Retro Video Games - Nerding Out Theme

Andi 0:01

They called him Jumpman because this was one of the first games where you could jump, your character jumped. Yeah.

Tanner 0:08

Rated two for teen and all that,

Andi 0:10

Yeah.

Sups 0:12

I didn't have a Game boy. But I played a lot of teres I had like a fake version, like the Made in China version of Game Boy, Oh, wow.

Tanner 0:21

Oh, It's

Sups 0:22

a history item though. It's amazing. Oh

Andi 0:25

Yep. And Exactly. Hello, and welcome to this episode of the I Should Have Known podcast, the trivia podcast that can't be trusted. Each week, our Quizmaster presents you with four big facts on a topic, but one of those facts is a lie, and we're nerding out for the month of March this year, Today, I'm your Quizmaster. I'm Andy, and I'm going to be presenting you with a timeline episode of Retro Video Games. So I will be presenting you with four events in the history of retro video games, but the order of these events is not quite right. So join our other hosts, soups and Tanner in trying to figure out which one of my four events is out of time.

Tanner 1:08

let's press start.

Andi 1:09

yes. Ready? Player one? Yes. Player two. Mm-hmm. Yeah, Retro video games.

Tanner 1:14

like the old coin operated ones

Andi 1:16

we're gonna talk about some of the first home consoles arcade games. Yeah. So we're going back to the early glory days of video games, because I feel like about nerdy stuff, video games are mainstream now. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It doesn't really feel like a nerdy thing anymore to play video games. Right. But these are older ones when like video games were new, they were also hugely popular. But I also think the same time period is where the concept of nerd kind of came from. So they kind of go together. these four events we're zooming in on a very short time period. It's only about 20, 30 years that we're looking at. So these events happened quite close to one another, but I'm going to give them to you in the wrong order.

Tanner 1:55

Okay.

Andi 1:55

So low hanging fruit. Founded in 1889, Japanese video game Titan. Nintendo originally manufactured what consumer product.

Tanner 2:08

I know this one. It's playing cards.

Andi 2:10

Yeah, playing cards. So in 1889,

Tanner 2:14

we're going way back.

Andi 2:15

Yeah. Nintendo was founded in Japan and they first made playing cards. Yeah. So then they moved over to video games

Tanner 2:23

and then they became a

Andi 2:25

Yeah. Really one of the most successful video game companies, if not the most

Tanner 2:29

Yeah. I'm surprised that they don't still make playing cards.

Andi 2:32

They might in

Sups 2:33

Yeah. Yeah.

Andi 2:34

so soups, do you play any video games?

Sups 2:37

I have a love hate relationship with video. because I've always wanted to own a console. But growing up in a family like mine were video games. It was a total no-go. I remember like all my friends have it. I really wanted, I, I think I was the only kid in the. Who didn't have one, so I'd always go over to my friends. So I played a lot of games. my friends, but I never owned a console. Okay. Even till this day,

Andi 3:04

So these games that we're gonna talk about, these are ones that even if you don't play video games, you've heard of these games. These are huge. games that they're on like iteration

Tanner 3:13

Yeah.

Andi 3:13

Okay. So event number one. Atari settles with Magna Vox over copyright infringement for the game pong.

Sups 3:21

Mm.

Tanner 3:22

Pong.

Andi 3:22

Have you ever played pong? You really have.

Tanner 3:25

Yeah, it's super boring. It's just like up, down, up, down, up. I lost. Okay.

Sups 3:30

Yeah.

Andi 3:31

Yeah. So Pong is basically a table tennis ping pong simulator and Yeah. It's pretty boring. Yeah. You move a paddle up and down and you play table tennis,

Tanner 3:43

Right.

Andi 3:44

It was huge. Yeah. Pong was like a revolution in Entertainment in general, which feels really silly now because, you know, we're so spoiled. our games are like complicated winning like literary awards and this is like move stick up and down

Sups 4:01

I mean, you have to start somewhere, right? Yeah.

