Do Go On - 374 - Tetris

Episode Date: December 21, 2022

This week we are joined by Tommy Dassalo and Karl Chandler from the Little Dum Dum Club, to hear about the surprising history of one of the world's best sellign video game... Tetris!Matt brings up the names of the blocks from the original Nintendo game but these are fake, he fell for a meme/listicle! Disappointing!This is a comedy/history podcast, the report begins at approximately 14:41 (though as always, we go off on tangents throughout the report). Support the show and get rewards like bonus episodes: patreon.com/DoGoOnPodLive show tickets: https://dogoonpod.com/live-shows/  Submit a topic idea directly to the hat: dogoonpod.com/suggest-a-topic/ Check out our new merch! : https://do-go-on-podcast.creator-spring.com/ Stream our 300th episode with extra quiz (and 16 other episodes with bonus content): https://sospresents.com/authors/dogoon Check out our AACTA nominated web series: http://bit.ly/DGOWebSeries​Listen to the Little Dum Dum Club: https://littledumdumclub.com/  Twitter: @DoGoOnPodInstagram: @DoGoOnPodFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/DoGoOnPod/Email us: [e-mail] Check out our other podcasts:Book Cheat: https://play.acast.com/s/book-cheatPrime Mates: https://play.acast.com/s/prime-mates/Listen Now: https://play.acast.com/s/listen-now/Who Knew It with Matt Stewart: https://play.acast.com/s/who-knew-it-with-matt-stewart/ Our awesome theme song by Evan Munro-Smith and logo by Peader Thomas Do Go On acknowledges the traditional owners of the land we record on, the Wurundjeri people, in the Kulin nation. We pay our respects to elders, past and present.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Melbourne and Canada, we got exciting news for you. And we should also say this is 2026. Jess, what year is it? 2026. Thank God you're here. Right now, I'm in Melbourne doing my show with Serenjai Amarna, 630 each night at the Cooper's Inn Hotel, having so much fun. We'd love to see you there.

Canada, we are visiting you in September this year. If you've somehow missed the news, we are heading up Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal and Toronto for shows. That's going to be so much fun. Tickets for all this stuff, I believe, are online. And I'm here too. Welcome to Do Go On. My name is Matt Stewart and this is the Dooku On podcast.

Is that kind of right? It's, sure. Hey Jess, why don't you take it from here? Hello and welcome to another episode of Doog One. My name is Jess Perkins. That's fantastic. And as always, I'm joined by Matt Stewart. Hey, Jess, how's it going?

I'm fine. We are not alone in the studio though. We have some guests. I'm wondering who they were. Do you want to introduce them? Why did you have Matt even have first crack at that intro? I don't know. I was being kind.

Yeah, we'll take it from here, guys. Welcome to another episode of Do Go On. Welcome to Do Go On, guys, calling. 1-800 Do Go On. Have you seen something go on? I'll say you listen to the show car. We're in a hotline? We are, of course, joined by Carl Chandler and Tommy Dassolo of the Dumptime Club.

Hello, and welcome back. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Thank you so much for having us. When's the little boy? When does he get here? When does the little fella? He plays by his own rules.

Okay. He turns up when he wants to turn up, that little boy. Is the rule that you don't shoot your pants before you come in? Is that what happened? I just assumed he was busy playing an outfit like Kmart. It's his busiest season. We're only to say this, aren't we? In the group chat this morning, he said he can't come in because he has massive

diure because because. We're off for a hot start today. I think massive is editorializing a little bit. I mean, if he's probably out of a podcast. Exactly. We had to drive across town. If he had just had a little bit of diarrhea, then he should be in here. Yeah.

Yeah. So he ate nachos at a cinema? No, he ate fish tacos. Which, yeah, it's a bold choice. Now, again, you guys know this way more than me, but isn't he a guy with a delicate digestive system? Yeah. Now, why is he trying fish tacos on the eve of a very important podcast?

Yeah, true. Look, I'm going to go a level above that. Why is the cinema? having a cracker making the fish taco. That's the thing. I mean, I can't, I'm cut from the same cloth as Dave. Delicate digestive system, but if I see something wild like that on a menu, I'm going, you know what, I'm going to see what Hoyt's do with this.

I'm curious. Hey, honey, do you want a chock top or a fish taco? Who's asking? So, yeah, we were meant to do a big double crossover episode of our two pods today. Yeah. But instead we said, fuck your podcast. Yes. Let's just do ours instead without Dave.

I've had to explain to Matt wasn't very happy. I said, we want the whole Rolling Stones on our episode on the twin recording. We can't be missing Mick or Keith or whoever you want to assign the role of Dave to. Who do you think you three are of the Rolling Stones? We haven't done the Rolling Stones. We've only done Destiny's Child and we know Dave's the Michelle. Oh, okay. Who's Beyonce?

You are. Okay, so that means you're Mick then. Yeah. I guess I'm Mick. Jess is Mick. I think Dave is Keith. Okay. And you are...

And I'm probably the guy died in a pool or whatever. Oh, really? Right. Brian Jones. Brian Jones. Do he die in a pool? Yeah, he started the band and then he got real shit at it. Yeah.

And then they kicked him out. They moved past him real quick. Yeah. Yeah, that's probably about right. Should we just do the Rolling Stones today? Because I'm covering the topic. Yeah. And I was talking to Dave last night, kind of about some of the bullet points.

of it and then all of a sudden he gets up this morning he's like I can't be on the episode. So it hasn't really instilled a lot of faith in me about the quality of what I'm bringing to the table. Doesn't bode well, does it? It doesn't bode well. Yeah, to be fair, he should be the Brian Jones, the guy who's dead. Yeah, that's true. Pool of his own, you know what at the moment.

What a way to go. I don't know if he specified which way was coming out, but he did say, yeah. Well, no, he did. No, he did. Yeah, he did. It was kind of like we gradually got more information out of it. as we were all sort of like angrier and angrier about the fact that we all need this to happen. We're all banking episodes for the holiday break.

And also this has been in the pipes for about six months. That's the other part of it too, yeah. Do you know what movie he was seeing? I was there with him. We saw a violent night. Oh, my God. It was awesome. It was so good.

And what were you eating instead? I didn't want to say because I was eating basically nachos. I was like, what did you order the two weeks? old milk. I have a glass of old milk. No, not out of the fridge, that one, in the windows. It's not on the carpet. Can you scrape that off for me?

It looks delicious. He messaged me this morning saying, hey, just to let you know, this might be coming for you as well. Oh, you got early access. I'm like, I'm, I'm feeling only information. I'm like, I'm feeling pretty fine. Any chance it was the fish tacos that you had? And he said, oh, yeah.

What did he think you were, how did he think you were going to get it through the movie? The movie made me sick. No, we'd share, because we did a gig earlier and we shared the catering there. So it could have been that. But then this was the, this was post gig. That's when we split off. He went fish tacos. I went chips and guacamole.

Right. So this truly is like a science experiment. You've got the control of the gig catering and then, yeah. So we can 100% level this at the fish. Tarko. Yes, I think so. This was, well, you know, I'm sort of used to it when it comes to this podcast and the members of, because it was only two weeks ago when someone pulled out of a gig I run comedy

explain. It starts at 830. I think it was 6.30 when I got the pull out. Yeah. The day after Meredith's music fixed for him from all reports I heard was Matt Stewart was absolutely no, no, no good after that. Meredith was this weekend. That was an entirely different thing, yeah.

I want, I need gigs at the moment. I would have thought you'd have people begging for that spot. No, because there's a lot of people like you and Dave Warnocky that keep pulling out of things. Oh, really? Guys, can we pivot? This honestly is just an episode of our show. Yeah, you're right.

We could do this for another 55 minutes easily. We're talking diarrhea. We're talking gig beefs. We're fully in our wheelhouse now. We've just taken the ship over. We've Captain Phillips did. That's why we need Dave here. We need to outnumber guests or...

Oh, we lose control very quickly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey Jess, why don't you, or maybe we normally get one of us to explain how this show works. Tommy, do you reckon you could have a crack at explaining what do go on is? Oh, yeah, sure. Well, three people of varying levels of reliability come together and they ask someone else who's not affiliated with the show to spend a few days putting together research on a topic and then one of the hosts pulls out at the last minute. Yeah. Is that what the show is?

Yeah, for about seven years now. And we normally get on a topic with a question. I don't know if you've written a question here, Tommy? No. Okay, fantastic, because you already let slip what the topic is anyway. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My question for the listeners is, what is the most famous Russian video game?

Oh, wow. That's a tough question because surely there's no definitive answer to what. It's like saying who is the most famous person in the world. Well, you can't have a litmus test to find out. Okay, well, name another Russian video game. Another one. I can't even name it. What's the first one?

Am I even right saying it's Russian? No, 100% you are. Well, done. Yeah. Oh, what is a Russian game? Okay, well, what is a Russian game? The video game, Super Gorbachev brothers. Yeah, I'm just like what I've prepared the type of company.

Miss Yeltsin, man. Super Gorbache. Now, just because somebody, one of a lot of a lot of, our listeners is keeping tally of which of us guesses it right. I'm just going to jump in there to get a point. Is it Tetris? It sure is.

That's a point for me. That's a fucking point for me. That's Russian. Actually, I'm looking at a book that you've brought in that's clearly a book about Tetris and now I'm going, oh, okay. Yeah, I should have probably guessed that one too. Yeah.

You guys, now, to the best of my knowledge, the three of you aren't gamers, but you surely have interacted with Tetris at some point. I've been playing Tetris recently. I like the way that question should go. go, you guys, I don't think your game is, so maybe you don't know what Tetris. Some of us hardcore games, you wouldn't really understand.

I'll explain it. You probably don't know the rules. Please tell me, nerdsplain it to us. Well, my point being, Tetris is like ubiquitous enough that, like, even if you're not into games, you've played it at some point. Yeah. Or you, at the very least, you know what it is.

Yeah. Your mum and dad would have heard of it probably. Yes. Yeah. Now, Matt, you've been playing it recently. Yeah. For the first time. He's just discovered it.

That's a fun new game. That's great. I find it very relaxing. You text Carl say, I can't do spleen and then just go to Tetrus. You're one of those late adopters. You watched the movie and thought, I'll get into the game now. Yeah. That's right.

Yeah. It was a fantastic film. I wanted to get into the source material. Apparently, I don't know if you're getting into this at all, Tommy, but I saw recently that it's just been discovered that each piece has its own name. Did you see that? What? Yeah.

Like a person's name you mean? Yeah, yeah. I think, yeah, one of them. Well, the pieces themselves are called tetrominoes. Oh, yeah, well, I mean, we all know that. Sorry, guys. But, yeah, no, I didn't know that they all had, each piece had an individual name. Yeah, I think it just called it square, long one.

Someone found the old booklet that came with the Nintendo version of it, and there was a page with the names of the pieces. Wow. Okay. I'll find it before we finish up. But again, like people's names, like Gary. I think, I can't remember. But I think they are stuff like that. You know, like the ghosts in...

Oh, like they've got blinky. Blinky and... Yeah, exactly. I think it's like that, yeah. At some point they thought everything needed to be named. Yeah, that's cool. So there's like Tetris Law. Yeah, yeah.

Where the person... You know what? For the time of... Like, for the time that it is, the fact is it's probably just like the person who wrote the instruction manual just went, I'm just going to come up with these. Yeah.

And then, like, you know, not signed off by anyone. top brass. Someone that wrote the instruction books had 2,000 words to fill, and he was sitting on 1,500. We're naming the bricks. Here we go. The instruction manual has a word count that it has to hear. They've already booked in a 16-page print run. What are you going to put on 14 pages of it?

