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Arcades: Nostalgia Abounds · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, we are doing a Northeastern swing for our
0:05
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three tour and which includes one day in
0:09
Speaker 1: dear old Canada. Right, that's right. We're gonna swing it
0:12
Speaker 1: up starting May fourth at the Warner Theater in DC.
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Speaker 1: It's gonna be amazing. May fifth, we're gonna be at
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Speaker 1: the Chevalier, which you have to say with your pinkie
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Speaker 1: in the air. That's in Boston. And then Chuck. May six,
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Speaker 1: we're finishing up in Toronto, Ontario at Massey Hall. It's
0:29
Speaker 1: going to be massive at Massey Hall. That's right. Our
0:32
Speaker 1: first shows went great earlier this year. It's a great
0:35
Speaker 1: topic and we are super super excited to take it
0:38
Speaker 1: to DC, the Boston metro area in Toronto, yep. So
0:42
Speaker 1: go to link tree slash SYSK live for tickets and
0:46
Speaker 1: for you oldsters like us, that's l I n K
0:49
Speaker 1: t R dot E slash SYSK Live. We'll see you
0:53
Speaker 1: guys in May. Welcome to Stuff you should know, a
0:58
Speaker 1: production of Iheartradiot. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
1:08
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Jerry's here somewhere running around like
1:11
Speaker 1: a chicken worth or head cut off like headless Mike,
1:15
Speaker 1: and that makes this stuff you should know, Mike, or
1:17
Speaker 1: headless chicken. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, we're immediately reminded me
1:21
Speaker 1: of the mcnaggan. What lets I mentioned that way back then,
1:26
Speaker 1: there's a just look at mcnagan. It's a fried chicken heads.
1:30
Speaker 1: It's a fried chicken head that's slipped into some fried chicken.
1:34
Speaker 1: Oh at a restaurant. Have you ever eaten an h
1:37
Speaker 1: and F home in and finch? Uh? Yeah, yeah, I've
1:40
Speaker 1: had that burger at Pond City Market where we used
1:42
Speaker 1: to have our studios. Oh, if you go to the
1:44
Speaker 1: flagship restaurant, fried chicken heads are on the menu. No, really, yes,
1:50
Speaker 1: And when you eat one, you're like, I've gone too far. This,
1:52
Speaker 1: this dinner has turned into a blood orgy. Basically, I
1:57
Speaker 1: have never am sending you the mcnaggan right now, just
2:00
Speaker 1: because that's the kind of stuff we're doing. Now that's
2:02
Speaker 1: i'll lose. This has gotten here. I'll do a typing
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Speaker 1: sound effect. Do do? All right? Feast your eyes on
2:09
Speaker 1: the mcnoggan, and let's talk about arcades. Ah, yes, let's
2:14
Speaker 1: I'm really excited about this one, Charles, because both of
2:18
Speaker 1: us we're kind of we hit two different sweet spots
2:21
Speaker 1: with this, right. I mean you were in the Golden
2:24
Speaker 1: Era and I was in the Silver Era? Am I correct? Yeah?
2:28
Speaker 1: I mean you you were kind of you probably went
2:31
Speaker 1: to the Golden era time written from going to a
2:35
Speaker 1: little Yeah. Yeah. My mom was like, that's a drug
2:38
Speaker 1: den right, which is funny because I went to a
2:44
Speaker 1: lot of arcades, and I know I was a naive
2:46
Speaker 1: little Baptist boy, but actually, what am I saying? There
2:49
Speaker 1: was probably drugs all over. Yeah, You're like, why are
2:51
Speaker 1: you acting so goofy Todd, geez, get it together. But
2:56
Speaker 1: we're talking about mainly the Golden Age of arcades? What
3:00
Speaker 1: else is it? Dovetail with you? Said Bob for us
3:03
Speaker 1: and what I was part of the Silver Age? Is
3:06
Speaker 1: that with you? Okay? I thought that was one additional
3:07
Speaker 1: thing you were going to say, No, I don't think so. Okay,
3:11
Speaker 1: Well this dovetails nicely, I think with our episode on
3:13
Speaker 1: Nintendo obviously totally and in fact we've had this. Dave
3:17
Speaker 1: Russ helped us out with this one. Dave rus Co,
3:19
Speaker 1: creator of the hit podcast Biblical Timing. But he wrote
3:24
Speaker 1: this a while ago. But I've been sort of sitting
3:27
Speaker 1: on it until Nino the Nintendo stank were off. And
3:32
Speaker 1: did we do one on Atari or not or just
3:34
Speaker 1: the one with Strickland. I think on Atari. No, I
3:38
Speaker 1: definitely did a two parter on tech stuff, but we
3:40
Speaker 1: did not. We did the et game the writer, Yes, yes, Okay,
3:44
Speaker 1: did that one. Yeah. We've talked about the video game
3:46
Speaker 1: Crash of nineteen eighty three like multiple times. And we
3:49
Speaker 1: did pinball. We did do pinball, and that actually kind
3:52
Speaker 1: of factors in remotely. We won't go into it much,
3:54
Speaker 1: but pinball kind of prefigured the video game arcade in
3:59
Speaker 1: a lot of different ways, not the least that it
4:02
Speaker 1: had an unsavory reputation among parents and kids love to
4:06
Speaker 1: go play there. But after pinball kind of stopped being
4:11
Speaker 1: as much of a thing, there was a little bit
4:13
Speaker 1: of a drought until we pick up and I think
4:17
Speaker 1: that say the seventies, the early seventies, late sixties, with
4:21
Speaker 1: a young man, an electrical engineer from University of Utah
4:25
Speaker 1: named Nolan Bushnell. Nolan Bushnell figures into this story as
4:31
Speaker 1: much as you can figure into the birth of the
4:32
Speaker 1: arcade because he was a nerd. He was in all
4:38
Speaker 1: the best ways. He was an e major at Utah,
4:42
Speaker 1: Like you said, and when you were a nerd in
4:46
Speaker 1: university in the late nineteen sixties early seventies, you're gonna
4:51
Speaker 1: start playing very rudimentary computer games and think they are awesome.
4:56
Speaker 1: In that very first game that he played was one
4:58
Speaker 1: in from six two developed an MIT called space War.
5:04
Speaker 1: Yeah with a big fat exclamation yeah, And it spread
5:07
Speaker 1: very quickly among nerds in college all over the country.
5:10
Speaker 1: It was a big deal. Um. But you say that
5:13
Speaker 1: that um Nolan Bushnell was like an important figure, You
5:18
Speaker 1: can actually kind of make an argument that this may
5:22
Speaker 1: have never happened had it not been for him, because,
5:24
Speaker 1: as he kind of recounts later, well, listen, there was
5:29
Speaker 1: no one in the same position that he was in
5:31
Speaker 1: probably in the world, because he had an electrical engineering
5:34
Speaker 1: degree and he played he played games on computers, so
5:37
Speaker 1: he knew about video games like I should say video
5:40
Speaker 1: game because there was basically just one at the time. Yeah. Yeah.
5:43
Speaker 1: And then he also um and during summers, and then
5:47
Speaker 1: shortly after he graduated college, he was the games director
5:51
Speaker 1: for an amusement park outside of Salt Lake City called Lagoon.
5:55
Speaker 1: And there's seriously probably no one else on the planet
5:58
Speaker 1: that had that varience with computer games and also with
6:02
Speaker 1: UM arcade games like pinball or ski ball, was one
6:07
Speaker 1: UM who could have kind of synergized them the way
6:11
Speaker 1: that Nolan Bushnell did create Atari. M that's my take.
6:16
Speaker 1: Do you have a thing against Nolan Bushnell? No, But
6:19
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what is Nolan Bushnell still around? I
6:23
Speaker 1: don't know, my friend, he loves you. If he is,
6:26
Speaker 1: I will say that why because you're saying he's the
6:30
Speaker 1: only one that could have done it in the world
6:32
Speaker 1: and that it wouldn't have happened without him. He's like,
6:33
Speaker 1: you can make a h Clark praises right now. Well,
6:37
Speaker 1: Nolan Bushnell, if you're out there, I think that that
6:39
Speaker 1: demands that you get in touch and thank me. Yeah,
6:42
Speaker 1: it's in some of that arcade money, Josh Way sure,
6:47
Speaker 1: but you are right, and that he had um he
6:50
Speaker 1: had an economic understanding that proved to be pretty key,
6:55
Speaker 1: as in, he uh, he knew what it cost to
6:59
Speaker 1: like build the game in a game cabinet, he knew
7:03
Speaker 1: how much they had to make to make that money
7:05
Speaker 1: back and turn a profit. So just sort of learned
7:09
Speaker 1: knowing the economics of how this stuff worked, and like
7:13
Speaker 1: you said, also being into the games was a It
7:16
Speaker 1: was a key reason this all happened. Yeah, so he
7:19
Speaker 1: saw a real opportunity to do something big and he's
7:24
Speaker 1: alive by the way. Okay, cool, well then yes, please
7:27
Speaker 1: do get in touch Nolan Bushnell. Yeah. Um, he recruited
7:31
Speaker 1: a guy named Ted Dabney who together they went on
7:35
Speaker 1: to found Atari with another guy named al Alcorn. Alan Alcorn,
7:41
Speaker 1: and the three of them created a first a rip
7:45
Speaker 1: off of Space War called computer Space in nineteen seventy one,
7:49
Speaker 1: and a lot of people say, like, it wasn't it
7:50
Speaker 1: wasn't a good It wasn't a good game. It was
7:52
Speaker 1: too hard, because the whole point of creating a game,
7:56
Speaker 1: they found out after this first attempt is to make
8:00
Speaker 1: it just hard enough to keep people interested, but easy
8:05
Speaker 1: enough that you can play it while half drunk. Yeah,
8:08
Speaker 1: like easy to play, hard to master. Yeah, because these
8:12
Speaker 1: these coin operated games, their first targets were bars. So
8:17
Speaker 1: computer Space it's very frequently said it's a commercial failure.