Andi 4:05

So Magna Vox. are accredited with creating the first home console. Mm-hmm. So video games started in basically universities where people were building computers and then naturally, they made games out of

Tanner 4:17

them.

Andi 4:17

But many people consider the first home console to be the Magna Vox Odyssey.

Tanner 4:21

Mm-hmm.

Andi 4:21

Ralph Bayer often called the father of video games. he designed the games for this console and it came with 28 games, and one of those was a table tennis simulator, Mm-hmm. .So then many years later Atari Made a game, a table tennis simulator called Pong and put it in arcades and it was super popular. And Atari worked with Sears to make a home console version. Again, I included multiple games including. Pong. Mm-hmm. Pong was hugely popular, and so Magna Vox was like excuse me,

Tanner 4:55

game. Yeah.

Andi 4:56

And so Atari ended up settling with them because it was pretty clear that they had violated their copyright. Yeah.

Tanner 5:03

I mean, it's table tennis. how different can the games

Andi 5:05

Yeah. It is one of those things where it. Anybody could have come up with, because they basically made like sports games, like, you know, you play all these different sports and so like, yeah, it's not that creative, but it was pretty clear that Atari had specifically copied this game. They could even prove that the founder had been at presentations of the Magna Vox Odyssey and eventually admitted to having played The game. So,

Tanner 5:31

Okay.

Sups 5:31

Sure. Pong is one of the oldest What year are you thinking?

Tanner 5:36

I wanna say like the very beginning of the eighties. Like 1980? Yeah. You

Sups 5:41

I wanted to say 1974,

Tanner 5:43

But I could also see it being like, They just competed for years and years and years. And then the settlement happened and then it's later than we think,

Sups 5:52

Yep.

Tanner 5:52

Hmm. So I can already see some possibilities of where this might throw us off,

Sups 5:57

Yeah.

Tanner 5:57

It does sound very, very old.

Sups 5:59

Yeah.

Andi 5:59

I know it's hard to play the game for timeline with just

Tanner 6:01

a first

Andi 6:02

event. So I'll go right into event number two. So event number two, video game icon. Mario is introduced to the world as Jumpman in Donkey Kong. Yes.

Tanner 6:12

Yes, It's a me Jumpman.

Andi 6:15

Yeah.

Sups 6:16

Yes,

Andi 6:16

precisely. The iconic Mustachioed Italian plumber. right? very famous for. the Mario Brothers Super, Mario Brothers games. And then eventually Super Mario. but he actually started out on the game. Donkey Kong. Where he's plumber. They called him Jumpman because this was one of the first games where you could jump, your character jumped. Yeah. Not only did it move across the screen because it's two-dimensional, but it could also. Jump and so You played Jumpman and Jumpman jumped over barrels, and you had to kind of climb ladders and jump over barrels that were being thrown by a giant gorilla named Donkey Kong in order to rescue your girlfriend, Pauline,

Tanner 6:52

Not Princess Peach, Mm-hmm.

Andi 6:55

in Mario's actual game.

Tanner 6:56

He moved on.

Andi 6:57

Yeah, he moved on,

Tanner 6:58

changed his

Sups 6:59

name,

Andi 7:00

Yeah. this game was revolutionary, not only because you could jump, but also because it had a basic plot, like there was a story involved with donkey conlin stealing. Pauline, you have to jump over things and it very famously doesn't end.

Tanner 7:13

Oh

Andi 7:14

So the final level, You rescue Pauline, but then it just starts over and you keep going. The game doesn't end until you lose all of your lives. So like this has kind of become a cult thing where people try to get the high score because you can literally keep playing as long as the machine's plugged in and going, but yeah. So originally this was an arcade game. Mm-hmm. big old box that you put like, quarters into it. And eventually Donkey Kong was on the Atari 2,600 this was one of the Gameses on there as well.