You've got to put something on it. How much more detail can I put into push left to go left? If you're really feeling like it, it's what you could do. Of course, you know, it's optional. You don't have to go left. One could go right if they're so. There's no rhyme or reason to the, like some of them are people names. Anyway, I'll tell.

So you've got the... Is this where we should be starting in the history of interest? No, I like, no, I like, because this doesn't come up in my thorough research. Oh, God. So you've got the L shape is orange Ricky and then the... Orange, orange, okay. Is it orange? I think it must be orange because then, I mean, in the booklet they're all grey.

Oh, yeah. Then the, you know, the backwards L, that's blue Ricky. Okay. Someone's taking the piss here. Then that sort of, that Zed-ish-looking one? What would you call that? The zigzaggy one. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's called Cleveland Zed. And then the opposite of that is Rhode Island Zed. Okay. So they've gone from names to place. This is worse than what's in Dave Warnocky's pants at the moment. Now, you've hit the nail on the head car. This is someone who's getting paid by the word. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The stick one is hero. The, no, but it is. That's the hero piece. When you're like banking it up and you're making sure you've got like a nice bit for a slot into and you get that full, the full Tetris of like all of them. That is the hero. That's the hero.

Yeah, okay, well there's a reason to go, oh, that's the hero. Is there a need in the game to go, oh, Orange Ricky. Rhode Island.

You need, the Z's like probably like useless, you know, because it's like it's more difficult to work with. So that, yeah, I reckon it feels like that's a slide against Cleveland and Rhode Island, right?

Surely. Yeah, yeah, right. Right, it's not helpful. Someone's got an ex-girlfriend in each place. I'll show them. I'm going to burn them in the Tetris Instruction Manual. Then the T-Shap is T-wee.

Okay. T-wee. That's the easiest one to come up with a name for. Yeah, just stop at T. You had it. Yeah. And then finally the square is Smash Boy. I don't mind that.

Smash Boy and Hero are the only ones that I'm on board with. All the rest of them, shit out. How did Tetris become such a big part of culture, with dog shit like that in the instructions. I wonder if there was anyone back in the day. You know, they got their game boy, they break it open. They're just going to have a read of this instruction manual before I start the game. And then they've just seen all the names and gone, fuck this.

This game sounds stupid. I'm out. I reckon this is the game that stopped everyone from reading the instructions before they played the games. Because who reads the instruction before they play the game? Yeah. Do you? Well, now they don't come with instructions. It's all like built into the game.

They'll be like two hours of just like some, coming up. Sorry, do you say that word on this podcast? It's been coming up more. Surely with Warnocky pulling out every two seconds as you come up a bit. We did it early and then Dave at one point went, apparently in America it's offensive.

Oh, right. So we stopped saying it for a while. And then we started bleeping it when it comes up occasionally. I think in our first 50-100 episodes, I used to be pretty hard on even Tommy and the other guest, like, don't swear if you can. Let's try not to swear. Because what if we got our own radio?

show and then about two episodes later we went, that's never fucking happening. Well, on the video games podcast that I do, Filthy Casuals, we do videos on YouTube and they started getting demonetized for ads because they changed their standards. And the C-bom got put in the category of like slurs along with like the N-word.

And it's like just having that leveled at you, it's like you've said some, you've said the equivalent of the N-Word. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa, we're Australian. Your system should be detecting the accent. It's just in the national anthem. Like, come out. All right.

Do you guys want to hear about the history of Tetris? Yes. Is there more to come? Just naming the blocks. Blue Ricky. Yeah. There once was a man called Hero. What was the square again?

Big smashy. Smash boy. Smash boy. That's so sick. Love smash boy. That's awesome. Okay. So, 1985.

Alexi. Hatchet Nov. He's a computer scientist at the Moscow Academy of Science. His main job was creating artificial intelligence and voice recognition software. He's fascinated by puzzles and games and how much they reveal about psychology and behavior. So in his spare time, he starts messing around trying to like make versions of his favorite puzzles on his computer. So he's like getting the, you know, whatever, like the Rubik's Cube and being like, yeah, this, but it's on a screen. Okay. Oh, so he's an episode. Oh, right. That kind of makes sense. Like imagine if Rubik's Cube was Busted apart and not a screen.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, his inspiration for Tetris came from this puzzle game called Pentominos. Do you guys know this game? It's like a wooden box and then you've got all these shapes that are like the Tetris shapes. And you have to, it's like a puzzle. And what are their names? Simon, Mick, Keith, Dave, Beyonce. It's just all in.

Ringo. So he was kind of obsessed. with that game, that specific little puzzle game, which you could play alone or with a friend, and then one day he starts thinking like, oh yeah, what if all these little shapes were falling from the sky into a glass and you were having to, like, you know, manipulate them and, you know, get them to like all, like do the puzzle kind of the other way right. Which, you know, sounds to me like someone in the dorm room at the Moscow Academy of Silence just, what I'm saying, oh man.

Someone at Moscow Taif. studying the effects of mad bongs on the human mind. Yeah, man, artificial intelligence. It's for science. What if the bong smoked you? Just with posters of Boris Yeltsin, but with dreadlocks on his wall. So, yeah, he starts, he's obsessed with that. He's toying around with the idea.

The pentominoes, the blocks were made up of like four little units. He changes it to five. And, oh no, sorry, he changed it from 5 to 4. So he's working on this computer that's like, obviously, like, very old, very rudimentary, didn't have any graphics capabilities. So he makes this version of it that's just text. Like, so the blocks are coming down and they're just like made out of it just like. The text says, orange Ricky.

Yeah. I mean, when I read it, that's what I thought. I was like, you're typing in, rotate to the left. And then the game's going, good one. But no, it's like, it's scrolling from the sky, but it's just, it's, the pieces are made up of just like little brackets. Yeah. To kind of like, you know, fill it in that way. So he gets obsessed with it.

He starts sharing it around the Moscow Academy of Science and all his friends get hooked on it, even though it's like very basic, very rudimentary. Everyone that he works with gets super into it. And what year is this? This is 85. So where are we in like computer? Are there, is Atari around and stuff like that?

Atari's around. There's like arcade machines are around. They're well and truly around. What would be number one on the hit parade in 85? Like, Pac-Man's like late 70s or early 80s, is it? I reckon it's Atari. I don't reckon Nintendo have quite launched yet. I think Mario Brothers is like 86.

Right. So they're like, yeah, they're not quite in the field yet. I think maybe the video game crash may have just happened or be about to happen. We did an episode about that back in the day. That might have been, yeah, 83 or something. The video game Crash, what does that mean? So Crash Bandicoot So they're like Atari

They have like there's just Everyone's buying these video games Like the home consoles Yeah the cartridges It was sort of Not regulated or whatever And it just meant that all like supermarkets Were putting out consoles

And everyone was doing it And it just ruined the market Like that flight at the market And then people got over it And then so when it came time for Nintendo To put out their console They had to really battle to get it in shops because all the department stores were like, no, we just got burned by this a few years ago.

We've still got all this old stock. You're not tricking us. Was it an ET game? Or there was some game and they had to bury a million cartridges or something. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, that's kind of, yeah, that's where things are at at the moment. So in terms of, I think home computer stuff is still like pretty big. But consoles, yeah, Atari would have been the last kind of like a big one.

But it would have, so it's not like this would have been blowing their minds. This would have looked pretty primitive. I was going to say, how bad with these old video games, if Tetris came along and everyone was like, oh, finally a good-looking video game. But yeah, so everyone that he's working with gets into this kind of very basic version of it that he's made because, you know, it does, it taps into, the book I read about it goes, like, goes into the sort of psychology of why people love Tetris, because it, it taps into this thing in the human brain where it's like the dopamine rush of, like, finishing a task. Because it's like you...

It's like crossing something off the to-do list. Yeah, but then the to-do list just reappears again instantly. because it's like you get a line. It's like life, man. Guys, that's the only point I wanted to come in here, is the Tetris is like life itself. It never stops. It's like the mail coming into the mailroom,

and that's why I had to shoot up a school. It's like the shit coming out of an asshole after you've eaten a fish taco. It's endless. It just keeps repeating. All morning. You wipe, you flush, and then guess what?

You're back in there three minutes later. And then your mates are back in the chat, in the going, can't you just come and do the podcast? And you're like, no, fuck off. You prescribed him a pie, didn't you, Carl? Just eat a pie, mate, you'll be good. That's, like, he eats a, is that the thing?

He's at, he's finally eating something that he's in a pie. And it's just absolutely blown his guys up. I think that might have been what it is. I'm starting to think as well that even if he wants to, Dave won't be able to edit out this thread. No, there's no way. Absolutely not. Absolutely not.

Guys, now, here's your challenge for the rest of this story that I've got that's quite dry, I have to be honest. If we can just relate every bullet point back to Dave having diaries, and I think we're in for an all-time top five episodes of do go on hosted by Tommy Daselot, Gall-Channel. Why don't we name all of Dave's ships

while we're at it? Smash boy. Splash boy. Splash boy. So yeah, the game's a viral hit at the Moscow Computer Center. A friend of Alexes named Dimitri Pavlovsky,

who was very well versed in MS DOS, which is like the big operating system of the time. They get to and they make like a proper graphical version of the game that's not just like text-based. Like it looks kind of more like what Tetris looks like now. They get it kind of popping. They come up together with the name Tetris, named for the four blocks that make up each piece,

which is a tetra plus tennis. That's where the name comes from. Block tennis. Not really like tennis at all. No. I guess it's a little bit like the old tennis game, though. People like Pong. Yeah, like Pong.

Yeah, exactly. It's got a bit of Pong about it. Yeah, yeah. Speaking of Warnocky this morning. There we go. You asked for it. That one was always too easy. Life is picturing,

how's tennis played over there? It's like you lob the ball at someone and then they just disappear. It's like that's what's happening in... If they're not good enough in Russia, yeah. Yeah, in Russia. The protégés who don't quite make it. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. They don't quite make it. Yeah. And by the way, if you're making up these names, I think you're being borderline racist. Dmitri Popolovsky? If I'm making them. Okay, yeah.

An opportunity to be borderline racist. Yeah, I jumped on that. That's the underlying subject with this. Yes, not Tetris itself. Because normally when people come in to do a report, they've written it down. And you've just been closing your eyes and looking upwards. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've just been Googling pictures of ugly Russian people and then been like, looks like a Dmitri to me.

And you've been making a note of every time he has a five second delay of going, What else can I say? This is going to be a brutal edit. Yeah, yeah. I assume Dave's done a wonderful job. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's that version of Tetris that makes its way outside of the computer center.

So people are copying it. They're giving it off to their friends. Oh, they're bootlegging. Yeah, they're bootlegging. Yeah, but the guy who made it, he's like, he's just made this as a lark. Like, he doesn't care. So it's, it makes...

This is the 85 version of the, what was the... What's the... The crazy frog? The viral hit. No. The body. The thing that the New York... Matt's doing an impression of Dave's Marl.

The game that the New York Times bought. Oh, Wordle. Wordle. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah, kind of, yeah, just a little fun thing. No one wanted any money out of it. So within two weeks, Tetris is on every computer in Moscow.

It's copied around. To give it, here's an example of its popularity. At a psychology institute in Moscow, a manager loved Tetris. for so much that he's given it to his entire staff. He's like, you've got to check this out, guys. And then like, a week or two later, he has to come around and confiscate all the copies back off them because no work is getting done.

Guys, I tried to be cool boss. It's backfired. I now have to be asshole boss. I have to take the game away. Like... Dave is certainly not the asshole boss today. If only he was a bit more of a boss, we could be...

