Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Jared Petty's Gaming History - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 159

Episode Date: February 26, 2018

Tim and Jared Petty sit down for a one-on-one going through Jared's history with video games. (Released first to http://www.Patreon.com/KindaFunnyGames Supporters on 02.23.18) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up, guys. Welcome to the first ever episode 159 of the kind of funny games cast. As always, I'm Tim Getty's joined by the Reverend Jared Pedy. I'm glad to be here. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. For the first time, officially in at the chair. Yeah, this is the beginning. And right now, oddly, I'm the third chair.

And yet today, I'm the second chair. And I guess this isn't your first time on the show. You've been on games cast before, but this is your first time as a permanent host. As a regular, as a host, as a part of the kind of funny family brought into the fold, adopted by these three fathers and various sisters and brothers at all, et cetera, brought into the midst of you. I like Oliver Twist, now among you, part of the family, like little orphan Annie. One of the coolest dudes in video games.

Glad to be here. Oh, you're so sweet. The Reverend, Chad Patty. I want to try to make that dokey dokey dokey thing a thing. I like the dokey dokey. Dokey. All right, there we go. We're going for that.

That's a little catchphrase. That's right. I don't have a catchphrase yet. What? What is Dokey Dugretty. doki-dokey mean? That's the sound of your heart, it's automatapea for like pitter-patter, like the sound your heart makes when you're excited or scared or in love. It's a very kawai thing.

Exactly. It's like pon-pon, which is a popping bubble or, you know, there's a lot of chew-choo. That's the sound of a mouse makes. Pika. Pika, chew. There you go. Exactly. Pika pika.

A lot of things making sense here. Shout out to Patreon producer Tom Bach for keeping the show going, making it run. Now I also wanted to give a shout out to Nick Scarpino and Andy Cortez for doing the beautiful artwork that the people watching live right now did not get to see. But the going forward on YouTube and on everything, there's the new games cast intro that features Jared Petty as Mario and as Chun Lee. Have you even seen this yet? I haven't seen this yet. Oh, man. I have not seen this. I show you. It is fantastic somewhere. But I mean, you know, they'll see it. I don't know. Nick maybe. But yeah, so that shout out to them for making the intro. It was really

cool. Oh, I'm really excited. I'm vain. I went to see myself. Excellent. You're also one of the slimes from Dragon Warriors? You made me a Drunker slime? I did. Well, I didn't.

If I'm being honest, I didn't do anything. I just told people to do things and they did and I was like, well, that was really good. Welcome to executive level. Oh, man. Exactly. Look at me. Sea sweets. You know what I'm talking about?

Do you like the Dragon Quest? Never gave him a shot. Okay. So you like the Dragon Ball. No. No. Not the Dragon Ball. No.

Not a Dragon Ball. I just, I didn't have Cartoon Network growing up. Okay. So, Dragon Ball Z, not my thing. Get it? I'm sure I would have loved it. If fucking little Tim Getting's got his hands on Dragon Balls, he would have been addicted. But no, I missed out on that whole boat. And I was the Final Fantasy guy, but that was later in the game.

In the pre-show, me and you were talking about Pokemon a lot. And Pokemon was my first kind of entry into the world of role-playing games. No kidding. That was your first part of the sheet. Yeah, I feel like there's a lot of people from my generation. It makes sense. That was kind of the first time where it's like, you know what? Reading is fun.

I'm going to, I'm going to do that. It's not going to be the worst thing ever. Pokemon easily, if you're making, and making the top 25 most important video games ever, absolutely red and blue easily on that list, influenced a generation and influenced a lot of design to follow. And the way that we thought about what video games could be, it really did. It changed the way we approach franchising around games. Trading car games. Exactly.

TV shows, movies. Yeah, in America, Pokemon was a game that came out about a TV show. Yeah, pretty much. I mean, I remember the Nintendo Power issue where I first fell in love with the idea of these pocket monsters. Exactly. Or a TV show about the game. I'm doing it backwards here. It came with a comic book that was an adaptation of the first episode of Pokemon.

I was like, well, I, huh? Yeah, and I couldn't wait to see that. And then I was reading more about it. I was like, oh, these games have already been out in Japan. It was this whole mythos to it. And then, of course, it turned into what it was. But you can hear more about that in the pre-show. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the kind of funny game.

games cast each and every week right here on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. We get together to talk about video games and all the things that we love about them. You can get the show every Friday early by going to patreon.com slash kind of funny games at 9 a.m. Or you can get it later the following Monday on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. Or podcast services around the globe, including Apple Podcasts, Beyond Pod, Stitcher, tune in pretty much anywhere you're listening to to podcasts. You'll be able to find us. Winamp? Winamp, you would have to manually download it and then play it in Winamp, but it's not your daddy's

llama or whatever it was. So if you want to kiss the took us or kick the tookus of the llama. That's what it was? What was the llama phrase? No, no, it was Winamp, colon, it really kicks the llama's ass. That's what it was. That was what it was. And if you want to kick the llama's ass, you can do that by listening to the show and

podcast for me. We appreciate that very much. Or you can watch the show live for just $1. on Patreon.com slash Kind of Funny Games, which also gets you access to the PlayStation VR show, Greg Miller's new show,

a week early, every week for the next eight weeks. I'd call that a dollar well spent. Oh, it's definitely worth a dollar. And this episode of the games cast is going to be worth the dollar because,

just like we did with Brian Altano a couple weeks ago, we're doing the special one-on-one going through the gaming history of Jared Petty. And what an act to follow. That is a great episode. Thank you.

Thank you. You were fantastic on an Altano what a dude to follow and his story so passionate and Brian Altono is funny. I am not funny so I'm terrified. Brian Eltono is so funny and I feel like to see him grow in his comedy over the years like he is at peak Altono right now and I'm loving it and I will say thank you

for the kind words about that episode. I totally agree. It is that podcast is probably on my, it's in my top three for sure if not my top number one favorite podcasts I've ever been on. It's a super fantastic show. But then last week we had Huberon from Easy Allies

and that was a great episode. We're on a roll right now, ladies and gentlemen. That was two hours of you guys snorting cocaine and talking about video games, and I couldn't have been happier. It was great. It was just rain down pure unadulterated love. It was like a 3 a.m. surge-fueled, like sitting in the dorm room session talking about all the things you love. It was so fun. I love that so much.

But now let's make some new memories. Now you're stuck with me. That's right. It's going to be fantastic. So yet, let's start this off right with your first real inauguration into the kind of funny games cast world. Okay. Let's start from the beginning, Jared. Where, what was your first video game that you ever played?

The first video game I remember playing is probably not the first video game I played, but it's a very clear memory. And it's one of those memories from very early childhood. I am older than many of the guests you've had on here before. And I was actually born at the end of the 1970s. Because of that, I was deletive. delightfully positioned to experience as a small child the arc of arcade wonder at its absolute peak. And I think because I was little, very little, it was even more impressive.

And arcade was like this gigantic world. There used to be arcades everywhere. And they were these massive machines that were many times my size with what seemed to me huge screens and controllers I couldn't reach at the beginning, towering over me with a cacophony of a track mode noise and then from somewhere overhead whatever Michael Jackson had recorded the week before playing through some tinny speakers. What a time. While in the back of the arcade were invariably some gigantic teenagers that may have been

as old as 15 playing pool and smoking cigarettes and the ticket machines out front. And yeah, they were so cool. And to me, that was the best thing I could imagine. And so my first memory is going up to a Pac-Man machine. Pac-Man released in 1980. This memory is probably happening in 81, maybe 82, and I'm like two or three years old. And I walk up to it, and I can see that blue glow of the maze against the black playfield. And I'm reaching up for it, and my father puts his hands on my sides and picks me up.

And he puts his arm around me, and I reach out and I touch the joystick with my hand. And I hear he's got one arm around me, and then I hear the coin click in. the slot and that you know that starts we start in our K gam and I guess he pressed the button and he puts both his hands back on me holding me up there because I couldn't reach the controls and there's a little yellow little yellow guy and so bright and so shy and he starts moving and eating the dots and I come to understand very quickly that wherever I move the knob he goes I can make him move and a ghost catches me in like 10 seconds and I'm like they're bad I mean they were colorful a big eyes. I thought they might be my friends, but they're bad. And so I start eating the dots and I start

running away from the ghosts. And they're chasing me around. And I'm like, I'm going to fat. And of course, I'm running right into them. And the entire game, you know, but they get over to one of the dots and they change color. And I don't quite know what it means, but they're running away now. And I don't doubt I even caught one. And then, you know, one minute later, my game's over. But I had touched that machine and there's a world on the other side of it. It's kind of like what would happen in my imagination as a kid when I had imagined I was Luke Skywalker with a lightsaber running around fighting Darth Vader except it was right there and I could just like I did in my mind I could control it but I wasn't in complete control it was challenging me and it was just

as real as the place I was standing my life has never been the same since that moment ever I was ruined by that Christmas I guess the Christmas of when I was three years old there was an Atari 2600 in the house oh my God I mean I was Three years old. Yeah, three years old. Three years old. Very young. Exactly.