Tanner 7:44

Mm-hmm.

Andi 7:44

And that's where we first got Mario.

Sups 7:46

Okay.

Andi 7:47

So I'm from the rural Midwest where it never stopped being the eighties and

Sups 7:52

Even today. Yeah,

Andi 7:53

yeah. And I remember going to bars with my parents, which is also a thing that you do in the Midwest.

Sups 7:58

And Sorry,

Tanner 7:59

walked

Andi 7:59

Yeah. because like every restaurant is a bar and like the bars is a place to hang out. Okay. Like I wouldn't drink alcohol, but I would be at the bar. And I remember there was this one bar that had an old school. Doggy Kong machine. And I remember playing that and being like, this is dumb. I wanna go home. Play PlayStation

Tanner 8:19

yeah.

Sups 8:20

Okay. So between event one and two Yeah. They seem chronological

Tanner 8:24

Yeah. To me. Yeah. Sounds like it's in order to me. Yeah, yeah. Yep. Well, I'm pretty sure Pong came up before Donkey

Sups 8:30

k I mean, sure. But the question is like, how soon after was the settlement? Right? Yeah. I mean, was it immediately, or let's say a decade later.

Tanner 8:38

But we're still in the eighties or seventies, eighties timeline, I think. Yeah.

Sups 8:42

Okay.

Tanner 8:42

I think we have to hear a third one.

Sups 8:44

I think so.

Andi 8:45

Okay. Event number three. The entertainment software rating board or e s Rrb is founded.

Tanner 8:52

Hmm. This is Pretty key in video game history because then. Rated two for teen and all that,

Andi 8:58

Yeah. So if you don't play video games, you maybe don't know about this rating system. Yeah, so this is not a government body, it is a private non-profit organization.

Tanner 9:08

It's also US

Andi 9:09

specific, US and Canada and until very recently, Mexico. and they put. Uh, Rating on games based on the appropriateness for certain ages. So the ratings are,

Tanner 9:20

E for

Andi 9:21

You have E for everyone. There's E 10 plus, so 10 or older

Tanner 9:27

T for teen,

Andi 9:28

T for teen,

Tanner 9:29

M for mature audiences.

Andi 9:31

M for mature, which is 17 and up. And then.

Tanner 9:35

ao. Oh, adults only. Only. Oh yeah. I never could check out those games.

Andi 9:40

actually, So getting an AO rating is basically like death for a video game because many retailers and platforms will not sell or support adults only

Tanner 9:50

Yeah. Grade games. I don't think you can get those at GameStop. No. you cannot.

Andi 9:54

but it's technically like there's no law. It's not a legal thing, right? So it's not like in the us, the FTC or the fcc, like these groups that do tv. they can find people money. For violating their rules. This is just simply like to give consumers information.

Tanner 10:12

Okay. So it's kinda like the, what is it, the r i A A for music, where it's like, oh, explicit lyrics. Yeah. But this is like totally just to help

Andi 10:20

It's basically they were created around the same time for the same reason. Right. So they're actually in the US there were congressional hearings on video game. particularly, they cited Mortal Combat and Doom.

Sups 10:34

you my favorite.

Tanner 10:35

well, they specifically say fatality. Yeah. So I mean,

Sups 10:38

But I love Doo Doom was such a fantastic

Andi 10:41

game yeah. yeah. That's a good one. yeah.

Tanner 10:43

I mean, yeah. When you have these video games like Donkey Kong and Doom right next to each other, one's very graphic and one is just like, jumping

Andi 10:50

Well, that's funny because actually a lot of people talked about that like in the seventies. it was the Wild West if you knew enough about a computers, you could just program a game. And because men are disgusting. Mm-hmm. they often programmed pretty disgusting games, both sexually disgusting and vulgarly violent. So, A lot of people were like, we should have had this sooner. Yeah.