8:20
Speaker 1: But um, Nolan Bushnell, my new friend, he points out
8:24
Speaker 1: that we sold enough of these units that we were
8:27
Speaker 1: able to go on and found Atari. Yeah, so they
8:30
Speaker 1: actually did sell some. It went okay, but again it
8:33
Speaker 1: was supposedly way too hard, and they took that as
8:35
Speaker 1: a lesson learned and they moved on the next year
8:37
Speaker 1: to create Pong. Yeah, they said, all right, you want easy, right,
8:42
Speaker 1: let me introduce you to Pong. And I know I
8:44
Speaker 1: mentioned this on the Strickland's episode, but I had the
8:48
Speaker 1: you know, and I think you were kind of the
8:49
Speaker 1: same and your family sort of you know, middle class
8:53
Speaker 1: folks who a lot of times got the knockoff versions
8:56
Speaker 1: of whatever, whether it was ping, the where those the
9:00
Speaker 1: the not quite eyes odd shirt or the not quite
9:02
Speaker 1: Monga's bike. I had Knights of the round Table knock
9:05
Speaker 1: off polo shirts. Yeah, I had the not quite Pong,
9:08
Speaker 1: which it was I believe the Sears and Roebuck version
9:11
Speaker 1: of Pong it always is. Yeah. I don't know what
9:13
Speaker 1: it was called, but it was essentially the same thing,
9:15
Speaker 1: which is um ping pong or table tennis. It was
9:19
Speaker 1: called ganap. Was it really the Sears version? No, that's Pong?
9:24
Speaker 1: Okay backwards, Oh, I got you, boy. That was slow
9:28
Speaker 1: on the uptake on that one. So okay, there's somebody
9:30
Speaker 1: out there laugh. But Pong was based on a nineteen
9:32
Speaker 1: fifty eight video game um Tennis for two. Did you
9:38
Speaker 1: see video of that game of Tennis for two? Yeah,
9:41
Speaker 1: it's played on a radar oscillator. Yeah, like the same
9:45
Speaker 1: kind of like round fish eye screen. Yeah, yeah, that
9:49
Speaker 1: you use for like to detect missiles in nineteen fifty.
9:53
Speaker 1: That's how the game is played. But it's actually pretty
9:56
Speaker 1: sophisticated if you watch it. Yeah, there was another game
9:59
Speaker 1: that was on a round screen? Was it the um?
10:02
Speaker 1: Was it computer Space? Did you see that one? I
10:05
Speaker 1: didn't know. Was that a square screen? I don't know. Anyway,
10:08
Speaker 1: something in my memory bank tells me there was another
10:10
Speaker 1: one on a round screen because they just you know,
10:13
Speaker 1: that's what graphic screens were like in the sixties. They
10:16
Speaker 1: were radar screens. Yeah, but I mean this thing was
10:19
Speaker 1: like it's almost like they broke into like a d
10:22
Speaker 1: O d um missile silo and hooked up their controllers
10:26
Speaker 1: and we're playing Tennis for two on it. That's what
10:28
Speaker 1: it looks like in this video. Yeah. Uh. And you know,
10:31
Speaker 1: while we're singing Bushnell's praises for creating Atari and launching
10:35
Speaker 1: the arcade basically the modern arcade. He also was one
10:39
Speaker 1: of the founders of Charles Entertainment Cheese, better known as
10:44
Speaker 1: Chucky Cheese, which is still around. Yeah, have you ever
10:46
Speaker 1: seen I'm sure we've talked about it before, but have
10:48
Speaker 1: you seen the rock Afire Explosion documentary? The what so
10:54
Speaker 1: Chucky Cheese has his band like they have like the
10:57
Speaker 1: live animatronic band at their ch Cheeselo Showbiz Pizza had
11:02
Speaker 1: their own called rock Afire Explosion. I think a Gorilla
11:06
Speaker 1: was like the lead singer, and it's very cute, same
11:08
Speaker 1: thing animatronics. They sang some songs and stuff like that,
11:12
Speaker 1: and they made a documentary about people whose passion in
11:16
Speaker 1: life is finding and rescuing and restoring old rock Afire
11:21
Speaker 1: Explosion setups. Oh wow. It's one of those like really great,
11:25
Speaker 1: like social interest documentaries that like just kind of fly
11:29
Speaker 1: under the radar. But it's like, this is one of
11:31
Speaker 1: the best documentaries I've ever seen in my life. It's
11:33
Speaker 1: just great. Yeah, I gotta check that out. Please do
11:35
Speaker 1: check it out. Its Rockefire Explosion. I think it's mid adds,
11:39
Speaker 1: maybe twenty seven or eight. I love anything where someone
11:42
Speaker 1: takes old stuff and restores it for even if it's
11:46
Speaker 1: just for display or whatever. Okay, well, then I have
11:48
Speaker 1: something else to tell you. I was saving this for
11:51
Speaker 1: the end. But I happened I don't even know how
11:53
Speaker 1: I happened upon this. There's a website called Aussie Arcade
11:57
Speaker 1: and it's almost like a news server, list serve or
12:00
Speaker 1: something like that. But I found a post called Atari
12:03
Speaker 1: Star Wars Cockpit Restoration. So you remember the Atari Star
12:07
Speaker 1: Wars game? Do you remember the sit down version? H yeah? Okay,
12:14
Speaker 1: So a guy in Australia got his hands on one
12:16
Speaker 1: of these that's seen better days and he spent nine
12:19
Speaker 1: months restoring it like and I don't mean the outside,
12:23
Speaker 1: I mean the wiring. He resal soldered the wires, he
12:28
Speaker 1: like electro plated the metal parts. Again, it's one of
12:32
Speaker 1: the most amazing things I've ever seen in my life.
12:35
Speaker 1: And he chronicled it exhaustively. So if you want to
12:38
Speaker 1: like spend an hour just being impressed, go look for
12:41
Speaker 1: Atari Star Wars Cockpit Restoration by Womble Wombles, the guy
12:45
Speaker 1: who did it on Aussi Arcade, and you'll just be wowed.
12:49
Speaker 1: All Right, I'm gonna I know what I'm doing for
12:50
Speaker 1: the rest of the day. Now at least you'll like it, Chuck,
12:52
Speaker 1: I promise. And it's not a video, it's just it's
12:55
Speaker 1: photos and like explanations and stuff. Okay, all right, So
12:59
Speaker 1: back to Ellen alcorn in. Pong Pong was a huge hit.
13:04
Speaker 1: They put the very first one in a bar and Sunnyvale,
13:06
Speaker 1: California called Andicaps, which is kind of fun, one little
13:10
Speaker 1: historical footnote and a couple and this is like the
13:14
Speaker 1: movie version. Two weeks later they called and said, hey,
13:16
Speaker 1: it just sing's not working anymore. And they go over
13:19
Speaker 1: and then I was like, here's your problem, and they
13:22
Speaker 1: opened the coin catcher and like a million dollars spills out.
13:26
Speaker 1: But that's how the story goes. It was basically so
13:28
Speaker 1: popular it was jammed with quarters, and they sold eight
13:33
Speaker 1: thousand pong cabinets in the face of knockoffs because it
13:38
Speaker 1: took a year to get the patent for pong, so
13:41
Speaker 1: they were knockoffs being sold and they still ended up
13:43
Speaker 1: selling thirty five thousand total pong cabinets. Yeah, they sold
13:48
Speaker 1: eight thousand just the first year, and that was with
13:50
Speaker 1: six people building them. That's in a pong cabinet in
13:56
Speaker 1: a bar in today's dollars could bring in close to
14:00
Speaker 1: one hundred grand in quarters. Wow, every single year. If
14:04
Speaker 1: you had one of those in your bar. I think
14:07
Speaker 1: they were saying it was bringing close to in today's
14:10
Speaker 1: stellars about two hundred and seventy dollars. And of course
14:14
Speaker 1: that's if it's played every day. Of course you can
14:15
Speaker 1: be closed on Christmas. Sure, Oh you did the math?
14:18
Speaker 1: Is that where you got it? I did the math,
14:20
Speaker 1: but I sort of round it up still. I'll bet
14:23
Speaker 1: Andy Kapps was open Christmas. But it was also a
14:26
Speaker 1: good place to meet somebody if you were interested in them,
14:30
Speaker 1: because it was a good way to have a conversation.
