Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 132: New Year's revue: 1978 - 1988 - 1998 - 2008

Episode Date: January 1, 2018

We dust off an ancient Retronauts tradition, kicking off a new year by looking 10, 20, 30, and even 40 years into the past to explore the evolution of video games through landmark events and releases of bygone decades. Jeff Green and Ray Barnholt join us!

This week in Retronauts, an episode Decades in the Making. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another fine episode of Retronauts. My name is Jeremy Parrish, but you have a very one. already knew that because you listen to Retronauts on the regular because you're cool and great and we love you. So, you know, the drill, the deal, we're going to be talking about classic video games. And with me to do that, the Royal Wee is... Hey, it's Bob Mackie

here again. And... Hi, it's Ray Barnhold. And you know what? You guys always seem to have me on when I'm between haircuts. And, you know, usually that's okay, but now we have this rowdy, rotty peeper on the side here. So... Sorry about that. I'm just saying, I have bodyish. Did we get your good side, at least? I hope so.

I don't know until the final thing comes out. Okay. And finally, rounding out the cast. This is Jeff Green, and I did recently get a haircut, so I just hope this is my good side. Thank you for planning ahead, Jeff. Just for you, Jeff. Yeah, so with this episode of Retronauts, we are not just diving back into the past, but diving into our own past and bringing back a Retronaut tradition from back in the one-up days,

where at the beginning of a new year we would look back across time and space, mostly time though, to the previous 10, 15, 20, 25, et cetera, years and kind of do an overview of those years of video game history. And we're going to do the same thing, except this time there are more years to look back on because we're all older now and video games are older now.

So we're just going to look back every 10 years. So as of the time of this episode's release, it is now the year 2018. So we are looking back to 2008. Believe it or not, that's retro now. Yep, by our rules, sorry. 1998, 1988, and 1978.

So that's going to be the routine here. So these are not going to be, you know, super in-depth discussions of topics, although, you know, we may go off on an in-depth tangent, and that's okay. But mostly it's just to kind of get perspective on the years and, you know, you know, kind of get a glimpse of how video games as a medium, as a business, in both respects, has evolved over time. And I think actually doing this by decades will probably give us a more interesting picture, a more interesting perspective than when we did it by five years. Because the jump in technology, business, and trends changes a lot more in the space of 10 years than it does in five. So I think this should be an edifying and interesting episode.

And also by going to every 10 years, that means we can do this for a full decade every new year. So I'm planning ahead for the long and glorious retronauts future. And reuse content. Yeah, that's right. Even better. It is a little depressing to think about my life, you know, and structured in those terms for so long. But I do have a mortgage now, so I'm kind of used to it. All right.

All right. So, I don't know. Should we just roll into this? Should we give our bona fides? Like, do all of our listeners know who Ray Barnholt and Jeff Green are? Oh, okay. Well, I don't know.

They should. They should know me. Geez. All right. Part of this thing. Okay, so maybe we don't need to go over that. No, we're doing it at the end. Yeah, we don't.

But I think we can at least say that. Wow, I just shrunk like four inches. Jeff's seat just dropped out. That's remarkable. Okay. I'm back. We can confirm that maybe half this room was alive in 1978 to begin with. That's correct.

That's correct. I don't remember it that well, but I was there. Yeah, technically alive if you were. I wasn't even a zygote. I might be the one who was actually gaming in 1978. Yeah. So you can offer that perspective. That's why we brought you on.

Yeah. Because you have been gaming for longer than the rest of us. I represent the old guard. That's good. The ancient guard. You're one of the good boomers. Actually, you're not a boomer. You're somewhere.

I think technically I am. Are you? I think, yeah, I think the year I was born was like the cutoff. Oh, okay. I certainly don't identify with them. I'm kind of in a no-man's language. Boy, who wants to identify with those guys? Gen X after that, right?

Yeah. That's me. Jeremy, you can tell by his slacker nature, all the flannel. I see, that's me. I'm more of a Gen Xer. Clove cigarettes. Is that a Gen X thing? I'm making it one.

No, I don't think it is. Oh. Yeah, it was a good try, though, Bob. That damn it. So, yeah. You and your grunge. That's me. Actually, that was my brother.

And I think technically he's a millennial. He's two years younger than me. I was right there at the cusp between Gen X and Gen Y. None of this is relevant. Sure, okay, sure. Why do we go on and talk about these things? I definitely remember 1988 in video gaming. 1978, not so much.

But that was not the first year that video games were a serious business, but it was very early on. I mean, Atari's 2,600 had just come out the year before, and that was pretty much it for video gaming. at that point. I mean, there was, you know, computer games. Zork was in development somewhere secretly in a lab at MIT. We talked about that. But, yeah, there's not too much that was happening.

So 78 was kind of a year that, you know, more things began to happen. There were other consoles suddenly on the market besides the Atari 2,600. And the first true video gaming craze hit the market, at least in Japan, hit arcades of Space Invaders. So I kind of feel like it was the first year you can really talk about. like video games as a collective entity and really have something to back you up there. Maybe I'm wrong. No, I think you're right. In 79, so maybe this is appropriate for next year.

But that was the year that I moved up to Berkeley. And that was the, I watched as the local pinball arcade, Silverball on Durant Avenue, started morphing into a video arcade. Wow. So it was all pinball machines when I first started playing there. And we all went there, you know, with our backseat dimes at the time, or three games for a quarter. And they put in a space invaders machine followed by a missile command, but definitely space invaders was the first one. And what I remember is that most of us were bitter Luddites about it. And we were kids, you know, we were like, what the hell?

This is a pinball place. There are still people. It wasn't an immediate, you know, love of it. There are still people that are bitter about that, Jeff. I interviewed the curator or the CEO or whatever of the Pacific Pinball Museum in Alameda. Yeah, great place. He not only hates video games. He hates pinball made after a certain date in the 70s where it's like after this point

it was not skill-based. You could not use physical skill to win. So he draws a line pretty early. But yeah, that resentment is real. Yeah. That was new to me when I first interviewed him. Right. And I mean, it was palpable.

I remember. We all felt that way, or at least all the people I hung out with. I mean, and then, like, one person would try it and then say it was great, and then we would all start playing. And, you know, by the time, like, Dragonslayer and all those things came in, I think we were all convinced. But for a while, the arcade was definitely, even when we started playing those, it was still a pinball arcade. And those machines still felt like, you know, an experiment or a novelty. It was still pinball was the thing. And pinball was actually the skill-based one as opposed to the video game.

So, yeah, so I do remember, I do remember the guy who had all the records. It was one guy had the record on every machine on missile command, battle zone, all those lump. L-U-M, I don't know where he is today. Do you know what replaced that arcade on Durant? What's there now? I don't. Parking lots. Yeah, or I want to go there.

I live in Berkeley. It's probably like a Chipotle or something, right, you know. That would make sense. That's all those good space, yeah. Let's look at Street View. So, Jeff, do you remember when the BART stations were taken over by Pac-Man machines? I keep seeing photos of, like, these events where, like, Atari took over BART stations here in the Bay Area so people could, like, play Pong and stuff as they commuted to work and got on the BART train.

Wow, I don't remember that at all. But that would have been when I was in college, and, you know, most of us in college, like, barely leave the campus or whatever. I had no really real conception of the outside world outside of the couple blocks around campus, which had the pinball arcade and the bar and everything. Yeah, I understand the insular bubble. Exactly. San Francisco was far away. It's a way over there on the other side of some water. But I'm guessing Bart was much cleaner and newer.

It was cleaner and newer. Less of a toilet. Yeah, and it felt like, you know, the future. All right. So some major video game events in 1978. You mentioned Space Invaders. I mentioned Space Invaders. Let's talk about Space Invaders. It was kind of a big deal. It's sort of the, like I said, the first really big, the game to launch the first real craze fanaticism. I don't know how much of that actually happened here, but I know in Japan it was a really big deal because I think that's just sort of the nature of the popular culture over there is like something gets big and it explodes and then a few months later it goes away. But for that brief time, there are, you know, urban legends about how. 100 yen coins, which is how they paid for their machines.

Instead of using quarters, they paid a dollar at a time. They were out of the curve right now. They were. They were way up there, how there was a shortage of 100 yen coins all over Japan. I don't know how true that is, but it does speak to sort of the cultural impact that space invaders had at that point. And, I mean, that series still exists in sort of a viable form. And Taito, the company that created it, which is now owned by Square Inix,

keeps, they still maintain some autonomy within Square Inix. And they keep, you know, coming up with ideas like Space Invaders versus Arcanoid, which just came out earlier this year or last year, I guess, on iOS. I don't want to play an Arconoid game like where I can't use a spinner, but I like the principle of it at least. So you mentioned that your arcade there had Space Invaders. Yes, that was the first one. I remember it was pretty much right as he went in.

They kind of featured it. And, you know, there were always crowds around it. So, you know, even though I said that there was a lot of resistance to it, of course, it was a novelty and it was fascinating to look at. And so it was actually hard to get on that machine because it was the only one of its kind in the entire arcade. And, you know, there were quickly people who had an affinity for it and loved it right away and were ready to adapt that kind of gaming. And, you know, I definitely wasn't one of them and neither were my friends. And, you know, we weren't old fuddy-duddies yet. You know, we were kids.

But to us it still was – it remained to be seen whether it was actually, you know, a viable platform. And also, we had spent so much money and so much time getting good at pinball. You know, all of our – that's what we worked on. My legacy. That was our legacy, right. And there was certainly no inkling with it. so ever that those machines would replace pinball. There was no feeling at that that this is, okay, pinball's over, not at all.

When was Tommy? What year was that? That was like the 60s, wasn't it? 60s? No, it was like 70s. It was early 70s. I must be like super heavy because I keep sinking in this chair. Yeah, that was maybe like mid-70s.

Okay, because that probably reflects the height of pinball, the height of pinball in America, I'm guessing. And the UK. In the UK. Yeah, it's actually really interesting for me to hear you say this because, you know, the difference in years between us, it's not that great. Right. But, you know, I sort of became aware of video games and just pop culture in general around 1979, 1980, 81. And, you know, as soon as I became aware of video games, I was like, hell yes. Yeah.

You know, like Miss Pac-Man and Donkey Kong and all those games, I would see them. and I just wanted to play them. And, you know, Tron came out in 1982, and I thought that was the greatest thing ever. So, I don't know. I guess games like Space Invaders kind of help pave the way and soften younger minds to be more accepting. Yeah, I mean, again, you know, we were kids, and it was exciting to see these things. But it was just, really, there was so much investment in pinball. You know, there was so much, I don't even just mean money, you know, all of our mind share, you know.