Tanner 11:15

Interesting. When we think about when this was cuz as long as I've been checking out games, they've had ratings. right?

Andi 11:22

Yeah.

Sups 11:22

So this is definitely before your time, I wanna say this is.

Andi 11:28

It is 19 something. I'll give you that.

Sups 11:31

Okay. I got 50% right

Tanner 11:34

I agree with you there. I think it is late, mid to late eighties. Yeah.

Sups 11:37

yeah,

Tanner 11:38

Might be early nineties, but I don't think so. I think it's eighties still, but it's definitely after the first two. definitely. After atar, well the settlement still could throw me off, but I definitely think it's after Donkey

Andi 11:49

Yeah.

Sups 11:50

So if 1, 2, 3 are in order, then do we even have to

Andi 11:54

listen Yeah. You guys already

Sups 11:56

figured out. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But still, we want to listen to number four. Yeah.

Andi 12:00

So event number four. The First Game Boy is released and bundled with Tetris.

Tanner 12:06

all right, game Boy. Now we're portable games

Sups 12:09

I didn't have a Game boy. But I played a lot of teres I had like a fake version, like the Made in China version of Game Boy, not the, like 36 break games in one, like, you know, it. There were different forms of Tetris. like this

Andi 12:22

Oh, okay. I had something like this too. It was like a fake cell phone and

Sups 12:26

yeah, yeah. It had like a bunch of mini games and

Andi 12:28

Yeah, mini games. Yeah, exactly. We used to play it on our

Sups 12:31

Yeah,

Tanner 12:31

Yeah. You could program Tetris under your programming calculator.

Andi 12:35

We had to pay for one of those. You might as well get used

Tanner 12:37

classic game.

Andi 12:38

Yeah. So Tetris is, I don't know how you can describe it. all of the games on the original game Boy were eight bit, so they're all like blocky. Tetris is a game where blocks of. Of different shapes. fall from the top then land on the bottom. And if you fill a full row, they disappear. but once the screen fills up to the top, your game is over. So your goal is to try remove all of the blocks, but you can't know what the next shape of the block's gonna be. So that's Tetris developed by Russians actually.

Tanner 13:03

Yeah. That's why the title of screen has the, red square.

Andi 13:06

same. Basels, Yeah, so the original Game Boy from Nintendo It was a handheld console. It was not the first handheld console, but it. By far the most successful. Yeah. It had removable cartridges, and it had a like two inch or five centimeter screen and was like green. color.

Tanner 13:26

It's just shades of green

Andi 13:27

Yeah. So it came bundled with Tetris originally.

Tanner 13:31

Free game with your console, free

Andi 13:33

free game with it.

Tanner 13:34

they had some really weird games. They had Tetris, they had balloon kid, they had battle toads. They had all these weird games before Pokemon. I carried those around with me all the

Andi 13:43

yeah.

Sups 13:44

Original Game Portable. Portable,

Andi 13:48

Actually, so this was a thing when I was looking it up that kinda made me a little depressed was that a lot of the information I got when I researched it was because there is an original Game Boy on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American

Sups 14:00

Oh, wow.

Tanner 14:02

Oh, It's

Sups 14:03

a history item though. It's amazing. Oh

Andi 14:06

Yep. And Exactly.

Tanner 14:08

I have relics in my

Andi 14:09

here's, an existential crisis for

Sups 14:12

you. I

Tanner 14:13

I don't wanna play this game

Andi 14:14

anymore. You

Sups 14:16

Game over. It's a game over. Oh. Oh wow.

Tanner 14:20

Oh man. Well, the fourth one. Okay, back to the timeline. I think

Sups 14:24

I think

Tanner 14:26

I think Game Boy in Tetris probably fits there as the most recent one. Now I'm wondering how, this is not in chronological order.

Sups 14:34

I, yeah. Okay. we could definitely guess, this, so, but Andy please go through the timeline once again.

