Citation Needed - Pong

Episode Date: December 11, 2024

Pong is a table tennis–themed twitch arcade sports video game, featuring simple two-dimensional graphics, manufactured by Atari and originally released on 29 November 1972. It is one of the earliest arcade video games; it was created by Allan Alcorn as a training exercise assigned to him by Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, but Bushnell and Atari co-founder Ted Dabney were surprised by the quality of Alcorn's work and decided to manufacture the game. Bushnell based the game's concept on an electronic ping-pong game included in the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game console. In response, Magnavox later sued Atari for patent infringement.

Hello and welcome to Citation Eaten, the podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia, and pretend we're experts. Because this is the internet, and that's how it works now. I'm Eli Bosnik, and I'll be booping the beach tonight, but I'll need some sprightly fellows to fill the screen. First up, podcasting's Waluigi and Wario, Cecil and Tom. Hey, as long as they get to be the the tall thin one, I support this analogy. Oh, sorry, Tom. Like us, they are both down with the thickness.

And also joining us tonight, two guys whose jokes would make Conker blush Noah and Heath. All right. If squirrels don't want to get murdered by liberal elites, fucking get good. Oh, no. That's squirrel. Now we're fucking get good. Oh, God. Now we're we're all sad again. Heath, we just got over that. We just made our way over.

Before we begin tonight, I'd like to thank our patrons patrons. It's episode 400, and I've spent every free waking moment of my life playing Deep Rock Survivor to celebrate. I'm probably playing it while you listen to this episode. Just statistically speaking, that's probably what's happening right now. But I wouldn't be able to play that, nay, any video game without your money. So if you think about it, you already got me a Christmas present. It's Deep Rock Survivor. And I'm really enjoying it.

If you'd like to learn how to join their ranks, be sure to stick around till the end of the show and with that out of the way tell us Tom What person place think concept phenomenon or event who would be talking about today today? We'll be talking about pong and Noah correct me if I'm wrong, but Haven't you already told us the story of pong? Okay, so I yeah. Yes, technically we talked about this back on episode one eighty eight when we talked about the Atari video game burial

and a little bit on episode two fifty three about Coleco. And it was sort of mentioned tangentially on episode three forty seven about the large hate on Collider, but I've never really gotten into the details. And it's actually a pretty cool song. Like the Forrest Gump of history. Yeah. Well, it comes back right, it always bounce us back. Well then here on episode 400. Why don't you tell us the story of pong for the fourth? All right, so one of the weird things about video game history is that it seems like no matter how far back you go One of the weird things about video game history is that it seems like no matter how far back you go,

video games already kind of existed. Oh yeah, actually the Etruscans made video games so video gamey they haven't been recreated to this day. That's a lot of people don't know that because it's not true, but thank you anyway. So, but like in the 20 years or so that I've been interested in this subject, the title of earliest video game has changed several times and there's actually considerable disagreement about which video game deserves that title amongst video game historians. The correct answer is Space War and people who disagree with me are wrong for various reasons, but a lot of people disagree with me, including people who know a lot more about the subject than me. That last couple of sentences feels like a comment section becoming self-aware, man.

Sort of what it is, Cecil. Sort of what it is. I'm pretty sure it's Mario 3. I hate to correct you on there. Star Fox. So, when I first started reading about video game history, it wasn't uncommon to find sources that claimed the first video game history, it wasn't uncommon to find sources that claimed the first video game ever made was Pong. Now, to be clear, nobody who is remotely informed on the

subject thinks that now. And if you do, you're a piece of shit. Thank you. I wasn't going to say it, Eli, but I'm not going to deny it. Now, there are a couple other contenders other than Space War, but Pong isn't one of them. It wasn't even the first tennis-based video game. Fucking kill yourself! It wasn't even the first video game made by the guy who made Pong. But it was the first successful video game. It was the game that kicked off the video game revolution and turned it into the kind of thing a person could later be interested in the history of, right?