There was just, there were machines that, you know, we owned, you know, the one that we were awesome at, you know, and that was sort of the priority. And, you know, it actually took a while when Space Invaders showed up at that, you know, at that arcade for the first real guys who were, you know, to get good at it. So once you could actually start watching kids play video games really well, that was super exciting. And, in fact, what I really remember is the first guys who were very good at Dragon's Lair just because they had everything memorized. And so there would be humongous crowd. It would be a crowd so big. It's going to sound exaggerating, but like you couldn't get to the machine. The Dragonssler actually wasn't at this Arcata was on the UC campus in the student center.

And it would be so crowded if somebody was good was playing Dragons there that you couldn't even get to it. Well, I mean, it was like, you know, watching a 20-minute cartoon. Exactly. Yeah, I'm not sure. A very nicely animated cartoon. I never saw that part of the cartoon. Like, if you watch it, you don't have to play drag it here. You get the full experience.

That's right. I'm not sure if this was on every machine, but all the Dragon's Lair machines I've seen had a TV on top as well. So the crowd could watch. Was that the case with the one they used to? Well, I think, I don't know if it was at first, but I do remember later, but even that was, like, hard to walk up to and see if somebody good was playing. Because he'd be seeing part of the movie you had never seen. before. That's pretty

great. So do you guys, Bob, Ray, do you have like archival memories of or no personal memories of Space Invaders or is it

something that exists for you more as like a relic or curio of the past? No. Go ahead. By the time I got to play Space Invaders,

it just felt too simple and my first games I played were Atari 2,600 games, but it really hit with me with the NES. So by the time I got around to playing an old Space Invaders

thing, I was just like, Well, I could see how this was fun, and I moved on, so I don't have any really fun memories. I do like the fun remakes from about a decade ago, the DS one, and then like Extreme. And there was one on Xbox 360, the Infinity Gene. Something like that. Yeah, those were fun. I had a lot of fun with those.

Yeah, the folks who currently sort of look over the Space Invaders property, I like the approach that they've embraced with the very neon strobing style and techno music. It adds some liveliness to a game that at heart is very simplistic. And I think they took the series in a good direction. You'd almost say it's more like the approach pinball has with all flashing lights and stuff. All these bibles around. Put those on Space Invaders. Now, I didn't really get a good taste of Space Invaders until the Game Boy version, which I think kind of dovetailed into me just sort of getting interested in the history of games anyway when I was a kid.

But, you know, I played that quite a bit. I also had, like, Game Boy Pac-Nam, which is, you know, pretty good for me as well. And, you know, just having that, that Game Boy version, which they also put the Super N.S port on. Yes. On the Super Game Boy, that was fun. But, yeah, that was about it. And, you know, I definitely saw the interest in it. And then later on, I think when I would get into, like, emulators and stuff, you'd find the sequels that came later and they maim and such.

Space Invaders 95, I think it was. The Attack of Lunar Loonies. I love that one. Yeah. And all that stuff. So, yeah, I definitely have that sort of fondness for it. Yeah, I started getting into, you know, arcade games, like I said, around the time of Miss Pac-Man and Donkey Kong.

So by that point, Space Invaders was pretty much, you know, phased out of arcades at that point. But I was still very aware of it. Like, you always heard people mention Space Invaders. And, you know, you would see home ports of it. But I don't know if I ever actually saw the game in arcades. It was just one of those things. that I knew about.

It was like, you know, like the Beatles. Like I didn't live long enough, or, you know, sorry. John Linnon didn't live long enough for me to ever, like, see him perform or anything like that. But, of course, I was aware of the Beatles because of their sort of background presence throughout music. And I think Space Invaders was kind of the same way. I don't know how I was aware of this information, but somehow I knew, I always knew that you should shoot up through your shield. Well, I don't know if you should, but it's a way to avoid dying for a little bit of time. But I don't know how I gained that information.

I just somehow attained it through adults, or I don't really know how it happened, yeah, or maybe watching somebody, but just like I knew how to do that at least when I was playing it. Yeah, I think it was the gameplay itself in the end that didn't, you know, that one didn't grab me. Like I was aware of it, but it was really Missile Command was the one where I became a convert to video games. It's a much faster-paced and more stressful game, and the end game comes much more quickly. Like, it's possible to milk a quarter for a very long time in space invaders. Right. The missile command, it's going to overwhelm you pretty quickly.

Yeah, you hit a wall, a skill wall pretty quickly. Yep, that's the golden age. Yeah. And the theme just wears you down, thinking about, you know, nuclear annihilation. Yeah. That was actually the first video game ever that I started, it started affecting my dreams, you know, where, like, the lines would be coming out of the sky in my dreams, like the way later Tetris pieces, you know. Mm-hmm.

So Space Invaders was not the only notable arcade game in 1978, two others that I want to highlight are Ghibi. Which is, or Gibi? You can say Ghibi. Okay. That sounds better that way. Which was Namco's first arcade creation, their first video game. They, you know, had been an amusement company peddling toy rides for kids to, you know, drop a nickel into or whatever, and then our pinball games and that sort of thing, electro-mechanical amusements. But Ghibi or, sorry, Ghibi was their entree into video games.

And I cannot for the life of me remember what that game is like. I've played it on Namco Museum, but... The art is a bee doing this awesome, like, dragon punch to the sky. Nice. I don't know what inspired that, but I have never seen this before. Well, coincidentally, the gameplay is kind of pinball-like. It is kind of like a video pinball game. The playfield has bumpers in it and such, and it also kind of has that kind of arcanoid breakout, I think, mechanic to it as well.

Okay. So not just a plain shooter. No. No, they were definitely drawing upon what it did. come before it, before, before the advent of CPUs. So I guess they wouldn't get into shooting until after Space Invaders came out and then they would come up with Galaxian and try to improve on the formula. Yeah, pretty much, just like every other Japanese company after Space Invaders.

But Namco is notable for actually having pulled it off. Like, I would say, Galaxian was the big, the big next step for that stuff. Yeah, I mean, in Japan, you know, every Space Invaders game was just called an Invader game. and, you know, tons of clones on both sides of the world after that. But I think, yeah, Namco really added, you know, lots of color and flourishes and things like that to sort of make themselves stand out. I think it worked. Less colorful is the other game I want to point out, which was Atari's football, a game that is ridiculously simple.

And even if you don't like football, it's very playable because of its simplicity, I would say. And also the fact that it uses a trackball to, let you make your advance down the field when you have possession of the ball and the faster you spin the track ball, the faster your little guy runs. It's a very physical and aggressive kind of game that kind of gets back into the electro-mechanical era of arcade games while still being very much a video game. And I've only ever seen it as a cocktail cabinet. I don't know if it ever came in a stand-up.

But I don't think it did because I think it was meant to be head-to-head. Is that right? I think that's correct. All I can remember about that one was like you would just. hear the slapping of the ball, you know, or the track ball as people were competing. Yeah, you know, since I grew up in Texas, that game stuck around in arcades until the mid-80s, I would say. It had like nearly a decade of life to it. I would see it in roller rinks and arcades long, long after there were no other black and white games around.

And it was just simple X's and O's white on black, but people would still play it because Texas. love football. Oh, yeah. So that was always there. That's why. That was the connection I was drawing there. Texas is like football as a high school football, college football. It's Friday night lights.

Yep. It's the whole thing. Yep. It's not just a rumor. It's true. And Atari's football's longevity in Texas is point in case, case and point. Would you say that's your closest association with football? Probably.

Let's see. As a Texan. Yes. Sometimes I had to go to football games, but I always tried to avoid it. So on the home front, a lot of arcade or a lot of game consoles began coming out in 1978. Magnavox released the Odyssey 2, which, as the name indicates, was its second Odyssey console. So, you know, they had pretty much defined or like, you know, pioneered the home console space with the original Odyssey, but there wasn't much to it. Whereas the Odyssey 2 was a more advanced system.

have never actually played one myself though I've seen them like as museum installations and curios. Were these the ones that relied on overlays as well or was it just the first Odyssey? We talked about it like four years ago. Yeah, I can't remember. Jeff, do you know? I'm

trying to remember. I never had one but I had a couple friends who did. They were like the rich friends. Yeah. In my day it was the Atari 2,600 or 5200. Actually, that was what the really well-to-do kids had. Wow.

And they were popular with those machines. Everybody wanted to go to their house. Let's see. There was also the Bally Professional, which that was just like a Pongrel, right? Sure. Yeah. I don't take these cartridges. Yeah.

And then Nintendo released the Color TV Game 15, which was, I think, like, their third standalone, you know, self-contained, dedicated console device. but the colored TV game 15, I think, was the one that was, it had a physical case redesigned by Shigar Miyamoto and went from being kind of like clunky and blocky to very sort of like late 70s, groovy, with lots of organic shapes and rounded corners and things like that, rainbow colors. But it also, you know, as much as we joke about that, there was a really great interface element to it where, you know, it had multiple games on it, it had 15 games on it.

Maybe it was the six that he did, but it was one of the two. But, you know, it had multiple games that you activate it by throwing switches, and there were little icons underneath each switch that gave a very simple sort of stripped down image of what those games were. So you could look at it in a glance and just know, like, oh, if I want to play, you know, the breakout clone, I switch it over to here. So there was a really, really good interface design that I think kind of spoke to an up-and-coming future star at Nintendo's future career. Let's see. Other things, Ray, I think you added that Koe and S&K were founded that year. Yep. That seems like a note you would add.

Thanks. No, I get it. Yeah, no, Koea was founded, I think, because it kind of came with the boom of, not the boom, but the introduction of real home computers in Japan. Like, I think, like in America, a lot of computers that were coming to the home were basically just kits for hobbyists and stuff. Yeah. But finally, the big electronics company.

companies were catching on to that and either making their own kids or their own all-in-one self-contained home sort of computers. And that's sort of how Ko-A came about because of the founder of that Ko Shibasawa, I forgot his real name. He's the guy who still runs the company, right? Yeah, yeah, him and his wife. Yeah, it's crazy. It's been 40 years.

And he still goes on videos and is like, new video game's coming. He must have been really young when he founded the company. Yeah, I think so. But, yeah, he made the first simulation game for them. and that's where it all began. Yeah, I see also you put that Sharp, Hitachi, Canon, and Sword, S-O-R-D, introduced consumer-level PCs to Japan. Yeah, they were just one of the big companies back then that really,

I think they introduced a computer a year before or somewhere around there. But, yeah, then the bigger companies like Sharp and Hitachi followed suit. I've never heard of Sword. Yeah, neither did I really. That would explain the Intera Bang. Let's see. Laserdisc was introduced, which I guess became important to video games a few years later with Dragonslayer. Did Laserdisc have a role in gaming before that, or was that kind of the...