And the one that I got, delightfully, you know, it comes with certain games. I had what was called the Sears Video Arcade, which is the 2,600 that was sold through the Sears sporting goods section. Interesting. Yeah, a little weird. But it's exactly the same machine. It looks the same, just sets different letters on it, plays the same cartridges. It's made by Atari.

They just had a, like, because Atari and Sears, Atari, when they started out, was just an arcade game manufacturer, couldn't afford to release a consumer product. And so when they released Pong, Sears was their partner and that. And that relationship really went on for a while into the 2600 era. So Sears would release those. And I had Air Sea Battle, which is also called Target Fund. And then very early on, we got that Pac-Man port for the 2600, that terrible, terrible Pac-Man port that is nothing like playing Real Pac-Man.

Although people pick on Todd Fry about this, but that game's actually a stunning technical achievement when you figure out what the 2600 was built to do. It's actually kind of amazing. And yes, much later, the Miss Pac-Man that came out was way better, but they also gave the person who made that, twice the ROM space. Again, I'm ranting here. So how much of this should I do in this place? I'm sure people are in it. This is fascinating. Fun thing about old video games on the Atari, and this is almost unthinkable.

But the first several years of Atari 2,600 developed from 1977 through the early 80s. If you wanted to make an Atari 2600 game, it had to fit into a 4K ROM, not RAM. Four kilobytes. ROM, 4 kilobytes. To give you an idea what that is, that's the source code for the entire game. You ever seen code for a game? Source code for the whole game. Everything was going to happen.

All the graphics had to fit onto one typewritten sheet of paper. That's about what 4K is. So print out a typewritten sheet of just digits, and that's the size that he had to fit Pac-Man in two to make the entire video game, written an assembly language. So all those old games you play from that era on the Atari, that's what they had to do. Eventually they were thrilled because they figured out a trick that would let them use 8K and get two pages. Double the fun. And that's when you start seeing the games that are, you know, way more advanced looking.

So is that where like Pitfall comes into play? That's a pitfall, I think, is an 8K game. Pitfall might be four. David Crane's such a master programmer that pitfall might be, might actually be 4K, but I think it's 8K. David Crane, who's just a fascinating dude, an amazing guy. And great poker player, too. He took a lot of my money one night But Crane was so good at reusing things

Is he the founder of Activision? He's one of the co-founders He's one of the co-founders There's a group of guys at Atari that were like Hey, we're making the games that sell best Maybe we should get a bonus And Atari's like, no And so they're like, well, we'll just leave

And Atari's like fine Well, Atari had just never considered That they just go off And they all knew how to make great games And they invented They literally invented third-party console games Wow. That's interesting to think about

Yeah, they walked out the door And Atari's like, well, fine, just go. They treated them like, you know, factory workers. That was the, not that there's anything wrong with factory workers, but their argument was you're no important to this business than anyone else. And they're like, but we make the art. Shouldn't we get a little of the cut of this? A little more than we're making?

So was Activision the first third party? Activision was the first console third party, at least the first one to succeed that we remember today. They walked out and Atari just hadn't considered. They walk across the street. They get a little seed money. And suddenly you have the four of the very best console video game makers in the world making products for your console, which for the last several. And that happened. It was several years into the 2600's life because it had a long lifespan.

Suddenly there are people making games for your machine. But you thought you were the only person that was ever going to be able to make games for your machine because that's how people thought about video games because nobody had ever tried to do it otherwise. There were third parties on computers early, like Apple. for example, they thrived on third parties. That's what, the Apple was a tool, and it's basic system written by Steve Wozniak and the disc two, those were tools,

they were pretty much like platforms, almost like iPhone or the iTunes store today is a platform for other people's creation. Apple was kind of, the Apple 2 was kind of that, along with the Tandy Trash 80, which never gets enough credit for being just as important a computer as the Apple 2. That sounds like some Star Wars. Yeah, the TRS Tadie, an amazingly important

computer manufactured by Radio Shack. Apple Apple was the high end, the trash 80 was the for the people that didn't have the money for the Apple. Tr. 80. Yeah, the TRS80. The Tandy TRS80, which everybody called the Trash 80, because it really didn't work all that well, but you could buy a home computer with a monitor for $600 in 1977. At a time that buying an Apple was going to cost you more than twice that. Yeah.

And so people were like, well, I can afford that. Gateway. Very, very, very important computer for like 77 to 82, 83 or so. Really important. A lot of innovation happened there. Also the Commodore pet for all of the reasons, but that's a long rant too. So the Commodore 64. That's years later, yeah.

That was used. So, okay, so there's a Commodore before the 64. There is. There's a Commodore P-E-T, the pet. 1977, one of the most important years in the history of geekery. You get the Commodore Pet, which was very important to the formation of personal computers because it was an all-in-one kit. You had the monitor there.

You had this fold-open computer. You had the tape drive or used to put the monitor on top. It opened up. It was easy to work on. They used cassette tape. tapes for programs then. So the tape drives built right in. It's just like plug and play. Here we go. That was a really neat innovation. Trash 80, accessible, expandable, affordable, a hobbyist computer. You can tink around with it. People figured out how to make it do sound. It didn't have a sound port,

but it wasn't very well shielded from electromagnetics. So early programs like, well, if I put my radio next to it and I tuned to this station and I send these electrical impulses through the computer, I can make music and sound effects for my game through that radio. What? And people did that. Yeah. Oh, early computing is amazing. And then Apple, likewise, all the same year.

Plus that year, so you 77, you get all three of those computers, the Atari 2,600, Star Wars, and Dungeons and Dragons goes mainstream. God. What a year. Yeah, we talked about this on IGN history of awesome. Yeah. But the most important home console of the first generation of the first real ROM programmable generation, the three. Founders, founding examples of personal computing, Dungeons and Dragons, and Star Wars. What a year to be alive.

Yeah. Now, I wasn't there. Two years later, I'm 79. I come along. So I was an early issue 79. And came along. Yeah, I came way early in that year. So I love to rant about this.

And I hope I'm not boring people to death. I love this. People innovated. I talked about, I've shared this story before, Howard Scott Warshaw, who's this amazing developer, a really nice guy, too. And he's one of the most fascinating people in early, early software development. Because Howard, by his own admission, made some of the best video games ever and some of the worst video games ever. He made Yars Revenge, one of the greatest home titles in the history of Atari.

Did he make E.T. He made E.T. Oh, my God. Also. And it's great. Like, he made both these. He's like, I have the greatest range of any developer ever. And he's great about it.

The whole thing. E.T. was not his fault. That's a whole other can of worms. But you have this incredible invention. I was talking about that 4K ROM, right? So he's trying to fit this amazing game, Yars Revenge, great video game. So innovative. There's never been a game like it ever since. There's still nothing like yours revenge. And he's trying, he needs a force field to stream across the middle of the screen. But he's out of code. He's out of his piece of paper. He cannot fit the graphics for a force field in there. And so he writes a two, line routine that reads the source code and streams the source code across the stream in a randomized pattern. The code looks at itself and throws itself in a moving pattern up and down the screen, which creates an effect because of the way it handled code graphics, kind of like little flashing colors and pixels. When you play Yars Revenge, the force field in the center of the screen is the source code

for the game streaming across the middle. Wow. You're watching the source code while you play. because he needed a force field. That's the kind of tricks people had to use to fit this stuff in. And not that modern programmers aren't incredibly innovative,

but the limitations of hardware and the limitations of platforms have been the root of some of the greatest innovation and artistic creation in the medium. There's a wonderful book that you should read about this called Racing the Beam.

That's all about these examples. Another person who's talked some about this. Chris Kohler has written about this some, I believe. And I actually, the second episode, to plug my own thing for a second of my new series, Hot Blipin and Jump, is all about this and about how console wars are kind of a farce. There's a big difference between art and marketing. And that actually the differences between consoles are the reason we have more great games.

I really believe that. And these are just some examples. But you imagine the radio and all that there. And again, I will rant until you stop me, Tim. So watch out. I'm going to stop you. I'm going to stop you here to kind of turn this. Speaking of Hoplip and a Jump, your new show over on YouTube.com

Oh, let's just point into hoplitjump.com. That's the easiest way to find. Hoplip.com. Yeah, it's on the kind of funny or Hoplip and a Jump YouTube channel as well. There you go. So your first episode is kind of your history with Mario and how Mario has always been there for you. And I love it.