14:32
Speaker 1: You played side by side. It was a social lubricant
14:36
Speaker 1: because you were drinking at a fern bar, a Harvey wallbanger,
14:40
Speaker 1: playing pong, and you know, meeting some ladies down at
14:43
Speaker 1: the Regal Beagle exactly. So this was nineteen seventy three. Yeah,
14:50
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three. So Atari went from not existing you're
14:54
Speaker 1: coming out with its first game in nineteen seventy one,
14:57
Speaker 1: to having a smash hit and actually creating stand up
15:00
Speaker 1: coin operated arcade video games as an industry, from nothing
15:05
Speaker 1: to in nineteen seventy three to nineteen seventy four selling
15:09
Speaker 1: out to a tar to Warner Brothers or Warner Communications
15:13
Speaker 1: for twenty eight million, which is almost one hundred and
15:15
Speaker 1: fifty million today and sorry, in six years. That's crazy. Yeah,
15:20
Speaker 1: I mean that's definitely worth singing the praises. Yeah, absolutely,
15:25
Speaker 1: And you know, Dave argues that the golden Age was
15:29
Speaker 1: seventy eight to eighty two. I would argue it trickled
15:34
Speaker 1: into eighty three and people were still going into arcades
15:36
Speaker 1: in eighty four and eighty five. But I think he's
15:40
Speaker 1: probably pretty close because eighty three, as we'll see later,
15:43
Speaker 1: is if you look at data, is when gross profits
15:48
Speaker 1: you know, really kind of didn't bottom out. But we're
15:51
Speaker 1: a lot less than during those previous four years. Yeah,
15:54
Speaker 1: I think it was like eighty four, maybe especially eighty four,
15:57
Speaker 1: but probably in the eighty five it was like a
15:59
Speaker 1: dead man walking. You didn't know it. Yeah, but yeah,
16:03
Speaker 1: people were still I mean, those those video arcades that
16:06
Speaker 1: started to spring up like mushrooms all across the country.
16:10
Speaker 1: I think in nineteen eighty two there were thirteen thousand
16:14
Speaker 1: arcades in the US and let's just get the straight
16:17
Speaker 1: five six years before there were probably zero, and all
16:23
Speaker 1: of a sudden there were thirteen thousand arcades. There were
16:25
Speaker 1: tons of companies that were getting into creating and designing
16:29
Speaker 1: and building these stand up cabinets that were sent to
16:33
Speaker 1: all of these thirteen thousand arcades in the United States,
16:36
Speaker 1: and it was just the thing. It was the biggest
16:40
Speaker 1: thing around at the time. Yeah, I mean, I can,
16:44
Speaker 1: off the top of my head, I can think of
16:46
Speaker 1: four arcades that were within twelve minute a twelve minute
16:52
Speaker 1: drive from my house in suburban Atlanta, I see. I
16:55
Speaker 1: The only one I could come up with was the
16:57
Speaker 1: one at Southwick Mall and Toledo that I wasn't allowed
17:00
Speaker 1: to go to. It was called Red Barns And Okay,
17:04
Speaker 1: I don't even remember what it looked like inside. I
17:06
Speaker 1: saw pictures of the old sign. I was like, yeah,
17:08
Speaker 1: that's it. I just remember it being dark. And I
17:12
Speaker 1: think I met gone in there once as a slightly
17:14
Speaker 1: older kid, after I was like allowed to do whatever
17:17
Speaker 1: I want, you know, like age twelve. Yeah, and um
17:22
Speaker 1: and uh, it was, you know, kind of like this
17:25
Speaker 1: neat place that I wasn't allowed to go to before.
17:27
Speaker 1: But it kind of missed, you know what I mean. Yeah,
17:31
Speaker 1: you know, if I wish one thing for you, it
17:33
Speaker 1: would be that so that you were just a little
17:37
Speaker 1: bit older. Yeah, and then and then you could take
17:39
Speaker 1: those years off because I don't want you to be
17:40
Speaker 1: my age. I want you to be my age in
17:42
Speaker 1: the eighties. That would be really neat. I wonder when
17:46
Speaker 1: we'll start doing that, we'll start playing with age and
17:48
Speaker 1: experience like that. I have an idea. I want to
17:51
Speaker 1: tell you this. I think this is so cool. I
17:53
Speaker 1: there's no way I can possibly do this, so I'll
17:55
Speaker 1: just share it with the universe and maybe somebody can
17:57
Speaker 1: do it. Okay. Imagine, so we've got like AI that's
18:00
Speaker 1: starting to get pretty smart all of a sudden, and
18:02
Speaker 1: if you listen to the End of the World with
18:04
Speaker 1: Josh Clark, that may not be a good thing I'm saying,
18:08
Speaker 1: but they're the AI that's starting to be deployed is
18:11
Speaker 1: getting smarter and smarter and more and more humanlike and
18:13
Speaker 1: more and more capable. And one thing I thought would
18:16
Speaker 1: be really cool as if the AI that's out there
18:19
Speaker 1: today could study the different stats and footage of every
18:25
Speaker 1: NBA player that ever existed. Okay, and then eventually you
18:29
Speaker 1: can say, I want the eighty eight Lakers to play
18:32
Speaker 1: the twenty fifteen heat and the AI would play a
18:37
Speaker 1: simulated game that would play out probably exactly like it
18:41
Speaker 1: would have played out in real life if you could
18:43
Speaker 1: actually do that. I mean they do those simulated games
18:46
Speaker 1: now for like this the big game for super Bowl. Yeah,
18:52
Speaker 1: I thought we weren't allowed to say that was the
18:55
Speaker 1: super Bowl. Police can come get us. Uh. Yeah, they
18:59
Speaker 1: played those those um computer sims. But I don't know
19:04
Speaker 1: if it's as like robust as you're probably thinking. And
19:07
Speaker 1: I don't know if they have done like matching up
19:09
Speaker 1: classic teams, because that would be pretty fun because that,
19:12
Speaker 1: especially in the NBA, that's a big argument of like
19:15
Speaker 1: you know which era was best or whatever. Um So anyway,
19:19
Speaker 1: the arcades, I had four that I can think of
19:22
Speaker 1: off the dome that we're within fifteen minute drive. Uh.
19:27
Speaker 1: Kids in the eighties were Ferrell basically, Um, if you're
19:31
Speaker 1: a younger person and you watch Stranger Things and you think, like,
19:34
Speaker 1: was it really like that? Yes, it was really like that.
19:37
Speaker 1: You would you would come home. My mom was at home,
19:40
Speaker 1: but I would basically come home and immediately leave again
19:43
Speaker 1: most times and not come back until after dark. Latchkey.
19:47
Speaker 1: Kids would come home to an empty house and then
19:51
Speaker 1: go somewhere else or have friends over, or go straight
19:54
Speaker 1: to a friend's house, and we just didn't have oversight
19:58
Speaker 1: um somehow, you know, most of us did, okay, at
20:02
Speaker 1: least me and my friends did. Like there were no
20:05
Speaker 1: I'm sure there were plenty of tragedies, but not in
20:07
Speaker 1: my room. We all did fine. Yeah, I mean there
20:10
Speaker 1: would be a tragedy once in a while, it would
20:12
Speaker 1: make sure and scare everybody, but it was so few
20:16
Speaker 1: and far between at the time. Yeah. But one thing
20:19
Speaker 1: I wanted to get into with Dave. He kept saying,
20:22
Speaker 1: like quarters, quarters, quarters. In the early days of arcades,
20:27
Speaker 1: at least at the ones I went to, there were
20:29
Speaker 1: not quarters. There were tokens. Oh yeah, yeah, and you
20:33
Speaker 1: they had deals going like a game didn't cost a quarter.
20:36
Speaker 1: A game cost depending on the deal that day. If
20:38
Speaker 1: you went on like a Tuesday, you would get like
20:41
Speaker 1: twenty tokens for a dollar or something like that, like
20:45
Speaker 1: they would have like double token day, and a game
20:49
Speaker 1: was never a quarter, so you could play and play
20:51
Speaker 1: and play forever for five bucks because games ran on
20:55
Speaker 1: tokens that were not the value of a quarter. And
20:57
Speaker 1: then eventually, of course quarters or maybe in some places
21:00
Speaker 1: they already used them, but then the quarter became like
21:04
Speaker 1: a fifty cent game was like whoa like, are you
21:06
Speaker 1: kidding me? And now when you go to like a
21:09
Speaker 1: Dave and Busters, you get a pay fifty dollars for
21:13
Speaker 1: some card and you didn't even know how much you're
21:16
Speaker 1: paying per game unless you read the fine print. You
21:18
Speaker 1: just buzz your card. It's you know, it's over. It's
21:21
Speaker 1: several dollars probably, yeah, for sure, I'm sure probably five
21:23
Speaker 1: bucks a game maybe, and some for the big, big ones.