So one of the reasons why the question of primacy is so hotly debated is that the concept of video games seems to predate their existence in a sense. Long before the technology allowed for it, we already kind of had an idea in our heads of what video games could be at like a species-wide level. So pretty much the instant each piece of the video game technological puzzle came into existence, somebody would make the closest thing to a video game that you could then make. Right? So the question of the first video game, it's not a question of did this come out before that? It's a question of what counts as a video game. Interesting. I'd say the first game was when somebody wrote boobs

or asshole by typing numbers on a calculator and moving upside down. Sure, okay. Yes. All right, I believe that would have been 1966. I think there were games before that. I think somebody wrote boobs on an abacus even before that.

So. It was just two on the top row. Right. You could write testicles the same. No. No. on the top row. You could write testicles. So one of the earliest players in the world of proto video games was a guy named Ralph H. Baer. He was born in Germany in 1922, which is a terrible time to be born in Germany, especially if you're being born into a Jewish family, which Baer was. Luckily for him, though, and the entire future of video games, his family managed to flee the country about two months before Kristal

knocked. They came to New York, citing the well-known superiority of the pizza there and became American citizens. Yeah. And like video games, there are a lot of people that disagree with Noah about pizza. And also those people know a lot more about the subject. I gave 10 years of my life to pizza. So no one knows more about the subject. I gave 10 years of my life to pizza. He's a no one knows more about pizza. See, so Bear would have gone to Michigan, but he was trying to escape the Nazis, not kidnap the governor. So, you can see, for example. So now ultimately, Ralph gets drafted, he works in intelligence, and then he uses the

GI Bill to get a degree as a TV technician. And on his first job working for a TV company, he's looking at this gridded test pattern on a cathode ray tube screen, and he thinks to himself, it'd be really cool if you could like play chess on this thing. That was 1951. He's way ahead of the game there, literally. But that idea germinated for about a decade and a half and in 1966 He started the effort that would ultimately lead to one of the contenders for the first commercial video game a thing called the Magnavox Nice Magnavox Odyssey. I heard those are really hard to find right? They are only a true Connoisseur who knows about

Pizza would have one of those things, right? It takes a large penis to own a Magnavox Odyssey, yes. I got Noah Dusty thing a couple of years ago. He didn't like this. Imagine looking at an enormous ye olde television and thinking, wow, this will save me from having to have both a 300 pound television and a chess set. Yeah, right. No, so Bear started working on this thing in 1966 and Magnavox wouldn't get involved for years. So at first it was known as the as Bear's Brown Box.

Not great. And it's no, no, but you know, back then they didn't know. It's going to get worse, man. It's going to get way worse. So it is impossible to overstate how basic the first couple of iterations of this thing were. Here's one of the games. The screen is half red and it's half blue. And the red is slowly taking over the blue half. But you, with your single button, if you press your single button fast enough, the blue will take over the red. When I say that, people are like, blah, blah, blah, that's voter fraud.

You're not supposed to vote that. Yes, you are. So that's the game though. You could play a rousing game of make the screen blue. I feel like this game walked so Powerwasher Simulator could run. I was gonna say, my wife has spent more hours in Stardew Valley than most actual

farmers spend on their farm. Let's not knock a business opportunity here guys. It went somewhere. So now the company though that bears working for it this time, Sanders Associates, they recognize that even if you can't sell kids a fucking make this screen blue 5000. The work Bear is doing is invaluable as long as he's gobbling up patents along the way. So the work on Bear's Brown Box was less about creating the first video game and more about making sure that when the first video game was created, they would have to license patents from Sanders Associates. Pin in that because that's going to get important before this is over. Meanwhile, there's another dude kind of

working on a parallel track named Nolan Bushnell. Spoiler alert, he's going to make a lot more money and get a lot more famous. Also, he'll be directly involved with the invention of pong. So yes, we're on the right track. We're eventually going to get to the subject that is the title. So Bushnell, he was born in 1943 in Utah. So yes, Mormon. Boo. Yeah, right? He went to Utah State University where he bounced back and forth between business and engineering in terms of his focus. Get it bounced, because ultimately though, he would settle on electrical engineering and transfer to the University of Utah College of Engineering.