It was a great show. In it, you mentioned the first Super Mario Brothers game and when that came into your life. What I thought was interesting is you didn't reference it as a Nintendo game. reference it as an arcade game. That's right. That's how I experienced it first. Going from Pac-Man, going then you had the Atari, like where's the junk? When I'm when I'm a little kid, I get my, I get my Pac-Man. When I'm three, I get my 2600. I play to this day, the 2600, this is not going to be a popular opinion because people say it's hard to go back to, but I don't think this is just nostalgia. There are dozens of games that are still fun today on that console. They just look

weird. And so people don't give them the time a day or they play them for five seconds like you do an emulated game and move on to the national. Yeah. You go back, there are dozens of good games on that platform, and I played a lot of them, along with hundreds of terrible games. When I was five, my parents bought me a home computer. They got me what was called a Calico Adam. In that age of early home computers, there were winners and losers.

There was a period of time where everybody in their uncle was making a home computer. Calico was a leather company that had some success making above ground pools, followed by Pong clones, like single game home consoles, followed by the Kaliko Vision, which was actually a very capable and well-designed home computer system, followed by a home computer that happened to play Kaliko Vision games. My parents, instead of choosing a Commodore 64, wisely chose the Kaliko Adam, which almost immediately after they purchased it went defunct and there was never any software for it. So I had this very capable gaming hardware, and I could occasionally buy like $1 on clearance

Calico Vision cartridges to play on it and they were fun. But I was like, man, there ain't anything new for this thing. And I knew that. So I go to arcades. I was like, things seem kind of weird here. I loved games. I just knew I loved games. Donkey Kong.

On the other hand, I knew it loved. And that was a game that was only proper to play in the arcade because most home versions of Donkey Kong, when you played them, they had two screens. They had three screens. But they didn't have all four screens. And they certainly didn't have that version. orientation you want it. And they certainly, certainly didn't have those high resolution graphics, which that sounds ridiculous. But man, when you were a kid, that big monkey was big

because you'd never seen anything like that before. And it was, as I think again, Chris Culler pointed out, a game with a story, an arcade game with a story. And I just loved it. This little man with a mustache and he went bong, and I knew him then as jump man. And then later I learned his name was Mario. Promises this is going somewhere. Donkey Kong turned the world on its here. And even the famous Kaliko Vision port of Donkey Kong honestly didn't completely capture everything that went into that game because it didn't have all the levels and it still had to be compromised. So I wanted to play Donkey Kong in the arcade. Oh, I loved it. I loved it so much. It was a game of the quest. You kind of felt like if you got to the top of that final level, you beat it.

Also, side note, Gary Kitchen made an excellent Atari version of Donkey Kong that gets made fun of a lot. That's not his fault either. For more on that, we'll talk later. That guy's awesome. them and Gary Kitchens game maker and Keystone Capers are fantastic. Anyway, moving back. So, Donkey Kong, my babysitter would roll barrel or roll footballs at me that I pretended were barrels. And I go do do do do and jump over them. Then I'd smash them with my imaginary hammer.

So I'm at my birthday party. Now, here's the problem being a kid. You're not always sure exactly when things are happening. The way I remember this, this is like my sixth birthday. Yeah. Okay. But it might have been my seventh. It might have been the January of my seventh birthday.

I thought it was a January of my sixth birthday. on my sixth birthday. I'm a Chuckie Cheese. Oh, yeah. By the way, Chuckie Cheese, invented by the guy that started Atari. Do you know that?

Sir Chuckster? Sir Chuckster, indeed. Himself? No. No, that was actually Checks Checks invented by Nolan Bushnell.

That was his second. No. After he left Atari, he went on, I know that there's been a lot around that discussion right now, but this is a historical thing. He started checking cheese

with his Atari money. Yep. Wow. Yeah. So, Chuck E cheese. It's very smart when you think about it.

to be like, all right, well, obviously video games are popular. How can we kind of really monetize arcades and grow them out in a different way? Exactly. And after he kind of got pushed out by Warner or decided to lead, depending on who you asked, he went and did that. So Chuck Cheese Pizza Time Theater, for me, a kid that was, it was a religious obsession. Yeah. I wrote once in a notebook that I think both Jesus and Mario had kind of equal reign over my life.

I became a pastor and a video game writer. And I'm not trying to mock my. faith at all. My faith is something I take very seriously. But I'm talking about the arc of my life. They have defined my vocation, my friendships, my social thoughts, my political stances, my, those have all been influenced by those two guys. Isn't that weird? I mean, I got it. Six or six birthday. I am ranting again. I'll try to bring it back on course. I love it. This is perfect. This is why we have here. So I, you know, I'm playing my games and there's a Star Wars arcade vector game, one of the greatest all-time arcade games ever.

Oh my gosh, you remember that thing? Oh, yeah, of course. You got Obi-1 the force will be with you always. And unless you've experienced vector graphics in the arcade, it's like VR. You can see it,

but unless you put the helmet on, you don't know what it is. Vector graphics for an arcade game are like that. Have you played a vector game? Oh, yeah, yeah, at Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. Exactly. Played the Star Wars one, yeah. Yeah, it's fantastic.

You just got those, it's, I can't describe it. It looks like nothing else. And it looks rad. Even today when you play it, you're like, that looks cool. Yeah, I mean, well, it's, it looks like, like the retro 80s aesthetic that you think of now with just the

grid and those lines and the colors and that's what it was. But there's a cut your eye sharpness to it that's almost like HD. It's hard to describe and a brightness that almost hurt your eyes. It's amazing that a regular monitor can't quite pull off. So anyway, I'm there playing those

and I walk by and even Mario Brothers. A game I think is pretty cool. You know, you got Mario and Luigi running around and they're jumping turtles from underneath. And it's pretty cool. You can play with your friend and you can screw with them and I love that. Nintendo comes back around to that with new Super Mario Brothers Wii all those years later. It's great. And there's this video game machine over there.

And there are kids crowded around it like nothing I've ever seen. I mean, just a flock of children around this thing. It was as if that half of the arcade didn't exist. Not the screaming of Dragon's Lair could bring you that way, nor any of the other fantastic things. And I said, I'd come walking over. And there is this little man. And I'm like, holy crap. It's Mario.

I know that guy. He's from Mario Brothers. He's, he's from Donkey Kong. He's from Donkey Kong Jr. With the whip. What's he doing in this game? But he's running to the right.

And it just keeps going. It just keeps going. And he's jumping on turtles. He's stepping on what I thought were mushrooms. Turned out they were chestnuts. And he's jumping over big holes. And he's grabbing mushrooms. And shooting fireballs from flowers.

And he goes under, like it gets to the end of the game. and then he just goes underground. It's like, that's at the end of the game. It's not even World Two. It's World One, Two. What is that? What does that mean? World One.

When you first saw Super Mario Brothers, if you hadn't seen anything like it before, it was like something came down from outer space. There had just, yes, I had played Pac-Land before this, by the way. I'd played Pac-Land at an arcade in Akron, Ohio, which is a scroll to the right, colorful game. It's also not... This level in a Smash Bros. Wii U based off...

Based off Backland, yeah. Backland is not fun. That is bad game. Very bad. Colors are hideous. Yeah, it's often, you know, it's often... And it's important because it did... It showed how to...

A lot of times games that do things badly first, open the door for great things. But Mario, there never been anything like that. Mind completely blown. Again, this could go for three hours if you're listening. Yes, I love it. So, I'm sitting there playing it. And yeah, so I sit down and I play,

I pop my quarter in. But I mean, so I have the immediate question. Your, your first experience with Super Mario Bros. Was in the arcade. In the arcade. That's right. Versus the arcade version. Versus,

which is recently released on Nintendo Switch, if you want that version of the game. Which is a meaner version of Super Mario Brothers. But that didn't matter because I couldn't get past World 1-1 or 1-2 at that point. And so it just did not matter. Just getting the fireflower became a goal for me that night. But so time-wise, when was this? Well, again, my memory's a little flawed.

I think it's 86. Okay. But it might have been January of 87. But Mario had been on, obviously, the NES first, right? You got to remember, though. So the NAS rolls out in October of 1985 in test markets. In New York, maybe L.A. You know, it's getting out there.

In 86, it's hit shelves. And there's buzz. But there's not mania. There's no internet at this point. So the way that we learn about new things from our friends is a little. little different. Whenever this event happened, none of my friends had an NES. None of us were talking about the NES, which is why I think it's 86. Because 86 is really, at that point, the only really good games I could think of on Nintendo by 86 are Super Mario Brothers, Duck Hunts okay, Excite Bike, Gradius,

Ghost and Goblins, it's all right. There's not a lot else at that point in the United States. That first year was thin. Kung Fu was okay. And exactly. Kevin's in on that. And but I know I play this game. All I do is talk about it. I go to school the next day.