The arsoles running the show there. We could be doing an episode of a little. Dundman was that as well. Oh my God. I'm just imagining the listener of this who's like, loves video game history, always wanted to hear this story, but there are some people who are severely put off by anything fake.

I'm one of those. Really? Oh, really? Well, you're doing a valiant job here. I'm blocking it out. I think David and I have had an influence because he's starting to be the one to make shit jokes now. And I'm like, oh, come on.

I reckon if I was listening to this, I wouldn't be listening to it anymore. But being in the room, I don't know, somehow it's, and I'm not. If there was any food coming up for me, I wouldn't be able to... Sure. If we were sitting down for lunch, I would have pushed a plate away from me at the point, I reckon.

Interesting. Wow, I didn't know you were that delicate. I'm very delicate. Yeah. Can't believe that that doesn't just come out of him. A guy with a Mervhue's mustache and an old St. Kilda jumper. Like, you look like you could probably eat this table, let alone fucking be weird about talking about poo for a second.

I don't like that word, Carl. Sorry. Let's just, let's be delicate around Matt. Let's just call it a whoopsie for now. Yeah, that's nice. Dave's at home having a bit of a whoopsie. Having frequent whoopsies. Liquid whoopsie.

Some whoops boys. Liquid whoops boys. Oh, no. We're in too deep now as well. We can't go back. Okay, so, yeah, so no money's changing hands for any of these copies of Tetris. everyone in Moscow just has it because yeah

Russia's in 1985 communist country so the guy who made it Alexi he could have been arrested and jailed for even trying to sell it but he also he also doesn't care he just wants he just likes puzzles he likes what they kind of have to say

about like the human mind and everything so he's just happy that people have their hands on it and they're having a good time I imagine going to jail for inventing Ted so eventually a colleague of his suggests that he sends the game to a friend in of his in Hungary, who publishes games.

So at the Hungarian Institute of Technology, they hold an exhibition of software that they've developed. A guy called Robert Stein, who's the owner of a UK company called Andromeda Software. He's come to the exhibition looking for games that he can sell in foreign markets. He has a go of Tetris. He gets hooked,

and he decides that he wants to license it in the UK. He wants to get the rights to be able to, like, give this game out worldwide. At the Hungarian Expo. At the Hungarian Institute of... Famous capitalist sort of utopia. Yeah, yeah. That is, I mean, that is a roll of the dice, isn't it?

It's like, yeah, just pop over here, have a look. Probably find a big, I'll probably find the next Pong over there. Yeah. You know, I'll probably find the next Pac-Man. And he's kind of right. So he... Packing your Dax Man. Yeah, there we go.

Very nice. So he... Talking about Dave there. Oh, yeah, no, I got it. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah. I forgot about him shooting himself for about three seconds. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's why he's not here. Right. Is he not here? Yeah. Oh, man. It's all starting to make sense now. So once this guy, Robert Stein gets home, he contacts the Moscow computer center using a thing called the telex, which predates the fax machine. Okay.

Never heard of one of these. Telex. Pre-fax. So it's kind of like you're typing it out and then it's appearing. It's basically a fax machine, but it's like, I guess it took a little bit longer. Right. Name was too long. Had you get it shorter.

Facts. Telex sounds awful. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, oh, it's like the telephone. Yeah. But does fax sound good? Yeah.

You reckon? Fax. Is it only just because you're used to it, though? It's a bit of a weird name, I reckon. Telex sounds like what the 80s thought the future sounded like. Yeah, that's true, yeah. It also sounds like an antihistamine or something. Yeah.

You know? I like it. Tell us it. Yeah. Is anyone using it now? I think it's back in public domain by now. Yeah, you can have that. I wonder if you can find one.

Yeah, telx. There used to be, like, some TVs used to have. I thought it was the telex button. Teletext. Or teletext. Right. Which was just subtitles, right? Yeah.

And maybe there was a news service. It was a very primitive internet, wasn't it? Because you could watch TV and then you could just flip over and have like some two-week-old news. It was like written like a Commodore 64 star. Exactly. Yeah, like maybe a blue screen with yellow writing or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You could get the football scores on it.

Yeah. Pretty sick, actually. It's really pretty cool. Bring it back. Okay, so Robert's sign. He opens up his teletext and he gets the footie scores. and he sends them to the Moscow Computer Center to try and get permission to take Tetris to the rest of the world.

So, Alexi gets the message at the Moscow Computer Center. He then has to type out his response in Russian. He has to get that message approved by someone, and then he has to get someone else to translate the message and send it back to this guy in the UK. So because of that, there's this big communication breakdown. By the time all of that happens, He's basically said, yeah, yeah, I don't think you're allowed to use that term anymore, Carl.

Okay, right. I think you're meant to say, beep, whispers. Oriental whispers. Okay, okay. I think you're getting colder there, Carl. Let's just give Dave a little gimmie to edit out. You know, just an easy one that doesn't affect anything else in the show. They call it in America, they call it telephone.

That feels like that must be so confusing. Yeah. That's already a thing. Because telephone's like one-for-one audio. Yeah. There's really no room. for misinterpretation. I think they came up with telephone because it started as Chinese whispers and by the time

it got to there, it made no sense. Right. You guys should do an ep on the history of Chinese whispers. The concept, the term, there's a lot to dig into there. But so basically, Alexi, what he's gone to say is, yeah, I'm interested. This sounds cool. Let's have a talk about this. Like, we'll work out a deal.

Hopefully we'll work out a deal. You know, we'll get a contract going. It all sounds, you know, sounds pretty good to me. Happy to chat. And Stein has just read, but by the time it's been translated and everything, Stein's just read this as, we're on. You've got a deal. Right.

So he's like, bang, we are off to the races here. I've got the worldwide rights to Tetris. Oh, shit. You know, this game is so addictive. This is going to make me like tons of money. So he just starts giving off the rights, basically willy-nilly. So he gives off the rights to selling or giving? Yeah.

Well, selling. Okay. Yeah, selling. But what is selling if not giving? Oh, that's so true. Yeah, exactly. With money involved. Yeah.

Yeah. A transaction involved. Yeah. It's like you've given me a pie. Yeah. And then I've given you money. That's right. But they're two separate events.

We both give them. If only that transaction had it happened last night with Warner. Instead of what actually happened. Would have been safe with the pie. That's the other thing is how much were, you got the fish tacos at a cinema. I'm guessing they're like 25 bucks or something like that. Oh, $27. $27.

$27. What? I know that because as we were leaving, he was saying, they weren't that good. And he says, so we're, because we went to a movie to kill Tom, waiting for a flight.

And he's, he's gone, I can't help but think what I could have bought for $27. Yeah. But he doesn't realize he bought a whole lot more than he realized. New plunger for one. Probably costs about 27 bucks.

Adult nappies, whatever. Do you reckon you could actually, I could get, I reckon he could get child nappies. How big do they go? Like a big child. A big child.

Do you reckon, do you reckon, I mean, look, I'm not, I'm not saying he should, he should be here right now. But do you reckon you could operate? Do you reckon you could be on a podcast while you're struggling with that affliction? Do you think you could actually do it or not? I don't. Do you think personally you could get through it? I mean, it depends on how severe it is, I suppose.

And, yeah, I mean, do you want to be around that? I'm just asking. There's quite a few doors to get through out of the podcast. That's true. It's a fair walk to the Lou. I guess so. I have done that many times. Right.

Yeah. But you record in your lounge room sometimes, I know? I have a very vivid memory of the time we had Grant Denier on. And we went and did it at his hotel. Oh, no. I had like a week, but like week long full on food poisoning. Like I just had straight up been in bed and it was like, well, you can't cancel on this guy. You know.

Go Logie winner, right? This has to happen. And just turning up and it was like, I think it had been, like, it had been nearly aware. I'd been so sick. So it wasn't like the, it wasn't like it was coming on. It was like, I was pretty, I was like, I can get through this. I know, I know what I'm dealing with.

I can, yeah, I can regulate this. You knew what the rhythms were. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Warning signs the time you had between the first warning signs. You're an old hand. You've got like a callus down there. Yeah, exactly.

But not my favorite experience. That's for damn sure. You also, yeah, your problem would be. your guests, it's hard to organise your guests. But I guess, you know, for Dave today, this was one of the rare times where we had guests coming in. Oh, sure. But obviously he doesn't respect you like you respect Grant Daniel.

Do you think he would have pushed through if it was just you two? Yeah. No. No. No. No. Certainly not. And I wouldn't have either.

Yeah. If it wasn't, we were trying to get this done just before we have a bit of a break. True. I think we would have all loved the late can. I love a late cancel. Love that. Love a late. cancel.

Oh, the plans I had for the day. Yeah, yeah. Sadly, here we are. I know. I'm glad we're doing this.

I'm having a great time. I am now, but like when it looked like it wasn't going to happen, I was like, fuck yeah. Yeah. We all had a day off. Yeah,

I didn't have anything in the planner. This is going to be. I was thinking, I was on my way and I'm like, I'm already doing this. Yeah. That's the only reason to happen because every five minutes in the chat you kept popping up. No,

I reckon actually, morally, we should be doing this. It's like, It's got anything to do with the fact you're already there. I was already looking forward to heading home, honestly, but I'm like, but then I'm just going to have to come back when next week or something? See, I rode the waves of it. First up with it being cancelled, I was like very annoyed because I'd like based my whole

day around it and we need a bank an epa vowsha. And then once it's said and I was like, this is, no, this is actually cool. I just got the morning to like chill around the house, take the dog for a walk, get some other stuff done. And then all of a sudden it's like we're back on. So it's like, I really felt every. motion that it's possible to feel about it. Yeah, that's even worse. You've made, you've sort of, you're starting to go, oh, how good is this? It was all up and down all over the place. Our heads were

like Warnocky's bum. Yeah. Stuff spewing out. Okay, so Robert Stein, he's convinced he has the, he has the go-ahead to license Tetris around the world. He sells the rights to two software companies to begin with Spectrum Hollabite in the US and Mirrosoft in the UK. So he claims that he's like, you know, licensed to do this even though he doesn't... King Tetris. Yeah, he doesn't have any form of contractor.

Yeah, it's only a vocal... He's not even voids. He's got like a mistranslated, you know, Russian to English. It's not a full knit, but it's... Exactly. Would I have heard of these brands? I don't know if they still exist,

but I think they were pretty... They were both pretty big players at the time. So, yeah, maybe just in relation to other... They didn't make Battletoads or something that I would have heard of. That's the one video game you've played out. side of Tetris. Solitaire on Microsoft.

Microsoft Golf. Oh, yeah? You played Microsoft. You hit the tree, Jim. Yeah. Yeah, I've played Windows. I played Word. I typed out all the letters.

I clocked it. I beat the final boss, the paper clip. Told him to fuck off. I beat the squiggle. I spelled something right. So around this time, there's a growing fascination in the US about what life was like in Russia. Gorbachev and Regan, they have a Reagan. Brian Reagan. Brian Reagan.

Brian Reagan. Great comedian. Dave edited out the bit where I say Reagan. Don't leave it in, please. Reagan, President Reagan. They've scheduled a nuclear summit together in Iceland. Iceland. It's fine. God, I'm butchering this.

I think Iceland is a department store in the UK. Is it really? Isn't that, no, it's a supermarket. It's a supermarket. Isn't that weird? Iceland. Yeah, it wouldn't be a department. Really?

Yeah, in the UK, when you say Iceland, when you go, oh, I'm just going to Iceland, it's like holiday, no, milk. It's weird. Naming it after like one very small bit of one department of the supermarket. Yeah. Yeah. And also a country that neighbours them, basically. Yeah. It's very weird, especially when you're in Europe already.