And crucially, while he was in school, in between semesters, he would earn money as a carnival barker at a boardwalk. Step right up and touch the hair of a genuine Lamanite at the Mormon carnival. Girls without temple garments right through this door, gentlemen. Stuff like that. Look through these amazing glasses. Called Leah Honi. So, while he's at university, he comes across this amazing thing called a video game. The aforementioned first video game, which I declare for reasons that are as arbitrary

as they are adamant, Space War. Now Space War was a video game by any reasonable definition, but it wasn't something that was commercially available. You could only play this thing on digital equipment systems, PDP-1 microcomputer. This thing was only micro compared to the fucking room-sized computers they had in 1959. The only place that you were likely to find a PDP-1 at the time was on a college campus. And the only people likely to find one were electronics nerds like Nolan Bushnell. So right away, the carnival barker in Bushnell, he sees this game and he sees huge financial

potential. He can just imagine people dropping quarters into this thing on the boardwalk and him fucking filling a pool with those quarters later and swimming around like discount Scrooge McDuck style. So after he graduated, he set about trying to make that happen. First, he goes to a company called Nutting Associates. Nutting Associates for when friends with benefits is too formal.

Right. So. Nice. So he gets himself hired. Bill Nutting, he's had some success with a coin operated trivia machine called Computer Quiz. And he was looking for the next big thing and Bushnell convinced him that that next big thing was going to be a coin operated version of Space.

Okay, I'm sorry. He took button mashing Bear's Brown Box to Nutting Industries and you want me to believe this story is about video games? This is okay. It's about it's about whatever you want. Once I give you this story, it's yours to do with as you choose. So now the only problem of course is that Nolan Bushnell has no fucking clue how he's going to actually make this work. Right? Like you can't you could just get a PD-1 and put a coin slot on it, but those things are way too expensive for that to be a profitable idea. Now, they considered running like 8 or 10 terminals off the same PDP-1 and the machine actually could theoretically

do that, but it would still be a money-loser unless you could find a place where like 8 or 10 people at a time wanted to play Space War for 15 hours a day. Yeah, that's tough. Women weren't lying about gaming journalism yet. So like that sad angry group of dude bros is really hard to find. It's a cap 22 because you have to invent gaming first. Right. Yeah. So Bushnell, he gets with this other engineer named Ted Davney, and they set about trying to find a way to bring Bushnell's vision to life. Now, Davney gets frustrated after a while. He says, look, man, we've tried everything. There's no way to move an object around on a TV screen.

But Bush now points out that you actually do that all the time. As old folks like myself might remember, old cathode ray tube televisions had a thing called horizontal hold that allows you to swing the picture left and right to center it. Well, apparently, that was the key insight using that same mechanism. That's what was going to allow them to make this thing work. And I have to emphasize this so you have an idea how impressed to be. They did this without a computer. This is a game where you fly a spaceship around trying to shoot another spaceship on a TV screen and they did it mechanically.

So tennis in the physical world with nary a computron in sight? What will they think of next? Okay, Tom, Noah doesn't take away the joy of when the guys in your essays freeze to death. Please let him have this. Thank you, Eli. That joke was cold. So they worked night and day on this thing.

And lest that seems selfless, I want to point out that they did it in Ted Dabney's daughter's bedroom. When it came time for somebody to sacrifice their living space for this project, they chose Ted's kid. But they did manage to make it work. Or was she the first kid to get to play PlayStation in bed? Huh? Well, she was. She was. So they bring it to Bill Nutting and he greenlights it. And so they've got to come

up with a name. Now, the logical thing would be to call it Space War. Nobody had any kind of copyright on the existing game. And what few people knew about it, knew it by that name. But this was 1971. And there was no way in hell you were going to sell something to young people in 1971 that had the word war in the name. So in an effort to tie his new product to the already successful computer quiz, they called it Computer Space. I know people will later shit on game companies for spending too much on marketing, but maybe spend just a little on marketing. Just a touch. Right. Just a little. They should have called it metaphor refantasial.