We're supposed to write an autobiography with like pictures. It's like a project we've been working on for weeks. I scrap it. I stop working on the last chapter, which is about my little brother being born. And I start working on a new chapter, which is about how I played Super Mario Brothers. I draw the machine and that's all I want to write about.

My parents are very unhappy with me. In the way I remember it like a week later, my friend calls me excitedly on the phone. He's like, you have to come over right now. I run up the street. I'm like, what is this? Down in the basement and he and like some cousins that I'd never met before there,

and one of the cousins had brought an NES. And they're Super Mario Brothers. And this is the first moment that I know that this is something that can happen in your house because that didn't happen. It was always a compromise. It was always some little blocky man. It was always fewer levels.

But that version's better. It's better. It's more fun. It's better about it. And then my parents did not want to buy me. A Nintendo entertainment system. How much was the NES when it first came out? When it very first came out, I think Frank Sefoldi's the right guy to ask because there's a little

debate about this. but the kits I remember best have the price points ranged eventually between $80 for just a control deck with no game and a controller or two about $100 to $120 for the control deck earlier on and then later on to the control deck plus Mario plus the gun plus duck hunt 100 to 120 and the 150 price point came with Rob if I remember right this is what I remember my family had no money. My parents bought me this computer and they're like, are you kidding me? We're not buying you a video game. You have, yeah, what is this? For comparison, Atari 2,600, how much was that going for? By the time my parents bought it, it was five years old. So at that point, it was probably going for like 60 bucks.

Cool. Okay. And also at the time my parents bought it, they had more money. Same time as when they around when they bought my computer. But we had moved. My dad was working three jobs to make ends meet. It was really tight. And they also. I also didn't want to support my crazy mania about this. They thought it was passing. So it was a long time. So I was that annoying kid that you knew that just wanted to come over to your house

so I could play with your Nintendo. I made friends with people I didn't like so I could go play their Nintendo. But I was not just a Nintendo guy even then, my friend. I was a connoisseur of all things video games. My parents would try to satiate me. At that period of time, you could buy Atari 2,600 and KalicoVision games for a dollar,

inbox out of these giant bins in the front of targets and toy stores and Kmart's they were just they'd made so many and no one had bought them for so long so they would buy me these dollar games that they'd but this huge library and then I'd buy these surplus games for my computer whenever I could you know with pocket money or with what my grandparents sent me or and of course that point saving up $120 seemed unimaginable that was more money than anybody ever had well I mean you're at this point seven maybe seven maybe six maybe six And so it took a very long time. I would go to the mall with my, you know, my uncle when I'd visit Ohio, he'd take me to the mall and play video games and hand me quarters.

He actually had a lot to do with me loving arcade games so much because he'd take me out and he'd take me out on dates with his girlfriend, who's now my aunt. And we'd go out and play video games and I'd just, I'd just long sit there and think about it. I would stand in stores for hours. I would get every Christmas catalog and circle everything. And year after year, Santa did not bring it. I would obsess over games. I read every magazine I could get my hands on. I would buy the Jeff Rovin's strategy guide books before I own the games.

I would buy game guides and game maps for games I did not own. I had a friend. I learned about the Sega Master System. I saw it at a demo and just Montgomery Ward. And I was almost seduced. Montgomery Ward, wow. I was almost seduced because they were running fantasy star on that sucker. And let me tell you what, you talk about, you see the 3D graphics because I loved RPGs.

I was never locked in one camp because I did love computers. And my mom would sometimes be able to bring an Apple II home from school. And by that point, the Apple II was like 10 years old and still going. And so the 1987ers of the Apple II is still kind of in its peak and it's a decade old. And so I'm sitting there playing things like Ultima 3 and these amazing old games and choplifter and Oregon Trail and stuff like that and like a Zork and these incredible venerable classics. The Ultimate Games made me love RPGs.

I was like Ultima is incredible. Then I met wizardry. And then I learned a wizard who was on the NES. And I went in NES even more because the graphics look better on the wizardry there. And I was just stymied. And then I watched them like Dragon Warrior is coming and that's a thing. And oh my gosh, it's an RPG on the NES. And I love Ultimamount.

I want to play RPGs and about my friend's house. And finally, they relented. Oh, it's time, motherfucker. They relented. And the NIS came into my life. And so at this point, what year is it? Gosh. Like what did the library look like there?

Like did was Mario it was kind of was Mario three out. Was Mario two out? Mario two was out. Mario three was not because Mario three was one of my happiest gaming memories of all. So Mario you sure it's all right. I'm going so long. Hey. This is what we want.

All right. We're going to do this a long time. Here we go. I'm an old man. It's going to take a while. All right. So I get it. The first game, you know, comes to Super Mario Brothers duck out at that point.

I get the control deck set. Duck Hunt's fine. I'm going to play Mario. I got real good a skeet shoot. And even then, I loved Mario. There were so many other games to play. And my birthdays almost immediately after that. And I really did love, you're just going to laugh at this.

There's a, the ultimate games are very important to me. I had played Ultima 3. I knew about Ultima 4 at that point. And those two games, if you hadn't experienced them before, those are the templates on which Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, pretty much all contemporary RPGs are built. the lot of the stuff that we get and expect from an RPG was born in wizardry and Ultimate

in those series. And when there's nothing else like them out there, they were as fresh and innovative as any groundbreaking game you've played today. Is wizardry related to Warriors and Wizards? No, Wizard and Warriors is a different game. That's actually Rare Made Wizards and Warriors. Really? Yeah, that's a size-scrolling platformer by rare.

Rare made, I believe, 60 NES games, mostly for other publishers. Yep. Rare made a, they hacked effectively the NES and we're like, hey Nintendo, look what we can do.

We made games. And it was like, cool, want a license? And that was how that started. Huh. And at least that's the story as I've heard of it. That was again for Franks Faldi.

And Shalom, I think was the first one. And they went on to make like 60 games for the thing. It's unreal. No. Wizardry was a dungeon crawler, 3D dungeon crawler.

Ultima was the top-down RPG. And Ultima also had some dungeon crawling sections. When you put the two together, you got these party-based games about story and then Ultima 4, Good Lord Ultima 4, which is about ethics. It's about there's no, that game, modern video game storytelling, everything that surprises us, everything innovative, everything that gets to the fields a little, starts largely in Ultima 4 where it's about there is no big bad. You're looking for one, you're expecting one, and you discover the entire quest,

and this sounds pretentious now. But again, in 1985, this is unreal. No, you're trying to overcome yourself. This is about trying to become a better person. It's about trying to take a dark world and inspire it and become a better human being. And it's an RPG built around that, like a party. It's really strange and beautiful. So Ultima and wizardry affected the games I love very much.

I also love war games and battle games. I like strategy games. A lot of those were on PC. Well, a lot of those made their way to NES as well. Not as many made this. Famicom didn't worse, didn't make it to the U.S. Or fire emblem. Or fire emblem.

But clones or knockoffs like Kekmos Desert Commander or Schingin the ruler did make it over. And I played those games all the time. Or Nobunaga's an ambition. Yeah. Which again, was a game I really loved as a kid. I was a weird kid. And so I made up for lost time.

I started with rentals. And but also I just, once the floodgates open, my parents had a little more money. I mean, I didn't get showered in games. but I picked him. So I started with Ultima 3 for the NES, the terrible FCI port by Pony Canyon of that game. Pony Canyon. Yeah, Pony Canyon.

That version of Ultimate is almost unplayable. And I regret it to this day. Great soundtrack, though, for the NES. So I went back to, you know, I'm going to play that on the Apple, never mind. And then I went on to collect that classic library of extraordinary games. But I also had a real interest. I love the mainstream stuff.

I read the Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy One has a. Markable place in my heart to this day. Dragon Quest, the very first Dragon Warrior. Oh, man, I loved it. But I also played weird stuff, like Swords and Serpents, the party RPG that used the four-player adapter. I didn't even know there was a four-player adapter for NES.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I remember there was for Super Nintendo. There were two four-player adapters for the NES. One was the NES satellite, which used an IR sensor and didn't really work. And the other, the one I had was the NES 4-scorer, which was the same thing but wired. And there were a number of really good games made for it and a number of, not so good games made for it.

I think it's probably best uses. Guntlet 2 was a good use for it. The, oh, it was Friday the 3rd, or Nightmare and Elm Street was a terrible use for it. R.C. Pram 2, four players. Really good. Swords and Serpents. Not a great game, but really cool to play D&D with four friends, even though it didn't really matter to the game.