21:26
Speaker 1: But it's a different I mean, I went to a
21:29
Speaker 1: Dave and Busters recently with Ruby, and it's not a
21:32
Speaker 1: ton of just regular old arcade games, big things and cranes,
21:38
Speaker 1: grabbing stuffed toys and interactive stuff. It's fine, it's fun. Yeah,
21:44
Speaker 1: it's just not a video arcade. A video arcade. And yeah,
21:47
Speaker 1: late some of these and early eighties was a very
21:49
Speaker 1: specific space. It was dark, there was very few people
21:54
Speaker 1: over the age of eighteen or nineteen in there. It
21:58
Speaker 1: was just it was a kid's place. And like you said,
22:02
Speaker 1: kids were ferrel at the time, and you could your
22:05
Speaker 1: parents didn't know where you were, so you could spend
22:08
Speaker 1: as much time as you wanted or as much money
22:09
Speaker 1: as you had at the arcade or out in the
22:13
Speaker 1: woods or doing whatever, and so because that this was
22:18
Speaker 1: like a new thing. Like kids were I think allowed
22:21
Speaker 1: to like kind of roam free in the mid seventies
22:24
Speaker 1: for sure, and definitely before that too, but they didn't
22:28
Speaker 1: have this place to go to. Maybe a pinball arcade
22:31
Speaker 1: was there or something like that, but nothing like this.
22:34
Speaker 1: And the difference between a pinball machine and at nineteen
22:39
Speaker 1: seventy nine stand up art video arcade machine is just
22:44
Speaker 1: mind boggling, especially if you're playing this thing in nineteen
22:47
Speaker 1: seventy nine and your only exposure previously was two things
22:51
Speaker 1: like pinball machines. Yeah, should we take a break? Yeah,
22:55
Speaker 1: all right, we'll take our first break and we'll be
22:57
Speaker 1: right back, all right. So we've established that the peak
23:21
Speaker 1: of parents not caring about their children was in the eighties.
23:24
Speaker 1: The early nineteen eighties, arcades came along to squeeze dollars
23:29
Speaker 1: out of us, and they started getting better games, you know,
23:33
Speaker 1: the games at first, you know, I started looking at
23:36
Speaker 1: these and we're going to talk about some of the
23:37
Speaker 1: iconic games, and what I realized is the iconic games
23:42
Speaker 1: of the era almost all still hold up today. Maybe
23:47
Speaker 1: not with the graphics. It may be a little rudimentary,
23:50
Speaker 1: but most of these iconic games are still the gameplay
23:55
Speaker 1: is still challenging, and that's why I think it holds up.
23:59
Speaker 1: The one that aren't that don't hold up as far
24:03
Speaker 1: as gameplay goes, or games like pole Position, which was
24:08
Speaker 1: the first three D car racing game where you were
24:11
Speaker 1: sort of position right behind the car, and Pole Position
24:14
Speaker 1: was a huge game in nineteen eighty two that really
24:17
Speaker 1: brought on driving games. But Pole Position didn't hold up
24:20
Speaker 1: because the gameplay is not that great in addition to
24:24
Speaker 1: not looking great. But if you go play misspac Man
24:27
Speaker 1: or Space Invaders or Centipede or Yeah, or Galagha or Asteroids,
24:32
Speaker 1: these games are still challenging and fun to play. Yeah,
24:34
Speaker 1: and Galagha, I will put money that it still looks
24:38
Speaker 1: good just about anybody. Yes, it is bitmapped because it's
24:42
Speaker 1: a bit it's like eight or sixteen or whatever bit graphics,
24:45
Speaker 1: But it still looks good and it moves well, and
24:47
Speaker 1: it's just a it's a cool looking game. It is
24:50
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one. Shout out to Shagira Yoko Yama for
24:55
Speaker 1: designing Galagha on the heels of Galaxian, their previous this game,
25:01
Speaker 1: which was not as good Galagha and both were inspired,
25:05
Speaker 1: of course, by Space Invaders, which was the next biggest
25:08
Speaker 1: game after Pong to come along in nineteen seventy eight. Yeah,
25:11
Speaker 1: so Pong just put video games on the map. And
25:14
Speaker 1: then the next up was Japan, who said, oh yeah,
25:17
Speaker 1: I'll hold our sake, and they came up with Space
25:20
Speaker 1: Invaders in nineteen seventy eight, and it became such an
25:23
Speaker 1: overnight success in Japan that people rented empty commercial spaces
25:26
Speaker 1: and just put Space Invaders in there and created like
25:29
Speaker 1: these kind of pop up arcades that were opened twenty
25:32
Speaker 1: four hours a day and had a line out the
25:34
Speaker 1: door at all times. Apparently, the legend goes that there
25:38
Speaker 1: was a nationwide shortage of one hundred yen coins because
25:42
Speaker 1: these storefronts with the Space Invader machines were sucking them
25:46
Speaker 1: up crazy pretty cool. I will say that David Busters
25:50
Speaker 1: had a like a probably probably ten foot tall Space
25:56
Speaker 1: Invaders that you can play, which is kind of cool.
25:59
Speaker 1: Ten what's the point of it being ten feet tall?
26:02
Speaker 1: Is the screen like that big? Yeah? That's how big
26:04
Speaker 1: the screen? H Okay, I got you. Well, it's pretty
26:07
Speaker 1: Does it look good though? Yeah? It looks awesome. So
26:10
Speaker 1: Space Invaders is the reason we have all those space
26:14
Speaker 1: fighting or space shooter themed games that are so clustered
26:18
Speaker 1: in like the early eighties, late seventies. That was the one.
26:22
Speaker 1: But um the next game that came out that really
26:25
Speaker 1: kind of shook that up. That was the trend forever.
26:29
Speaker 1: There was one I saw a chuck called Starfire from
26:32
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine. I don't remember that one. It was
26:35
Speaker 1: by UM, I can't remember who it was, but it
26:38
Speaker 1: was this um this company, this games company that just
26:41
Speaker 1: kept pushing the envelope. But anyway, Starfire, if you watch
26:44
Speaker 1: the gameplay, it has the same exact font as Star
26:47
Speaker 1: Wars and interesting you are unambiguously shooting tie Fighters. But
26:53
Speaker 1: it was in no way, shape or form license from
26:55
Speaker 1: Star Wars. It was just that big of a rip off.
26:59
Speaker 1: So that was like the big trend was space fighters
27:01
Speaker 1: until pac Man came along in nineteen eighty and said
27:04
Speaker 1: boom yeah. Pac Man was the first. It was a
27:09
Speaker 1: Namco game, a Japanese gaming company, and it was the
27:12
Speaker 1: first game to have a mascot, like a little character.
27:17
Speaker 1: Previous to this, you know, you had your little shooter
27:19
Speaker 1: ship with space invaders and your little triangular spaceship with asteroids,
27:26
Speaker 1: and not even a ship with games like Missile Command.
27:29
Speaker 1: But which actually that may have been after pac Man.
27:31
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, but pac Man was the first mascot.
27:35
Speaker 1: It was designed explicitly to not be violent. It was
27:39
Speaker 1: designed explicitly to a feel appeal to young girls because
27:43
Speaker 1: they were trying to make more money, and you know,
27:45
Speaker 1: it was it was sort of a boys thing at
27:47
Speaker 1: the time. They were like, we need to get girls
27:49
Speaker 1: in here, and pac Man comes along and they were
27:52
Speaker 1: into it. The boys were into it, and it became
27:54
Speaker 1: a worldwide sensation. It was I had a pac Man
27:58
Speaker 1: lunchbox and matching thermis that I was like, one of
28:01
Speaker 1: my prize possessions, the pac Man cartoon. This is about
28:04
Speaker 1: when I came in pac Man cartoon was I think
28:07
Speaker 1: it's probably still good. There's a song pac Man Fever.
28:11
Speaker 1: There's an article we really need to shout out on
28:15
Speaker 1: the Verge by Laura June from back in twenty thirteen,
28:20
Speaker 1: and she points out in this article that the pac
28:25
Speaker 1: Man Fever sold a million records in nineteen eighty two,
28:30
Speaker 1: and survivors I Have the Tiger, which was the number
28:33
Speaker 1: one hit of nineteen eighty two, only sold a million
28:36
Speaker 1: more that's how big pac Man Fever was. Yeah, Buckner
28:41
Speaker 1: and Garcia that the singers of pac Man Fever terrible song?
28:45
Speaker 1: Was it link in the tune of a cat scratch Fever? No? Okay,
28:50
Speaker 1: well that was just the Simpsons that screwed me up. No, no,
28:53
Speaker 1: no good. Listen to Pacman Fever. It's it's awful. But
28:55
Speaker 1: you know those guys, hats off to them. They made it.
28:58
Speaker 1: Sold a million records? Ever done that? Yeah? I never
29:01
Speaker 1: sold one record, although we may soon. Oh yeah, man' uh.
29:09
Speaker 1: Cinipede was another watershed game in nineteen eighty. It was
29:12
Speaker 1: the first game um Co designed by a woman named
29:15
Speaker 1: Donna Bailey, and she was the only woman working at Aitari,
29:19
Speaker 1: at least the only designer, and she picked out that
29:22
Speaker 1: track ball in Cinipede. Again, gameplay holds up still very
29:27
Speaker 1: very hard game to play. Yeah. I was watching gameplay
29:30
Speaker 1: on YouTube of Centipede and I was getting anxious. Just
29:33
Speaker 1: done like the second second level. Yeah, these games are
29:36
Speaker 1: are fun and hard. Um. I don't think we mentioned
29:39
Speaker 1: that Asteroid I think was the first game to untether
29:42
Speaker 1: the ship. Um Like Space Invaders and Galagha all those games.
29:45
Speaker 1: You can move left and right at the bottom. Yeah,
29:48
Speaker 1: but you're shooting upward towards the top of the screen. Yeah.