So Iceland's not that far away. It's quite accessible. Yeah, that must be super confusing. Very confusing. Yeah. I've, what? I'd be like us calling a supermarket New Zealand. Yes.

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just popping to New Zealand, do you need anything? Some Kiwi fruit? Oh, yeah. It works either way. That one works, yeah. So Spectrum holobite tap into this kind of US fascination with Russia

by taking out a full-page ad in USA today, showing like a... And this is still like old mates back home in Russia, not knowing anything about this. He has no idea about this. He's a great to having a chat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's it. They take out and ad in USA Today. They do like a mock-up, like a fake thing of Reagan and Gorbachev playing Tetris together.

And they've got it as like, this is the game that escaped the USSR. And like in that ad, it's like, here's what's really happening behind? Because everyone was like, what are they going to talk about in this meeting and everything? It's like, here's what they're actually doing. Six strategy. Honestly, great ad. Back then, I mean, I'm old enough to remember that in the 80s when there used to be a real thing about, yeah, America versus Russia.

And imagine Russia coming to blow everything. up or whatever. It's like, that was a real. I mean, look, Rocky four. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. No, Rocky three. Three. No, four.

Four. Four. Yeah, yeah, Rocky four. Yeah, and just even being able to use the phrase, the iron curve. Yes. It's like, that just adds to the myth what's going on behind the iron. Yeah. Did that ad get Dimitri killed?

I've just picture him back at home and the word gets back. Who's made this game? Well, so this Robert Stein guy, the guy who's like, thinks he's got the, you know, he's like, you know, he knows he's, yeah, he knows he's taken the. piss a little bit because he's also he's it yeah it's it's a combination of like it's sort of mistranslated but he's also reading into it what he wants to read in like his attitude has just been i'll sell this off and i'll just deal with this later because i can make so much money and like by the time i've got the money i can like you know pay you know pay people off or whatever

yeah so anyway but he sees that ad that big um you know the big u.sa today ad and he starts to realize this is like he sees it yeah he sees it he's like this is getting this is this train is getting away from me right i've got to get back to russia and i've got to actually get these rights. Otherwise, I'm going to, I've got to make sure I've actually got them because otherwise I'm in big shit. Russian news agency is stocking USA today? Yeah, like eight months later.

The big orange, like, direct freight sticker on it. A lot of it's redacted, but. Yeah, totally. I just guess they're like leafing through and ripping that page out. So around this time. Garfield's like censored. It's like, he doesn't hate Mondays. He hates America.

So around this time, the Russian government has created a new agency. called E-Log to oversee and control the importing and exporting and hardware software. God, there's a lot of terrible names in this story. So this organisation, E-Log, they take over negotiations of the deal with Stein. So he goes in for a meeting with them in Moscow, which lasts for four days. And eventually they draft up a contract which says that E-Log has to approve any and all versions of Tetris. And Stein has to just basically agree to whatever they propose, because he's in so deep

with MirroSoft and Spectrum Hollabite. Like, they've already started putting the game out. So whatever, you know, whatever conditions E-Log want in the contract, he just basically has to go like, yeah, sure, sounds great. You're sort of not telling them that he's done the dodgy on them. Right. So they're in a strong spot here. They're in a strong spot.

So they finally, after months, they get the contract worked out. They're good, you know, he's now, he's got it in writing. He's good to go. So in 1987 and 1988, Mirosoft publishes Tetris in the UK and Spectrum Holobite publish it in the US. And both of them become the best-selling games in their respective country. So, yeah, they come out on, I think, like, home computer, and they're both, like, massive in both those countries immediately.

It really feels, I was sure this would have come before so many. There's games that look more advanced than this are already out by many years. Yeah. It feels like this, I was assuming this came out in 19978 or something. But this is, like, a very, I guess the strength is, a very playable. Right. This game, isn't it?

Yeah. I mean, there was when he was, like, shopping it around originally, a lot of people were like, ah, exactly what you're saying. A lot of people were like, no, we want stuff with, like, violence and, like, graphics have gotten better. Like, you can, you know, you can show someone like killing a demon on a screen. We want stuff like that. We don't want this.

What about, we don't want this sort of stuff? What about this sort of stuff? Smash man rather than smash boy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The industry is matured. It's not just for children anymore. Guys, it's 1986. Games aren't just for kids anymore.

So there's already, there starts to be a bit of tension with the Russians. In 1987, a German pilot named Matthias Rust landed a plane in the middle of, of the red square in the middle of the day as like a political protest. He was aiming to create an imaginary bridge between Russia and its Cold War enemies. He was arrested two hours later and named a radical by the government. So then the UK and the US publishers of Tetris, in an attempt to make the game kind of look more sort of visually interesting on the screen because you've just got that grid.

And not if you don't remember in any of the versions you've played, there's just like a bit of flavor around like the side of the game. Yeah. So they just chuck a bunch of stereotypical Russian shit on there, including this Rust guy's plane that had landed in the Red Square. So they put that in there. That gets back to Alexi, the guy who made the game, and he's like, you've got to take this out

because that could be seen as glorifying a radical. And people know I made this game so that could get me in deep shit. So, yeah, already a bit of tension is going on right. So then 1988, a developer called Hank Rogers. He has powerful contacts in the Japanese video games market. He discovers Tetris at a Las Vegas game show, and he falls in love with it. He's like, this is awesome. So he decides...

What happens in Vegas? Stays in Vegas. Leave Tetris there. Yeah, he cheats on his wife with Connecticut or whatever the piece was called. He and Tetris get married by Elvis. It's actually beautiful. Beautiful ceremony. He decides that he wants to pursue the Japanese rights to the game, because he's got a lot of

contacts over there, and he thinks like this will be huge for them. I want to kind of facilitate that happening. So, yeah, the rights are all over the place. The UK company, Mirosoft, they've assumed that they have the rights to make an arcade machine version of it. Because old mates just told them, go for your life. I'm sure it'll be all good. There's nothing about it in the contract. So it's like, it's already, it's a complete mess.

It's just like people are just, people are putting versions out being told they're good to go. They're selling the rights on, they're on selling the rights to other people. So he, so this guy, Hank, He contacts Mirosoft, who can't give him the Japanese rights because they've already given them to Atari. But after some negotiation, Mirosoft gives Hank the rights to Japan on the home computer and the rights on all of the other formats, including like arcade home consoles to Atari. But Hank takes the head of Atari out for dinner and he leaves with the console rights. Whoa.

So he just goes, I'm going to whine and die this. That's a powerful dinner. Atari MF. Great conversationalists. Yeah. More powerful dinner than Warnock you had last night. there we go I wonder if it was just like

if this all just did happen at Vegas and it's like they just go out for a wild night head of Atari does something he shouldn't have I've got you over a barrel here So Hank gets the rights to Japan Tetris comes out on the Nintendo over there sweeps the country just like it had everywhere else

The Nintendo version sells 2 million units So Back to the Russian government's e-log agency Their only deal was with Stein And as far as they were concerned it was for the home computer only. They didn't know that he'd been doling out the rights to other people. But what he's been doing is he's sending them royalty checks to placate them,

to just be like, yeah, money's flowing in, it's all good, it's all above board. And they're, you know, they're completely unaware. Like, they're getting money, so they're just like, oh, this all seems above board. But they're completely unaware that the game is massive in the US, massive in Japan, and that it's like there's an arcade version of it that's massive as well. So they're not sending as much as they should be. No, not at all. He's just going like, yeah, you.

You know, some people are buying it. He's like 50 bucks. It's doing all right. It's doing all right. It's so funny to think that so recently you could get away with that. Yeah. And someone in another country just be unaware. This is what I love about this story is just that there's no precedent for this stuff yet.

Yeah. So it's just truly like, yeah, Wild West, people doing whatever the fuck they want. Like, it really is great. So Alexi, the guy who made the game, he's had no compensation because all the money is just coming in going to the state. So he, this game is like, yeah, 2 million in Japan, massive best-selling game in the UK and the US the year before. It's just like Tetris, it's like the money's coming towards him, but just as it gets through it just disappears.

There's a bit of other money on the side of the slots in there, all of a sudden no money. So at Nintendo in Japan, they're getting ready to reveal their latest innovation, the Game Boy, portable handheld gaming device that people could take anywhere with them, the first device of its kind. And I think fair to say,

the Game Boy is probably where most people are familiar with Tetris. It was the, it was the, like, it's synonymous with the Game Boy. I'll be honest. I wasn't down at the pinny parlor as a kid playing Tetris on the, on the console. That surprised me reading this. I was like, there was an arcade version. That just seems like, that just seems like, that just seems like the sort of thing

where it's like, Donkey Kong, nah, Tetris, yeah, that's more my spirit. That's the jam. I want to get wedged in the pinball parlor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And having someone over your shoulder be like, rotated to the left. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like backseat drivers while you're trying to play Tetris. It is a very.

solitary experience. So the president of Nintendo at the time, he was a huge fan of Tetris. He thought it would be perfect for the Game Boy. The rights are still a mess. So Hank Rogers, he attempts to go and get the worldwide handheld rights from Stein. Stein doesn't have the rights. He gives him the runaround. He wants to get the rights from the Russians himself.

It's a great term, by the way, the handheld rights. Yeah, the handheld rights. Anything about that? Bit hard. Bit hard. So this guy, Hank, he senses that he's getting dicked around by Stein. So he just goes over to Moscow. He goes, I'm just going to go to the Russians direct to get the rights from them

because this British guy is giving him the runaround. He just rolls into town. He has no idea where the e-log agency is. He doesn't speak any Russian. He doesn't know anyone there. He just gets there high as a translator. And he's just walking around the streets asking people if they know where this government agency is. That's so cool.

He just bumbles his way into the office. Do you know where Mr. Tetris is? he gets in there he's like I'm here to see this guy who's like the head of E-log and it's like not it's not it's illegal at the time to take a meeting with a foreigner

without it being like cleared by the department so that so then like you know downstairs the reception they're calling up and they're like hey this guy's here to see you and the superiors are hearing this going like like he nearly gets this guy killed by basically just showing up and saying like yeah I'm here to see whoever yeah

so he gets the meeting He starts pitching them about how much they'll make on the Game Boy based on the Nintendo version that's sold so well in Japan. And E-Log go, what Nintendo version? You didn't have the rights to do this. We didn't give them out. You know, what you've been selling is essentially a bootlegged copy. So he, you know, he realizes in hot water. He gives them a royalty check for, you know, product they've already sold.

That smooths it over with them. They kind of go, all right, they take a liking to him. They sign off on the deal. So he now has the rights to Tetris on the Game Boy. He's gone. And an open invitation to come back and bid on global console rights for all the rest of it. Like out bid other people. So they take such a liking to him that they're like, you can put it out on the Game Boy.

And if you want to come back in and just maybe Sweet Talk Us, maybe we'll tell these other clowns to take a hike. He's got a good start a cult. He sounds charismatic as hell. He sounds really cool. Wow. So he goes back to Nintendo and he tells them this. He's like, got the rights to the Game Boy. We're good to go there.

We can put Tetris on the Game Boy. But also, yeah, they gave me an invite to come in and, like, bid on the worldwide console rights, which at that time, they're owned by Atari. And Nintendo go, this sounds awesome because Atari is their biggest competitor. And the presidents of both companies, they hate each other. They have, like, longstanding beef, which was apparently just, like, the real breaking point was the head of Atari had a dinner party at his house in Seattle. And the head of Nintendo was there. and after the dinner, the head of Nintendo went for a nap, and the head of Atari went,

this is a sign of ultimate disrespect. Fuck you and fuck Nintendo. That's good. That's just, I mean, I don't know. If I'm having you guys around for dinner and one of years having a little snooze afterwards, I'm really not thinking anything of it. I'm not saying, Carl, we're having nothing to do with Dugo one ever again.