There are actually quite a few things made for it. There's an entire issue of the Nintendo Power Spinoff Strategy Guide series about the four-player games on the console. Wow. Yeah, you read through it sometimes. It's fun. Some sports games. A mule, that's what I really wanted, which was a PC game that I just loved.

And Mule is a great, to this day, one of the most innovative video games ever. I don't know if I've ever heard of it. So Mule is a game that you can play with a joystick in one button. It sounds like the most boring thing in the world. You and three friends all land on an alien planet. You have to survive, but you're also trying to prosper and beat the other guys. If you screw up too bad, you all die. like if any of you spruce up too bad you all die exactly but at the end one of you wants to win

yeah so four swords adventures kind of like that exactly it's mostly about barter but not like but very fast barter there's an there's an auction system that's an action game i don't know how to describe that a very fun action game all about bluffing other people and it all takes place in a few seconds and it's about trying to commit to more but not over commit and screwing over your friends, but teaming up temporarily and threatening to burn the whole thing down if they're getting too far ahead of you and ruin it for everyone. And it's all about diplomacy in the room on the couch, elbowing your friend in the head because you're angry with them and betraying someone at just the right moment. I love games like that. It's kind of like DefCon. If you ever

played DefCon? It's delightful that way. I wanted to play them in the NES. It was a computer game, but it worked with four player adapters. It's hard to get people to play it with you until they tried it. And they're like, because it looks like the most. Just awful thing ever. Man, it's great. Oh, what a great game. Played a lot of Arcon. I loved the innovation of Arcon.

Again, a PC. I played a lot of PC ports to NES, some of which were terrible and some were wonderful. I liked some of the rare NES library. I thought Snake Rattle and Roll was beautiful, and I love the music on that. But again, Mega Man, Castlevania. All the things you expect me to have liked, I loved.

I was deeply, Zelda. Zelda did hold, Zelda was an obsession. I create, I wrote, quote unquote, but I created pages and pages and pages of a tabletop RPG based on the legend of Zelda's kid where I drew all the items and stats and colored pencil and had check boxes for each of them so my friends could all have their unique character sheets and invented new things and the playground thing where you'd sit around to talk with your friends and share strategy guys stuff and make up things and the Nintendo Oncles and that was all completely real.

And I realized if you weren't there for this, this may sound like the most boring thing in the world. I don't think it was better than what we have now, what we have. have now is beautiful and amazing and incredible in its own way. I think people mistake that about me sometimes that I somehow don't enjoy or play new games. You're kidding? Blasterman. This is a great age. What a year to play games. Oh man, 2017. What a year to play. Yeah. Keep it going. It's not that the old was better. It's that it was different and I like variety. So I like reaching back to the past and touching that sometimes. And I like how it informs the present and makes me wonder about what's possible in the future. That's me. So, Mario 3. Yeah, well, you skipped over Mario 2. I mean,

is there much to say there? Other than it's fantastic. Yeah. And so as a kid, I remember being mind boggled by it. Now, you're going to understand that our idea of sequels at that point was a little different than the idea of sequels we have now. I was used to sequels being the same thing with more. Pac-Man to Miss Pac-Man, fundamentally the same game. But, but, you know, but a little better. Ultima 3 to Ultima 4. Fundamentally the same game, but with a big change.

Wizardry to Wizardry 2, almost exactly the same game. Then this weird thing happened in the Nintendo console generation where he had the NES2s. You want to explain the NES2s, Tim? Because I feel like I've been doing all the time. Well, essentially, I'm sure most people know,

but during the NES generation, when you look at Mario, when you look at Zelda, when you look at Castlevania, the sequel to the game was drastically different than the first one. You compare a legend to Zelda to the adventures of a link, and it is all of a sudden a 2D platformer sometimes, but then it also goes back to top down,

but even then it's a different style of top down. Yeah, it's more strategic map. Exactly. It has an experience system suddenly. Yes, there's role-playing elements. Then you look at at Castlevania, and it's just a very different style of game even. Oh, yeah, it's completely different game.

Yeah, also not nearly as good, unfortunately, in Cassavania's case. I love Zelda, too. Zelda 2 is the only Zelda mainline game that I haven't beat. Really? It's just too hard. I love it. It's just way too difficult for me.

One, well, okay, one of the brightest moments of my childhood, oh my gosh, was getting to the end of Zelda 2 because that game is a, that game is a bear. Yeah, that's a rough game. It is, uh, it is the Dark Souls of Dark Souls. Um, no, it is, in fact, a very difficult video game. Sometimes for obdurate reasons, but mostly for, I mean, that's, that game is, not get enough credit. You have seven real fundamental move options through most of that game that you have from the very beginning. You know, you can stab, you can stab kneeling, you can jump and

step. There's a very few moves you can actually then the upward and downward thrust, a couple other little things you can do. Iconic. Yeah, you can block high, block low, stab high, stab, high, stab, jump stab, upward thrust, downward thrust, seven moves, really. And you have this been very, five of those seven from the beginning until you get pretty soon. and almost every threat you meet in the game, you can overcome with a different combination of those moves. It's taking, it is a, it is a perfect, absolutely tremendous essay on how to take a very simple thing

and iterate on it as far as it possibly can be and make it rewarding. When you die in Zelda 2 in combat, 90% of the time, You're like, wow, I just lost to that guy. 10% of the time, you're like, screw this, that was cheap. But 90% of the time, I was out fought. Yeah. I was to out that I lost the sword fight. And I love that about it.

And I don't think it's sort of credit for that part of the game, that that core mechanic is so finely tuned with the way you interact with each and every enemy in that game, which is really built around those core capabilities. It does it better than most games. But yeah, getting to the end of Zelda 2, there's the Thunderbird. And I, you know, I've used my spellman. magic to find him and figure out how to hurt him because I've got the hint and I'm like okay yeah you spell now he's vulnerable but you got to go to that temple over and over and over and over just to get to the guy and then you finally get to him he can't hurt him and I'm like I beat this giant boss which for an NES game he was huge and I'm like the game is over and I go outside and like it's really cool there's like this kind of like dusk effect and my shadows right next to me and I'm walking outside and I'm like this is such a cool effect I've beaten the boss there's

There's the Triforce over there. Not so fast, motherfucker. And my shadow leaps away from me, turns around and draws its sword and comes at me like that. Shadow Link was not a thing. Shadow was coming and attacking you in video games were not a thing. That hadn't happened before. Two bosses at the end of a game was not a thing. That's not how it works.

My, I remember just screaming in terror and being cut down instantly the first time that happened. And then loving it when I went back and beat the crap out of that jerk. I realize I kind of over told that story. No, not at all. I love it. No, I get you because, you know, we look back on that. And even for me, like I said, I never beat Zelda to. But that moment still is iconic to me.

Just even watching videos or seeing other people I know, beat it and all that. And it's that, that is such a crazy moment. When you don't know that's going to happen? People, old games were simple. No, they were full of memorable moments. That in Mario 2, you know, you get to the end of every level and you're running the little bird face. The first, remember right at the end when the bird attacks you? That is one of the most.

Just like, what? Because you're not, again, it's built on your expectations. Mario 2 is so special to me. And I feel like it is totally underrated and does not get the love that it deserves. And it may be saying it's underrated, it's not fair. Because I feel like people do rate it highly. And yes, compared to the rest of the Mario series, it is not in the same caliber. Oh, I disagree.

Really? I think that there's, I love the game so much, but I still feel like compared to Mario 3, Mario World, it's not even in the same league. I think doki, dokey panic, and Mario 2 is a much better game than dokey, dokey panic. I've never played dokey panic. I should. Mario 2 is like a polished doki, dokey panic. It's a much better game.

It really is. And again, I grew up with the All-Stars version. Oh, that's right. You're an All-Stars guy. Yeah, which I know is blasts me to a lot of people. Well, the graphical jump from Mario 1 to Mario 2 is mind-boggling as a kid because you didn't know what the machine was capable of. And also in those days, they could do things we can't really do now. You could put chips in a cartridge that made the NES more powerful.

And so you'd be like, wow, they sure are getting good at making games. Well, yes, they did get better at coding them. They really did over time. And they used amazing tricks to do things. The tricks that go into Mario are amazing. But they also put chips in the cartridge. that gave the Nintendo entirely new capabilities. Now you're playing with power.

Yeah. And so you would plug it in and like it would do things you'd never seen your machine do before. Punchout does that. A lot of games do that. Mario too, man, I think that jumping on top of everything mechanic is very well explored in the game.

I think it's beautiful. I think the music's unreal. I think it's people say it's too short. I think it's a perfect length for that game. Yeah, I totally agree with that. It's too short or that it's the perfect length. The perfect length. I love the warp system in that game.

