think in is when they 0:45:27.120 --> 0:45:30.360 launched the sixteen bit, No no, no, Super Nintendo was 0:45:30.719 --> 0:45:33.320 one and that was the one that I guess my 0:45:33.440 --> 0:45:35.680 roommate had where ended up playing a lot of Super Mario, 0:45:36.680 --> 0:45:40.080 and then Super Mario two and three of course came along. Uh. 0:45:40.200 --> 0:45:42.919 We already mentioned punch Out. That was I remember playing 0:45:42.960 --> 0:45:45.480 punch Out. That was a great game. Mike Tyson was 0:45:45.560 --> 0:45:48.680 the biggest boxer in the world at the time. But 0:45:48.800 --> 0:45:50.680 there is a little fun fact that Dave dug up 0:45:50.719 --> 0:45:53.479 and I think I remember this, but the arcade punch 0:45:53.560 --> 0:45:57.920 Out had a boxer. The Russian boxers name was Vodka 0:45:58.160 --> 0:46:03.640 drunken Ski, so great, and he got changed to Soda 0:46:03.680 --> 0:46:07.120 Popinski very famously. Anyone who played punch Out is very 0:46:07.160 --> 0:46:10.080 familiar Soda Popinski. And one of the one of the 0:46:10.120 --> 0:46:13.560 big revelations of my childhood was that the great tiger 0:46:13.640 --> 0:46:16.239 who wore a turban with a gem on it. His 0:46:16.440 --> 0:46:19.160 gem flashed before he came at you to throw a punch. 0:46:19.840 --> 0:46:23.000 When I realized that you could protect it. Yeah, it 0:46:23.160 --> 0:46:26.480 just changed my life. That's funny. It changed your life 0:46:26.520 --> 0:46:28.680 in it did. Hey, you might not never become like 0:46:28.880 --> 0:46:32.040 a podcaster. You never know. It's possible that whole glass 0:46:32.080 --> 0:46:37.000 stores or the sliding doors glass stories. Yeah, the glass ceiling, Yeah, 0:46:37.080 --> 0:46:40.680 different thing. So um, what else, Chuck, There's some other 0:46:40.760 --> 0:46:43.160 ones too that we have to shout out. Well, I'll 0:46:43.200 --> 0:46:45.200 shout out Tetris because that's a game I played alone 0:46:45.239 --> 0:46:49.320 in the game Boy. Uh talk about addictive. Tetris was 0:46:49.360 --> 0:46:52.840 super addictive. I think I literally owe Tetris to my 0:46:53.160 --> 0:46:56.799 car packing skills today when we go on road trips 0:46:56.840 --> 0:46:58.959 and stuff, Emily always still jokes like, Chuck is gonna 0:46:59.000 --> 0:47:02.239 Tetris this thing. Uh, it was great. Tetris is a 0:47:02.320 --> 0:47:06.080 very simple game. Uh. If you've never played it, it's 0:47:06.280 --> 0:47:09.280 uh oh, I don't even know if it's worth describing, 0:47:09.360 --> 0:47:11.880 but it's um. It's a game where you stacked to 0:47:11.920 --> 0:47:15.360 different shaped blocks, and when you got solid lines, a 0:47:15.440 --> 0:47:17.520 line would disappear, and the whole goal of this game 0:47:18.120 --> 0:47:20.320 is to to keep those lines low. And as it 0:47:20.360 --> 0:47:23.040 built higher and higher and higher, there was less room 0:47:23.080 --> 0:47:25.560 for those blocks to drop, and it would go seemingly 0:47:25.640 --> 0:47:28.400 go faster and faster. It was like it could very 0:47:28.440 --> 0:47:32.040 stress panic. Yeah, especially as they just kept building up 0:47:32.080 --> 0:47:34.880 and they're dropping in It's like it drops right onto 0:47:34.960 --> 0:47:37.960 another block. You're up there high. It's just like you know, 0:47:38.360 --> 0:47:40.560 it's just it is very stressful, it is, but it 0:47:40.680 --> 0:47:43.480 was fun well, and it's also I think one of 0:47:43.520 --> 0:47:47.040 the more satisfying games ever invented, uh in that when 0:47:47.120 --> 0:47:49.640 you would things would get a little hairy, and if 0:47:49.680 --> 