29:51
Speaker 1: What made Asteroids really really hard was once you were
29:54
Speaker 1: brave enough to hit that throttle button and start flying
29:57
Speaker 1: around a little bit like it was, it's a very
29:59
Speaker 1: tough game. And then I think um was a Defender. Yeah.
30:03
Speaker 1: Defender was a really cool one that still holds up
30:07
Speaker 1: two that you could shoot left or right, and so
30:10
Speaker 1: it was a scrolling game, whereas with some of the
30:14
Speaker 1: other ones, they were like yes, whereas some of the
30:17
Speaker 1: other ones they were just or all the other ones
30:18
Speaker 1: they were just a new level, which basically was like, oh,
30:21
Speaker 1: these shapes are now in a different location in their
30:23
Speaker 1: purple rather than green. Yeah. However, were they scrolled vertically,
30:27
Speaker 1: but this is definitely the first horizontal scroll. Yes, and
30:29
Speaker 1: it was cool. That's another one that really holds up
30:31
Speaker 1: to Defender. Yeah. Miss pac Man far superior to pac
30:36
Speaker 1: Man in nineteen eighty two. Was I mean, I feel
30:41
Speaker 1: like it was just as popular probably as pac Man.
30:44
Speaker 1: It may as far as like play goes, I would
30:48
Speaker 1: guess it's Eclipse pac Man, but as far as like
30:51
Speaker 1: pop culture goes, yeah, pac Man might have Miss pac
30:54
Speaker 1: Man beat I think they were kind of hand in
30:56
Speaker 1: hand appropriately, you know, Yeah, you're right, Um want to
31:00
Speaker 1: shout out a few more games just quickly that I
31:02
Speaker 1: feel like we're sort of game changers. The game Tron,
31:06
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that was good, just on the heels of
31:09
Speaker 1: the movie Tron. It was great because it had four
31:13
Speaker 1: different sub games within the game, and that light Cycle
31:17
Speaker 1: game was like one of the coolest things you'd ever
31:19
Speaker 1: played when you played it so hard to at least
31:22
Speaker 1: like a six or seven year old. It was very
31:24
Speaker 1: well and as it as it progressed, those first levels
31:26
Speaker 1: are kind of easy and they just get harder and harder.
31:29
Speaker 1: And then for me personally, the game Tempest, the game
31:33
Speaker 1: Joust in the game battle Zone, where all three like big,
31:37
Speaker 1: big games. For me, I always loved Cubert. Anywhere there
31:40
Speaker 1: was a Cubert that I would play that. Yeah, Cubert's fun.
31:43
Speaker 1: And that makes sense because you were younger and sort
31:45
Speaker 1: of a skewed toward younger kids. I think what was
31:48
Speaker 1: the one where it was like Hamburger or something like that, Oh,
31:53
Speaker 1: Burger Time, Yes, Burger Time, Burger Timelay dig dug was good.
31:58
Speaker 1: And then still to this day, I went and looked
32:00
Speaker 1: at Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Junior, and that was
32:03
Speaker 1: way too hard for me at the time. It's still hard, yeah,
32:07
Speaker 1: but it's it's some of the best like graphics and
32:10
Speaker 1: like colorful, like movement, and it's just just such a
32:14
Speaker 1: beautiful game still to this day. And that one came out.
32:16
Speaker 1: Donkey Kong came out in nineteen eighty one. Yeah, and
32:19
Speaker 1: I don't think we covered in the Nintendo episode the
32:22
Speaker 1: name Donkey Kong, did we We did, because remember, somebody
32:26
Speaker 1: tried to file suit. I think ourca tried to soothe
32:29
Speaker 1: them and they were like, now this is that's long gone.
32:31
Speaker 1: That ship is sailed. Oh okay, because for some reason
32:34
Speaker 1: it didn't ring a bell. Because I had never really
32:37
Speaker 1: stopped to wonder why in the world it was called
32:40
Speaker 1: Donkey Kong. It's such a weird name, but apparently they
32:45
Speaker 1: were looking for an English word that meant stubborn, like
32:47
Speaker 1: a donkey, and then just combine that with King Kong yep,
32:51
Speaker 1: and Mario. I don't think we talked about this. Mario
32:54
Speaker 1: was originally known as jump Man, one word not even hyphenated.
32:59
Speaker 1: We should have been dragons Layer. Briefly, it's a game
33:03
Speaker 1: that came out in nineteen eighty three. I don't know
33:05
Speaker 1: if you remember dragons Layer much. Yeah, it was. It
33:09
Speaker 1: was the first game that used and kind of the
33:11
Speaker 1: only one that used LaserDisc technology to basically where you
33:16
Speaker 1: were playing a Disney cartoon. Yep. And it was from
33:20
Speaker 1: Don Bluth, an ex Disney animator. He did um an
33:24
Speaker 1: American Tale, I think, Okay, I think he was like
33:27
Speaker 1: the lead on that. Maybe I gotcha, But here was
33:30
Speaker 1: a deal with dragons Layer. It looked cool, and it
33:33
Speaker 1: looked different than anything you'd ever seen, and way better
33:36
Speaker 1: than like the sixteen bit technology graphics wise at the time.
33:41
Speaker 1: But the gameplay was terrible. You basically just push buttons
33:46
Speaker 1: at key moments to advance the story, and like you
33:49
Speaker 1: weren't really playing. You didn't have control of the character. No,
33:52
Speaker 1: so let's say a single minute of this this movie
33:57
Speaker 1: was chopped up into five different segments. Yeah, over the
34:03
Speaker 1: course of this whole minute that played out, you would
34:06
Speaker 1: move that thing like five times, and the rest of
34:07
Speaker 1: the time you were just standing there waiting. It was terrible.
34:11
Speaker 1: I never played dragons Layer. I was suckered into it
34:13
Speaker 1: at first because it looked amazing, yes, and then I
34:15
Speaker 1: was like this is bad. Yeah, it really was, and
34:18
Speaker 1: which sort of just reinforces my point about the gameplay.
34:21
Speaker 1: If it's it's good, it holds up. Yep. No one,
34:24
Speaker 1: No one's playing dragons Layer these days. Um I want
34:28
Speaker 1: I'll bet there's somebody out there that's like dragons Layer
34:31
Speaker 1: for life. Yeah, maybe I want to. Yeah, I want
34:35
Speaker 1: to shout out to from my youth, my super youth. Um.
34:38
Speaker 1: There was one called Comanche, which is like a Wild
34:41
Speaker 1: West shoot him up. I never played that, I remember it.
34:43
Speaker 1: Do you remember? I cannot find any documentation of it
34:47
Speaker 1: anywhere online, just can't find it. But I'm glad that
34:50
Speaker 1: you verified that. I used to play that at the
34:52
Speaker 1: little Putt put on Kataba Island by where my family
34:55
Speaker 1: used to vacation in summers. Nice. And then the other
34:59
Speaker 1: one was, Um, it just escaped me, chuck because I
35:02
Speaker 1: was talking about Camanche. Paperboy. No, I don't remember. I'll
35:07
Speaker 1: shouted out, Oh, come to me later and I'll just
35:09
Speaker 1: interrupt you with it. Okay, do you remember battle Zone?
35:12
Speaker 1: The one I mentioned is that the one it was
35:14
Speaker 1: like a destroyer. Now. Battle Zone was the one where
35:18
Speaker 1: you put your face in what kind of you would
35:22
Speaker 1: think now is like a VR thing, like a like
35:25
Speaker 1: a submarine periscope, and you had these two levers and
35:31
Speaker 1: you were a tank basically, and it was all like, um,
35:35
Speaker 1: I don't know the technical name, but when it's just
35:36
Speaker 1: like the green lines and like a grid layout like
35:39
Speaker 1: those were the graphics, but it was it was kind
35:42
Speaker 1: of had like a three D effect. Yeah, and was
35:45
Speaker 1: really pretty rap. I'll but it knocked your socks off
35:47
Speaker 1: back then, Yeah, it did. I thought it. The other
35:50
Speaker 1: one and another one okay, the one I was thinking
35:53
Speaker 1: of was Empire City. I think it's Empire City nineteen
35:56
Speaker 1: forty two or something. You're like a gangster shooting other gangsters. Okay,
36:00
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. And then the other one was Spy Hunter.
36:03
Speaker 1: Remember Spy Hunter. Yeah, that was that was a pretty
36:06
Speaker 1: good driving game. That was because you put like that
36:08
Speaker 1: oil slick and people would spin out who were chasing you.
36:11
Speaker 1: It's just yeah, very neat. I knew this episode is
36:13
Speaker 1: gonna go like this. Yeah. We just took fistfuls of
36:16
Speaker 1: member barries before we did this one. Kill screens we
36:20
Speaker 1: should talk about because there was a technological limitation to
36:26
Speaker 1: these arcade games that were based on eight bit processors.