I think it's brilliant. I think it really promotes exploration and I love the getting, you know, picking up the different vegetables, but then sometimes you're getting the potion and be like, oh, where's the right place to put it and being able to throw it down? And sometimes there's secret doors in

the other world. Yeah. I love that stuff so much and the bosses were so creative. The bad guys were creative being able to play as Peach, being able to play as Luigi and Toad. They're all different. They all have different playing styles. Of course, you know, Team Peach until you die, even though it makes the game way too easy, but I don't care. Oh, no, I'm a Toad guy.

Yeah. The old Toad makes it hard. That's back before Toad was horrible. Like that's back before Toad screamed all the time. But Toad, I didn't think Toad was hard because Toad, he does have one strength. Do you know, I mean, he doesn't jump all that well. He's the fast picker up guy. And there are parts in the game that being able to pick up an enemy or a weapon or a vegetable is really advantageous, actually. Especially later in the game and some of the boss fights, that's huge because the princess, great float jump, slow picking stuff up.

And in a boss fight, she's really vulnerable. Yeah. Toad, on the other hand, man, he just zips around. Zipping around, yeah. But the tradeoff is in the platforming. Peach has... Tiny little jump, yeah. She's got that amazing, like, reach.

Very similar, though, to the big, the bird at the end of the level. And, like, that moment when at first attaching, you're like, what is going on? Yeah. The, I think they're called Fantos. Yeah. When you go down and I think you first see them in the desert world and you go down into one of the weird pots, not even up hype. And you're... Yes.

So you're in, well, that's Mario 3. Oh, wait. No, no. The do, do, doon, do. Boom. Boom, boom, boom. Yeah. No, that's Mario 2.

That's why it's 3. That's underground of Mario 2. No, it's not. I'm telling you it is. Oh, man. Oh, we're gonna have fun here. That's, don't, dun, dun, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,

boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. That's the desert map for Mario 3. That's the desert Mario 2. Oh, wait, we're gonna have to, all right. Rather than try to solve this here, yeah. I suggest you move on with your story. We're gonna move it on. Let us know.

Let us know. Let's know the comments. I very well could be wrong, but I don't think that I have. I don't think that I have. There's a great desert theme too. In, uh, that's very unique. But in Mario 3,

the underground desert theme is, oh yeah, no, no, no, no, that's definitely the underground theme. Do, do, do, do, do it's just like the classical one with the drum. Right. Well, it's a little different,

but yeah, it's, uh, so okay, going back to it, uh, the phantos, when you grab the key and the thing starts chasing you down, it's like,

oh shit, that's really cool. But then when you leave the pot and it's still chasing you from screen to screen to God, that was so intense. And like, that was the, the scariest experience I've had in video games. I'll always talk about Resident Evil and how scared I was playing that

Fatal Frame 2. Nothing scary than the fucking Fanto thing chasing you down. That is so, that is so, because you weren't used to games scaring you. And suddenly something's happening so uncanny, so expected. It gets at the core of what makes this medium amazing.

And so people kept figuring out ways to make us feel new things. The guy who made Fano is just, they're going, and then you got to feel, the fear. Yeah, man. I identify with that. So that's the NES. Oh, wait, we got to do the Mario 3 story. Oh, of course. Sorry, and that's quick. Give me the Mario 3.

It's real short. When Mario 3 came out, we were talking about Half Light 3 confirmed, you know, earlier joking about that on another show. On Games Daily. Mario 3, when you were there, the world of video games was not what it is now in terms of reach, but it was a big deal. And Mario, especially was a big deal. Super Mario Brothers

3, it is impossible to over-emphasize if you were a kid in that world how big a deal that was. My, you didn't quite know when games were coming out. And so you would check at the stores and you would check at the rentals and you would check at the everywhere. And I had gotten the inside scoop on when my local video store was going to get it in. And they were going to get it in before other places they were telling us.

But I'm at school one day, midday and little, burp, Jared Petty come to the office. So, you know, I was a good kid. I didn't get in trouble much. So I go to the office. My dad's there and he's like, hey, we got to go. It's like, everything all right? He's like, yes, fine.

So my dad takes me out of the car and he drives me to the video store, which is just opened. And there on the shelf are copies and copies and copies of Mario 3. And I grabbed the first one on the shelf there in my little corner of the world. He's like, let's go home.

And we got home. He's like, you want to hang out? I was like, no. He's like, I didn't think so. I went upstairs. I played Mario 3 during my school day till the sun went down and beyond. And it was one of those sublime days of my life. That is awesome.

I love my dad. Yeah. What a baller-ass move. Oh, my God. I have a couple of good gaming members to my dad because, again, my family never had a lot of money. But once we had a little more, we had the NES. And then we actually got a PC, an IBM PC, and then later on another kind of PC line thing, which meant that I got to start playing games like originally.

Some of my earliest ones were like Maniac Mansion, which to the day is one of my all-time favorite games. I like Manninghampton more than Day of the Tenicle, even though Day of the Tenicle is great, because Manchin has multiple endings. You play with different characters, which means you have to solve all the puzzles, different ways, and it leads to different ends, and it's a lot of fun.

But I also ended up playing SIV. And SIV is another one of those games that was life-changing. The SIV games are, there's nothing quite like them. And my dad, that was one of the games. My didn't get hooked on mini games. He played the Atari with me some. He played Raiders Lost Ark, and we used to beat that together on the Atari, which is a weird kind of early Zelda game.

I like Raiders. Another Howard Scott Worshawkshack game. And but my dad didn't play NES. And you said there were too many buttons. And which I think, yeah, I know, I love that. That is amazing. And so when we got to, we got to PC, we played Siv. and we were both hooked on it.

It was all we would do. And because we only had the one computer, we were constantly switching off. You know, it became like, hey, who's going to get Siv time? I remember it got to the point that I set my alarm for 3.30 in the morning, one school night. So I could wake up and play SIV

until the sun came up and then pretend to go to bed just before. So I sneak downstairs after my alarms got off, jump out of bed at 3.30 in the morning. sneak downstairs and there's my dad at the computer playing sieve that's awesome and he's like what are you doing here and i was like uh uh uh he's like come over here so we sat down and we played sieve together just doing the hey let's go there let's do this thing switching off for games back and forth until the son came up side by side and then my dad called into work and he told me not to go to

school and we just sat there and played sieve until we were too exhausted to stay awake and then we went to bed and then we got to play more sieve and that's another i guess all my memories about playing video games and skipping school with my father. Yeah. I love this stuff. So, yeah, I was very platform agnostic. I didn't like the Genesis when it came out. So before you get there.

Yeah. Cool Greg. I'm calling Cool Greg here. Cool Greg has to come in here. You geared up? You geared up? What's he got? Cool.

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Tell you what, Tim. Yes. I'm almost embarrassed at this point by how ecocentric I'm being on this cast. The headline of this video is Jared Petty's gaming history. It would be weird if it wasn't about you. Well, thank you for putting up with this. Although I do want Kevin to know that I do not have a stopwatch up. For some reason, Netflix started on the screen and it loaded a video and it played it for a while and then it went away.

And now it just says start your free Netflix. trial so yeah I have no idea how long we've been going but let's let's keep going here so n-as you're talking about to get to genesis now I don't want to skip a very important part of gaming history here the game boy okay so the game boy was my brothers now when the game boy was released you have a brother so what's your family like look like here okay so my brother is seven years younger than me much younger than me and my parents were like look if we're getting you NES there's no freaking way we were buying you a game boy we got another computer because you complained about there being no software that for the computer and we want you to you know do well in

school and computers have something to do with that and parents minds at that point in history absolutely plus my dad honestly they was working on some scholarly stuff and having a better word processor than he had was very because early computers really in the home were used to write papers and print them use the print shop and print out banners and signs for science for projects and for like your church play video games and do spreadsheets And that's about, that's what 90% of people did with them in their homes. So to hijack this a little bit to talk about me because I love talking about me and kind of Kevin as well in our experience. Like my original memories playing video games where my dad had a Commodore 64 and with a basket full of games.

Oh yeah. I vividly remember James Pond. James Pond. Yeah, absolutely. I think being one of those games. Yeah. And then in addition to James Pond, there was a James Bond game called Diamonds O'Brien. forever.

On the C-64. On C-64. I played that one. And that, that to me was like the coolest thing possible. Like the first level, there was a plane

and you'd jump out of the plane and you need to land on this, there was like a raft on water and you need to time it right. I don't think I ever did it correctly once in my life, but it felt like an action movie

that I got to play. So that was awesome. And the game, my favorite Commodore 64 game that really turned me out of video games was a game called Jump Man. Oh, yeah. Jump man's a fantastic game.

I loved it so much. And I was so confused growing up when I found out that Mario was called Jump Man. And I was like, wait, are they the same Jump Man? Like what's going on? Yeah. What I have a question for you? Yeah. What the fuck was Jump Man?