0:47:52.120 you got like two in a row of the exact 0:47:52.239 --> 0:47:55.000 ones that you needed and made I think it was 0:47:55.040 --> 0:47:57.160 a tetris when you got like was it like five 0:47:57.280 --> 0:48:00.400 or was it four? I don't remember four because the 0:48:00.480 --> 0:48:02.880 tallest block was four high? Was it four high? But 0:48:03.040 --> 0:48:05.080 it would make all four disappear at once, And if 0:48:05.080 --> 0:48:07.359 you got a couple of those and you went from 0:48:07.400 --> 0:48:11.959 like seventy high to down to in an instant, there's 0:48:12.080 --> 0:48:16.279 no feeling like that. No, Toutris was pretty great. I 0:48:16.400 --> 0:48:18.759 loved it too. It was awesome. I want to shout 0:48:18.800 --> 0:48:21.480 out some other ones. There was another one, Metroid, which 0:48:21.640 --> 0:48:26.480 I rented countless times for an entire weekend from Blockbuster 0:48:26.960 --> 0:48:29.800 and would spend the entire weekend with friends trying to 0:48:29.840 --> 0:48:33.080 beat it. And if I remember correctly, I never beat Metroid. 0:48:33.600 --> 0:48:36.000 But it was really groundbreaking in that there wasn't like 0:48:36.120 --> 0:48:37.960 some path you I had to stick to, like you 0:48:38.080 --> 0:48:41.960 were meant to explore these vast areas and find stuff 0:48:42.080 --> 0:48:44.920 before you could advance to the next level. That was 0:48:45.160 --> 0:48:48.480 pretty new actually, So Metroid was groundbreaking two. And then 0:48:48.480 --> 0:48:50.040 there are other ones that were just fun to play, 0:48:50.160 --> 0:48:53.560 like ice hockey. Did you play that one? M I 0:48:53.680 --> 0:48:55.920 was always into sports games, so I was I played 0:48:56.040 --> 0:48:59.880 hockey and golf, about tennis, tennis, I played all that. 0:49:00.440 --> 0:49:02.879 It was fun. Did you play the MLB Baseball game. 0:49:03.280 --> 0:49:05.399 I'm not sure if I played that one. That one 0:49:05.520 --> 0:49:09.320 was very addictive. R C Pro Am Ducktails was actually 0:49:09.680 --> 0:49:11.759 a lot of fun. And then there was an army 0:49:11.800 --> 0:49:14.520 one called jack Hole. And then if you like skateboarding 0:49:14.560 --> 0:49:16.719 at the time, which I did, there was Skate or Die, 0:49:16.880 --> 0:49:19.319 which was pretty good. But my money was on Town 0:49:19.400 --> 0:49:23.400 and Country Designs Skate and Surf I think it was called, 0:49:23.920 --> 0:49:25.919 and you could skateboard and then you would go surf 0:49:26.000 --> 0:49:28.200 and it was a lot of fun to play too. Yeah. 0:49:28.280 --> 0:49:31.239 I was so h into the sports games and I 0:49:31.320 --> 0:49:36.160 still play the PlayStation Uh uh, what is it? P 0:49:36.280 --> 0:49:38.040 G A two K for their golf game is still 0:49:38.040 --> 0:49:40.520 a lot of fun, but I played. I was addicted 0:49:40.520 --> 0:49:44.960 to the Atari Beach volleyball game, wherein it was two 0:49:45.040 --> 0:49:49.600 players aside and both players were connected to one another. 0:49:49.680 --> 0:49:52.839 They could not move independently, so when you're moving your 0:49:52.880 --> 0:49:56.359 joystick around, they're both running in the exact same pattern. Yeah, 0:49:56.560 --> 0:49:59.359 that's hilarious. That sounds. It reminds me of another game 0:49:59.400 --> 0:50:02.359 that Dave doug up called Chase the Chuck Wagon, which 0:50:02.480 --> 0:50:04.239 was just about as bad as it got for a 0:50:04.320 --> 0:50:07.239 tari where a dog chases the wagon from the Chuck 0:50:07.280 --> 0:50:11.600 Wagon commercials branded poop out? Yeah, who who would have thought? 