No, I don't think so. Otherwise, it would have been CEDs. We don't want that. That was definitely, for a little while, though, that was, you know, that was like the movie buff format. I had a friend who had Laserdiscs, and I watched Star Wars with him, and he had to flip it every 30 minutes. It kind of broke the flow, but it didn't look nice. Well, it's like eight tracks, which you're probably all too young to even know. I remember. I've used eight tracks before.

Yeah. I've seen one. I don't think I've touched on. It's crazy because, you know, it would, you know, the track would just switch in the middle of a song. What I really, the one I remember the most is dark side of the moon, you know, which is basically one long piece. And then all of a sudden there would just be this like mechanical, you know, a chunk. Yeah, conchunk. Oh, God. Yeah, the only, I actually, when I was in high school, my parents gave me a used car to drive around, and it had an 8-track player in it when I got it. Oh, man.

This was in the early 90s. The coolest guy in the 90s. He's about to pull up. I had an AM radio. Hello, ladies. And an A-track player. So that was good times. A lot of Steppenwolf happening in that car.

No, I didn't actually own any A-Tracks. Like, you couldn't buy them at that point. Were you into Prague Rock yet? Yeah, of course. Okay. I was born into Prog-Rock. baby. Your dad is the Crimson King.

No, my mother. Okay. Really? My mother was into like yes and I don't know, Uriah Heep and Chicago and that sort of thing. My dad didn't care. Oh, sorry. Oh, go ahead.

Sorry. I was just going to say more about laser disk that day. I just mentioned it as a tangent just because it didn't really come into being for gaming until, you know, Pioneer, who was basically the innovator of the format started pushing it. They made an MSX computer that had a laser disk player. So that was really the first home application, I think, of, like, real laser disk games. And now the laser active is a holy grail for collectors of sorts.

Yeah. Getting a full set of those games, that'll put you back. They're like six. But they will put you back. They will put you back, yes. I mean, it's kind of like the super graphics. It's like four games, but, you know, each of them is its own second mortgage. Yes.

So, and then finally, one last note for 1978, something dear and near to all of our hearts, which is that Bill Kunkle and Arnie Katz were the first humans to be paid to write about video games. Yeah. They pioneered video games journalism. And with inflation, almost the last. Yeah, and 40 years later,

people still don't understand when I tell them what I do. So it still isn't caught on. Yeah, I... Yeah. It's like, I talk about video games and they give me money. Podcasting is even more difficult.

So are you interviewing people? No, we're talking about video games. And people give them. you money for this. That's what I hear. I'm like, yes. Yes, because I talk about video games better than you would. Yeah, I was just last night I was hanging out with a couple people actually older than me. They were in their 60s, and they found out that I was in the video game industry. And the first thing they asked me was they said that they were at a party or it was Thanksgiving.

They were Thanksgiving and all the young nieces and nephews and grandchildren were there. and there were a couple nine-year-olds who were in the other room and they were doing the most inexplicable thing they had ever seen. And that was, nope, they were watching Twitch. Oh, yeah. Oh, that is, that is baffling. Why were they watching other people playing games? Yes, but those other people scream with a British accent.

That changes everything. It's a transformative experience right there. Yeah. All right. All right. All right. Can I ask, though, I ask this only because I don't know all the facts. But is there a reason you didn't mention Joyce Worley in that?

No. Is it because she didn't join up with them? Or I don't remember the whole story. I just knew it as, you know, those three people were sort of like the first video game writers. I guess I accidentally erased a woman from history. Okay. Sorry about that. Just this episode.

Typical patriarchy. I think the Kunkle and Katz were the ones who established the. the practice and then she What was the outlet? Was it computer games or something like that? No, I think. Something like that. I didn't put that part down.

I thought you guys were going to pick up my slack. It's not beep. I know that. No, that was Japanese. No. Sorry. Anyway, I should know this. I'm definitely not the expert because I've only, I mean, I did read Bill Cuncle's book,

but I don't remember it that well. But I do know those names. Okay. We do owe everything to them, so we should know more. I know, right? Here I'm like, we owe everything to them. And then I don't know James. Not about them.

Okay, I'm cool. Yeah, but Bill Kunkul was like a comics writer before that. And he did stuff from Marvel and then DC. And he also later wrote the comic that was in Sega Visions, Niles Nemo. So, yeah, he was floating around in that business for quite a while. I did not know that. I need to read that book. I own it.

Yeah. But like many books that I own, I have not had time to read it. Well, we should. Of course, we lost him a few years ago. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So on to 1988, which, you know, we kind of had to poke around to find much to talk about with 1978. But 88 is a much more vibrant year.

And, you know, looking back over some different resources about the year 1988 in video gaming, it's all pretty much Nintendo, at least in the U.S. and Japan. There are a few other incidents of note. but really, like, at that point, video gaming was really centered around the Nintendo entertainment system in the U.S. and Japan. I think by 88, it was the must-have game system or toy or whatever you want to call it at this time. 86, 87, it was picking up, but I think 88 was like critical mass for the NES, at least from my perception. Yeah, I think 88 was like the year that it was most vibrant in both Japan and the U.S. It was, you know, when Americans had finally, like you said, hit.

critical mass and everyone owned one. And it was right before the big drop-off in Japan. Because it's like 1988 at the end of the year, as I'm about to mention, the Sega Mega Drive launched, and then the PC engine had launched the year before that. So all of a sudden there were, you know, viable, higher-end competitors to the NES, the Famicom. And was the PC Engine CD out this early? I know it was 89.

89. Okay, yeah. Still astoundingly early for a CD system. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. I was just going to say, I think, you know, 88's really when we reached a real peak of, like, Japanese video gaming, at least in Japan. I think a lot of, there's lots of our good examples.

But, I mean, just the fact that, you know, we had the bubble was so big at that point. And just so, you know, like stuff like the Mega Drive and PC Engine, just technology being thrown around all over the place to try and supplant Nintendo. But also, like, the people making Nintendo games were also really, really good. And, you know, as anyone who's played Yakuzza Zero knows. Oh, I have. People just have money spilling out of them in the streets. That's true. So, you know, so you're saying that in Japan it's been a 30-year downward

slide since 1988? Well, maybe we'll get into that in 98. I don't know. But, yeah, I'd say we really did reach a peak there where just the quality was just really high all over the board. So there were two significant pieces of hardware that debuted in 1988, not in the U.S., but in Japan where, you know, people were most actively making video games, non-computer games.

That was the Mega Drive, the Sega Genesis, which came up there about a year before it hit America. And it didn't have that many games. There were like three games at launch. But they did look pretty cool. One of them was Altered Beast. Crap, what else was there? Was it Space Harrier 2?

I think it was a launch game. It might have been. And there was like some board game or something. Of course. Yeah, a Go or Shogi game or something. As always. No, no, I think it was one of the... Also, Matsu Kuhn, platformer.

Oh, was it? Yeah. Oh. That's right. Oh, maybe I'm thinking a PC engine. It was obscure enough that you might as well have called it to launch on a game or something. All right. That reboot is pretty popular, though.

Yeah, that's weird, huh? It's an anime, also Matsu Koon. From the 60s, right? Yeah, anime manga that they, like, made a Mega Drive game out of, I think, because maybe there was a contemporary anime or something. It's about sex tuplets or something. Yeah, I'm not an anime expert, so I don't know. But, yeah, Sega just made Platformer as a launch game, I believe. for a launch window game.

And now, like, 30 years later, there's like a new anime that makes people go crazy. I did not realize that. Yeah. I'm so out of touch. Let's see. Also, the Namco System 21 arcade board debuted,

which was notable because it was the first arcade board to support polygons as, like, 3D gaming. Huh, wow. So that would become a big deal a few years later. Let's see what else? Nintendo Power debuted in 1988. that's kind of where we were in America.

We were just beginning to get that sweet, what do you call it? Propaganda? Propaganda. And even then, even then it was only bi-monthly. They could have easily made that a monthly magazine with everything that was being released. They could have found a way to pad it, but I think they were still like, well, this magazine work in America? and by year three, I think it was monthly. It was indeed.

So let's see. Some other things. In the arcades, you had Splatterhouse, the first game to get an age rating, I think, under like a content rating morning. Double Dragon 2, Goals and Ghosts, the Ninja Guidean arcade game and Famicom game debuted in Japan.

That's right. very different games starring a guy named Ryu but that's about all they have in common I think in the arcade game

he was just called Ninja Oh was he? Yeah I didn't actually call him Rio but he kind of looked like Ryu

like with him with you know wristbands Yeah it was a very 80s kind of ninja it's fine to call

in Rio okay yeah let's see on the Nintendo side of things actually let's talk more about

stuff that was happening in Japan because they were so far ahead of us in terms of game releases over

there and what's what we're so good at Retronauts. That's right. Final Fantasy 2, Dragon Quest 3 like neither of those series had come out in America yet. Neither of them would appear here for another

a year for Dragon Quest and two years for Final Fantasy. Yeah, I think even Nintendo Power had a blurb. It's like, wow, they're crazy. Everybody in Japan's lining up for this game called Dragon Quest 3. Yep. How about that? I remember that. And they had to change the

laws. Oh, no way, never mind. Well, we can say with some, we can say something solid about that 100 yen shortage, but they did not change the law because of Dragon Quest. Right. So then another great example of how far

Japan's game releases were ahead of Americas. We got Super Mario Brothers 2 in America, and they got Super Mario Brothers 3. It couldn't show up here for another year and a half. Not fair. With a marketing campaign that consisted of a Hollywood movie in tow. Right.

Yeah, so anyway, that's kind of where things were over there. Here in the U.S., you know, there were some pretty big movers and shakers. John Madden Football, the very first Madden-based football game appeared. It wasn't even an NFL game at that point, was it? Maybe it had a license, but they didn't call it NFL. Right, no. Right, it was called John Madden Football.

And it was on the Apple 2 first, I think. Yeah, Zia Zadder, C-64. Could be, either way. Yeah, it made its way to consoles over the next couple of years. Madden is still the most notable name in football, but I have to wonder if the people buying the game know who John Madden is. In the first five years, he was on the cover. Like, John Madden advises game, but now it's just like the turducking guy is going to help us make this football game.

I don't know if anyone knows that. Ultima 5 Pool of Radiance, D&D. The first gold box game. Yep. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so now that's kind of laid down the basis for what happened in 1988. What memories do you guys have?

Like, what kind of games were you playing? What were you doing? Where were you in life in 1988? Ray, why don't we start with you? Sure. Well, I started pretty much gaming in 88. That's when I first, I think, found out about what a Nintendo was and then got it for Christmas, which looking back is funny because, like, I had no concept of that mania about Mario 2 and Zelda 2 because I didn't know what Mario was yet. And I didn't even like Mario at first.