And was that like trying to, you know, take Mario's credit? Jumpman was not directly related to Mario. Now there was a period of time. You got to remember again, this is going to seem strange. But once upon a time, video game characters didn't jump over things. really until around the Donkey Kong era you didn't have a lot of jumping over things there are a few earlier examples

but not many and so what you have is this kind of game where people are like whoa you can make ladders and platforms between the ladders and you can jump over holes in those or over obstacles and climb ladders into that led to an entire world of iteration on that idea. Space Panic

is one of the earliest versions of that which is a game that's kind of like that but you can't jump Then comes Donkey Kong Load Runner, which came a little later Still, I think we had loadrunner as well Did you have an NES or did you have it on your computer? Yeah, Load Runner for Commodore 64

C64, C64, what a game platform. I mean, it just can, I didn't understand what a video game was So to me that was like, whoa. One of the all-time great video game platforms, the C-64. Don't know that I can agree based on my experience. You had the wrong games. I know, what a platform. Oh my gosh.

And that sound, that sound chip. Oh, that sound chip so good. Going back around. So jump man, wizard, games like that. It's not like they were just ripping a game off. It wasn't a Donkey Kong clone. It was a thematic iteration on the idea of jumping around and climbing over things and what was possible. And there was a whole world of games, kangaroo and things like that that came out around that time.

I'm like, what can we climb? What can we jump over? What can we do with this next? Keystone capers eventually. introduces moving screen to screen pitfall multi-tiered levels jumping over barrels leaping over pits you know or pits and and swinging over swamps and things like that all of these and jump man fit into that world of what can we do with this and they have games like wizard that takes a jumpman kind of idea and it's like well yeah yeah can do that plus zaps and superpowers and then people put

game construction kits in like what can you come up with with this like wizard ultimate wizard came with its own for the C-S64 maker. Yeah, its own Mario maker. That idea is really old. A lot of games used to come with those. Yeah. And because you could save things on a disc, so why not? Wow.

And people would be like, oh, the games are pretty simple. Just build a little construction kit into here. And so, no, it's not a blatant rip-off. I would say it's inspired by what might be the better way to think about it. It's more like, it's not even blood-borne to Dark Souls. It's more like, Crash Bandicoot to Mario. Yeah, more like that.

I think that's closer. Okay. And then the other thing I just remember now, the best game that I remember actually really liking because it was a good game, Centipede. Oh, okay, so I have a Centipede in my living room. Cometre 64. Yeah, I have a centipede in my living room,

like an arcade cabinet. What's that? Yeah, it's a cocktail centipede. I bought it from Sam Claiborne. It's fantastic. I love it very much. Actually, I use it for Apococetian. full of quarter stuff that I

Oh cool. Yeah and probably will use it on hop-lop and jump as well But I love it what a game why do you like it? Oh, I mean I just loved it just because it was the out of the games that I named that I had on Combinoc 64 it was the only one I could really wrap my head around the controls and I I always felt like I knew what I was doing In it because I must have been Four five playing this Well the nice thing about Centipede is shoot everything is generally the answer like everything is trying to kill you

Yeah, so kill it all just keeps sure although actually instead of Pete have learned you control everything that's happening on the screen. Like when the fleas drop, everything but where the spider's going to show up, you control. And so if you get really, really good at Centipede, which I'm not yet, it's possible to game that game so hard. It's amazing what you can do with it.

Yeah, that's very cool. It's all determined by what you're doing with the mushrooms and the enemies that determines other things that happen. It's a really cool ecosystem. The game's really deep, and I had no idea before I got it. Okay, so going back to you. Yeah. Game Boy.

your brother has one. Yeah, so the game boy becomes my brother's thing of it. I wanted the game boy. My friend, my next door neighbor had the game boy. I was like, oh, I love it so much. I want it. My parents are like, seriously, we got you an N. Yes, we got you to the computer.

Now you turn into Mickey Mouse. Yeah, I turned into Mickey. Fortunately, brother comes along and brother gets the game boys. So that helps an awful lot. Tetris rocked my world. I think, I'm not trying to, paint myself as something I'm not I'm I'm a complete moron in so many ways but when it comes to video games I thought about them a lot and I compared them a lot and yes I liked some bad games

but I do think as a kid I was pretty critical of games from very early on and compared them to each other and what was good and what was better and I knew there was something special about Mario not just from my love of the character but because it was different than anything I'd seen Mario three I was like nobody's ever done things like this I can fly and I'm remember I remember thinking of it. I would write things about it. You know, that was an early thing. Tetris, I was like, there's never been anything like this. I was just like, this, this is a new language of the way I played games. I didn't know that you could do this and it could be fun. And were you, so were you introduced to Tetris on Game Boy? Game Boy, yeah. Like, like, like, I hadn't played the NES version. No, I hadn't played the NES version. I saw Tetris first on Game Boy. It was the, it was the pack in and my, my neighbor got it. And I was like, and that sound of the game, I love the Game Boy speaker.

Bidding. Yeah, that, but ding. Oh, my. There's like a Pavlovian response. Like my mouth just watered when I hear that. When it rolls down. The Game Boy is such an interesting beast. It's a Z80 processor. Like the most simple. Okay, so I talked about the Trash 80 earlier.

The Game Boy has the same processor in it that the Trash 80 did 12 years before. It was very easy to develop for because a lot of Japanese, the programmers that did assembly had cut their teeth on Z80. Because it was a popular format in Japan in the late 70s, early 80s. which guaranteed these games were going to be, have support almost immediately because a lot of Japanese pro-grabians knew how to use it already. Well, more than that, like what's crazy to look at the Game Boy might have had the longest running lifespan

of any, quote, unquote, modern console looking back at what we think of, like, PostNES, because Game Boy came out in, what, 89? And then it continued all the way through to, it wasn't until 98 that the Game Boy Color was introduced. Yeah. But even that was still playing the same games with a couple exceptions of Game Boy Color exclusive games. Yeah, I think there's, I think there were quite a few Game Boy Color exclusive games, but I think there's a Harry Potter game for the original Game Boy in like 2001. I think that's the last one.

I'm not sure. Well, 2001's when Game Boy Advance came out, so that would check out. I think so. Now, I might be confusing that with a Game Boy Color game, but I don't think so. I think 2001's the last Game Boy game. Again, that could be a big fact check, though. I could be pulling that out of my butt. So that's a long, yeah.

But even that, a lot of the Game Boy, color games weren't exclusive. They were playable on Game Boy, but they had exclusive color features like Pokemon Golden Silver, for example. So that's like the Atari 2,600, which has 1977 to about 1990, had a viable lifespan. They were still making new 2,600 games licensed in 90. NeoGeo had ridiculously long lifespan. I know that sounds weird, but they made games for that thing forever. Actually, in Japan, the PC engine had a really long lifespan, what we call the TurboGraph 16.

totally flopped here. In Japan, that thing had like more than a decade of life and an incredible library that we never got. That's my, that's my favorite like Japan Chauvinism console.

That wonderful look of those graphics because it's an 8-bit processor and 16-bit graphics co-processors and it just has this kind of groovy flatness to it and the color palette of it. It looks like somebody drew a cartoon a lot of the time.

And in a different way than the Genesis, which has this kind of like moldy, arcadey, very Sega, reds and browns and blues thing going on or the S&ES, which is just like, colors, you know, just so many colors.

The TG16 is just like, ah, this is like something I'd watch on Saturday morning. I love it. I love the unique look of that thing. Man, a lot of good games on that. I mean,

uniquely, it's so funny the different systems have that, that look like looking at the jumping ahead to the n64 and PlayStation uh and even Sega Saturn yeah like you know PlayStation was so dark a lot of dark colors yeah a lot of triangles yeah a lot of sharp everything's very sharp uh the n64 a lot of circles everything looks very smushed and blurry yeah everything's blurry let's let's do some anti-aliasing here a lot of blur and then uh the Saturn was kind of somewhere in between where it was a lot of sharp circles. Yeah.

Like sharp spheres. Especially in the 3D. Well, the Saturn used quadratic polygons, like four-sided polys. Like the PlayStation uses three-sided polygons, triangles, which is what PC is also. That became the standard. But nobody's quite sure what the standard was going to be. And Sega bet wrong and went with four-sided polygons to make their 3-D images, which meant any time you wanted to make a Saturn game, you had to reflect.

re-write the 3D because it didn't work the same way. The Saturn was doomed for about 20 different reasons. I love the Saturn. Also, you talk about that rounded 3D thing. Yes, in the 3D. But on the 2D, which is what the Saturn was originally built to do, 2D Saturn games are some of those breathtakingly beautiful, cartoon, bright, color, sharp-looking things you'll ever see.