0:50:11.840 --> 0:50:13.800 And then it would poop out like food and the 0:50:13.880 --> 0:50:15.719 dog would eat the food. That was like the point 0:50:15.760 --> 0:50:17.880 of the game. Uh. You should speak a little bit 0:50:17.920 --> 0:50:20.040 about Zelda though, the legend of Zelda. That's a game 0:50:20.080 --> 0:50:23.200 again that by the time that came out, it felt 0:50:23.239 --> 0:50:26.800 like a kid's thing. Uh, and again we couldn't afford 0:50:27.120 --> 0:50:30.440 an ne s. So what was Zelda all about? So? 0:50:31.600 --> 0:50:35.960 I never liked Zelda. It did something to my mind 0:50:36.120 --> 0:50:39.439 or my brain that was not comfortable. I don't know why. 0:50:39.960 --> 0:50:42.719 It's almost like, have you ever um, what's your grocery store? 0:50:43.040 --> 0:50:47.080 Kroker republics? I can't remember both, but generally publics. Okay. 0:50:47.160 --> 0:50:49.359 So there's a lot of people out there who are 0:50:49.440 --> 0:50:52.280 only publics and only Kroger. And I think my theory 0:50:52.400 --> 0:50:54.640 is that they're laid out in a certain way that 0:50:54.760 --> 0:50:56.960 they appeal the one type of person, and then the 0:50:57.000 --> 0:50:59.040 other one appeals to a different type of person. So 0:50:59.480 --> 0:51:01.440 if you are a public's person and you go into 0:51:01.480 --> 0:51:04.719 a Kroger, it feels weird and out of place, and 0:51:04.840 --> 0:51:08.360 reality is just slightly askew. That's how Legend of Zelda 0:51:08.400 --> 0:51:10.480 maybe feels. So I never got into it, but I 0:51:10.600 --> 0:51:13.480 know some people, like I've essentially dedicated their lives to 0:51:13.600 --> 0:51:17.560 that game, like beyond playing, it's like probably dress up 0:51:17.600 --> 0:51:20.320 as link the main character, have like all sorts of 0:51:20.440 --> 0:51:22.680 toys and stuff like that. Like, Legend of Zelda was 0:51:22.760 --> 0:51:25.400 really big too. Yeah, and it was certainly not the 0:51:25.440 --> 0:51:28.719 first open world game, but uh, and I think there's 0:51:28.760 --> 0:51:32.080 not a solid agreement on what that was. Um, there 0:51:32.120 --> 0:51:35.960 are some arguments for the Great Atari Game Adventure that 0:51:36.120 --> 0:51:39.480 was the first open world game I played. Your Avatar 0:51:39.680 --> 0:51:44.040 was a square, but it was so much fun because 0:51:44.120 --> 0:51:45.920 you could go anywhere for the first time. It was 0:51:46.000 --> 0:51:48.920 really different new But I think Zelda is kind of 0:51:49.000 --> 0:51:52.759 regarded as or the Legend of Zelda as one of 0:51:52.840 --> 0:51:56.240 the first open world like really good open world games. 0:51:56.280 --> 0:51:59.680 I guess it advanced one and it was by the 0:51:59.760 --> 0:52:02.960 same guy who did Super Mario Brothers, so that's not surprising. 0:52:04.520 --> 0:52:07.319 What else you got, Chuck, I mean, not a whole 0:52:07.360 --> 0:52:08.960 lot of else. I guess we should we should definitely 0:52:09.000 --> 0:52:11.359 talk about blowing in those cartridges, because I even made 0:52:11.400 --> 0:52:15.160 that joke before we recorded because my microphone wasn't working, 0:52:15.280 --> 0:52:18.520 and uh, Dave, who's sitting in for Jerry, said, unplugged 0:52:18.560 --> 0:52:20.520 the cable and just plug it back in. I said, 0:52:20.560 --> 0:52:23.279 should I blow in it? All right? And you don't 0:52:23.320 --> 0:52:25.680 want to actually, so did you know about that? Right? 