I was, like, five or six, so I was more into shooting ducks. But that's basically where I'll start. But I think maybe before that, the earliest game I saw or played was like Miss Pac-Man at Safeway, which sort of dovetails in what we were talking about with the big arcades and stuff. But, yeah, that's pretty much where it all started for me. Bob? I had a $2,600 growing up in my earliest years. I think I just entered the world with a $2,600 in the home. And I played Mario somewhere, maybe at a cousin's house, maybe at a babysitter's.

And as I said on the Mario episode, the Super Mario Brothers one episode, after I played that, I was like, Like, this is what I'm about. This is what my life is going to be about now. This is me. This is who I am. And then I really wanted Nintendo. And thankfully, my parents got divorced, and I got a pity gift in the form of a Nintendo. So that really sealed the deal in terms of making me a lonely shut and child.

But now I'm making major bank on it, so it's all paid off. But yeah, that's really, I think it was 88 where I got the Nintendo. And from then it was just like, who are the Nintendo fans in my class? Like, let's all let's talk about Nintendo. Let's, like, get the Nintendo powers out. This is what we are, Nintendo. Yeah, I think you and I were really examples of, like, that first generational shifting games, because I think so many people of our age got started with an Atari

just as a hand-me-down, and then eventually got a Nintendo. Yeah, and Atari, I mean, I would enjoy sitting down to play an Atari game, but it was just like, I guess this is what I'll do, but Nintendo was just like, this is all I want to do ever. Yeah, it was the same way for me. I didn't have an Atari, but we had a Klico. vision. And those games were fine to entertain ourselves

with, but it wasn't until Nintendo came along, the NES, that I was like, I want to spend all my time playing this. Like, I need to figure out every part of Metroid. I need to find all the secret worlds. I need to get to the minus world in Mario, et cetera, et cetera. Like, that was just,

yeah, it represented a huge change for me in my perception of games. That's a good point. I think a lot of NES games sort of focused on secrets and so hidden things or whatnot or secret areas and that sort of became just like the thing that you would talk about

and get interested in as opposed to just the previous generations which are just like arcade games right you had a good statement I think you were joking but you said oh this is this has a point and it's just like I think that's why the 2600 games

I enjoyed them but they didn't click with me because it was just like play until you're done play until you decide you're finished there's really there's no end goal very few games had endings so I don't know why, but yeah, the fact that you were making progress in the game might have been like the big hook for me

with the NES. For sure? Yeah, we got our NES at the very beginning of 1988. I wanted it for Christmas 87, but they were sold out everywhere, much like the Switch and the Super NES Mini now. And so 19888 was the year that I basically

shifted my interest and attention to video games and I played a lot of games that year and really kind of cut my teeth. What about you, Jeff? Well, yeah, I was just trying to remember when certain games came out so that I had the timeline right.

By that point, I was already kind of, I was pretty much playing computer games at that point. I mean, because believe it or not, I was already mid-20s by 1988. And so I remember the consoles, but those machines, like the NES, were like what my friend's little brothers had.

So that was already an age thing. But I definitely remember pool of radiance at that time. And, you know, it was so monumental for those of us who grew up in the 70s playing D&D to now be able to play it by herself on the computer. I mean, it was such a revelation. And it was so it was just kind of mind-blowing because, you know, as it is to this day, it was hard to get everybody together, you know, for a real D&D session. and now you could just stay up all night by yourself and just do it on your own. So it was phenomenal.

That was also around the time that strategy gaming on the PC started coming up. So civilization was still a few years off, but 88 was around the time with Sid Meyers' pirates. So that was when he started making a name for himself, and we all played that game. And the first computer that I had in my house ever was actually a Macintosh. So, way back then, you know, there were actually some decent Mac games. There was, you know, some discussion way back then that the Mac might be a viable gaming platform. You know, Apple was always so hostile to it from the beginning. So it was really kind of a lost opportunity because, you know, they were doing gooey, you know, great gooey stuff, great whizzywig way before it showed up in Windows 1.

And, you know, Mac had that reputation for being for creative people, and so you'd have probably a lot more creative games coming out for it. Yeah, right. Yeah, we've done a couple of Retroids. We've done Mac episode and HyperCard, too. HyperCard, yeah. HyperCard was 87, so there were, you know, people were starting to make HyperCard games at this point.

That's right, yeah. Teething around and creating very simple graphical adventures, but they would get more complex. Yeah, I actually made a couple HyperCard games. I mean, they were terrible. And they were basically just a joke, but I remember that feeling at that time when we were playing around with HyperCard that this is the future and this is the future of gaming, which was ridiculous. But, of course, the guys who made Mist, that's how they got their start, was making HyperCard games. I mean, Mist was a HyperCard game.

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Yeah. Well, my thesis for this year is it was the year, these weren't the first polygonal games, but it was the year when we figured out what a polygonal game should be in various different genres. Finally, triangles are fun. That's right, yeah. I think everyone got rid of all those non-triangle polygon concepts, the quadrilaterals and the circles. and they were just like triangles. And that's when everything got good.

Ray, you kind of sighed or scoffed when I said the best year ever. Was that, do you disagree? I was just playing along with what Bob was going to say. And I would not get too far. Oh, sorry, Ray, go ahead. No, I don't. I think that gets hammered so much by people, I think, especially my age. You just, you know, we're all teenagers back then.

It was like, boy, games are so badass back then, man. Look, we got Zelda in Metal Gear, and then they stopped listing games because that's all they remember. It's like, yeah, okay, yeah, best year. Mm-hmm. So you would like to make a case that 1998 was not the best year for gaming? No, 99.

99. 99. I'm half kidding. I'm Jim Malamy. Chrono Cross. Chrono Cross came out. Yeah, sure. All right.

So, yeah, let's just go down the bona fides of 1998. We've done episodes on a lot of these games. We have. Right, no doubt. The Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time, Metal Gear Solid, half-life, Mega Man Legends. was mine. Parasite E. Spiro the Dragon, Panzer Dragoon Saga, and Saga Frontier, two very

different takes on the RPG. Final Fantasy Tactics, Resident Evil 2, Zenogears, Einhander, Unreal, Starcraft, Grand Turismo, Vigilante 8, Banjo, F0X, Rainbow 6, Pokemon, in America. Grimfandango, sin, thief, no one can stop Mr. Domino. The Dreamcast debuts in Japan with Sonic Adventure, Sweak it in two, Balder's Gate and also things like the Game Boy Camera, the Wonder Swan, and the Neo Geo Pocket. Wait, why is sin there? I'm confused. It was just, it was

it had a lot of hype at the time. I don't remember anything. It was going to be like the first episodic game. It was going to change everything. I think we got one episode. What? Sin episodes. It was like a decade later. Oh. Yeah, yeah. Are those separate? Yeah, they are. I can't remember what the first sin is because of those episodes. That's erase

all knowledge of sin. I'm not alone here. I am without sin. I'm going to cast the first stone. I will grant you that the first inn had some hype, just because I think it was one of those made by a developer who somehow had a pedigree. I was reading a lot of next-gen magazine at this point, so there was a lot of hype in there for that. This uses such and such engine. It's going to be great. Technology is the only thing that matters.

Yeah. That was 98. That's 1998 in a nutshell. Colored lighting. That's unreal for you. Yeah, so that was a real list of video games that I just spouted out. There's a lot of great stuff in there. Jeff, you were actually writing professionally about video games at this point.

I was a computer gaming world. I was writing amateurishly about video games. So your perspective is going to be, I think, more interesting and valuable than mine. Well, the main thing I remember is I think even at that time we were saying, best year ever. because, you know, on the computer gaming side, well, you listed some of the highlights there. I mean, to have Half-Life and Starcraft and Baldersgate and Thief, there's others in there all the same year. In fact, we gave, not surprisingly, we gave Half-Life Game of the Year that year, but I think in the write-up, we, you know, we said, you know, when Starcraft doesn't win Game of the Year, that tells you how good this year is. And I remember at, I think it was the GDC Awards, and the Blizzard folks were there, and of course, Valve was there, and Half-Life won there, too.

And you could just see the looks on the Blizzard guy's face. Like, how do we not get Game of the Year? Like, everybody knew how great Starcraft was way back then. But Half-Life was so revolutionary at the time. That's really what I remember the most. For me, personally, that was the year of Half-Life. Because that blew us all away, and we didn't even see it coming. We did a cover story called Quake Killers that year.

And can you guess what the cover game was of that? Was it unreal? Nope. DiCatana. Yes. It was DiCatana because you never have guessed on a million years. I do that to be a joke. Well, it was pre-Dicatana being a joke.

Oh, yeah. It was John Romero's next game, right? So it was sort of the obvious one. And Half-Life was such an unknown factor that it didn't even make the cover. You know, when we listed, you know, DiCatana plus these six other games and Half-Life didn't even make the cut. One of our editors, Elliot Chin, he had flown up to Seattle and looked at the game and came back and he insisted to us that it be in the article.

And we were all like, what? X Microsoft guys are making a shooter? Like, no, who cares? On the Quake One Engine? Right. Published by Sierra? It just sounded not possible. And, of course, we all know what happened.

And then the other one that really struck me that year was Grim Fandango, because that was what you mentioned, that was the year of when we figured out what to do with polygons. So that was the first year that LucasArts figured out what to do with polygons in terms of having a 3D, quote-unquote, 3D adventure game. which was also kind of mind-blowing. It wasn't as mind-blowing as something like Half-Life, but still the idea that you could have an adventure game where you're moving Guy Brush around,

not Guy Brush, sorry, Mani. Mani. I'm mixing up my franchise. Where you can move him around in the three Ds. Actually, what I do remember is how frustrating and hard it was at first to deal with those controls on a PC. It was the same kind of movement that you were having,

in metal gear, but for those of us on the PC, it was a more challenge. Tank controls kind of tank controls. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I played Resident Evil, so I was used to that. So I can understand being mostly a PC guy, I'm just being like, come on. And we

didn't use, we weren't using controllers either. Yeah. Keyboard mouse, so that made it worse. But certainly there was a lot of awareness at the time that this year was a big deal. When When BioWare came in to show Baldersgate, that was also huge.

We had already met them because they had come in to show us armored steel, which was a mech warrior clone. That was Biowar's first game. And I don't want to go off on too much of an old man tangent, but I do remember that very clearly because it was Gregon. Jeez. Yeah, the other guy, the other doctor. Dr. Ray. Yeah. Ray.

Oh, that's right. God. Strike me dead for not. So Ray and Greg came to CGW, and I remember somebody had made the appointment for them. And it wasn't any of the main editors. And then, you know, there was a call around the room saying these two doctors showed up with a video game. And there was whoever had rains that the meeting wasn't there that day. So will somebody else go sit with them?

And we were all like, are you kidding? Like, we were so annoyed that we had to, you know, babysit these. No one thought it was anything real. And then they showed up and it was a Mech Warrior clone. So it looked fine, but it was still nothing that you would never in a million years of predicted what would happen. But when they came back, you know, the next year, however many years before 1988 with Baldur's Gate, then they had our attention.