Well, we got a bit of a sign of disrespect this morning from here. That's what we got. We got the Atari Nintendo. That's what's happening right near, the ultimate sign. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is the modern day dinner party, a podcast. That's it. I feel like I'd take it as a subtle hint that maybe you should head off if the host is having a nap.

No, no, no, it was his guest. I was a guest. That is a weird. I mean, it feels like a weird thing to do at someone's house. You come to my house, I stuff you full of food, then you get sleepy and go to have a little lie down. How dare you eat my fish tacos and then disappear? It's not disrespect. What I was about to do is disrespect your lounge room if I hadn't to disappear.

Yeah, that wasn't a nap. It was a strategic disappear. Yeah. He's been napping in the bathroom for three hours. He's snoring is a very strange sound. He's snoring is splashing. So Hank goes back to Moscow, makes a big bid for the rights. E-Log are keen, but they have to give Atari like a day to respond, you know, if they want to like counter-bid, you know, outbid them.

So in response to this, Atari sues Nintendo, they go, this is bullshit. We're taking you to court. We had the rights. you started putting this out anyway. Yeah, isn't it? That's a strange thing. So the rights that are being bought can be somehow outbitted or you've got it 12 months at a time? Can I guess who's going to win this given the how often I see Nintendo around and how often I see Atari around these days?

But I do, it's just, it is so cool. It's like it's so funny this era of time where it's like contracts were like half a page. You know what I mean? When you get sent anything now and it's like, even if just if you're doing a gig for like some, kind of official party and it's like this 80 page document that you have to wade through and you're like I'm going to do the gig. Don't worry about it. I want the money.

It's like, no, someone fucked us over once before. Are you saying that this is a nanny state now? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, I mean, I'm unvaccinated, but whatever. So yeah, the judge ends up ruling that Nintendo wins the trial grants their injunction against Atari. So Nintendo go into production. They make the Game Boy version and they make a Nintendo version for the US. The game comes out with every copy of the Game Boy.

sales record breaking game becomes cultural phenomenon people have these have you heard of this when people like start hallucinate when they're playing Tetris so much that they have hallucinations that they're seeing the that they're kind of seeing the box I did

I once when I was at TAFE I once played Pac-Man so much that I did get a bit of like walking around feeling like there were ghosts like you know like I was moving yeah right Pac-Man style I had that same experience I got very lightheaded but that's because I was playing

Ms Pac-Man and I just Really turned on. Saw the blood had gone to another part of the body. That was like me when I was playing Leger Suit Larry so much. I was constantly trying to find dingers. It was quite weird. But have you ever had the Tetris effect? I play at night and, yeah, I close my eyes going to sleep

and my brain continues the... Yeah. Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-da-na-na-na-na. And the shape's dropping down. I'm saying Cleveland. I'm seeing Orange Ricky. Yeah, there's a VR version of it that I played a little bit of And it's like, it's too much

Knowing that this already can trigger like a psychiatric effect in people It's like, I don't need the fuck I don't need the helmet on When did the song come in? The Game Boy version, I'm pretty sure I think so, yeah, I think that's the one that coined the song So yeah, massive, massive cultural phenomenon Hank Rogers becomes incredibly wealthy Alexi, the developer, he's still absolutely zero

money off of this worldwide smash game. He just still, he's just working away. And, and, you know, by all accounts is like, you know, I mean, he's like he's chill with it. You know, it's just not in their society or culture at the time to feel like, oh, I've been hard done by here. It's like, yes, just how things go. That's cool.

It's great. My thing got out there. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. He, I think he might be. Yeah. I believe so.

Has he made any money? Well, so him and Hank, Hank, they stay good friends. and then in 1991, Hank helps Alexi move his family over to the United States. He gets a job at Microsoft, where he continues making games. And then E-Log falls- I know his work then. Microsoft, golf. Golf.

Yep. Microsoft. What was the other one I said? The calculator. Solitaire. The calculator. Running a diagnostics report on your modem. Sleep.

Yeah, that was his. Shut down. Sleep art. Elog falls apart. Alexi gets a letter informing him that the rights to Tetris are going to revert back to him. But because Elog's a government organization, he gets a feeling that the Yeltson government is going to step in and contest this. So he calls Hank for advice. This is Rocky Four all over again.

No, totally. Because Hank goes, you know what? You've made me an incredibly wealthy man. Like, he sees this as a way to repay his friend. So he gets on the horn. I've thought of a way to repay you. With money. But not with my money.

No, no, no. Like, I'm incredibly wealthy. I've now thought of a reason, a way to pay you back. But I put in a small amount of effort to see if I can get you some money. We could go 50-50, but, you know, you're Russian, and I felt like that might have been offensive to even suggest, because it's just not your way. You know, it's just not what you're used to.

I've only got dollars. I don't have any Russian drug money or whatever you use. So he, so Henke heads over to Moscow, and he, renegotiates the rights to Tetris and he gets Alexi the rights and the two of them together start up a company called the Tetris Company that is basically... I like it snappy. Still exist. Yeah.

No on the nose. Yeah. No beating around the bush. No Glob no orb or whatever the fuck was going on. Exactly. Yeah. This company still exists and it basically they've got like a kind of just basically like a rule book of how anyone who's making a new version of Tetris, it's like here's the things

that have to be in it. Smash boy. Smash boy. Orange Ricky Cleveland Blue Ricky Reverse Cleveland Cleveland

Cleveland steam up Up the bum no babies The best brick of all That's great Going into the Tetris company And being like All right So you know

We're going to make a version of it But here's some changes I don't know how many times We have to tell you That's why this company exists Is so that people like you Can't do this you can't have a piece called the rusty trombone

that fills up the whole screen. How many times do we have to tell you? All right, all right. Back to the drawing board. No, no, drawing board. There is the drawing board. Okay, so we put the golden shower in here. Then what do we do?

So, yeah, that's basically, that's the history of Tetan. Now, I don't know if you guys ever have people who, you know, who know a lot about the subject that you've covered on an episode that then call, you know, like ride in and go, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, you've gotten this bit wrong or you've left this bit out. Does it ever have people like fact-check-you? Yeah, okay.

So I should point out, just for the sake of accuracy and transparency, there was a guy that Alexi was mates with, that he was kind of like, is riding kind of like side saddle with him the whole time throughout this journey. They were kind of working on the game together. They were workshopping it together. He moved to the States with him.

He did all that stuff. And I'm sure there's been some people listening, being like, you've left out his little mate. You've got this all wrong. Little orange Ricky. You've got the story all wrong. You know, you've left this guy. This guy's, you know, he's butchered the story of Tetris.

And just to be clear, the reason that I've left him out of the story, it's not human error. It's the fact that at the very end of the story in like, I think 98 or something, he went insane and murdered his whole family and then killed himself. So, all right, guys, I've editorialized and I've left him out for the sake of comedy. Why the fuck didn't we just hear that story? said of all these fucking franchise bullshit for an hour. So yeah, that's Tetris folks. Wow. Yeah.

What are the... I guess I'd answered all the questions I had about Tetris. I was wondering how you were... How were they negotiated? You could have done Star Wars, the Empire Strikes Back, but you did the prequels, basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all about the trade routes and the...

Oh, okay. You know what I'm saying they? I recently learned about why people hate the prequels. I get you. It's a lot of business, a lot of politics. Admin. Admin more than lightsaber fighting. Yeah, yeah.

So yeah, Dave got a bit of a look in last night to what I was cooking up there. And then what do you guys think? You think he faked this together? No. I was surprised. Yeah, I was thinking, how is this going to be an episode? and by Jingo you did it. By Jingo.

By Jingo. As we always say. Like I said, it's just such an of its time story that just could never happen today. Oh, yeah. It's fascinating. The fact that it has to escape the USSR. And yeah, I got all this from a book by a guy called Box Brown, which is, that's the other thing is like, I remember. There's got to be something there.

Box Brown. Oh, my God. I remembered reading this book and I was like, oh, that would be good. for Dogo on. It's very colourful, you know, very, you know, very silly story. And then as I was reading it, I remembered probably the reason I think that is because it's like an, it's like a graphic novel. So it's like, it's actually not very silly or light at all.

It's just the fact that like the book about it is like literally a comic. Oh, that's cool. Oh, sick. So box brown, is that like the brown box that was on Warnocky's flight to the toilet last night? Is it a recorded? A sort of a black box. I just think you're over. I really think you're overthinking.

I'm thinking this. I really think you, I think I would just lean into the brown side. Why didn't they make all of Warnocky out of the brown box? Okay, yeah, we're getting further. Yeah, if that's possible. I don't know, do we have, do we, do we have time? I've just found an article about the history of the Tetris theme music. I could read you quickly.

For sure. Yeah. Because I was just thinking when you said, when you said, do you have any people who come in and contact you about wrong info? and how I asked you a question about the music and you had an educated guess about it coming in with the game board. I'm like, oh, let me just double check.

And I haven't read this. So this could be as I'm, I was trying to browse through it then. Wait, so you've implied that I'm wrong, but then you're like, I actually haven't read this information. So you might have done it out. Everyone shut up,

well, I possibly agree with you. Well, I just, all I saw was this weird line that it, that it comes from a poem. And I don't really understand how that makes. sense. But anyway, it says this is from tetris.com. It once was a man from Nantuck. The original Tetris theme song is almost as iconic as the game itself. So much so that it's easy to forget where the music originated from and just how much

it evolved over the years. First and foremost, the true name of the Tetris theme is Korobiniki, the Russian word for peddlers. And it was initially created as a poem by Nikolay Necrosov in 1861. Okay. This is... Thrilling, yes. Fuck, I just go somewhere.

If you pay a visit to Russia... Fuck, my story sounds... Feels like the Matrix now. There's currently... A thrill ride. There's currently a museum that contains several archive documents pertaining to Neckrosov,

including a copy of the infamous Korabiniki itself. Oh my God. Historian, Patricia Kennedy Grimstead notes that the museum opened its doors in 1946, they're padding this out now to mark the 125th. I know he's padding it out.

Warnock his pants. Yes. Okay. Upon reading the poem, it's a poem now. Yeah, this is where it was based on. In 1989... How's the theme music based on a poem?

That's what I don't quite understand. That's what I'm like, oh, this might be interesting, but it turns out it wasn't. Right. Yeah. In 1989, Hirikazu, Tanaka, did that name come up at all? No.

Remade the song for the Nintendo Game Boy version of Tetris. So you were right, okay. So it's an existing thing that's out there, but in terms of its usage in Tetris. Yes. The Game Boy is the first version to use it. So yeah, I'm glad I got you there. So I just want to say gotcha, Tommy. Yeah, I'm going to go back and re-answer again.

No, we don't have time to hear that. We can just edit that out. Real nice. Yeah. Thank you for coming on DoGo One once again. And for preparing the report really took it off my plate. So I appreciate that. Very much.

It's the second official episode in the crossover. The first one was about Mike Patton. The people who love this. That's right. I assume we talked. Actually, we did talk about shit in a hairdry. Absolutely. So there was a bit of a thread there.