0:52:26.239 --> 0:52:29.040 I blew in a lot of cartridges at Aory cartridges too, 0:52:29.719 --> 0:52:34.040 So that was the thing. If your Nintendo cartridge didn't work, um, 0:52:34.360 --> 0:52:37.000 you would take it out of the VCR like um 0:52:37.719 --> 0:52:41.160 entry point and you would blow on it. Everyone blew 0:52:41.239 --> 0:52:42.800 on it, and you put it back in and it 0:52:42.840 --> 0:52:46.640 would work. The thing is, it wasn't doing anything when 0:52:46.680 --> 0:52:48.640 you blew on it. You weren't helping it. It just 0:52:48.800 --> 0:52:51.319 hadn't made the correct connection the first time. So when 0:52:51.360 --> 0:52:53.520 you took it out and put it back in, the 0:52:53.680 --> 0:52:56.160 chances were that you were making the correct connection then 0:52:56.440 --> 0:52:58.560 and then the game would work. But you, being a 0:52:58.640 --> 0:53:00.480 dumb ten year old, thought, well, I blew on it, 0:53:00.560 --> 0:53:04.399 so that fixed it. But there the Nintendo long said 0:53:04.920 --> 0:53:08.000 do not blow on these things. It's actually bad for them, 0:53:08.320 --> 0:53:10.719 and no one listened until there was this guy who 0:53:10.800 --> 0:53:13.719 came along and actually ran a study, the first, the 0:53:13.840 --> 0:53:17.800 world's first study on what blowing on a Nintendo cartridge 0:53:17.840 --> 0:53:21.160 does and it didn't work. This is his name was 0:53:21.200 --> 0:53:24.160 Frankie Bit Truelo, And you know it was a very 0:53:24.360 --> 0:53:26.640 rudimentary study, but I mean, how else you gonna do it. 0:53:26.680 --> 0:53:28.960 You're gonna have a control game you don't blow into, 0:53:29.480 --> 0:53:33.520 and you're gonna have game you blow into. And after 0:53:34.120 --> 0:53:36.600 how long did he do this? Thirty days? Every day. 0:53:37.840 --> 0:53:40.600 The guys spent a month blowing on this game. Took 0:53:40.680 --> 0:53:43.720 this the blown cartridge out at the end and showed 0:53:43.760 --> 0:53:46.520 that it was. It was corroded and kind of gross, 0:53:47.560 --> 0:53:50.759 and uh, it's it's funny, like you don't know what kid. 0:53:51.160 --> 0:53:54.600 You always wonder who invented this because every kid did it, 0:53:54.719 --> 0:53:57.680 because every kid saw another kid do it who just 0:53:57.760 --> 0:54:00.480 got it from some other kid, but was just sort 0:54:00.520 --> 0:54:02.200 of known. Like you would take it out and it 0:54:02.320 --> 0:54:03.960 was always the same thing. You would do it really 0:54:04.040 --> 0:54:07.839 quick and just go and like run the cartridge back 0:54:07.840 --> 0:54:09.839 and forth in front of your mouth and then stick 0:54:09.920 --> 0:54:12.720 it back in. Yeah, I mean that sounds just triggered 0:54:12.760 --> 0:54:17.920 a tidal wave of nostalgiam and chuck. Remember that, So 0:54:18.120 --> 0:54:21.600 don't blow in your Nintendo cartridges. People who still playing 0:54:21.640 --> 0:54:24.839 Nintendo Original and yes, you should follow this up again 0:54:24.920 --> 0:54:28.560 one day to to do one on the music of Nintendo. No, well, 0:54:28.719 --> 0:54:30.560 just sort of everything we didn't cover because the in 0:54:30.680 --> 0:54:33.640 sixty four was such a big deal. And uh, I 0:54:33.680 --> 0:54:35.920 don't know, this could be a two parter separated by 0:54:36.000 --> 0:54:38.959 time and space. Okay, I like that idea, Chuck, let's 0:54:39.000 --> 0:54:42.480 definitely do that. Um. And in the meantime, since Chuck 0:54:42.560 --> 0:54:45.200 and I just hashed out a second part to this episode, 0:54:45.600 --> 0:54:52.439 of course, that means we've just unlocked listener mail. Maybe 0:54:52.520 --> 0:54:56.520 next Christmas it can be, are you know, because this 0:54:56.560 --> 0:54:58.680 is kind of every year we try to do a toy, 0:54:58.840 --> 0:55:02.279 a famous toy. Yeah. No, I have the same thought. 