Because now what you had was a return. to the kind of games that Pool of Radiants were. There were just tons of terrible D&D games leading up to the time. Like, Interplay had the license, and they were making those horrendous D&D games that were actually using, like, the, what engine was it? The build engine? No, it was the... Are you talking about the dissent?

The dissent. They had descent to undermine games like that. That was a state of D&D games at that time until. until Baylor came along and said, we're going to put this back on an isometric, you know, turn-based level. So that felt like a watershed moment, too. So, you know, even living through it at the time, you know, Half-Life, Baldersgate, Grim Fandango, these were clearly monumental moments even at the time. We didn't need, you know, yours perspective to recognize that these were super cool. Yeah, and I think something that strikes me about looking at the list of games for this year is this is this is,

I feel like the first year where you really start to see a blurring of the lines between consoles and PC games. I mean, there's definitely divisions. Like, you're not going to see Banjo-Kazui on Windows in 1998. Right. But you look at, you know, Baldur's Gate happening, returning the RPG to the isometric perspective. Meanwhile, you have Square putting out Final Fantasy tactics, which is, you know, isometric perspective. But then it uses, like, polygons so you can rotate and you can. kind of like treat the world as a bunch of self-contained dioramas for a strategy game.

It was very much sort of a consoleized version of a very PC-style game. I think you're right. You could even really say the same thing about Grim Fandango. It was like a consoleized LucasArts game. Yeah. I mean, a lot of these games have come over to consoles with no real compromises. And, you know, some crossed over from consoles to PCs. There was a PC port of Metal Gear Solid, wasn't there? There was.

There was. And Mega Man Legends. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the PC console was. was, you know, was full on at that point. It was, for sure. But you're right, technologically, they were probably closer than anybody wanted to admit.

Right. And Vigilante 8. Was that the console version of Interstate 76, or was Interstate 76 the console version of Vigilante? No, no. Viginali 8 was sort of a spin-off-e thing like that at first, but it's actually a twisted metal clone. Yeah, they're both very good, but Interstate 76, which I love, I did an episode about it. That's more of a MEC Warrior-style simulation-e game, like mission-based. Mac Warrior Engine that they were using.

God, I want to remake of that so bad. Yeah, yeah. So games like Thief and Rainbow Six and what else, Starcraft, some of the Unreal games, like all of those Resident Evil 2, those have transcended boundaries. And yeah, like they

work on any platform. Yeah. Also, I would add a Fallout 2 to this list. It is just a sequel. It was 98. Yeah, it is a sequel, but I think many people consider it the definitive fallout game, even 20 years later, I'm not one of those people, but I can definitely see a case for it. And then, you know, there are also games that are very unique to their platforms.

Like, Pokemon worked because it was a Game Boy game. Yeah. It was a game where you could take anywhere and you could put in, you know, it played on a system where you could link a cable to another person and go head to head. Like, there was just something about that experience that was very engrossing. And, you know, it was really perfectly aimed toward the school kids set. So these kids would take their game boys with them when they went on vacation or, you know, went to the playground or went to school, and they'd have other people to compete against.

Like, that was really taking advantage of the platform there. So, yeah, I feel like 98 or 98 is a year where video games really began to diversify and at the same time to kind of be comfortable with themselves, I guess you could say. What's interesting, too, is that you had all these huge blockbusters and yet it was still not quite mainstream yet, gaming. I mean, it was still not the era of, I mean, EA existed, of course, activism existed, but it wasn't really, not everybody was gaming yet. It was still kind of a dorky thing to do.

Yeah, I don't think it really hit that threshold until, what, the PS2 era? Maybe, yeah, like 360? We were talking about the GameCube yesterday, and this was the time when all of my friends fell out of gaming and looked down upon it suddenly. And I was like, but I just want to play games forever, guys, what's going on? So with deep shame, I had to buy Pokemon by myself at age 16 and continue my shameful gaming life. I don't know. I see Call of Duty modern warfare is sort of like a watershed moment for gaming in terms of mainstream penetration.

It could have been that recently, yeah. But I think, you know, even before that you had stuff like Halo that was really starting to make its way into dormitories and into computer labs. and that sort of thing. So, yeah, I don't know exactly what you would say was the point at which gaming became what it is today, but it definitely wasn't there 20 years ago. And at that point, you could still have like B and C level games that would make money.

Not every game was a blockbuster. Yeah, I mean, I put a few games on here that were not blockbusters like Mega Man Legends. But, you know, they had, besides the certain level of charm that game had, But it also did, you know, kind of have some technological innovations in it. You know, it had lock-on targeting before Ocarina of Time. It had real-time cutscenes where characters had animated faces, which you did not see in Metal Gear Solid the same year.

You didn't see in Half-Life. Did Half-Life have animated faces for its scientists? I feel like the scientists just were like... They had their puppet mouths and simple lipclads, but they didn't have expressions, whereas Megamand Legends did. They didn't have expressions now. So even though it wasn't a big budget game, like there were still people, you know, there were still people who were taking these kind of like second tier games and saying, let's do something different and let's, you know, push the art forward a little bit. I would also add Brave Fencer Musashi, which is Squares' version of Mega Man Legends, I think. They both do very similar things. Animated cutscenes in real time, an open world with interconnected elements, things like that.

Goofy worlds and funny localizations. Yes. Yeah, yeah, like all localizations with. Is this like the first year where localizations are getting whipped into shape? I mean, maybe not Xenogiers, but I think things are picking up in terms of what the standard is, too. Yeah, I mean, there were good localizations. Yeah, I mean, they were mostly outliers like I found. I think in 1998, you could have things like Zach Meston creating a website about bad localizations of the past.

Yeah. Because it became something you just sort of expected, like you saw a video game from Japan, and you could, you know, you could take for granted that it would have coherent English language in the American version, which is something that wasn't necessarily a given up until that point. Things like even three years before,

Earthbound was an outlier with the quality of its localization. But Metal Gear Solid was definitely I would say a revolutionary work in terms of localization. The quality of the voice acting, the quality of the script really

that game really took it to a new level, the idea that, hey, you know, this is a pretty, you know, relatively smart work for the medium and it can be just as intelligent in another language as it was in the original Japanese. It's certainly interesting because, you know, you could argue, I mean, not the language part, obviously, but really half-life, you know, that's part of why that game was so revolutionary just in terms of its storytelling. I mean, really, that was the first in the shooter genre genre to do that, to tell linear story all the way through. you know, shooters until that point had levels that ended, you know, and you would get the how well you did screen, and then it would go on to the next

thing. You know, there was no uninterrupted, continuous story that was happening. Yeah, and I think Half-Life basically created the opening for every non-R-PG where you have a sort of tour of what will come with no real mechanics. Like, I was just playing The Evil Within 2

20 years after Half-Life 1, and that starts with like a chapter 1, just walk around and look at things. stories introduced. So I think that tram ride really set a standard for the opening of like almost every video game. And it was so revolutionary at the time. Yeah.

I remember being blown away by that opening scene. Yeah. And, you know, there were definitely shooters that had stories before that, like marathon and that sort of thing. Absolutely. But the way Half-Life presented its story was so effortless. Like, it didn't expect the player to make a big investment of their time. where it's something like, you know, system shock,

you really had to sort of get into the systems and everything. Half-life was just, it was all right there in front of you. You couldn't avoid it. Sometimes the camera would sort of be taken over by the game so that you'd have to see something. But it was all just like in the environment. It was all happening to you, the player. And there was no reading involved.

Yeah, that's right. It was a movie, basically. And the user interface was practically invisible. You know, you were not dealing with big HUDs. there. I wrote the review of that game for a computer gaming world, and I remember commenting on things like, you know, health, to get health back, it was those, you know, those little health machines on the wall.

But even that felt like, wow, they integrated that into the story. It wasn't just like a floating health thing in the middle of, you know. You went to Zen and you couldn't refill your health, right? That's right. Yeah. So, look, it was, you know, part of the complex. Yeah, but everything was part of the story they were telling. Yeah.

And then just because I'm me, I do want to mention the portable side of gaming. I mentioned Pokemon, which came to the U.S. in 1998. But, of course, that was two years old, two and a half years old by the time I got to the U.S. And I think it's interesting that if you look at the new game hardware, the new portable hardware, the three systems that launched around the world in 1998, you see Pokemon's impact on the philosophy of handheld gaming. because, you know, Game Boy launched in 1989 and people put out color systems to compete with it, the Game Gear, the Links, the Nomad, the, what the hell is the other one,

the Turbo Express. All these were like high-powered systems, much more powerful than Game Boy, very battery-hungry. And then, you know, Game Boy endured where these systems didn't. And then Pokemon came along and gave the system, the old Game Boy, a new shot on the arm. And so you have both S&K and Bondi producing the NeoGeo Pocket, which initially launched in black and white,

and the Wonder Swan, which initially launched in black and white, low-powered systems. NeoGeoPocket was more like a 1632-bit system, had better spray capabilities and better screen quality, but still like very much competing with the original Game Boy. And then Nintendo, they had had plans for a 32-bit system and they scaled those back because Pokemon was so successful. They were just like, how about an incremental upgrade

that has color to Game Boy? So it's really interesting that game hands. handheld game design in this year, like everyone else, all the other formats, you know, there's big revolutions happening. And handhelds are like regressing back in time to 1989 and competing directly with the original Game Boy. Yeah. Then they figured out like six months later, oh shit, we got to make color ones now. Nintendo did a color system? Damn it.

Yep. Yeah. All right. So then finally, the year 2008. And I don't know if I'm ready for this. Oh, I'm ready. Ready that it's 10 years old. Existentially?

Yeah, existential. I like, I never mind. We'll get too much. So what I find interesting, you know, just in making a list of notable titles that came out in each year. there were a handful in 1978, a fair number in 1988, probably twice as many

mostly really huge titles in 98, but then you get to 2008, it's just like this list, it's more than a page long. It's crazy, and not that many of these games are, you know, world shakers. But it kind of shows, I think, the way video games have developed

as a medium, where you had these kind of tentative first steps, and then 20 years later, people were sort of laying down the boundaries, like, this is what the future of gaming is going to be. So then 10 years after that, you have people creating games very much in the mold of the 1998-1998-style games, but just so many more of them and so many little variances on the themes, which is, it's very interesting to me. So read off some of the big ones. All right, here we go.

Oh, my fingers didn't crack. At edit and post. I'm very disappointed. My knuckles did not crack. All right. No more heroes. Advance Wars Days of Ruin, which, by the way, was the last advance wars game. Really?