Andi 14:42

Yeah. So the four events all of them are in the correct order relative to one another, except one event number one, Atari settles with MNA V over copyright infringement for the game pong Event number two, video game icon. Mario is introduced to the world as Jumpman in Donkey Kong Event number three. The Entertainment Software rating board or E S R B is founded, and event number four, the first Game Boy is released bundled with Tetris. So one of these events, you can move it and create a new order, which is the correct

Tanner 15:30

Mm-hmm. So I'm thinking it's probably either the settlement or the rating board. I think maybe the Game Boy came out before they had the

Sups 15:41

correct Because she's talking about model combat and Doom. Mm-hmm. which I feel like is late eighties, early nineties.

Tanner 15:50

Mm-hmm. And you think the Game Boy came out a little before that? Yes. Mm-hmm. Yes. Otherwise it could be that the settlement mm-hmm. is just much later than the actual games.

Sups 15:58

Yes.

Tanner 15:59

So then is number one,

Sups 16:00

two is where it should be. Yeah. The doubt is around what was the gap from the time this game released and the settlement happened. Right. But also this ratings because of the mention of Mortal Combat and Doom

Tanner 16:11

Yeah. I am inclined to believe that Tetris didn't come out with a rating. I think it came out before the ratings board. Yes.

Sups 16:18

I think I'll pick this. The three and four

Tanner 16:20

So you think it's 1, 2, 4, 3, Yeah, I think that's a pretty safe way to go. I'm gonna say it's the settlement So it's 2, 1, 3, 4. Four.

Sups 16:31

Okay.

Andi 16:31

Okay. So Actual event number one. Is Atari Settles with Magna Vox in 1977. So the Magna Vox Odyssey came out in 1972. Okay. Pong came out in 1974 and this lawsuit started, but it was settled in 77. There there was a gap I was playing with you cuz I figured, like you could guess when the game came out, but the settlement would be a little harder. Then Mario was introduced in the game, donkey Kong in the year. 1981. Yeah. Then the First Game Boy is released. The First Game Boy was released in 1989. so it was quite a bit earlier than I thought. eighties. is in the eighties. The Game Boy Color came out in 1998, so nearly 10 years later. So I kind of thought maybe that What kind of mess with your mind that like, actually the Game Boy came out much earlier than you

Tanner 17:20

thought. right? Nowadays you think of new consoles, new games coming out like every year or every two years, right? 10 years is a long time

Andi 17:27

almost. Yeah. The pocket was in between, but Yeah.

Tanner 17:29

yeah. Wow. 89. Okay. And then the ratings board,

Andi 17:32

so the, A SRB was founded in 1994,

Tanner 17:35

yeah. Okay. it is. bit like right in the

Andi 17:38

It was nineties. Um, though I still think it's very unlikely you played any game that didn't have a rating. Tanner, you're, you're not that

Tanner 17:44

The, the taris I did play already had an E for

Andi 17:47

everyone. Yeah. probably. Yeah.

Sups 17:48

Yeah. that

Andi 17:49

argument was

Tanner 17:50

for

Sups 17:51

No, I only went off when you mentioned Mortal Combat and Doom. I

Andi 17:55

I think

Sups 17:55

was like my reference

Andi 17:56

point I kind of figured, you know, you could guess the SRBs from the nineties. It seems like a very nineties thing. nineties thing, but, or maybe you thought it was in the eighties along with like the music industry. That was also early nineties, so it was right around the same time. But I thought maybe you'd be surprised at how early the first Game Boy

Tanner 18:11

came Yeah,

Sups 18:11

No, definitely

Tanner 18:12

I was,

Sups 18:12

89. Yeah.

Tanner 18:14

Interesting.

Andi 18:15

right. should Thanks for listening to this episode of the Ah, should Have Known podcast. We'll be nerding out for the rest of the month and I hope you join us and as always, thanks Boo Boo Boo.