0:55:02.320 --> 0:55:04.759 I just didn't want to spill the beans. Oh all right, 0:55:06.000 --> 0:55:09.040 consider them spilled. Yeah, they're spilled all over all right, 0:55:09.120 --> 0:55:12.360 speaking of spilling all over, Uh, this is a correction 0:55:12.440 --> 0:55:14.880 that on something you said that I I don't know 0:55:14.960 --> 0:55:17.799 how I didn't catch this, but it's the we'll call 0:55:17.840 --> 0:55:23.839 it the Great Nutter butter controversy of Hey guys. At 0:55:23.840 --> 0:55:25.839 the end of the Vaudeville episode, Josh said, it's weird 0:55:25.920 --> 0:55:28.799 how there were two types of nutter butters and they're 0:55:28.840 --> 0:55:32.000 totally different. The wafery kind and then the peanut shape 0:55:32.000 --> 0:55:34.239 cookie And I'm I don't remember what I said. It 0:55:34.320 --> 0:55:38.120 must have just been like, huh, I think that's exactly 0:55:38.200 --> 0:55:40.279 what you said. And you mentioned both of the same logo, 0:55:40.360 --> 0:55:43.520 same packaging, which is not true, just two different types 0:55:43.520 --> 0:55:45.840 of peanut butter cookies. And I guess this is what 0:55:45.880 --> 0:55:47.319 you're talking about, because we had a bunch of people 0:55:47.440 --> 0:55:50.919 right in. The peanut shape cookies are the Nutter butters, Josh, 0:55:51.000 --> 0:55:55.560 but the other wafer retreats are nutty Buddy bars. Did 0:55:55.640 --> 0:55:58.680 you look as this what you meant? No, I think 0:55:58.719 --> 0:56:01.520 this person is from an altar that barn, same bear's dimension, 0:56:01.800 --> 0:56:04.799 because in in our dimension that there, it's the same thing, 0:56:04.960 --> 0:56:07.880 same package, same name, say everything, just different cookies. But 0:56:08.040 --> 0:56:11.160 is the nutty Buddy what you were thinking of, though? 0:56:11.200 --> 0:56:16.040 Is what I want to know in that person's dimension? Yes, okay, okay, 0:56:16.760 --> 0:56:18.960 it's easy to get a mixed up guys, if you're 0:56:19.000 --> 0:56:24.600 not a true nuts specialist. Uh. And Chuck didn't pick 0:56:25.160 --> 0:56:28.000 pick up on it, which was weird because I love both. 0:56:28.080 --> 0:56:30.719 I don't never buy these, of course, but boy, a 0:56:30.760 --> 0:56:35.200 little Debbie nutty bar so good. I think you would 0:56:35.280 --> 0:56:37.480 like the other version of Nutter butters, the kind of 0:56:37.520 --> 0:56:39.320 way free one. I think you would really like it. 0:56:39.520 --> 0:56:43.439 That's the Nutty Bar or the Nutty Buddy. No, that's 0:56:43.480 --> 0:56:46.839 the Nutter Butter. But I know what you're saying. Oh man, 0:56:47.480 --> 0:56:50.440 who wrote this email? This is George. I think Georgeton 0:56:50.520 --> 0:56:52.440 is going to be more confused now than ever. So 0:56:52.680 --> 0:56:56.520 George says, PS, gotta go. It's raining donuts again outside. 0:56:58.560 --> 0:57:01.960 Thanks a lot, George. Were ciate the dispatch from your dimension. 0:57:02.480 --> 0:57:05.600 Hopefully you guys are having a happy holiday season there too. 0:57:06.160 --> 0:57:07.960 And if you want to be like George and reach 0:57:08.040 --> 0:57:11.040 out and say hello, you can do that in an email. 0:57:11.360 --> 0:57:14.799 Send it to Stuff podcast at i heart radio dot com. 0:57:18.040 --> 0:57:20.320 Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. 0:57:20.840 --> 0:57:23.360 For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart 0:57:23.440 --> 0:57:26.320 Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your 0:57:26.360 --> 0:57:27.080 favorite shows.