It's been a decade. Oh, my God. Burnout Paradise, pixel junk monsters, Descaya 3 and DS, sins of a solar empire, Super Smash Brothers Brawl, Devil May Cry 4, called Sips saga, Lost Odyssey, N Plus, Lost Planet, Space Invaders Extreme, Shiren the Wanderer for DS, Dragon Quest 5 for DS, both remakes, Silent Hill Origins,

flow, everybody's golf. Five, we were already up to the fifth everybody's golf game. Target Terror, crisis core, Opona. Wise Opuna here. I mean, I own it, but I'm just confused.

It's interesting. It is. It's got a good soundtrack. The soundtrack is too good for what the game actually is. Mario Kart Wii. Someone got snarky. I put Wii music, and they said Wee hubris, I mean music.

Wow. By the way. Persona 3 Fess. The world ends with you. Valchuria Chronicles. Grand Theft Auto 4. Metal Gear Solid 4. Etrine Odyssey 2.

Trauma Center 2. Pursona 4. Warioland Shake it. Soul caliber 4. Lots of 4s this year. Fantasy star portable. Fire emblem, Shadow Dragon. Bionacianna Cammando Rearmed.

Bongayo Spirits. Infinite Undiscovery. Spore. Yakuza 2. One Piece Unlimited Cruise episode 3 or episode 1. That's for you, Bob. Rock Band 2. Pokemon, Pokemon.

Crisis Warhead, Mega Man 9, and from our friends at BioWair, Sonic Chronicles. The Dark Brotherhood. I want to add one to that, this list. I want to say, Left for Dead. Oh, was that 2008? Was that 2008? It was an evolutionary dead end, but it tried to teach the world what a, like, it was a PC game that was multi-platform, but it taught the world, like, you can just release a multiplayer game.

It could just be up front. Here are four campaigns. Here's every character. Play with it. Like, it's a box of toys. boys. Overwatch, the same thing was hugely successful. But then you see other multiplayer games this year and in recent memory like Battlefront

2 where there's just this anxiety. Like we can't just give everybody everything. They'll get bored. But these games taught the world like, no, just give people all the parts and they'll have fun with the parts. And I feel like Left for Dead was a great example of that. The sequel is great. If Valve still made games, there might be a third one.

But, yeah, like Left for Dead one was a great experience for me. My somewhat cynical response would be, yeah, you can just release a multiplayer game if you're Valve or Blizzard. That's true. You have to be Valver Blizzard first, and then you can do it. But I still think it's a viable, it's a viable, like, content plan or whatever you want to call it. Well, a player unknown battleground. True, true.

It came from a player, like a total unknown that's in his name. I really love that game because it's like, here's an unfinished game with one map, and it's sold 30 million copies in its game of the year. It's like, all the rules have broken, and what is reality anymore? But that's kind of the way it goes, I feel bad that I missed Left for Dead because, One up, I think, voted that, the game of the year for 2008. Oh, wow. And there was a lot of unhappiness about that from some of the old card. In fact, I think there were some people who demanded a recount of the vote at the end.

And I'm not sure exactly how that went. I kind of wiped it from my memory. But, yeah, like there were some people who really got into Left for Dead and said, this game is amazing. It is game of the year and really pushed for it. And then other people were like, well, that's not, you know, that's not kind of what I expect from a game of the year. I think player unknown battleground is kind of the same thing.

It's sort of breaking the rules, but it clearly resonates with people. And the, not to get too far into this, but the spiritual sequel, Left for Dead evolved by the same developer, I think it failed because in order to unlock all the basic functionality of the game, you had to play for like 40 hours. There was this anxiety, like we need to give you the full, quote-unquote, single-player experience in order for you to feel like you've gotten your value out of this game. Like, we can't give you all the things up front, which I think that's why Lefford had one excelled because it just was this fun box of toys you could play with with your friends.

I did like that you got spore in the list. It just, you know, we just railroad right past it because, you know, I think we back then we thought it would be on the kind of list now 10 years later where we're talking about, you know, milestones and gaming, of course, it turned out to be a huge disappointment. I mean, I was at the GDC panel where Will Wright announced the game and showed it off for the first time. It was one of those where it was like at the very end of GDC and I went just thinking, well, he might say something interesting. And it became like the biggest news out of the show. Everyone just lost their minds.

I couldn't believe what they showed off. He was like, it was this amazing looking game, partially designed, partially procedural. It spanned reality from like, you know, from micro-organisms to, the macrocosm. I couldn't believe it. It was going to be, it seemed too good to be true, and it was totally too good to be true. It's actually surreal for me to be in this room with Jeff talking about 2008 because I listened to his podcast in 2008 and hearing him talking about these things. So I'm just remembering all of the GFW radios or CGW radios where you would talk about sporing other games like this, Lefer Dead. This conversation is actually freaking me out because

2008 was the year that the magazine went under. That was the last year of the podcast, too. Right. That was when I last year of the original one-up. Yeah, one-up imploded at the beginning of 2009, right? Yeah, like January 6th or something like that. It was like 2009 came along and that was it? That was it. Yeah. And that was 10 years ago. 10 years ago. And now we're on Bob's show. What a world this has turned into.

So one thing that I do think is kind of interesting, you know, from the retronauts perspective in 2008 is you see a new appreciation for. gaming's past taking hold. All the games that I mentioned for 1998 felt like they were attempts to take either classic series and push them into new dimensions, literally like Mega Man Legends, or to, you know, come up with new brands. Metal Gear Solid was, you know, basically Metal Gear 2 for MSX with polygons. The idea was let's push forward. Let's, you know, let's revolutionize the medium.

But in 2008, you have all these remakes and games that kind of call. back to the past, you have Space Invaders Extreme, Sharon the Wanderer, which was a super Famicom game, Dragon Quest 5 also, that came out for DS and became practically new games. Persona 3, got a remake even as Persona 4 came out.

Let's see, Mega Man 9 was a brand new game, specifically designed to resemble a game from 20 years ago, 2008's Mega Man 2. They specifically targeted that one game in creating a new Mega Man game,

visuals, mechanics, everything. Let's see. What else? There are a few others in here. Bangayo Spirits is like a scaled-down version of a Dreamcast game, but it was a new game. Descaya 3 came out, but then there was Disgaya DS, which was a remake of the original Disgaya, and so on and so forth. So you have people pushing forward in video game design, but you also have publishers who are stopping and looking and taking stock of their past and saying, you know what? there's value to this.

These games are still viable. This may be a 15-year-old Super Famicom game, but people would still buy it if we polished it up and gave it to them in a slightly new form because the underlying principle of this game are still fun and interesting, and maybe no one's done

them better. Like both Sharon the Wanderer and Dragon Quest 5, I feel, are peak examples of their particular genres. And even though those games are from 1992, 93, like they're still fantastic, you know, 10 years on from their 2008 releases. So that's my rant.

I think this is unrelated, Jeremy, but I think we have to talk about the sheer ubiquity of the plastic instrument slash rhythm game craze of this era. Like, I think 07, 08, 09, it burned the hottest and the fastest. And then 2010, I feel like there was a sharp drop off. And then after that, I mean, they were still releasing games, but no one really cared anymore. But you could not go to a party. You could not go to someone's house without seeing that drum set propped up somewhere without playing rock band or guitar hero. It was just like, everyone was doing it, everyone had it, and now you can't give that stuff away. I've tried on Craigslist.

Nobody wants it. Right, right. They're all over sidewalks all over America. Oh, for sure, yeah. There's going to be like a coral reef of plastic drums in like 30 years. We'll see it. Well, you know, in the future, in the planet of the ape's future, you know, the apes are going to see all these drum kits, plastic drum kits and wonder what they're going to build their new civilization out of the guitars. Yeah.

Ape must never melt ape's face. But it was this very weird era where the Wii was still, I think this is the last big year for the Wii. It just like, we don't play games like this anymore. It was just this very specific time where these kinds of accessories were just so ubiquitous in terms of how we use them in the games we played with them. Did we music kill the genre? I don't even think. No one noticed. No one even realized it.

We just remember that guy drumming a lot. Yeah. And like I never played Wii music. I don't even know what it is. I want to see it just for the sheer trainwike value of it. But, yeah, like, I mean, it was obviously engineered to capitalize on the rock band guitar hero craze, right? I mean, Nintendo can't have developed it like. I'm sure Nintendo of America would love for you to believe that.

But I think it was really just another bug up Miyamoto's butt that was just like, let's make a music game that's just like all these other mini game things that just came out with. I could see that too. But people only really care about sports and fitness stuff. And they don't really care about, you know, not everyone as a musician. so they're not really going to be attracted to have an invisible drum set in front of them.

Although that drum set, that part of the Wii music was pretty good. It was the balance board and you had a little dampany. Yeah, when I was at that E3, the pre-release Wii E3, I have to admit, we music was the one

that I liked the most. Because, I mean, because I did, do have a music background and I thought it was cool and I liked the idea of conducting and something. I thought it was fun.

I don't actually hate it, But a lot of people do because it was just like to them, I think, like, the, as I said before, the peak of just Nintendo just being like, well, we went for the blue ocean and now the blue ocean is like this nice, rich cobalt blue. So let's just go hard for moms and adolescents and see how that turns out. Yeah, yeah. That X-D3, oh, yeah, I'm sorry. We made a new Metroid, too. Sorry about that. Yeah, I think we music of why I don't get to interview Miyamoto anymore because I've interviewed him.

the following E3. And I just asked what I thought was an innocuous question. Like, you know, some of the ideas you come up with are huge hits, but then things like Wii music don't necessarily go over that well. So, like, what do you take away from a game that doesn't catch on to the audience, like, Wee Music? And he, like, paused and asked something to his interpreter, Bill Trinnan. And basically, I think he thought I was ambushing him or, like, trying to put his feet

to the fire. Like, why is this game of failure? Don't you feel bad and stupid? But that wasn't the question. I was asking at all. I was like, you know, like what do you take away from something, you know, when it's a failure, you know, even amidst the successes you have. But I haven't interviewed him since. Yeah, I'm not sure he always gets told when things fail or not. Yeah. So, yeah. I've learned my lesson. Don't ever ask questions. No, one's honest journalism in this industry. So, no, right. You got to stand behind Iwada. That's true. We did. We were in his presence. We were in the newspaper. A sheer 30 seconds. We were, we were, we were his background. decoration. Ah, yeah. So any other thoughts on 2008 before we go to the listener mail section?

I mean, you know, I did review a lot of those, including weed music. Grand Theft Auto 4 should be remarked upon the first HD Grand Theft Auto. I think, I want to say this had the biggest, like, turnaround in terms of opinions. I remember just listening to podcast. I think five is a much better game than four, but four, first week, this is amazing. It's like a living, breathing world. Two weeks past. this game's a bummer.