36:30
Speaker 1: The hardware was and an eight bit processor can only
36:33
Speaker 1: store two hundred and fifty six total values. So if
36:37
Speaker 1: you got good enough at some of these games, you
36:40
Speaker 1: could get up to screen two fifty five, and when
36:43
Speaker 1: you hit screen two fifty six, the game would sort
36:46
Speaker 1: of skits out on you and stop, and that was
36:48
Speaker 1: called a kill screen. Yeah, they were the game was
36:51
Speaker 1: trying to reset to zero, but there wasn't a level zero,
36:56
Speaker 1: so the game would just do some weird stuff. But
36:59
Speaker 1: what's interesting does that mean? Then? For like pac Man
37:02
Speaker 1: in particular is very famous to have that two fifty
37:04
Speaker 1: six value curse, and you can only get to two
37:08
Speaker 1: fifty five. But if they just had named level one
37:13
Speaker 1: level zero, would I wonder if the game would just
37:17
Speaker 1: just start over again and you could just play it
37:19
Speaker 1: in an infinite loop. Donkey Kong had one two. They
37:23
Speaker 1: had the same problem with the two hundred and sixty
37:26
Speaker 1: or two hundred and fifty six value curse. At level
37:29
Speaker 1: twenty two, you should have two hundred and sixty seconds
37:32
Speaker 1: to complete the level, but because the eight bit processors, like,
37:37
Speaker 1: I don't know what two hundred and sixty is, so
37:38
Speaker 1: let's just call it four. You have four seconds to
37:41
Speaker 1: complete so in theory it goes beyond level twenty two,
37:45
Speaker 1: but in reality, in practicality, it stops there because no
37:49
Speaker 1: one can beat that screen in four seconds, not even
37:53
Speaker 1: Billy Mitchell. I'll bet an AI in the future, Kim.
37:56
Speaker 1: All right, So I say we talked about a few
37:58
Speaker 1: of these little tidbits, and then we'll take a break
38:01
Speaker 1: and then talk about what killed the arcade? Good. Yeah,
38:04
Speaker 1: these are kind of fun because you know, if you
38:07
Speaker 1: were a kid at that age or heck, I still
38:10
Speaker 1: enjoy entering my initials as when I kid high score.
38:16
Speaker 1: Anyone else is going to say that. The very first
38:19
Speaker 1: game to even display a high score at all was
38:22
Speaker 1: called Seawolf from nineteen seventy six. Do you remember that game?
38:26
Speaker 1: I do. I don't think I really played it, but
38:28
Speaker 1: I remember it so everybody. It was. It was a
38:31
Speaker 1: submarine game, so you just shot torpedoes at ships, but
38:35
Speaker 1: the joystick was a periscope. It's so cool looking still today.
38:41
Speaker 1: Oh I remember that. Yeah, And it had great like
38:44
Speaker 1: graphics on the cabinet. It was just an all around
38:46
Speaker 1: NIAT game. The I don't know about the game play
38:49
Speaker 1: and the graphics like in the game weren't top notch
38:52
Speaker 1: or anything, but just the periscope alone was very cool. No,
38:55
Speaker 1: I totally remember that. It just kind of came out
38:58
Speaker 1: and then came down, right, But that was the comparscope does, right.
39:02
Speaker 1: But that was the first one that had a high score.
39:04
Speaker 1: You said, that's the first one that just registered a
39:07
Speaker 1: high score. The first one that I believe stored the
39:12
Speaker 1: high score was pac Man. I thought it was Space Invaders.
39:16
Speaker 1: No, no no, no, what I say, pac Man? Yeah, I
39:19
Speaker 1: do Space Invaders and seventy eight, but you still didn't
39:23
Speaker 1: have the initials. That was Starfire in seventy nine that
39:27
Speaker 1: let you put your initials, and then Asteroids was the
39:30
Speaker 1: first one that showed like the top ten or whatever. Yeah,
39:34
Speaker 1: And the problem with Space Invaders was that if you
39:38
Speaker 1: unplugged the cabinet, the high score was gone forever, which
39:43
Speaker 1: was very richly portrayed in that Seinfeld episode The Frogger,
39:46
Speaker 1: Remember that one, right where George like his only legacy
39:50
Speaker 1: is he still had the high score at the pizza
39:52
Speaker 1: place that he used to hang out at in high
39:53
Speaker 1: school on the Frogger and he tried to keep it going,
39:57
Speaker 1: and of course it didn't work out for George. Yeah,
40:00
Speaker 1: I forgot to shout out Frogger. That's another game that's
40:02
Speaker 1: still fun and still hard. I totally forgot about it too,
40:05
Speaker 1: and it really is. I like, I even looked up
40:08
Speaker 1: that episode. I still didn't think that, like, oh yeah,
40:10
Speaker 1: Frogger was a great game, but absolutely was. And that's
40:13
Speaker 1: actually really good point, real quick, Chuck. If you played
40:16
Speaker 1: Frogger on the arc like a stand up arcade, it
40:19
Speaker 1: was exponentially better looking. It played better than what your
40:23
Speaker 1: friend was playing at his house at home on the
40:26
Speaker 1: Atari twenty six hundred. And that was another big draw
40:29
Speaker 1: that even when the controllers and the home consoles came out,
40:32
Speaker 1: there was still reason to go like put your tokens
40:35
Speaker 1: in at the arcade. No, absolutely, um, I would argue
40:39
Speaker 1: that Frogger was one that translated pretty well to the Atari.
40:43
Speaker 1: Sure it just didn't be good. Yeah, they didn't look
40:46
Speaker 1: as good. And but some games did not translate at all,
40:48
Speaker 1: like the infamously bad pac Man for Atari. Oh yeah
40:54
Speaker 1: it was bad. I was very, very excited to get
40:56
Speaker 1: this game. It was the biggest thing in the world
40:59
Speaker 1: and I got it for my birth day, and it
41:00
Speaker 1: was just it didn't sound right. It went don don
41:04
Speaker 1: don don donk like when it was eating the things
41:07
Speaker 1: at the mouth. It just none of it worked. It
41:10
Speaker 1: was just a bad game. And by the way, the
41:13
Speaker 1: thing I couldn't remember about battle Zone it's the vector graphics,
41:16
Speaker 1: oh yeah, which apparently I don't know a lot about it.
41:18
Speaker 1: But it's you can render way more a way higher
41:23
Speaker 1: resolution graphics with less processing power somehow. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah,
41:28
Speaker 1: all right, so let's take that break, yeah, and we'll
41:33
Speaker 1: come back and talk about what killed the arcade right
41:35
Speaker 1: after this. All right, Chuck, what killed the arcade? Ronald
42:00
Speaker 1: Reagan kinda he did not? He probably, yeah, right, Well,
42:06
Speaker 1: a couple of things killed the helped kill the arcade,
42:10
Speaker 1: one of which was kind of what happened with Atari
42:13
Speaker 1: in a way, and that it got so popular that
42:17
Speaker 1: people just started making terrible games to try and cash in,
42:21
Speaker 1: and that that was true for the stand up and
42:23
Speaker 1: sit down cabinet arcade games as well. They just started
42:27
Speaker 1: making too many of them, and a lot of them
42:29
Speaker 1: weren't good, and a lot of these arcade owners, like
42:33
Speaker 1: you know, borrowed money to get the latest games in
42:35
Speaker 1: there that ended up stinking, and that that bit him
42:39
Speaker 1: in the rear end. Yeah, I mean, like Anyboddy, any
42:43
Speaker 1: small business entrepreneur could open an arcade because all of
42:47
Speaker 1: those manufacturers had programs where they would they would give
42:51
Speaker 1: you these machines on credit and you could pay them
42:53
Speaker 1: back in quarters if you wanted to. But, like you said,
42:56
Speaker 1: when you couldn't tell what game was good and what
42:59
Speaker 1: game was bad because the marketing and the graphics and
43:01
Speaker 1: everything made it look so cool no matter how bad
43:04
Speaker 1: the game was, that you would end up with a
43:08
Speaker 1: room full of duds and all of a sudden, all
43:10
Speaker 1: your customers are gone and you would go under. And
43:12
Speaker 1: that happened over and over and over again. So those
43:15
Speaker 1: thirteen thousand arcades just dripped down to very very few
43:19
Speaker 1: by the mid eighties. Yeah, And I bet you, and
43:22
Speaker 1: this is just me speculating, but I bet you a
43:24
Speaker 1: lot of those arcade owners weren't like really into the games.
43:28
Speaker 1: They were They're like, you know, I've got three car
43:30
Speaker 1: washes and an arcade. Well yeah, and they also like
43:35
Speaker 1: made a pretty good sideline on selling little kids drugs.
43:41
Speaker 1: H the other and this is um from that Verge
43:44
Speaker 1: article you mentioned. They list another big reason, which was
43:49
Speaker 1: that there was a cultural backlash. Just you know, that's
43:55
Speaker 1: sort of sort of always been the story from Pinball,
43:57
Speaker 1: like you mentioned early on, to you know, Grand Theft Auto.
44:01
Speaker 1: Now is parents and politicians saying, hey, these games are
44:07
Speaker 1: not only um robbing our children of like potential homework
44:11
Speaker 1: time or interacting with the world and with their friends
44:14
Speaker 1: or being in nature, but they're they're corrupting them yeah right,
44:18
Speaker 1: like um, Like they're not only being corrupted like physically
44:24
Speaker 1: in the arcades by potential drug dealers and kids who
44:28
Speaker 1: want to teach them how to skip school more efficiently
44:30
Speaker 1: and that kind of stuff, um, but also by the
44:33
Speaker 1: games themselves, like they're being turned into zombies at best.