Now, I wish this was a visual medium so I could show you guys what a bizarre and sexy cabinet they came up with for computer space. Yeah, it looks like something you'd order food out of in fallout or something. But as pretty as it was, it wasn't very successful. The cabinet sold only about a thousand units in its first year, and that was not enough to convince nothing to pursue the video game concept any further. Why do they make it all like expressionist? It's fucking weird. I don't fucking know. It was so expensive. It was so expensive to do that. They didn't make it like a fucking surfboard company had to make those cabinets.

No shit. Wow. Especially. I'd rub my dick on it. Right? It was a separate issue. So Bushnell and Dabney, they decided though, this was proof of concept. They thought something was there. So they left Nutting Associates. So they formed their own company, which they called Sizzogy until they found out that somebody else already owned

that name in California so they changed it to Atari. Somebody already owned a name assembled from randomly pulled tiles from a Scrabble bag? Fun fact, the owner of that name was actually a magician and Syzygy was the name of his mentalism magazine. So while I rub my nerddom in my cohorts faces, we'll take a little break for some apropos of nothing. It was a roughing company. No! It was my thing.

I linked a thing on yours. Eli's lying to you again everybody. Eli's lying to you again. It's okay, he does it every episode. You have to pick- you have to find the lie that Eli lies to every episode. It's like a game we play on this show. Yeah. It's a game. Eli, what is syzygy mean?

she's I left it out of the essay because I didn't talk about the third guy. It's an astronomy thing, right? Yeah, it's like sun and moon distance. It's syzygy is when three different bodies line up together So, oh, it's like an eclipsing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And there were three guys in the company at first. And then you have a nutting associates. That makes sense. Thank you for coming in Mr. Robertson. No problem Charles, I'm excited to see about these new video games you're so excited about. I'm telling you sir, these things are going to be the future. This first one is called the Space Collective.

Alright, then what's it about? Right, so the year is 2300 and a super intelligent AI has risen up against mankind. You play a rogue AI trying to fight back for human freedom without being detected. I see. And how do you play it? Well you push this button right here. And it turns the screen from red to blue. And then that's the AI.

Yeah, because the AI is red. Yeah, it's got it, but it does seem a little obtuse. Right? Yeah, obtuse, sure. Well, how about Super Bowl? Ah, you've got a football game. I sure do. All the thrills and chills of the grid iron from the comfort of your

home. All right, well then how do you play that one? Well you push this button here. I see. Yeah, and you see this square? Yes. Well that's your football guy. I go into the uh touchdown. I'm not sure I see it. Look Charles, I want this to happen as much as you do, but it doesn't seem like this technology is ready. Ah, please, Mr. Robinson, I got one more for you. It's not for the kids, but it's called a Night of Pleasure. Night of Pleasure, you say? Yes, you see these two squares?

Yes. They're fucking- I'll take a thousand. All right. ["The And we're back! When we left off, two guys were building something in their basement in the 70s and it wasn't a bomb! Congratulations everybody! Tell us Noah, what happened next?

So okay, it's 1972 now and video games are about to explode into the markets. The marketing guy quietly correcting Noah to say a merge instead of explode. Right after Eli's thing. And then the nutting industry guy correcting it back. Yeah, right? Third guy watching from the corner. So far... Why not both? All right.