I don't like hanging out with these people. This world is weird. These physics are bad. I hate driving. This game had the quickest turnaround on opinion I've seen. And I played through the entire thing and I thought it was okay. But it just was like night and day from like release to two weeks later on podcasts. That's true.

And I do think the press was complicit in that. You know, I think everybody was a splooging all over that thing for the first couple weeks. I will say that I wasn't, but I also wasn't a reviewer for it. It didn't have any of the things that I liked about the PS2 Grand The autos, which was, you know, this kind of chaotic freedom and just a sense of, like, go into the world and do stuff. This game was very much about a routine and a schedule. And even the way the city was laid out, it had this very interesting highway system, which

made it be very easy to get around, but it also made it very difficult for you to go off into new places and just, you know, get lost in the world because the highway was always directing you, like, you know, kind of like in a real city, the way it works to get you from one place to another, but it really played down, it devalued, I think, deprecated the appeal of going off into side roads and just seeing the city. So I ended up just kind of going through those main arteries, and I didn't feel like I really got to make the most of the world. Whereas GTA 5 did a much better job of that. It has a working highway system, but it feels like there's a lot of feeders and a lot of reasons to go off and explore different areas.

Yeah, it has a first person mode just for exploring, just for if when you're in those interiors, is you go into first person just to look at everything. They really made it more about exploration than this. You must hear our story. You must see our story play out. Yeah, GTA4 is the one GTA of the modern era that I just lived like. I played it for a few hours and just couldn't get into it. And I think I've talked about Metal Garsalt 4 for a huge game in 2008.

And Jeremy, you did review this. I did. What was that event like? God. It wasn't an event. It was the three. It was being held hostage, right? It was the three EGM reviewers, went to Konami's headquarters and sat in a room with a debug unit and a TV in front of each of us.

And there was like someone always watching over us to make sure we didn't like, I don't know, grab the disc and make a break for it or something, even though we were like deep within the company's bowels. I don't know. Were they commenting on the game as you were playing it? No. So they didn't do that. They were just hovering. Okay. Yeah.

No, it was pretty much just like we were left to our own devices, but do not touch. So, yeah, like we all finished the game pretty much at the same time, and that was it. But then I don't even remember why, but for some reason, they wouldn't let us review the game in the next issue of EGM. They were like, no, you need to wait longer. And for some reason, that became like a big controversy, and I wrote a blog just being like, Yeah, okay, that's fine. They gave us early access to it, and they want us to wait a little longer to put out the review. But people thought that was somehow, like, subservient to a corporation.

Like, no, I mean, that's just kind of how things work. Let us the gamers do that. Yeah, right? And this game was meant to be, like, the killer app for the PS3. And it's just bizarre to me that it has never seen a re-release. It has never seen, like, a 1080P or 4K upgrade. It just, it's forever stuck to the PS3. It really stayed true to its exclusive stance.

The clone was right. It's a strange game. I think we need to do a deep dive into that one. I mean, I really don't want to replay it, but I kind of want to replay it through 2017 I's post-Peace Walker, post-5, which are very different games. Jeremy, you did the sequestered review experience, and I sort of made that for myself because I wrote the strategy guide.

Oh, wow. For one up when I was doing that, and so I was staying up until like three in the morning at the office playing through it to finish it in. in-composite video. Oh, my God. The way it was meant to be played. Yes.

480. I. That's how I remember it. That's the worst experience. But I wanted it to do it. I was driven to do it. I don't know. Young and foolish, you know.

So what was everyone's favorite game of 2008? Maybe Bob has already mentioned this with Leffordead. It's probably Leffordead. And actually, that got me in. I never played online multiplayer games before that. So that really got me into it. I play PubG and Overwatch every weekend now. So I have to credit Lefford Dead for breaking me

that world. Yeah, I would say just although I don't remember that well, I've played it later, I think Drenquest 5 is pretty good. A lot of the wee stuff really, Mega Man 9 for sure. Oh, yeah. That's great. And Mario Kart sort of.

In retrospect, it was kind of a disappointment. But yeah, let's see. Most of that I didn't, I bought but didn't play just because of my job and responsibility and stuff. So I didn't really play Valkyria Chronicles. That's one that's been a gap in my existence for a long time.

So a few gap games. But, yeah, that in Smash mode as well. I enjoyed quite a long. Jeff, how about you? Well, I'm trying to look and remember what came out then. I mean, that was such a monumental year for me. Like, in my memory, that's just, yeah, PC-wise. Even looking at that, there isn't even a lot on PC.

I mean, what I remember, and that's one of the reasons that the magazine went under, was it was kind of like the nadir, I think, of PC gaming. You know, that was pre-everything being cross-platform. Yeah, and the PC ports weren't great yet. I mean, PC is kind of now like the best platform to play a multi-platform game, but back then the ports were pretty bad. Right, yeah. So I don't have a good answer for you.

Fair enough. I think, funnily enough, that year I built a gaming PC and then replayed Grim Fendango. It was like the first things I played on it. A bridge to the past right there. Yeah, yeah. All right. Yeah, I don't know if I could pick a favorite game that year from that year. I mean, I really loved Dragon Quest 5 and Sharon the Wanderer, but I think in terms of, like, brand new games, maybe the world ends with you.

It was so unexpected. I really expected to hate it, just despise it. And the rom, like the preview rom came in and I tried it out because I was the guy that everyone gave the DS stuff to. And I was like, whoa, this is crazy. I remember that was, for some reason, that year. I ended up going to Japan like three times. So I remember in one of those trips, I was staying in Shibuya. So I like went around and did like a photo log of like right before the game came out of all the locations that are drawn in the world ends with you and showing like this is the actual context for it.

And that was that was like a really fun thing to do. Just my memory, not just of the game, but also of like kind of like living the game in a little way. So it was a really interesting experience. You went to Japan three times in one year. and that was the same year one up one under I'm putting the pieces together Jeremy

I think I found out who did it that was one of them was vacation that I paid for I see was for an event the

I can't even what it was called it was like some crazy event like showing off all the Nomura games including Final Fantasy versus

the event had a number it was it was DK 13 Sigma something I don't remember but I'm pretty sure Square paid for that

that flight so it was just one trip for one-up, and that was still putting my case together. Okay, you go right ahead. Mega Man 9 is also great, and Bionicamando rearmed

was a fantastic remake of one of my favorite games of all time. The one tragedy I see here is Burnout Paradise, which I love. It was the first racing game I cared about in the while, and it was just like, why can't you just do that again? No one let them do that again. I just don't understand why.

That was probably the best one in the series, right? Or at least was to me. People love revenge a lot, but I feel like this is a really good version of whatever you want to call this. You have the purists who don't like the open world stuff. But yeah, no, I did enjoy that quite a bit as well. And, well, I think the bright side bob would kind of be

that, you know, a lot of, there's a lot of other open world racing games. Yeah, now there is. Like, no, Forza or, what's the one I'm thinking of? Yeah, Horizon. Horizon, okay. No, yeah, that's really good, but it's not exactly burnout. And so I understand that, yeah, those exact mechanics would be good

to have again. So, Fallout 3 was 2008. Oh, my lord. You forgot two fallouts, Jeremy? I know. I'm just biased against it. That's actually the first fallout I played ever. I never tried the PC ones.

It's a lot of people first. Yeah, sure. And there was a lot of backlash, but I loved it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, if they'll put those on Switch, I'll play them. I keep meaning to play them. But as with so many things, who has time for that? Especially those games.

You just need, like, 80 hours? I'm playing Switch. I'm playing Skyrim on the Switch. Yeah, I can't wait until I'm done with my current review slate, so I can play that for another 150. 30 hours and not finish it. A bunch of people wrote in, I said, you know, what was your favorite, 98, 2008, 2008, 2008, 2008. I don't think a lot of people, or if anyone said 78, but David Daly-Rimple says,

1998, 1988, I didn't get my N.EAS until 89, but lots of 88 games would become favorites. Mario 2. The original, let's see, Blades of Steel, Contra, double dragon. 1998, I think I played fewer games this year than for most of my teens. We became a blended family this year, so there was greater competition for the TV. I ended up reading and writing a lot, but my brother, stepbrother, and I played a fair bit of WCWNW over revenge for N-64, and I would eventually become a big man of Stargraph. StarCraft, Grim Vandango, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Ocarina

of Time. 2008, I spent the first nine months in a nine-to-five job, but we went back to school in the fall, drastically cutting my playtime. I enjoyed Innocent Life, the futuristic harvest moon, persona 3 fess, Smash Brothers Brawl, Mario Kart Wee, The World Ends with You, Valkyria Chronicles, Civ Rev, rock band 2, Mega Man 9, Final 3,

and I was deeply disappointed by Speed Racer, Wii music, guitar, hero, world tour, and Castlevania Order of Ecclesia. I also had lots of one-up podcast to to listen to during my game. That was the real winner of 19, or 2008, was one-up podcasts. Yeah, all right.

Silver I was 10 years ago. Can you believe it? It was a Wii. Was it originally a Wii game? Was it called Sybarian? I believe it was like an Xbox arcade game or whatever. There was a civilization game on Wii, though. Yeah.

But it was maybe simplified. I don't know, because Wii was originally called Revolution. So I always associated that game with Wii in my mind, which is probably stupid of me. Oh, well. Zach Walden says, while 1998 will forever be remembered as the year of Ocarine of Time Benjou, Kazui Half-Life and others, I'll always remember it for Body Harvest. The proto open-world game made by the studio that would

go on to make GTA was the coolest thing in the world to 9-year-old me. It's not a very good game, but something about it just spoke to me. I found out years later when I got into Earth Defense Force that Body Harvest was just the next step in my love affair with killing giant bugs started by Starship Troopers the year

prior. Tavis Nickerson says 1998 was the best year for gaming growing up. For Christmas that year, I got both got both Metal Gear Solid and Xenogers when my friend got Aquarine of Time. As a 15-year-old who was reliant on birthdays and Christmas for new games,

this was a banner year. Adam Ismail also picks out in 1998. When I think of 1998, one formative gaming memory comes to mind. I was really little at the time, just five years old. But if there were two things I loved as a kid,

it was cars and games. Grand Tarismo released that year. My brother sold our copy of Yoshi's story to get it, which really upset me. I was five. I didn't know any better. I picked up this racing sim it was way too hard for any small child to play properly.

Although I struggled to even stay on the track, it didn't matter. I spent hours browsing the dealerships, learning about rare models I'd never seen before. It only deepened my passion and knowledge of the auto industry. Today, looking back on what polyphony achieved on the humble PS1, it's pretty incredible. Although it looks really poor by today's standards, the driving mechanics are timeless,

and I can still go back and have a blast for the original GT to this day. So, yeah, we didn't really talk about that because we're not big racing fans. No, but that was a huge game. Yeah, I was thinking about it before coming in today, and I was going to say, like, yeah, the graphics definitely didn't hold up, but I think the physics modeled really did. But the graphics at the time were just like mind-blown. Yeah. And it launched with the Dual Shock, correct? The Grand Trees had no launch. No, that was an escape, wasn't it?