44:37
Speaker 1: At worst, they're being taught to enjoy things like violence,
44:40
Speaker 1: which is starting to become more of a thing. Um
44:43
Speaker 1: they are who knows what hidden messages somehow, Um Black
44:49
Speaker 1: Sabbath worked into some video game. It was the same
44:52
Speaker 1: kind of moral panic that that it was. It was, Yeah,
44:55
Speaker 1: it was within the same bubble that anything that was
44:58
Speaker 1: that parents didn't fully understand that kids were really into
45:02
Speaker 1: was suspect and dangerous and probably you just needed to
45:05
Speaker 1: keep your kids away from it. Yeah, which is really
45:08
Speaker 1: ironic because these are the same parents who let us
45:12
Speaker 1: be feral children right right, because the thing down their
45:16
Speaker 1: high horse about these games that we played that we
45:18
Speaker 1: really enjoyed, well, I think they could understand that in
45:21
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. Like if you were out in
45:22
Speaker 1: the woods building a tree fort, like your parents had
45:26
Speaker 1: done that before, they understood it. They knew what it
45:28
Speaker 1: was like, you know what I'm saying. These arcades, they
45:31
Speaker 1: didn't have that experience, or if they did, they remembered
45:34
Speaker 1: what they got into when they were playing pinball back
45:37
Speaker 1: in like the forties or something like that as little kids,
45:40
Speaker 1: and they were like, oh, yeah, I forgot I learned
45:41
Speaker 1: how to skip school there. I should probably keep my
45:43
Speaker 1: kid from doing that. And then I think also there's
45:45
Speaker 1: just like a it's just a generational gap that inevitably develops.
45:49
Speaker 1: Like I kind of understand where the parents were coming
45:52
Speaker 1: from at age forty six now, whereas if you had
45:54
Speaker 1: asked me ten years ago, I would have been like,
45:56
Speaker 1: that is so lame. Parents just suck in general, you know. Um, yeah,
46:01
Speaker 1: I think that those all those things put together like
46:03
Speaker 1: kind of kind of just people. I think all those
46:08
Speaker 1: things kind of came together to kill video games. Yeah. Um,
46:13
Speaker 1: the irony of what we were just talking about too,
46:15
Speaker 1: is like, you know what goes on in the woods,
46:16
Speaker 1: do That's where I learned to smoke cigarettes, Like nothing
46:20
Speaker 1: was going on, and that's good. In the woods. You
46:23
Speaker 1: found all kinds of things in the woods, you know
46:25
Speaker 1: what I mean. That's that's as far as I'm going
46:27
Speaker 1: as the cigarettes thing, as far as recollections. But at
46:31
Speaker 1: this notion that we were all just out there playing,
46:33
Speaker 1: you know, playing nature kid. I learned a lot of
46:37
Speaker 1: things in the woods as a kid. I was playing
46:39
Speaker 1: nature kid. I was just smoking while I was doing it. Right, Man,
46:43
Speaker 1: you had this thing where, um, I kept a bar
46:47
Speaker 1: of soap that I'd stolen from my parents' house out
46:50
Speaker 1: at our tree for it where I would smoke cigarettes,
46:53
Speaker 1: and I would I would go out to the golf
46:56
Speaker 1: course pond that was like right adjacent to the woods
46:59
Speaker 1: and wash my hands off first and then put the
47:01
Speaker 1: soap back and then go back home. As if that
47:05
Speaker 1: like got rid of the cigarette smell from me. You
47:07
Speaker 1: would have scared the hell out of me, because I
47:10
Speaker 1: was not If I would have seen a kid my
47:14
Speaker 1: age or god forbid, like five or six years younger
47:17
Speaker 1: than me smoking, yeah, I would have just run in
47:19
Speaker 1: the other direction. Did I ever tell you the cigarette
47:22
Speaker 1: buying story from when I was like twelve? Was this?
47:26
Speaker 1: I know, Emily got a note from her mom to
47:28
Speaker 1: buy her cigarettes and that was legal. It's pretty awesome.
47:31
Speaker 1: It wasn't that, was it? No, this is me buying
47:33
Speaker 1: for myself and my friends. We all pulled our money
47:35
Speaker 1: together and came up with I think like twenty dollars
47:37
Speaker 1: between us, which is like ten packs of cigarettes at
47:40
Speaker 1: the time. And I rode my bike to this convenience store,
47:45
Speaker 1: like lean the bike up against the wall in full
47:47
Speaker 1: view of the clerk and walk in and I'm like,
47:51
Speaker 1: I'd like ten packs of cigarettes. Let's see. It was
47:53
Speaker 1: kind of like when you're at a donut shop ordering
47:55
Speaker 1: a dozen donuts, but I was doing that with cigarettes.
47:58
Speaker 1: I like, I'll have those cools and those Marborough's of
48:01
Speaker 1: a couple of Winstons, how about some Virginia slims. And
48:04
Speaker 1: the guy sold him to me, put him in a
48:06
Speaker 1: back for me to drive or ride home on my
48:08
Speaker 1: bike more efficiently with that is amazing. It really was
48:12
Speaker 1: a beautiful time. It really was h so um Dave
48:18
Speaker 1: posits and he's kind of right in a lot of ways.
48:20
Speaker 1: Is one of the death Knells was in nineteen eighty
48:23
Speaker 1: two in a very sort of offan comment from See
48:27
Speaker 1: Everett Coop, who was a surgeon general at the time,
48:30
Speaker 1: had given a speech in Pittsburgh and this was in
48:34
Speaker 1: the Q and A afterward. There was a question about
48:37
Speaker 1: video game effects and he just sort of tossed out, yeah,
48:40
Speaker 1: and you know, I think these kids were becoming addicted
48:43
Speaker 1: body and soul. And then you know, this was the
48:45
Speaker 1: surgeon general. This is when people knew who that person was.
48:48
Speaker 1: Trusted what they said, Yeah, he was big, and uh,
48:52
Speaker 1: that just sort of became the media narrative. The National
48:56
Speaker 1: PTA leapt on this, issued a report and I'm glad
49:01
Speaker 1: that day puts reporting quotes because they weren't really basing
49:05
Speaker 1: it on hard data or really great studies. It was
49:07
Speaker 1: more like a lot of speculation on how bad these
49:11
Speaker 1: games were for kids, right, and that was all you
49:13
Speaker 1: need to hear. PTA put their seal on it, and
49:15
Speaker 1: parents were like, okay, it's official between them and see
49:19
Speaker 1: if Ritt Coop like this needs to end. Also, there
49:23
Speaker 1: was a part of it too, It wasn't necessarily the
49:25
Speaker 1: game consoles um. The author of the Verge article, Laura
49:29
Speaker 1: June points out that game consoles were around before the
49:34
Speaker 1: demise of the video arcade, and it really wasn't until
49:37
Speaker 1: like nineteen eighty five, like we talked about in our
49:40
Speaker 1: Nintendo episode, that they got even bigger. But I would
49:43
Speaker 1: say still early eighties Atari was still pretty big. Yeah,
49:46
Speaker 1: so it was around at the time. But I think
49:49
Speaker 1: parents let that live in order to let video arcades die,
49:54
Speaker 1: because at the very least, you could keep an eye
49:56
Speaker 1: on your kid while they were playing the games at home, right,
49:59
Speaker 1: you know, you could ignore them in the basement rather
50:01
Speaker 1: than ignore them out on the wild. Yeah. It's much
50:05
Speaker 1: tougher to smoke cigarettes in the basement than it is
50:07
Speaker 1: in the wood. There was an early nineties renaissance when
50:12
Speaker 1: Street Fighter to the World Warrior came out, followed by
50:15
Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat and Teken in the early nineties, so people
50:21
Speaker 1: crept back. And this was like my early college days.
50:24
Speaker 1: I remember we would go to the Bowling Alley and
50:26
Speaker 1: Athens to play Street Fighter and stuff, and then the
50:30
Speaker 1: whenever the first I guess it was the first PlayStation
50:33
Speaker 1: maybe is when we you know, started really playing heavily
50:37
Speaker 1: at home with Mortal Kombat. Yeah, with Mortal Kombat and
50:40
Speaker 1: Street Fighter. So, um, you were into this because this
50:43
Speaker 1: is where I was at my peak as far as
50:46
Speaker 1: video arcades go. Yeah, I was in. I was more
50:49
Speaker 1: into because, like I said, I was in college. So
50:50
Speaker 1: we would make the occasional trip to the bowling Alley,
50:53
Speaker 1: but it was mainly playing with my friends Clay and
50:56
Speaker 1: Jason and Brett and Bill playing at their house. I
50:59
Speaker 1: had a friend named Tony Tony Appy actually, who I
51:02
Speaker 1: went to high school with, and he was like seventeen
51:06
Speaker 1: at the time and managed an entire Mountasia somehow. That's
51:10
Speaker 1: how responsible he was. A Mountasia it's like a family
51:15
Speaker 1: fun park where there's likes mini golf, huge arcade, yeah,
51:20
Speaker 1: golf and stuff. Yeah, it was a lot of fun.
51:22
Speaker 1: Um and Tony was seventeen and managed the place and
51:25
Speaker 1: he would give us that unlimited coins, so we would
51:28
Speaker 1: go in and play all these games. And when you
51:31
Speaker 1: have unlimited free coins, like you're really willing to try
51:34
Speaker 1: out all sorts of games. But we had a really
51:37
Speaker 1: good time there at Mountasia in the early mid nineties.