It's into dreams. Well, that's a 3-D game. That is still kind of like a... No, I'm talking about, no, let's, I'm talking about, let's do some, let's do some Marvel superheroes fighting game. Oh, okay. Let's do, you know, let's do Alpha 3. Let's do things like that.

Let's do dark siders or, or not dark siders, dark stockers, pardon me. Let's do stuff like that. And you get some just real, guardian heroes, which, oh, what a beautiful game. But I do love some of the 3D on that with Radiant Silver Gun. By the way, you went back to the Game Boy handhelds. I love them. I coveted them. I didn't have one for quite a while.

That was also the era of the links and the game gear, which were color. And the Game Gear, I don't know if there's three good games on the Game Gear. I've tried to identify them. I am not going to crap on Sega. Genesis has a superb library.

As a kid, I didn't like them. Some people like the Sonic Game Gear games separately from the Sonic Genesis games. Those people are wrong. I actually have never, I mean, I've played them a little bit, but I've never extensively died there. You know what's really fun?

A very pretty, technically brilliant, stunning Sonic game on a handheld. Which is like, how can this be happening on this hardware? What amounts to a master system with a smaller screen? No matter which direction you run,

you immediately run into something you couldn't see. That's what playing... Sonic on Game Gear is like. Yeah, I wish I could be kinder. That master system versions of the same games are a little more playable, because you can see farther. What am I thinking of?

Was it triple trouble? Was it Sonic? There was some sort of game that I know people like. Again, there are a few good game gear games. I'm being cruel. I wanted one as a kid. I thought it was beautiful. What a beautiful.

And likewise, I thought the master system was cool. There were a lot of good games on the master system. I mean, Lord, you want to play Dragon's Trap on your switch? Remember, that was originally a master system game.

If you want to see, if you haven't been playing Dragons Trap, that's a delightful little game you ever played it? No. Oh, okay, so it's on Switch right now. There's a great remake, but it also has a master system mode

you can cut into and play it in this original graphics. Wait, Is it renamed now? It's Wonderboy 3, Dragon's Trapp. Okay, gotcha. Yeah, Dragon's trap. And there's a lot. I'll talk about the master's system for two hours if you let me.

No, let's not do that. Okay, good. The Genesis had a great library, but I did. But yeah, and even the links, before we knew it was going to fail, looked kind of cool. The problem with the links of software, the hardware was great. Epics had built an amazing, amazing piece of hardware that Atari didn't really know what to do with when they forced Epics to turn it over to them.

And Atari just couldn't at that stage in its history, get its act together and make that work. They were just too wounded and just lacked direction and mission at that point. And all the stuff that was going on with Trammell's departure and it was just a mess. So which is a whole other fascinating piece of video game history. But back to video games, Sega Saturn. What I think we should do is wrap this episode up. I'm so sorry.

But like, we can keep talking for a little bit more. But leading into the, you know, the 32 bit. 64-bit era. So let's, let's, everything pre-Saturned, pre-64, pre-Playstation. Let's, let's, is there any, any more there? Oh, there's a lot. Yeah, I mean, I barely touched on a lot of this stuff. I didn't, um, I haven't barely talked about arcades outside of seeing Mario, but

imagine what it was like at a time when video games were just better if you got up and what somebody, someplace else to play them. Because right now, you know, arcades barely exist anywhere. And if you do go to one, the games aren't better. but at the time, with hardware costs happening on a very different scope than they do now, in a very different economics than they do now,

that's the word I was looking for. Our kid games were objectively more capable than what you could play at home. So if you wanted to play the best of certain kinds of games, you had to get up and get in your car and drive to the mall and play a game. And that created a world where social gaming, as we understand it,

was a matter of people all showing up at a physical location. Putting a quarter on that screen. Put a quarter on a screen. Exactly. I'm next. Sharing a common love. Oh my gosh.

Street Fighter 2 and quartering up. I played Street Fighter 1 before Street Fighter 2. And I was really lucky and privileged to get my hands of this. Exactly. Well, not knowledge. Experience. Experience. Yeah.

And I still missed a lot because nobody can play everything. Street Fighter 2. Arcades were kind of in trouble. I mean, brawlers were great. And everybody loved playing. Man and TMNT and the Simpsons, but Street Fighter 2, which I actually first played at a Kroger, a grocery store. That was just another one was like, well, this is special.

There had been fighting games before I played some of them, but they weren't. Street Fighter 2 was silky smooth. I had two thoughts when I played, no, three thoughts when I played Street Fighter 2. First, what is this guy with big spiky here named Gile actually saying? When he's, is that, is that sort of boom? Is he really saying that? second this is the silky smoothest thing I've ever played how is this so responsive how is there so much here every stage has music why are there elephants oh my gosh that man is electric and green what is happening

why is mike Tyson here now I have questions for you that you might be able to answer right reu what does he say because I clearly heard sonic boom for guile for guy yeah we have had duken we have shorukin shoruken okay which is show and then Ryu, Ken. Riu and Ken. Yes. Okay, they're there and together. And then when he jumps up and spins his legs around, it's a tornado thing.

Oh, I have no idea what he's saying at that moment. Is it Ansatsatsukin? I don't know. I'm not a Rio guy. Yeah, man, nobody knows. Yes. No, I mean, I have no idea what he's actually saying there. I mean, some of the stuff.

Who are you? What guy are you? I started as a guile guy, but I quickly became a Chun Li guy. I'm a Chun Li guy. No kidding. I didn't know that. Not good. Oh, me neither.

But Cheney's my girl. No, I tend to play girls in video games. When I have the opportunity. I think I get two as well. I mean, going back to Princess Beach, I think it all started there in Mario 2. For me, I played Peach a lot in Mario 2. And also, have you played The Guardian Legend? Mm-mm.

One of my... The Guardian Legend might be the least provocative video game name of all time. Gordia Gaiden. The Guardian Legend, created by Compile, who made some of the very best N-E-S-N-E-S and PC games of the period. Incredible developer responsible for a number of delightful games you've probably played and not realized they developed. But Guardian Legend is if the legend of Zelda and the world's best schmup had a baby,

where you switched between superbly designed schmup stages, and then you're playing transformed into a girl, and she, a cyborg woman, walked around a Zelda-like world that was beautiful with incredible music and then you jumped back into the Shmup stages and the graphics were the best you'd ever seen on the NES and the music was your favorite on the entire console

and you could continue and your arsenal of weapons just built and built and built and you can come back to it with passwords. That's Guardian Legend, one of the best video games I've ever played. I love it. I don't think it's a sleeper really. The word's gotten out,

but its protagonist was a female. And as a kid, I was just like, she's like Ripley. She's awesome. She's a girl that turns into a plane. Fuck yes. And I was like, that's awesome. So I really love that. Yeah.

And I, because Ripley was just the coolest human being I can imagine at that point. Being a kid at that age, and her zinomores were awesome. They like eat people's faces and stuff. And so she burned them with flamethrowers. Arcades, handhelds, which I barely scraped the surface. but handhelds have become we'll get into that in the next story handholds are where I live Helmhilds are my favorite way to play games uh and so the game boy holds a tremendously

important place in my heart that developed later on weird when i kind of went back to it although i played a lot then when i could sneak it final fantasy legend final fantasy adventure i feel like i'm leaving all these best friends behind we haven't even talked about the sness which is just one of the you know well that will be there too and genesis proper and we barely talked about it he here, but the PC, which for me in this period, man, this is the era of Wolfenstein and doom and civilization and Master of Orion and some of the most marvelous video games ever created by human beings and all the great adventure games and the point and clicks. I really liked video games a little too much.

And I love it. Jared, we're going to have to cut you off there. Let us go off. Let us know in the comments, like, how you want us to continue this. I'm not sure when because we're going back to regularly scheduled games. Sorry about that guys. For at least the foreseeable future. But at some point, we will definitely pick this back up.

But my thing is, I think it's endlessly interesting. Well, I'm a little worried that it's a little, I worried that listening to me talk about myself for an hour and a half is a little. It's not talking about yourself, though. It's like, it's, I thought I knew things. And then talking to you about so much stuff, I'm like, wow, like, you just have such perspective and a knowledge and an actual real tangible understanding. I know some things, but let's remember this, though.

You know, yes, it's exciting. But I've never had your experience. And I've never had your beautiful childhood and your adulthood. And think about the people right now out there. Every one of them that chooses to be in a place like kind of funny, I'm going to guess each and every man and woman out there

has their own gaming history story that is unique and beautiful and full of knowledge and has things they could teach us. And I want to hear those stories. I love them. Me too. Well, Jared, thank you very much for joining us for your first of very many gamescast.

And until next week, I love you. Dokey, dokey. Dokey, dokey.