No, it was. It was an early marketing thing with Dual Shock. Hmm, I didn't remember that. I remember being one of the first Dual Shock games, like it will vibrate from both sides. Yeah. James Hancock says, 1998 felt like a changing the guard. at least on PC. We saw the last of the great LucasArts adventure games

with the still great Grim Fandango. And in Half-Life, we saw the dawn of the cinematic first-person shooter, which would dominate gaming for the next 20 years. The commercial failure of Grim Fandango, alongside the enormous success of Half-Life, really showed us where PC gaming was headed. I wonder what 2018 game will define the next 20 years. I'm not ready to think about that.

Jerry Radanong says, Fall Out 3 from 2008 will forever stick in my mind. I had long awaited to the triumphant return of fallout. I'd already saved the world in Fallout 1 and 2. I've also effed the world by killing everyone and everything in sight. And then there was nothing for a long time. Did follow tactics even count? No.

In 2008, in the midst of subprime loans, hope makes a comeback. Let's see. Brian Pitt says 2008 was around the height of the PC gaming as dying wave, but I never noticed. My wife and I were both wrapped up in playing World of Warcraft and eerily awaiting Wrath of the Litch King's release at the end of the year. In the summer of 2008, we had moved to Japan to teach English and lived in a small town in the mountains outside Hiroshima City. We didn't speak Japanese very well at that point,

hadn't many friends who lived nearby. So World of Warcraft was a way for us to keep in touch with our friends back in America and the other friends around the world that we had made through the game. It kept us social and connected. We haven't played wow in years at this point, but 2008, Wow and Japan are intimately linked in my mind. Interesting.

And remembering the frogs croaking in the rice fields outside, while my wife and I killed bosses in Karazahn and Tempest Keep, always brings a smile to my face. Let's see. C.J. Midica says, which year was better? Don't make me choose. We got our N.S. in 1988, and of course, that changed everything. But I remember Thanksgiving weekend of 98 when my brother and I were switching between

the N64 for Ocarina for Ocarina for Time and the PC. Whoa, here's one. PC for Final Fantasy 7. We didn't have a PlayStation, so that release was a gods. At the time my brother and I were saying it doesn't get any better at this. Two decades later, I think we're still right. Just a couple more.

2008 is a great year for me, says Javier Juarez. That is the year I went all portable, good man. Space Invaders Extreme, The World Ends with You, Dragon Quest 5, Rhythm Heaven, I even bought Blue Dragon Plus. They started releasing the Dragon Ball Origin games. By December for my birthday, my wife got me Castlevania Order of a Cleggia. I also got a copy of Corg DS10 by the end of that year. also before 2009, the best

Chrono Trigger version was released. We also got two human for Xbox 360. Nice. No, no. And Spore. I can recall life memories through video games the way most people recall memories through their usual five senses. And 1998 has to be one of the most potent years in my brain.

Specifically, I remember spending every minute of my limited sessions on dial-up internet searching for any new info or screenshots of Zelda 64. Yeah. So that's another one for you. And finally, Aaron Curran says, Best Year for Gaming, ending in an 8. I don't know what I'd say is the best year for gaming out of what the best year for gaming out of that set is, but I think the most significant one for us now is probably 1998.

You see, the two gaming companies most responsible for my current gaming habits started out on their current course with games that came out in this year. On the PC, a little company called Valve was making their debut release with a revolutionary half-life and would use this success to eventually become the primary means of game distribution for me. On the other hand, Nintendo was revolutionizing game design with one of the most influential 3D games of all time, Ocarina of Time, which I think has a legacy even longer lasting

than Nintendo's other revolutionary 3D games given its open world and quest structure. Most open world games can trace their heritage to it almost directly, or at least with GTA 3 as a major intermediate step. I'm sort of lose my ability to read. Even now I'd say my most played's game of 2017 is this year's follow-up to that franchise, the utterly brilliant and massive Breath of the Wild.

Yeah. So, those who know me know, I play much more Mario than Zelda. So 1988's release of Mario 3 would make that year more significant to me. But I disagree with that idea. Mario didn't even come out into the U.S. until a few years later. So while there was plenty of hype and excitement for what looked like a very revolutionary game, it was difficult to learn any coherent design decisions from into the West.

And I hold that the controversial, I hold the controversial opinion that Mario 3, while revolutionary in its own right, established a formula that wasn't mastered until the release a few years later of Super Mario World and perfected in the vastly underrated new Super Mario Brothers, you. There we go.

Let's not talk about that. I saved that for it. I did not actually deliberately save that the best for last. It's his alias. Also 2008 was the first year one-up didn't hire me, and they're still paying for it. Damn. I could have been the Greg Miller that place.

You guys didn't invest in bonds. We should have pivoted to Bob. Yes, that's a good option for everybody. All right. So thanks everyone for writing in. I think, I don't know, I feel like the consensus there was 1998 changed everything. Are we good with that? I think I am.

I guess. After talking about it, I'm really impressed by how much great stuff came out in 2008. But I really do feel like that was iterative. There wasn't a whole lot aside from maybe Left for Dead that really said, This is new. This is the future direction of video games in 2008. As opposed to 98, like everything, it just feels like we're still feeling those ripples. I think in retrospect, 2017 will be looked at as being nearly as influential as 1998,

just in terms of how big games had to change to stay alive, like Resident Evil and Zelda, and all things like Assassin's Creed are still sticking to their roots and looking very ancient in comparison to the other games that are changing. So I feel like in 10 years, we will look back at this. year, I'm in 2017 now, by the way, as a similarly big year for just the changing world of games. I don't know if you guys agree with me. I think I'm okay with that. I think I am too, yeah. And about 1998, one thing we didn't even discuss in terms of Starcraft and the influence is competitive gaming. It's professional gaming. Yeah, yeah. You know, that was really the first

game that you had professional teams. It was mostly in Korea at that time, but even still, that was sort of the dawn of that. So another thing about 98. Yep. So any final thoughts before we wrap this episode up? Nah. Okay. Well, that's it then. 1998, still the reigning king and champion.

Until 10 years from now when we look back at 2017. Thanks everyone for, like I said, writing in. Thanks everyone for listening. Thanks, you guys, for sharing your thoughts and anecdotes and perspectives and memories and video game ideas. So this has been Retronauts that you've been listening to. I'm Jeremy Parrish. Retronauts, of course, is a podcast that appears on the internet every week. You can find it on iTunes, on the podcast one app, and other

places where podcasts appear. It's everywhere. You can also go to retronauts.com, a website where reviews, or not reviews, news, and announcements are posted to say, hey, a new podcast is out. And there's other stuff like interviews and articles and reviews. It's great. You should read it. You just said not reviews. Oh, yeah. Damn it. And then you can find me on Twitter as GameSpite. I'm complaining about politics and making dad jokes.

It's a strange and sort of confusing schick, but that's what I'm going with. Anyway, and Retronauts, of course, is on Facebook and Twitter and so forth. Just look for us on the Internet. You'll find us. Bob, tell us about yourself. What about the Patreon? What do you tell us? I have two patrons to shill for.

I can't do both. That's a mouthful. All right. So Retronauts has a Patreon, by the way. For just $3 a month, you can get every episode a week ahead of time, ad free, and at a higher bit rate. So if you don't like the ads and some people don't, that's a way to get the ideal version of Retronauts every week. And I am Bob Mackey, by the way. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo.

My other podcast is Talking Simpsons every Wednesday on the Lasertime podcast network. We're doing a chronological exploration of The Simpsons. By the time you hear this, we should be in season seven, I'm guessing, or at the end of six. And we also have a Patreon. That's patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. At this point, we have done all of the series The Critic, all 23 episodes of that, using the Talking Simpsons approach. And we'll be doing another series soon. Maybe Futurama, maybe King of the Hill, maybe Baby Blues.

That will never happen, by the way. But please go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. There's like dozens of bonus podcast. If you listen to this podcast, you must like me or my voice in some way, I'm guessing. Somebody else. I mean, yes, I do. My earnest plea. Was that with the Passover?

Yes. Ray, you have to like me. Please like me, Ray. I kind of do. Okay. I don't know. It's been recorded now. Fine. Okay. Yeah. Well, I'm on Twitter as R-D-B-A-A-A-A. I also just started making games for myself. I just came out with a game on iOS right now called Blast Rush.

It's like a shoot-em-up, but you only use bombs, basically, and it's a really fun take on that sort of arcadey genre. Like I said, it's on iOS, but maybe by the time you hear this, it'll also be on Android. just taking my time with that, just improving as best I can. And I'm sure there will be some people who are listening to this now. I'm like, what, Ray? You never said you were making games. I didn't hear about this. And I would just say, well, I'm on Twitter a lot.

And, you know, I can't come to your house and tell you, but I am now. I've been tweeting those tweets, right? Yeah, thank you. Yeah, we both have. So you must listen to Bob, at least, right? So, I mean, yeah, just go ahead. Check it out. Do your part.

Thank you very much. And, yeah, that's also at blastrush.com, if you want it. Easy link. All right. Thank you. And I am at Greenspeak on Twitter. I'm trying to not tweet as much about politics these days. You might as well.

We're not up to our next. Yeah. It's a follower loser, though, you know. And I'm on a hiatus of live streaming. I'm going to get back to it. But I moved. And I moved for the first time in 25 years. So it was pretty monumental.

I'm still kind of setting up my home office but I'll come back to streaming and that is also Greenspeak on Twitch if you want to watch an old man play video games and if you're listening to Retronauts then clearly you do so thanks everyone

we'll be back as always in a week with a full episode and either this Friday or next Friday with a tiny micro episode you're going to be I don't know. Phil Collins

sucks How dare you I always wear a jacket Well, you know He has cool credentials I'm okay with Phil Collins He does. My mom

He kind of lost the plot after a while He did lose a plot but, you know. I like Land of Confusion. He was on Brian Eno albums. He has a lot of cred. Are we going? Oh, okay.

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There's a burglar in my heart. Thank you. Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates, discounts on available in all states or situations. The Mueller report. I'm Ed Donahue with an AP News Minute. President Trump was asked at the White House if special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report

should be released next week when he will be out of town. guess from what I understand that will be totally up to the Attorney General. Maine Susan Collins says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving of President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officers started shooting at a robbery suspect last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral.

his way to bear, knowing that your choices will directly affect the lives of others. The cops like Brian don't shy away from it. It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. The robbery suspect in a man, police, they acted as his lookout, have been charged with murder. I'm Ed Donahue.