51:40
Speaker 1: Oh well, I know I mentioned what was sort of
51:43
Speaker 1: the pinnacle of my childhood life at one point was
51:46
Speaker 1: when through something as my dad being principal. They had
51:49
Speaker 1: a free night at Charles Entertainment geez, and it was
51:55
Speaker 1: I think just the educators and their their kids got
51:58
Speaker 1: to go. But it was just one free night at
52:00
Speaker 1: Chucky Cheese and everything was free that you just ordered
52:03
Speaker 1: pizza when he wanted, and the first thing he did
52:05
Speaker 1: when you walk in was gave you a little a
52:07
Speaker 1: little cloth sack full of tokens. And the idea of
52:11
Speaker 1: that being free was just mind blowing to like, it's
52:15
Speaker 1: two a ten year old, Oh, I can imagine two
52:18
Speaker 1: free pizza, free games, free coke. Yeah, I mean, you
52:22
Speaker 1: just got to play games for free all night long.
52:24
Speaker 1: And I remember going home that night being tired and
52:28
Speaker 1: just dreamy in my head, thinking this is the best
52:31
Speaker 1: night of my life. So things came back in the
52:35
Speaker 1: early nineties and the parents stepped up again and said no, no, no,
52:39
Speaker 1: everything we were saying before in nineteen eighty three that
52:42
Speaker 1: didn't apply now really does apply. Like the violence is
52:45
Speaker 1: just outrageous and outlandish, Like in Mortal Kombat you could
52:49
Speaker 1: very memorably pull your opponent's final calum out. It's fun
52:53
Speaker 1: I mean, looking back, it didn't look that great, so
52:55
Speaker 1: it's kind of funny. Now that they're in uproar. But
52:57
Speaker 1: if they were an uproar over the violence from Space
52:59
Speaker 1: and Vaders, you can imagine what Mortal Kombat did to them,
53:02
Speaker 1: So that kind of killed that comeback as well. And
53:05
Speaker 1: plus also home consoles just kept getting better and better
53:08
Speaker 1: and better. Yeah, and that's the story of the arcade.
53:12
Speaker 1: I mean you can still go now. You know, they're
53:14
Speaker 1: the sort of there's the daven Busters type places, which again,
53:17
Speaker 1: like I said, are you know they've retrofitted. They have
53:20
Speaker 1: the Giant Space Invaders. They have this huge pac Man
53:23
Speaker 1: game where multiple people can be pac Man at the
53:25
Speaker 1: same time. So they've kind of like tried to bring
53:28
Speaker 1: some of these into the modern era. But if you
53:30
Speaker 1: really want that throwback experience, in most cities they have
53:34
Speaker 1: some kind of a barcade style thing where they have
53:37
Speaker 1: the classic games and you can you can get a
53:40
Speaker 1: beer or something in play. I've not been to one,
53:42
Speaker 1: have you. I went to one at one point, and
53:46
Speaker 1: then when I was living in La there was an
53:50
Speaker 1: arcade like an old school regular arcade. It wasn't some
53:52
Speaker 1: retro beer places within walking distance of my first apartment,
53:57
Speaker 1: so I would go down there and play or go
53:59
Speaker 1: to the Bowling The Big Lebowski Lanes had some good
54:01
Speaker 1: arcade games. Conceptually speaking, it just makes sense why not
54:05
Speaker 1: put like fun activities into a bar rather than just
54:09
Speaker 1: booze and you know, hopefully good conversation with whoever you're with.
54:13
Speaker 1: So I totally get that. Seems like it would be
54:15
Speaker 1: fun if everybody like followed all the unwritten rules about
54:19
Speaker 1: playing games. You know, Yeah, I'll try. I'll take you
54:23
Speaker 1: meet on a barcade date someday. You got anything else,
54:27
Speaker 1: I got nothing else. Well, that means everybody that arcades
54:31
Speaker 1: are done, Chuck, I feel like we burned through a
54:33
Speaker 1: really great live show topic here. Oh that's all right, Yeah,
54:36
Speaker 1: people don't come to our shows that have been to arcades.
54:40
Speaker 1: That's true. That's a good point, man. And since Chuck
54:43
Speaker 1: just made a good point, that means it's time for
54:45
Speaker 1: a listener me. I'm gonna call this hamburger steak follow
54:50
Speaker 1: up from LORI. Hey, guys, heard the discussion of the
54:54
Speaker 1: hamburger steak and thought, hey, that's all's my problem on
54:56
Speaker 1: what to cook for supper. But then Chuck said that
54:59
Speaker 1: hamburg your steak was just hamburger pressed into a steak shape.
55:04
Speaker 1: I had to stop and step back to make I
55:06
Speaker 1: sure I heard that correctly. But try this maybe to
55:09
Speaker 1: juice up your hamburger steak. I think you'll like it better.
55:12
Speaker 1: Mix that hamburger with about a half a pack or
55:14
Speaker 1: less of lipped an onion soup mix. That's a that's
55:19
Speaker 1: an all time great hat for hamburgers and turkey burgers.
55:22
Speaker 1: Period keeps some very choicy and very flavorable. Add some
55:27
Speaker 1: bread crumbs and even egg if you want. This is meatloaf,
55:32
Speaker 1: and then cook it completely. Remove it from the skillet.
55:35
Speaker 1: Place the rest of the soup mix that you didn't
55:37
Speaker 1: use and water in the skillet. You cook a burger
55:41
Speaker 1: in and basically thicking that into a gravy. Wow, you
55:45
Speaker 1: could add some flour or corn starch to thicken it
55:47
Speaker 1: up and then add the burger back in. And then
55:51
Speaker 1: this is how Lourie signs her email. You can use
55:56
Speaker 1: my name Comma Lorie. Yeah, that's from Lorie. Michael Good.
56:02
Speaker 1: That sounds like a good recipe to me. That is
56:04
Speaker 1: a great recipe, Laurie. Thank you for that. I'm going
56:06
Speaker 1: to try that post taste, and it actually brings to
56:08
Speaker 1: mind another thing I just came up, chuck, since we're
56:11
Speaker 1: talking about kitchen HACKSA Have you ever taken the water
56:18
Speaker 1: that you boil the spaghettian and then add a little
56:21
Speaker 1: bit to your sauce. No, okay, I never had before
56:26
Speaker 1: until the other night, and apparently we've been doing it
56:28
Speaker 1: wrong all along. You have to do that. And the
56:32
Speaker 1: reason why is it actually counterintuitively thickens your sauce a
56:35
Speaker 1: little bit because of the carbs that are still floating
56:38
Speaker 1: around in the water, and just a little bit, just enough.
56:41
Speaker 1: And then the other thing it does is it's when
56:43
Speaker 1: you put the spaghetti drained spaghetti into your sauce, which
56:47
Speaker 1: is what you're supposed to do. We won't put it
56:49
Speaker 1: on top of the spaghetti. You stir it around, toss it.
56:52
Speaker 1: It actually makes the sauce stick to the spaghetti more.
56:55
Speaker 1: It is I can rapport. Really, you should never make
56:58
Speaker 1: spaghetti any other way, all right, Okay, I'm gonna leap
57:02
Speaker 1: prog off of that because this is along those same lines.
57:05
Speaker 1: If you make homemade mashed potatoes like I do, and
57:09
Speaker 1: you chop up raw potatoes and then boil that, then
57:13
Speaker 1: you strain the water out, save some of that water
57:16
Speaker 1: and add it back in instead of just going right
57:19
Speaker 1: to like milk or cream or whatever you want to
57:21
Speaker 1: use as your liquid, put some of that starchy water
57:25
Speaker 1: back in first, and I think it has a similar effect. Nice. Yeah, starchy,
57:29
Speaker 1: That's why I was after, not carbi. Yeah. And finally,
57:32
Speaker 1: just at a correction, or not a correction, but a tip.
57:36
Speaker 1: Your butter bell you mentioned was getting moldy. We had
57:39
Speaker 1: quite a few people right in that say to use
57:41
Speaker 1: salted butter and your butterbell will not get mold Yeah.
57:43
Speaker 1: I don't. I'd like to salt my own butter. I
57:47
Speaker 1: don't buy it pre salted. I'm not a communist. Okay. Yeah,
57:52
Speaker 1: I'm sure that was part of it too. And also
57:54
Speaker 1: I think I may have fudged slightly when I said, yes,
57:56
Speaker 1: I did change the water every three days. I think
57:59
Speaker 1: I did from time to time, but I think that
58:00
Speaker 1: probably had something to do with it. But it's nice
58:03
Speaker 1: to know that wasn't the entire thing that I was
58:04
Speaker 1: using unsalted. All right, Well, if anyone's still listening, now,
58:08
Speaker 1: these are great Yeah kitchen tips. Yeah, for sure, I
58:11
Speaker 1: think we should probably get a move on. So thanks
58:13
Speaker 1: Lorie for that awesome recipe. Thank you for your tip,
58:16
Speaker 1: Thank me for my tip. As well, and if you
58:19
Speaker 1: want to get in touch with us to give us
58:20
Speaker 1: a tip of any sort, you can email us at
58:23
Speaker 1: stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
58:29
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58:33
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58:36
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.