I wonder what it's going to complete the shit trillel. Oh, yeah. Well, we, I mean, I felt like, yeah, because you did Mike Patton, which is a big interest to you when we came on and I thought, I'll do something video games, you know, into video games. So maybe like, maybe to complete the shit trilogy, we have to, we have to come together and do a joint report and something that we're, like, shit. Their history of the feces. Warnikies Pants. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, we could do a report. Let's go, let's go to Warniky's house now and just watch what's going on. Yeah, just see. Yeah, and then come back with our story of what we saw. You know how before we were all like, oh man, we were so excited to have the day to ourselves now, and you want to go and spend the rest of your afternoon at Dave's house. Watching him have food poisoning. Peering through the bathroom window.

What's going on in there? A lot of groaning. I'm hearing stuff, but I don't believe it. I've got to see it. No, in all seriousness, Dave, there but for the grace of God, no, I am. You know, I'm really feeling like. Like I could be heading to that place, you know, within the next 24 hours of myself. A lot of karma.

Yeah, yeah, totally. You've learned a lesson though, right? Absolutely not. If you're not gold class, you still might test yourself on the fish tacos? No, no, what I'd probably do is not eat the fish tacos, get home late from the movie, have not had dinner. Yeah. Order like a big creamy carbonate at 11 p.m. Eat that right before bed and then just right off the entire rest of the day.

That's how I do. And weird dreams and weird shits. So same result, but just different pathways to get there. Different methodology, I like it. So for people who don't know the little DumbDum Club, it's a very long-running Australian comedy podcast. It must be one of the longest, I assume, is it? I think so.

Yeah. Been running for 10 plus years? Yeah, yeah, it must be. You guys have been on it. We took you to Kosamui with us. If people listen and remember that, there'll be an episode coming up with you guys on it again soon. Who else has been on it recently?

The last one I listened to had Sean McAariff on it. Oh yeah. Which is pretty sick. And Tony Martin. Yeah. Oh yeah, they were on the same episode together. Yeah,

look, heaps of people. Who were all the big dames? Who have we had on there? Kamal Njani. I'm just trying to think of big American people. You had Kamal and I've been watching his series on... Chippendales?

Chippendales, yeah. I didn't know about that story at all. We had Bill Burr on. You had fucking hell. You're going to do that with every name, Carl says. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been watching the mandolars. He turned up to a podcast.

We had Russell Peters on once. Oh, yeah. That was pretty cool. Oh, I remember when I was at a... Yeah, he's going to comment on. Was it at a, what was the comics? Not the Comberth Comics Sounds, whatever that's been. Comedy Lounge and Kappa was meant to be on and he got bumped for Russell Peters.

Oh, that's awesome. I'd be all right with that, I think. Yeah. That makes sense, but I would have said that makes sense with anyone by then. Yeah. Yeah, heaps of people have been on. Yeah, there's like, yeah, there's 600 and something episodes in the back catalog. The idea of it, right, is that it's sort of like a theater of the minder in the green room and a comedy club.

Is that kind of what it is? I guess, yeah. Because it's that old as a podcast that, like, you guys have got into podcasting late enough where it was like, oh, you can't just sit around and talk shit like two fucking idiots like Datsloan and Chamber. You've got to have a concept now. Yeah, yeah. You're the reason why everyone has like these very niche. Concepts.

Or a reason to exist. Yeah. We got in at the time where it was like, just be funny with your mates on the air. We'll do this for like maybe two months and then we'll get a radio job and that'll be that. That was what the landscape was like at the time. Yeah, you're in that.

So as you and Hamish and Andy were probably there and. Yeah, very comparable. Yeah, whatever happened to those guys. No, they've been on. They've been on the pod. All the big names in Australia and beyond have been on get roped into doing it. So, yeah.

And it's a similar vibe to our show. It's all very positive. Everyone's nice to each other. We've talked about this before, but your audience is very, very well-maned, very polite, very nice and a little bit different to ours. There is crossover, though. There's definitely people who come to. Yeah, there's people who listen to everything.

But it is like, you know, it's like we're in the state penitentiary, just like looking out the window and it's like an ice cream truck's pulled out. There's all these kids having a fun time out in the street. And we're like, God, that'd be nice. I know. I mean, I've really made a life for myself on the inside. You know, I've got like, I've got a guy that, like, smuggles stuff in for me. So I'm really, I don't know how I'd go in the real world.

Meanwhile. I'd probably just reoffend and be sent back here. Just one day out there would be nice. We're looking at all their fans that are just like cherry-cheeked little blossoms eating ice cream. Meanwhile, we turn around and have to play to San Quentin over here. They're throwing fucking knives at us. That's what it's like. That's the difference.

So if any of you've got lovely listeners of Dugan, ever want to come to our live show and try to average out the fucking... Oh, please. The hell's angels that are at our show. Please, we've got a gig coming out at Altamont. That's going to be fun. And hey, yeah, if anyone listening does listen to video games as well, check out Filthy Casuals because that's a show that I do about video games.

But yeah, lots of comedy you can get your hands on. Lots of free content out there. Absolutely. Yeah. Get around it. Well, thanks, guys. We appreciate it. Is this coming out now?

Like is this, when's this coming out? I'm not sure. Because we were going to do it at the same time as the dumb dumb episode next week. You're my advice, spin it. Absolute waste of everyone's time. We'll just have a week off instead. Do a Warnicky and flush it.

I love it. You guys are like, yeah, this will come out next week and we log on next week. The best of do-go-off, summer series. Do you want's having a little holiday, guys. Hosted by Glenn Ridge. What is this? I was asking because I was going to be like,

have a good New Year's, but who cares? No, you're right. I think it will just come out this week. Yeah. So have a good New Year's. Okay. Listen out for all three of the Do Go On hosts, hopefully, on the Little Dum Dum Club in the New Year.

And you're both doing festival shows? I am. You're not doing one? No, I'm not. My name's Carl and I'm not. This is the first year off of all? No, no, I didn't do last year. either.

But Tommy, you are. Yeah, I'm doing a show called Scam Artist about how I had my identity stolen. Yeah, right. Yeah. Fuck. So lucky. I know. Isn't it funny when you're like, shit, that's sick.

Oh, you had an awful thing happen to you. Congrats. Well done. That's a show. It's a show. Yeah, exactly. Love that. Yeah.

I've had a really great year. You know, it would be great if that, that's the subject to your show and then you rock up to your show and it's not you there. That is good. I have thought about stuff like that. I did think about calling it. at the talented Mr. Dasolo. It's like, it's a bit, it just does.

If you don't know that film, it's like, oh, what? I do like it, though. I do like it. Yeah, I really, yeah, I don't think I got, I don't think I ended up with a great title, but I just could not think of anything that, you know what's annoying is that I kept coming back to the idea of calling it imposter syndrome,

but my friends in Chimp Cop, Ben and Adam, they called, that was their show last year. So I keep saying, I'm like, this is so fucking annoying that this title that would be perfect for a thing that I'm doing, you guys used it as a title last year and they're like, you know what the best bit is? It didn't really even have anything to do with what our show was.

Also, one of my favorite stories, and we've told this on, we've had this on the podcast about 10 years ago, but a friend of ours, a comedian called Pete Sharkey, once, he used to drink a lot and he once got so blackout drunk, he was at a pub, and then he blacked out,

and he woke up in a different town in a cinema, halfway through the talented Mr. Richard. Aiding Fish Tarcas. That wasn't a blackout, that was a brownie. What a beautiful spot to end. Thanks and sorry, everyone. Miss you, Dave.

What a pleasure to have. Both Tommy and Carl from the Little Dum Dum Club. Is that who that was? That, yes. Do we ever introduce them? I don't think we ever said their names. I did. I did. I did.

I tried to get you to do it and remember you can't talk. No, no, I was a little joke that I do. A little cat. character. Yeah. You know how I'm wearing these headphones. Yeah. And I've got one off my ear.

Yeah. But also, these headphones are only one side of them works. Fun. And it's not the one I've got on my ear. So I was wearing headphones and I couldn't hear anything. But anyway, I'll fix that now. Okay. Just to keep you in the loop.

Thank you. And the listeners. Yeah, the listeners cared. More importantly. Aw! Even more importantly. The listeners are more important than me? Uh, yeah.

God, you're a dog. Oh, you are one person. The listeners number millions. It's not the trolley problem. It's not either I die or our millions of listeners die. I'm just saying who's more important to you in your day-to-day life. And it's obviously the listeners because you're all about money and fame. You fucking sell out.

The listeners aren't money and fame. They're people who are here for me. They're people who have thoughts and dreams and, you know, heads. I hate it when Dave's away. We've got torsos. Okay. You know what I mean?

They're flesh and blood, yes. What am I? Fucking chopped liver. Is that true? I hate fighting with you. Let's never do it again. And we're back in the room. What a loose episode.

So good. But we've said goodbye to Tommy and Carl. They've moved on with their lives. Tommy's gone off to record an episode of filthy casuals. Yeah. And I assume it's once again going to be about Tetris. I assume so. I mean, he's just done all that work.

May as well. May as well. But do you reckon, I mean, Filthy Casuals has been around for a long time. Have they not covered Tetris? Surely. Surely. Surely. Unless they're a new game podcast.

Which they, maybe they are. I don't know. So I think they do a spin-off called Nintendo 69, which is maybe a retro. That is good. That is good. That stuff writes itself. So go check it out. If you enjoyed this and you love video games,

you're probably already listened to Filthy Casuals and it's pointless us giving you this plug. But if you're new to video games, go check it out. Go check out video games. Go check them out. They're fun. Yeah, just a bit of fun. A bit of fun.

You know, and if you've been checking them out too much, why don't you go outside? Go outside. Read a book. Touch some grass. Yeah, you need to touch some grass. So we're up to the section of the show, which is my favorite, And I believe everyone's favorite section of the show where we thank a few of our great supporters.

And I should say, because I didn't say it before, how good is it to be alive? Now, the way this works is people go to patreon.com slash dogoon pod and they can support us on all sorts of levels. Up to you. There's a list. You pick one based on how much you want to pay or what things you want to get or whatever. And you certainly don't have to do that. No. Don't get me wrong.

You don't have to. Just listening makes me. feel so good. Yeah. That you, Geraldine, are listening right now. Oh, my God.

That's going to be crazy. Oh, can I do one? Yeah. That you, James, are listening. That one might even work better.

Yeah. Do you reckon we got more Jameses than Geraldine's? I reckon. Yeah. Yeah. I'd say that quite confidently, actually. So. James is such a basic bitch name.

It's yours and Dave's middle names. Yes. And Andy Matthews. And Andy Matthews. And Brendan Fraser. Really? So it's, yeah. Holy.

Yeah. I think it's nearly everyone, every boy's middle name, every girl's middle name is Marie. No, yeah, Marie and or Louise. Yeah. It's one of the big three. Or Anne. I said Anne. Okay.

Just now. So, yeah, if you... I literally said two extra names and you lost one of them. If you get involved, I think I thought you said and. Anyway, so if you, which would not have made sense, but... Jessica and Perkins. So you said Anne and Louise, and I thought you said and and Louise. Uh-huh.

Double end. Gotcha. Uh, so one of the rewards people can get, I mean, there's all sorts of things, bonus episodes, shoutouts, access to an exclusive Facebook club. Yep. The nicest corner of the internet. Beautiful place. Uh, but one of the things is, if you sign up to the Sydney-Shineberg level,

you get to give us a factor quote or a question in a section we call fact quote or question, which has a little jingle goes something like this. Fact quote or question. Ding. She always remembers the ding. She always remembers the sing. And the way this section works is if you're on that level, Sydney Seanberg, you get to give us a fact quote a question.