So now at this point, the video game market includes computer space, a clone of computer space called Star Trek, which does not have Gene Roddenberry's permission, and a game called Galaxy Game, which is basically it's the idea that Bushnell and Dabney rejected where you just run a bunch of space war terminals off of the same computer. But the whole time that this shit's going on with Nutting Associates and Galaxy Game and shit, Ralph Bayer is quietly collecting patents and iterating his brown box until it's actually got a few genuinely fun uses. Yeah, you could kick it back and forth like some fun fun games. So, okay. So at this point, the brown box had grown into the Magnavox Odyssey,

which would become the first video game console ever sold in September of 1972. But Nolan Bushnell would get a sneak peek during a private demonstration in Burlingame, California, and that happened in May of that year when Bushnell was still working for Bill Nutting. Now this matters because among the games that was on display at that time was a game that you could play on the Odyssey where a pixelated ball bounces back and forth on a screen and each player has a paddle they can use to hit it and maintain the volley. Hey what if ping-pong was a game finally not only reserved for athletes and jocks? You hear that Heath?

Tom thinks you're an athlete. So Bushnell and Dabney they leave Nutting, they start Atari and they hire a friend to Dabney named Al Alcorn. Hey, that dude should kill his fucking parents. That's a great book. It's a superhero. What's his middle name? My hope is my name is corn.

Yeah. Corn. I wouldn't have bothered to bully that kid in school. He would have been like Have a nice high school in Alcorn bootress bootress guy Al Alcorn is gonna make a bazillion dollars for this is over dammit He deserves it all this shit that you guys are giving him car mickle speaking So they tell Alcorn when they hire him that they want to like, they want them to help work on a driving simulator that they're going to make. And they even

they tell them they've got a contract with a big company that wants to buy a bunch of these driving simulators. This is not true, but it's a good carrot to dangle in front of a new hire who's unsure about committing his future to this fledgling company that at least to this point hasn't actually made anything yet. Alcorn's watching all these pixelated things collide, and he's like, am I making a Caitlyn Jenner driving game? What's going on here? So Bushnell tells Alcorn that as a test, before he can work on the driving simulator, he wants him to make a game where, I don't know,

maybe a pixelated ball bounces back and forth on the screen, and each player has a paddle that they can hit it with to maintain the volley. Now, Bushnell would tell you that seeing the very pong-like game that Bayer had created had nothing to do with his inspiration, which apparently came right around the same time for other reasons. I feel like he's lying. Right? Yeah. But ultimately Bushnell decided that the reason the computer space had failed was that it was too damn complicated for the average person. So he's going for a simpler concept that would strip the new technology down to its most basic. And this paddle game that he saw slash had a spontaneous idea for was intuitive in a way that space war would never be. So OK, so Alcorn makes this thing that Bushnell describes to him, but he notices a problem with it.

That Ralph, maybe the kids want to make the screen blue bear seems to have missed the game was boring Right. This is the dirty little secret that often gets left out of this story I own a Magnavox Odyssey and on the rare occasions when I've been able to coax the fucker to life I've played the pre pong version of pong and it kind of sucks That the ball is too predictable and the paddles are too small so it's both too easy and too hard somehow now they did recognize you have a Magnavox very large penis like dusty other thing too I forgot so so they did they did recognize the problem they added an English knob that would curve the ball a bit, but

that hardly saved the game. It just made it more frustrating to lose out. Okay. So this is like primitive digital air hockey. Yeah. Like the game that seems like it's going to be fun, but 15 minutes later you've listed your table on marketplace as free. You must pick up. Oh, I would so pick up your table, too. I love air hockey. So I have nowhere to put it, but I'd put it in the backyard if I had to. They are always free on marketplace. So so now what Alcorn did, though, when he realized the game was too boring, he started changing shit around and what he came up with was ingenious.

So he made the paddles out of little segments such that when the ball hit him, it would bounce back at a different angle based on where on the paddle it hit. He also added a mechanic where the ball would get faster as you rallied longer, which was an ideal addition for a coin-operated game. His was also more sophisticated than Bayer's game because it was not intended for home use. You didn't have to keep the cost down to where everybody could buy one for his living room. So unlike the Odyssey version, Pong was able to keep score and it also had the iconic Pong

sound effects where Bear's game was silent. Yeah, and little did they know, Gen X wouldn't be able to come without those sounds until decades later, ahead of their time again. So okay, so the Magnavox Odyssey hits the market in September of 1972, and it doesn't do very well. Bayer would spend the rest of his life complaining that they marketed it wrong, and the consumers were led to believe it would only work on Magnavox TVs. But anybody who has seen the utter cacophony of extra cards and tokens and play money and

screen clings and shit that come with the Odyssey Suspects that there may have been more wrong with this consumer product than just the marketing just package it in this old monopoly box Hey once you buy it they can't stop you you like so meanwhile Bush no and dab it is important to buy it first though. It's awkward in the store. It is, yeah. You sound like a security guard at Target. Can I tell you that, Tom?

But you're less screaming. Yeah. So meanwhile, Bushnell and Dabney, they see this thing that Alcorn has made and they're like, holy fuck, this is way better than a driving simulator. And they rush it into production. It would debut in November of 1972, about two months after the Odyssey. And hey, it had no marketing issues whatsoever. Pretty much immediately, it just blew the fuck up.

Yeah. How bad was the proposed driving simulator though, that this was way better? Right. Well, I think a lot of it was that this was like actually doable and maybe the other one wasn't. So it's better in the sense that it could exist. Yeah. It existed in the universe of things. Yeah, exactly. So it's like that Tesla issue. Right. Yeah. Now I've actually told the story of Pauling's debut on a previous episode, but the story's too iconic not to repeat it a little bit here. So they put their prototype in a nearby bar to see how it works. Within a few hours, the bar calls and they say, hey, it's not working. So Al Alcorn rushes over to fix it. He gets there, he realizes that the problem is that there's too much fucking

money in it and you couldn't shove another quarter in it to get it to work again. Guys, stop blowing on the quarter through your shirt. That's nothing. Now you're jamming two quarters at the same time to push it and don't do that. So now there are some reasons to doubt the veracity of this story, but suffice to say pong was a huge hit everywhere it went. Okay. If that story is true, that does not say much for the bar owner's problem solving skills.

Maybe we're bottled drinks and don't think too much about what's growing in that guy's tap line. Oh, I know. Probably quarters. Yeah, right. So, needless to say, Bear's a little pissed about Bushnell's success with his idea. And it gets even worse in 1974 when Atari decides to make a home version of Pong to directly compete with the project that Bear's make a home version of Pong to

directly compete with the project that Bear has devoted almost a decade of his life to at this point. So in 1974, Bear and Magnavox sue Atari, along with a handful of other companies, because at this point, everybody's making a clone of Pong. Well, ours is actually called Ping and we were obviously first. I don't know if anybody tried that one. Now, at first Bushnell pretends that he'd never seen the Odyssey, but Bayer brought receipts in the form of a guest book that Bushnell had to sign on his way into the hotel

room where they were demonstrating the thing. Now, to be honest, the merits of the lawsuit are debatable. Some people consider Bayer to be the father of video games. Some people consider him to be the father of patent trolling. Okay, we're splitting hairs here. It's the same. Suffice to say, though, he presented a good enough case for Bushnell to settle the lawsuit. Now in Bushnell's telling of the story, it was one of those lawsuits where he couldn't even afford to win it.

And if you look at the size difference between Magnavox and the Atari of 1974, that's a believable claim. But suffice to say, he did settle the lawsuit and he agreed to license a few of Bayer's patents for the continued production of Atari games. But that outcome wasn't enough for Bayer, who still had to watch Bushnell go on to be the face of this burgeoning billion-dollar industry. So, he decided that, turn about being fair play and all, he was going to steal back. See one of Atari's early non-pong arcade ventures was a mechanical game called Touch Me. And now the Catholic Church is suing him for copyright infringement.

So now that game consisted of four buttons with lights over the top of them and the lights would light up in a random order and then your job as the player was To remember the order and push the buttons in the same order once it was done and the name they came up with was Touch me It was supposed to be like risque somehow Yeah, they had a game that had like boobs for joysticks at this time. A lot of bad decisions at that moment. No, but back into me and press the button.