You also get to give yourself a title. And I'll read out for each week. I read them out. When I read them out, that makes sense. The first one comes from Ryan Butterfield, aka Senior Chief Submariner. Okay. And Ryan is asking us a question.

All right. We'll see if I feel like answering. Because you do not like submarines. But do you like submariners? I think so? Yeah. But we'll find out. Okay. Ryan writes,

Hey guys, let me try writing in English again since last time it was really bad. I'm headed to Disney World for a five-day trip. First question, when are you doing a US tour? second question where can I get tickets? Wow. First question, we're hoping for 2023. Yeah, hopefully. I mean, we were in the sort of planning stage for 2020.

I'd say we're advanced planning stage. Do you reckon? Yeah. I'm so glad we didn't spend the multi, multi, thousands of dollars for that visa, which we were getting very close to doing. We were about to write that check. And just to stress, us again, multi, multi,

thousand dollar. It's, uh, yeah. It's expensive to come to your country and perform for you. It's almost like they don't think of us as Americans. Crazy, isn't it? American citizens. Wild. They see us as foreigners.

I don't understand. When we go to the UK, they welcome us with a big hug. Come on in. Have a whoa. Oh, I've got made you a cup. That's what they say. It's crazy. They're like two nights.

It's almost in us. No, no, no. Yeah. So we're hoping, look. Don't take our word too strongly on that. It's, I just, and I just worry, I don't want to, you like to sort of, you and I are chalk and cheese. You're always like, you're a dreamer.

I'm a dreamer. And I'm terrified of getting people's hopes up and, and them taking it as concrete. Yes. I just want them to know that we are trying. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. It's, we're, we're planning it. We're really hoping to do some more live tours and stuff in various places next year.

New Zealand. We'd love to come to New Zealand. Geez, we've been saying that for a long time. Yeah, we're sort of, we're looking at, we're keeping our eye on cheap flights, because for three of us, it can be expensive. And even, you know, some other shows in other cities in Australia that we haven't been to for a while.

So it's on the cards. We don't have concrete dates yet, but when we do, you'll, of course, like, Patreon's will be the first to know, and the first to get access to tickets as well, to answer your second question, which I think was probably being a little bit tongue-in-cheek. but part of the perk of being a patron is early access to tickets.

Yes. I think our first UK tour was basically sold out by the patrons. Yeah. The first runner tickets anyway. Yeah. And America, I'd say it would be some... Very similar. Similar, maybe.

Actually, we have no idea. That's the other scary thing. Yeah. We would be going over and we would have already spent over 10 grand. And it was like, oh, I hope people come. Yeah. Might have to sell a kidney. I think you can get paid for like donating blood or sperm over there.

So maybe. Really? Maybe if you wouldn't want to take him. Finally we can. Finally. I got a lot of blood. Dave has got a lot of spunk, if you know what I mean. Blood.

A lot of hotspot. Blood. He's got a lot of blood also. Yeah. I also have blood. You got blood? I'm not allowed donate blood. Oh.

Yeah. Why is that? I kept fainting. Oh, right. I only fainted once. And then I'm, um, I was anemic and they're like, you have to take a break. So I will drive you guys to and from your appointments.

Oh, get away, car. That's how. We're doing a heist at the sperm bank. Anyway, so yes, hopefully very soon, but we will keep you updated, of course. It's not going to be a surprise. That's nice. I don't think anyone's really been asking. They used to ask a lot now.

I think people are like, you know, I think they're almost like, nah, let's not. Let's give up. Don't give up. We get a lot on Twitter and Instagram still. Very, very keen. I'm so keen. Absolutely.

I want to go over and see a game of NFL football. Yes. That is National Football League football. I wouldn't mind seeing some hockey. Ooh. That could be fun. Who are you going to go see? Penguins?

Probably. I'd love to see Penguins versus Flames. My two teams clashing. Who do you go for that? Who do you go? Oh, Sophie's choice. Oh, no. You know?

And I reckon Sophie would go out of the flames. Okay. Wow. Sophie had a favour. it. All right. Well, it's the problem with giving it up to Sophie. I don't know where that phrase comes from.

All right. And really appreciate that, Ryan. Thank you, Ryan. The next one comes from Amy C. And Amy has the title of Chief Embalmer Sons's ass packing no matter how many rear orifices I find. Okay. I wonder how many Amy's found in the past. Hmm, just on the street.

Yeah. I found another rear end. Yeah, I guess, you know, it's sort of like the donut hole, right? You know, that joke, we sell donut holes. I don't know if that's a joke, but basically you're not selling anything there. Yeah, okay. Would that be the same with orifices? Look at all there.

There's a pile of orifices in the corner. We've got to move some units here. Yeah, right. I'm not sure I understand. I think I am. Oh, big time. I'm hungry. Running out of steam.

I mean, Dave's running at a guess. Poor Dave. Poor Dave. Hopefully when he's listening back to this, he's on the end. If you aren't on an episode, are you listening back to it? No, but he's editing this one. True. So.

Sorry, Dave. Amy C. has a fact writing, I humbly submit for Jess's consideration. Hmm. This is a potentially fun fact. We'll see. Though weird to WTF. Okay, well, I don't deal in weird or WTF facts. She says weird to WTF seems more accurate.

Yeah, so I... That's closer to my purview. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we'll see. We'll see what we deen these, this fact. Do I use purview right there? I think so. In medieval times, monks documented that you could tell the age of a rabbit by how many anuses it had.

Okay, now we're... Okay. This is fun because I don't know why. Normally we go, well, that seems like a real non-sequitur. Yeah. Or how have you say that word? Like that. In the title.

and then it, you know, this is where the orifice thing came from. Do you connect those two dots? No. Do you connect those two dates? The belief was that due to its alleged promiscuous nature, a rabbit developed one anus for every year it lived. What? It is so bizarre and absurd, I have no idea how this conclusion could ever be drawn.

Rabbits can live a while, can I? Yeah. So I think at some point you'd be more anus than, body than anything else. Imagine if humans did that. Are they thinking they've... I'd have 32 anuses. That's yuck!

That's double the amount you have. But why would they... Surely this is something that could have easily been checked. Yeah, just have a look. I have no idea how this conclusion ever could have been drawn, but I heard it on an episode of Your Dead to Me, a BBC radio podcast. So it must be fairly reliable, right? Thanks all.

keep up the as always great work. Would you say that's a fun fact? I know it's mine to my call to make. I think that's pretty fun. I think that's pretty fun. It's interesting. I think it's going to start a conversation if you bring it up. Yeah, yeah.

So yeah, all right, Amy. I'll say it's a fun fact. Fantastic. The next one comes from Skype, double exclamation mark, okay, official commercial driver, sorry, official commercial diver. That's quite different. I was like, finally I can have a rest from driving us around.

Nope. It's a diver. Also, Matt's non-binary parent, Sky. Thank you so much. Everything I am today was from the lessons you taught me, Sky. Thank you, Sky. Sky's got to brag writing, I just graduated commercial diving school in the top of my class.

Yes. And I already have a job diving. I want to say driving every time. Every time. This is my dream job. And I'm genuinely so. dream drum. That's what is it?

No. Oh, no. No, no. Just chucking eyes in everywhere. I'm like a rabbit. I got too many arses. That's not bad. I'm genuinely so, so excited to start working.

I've made a few really good friends out here, and I'm moving back to the middle of the country to work on dams and stuff. Wow. Sky, congratulations. That's huge, Sky. Well done. And also just nice that I love hearing people's enthusiasm. and for stuff they're doing and being excited for yourself.

That's huge. Oh, so great. Great to hear people live in the dream. Love that. And, yeah, because you did dive recently and it didn't go that well. Yeah, it was. Not your dream, I'm guessing. No, because I threw up in the ocean.

Yeah. I got seasick in the ocean. I feel under the sea? I was honestly impressed with myself. Yeah, because I would have thought that it would almost be a positive pressure there. Yeah, because. We were on a little boat and the skipper was like, if you're feeling a bit seasick, don't worry.

Once you're in the water, you'll be fine. That'll just go away. And I was like, I just have to, it's a short boat ride. I just have to get through this without throwing up. And I did. And I was so proud of myself. And I get in the water and I'm bubbling around too much. And I threw up in the ocean.

And that would be, wouldn't that be similar to chum? Yeah, fish loved it. Fish did? Sharks? It brought a lot of fish, no sharks. Okay, that's good. But I saw a lot of turtles. I mean, was the day worth it?

I guess. I also just saw turtles at the beach. Today, Dave, saw a lot of turtles. Thank you so much, Sky. Loved that fact. Sorry, brag. So good. We don't get a lot of brags.

I love a brag. Bring them on. We love a brag. Good on you, Sky. The last one this week comes from Angela del Guducci. Okay, don't blame me. I voted for Kodos. That's a Simpsons reference.

And I got it. I understand this reference. Only I may dance. That's what I say. I think that all the time, Conan. Yeah. Only I may dance. I say it so much.

On the I didn't do it episode. Yeah. So Angelo's got a fact writing, The abbreviation, OMG, can be traced back to 1917 in a letter from British Navy Admiral John Arbonaut Fisher to Winston Churchill about rumors of new titles that would soon be bestowed. The letter read, I hear that a new order of knighthood is on the tapus, he wrote.

OMG, bracket, oh my God. Shower it on the Admiralty. Can you believe that? Wow. That's the origin of OMG. 1917. Wow. Any thought?

If you could break down a response to this in maybe three letters, how would you respond? Lull. That's fantastic stuff. What were you going to say, mom? I was not as mom is also three letters. I was going to say, huh. Huh, I went for lull. I guess I just find more joy in life than you do.

You do. I'm more joyful. Thank you so much, Angelos, Sky, Amy and Ryan. The next thing we like to do is shout out to our few of our other fantastic supporters. Jess, you normally come up with a bit of a game for this section. Normally based on the topic. Yeah, we're going to, we're not going to give you. the whole plot or anything, like look it up yourselves, but we're going to just tell you the name

of the game that they invented. What is the name of the game? Thank you so much. That's great. You think so? I think we can have some fun with it if you just loosened up a little bit. Yes. That's my only note.

I was thinking you were going to say we would give them an orange Ricky type name, but this is better because there's more scope here. Yeah. Well, it would have ended up being red Ricky. Yeah. Brown Ricky. Um, uh, the orange. No, damn it.

Uh, right. If I can kick us off. Please. Do you want to go one for one? That's what I did with Dave last week. Yeah. Fantastic. I reckon.

I'll read a name. You give a game. You give a game. I read a name. Wait, no. I did a bit of a I win, you lose. Yeah. Heads.

I win, tails you lose. All right. All right. I asked him to loosen up, to be fair. Yeah. He's done it. First up, I'd love to thank from Glasgow in Scotland. It's onk.

Onk. Obviously invented the game. Tree Plugger. Oh, tree plugger. And, oh, we're not going to explain it. No, we don't do explain it. You did say that, I mean. Because I knew we'd just get bogged down too much.

Oh, really? Because I, I mean, I'm picturing a whole world. And you're wrong. Tree Plugger, really. It's the opposite of what you expect. No kidding. I was picturing it that you had to put, The world was full of holes and the oceans were draining.

So the game is sort of like a whack-a-mole style game. Only you're plugging holes with trees. Right. No. No. Way off. It's about demolishing forests. It's really bad.

Thank you so much for your support, Onk. Thank you, Onk. I would love to thank from Stanmore in New South Wales, Jeff Hammett. Violin Hero. Violin Hero. Yes. anticipated follow-up. Love that.

Thank you, Jeff. My pitch has improved since playing violin hero. Oh, yeah. I'm very good at it. Yeah, great baseball now. Now your turn. No, it's back to you. No, I just wrote that one.

No, it's back to me. It's not that hard. I found this equally confusing last week with Dave. I did it every time. Okay. We were also sharing that my computer, so I kept turning around him to read, And he's like, just does a like a twirling motion with his finger.

I'm like, oh, yeah, right. Well, I would love to take from Halifax in Canada, it's Rebecca Dubois. And Rebecca Dubois invented the game, airplane race. Oh, yeah. I saw an air conditioner. Oh. Airplane race. I like how you put it into North American parlance as well.

Exactly. Not aeroplane. Airplane. No. Or do Canadians, Canadians, make it. often speak like us, don't they? Sometimes. I'm not sure if they say airplane or aeroplane. I love cultural differences.

Isn't it fun? It is so much fun. It's crazy that you go to a different place and it's different. I love little quirks. I love it. Bucks party. Stagnite. Bachelor party.

Same thing. Come on. But very different language. So beautiful. So beautiful. I would love to thank also from Canada, from Nenamo, definitely said that wrong, apologies. Matt Linnaker.

Matt Linnaker. Do you remember the game he invented? It's called Stubbies. Stubbies? Yeah. You walk around trying not to stub your toe. Oh my God, you could not be further from the truth. Why?

You go around trying to stub your toe. But there are no obstacles. You must search in the barren desert for an obstacle to stub your toe on. You know, in the original Mars. Mario Brothers or not the, well, maybe the original. I don't know. I think it was the first one where there's a secret brick. You got a headbut to get a mushroom early.

It's like that. Right. But they're all invisible. So you'll go around kicking the air, hoping you find a brick to stub your toe. Wow. But you don't even get a mushroom out of it. You get pain. No, but yeah, but that makes you bigger.

Yeah. We weren't explaining the games. We're not. Okay, it's your turn again. Okay, thank you so much for doing that. I'd love to thank. From, address unknown, can only assume, from deep within the fortress of the moles.

It's Mike Humphrey. And it's convenient, actually. That's where Mike is from. It was sort of his muse because his game's called Mole Check. Oh, yeah. And it's just a skin. Oh. You just check all the moles on.

You're a doctor. Yeah. And you have patients come in. You have to check their skin for moles. Wow. It was put out by like the. Cancer Council and stuff, you know, one of those educational games. Came free with your cereal box.

If you don't check well, you lose patience and stuff like. Yeah. It's pretty full on. Man, I feel like I'd lose patience with that game. It's a lot of high pressure. A lot of high pressure. And tedious sounding. I would also love to thank from also deep within the fortress of the moles, Kara Smith.

Oh, Kara Smith. What a game that she invented. It's called Jim the Bin Man. Jim the bin man. Such an endearing character. It's such a beautiful backstory. Yes. Love that one.

Rich tapestry. The game starts when he's knocking off his shift. He's gone around, you know, he's been up at five. He's got the rest of the day to himself. Yeah. And you run errands with Jim. Run errands at gym. Pick up the kids.

Pick up the kids. You go do some shopping. Probably, you know, end up going to bed early. If you go to bed early, you've clocked the big boss. I played a game where you play a male. carrier and you just drive around a little town delivering mail. Oh yeah. And I fucking loved it.

Postman Pat. It was beautiful. It was called Lake. It's gorgeous. Okay. That's a confusing name. Well, you drive around the Lake Matt. Okay.

Your turn. Yes. I knew that. I'd also love to thank from Melbourne in Victoria, Australia. It's Reese. Reese invented the game. Electrician. Oh, yeah.

And you start off with like, you know, just, you're just working on a little, like, electrical panel and you're putting wires together and stuff. And as you progress through the levels, you're like wiring houses and then office buildings and it's pretty full on. So this is very different to Lake. This one, it is what it sounds like it's going to be. Oh, but also by night, you're Batman. Is that better? You've got to get through quite a few levels before the game takes a hard left turn. You're just trying to live your life and then you become Batman.

Oh, man. I mean, isn't that the Bruce Wayne story? Nothing ever fucking makes you. Anyway, the next person I would... That actually made me very happy. How dare you? The next person I would love to think is from Avondale Heights in Victoria. It's Natalie Baker.

Oh, Natalie Baker. Obviously, I think it was a bit of nominitative determinism here. Determititism. Because Natalie Baker made a game called National. bank, or the Nat Bank. And, yeah, it's basically all these games are so dull. But there are a lot of dull games. Yeah, that's true.

But this one is actually very different because it's a bank heist game. You've got to recruit a bunch of people to be in your crew. Yeah, and you're the inside. You're the insider. So you're giving out info and then you're there going, oh, no. Like the games, you know, comes to a crescendo with you. you winking going, oh no, please don't shoot me, wink and that end credits roll. Oh, and so the heist never happens.

You're just working at a bank. No, once, what's one of those games that works backwards? Oh, I love those games. Yeah, it's one of those ones. I thought you're a gamer. No, I play like little farming games and stuff. That one's a bit too advanced for me. Where is Avondale Heights?

I feel like, I went to look at this up. I feel like it's like on the way to Geelong, but I could absolutely be Beautiful spot. Suburb in Melbourne, 11 kilometres northwest of Melbourne Central Business District. Nah, it's not on the way. Did you long at all? Northwest. Beautiful part of the world.

Beautiful part of the world. Avondale Heights. It's like sunshine, Maribonong, that kind of area. Sunshine, lollipops, love it all. Gorgeous. Beautiful neck of the woods. Do you want to thank our last Patreon? I'd love to think our last Patreon from Ocala in Florida in the United States.

It's Tony Perez. Tony Perez. He invented the game, a mule. And you're a drug mule. Drug mill. You got to pick up the drugs. You got to pack it. You got to pack it.

You got to pack your own ass. You got to pack your own ass. You got to drive it across a border. And your ass is you. You're the mule. It's a bit of a grand theft auto type. Like you can sort of interact with the world and stuff. Steel cars.

It takes a while to get the gameplay going to walk normally because you start with quite a wide gate as you're getting used to the package. Yeah, that's right. But yeah, that's one of the things. If you get past the levels, you know, you start walking more naturally. Yeah. Thank you so much, Tony for bringing that game into the world. Thank you, Natalie, Reese, Kara, Mike, Matt, Rebecca, Jeff and Onk.

And the last thing we need to do, nay, the last thing we want to do is welcome in. A few of our fantastic friends and supporters into the Triptitch Club. Now, there's two people to bring in this week. Now, without Dave here, he plays the very important role of the hype man. Yeah. Now, are you up for playing that role? No. All right, I'll be the hype man.

Okay. You be the band booker. That's his other big job. Yeah, okay, I can do that. I'm standing on the door for new listeners. Well done for making it this far. We, people who have been supporting us on the shoutout level or above on Patreon, they get brought into the trip tochurch club.

up, it's a bit of theater of the mind. I'm the doorman. I've got a clipboard with a list. I'm about to lift the velvet rope, read out two names. Then I'm also going to be the guy inside who's on the stage, hyping you up. And Jess is behind the bar. You've normally made a cocktail for people for the after party. I have, yeah, I've called it the Orange Randy. What was it Orange, Orange Ricky? Orange Ricky. That's a great name for a cocktail. Orange Ricky or Orange Randy? Because I've made both. They are very similar. And yeah, so I've got a cocktail.

And I've also made finger sandwiches, but I've cut them into all the shapes of their Tetris pieces. So you got, you know, the bomb, whatever, the Exploder Boy or whatever. Geez, it wasn't long ago that I read a man. Big old boy. Oklahoma. Oklahoma State. Upper Midwest.

Reverse Oklahoma. Yeah. Roger was there. I've made a little. all of those into sandwiches. And yeah, Dave let me know that he booked a band. Yeah. You said I was booking the band.

And you were booking the band. Yeah, because I booked it. Yeah, you booked it. And Dave, sorry, I got defensive there. I was just like, what the fuck? Dave told you to book a band? Because you just told me to book a band.

I'm so glad you did because I was starting to sweat. I was about to check my email. I was, did I book a band? But you've booked a band. I've done it. And I'm pretty excited. I've been trying to get them in for a little while. I have managed to book Human Tetris.

Whoa. No relation. And so, yeah, we'll be hearing things off their memorabilia album in 2018 and things I don't need in 2010. They won't be playing their biggest hit, things I don't need, just because they're mad at me. And we ask them not to. Yeah, I don't like it.

I said, don't worry about that one. Can you play some of the underground hits? Yeah, I want the 2010 stuff. Yeah, we want some deep cuts, please. Thank you. Ah, that's fantastic. So please do hang around everyone in the club to see Human Tetris and grab yourselves an orange randy and or an orange rickie.

Yep, and a sandwich. And a sandwich. Can I just get props, please, that my snacks and drinks weren't fucked this week? Is that a bit of a relief for you? That is a relief. I could not make any bigger props than these. These are the biggest props I could get. Okay.

They are from Star Wars 2, whichever one that was. All right, let's just thank some people then. No, I just feel like this is. It's one of those big sort of camels that walks in the sky. I don't even like Star Wars. I mean. Okay. It's a big prop.

It's one of them, you know, those big sort of. I think I know what you mean, but like. They're horns and at some point. What did you think that would be the significance to me? I think Luke's, oh, that's the first movie I could think of because it was mentioned before. What? I'll bring people in, you hype him up, okay? Okay, fantastic.

All right, here we go. Firstly, I would love to welcome into the Trip Ditch Club from Vancouver in Canada. It is Shea Claire. Move Vancouver and make room for Shea Claire, who's not having a mare. She's having a dream. Let's welcome her in, Shea. That's actually not bad. I think I'm starting to see what the expectation is of this role, and Dave is bad at it.

You're right. Okay, I'm sorry. All right. And finally, thank God there's only two. I would love to thank from Royersford, Pennsylvania, Michael Maltman. We can't Royersford not to have him in. Welcome in Michael Maltman. We can't Roy's...

A fort. Michael Maltman, it's good to see you. Yeah. Nailed that. Good stuff. This is what I mean... Michael Maltman. It's good.

good to see you. Man, it's good to see you. Man, it's good to see you. There it is. I think it needed the inflection. I don't want an alt man. I want you, Michael, Maltman. That's nice.

I do want an alt man though. Yeah. It'd be great. Michael, if you could bring an old man as well. That'd be fantastic. Thank you so much. Yeah, so thank you very much to Michael and Shay for joining us. Shea, can't wait to become O'Fay with you, Shea Claire.

Move Vancouver. Yeah, you can. already done it. You've literally done it. You don't have to revisit it. We can't Roy's Ford not to. It's fucking terrible. I'm going to be this home. We're going to treat you like a royal from Royersford. Thank you so much for listening. If you would like to suggest a topic, you can do so over at dogoonpod.com. There's a link there. There's also a link in the show notes. Also over at do go on pod.com. You can find information about live shows.

I don't know, do other stuff. I can't find fault man. You're the maltman. You can buy merch. You can buy merch over there. You can find us ad to go on pod on social media. And until next week... Don't worry about any Clairs and graces.

We got Shea Claire. Until next week. She's chilled. Well, they're chilled. Thank you. And goodbye. Later. Bye.

Don't forget to sign up to our tour mailing the Suey. know where in the world you are and we can come and tell you when we're coming there. Wherever we go, we always hear six months later, oh, you should come to Manchester. We were just in Manchester. But this way you'll never, will never miss out. And don't forget to sign up, go to our Instagram, click our link tree. Very, very easy. It means we know to come to you and you'll also know that we're coming to you.

Yeah, we'll come to you. You come to us. Very good. And we give you a spam-free guarantee.