Yeah, right. Right. So now that game touch me was a bit of a flop. But as I was. Yeah, right. Right. Can you imagine? But as I was describing it, you may have thought to yourself that sounds an awful lot like that classic 80s Milton Bradley game phenomenon Simon, which is played the exact same way. It's just the lights are colored and they have tones to them.

And that game, which would go on to sell millions of units, continues to sell millions of units and be beloved even to this day, was invented by Ralph Baer. Nice. And when he was asked if Touch Me had played any role in inspiring his creation, he made no effort to hide it. He's like, yeah, I took their half ass idea and I added another half of an ass to it. His whole ass idea would go on to make him obscenely rich.

And if you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, what would it be? You should know better than anyone that there's no fucking way I'm gonna distill shit like this into a single sentence Eli. I'm sorry All right. Well before we hear the story again, are you ready? All right, what is a fun fact listeners should know about this essay a Noah wrote this one pinched for time. B. Because it was a subject he did not have to research. C. Which means he committed all of this to memory. D. I couldn't write 2500 words from memory with this level of specificity on any subject at all. E. Noah's memory makes me think I shouldn't attempt to take the man-woman-camera-TV test. So there is so much shit I left out of this.

This could have easily been twice as long. I smoke weed to keep it fair, Tom. That's what I do. Noah, I don't know my children this well. I think horse is in there. Okay, Noah, we learned about the Catholic Church's video game. Touch me earlier. What was their second most famous game? A rock and grope.

B altered, altered beast. C entitled goose game. Pull position. All right. Well, I've refused to acknowledge that D was even there. I love all of those dude, but entitled goose game is one of the 10 funniest things of all time. So I'm going with C entitled goose. It is definitely C. Alright, Noah. If Pong came out today, what would be different? A. It wouldn't work at all when it was released. B. The ball would be DLC.

C. It would require an online connection to play. D. It would cost 80 goddamn dollars. C. It would require an online connection to play. D. It would cost 80 goddamn dollars. C. It would require an online connection to play. D. It would cost 80 goddamn dollars. Secret answer E. Secret answer E. Nintendo would sue me for this essay. What do you mean I gotta log into steam?

Why does it play pong? I don't want to make an account for your video game company so we can stay in fucking touch. What are we going to make a yearbook Ubisoft? Get the fuck off my nuts. All right, no, I got one more for you. So as a Mormon, Nolan Bushnell tried to make a bunch of LDS themed games that got rejected obviously. Which was the best one?

A, missionary control. B, Honky Kong. C, that's fucking genius. Honky Kong is so good. Brilliant, absolutely fucking chef's kiss. Okay. C, similar theme, neon white and delights him, obviously. D, imperfect dark.

Oh, God. E, polygamists. Yeah. I still think fucking Honky Kong is out of the park. It's gotta be out of the park with Honky Kong. I think Cecil's gonna go next week. He's gonna go next time. Everybody's gonna go next week. We're gonna all win. Cecil's gonna, I think Cecil's gonna go next week. I thought for sure I was gonna lose because of most of that, but let's have Cecil next week. I think I'm gonna pick everybody. Alright. Well, for Tom, Noah, Heath, and Cecil, I'm Eli Bosnik. Thank you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week. And by then, someone will be an expert on something else.

Between now and then, you can listen to our podcasts on a Magnavox podcast player or an iPod touch if you still got one of those. And if you'd like to get in touch with us. I like the Zoom. And if you'd like to help keep the show going. You fucking liar. You can make a program so donation

at patreon.com slash citation pod or leave us a five star review everywhere you can. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes, connect with us on social media or check the show notes. Be sure to check out citation pod.com. 99, 100. Excellent. And Charles.

Yes, sir. When can I expect a sequel? Same year as silk song, sir. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. 100. Excellent. And Charles? Yes, sir? When can I expect a sequel? Same year as Silksong, sir.

Excellent. Can't wait. Yes the fuck you can. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahah