Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 314: Ape Escape & The History of Game History

Episode Date: July 27, 2020

A diverse double-header this week as Jeremy Parish fields a patron request from Joseph Wawzonek to discuss Sony's Ape Escape before a chat with game archivist Leonard Herman about the history of chronicling game history. Art: John Pading.

You're listening to Retronauts, a part of the Greenlit Podcast Network, a collective of creator-owned and fully independent podcasts, focused on pop culture and video gaming. To learn more and to catch up on all the other network shows, check out Greenlitpodcasts.com. This weekend, Retronauts, Saragetchu, I choose you. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Retronauts. I am Jeremy Parrish. And this is another remote pandemic special, another Patreon special, a topic request by one of our patrons, one with a live stream, who is here on the line

with me to talk about a series that I don't know that I can necessarily find people in my normal group, the normal retronauts group that we round up to actually hold court on these games. So it's good you're here. So please introduce yourself and tell us what is this mysterious topic that has already been given away by the title of the episode. Well, hello, I'm Joseph Woznik, and we're going to be talking about the ape escape series, which I think A lot of people, the people that play it, have a pretty fond place for it in their heart. But, you know, it's never really talked about, not extensively. So it's kind of like this, I don't want to call it a lost gem, but maybe a little bit of a forgotten one.

Yeah, it's kind of weird. It seemed like it was a really big thing for Sony in the PS1 era. And then I feel like the sequels didn't really gain that much traction. And after the third game, which was 15 years ago, believe it or not, They just kind of said, eh, we'll do some spinoffs, eh, PlayStation All-Stars, eh, I don't know. It just kind of fizzled out. It's been nearly a decade since the last ape-escaped game that I'm aware of. And that was a spinoff.

That was, you know, like a party game, which is not really where the series started. It kind of fell into ignominy and basically became a minions game, not minion. What is it? A rabid's the same thing. Yeah, rabbits, minions. What's the difference? Yeah, no. And we've been kind of endlessly teased since maybe like 2006 about an Apescape 4, but nothing's happened.

I know that Sony recently created an Apescape 4 Twitter handle or something like that, but they did similar things in like 2016, 2012, and nothing came of that either. So fingers crossed, but with how it's been kind of maybe not mishandled, but maybe mishandled is correct, how they've created this. series in the past, you know, hopefully something good will come out of it, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's another weird RPG or party game. Yeah, I mean, you know, there's always hope. It's always possible that by the time this episode comes out, we're recording it mid-May, the dead-ass center of May. It's possible, but by the time this episode comes out, there will have been an amazing

next-generation ape escape announced for PlayStation 5 to go along with shadows of Sushima or whatever it's called, you know, like really just like, let's blow out the Unreal Engine 5 and show the true power of PlayStation 5 with Ape Escape, but maybe not.

My fingers are crossed that will get a super realistic you know, super photogenic monkeys that you just chase around everywhere. From soft presakes. The hardcore that we really need. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know about that, but it does seem like maybe the series is just a little lost in history. Because the original game, when it came out, was really a technical showcase for the PlayStation 1. And I just don't feel like this is the style of game that you can use as a technical showcase in the year 2020. I think people want something different. And I mean, you look at, so this is recorded a day after Nintendo announced the latest paper Mario game, which, you know, in the way that Nintendo does a lot now, the visual style of that is extremely realistic in a stylized way. They focused, you know, on like very cartoonish characters, but they are made of realistic materials, origami and felt and things like that. So you get this

like tactile quality to the visuals. But, you know, people complain about how plain and blank the graphics are. I'm like, no, there's, there's like all this detail going on. There's lots of subtlety, but, you know, it's not a realistic craggy mountainside or something, or, you know, 20,000 million polygons in a single girl's face, like the most exquisitely rendered eyelash, more polygons in her eyelash than the original cloud strife. You know, I think people just have different metrics. And so time has kind of moved on. And ape escape, whatever it becomes in the future, if it becomes anything, I don't know. can necessarily hold the same place as the original, which was, again, very much to say like,

hey, this is, you know, kind of pushing the boundaries of what the PlayStation, original PlayStation can do visually and check it out. New controller. Wow. How about that? Yeah, I'm reminded of, you know, Nintendo's kind of design philosophy with Mario games, where in the mechanics of a Mario game are based on the controller, which works really well for them because, you know every console we get a radically new controller and so you know with Mario Galaxy you've got the Wii mode and the Nunchuk with was there even I guess there was 3D world on the Wii U that I hope I can't be blamed for forgetting that not that that really used the game pad to any sort of great extent but like Mario Odyssey

on the switch you know you've got really great motion controls and use of the HD rumble as well as that greater focus on portability but also like a home experience, whereas when I look at the PlayStation, ever since the dual shot came out, it's been the same. I know that with the PlayStation 4, they added, you know, the touch bar on it, but I, there's not many games that are, you know, using it. And I, with how inaccurate it is, I don't think I'd want to use it as a main means of controlling a game. So, you know, who knows what'll happen with the PlayStation 5, but the controller, once again, it's a, it's a video game controller all right. It's pretty similar to the Xbox 1 controller and the Stadia controller.

But it looks like Bjork. It looks like Burek, yeah. But what's also interesting is with Apescape, I think they did try to kind of continue that sort of tech demo narrative when the PlayStation move came out. There was a launch title, A Million million monkeys, I think. It's just called PlayStation Move Ape Escape, I think. It's like a rail shooter. I think there was a lot of potential to have the gadgets be used with the PlayStation move controllers, but they didn't really capitalize on that.

So who knows what'll happen at the shooting. Yeah, it's like there wasn't much that PlayStation Move Ape Escape did that you couldn't have done with like a Wii game five years earlier. Yeah, exactly. It seems, yeah, kind of like, again, this series just seems sort of. of lost at sea. Yeah, and maybe there is potential to kind of be on the cutting edge with it, but when you're following in the footsteps of like we sports and we play, I don't think that's really

going to happen. Yeah. So we kind of did this episode backward. We started with the referendum on the series future. We haven't really talked about the series itself. And, you know, as you mentioned, people who've played it generally have very fond feelings for it. And rightly so. Like, it's not my favorite game in the world, but I did enjoy the original.

And it has a lot of charm to it. I feel like the gimmick. gets in the way a little bit, but it's very exuberant and has a great personality and, you know, had enough of a place in history that Konami and Hideo Kojima

were like, wow, that is the franchise that we want to hitch our wagon to. This was before Monster Hunter. Before Monster Hunter, the biggest game ever in Japan, basically, Metal Gear was like,

hmm, ape escape. That sounds good. Let's do that one. So, yeah, there have been crossovers. Yeah, there've been crossovers with, you know, Snake and Metal Gear showing up in Ape Escape, but also Ape Escape showing up in Metal Gear Snake Eater, which is the last sort of crossover I would ever think of having, but I guess it makes sense with the Sony exclusivity.

Well, and also they are both stealth games. I mean, they are very much about sneaking up and using gadgets and using kind of weird controller configurations to perform different maneuvers. So it actually does make sense. And there's even like a funny pun in the Japanese title. It's just called Messelgear solid in English. But in Japanese, it's Messaru gear solid. Yeah, just like the Japanese title, Saru, getcha?

Well, yeah. So metal in Japanese is Metaru, and monkey is Saru. So Messaru, instead of metaru, you get this kind of, kind of layered pun. And I guess, you know, if you really want to stretch it, meh in Japanese is I. So it's like you're looking for the monkeys. So it's very clever. And then it doesn't really come through in English. But to their credit, like the Metal Gear team really just played it to the hill. Like they played it straight. It was like, Colonel, why am I hunting monkeys? And, you know, he just kind of rolled with it. Like David Hader put his heart into it.

And they just, I guess it wasn't talking to Colonel. Was it was, was missile. Missile Gear Solid, was that set in the Snake Eater timeline? Yes, it's set in the Snake Eater timeline. Okay. So I guess he wasn't talking to the Colonel Campbell. But anyway, the point is, like, they played it straight, and it was great. Like, there is that kind of wacky surrealism to Metal Gear. But that's all kind of a sidebar. The important thing is that Ape Escape itself is based around a pretty solid gameplay concept,

and the original was really designed to showcase the PlayStation dual shock controller, dual analog controller, either one. And a little bit of history there, you know, analog controls were kind of a, whoa, what a cool, neat idea back in the mid-90s, and you could buy them for PCs, but the first system to really make it a thing was the N64, which had the, you know, the weird three-prong controller, the middle prong of which had an analog stick on it. And Sony, around that time, introduced a dual analog joystick, which could be used for like flight sims and stuff.

It supports like 100 games, but it's very kind of inconsistent, and that controller was very, very expensive, and you couldn't really use it for just like standard platformers. But then they turned the original digital-only controller into the dual analog, which had a, like, it's a little different than dual shock because it doesn't have rumble, and the analog sticks are concave rather than convex. So if you play with it and you're used to the dual shock,

you're like, whoa, this is weird. What's with the little cups and the analog sticks? But then shortly after that, they were like, oh, yes, we should also put Rumble in there. So by the end of 1998, you had the dual shot controller. And the thing is, because it was introduced midway through the PlayStation's life, there weren't that many games that required it. There were games that, you know, could have Rumble features or analog features

as an option, but all of them supported. digital controls as well. So Sony was kind of leading the way here and basically saying like, hey guys, no, you need to make games exclusively for the analog control scheme and to really take advantage of the opportunities that it offers. And so they created Apiscape, which does use the dual shock dual analogs setup in a way that no game before it really had. You don't use the right stick to control the camera as would become standard. You use it to basically control kind of your weapons and your actions, which is pretty unusual. It takes a little getting used to, but it is very different and it really does kind of push the idea of, hey, this is a new interface device. And if you

really make use of it exclusively and don't shackle yourself to a digital pad, to a depad, you can do new and different things. Yeah. And I think by having, because it was the first game release that actually did require the dual shock controller i think there was this great opportunity for sony to kind of put forth this idea that like dual shock can kind of make you feel more like you're in control of your character because you know when you're playing mario for example you use the analog stick to move around but that's kind of it but you're right with ape escape since you're controlling the gadgets as well there's kind of a bit more of like a one-to-one control style there, which I think really helps with engagement with the game, but also, you know,

feeling like you're in control of a character. And it's a shame that a lot of other games haven't really done that, that we've basically relegated the right analog stick to be camera. And that's it. Yeah, it's kind of like, um, what if quop were a, uh, you know, a game you controlled with two sticks. So you move around with the left stick and you basically aim and fire off your, tools and weapons and stuff with the right stick, and that determines how you aim it. And I can't really think of a lot of other games that have done that. I know some have, but for whatever weird reason, like, it's just totally blanking on my mind right now. But I guess you could look back to Karate Champ, you know, a decade before this, or actually

a decade and a half before this in like 1984. And the original arcade game for Karate Champ had two sticks. And the way you press the sticks, like the, you know, kind of, you know, kind how they were moved in a relationship to one another, determined which karate attacks and defenses your on-screen character was using. So it wasn't just like move with the left stick back and forth and then use buttons to attack. It was like move toward, you know, your opponent and press the right stick high and you'll do a high kick or pull back on both sticks away from the opponent and you'll block and that sort of thing. So it's kind of building off that idea. but more fluidly and with much greater variety.

And in the concept, you know, in the rapper of a 3D platformer, which was, of course, all the rage in the late 90s. Like every game wanted to be a 3D platformer. Where did they go? They're coming back a little bit, you know, with a huge success of ukulele. Was it a huge success? No, I was being fissitious, but. Yeah, I think the 2D side-scroller did better than the 3D one.

Yeah, which is a shame because a certain period in the 90s is very much defined by the 3D platformer, and you're right, it's completely gone and even attempts to kind of bring it back. Maybe it's that people are older now and maybe a little more cynical and able to realize that maybe these games weren't the best thing ever, but at the same time, things like the Spiro Reignited Trilogy and Crash Insane Trilogy, I think have helped people realize that these games do still. hold up. And so this is a, you know, a means of game design that has a place in 2020s. Yeah. And, you know, as of now, there are rumors that Nintendo is bringing back Mario 64 and some of the other Mario 3D platformers on Switch. So, you know, maybe that's what it's going to take to kind of jumpstart things is Nintendo reminding kind of the most, I would say, the most receptive audience in the world that, oh, yes, this is good and fun. You enjoy it. Play these games and we'll make some more for you.

Exactly. But anyway, yeah, Ape Escape, coming from 1999, is very much a product of its time. And it is a colorful character-platform-based mascot action game in 3D. That's a lot of, that's a lot to say. But it comes from Sony Entertainment, Sony, not Sony Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment, Japan. It's, yeah, Sony Studios Japan, which, you know, they're kind of all over the place. They make a lot of stuff. And they're probably best known these days for things like Eco and more realistic games like that.

But they also, especially at this time, made a lot of kind of vibrant, colorful games, which was very much a thing of the time. You also had Blasto and a few other games around this era from Sony. You know, Parapa the Rapper. I want to say the director on, or one of the producers maybe, on Ape Escape, the original. If I'm not mistaken, yes, Takafumi Fujisawa worked on Umjammer Lammy, Parapa the Rapper. He also worked on Siren, so, you know, kind of the opposite in there. He worked on Lifeline, which was, if I'm not mistaken, like an action game.

Was that the one where you, like, had the voice control? Yes, yeah. On the PlayStation 2, where you kind of direct the girl as she goes through the game. Yep. And it doesn't work very well. Nope. And then there was Vibripple, like a game based around music, and I want to say Vibripple was like based around language somehow. I don't know.

It was strange. No, that was Moja Ribbon. Anyway, he's kind of had his hands on a wide variety of games, many of them sort of experimental. Chain dive was like a Bionic Commando style 3D game where basically you were fighting in midair and had to swing from point to point and could never try. dropped to the ground because there was no ground and you die. So he was, um, he got attached to a lot of wacky stuff. So I, I think, you know, Abyscape really kind of shows that multidiscipline tendency that Sony Studios had and has, really, um, you know, Sony Studios is also the company

that, the studio developer that made Kuma Uta, the game about the, like, training a polar bear to be an Enka singer. so yeah so it's got that kind of like unpredictable whackiness to it and it's got a great personality it's very like I said vibrant and fun it controls really well it has a kind of bouncy fluidity to it which is so important in a good 3D platformer exactly and that's largely helped out by what I've come to call the PlayStation wobble where the way that it renders polygons you know they sort of ebb and flow a little bit and it helps make everything look a little more lively and more fun and more bouncy.

And just like, it's interesting how that little quirk of the PlayStation's means of rendering graphics actually gives a lot more life to the scene and makes everything seem maybe not more real, but more responsive, especially with, you know, in Ape Escape, unlike with Mario, in Mario, you get a star, the star is there, it is stationary, you touch the star. Whereas in Ape Escape, you kind of have these literal moving goalposts as the monkeys respond to your actions and run away from you. And I think it makes it a lot more interesting and it almost feels like you're kind of outsmarting something. Not that the AI is incredibly intelligent, but the fact that it is able to actively respond to your moves and in later games even use your tools against you, I think that's something that we don't really see a lot of in games nowadays, definitely not. at the time. Yeah, you know, we mentioned the Metal Gear crossover before, but the stealth in this

is different from Metal Gear in that Metal Gear you're really just trying to evade being seen. You're trying to avoid detection and complete a task, you know, complete your mission, whereas here your mission is to capture monkeys, but you also want to avoid being seen by them before you capture them. So it's, you know, like a game of tag almost as opposed to, okay, so it's like a game of tag where you're it, as opposed to Metal Gear, where the enemies are it. So it does have like a reverse kind of flow to it, but that doesn't make the stealth any less challenging because, you know, a lot of the ways things are set up, like, you know, monkeys are kind of scripted to be in a certain place. And if they spot you, they might attack you, but they

might just run away and then you won't be able to capture them until you take off and they reset and go back to where they were. Yeah, and you've also got the different personalities for the monkeys indicated by their pants color, which kind of helps you know ahead of time. Like, okay, I'm approaching a light blue monkey. It's going to be really aware of me. So I'll actually need to crouch and hide from it. You know, it's a blue monkey. It's going to run away from me very fast. So I need to kind of understand the layout of the level. Green or a black monkey. is going to shoot me on site, which I don't necessarily want either. But then you've got, you know, a yellow monkey is kind of like the default guard in a metal gear game. You know, it's not

really a challenge or anything. It's more of an obstacle in the way that's really easy to overcome. Yeah. And, you know, you were talking earlier about the, the vibrancy and the motion. I just looked and it turns out the second producer on this game, Susumu Takatska. kind of cut his teeth at Sega as the motion capture guy for Virtua Fighter, Virtue Fighter 2 and for Fighting Vipers. So he was a guy who was very much kind of on the cutting edge, the pioneering edge of, you know, bringing 3D motion into video games and imbueing polygonal characters with a sense of life.

And it really does help it. Like obviously, this is a very different kind of game than Virtua Fighter. But, you know, you have like very lively responses in the monkeys. As you said, they all have kind of their own personalities. And it is more than just, you know, what color of pants are they wearing? Like, they'll perform different taunts at you or they'll run away and have different expressions if they see you. And, you know, on top of that, you still have that kind of Metal Gear thing where you have the alert, alert phases. In fact, actually, I think, I think this introduced alert phases before Metal Gear did.

The Metal Gear Solid came a year before this game. and you basically, like the enemies either saw you or they were curious or they were unaware of you. Whereas Metal Gear Solid 2 introduced, you know, the alert phases where enemies would, you know, be alerted, and then there would be a countdown. They'd be either like cautious or on the attack and it would take longer for them for the timer to go down. I guess, I don't know, was that in Metal Gear Solid? It's all blending together in my senility. But what I'm saying is I feel like this game was, you know, like it kind of drew from those stealth influences and then fed them back into Metal Gear.

And, you know, even before that, Sony had worked on Tenshu, which came out, I want to say in 98, and that was very much about stealth and killing as opposed to evasion or capture. So there was definitely something in the air at the time. Yeah, and I think it's pretty interesting because as we're talking about, it. I'm starting to realize you're right, apescape is a lot like Metal Gear because, you know, if you see a single monkey and you alert it, it's not the end of the world or anything. It's not going to alert other monkeys, but in a more crowded space, then it does become a problem because you've got multiple monkeys who are constantly running away from you or trying to attack you. And with the right combination of monkeys, that can be like a fatal error, just like in Metal Gear. And again, like in Metal Gear, you have a real emphasis on your equipment, your gear. I'm reluctant to call them weapons because it's a very nonviolent game. It's really meant to be sort of an all-ages thing. I mean, the entire plot, you're capturing monkeys that are wearing sirens on their heads

because a doctor accidentally turned one monkey into an evil genius and he's like trying to take over the world. You know, it's obviously not very serious, but you have all kinds of equipment as opposed to weapons. So like nets and what else do you have? There's like monkey detectors, right? Yeah, there's a radar. There's a slingshot, which includes like homing missiles and stuff. You've got the Hulu Hoop, which lets you get around really fast. But when you say homing missiles, it's not like you're going to blast the monkeys into jibs. No, no. They're like knockout gas or stuff, right? Yeah, you get like a little cartoon explosion, like a, you know, a red sphere comes out of them, but you're right, they're just knocked on, they're knocked into their butts

for a little bit, and you can go in for the catch. You're not hurting them or anything. I don't think it's even possible to knock monkeys off of edges into endless pits or anything. And in addition to the tools that you can carry around and use to help you capture monkeys as like, you know, control them, all these things are controlled, again, with your right stick. You can also get vehicles and things like that, like to go under water and so forth. So there's a real heavy emphasis, a really heavy emphasis on just gadgets and things that you really didn't see in a lot of 3D platformers. You know, they tended to be really pretty much about your characters, innate abilities, or temporary power-ups. And they tended to be more ephemeral things like, oh, now you can fly,

but only for a few minutes. Whereas this has not quite the progression of a Metroid-style game, but there is that reliance on tools and yeah so it really does put a different twist on on the 3D platformer and again you're using the right analog stick to control these tools and so it does create a little bit of additional need for additional dexterity like you don't have to be the world's most amazing gamer this is not instant you know like single frame parries and dark souls or something but it is a matter of you know like if you are swinging a net the direction you press the right stick is going to determine the angle at which you swing the net. So you need to be careful and kind of have a sense of your right hand's relationship spatially to what you see on the screen.

So it adds a little extra element of challenge. It kind of, I would say, moves away from the tendency of games of this era to autocorrect in 3D a lot for you. You know, like you look at Ocarina of Time with a Z targeting or even, a lot of first person shooters had aim correction or like a shot adjustment like i'm thinking dark forces star wars dark forces where you'd shoot at a stormtrooper and your bullet could veer like 15% away from the center of your aim to hit something you know they took a lot of liberties uh whereas this doesn't really do that it's it's very much about precision about you know being a cautious player really thinking about your approach to the monkeys and how you're going to

sneak up on, you know, a candy monkey who's perched on a rock looking out for you, how you're going to sneak up to them, and then will you be able to execute the catch and what tools will you use? So there is, you know, some sophistication underneath the kind of bubbly plastic surface of this game. And yeah, I feel like it deserves another chance. I feel like people are more sophisticated now. Gamers are more sophisticated. And I feel like the mechanics here would probably go over pretty well. Yeah, and I've shown Ape Escape the whole series to friends of mine who never grew up with it. They were Nintendo kids. And they've also found, like, the controls are really intuitive in a way that other platformers simply aren't. And, you know, it's just, it's very

fun to move your character and to interact with the world in a way that I don't think you get with a lot of other games. I think, again, because of that sort of one-to-one relation that you have. It's kind of like when you're playing Wii sports and you swing your baseball bat and you hit the baseball and it just feels good because the character on the screen is doing exactly what you're doing. Here, if I aim my net, it goes exactly where I'm aiming instead of going in the general vicinity of something. Right. So, yeah, there's something to be said for that level of precision in a sort of all ages platform action game. And I think, you know, maybe if I seem to remember, people tended to be kind of frustrated by it. And I just feel like people are more comfortable with dual analog controllers now. So a big part of this game was kind of getting over that initial hump of introduction.

to a new gameplay paradigm, basically, like a new interface concept. And now that that's just baked into video games, I feel like it would be a lot more intuitive. But on the other hand, if that's true, like why didn't Aposcape 2 and 3 just saw like Gangbusters? I think part of it has to do with the fact that by the time you have those releases on the PlayStation 2,

you've seen other games, especially first-person shooters, which are already using the other analog stick as a means of aiming the camera and I think maybe for some people that's more intuitive in a way and so kind of unlearning that knowledge of my right analog stick is my camera and instead oh my right analog stick

does the same thing that maybe the trigger or shoulder buttons would do in another game I think there's that weird kind of backwards barrier for some people because there aren't games that control like Ape Escape. Apiscape is very unique in that regard. So if it was your first dual-shot game, then that kind of set the standard for you. You kind of just got it. Whereas if it's something that you played later on in life, after playing many other games at the same time, it's just more difficult to kind of get into that headspace. Actually, let me ask, what did the

sequels bring to the series? I haven't really spent much time with two or three. So I'm part of the problem here, I realize, but I really don't know what those games represented. Aside from just like, hey, now you know what a dual shot controller is. Here is a cute, colorful game. Please try to love it even though you just played Grand Theft Auto 3 and everything has changed now. Well, as I was revisiting the series, going from Apescape 1 to Apescape 2 in particular, it's a very drastic jump for a thing that I didn't really expect. When you play Ape Escape, I don't know if you've experience this, but while there is that direct control, it's a little bit off. It's not as immediate as you might want, whereas with Apiscape 2 and Apiscape 3, your movement is a lot more

fluid, and you've got more moves with your gadgets that make it easier to kind of correct for those mistakes. I'm not sure if it's an Apiscape 2, but an Apescape 3, let's say I swing with my net and I miss. I can then move the stick to the side, and I'll do kind of like a side sweep, and it's such a small thing, but it adds a lot to the gameplay, and it just makes it a lot easier to go back to. Like, Ape Escape 1 isn't really a game that I look forward to replaying just because of those control quirks. So it has like canned animations, basically? I guess, but even things like the run cycle, in Apescape 1, Spike kind of, he walks like a Charlie Brown or a Peanats character, you know, it's a very stilted walk cycle, whereas in the other games,

it's a lot more fluid, and it's more immediate, and you're faster, which is very helpful when you're trying to catch certain monkeys. But you've also got an Ape Escape 2, which I think is kind of the black sheep of the series, but apparently it's most people's favorite. You've got the addition of Pippochi, which is a little baby angel monkey that is a little baby angel monkey that is with you for most of the game. And he acts as kind of a bit of a handicap, I guess, if you will. If you fall in a pit, he'll save you. If you don't quite make a jump, he'll help you make it.

If you go down, he'll give you more cookies so that you don't lose a life. And then in Ape Escape 3, you've got the introduction of the morph system, which gives you these different kind of anime archetypes, which give you new ability. so you can turn into a knight and you have a magic spell that you can cast but also a shield or you become a cowboy and you've got little pop guns and you're able to shoot kind of a projectile net things like that but Ape Escape 2 in particular you've got a couple new gadgets but not it's not a huge departure from the series well the series of one up to that point so it kind of sounds like two was a pretty significant leap forward in terms of

playability, but they didn't really have a lot of new things to say with the game necessarily? No, not really. You've got some new gadgets. I'm trying to think one of them is kind of like an extending arm like an ultra hand. Yes, exactly, the ultra hand, which acts as like a little punching glove that you can use to hit the monkeys, but it doesn't really do anything that your stun club couldn't do already. I think you use it for a couple of buttons maybe,

but why did that have to be there? Why couldn't it have just been the stun club still? Whereas in Apescape 3, you don't have any new gadgets. It's all about these new morphs, which some of them are in the same boat as the ultra-hand kind of thing, where the Kung Fu morph, you use it to punch a button with a dragon on it, and that's it. But then some of them are at least more interesting. They give you new means of moving around or of capturing monkeys or of maneuvering these different situations, some of which are set up, but some of which you're able to kind of craft and maneuver on your own. All right. So there are some differences between the various games, but it doesn't explain why the series just kind of went away after 2005 and Ape Escape

3. And I guess by win away, I mean they stopped. making platformers and just said, hey, here's some party games, here's, you know, a minigame collection. You had like Ape Escape Academy. And I guess, you know, in fairness, they did try to bring the series back and try to give it new life by taking it to PSP.

I remember Ape Escape on the Move, a remake of the original game, was a PSP launch window title. Yeah, Ape Escape on the loose. Oh, on the loose, okay. It was at launch, but

as I'm sure you'll remember, with the PSP, it has one analog nub, not two. And so you lose a lot of the charm of ape escape when instead of having that stick, wow, direct movement, direct action. Instead, you push the face button and it does it in the general vicinity of where you're facing. And so you take ape escape and you make it completely unremarkable by taking away, I think, the thing that makes it so great and when I play on the loose it's like I might as well go play Mario yes you just summed up my review of the game for oneup.com I basically said you know this game was designed to show off the dual analog stick so why are they using it as a launch title to showcase a platform that

doesn't have dual analog controls it's just highlighting what they didn't include in the PSP, even though everyone was like, why doesn't this have two sticks? It should. So yeah, a huge, huge mistake. But they did bring a bunch of the games to PSP. And I don't know that necessarily found any more traction there. But it seems like Ape Escape was just kind of like the property that they rolled out from time to time when they had like, hey, we want to dabble in this genre or make use of this tech. So that's what happened was, uh, They trotted out Ape Escape and worked it into something else. But none of those things were classic platformers.

Yeah, it's a lot like Fantastic Four, where we only get a movie every once in a while to, you know, keep the property and keep using it so that they can put it back on the shelf for a couple of years, only to then trot it out a little while later and disappoint us again. Huh, that's an interesting comparison. and I would not have thought to have compared Apeliscape to Fantastic Four. But sure, yes, I agree. Fantastic Four deserves better by God. Yeah. So anyway, are there any of the spinoffs that you actually love? Like, are there, any that you go back to? Or are they just kind of like, oh, that, that exists? I wouldn't say there are any that I love. There's some that I played as an adolescent. Um, ape quest comes to mind,

um, which is a spin-off RPG party game hybrid. That's a strange confluence of things. Yeah, it's not very good, and it was one of the earlier uses of, I guess you'd call them expansion passes on the PSP, where you had like these three main story routes. Each of them was like $7, and if you want the whole game, well, you've got to get all of them. But yeah, it wasn't a very good game. But as I was going back to the series and playing all of these games again, I found one that I hadn't ever experienced when I was younger, which was Ape's Pumpton Primed on the PS2, which is a party game. However, unlike Ape Academy, where you have these mini-games that have nothing to do with Ape Escape except for the Mongeys, with Pumpton Primed, you have kind of this 1V1V1 kind of free-for-all, I guess, arena style,

like Mario Kart's battle mode sort of system, where you are using the actual gadgets from Ape escape and you control the game like you do ape escape but you're presented with these really interesting scenarios that you don't get in the main series so for example you'll have a challenge where you're trying to collect coins like in super smash brothers is coin mode but you're using rc cars to maneuver around and damage and stun your opponents so that you can go and get more coins than they can. And it's not what I would have thought to do with the property, but the fact that it is still using the mechanics from the games makes it really easy to just jump into if you're familiar with the series, because I'm not learning new controls for how to do

a rhythm game or anything. I'm just playing apiscape, but against other people. Hmm. Interesting. But there are underneath that you're like, oh yes, this is it. This is what ape escape should be. They got it. They nailed it. No, I think apiscape should be apiscape and not these spinoffs. All right. So final question, if you were to bring back apiscape, if Shuhay Yoshida was like Joseph, my friend, we need you to come and save Apiscape for us, bring it back, make it a hit. What would that be? I think what it would be, it would mostly be based on Apiscape 3. So I would keep a lot of the morphs. I would get rid of kind of a lot of the redundant ones. But in Apescape 3, you go to different TV channels,

and so you get to explore these different set pieces. But I would do the same thing, but with different video games, because I think you've got a little more leeway there, but it would be in keeping with the rest of Ape Escape's kind of irreverence and quirkiness. But if I'm already catching monkeys, why not have sort of like a Pokemon parody in there? I think something like that would allow for a better exploration of the mechanics. And since they've already dabbled in so many other genres already, it would very much be in keeping with the rest of the series.

So you would be in like some sort of thinly veiled god of war parody with like a boomerang axe net that you'd throw and... Exactly. Capture monkeys. And there would be a Dark Souls level. Of course. Why wouldn't there be? Okay, that sounds interesting. Yeah, I could see that. It would give them the chance to dabble in a few different gameplay styles, maybe incorporate some of those varied mechanics, and do that kind of pop culture parody that they love so much. I remember, wasn't there like a monkey like from outer space or in a UFO or something named Mulder? They did a lot of stuff like that.

Yeah, there are countless pop culture references in Apescape. Yeah, at this point, I feel like, you know, in 20 years, video games have matured a lot and kind of develop their own vocabulary and develop their own culture. So there is space for that. I like this idea. You need to write to Mr. Yoshida and say, dude, I got it. I'm going to save Avescape for you. You didn't know you needed this, but you do. And I've got it.

I'm sure the only thing they've needed this whole time was N-I-D-As person. Yes, that's it. But those are so rare. There's so few of them in the world. All right. Well, I think that's probably, like, I can't think of anything more to say about Apiscape. Can you? No, not entirely, except for maybe the soundtracks.

Okay, yeah. Yeah, with Apiscape 1, what I find baffling is that they brought in a drum and bass producer. They brought in Sauchi Tarada, who, you know, is kind of one of the pioneers of Japanese house music and jungle music and I think his touch lends a lot to the sound design because it doesn't sound like video game music. When I play Mario and I listen to Mario music, it's Mario music. Whereas when I play Ape Escape and I listen to the soundtrack, it's the sort of thing that I would be listening to while I'm working or something or while I'm reading a book. And it just sounds like regular music and I think that that's really valuable. I was reading a little bit about

this and the director or one of the producers for Apescape, Masamichi Seki, apparently heard Suichi Tarada's sort of breakout album Sumo Jungle, which is a mix of drum and bass and jungle with traditional Japanese music and he was so sort of taken with it that he offered Tarada the opportunity to make the soundtrack and I think he did a pretty bank of job and then it kind of like LSD Dream emulator uh which was composed by Osamu Sato the music just stands up on its own and it doesn't seem it's not necessarily connected to the gameplay experience but it definitely makes it a lot better in a way that you know I don't think you get with other games And then with Aip Escape 2, they decided to change composers entirely.

They brought in Kochi Hayama, who most famously did the soundtrack for Chowiniki. And then it's not bad music, but it goes back to sounding like video game music. But thankfully, they kind of saw the light, I suppose. And with ApeScape 3, you've got Suuichi Tarada back again, and he starts repurposing some of his previous work. outside of the video game sphere and repurposes it for the video game space in a way that I feel is it's very unique to the Apescape experience

and it produced some soundtracks that I am still listening to regularly. You know, I've never really paid that much attention to the series' music, but yeah, that was a core strength of Sony during the PS1 days as they really leveraged their connection with music roots. I mean, PS1

kind of emerged from their relationship with Nintendo where they made a sound chip for the Super NES, and they had Sony records, so they had access to this huge stable of composers and musicians. So, yeah,

you had games like Parapa the Rapper, and you had games like Tenchew, which I mentioned earlier, and those just had amazing soundtracks, like nothing else in gaming. And, yeah, this was, I think it's easy to kind of disregard it because it's so cutesy.

But as you mentioned it, Yeah, like, it didn't have a cutie style. It was very sort of rhythmic and kind of, you know, like a groove as opposed to, oh, but don't, hey, let's go catch some monkeys. Like, you didn't get that, like, calliopee feel to it. And, you know, I think people kind of associate that, like, oh, it's going to sound like Mario music. And it took a long time for Mario music to stop sounding like Mario music and become

grandiose. Like, hey, now it's orchestrated. Now, you know, it's like ragtime. But that took a while to get there. and Sony was way ahead of Nintendo and really everyone in that regard. So, yeah, good call. Yeah, I think that's largely helped by having the CD format, whereas when you listen to Banja Kuzzi soundtrack, it's very good.

Grant Kirk Hope did a very good job, but it's not CD quality. Right. Well, that has a lot to do with the shortcomings of the N64 and the fact that it didn't have a sound processor whatsoever. But that's a conversation for a different time. time. But yes, there will be lots of music edited into this episode. So people will have kind of a living demonstration of the music by the time they've heard all this. So that's good. They can hear us now talking and say, ah, yes, they are wise recognizing this music and the quality

that we have just heard. So hopefully everyone has enjoyed this conversation about a largely overlooked little corner of video gaming. Joseph, thank you for suggesting it and for coming on the show to give kind of a fan's eye perspective, a knowledgeable perspective on the Aposcape series. I appreciate it. So with that said, where can people find you on the internet? Do you have anything that people can read or follow you on social media or what's the deal? I would prefer to be like a ghost in the wind and remain as anonymous as possible. Well, you've already told us your name. So anonymity only goes so far. But yeah, if you don't want to pimp anything or push any work, that's cool.

too. No, I don't. But thank you very much for having me. Yeah, well, thank you very much for supporting Retronauts and for, again, helping me to create content for everyone's enjoyment. So no one knows where you can find Joseph on the internet, but Retronauts you can find at patreon.com slash retronauts. And I don't know if there are any openings right now, but if you would like to be on an episode, there is a tier on Patreon called One of the Lifestream. And you can angle in there and be here on the show talking about your favorite game or a game that you absolutely hate. I don't care. Either way, it's going to be an interesting conversation. So again, thanks, Joseph. And we'll be back after this break with another topic. I don't know

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Hello. He's a man of many words, although you may not believe it based on his intro. But, yeah, Lynn has been writing about video game history for as long as I've cared about video game history. Right. I wrote the first book on video game history back in 1994. That was Phoenix, The Fallen Rise of Home Video Games. and I've been doing it ever since. So next year it will be 25 years since the first edition came out.

Yeah. So, you know, back in the 90s, people weren't really too concerned with where video games had been. They were mostly focused on, entirely focused on really on where they were going. And even, you know, what was available at the time was not enough. There had to be more. We had to get polygons and get better graphics. And, you know, you had Next Generation magazine. So, you know, a book focused entirely on.

everything that had come before since the 60s and 70s. I don't know, even before that, it's been a while since I've read Phoenix. How far back do you go with your research? Well, the newest edition goes back to about 1947. Okay. With the mainframe computers, the Tic Tacito on the mainframe computer. The first edition went back to the abacus, but a publisher who was interested in the book said take out the computer history chapter because the book doesn't cover computer games.

so I followed their advice. Yeah, but I really feel like you sort of paved the way for shows like this. I'm sure eventually people would have started saying, oh, where did this video game come from? And, you know, around the time that you published your book, I was starting to kind of step back and say, well, you know, I have a Super Nintendo, and eventually I'm going to get a Nintendo project reality

and maybe a PlayStation. But those old NES games, are actually still kind of fun. Like, I got rid of my NES, but I kind of regret it. I kind of want to go back and play some of those games. And so that kind of got me started thinking about, you know, what had been left behind and where, you know, the sequels that we were playing, where they came from, Donkey Kong Country was coming out.

And they made me think about, you know, playing Donkey Kong in the arcades. So I feel like you were just kind of a few steps ahead there and already kind of made the connections and said, well, let's talk about that. So, well, I do have a column in the magazine, old school, gamer magazine. and it's called The Game Scholar, which was a name that Electronic Gaming Monthly Magazine gave me back in around 2002. But I start, a subtitle of the column is now called, calls me the father of gaming history. Of course, people said to me, well, you did start all this. All these shows came on the back of that.

So I said, well, I'll run with that. But I wrote a book that wasn't available at the time. it was something I was interested in. There were some books out that had a chapter on video game history, but it was very brief, and I wanted more. And at that time, there was no internet like we have now. You couldn't find this information anywhere unless you really, really dug for it. The book itself, I never planned to write a history book on video games.

I've always been a collector when I was a kid, matchbox cars, comic books. and when I became an adult that carried over into that when I got my first Atari VCS I had to buy every single game for it And that was this early on in the VCS's life or was it second year Okay So there was still that was still a reasonable goal like buying all the games It wasn't like there were 300 of them

I got mine in May 1979 Okay And within a year There were several dozen out And so I went to school for writing I've always been a writer And so I said, there's so many games, I said, why don't I write a guide to all these different games? So people know the difference between them.

So I wrote a book. I started writing a book called ABC to the VCS, which was a directory to all the games that are out for the Atari VCS at the time. And I started writing that book around 1982. The problem with a book like that is it never ends. So I think I'm finished, but there's more games coming out. So I had to start attending CES, Consumer Electronics shows. to see what was coming out. I started acquiring the press kits

for all the advanced games and stuff. And then the crash came in 1984, well, 1983, but 1984 is when everything started really falling apart. And I knew that there was going to be no interest in this book at all anymore. So I killed the book.

And 1985, the NES came out. So I'm thinking, well, maybe I should do ABC to the NES. But I just couldn't. I wasn't. Phantom Nintendo for one. And I just couldn't stomach getting all the games for the system. So I abandoned that idea. But I still wanted to write a book about video games. I'm thinking, well, what can I write about? And then I think I have all this information for, you know, I have books that have game history in them. I have all these press kits. Why don't I write a book about the history of video games? Because one doesn't exist. So around 1987, I started that. And initially, I was going to write a chapter by chapter was going to be about different companies. Like the first chapter would be about Atari.

Second chapter would be about Mattel. The third chapter would be about Nintendo. And the problem with that was a lot of the chapters were beginning to overlap. There was information that would be in one chapter would also be another chapter. And I said, this isn't going to work. And that's when I came up to the idea to do a chronological approach to it. So my book goes year by year from the beginning to, what's current. Back then it was, the book went up to 1992, I believe. My plan was for the book to be

published in 1992, which would have been the 20th anniversary of Pong and The Odyssey. Unfortunately, the publishers didn't see the same, didn't have the same vision I had. I have rejection slips from companies saying, the industry's too new. It was only 20 years old. There's really too new to of history. And so, and I must have four or five ejection slips. So the book was done and I didn't know what to do with it at that time because no publisher was interested in it. And it was a fanzine at a time called the 2600 connection, which covered Tari 2600 games. So I wrote a letter to them and I mentioned my books, ABC, the VCS and Phoenix. And the response to that was overwhelming. people say, well, why don't, I want to read this book. I want to read this book. So I decided to

Xerox copies of it. Very small microscopic print. The book was in portrait mode, a page on each side, folded over and stapled. And I made 50 copies of that. And I started sending it out to fanzines and stuff. But then EGM 2 came out. That was, uh, EGM was doing so well they decided to have a magazine to come out two weeks after the regular magazines that are basically a it was like a bi-weekly publication yeah yeah i was going to say bi-monthly but that's the every other one semi-monthly yeah so every two weeks they had a magazine come out and in the second issue uh chris johnson who did have a fanzine out he got a job with eGM and he wrote a review of phoenix and it was a great review and i decided i cannot sell this little paperback thing i was

printing. And then I learned about self-publishing. So I went ahead, created my own company, Relenta Press, and self-published the book. And that's the story of the first edition. Okay. I didn't realize Rolinta Press was just you. I have Phoenix, like the first edition with the Rolinta Press. And I think the yellow cover with red text, yeah. So maybe that's the second edition. I don't know. No, that's the second one with the TV screen on it. Yes, that's my great artwork. That shows how talented I am. The first one just said Phoenix. and nothing else. Right.

But yeah, I mean, I saw that. And that kind of, that sparked something for me because I was like, well, I've never heard of Relenta Press. So it must be like, you know, a small vanity press. Well, the funny thing about that is when I was trying to find a publisher, I saw a publisher called Digital Press, which was in northern New Jersey, which is where I am. I said, they'd be perfect. I didn't know it was a fanzines.

Right. Yeah, it was a big name for a small organization. But Relenta Press is a combination. of my name oh my son's name Ronnie that's where the RO comes from okay the Len is me L-E-N and then my wife's name is Tamar so that's where the T-A came from and I have a second son Gregory who wasn't born into two years later so he wasn't included sorry Greg So it's interesting that eventually ABC to the VCS did make it out. Right.

I have a copy of that, and I didn't realize it dates all the way back to 1982 in some conceptual form. It goes back to 1982. And again, the same people who read 2600 connection asked for that, too. So that one I did come out with this folded paperback with this. It should come with a magnifying glass, but it didn't. And that came out in... It's just like reading sports statistics in the paper. So that came out in 1995, and then in 2005, I did a second edition, which was a slick, you know,

Yeah, that's the one I have, yeah. Yeah, there is one before that. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. So there's even more history here than I realized. But it, you know, kind of what you're talking about with the video game market crash and everything, that does kind of line up with, you know, just the way things sort of generally float.

I feel like that was a huge setback for anything. connected to the console industry in America. But then it was only America, too. Right, but just in America, yeah, yeah. We're pretty good about recognizing that on the show, I think. We know there's more to the world than just the U.S. console market. But it's interesting that you didn't like Nintendo. Is that just something that was at the time, or do you still kind of shy away from Nintendo?

I just felt that they were bullies with their, you know, everyone had to buy the manufacturer, the gaming developers, had to go to Nintendo, the management. manufactured cartridges cartridges, and they're so stringent about how many gains are going to produce, and I just didn't like that. So even at the time, you were aware of those stipulations on the market. Okay. And I don't think, maybe in the beginning their purpose

was to get, you know, keep the bad stuff off, but they never followed that. Yeah, I mean, yeah. In theory, it's good. Although, if you look at the Famicom market in Japan, there was a lot of absolute crap that could have made it over here and didn't.

So I think at the beginning, at least, there was definitely a filter happening and even though some of those early third party and first party games are kind of like they were still a lot better than some of the swill that was floating around in the Japanese market at the time so I think that was okay

but now at this point that's pretty much the standard model like they what they did was kind of standardized so for better or for worse and that's just kind of I guess how the business works I never even gotten any yes back then I mean I was a big huge at fan. So I had the 2,600. I got the 7,800. Never got a 5200. I had the Atari 800 computer,

which was what I wrote both books on. In fact, I bought Atari 800 for word processing. I figure if I'm writing a book about Atari, it should be on an Atari 800 or Atari system. Yeah, yeah. I knew nothing about computers then. Eventually, I taught myself basic and became a programmer after that. So I used the Atari word processor, which was this real, page was a file. And then years later, they came out with Atari Writer, which was a cartridge that went to the system. So I had to convert all the files from Atari Word processor into Atari Writer. So every page was a file had to be imported. And then finally, I had a file. Then when I entered the PC age, I had to find a way how to get my Atari files onto the PC. And that was a problem. Because they use different diskette standards, right? Yeah. There was no USB in those days. No

USB. No simple plug-and-play universal solution. Nothing like that. Someone said there was why you could hook a serial cable up to one. I don't even know. But I had CompuServe. And CompuServe had an online section where you can store files. So I figured I could load all my files up to CompuServe from the 800 and then download them on to my 286 PC. But I still had to get them from Atari Writer format into text. Well, they came out with Atari Writer Plus, which was disk-based, and that had a feature to convert to text. The only problem, because it was disk-based,

you needed the disk operating system in there, too, which took up a lot of the memory that the cartridge didn't need. So all my files, when I used Atari-R-2, were... were cut. So I had to go back to Tori Writer, take every one of my files, and split them into two. Then I had to go to Tori Writer, and I loaded them onto CompuServe at a whopping 300 bits a minute or something, really slow. And then download them as speedy, 1,200 bits to the PC. This was really, really time-consuming.

It was about 300-page book and both books. But finally, I got them down and used professional. write on the PC end converter and then finally i was able to put it out and then uh word perfect came out word perfect i never understood how to use word perfect on the uh pc i i like i said i use professional right which i thought was an easy program but they they came out with uh word perfect six which was a wizzy wig and i said oh this is cool because i could see what the screens are going to look like so i converted everything into word perfect six and that's what the book was uh finally published from But if you go through the book, there's a lot of formatting mistake.

It goes to the text, the font changes from one place to another. Yeah, it's something that I feel like that was kind of the charm of dealing with tech in the old times, even though maybe at the old times, you know, back when we were younger. Like it didn't seem fun at the time, but now you look back and you're like, wow, we really accomplished a lot. making all these different connections that were never intended and figuring how to get things from one format to another and you know i've gotten into um capturing footage from of games from original hardware and that has been an ordeal to like get all everything you know to get rgb output of everything and then feed it into a common system and make sure all the

RPG rgb yeah like they're syncing up the right way and you know it's it's all the same format and everything. It's just a huge hassle. And, you know, now that we have standards like USB and HTML, we kind of take things for granted. You just plug something in and it works. But one thing I love about U.S. It's not the way it was. I love about USB is that Joe D'Cour was one of the inventors of it. Oh, yeah? And he was one of the designers of the Atari 400, 800. And those computers, you can daisy chain together. Every peripheral, you just plug in. And I remember when I went to the computer, you had these serial cable. and stuff. It just was a problem to me. So when USB came out, that was saving grace.

days, you know, the 2,600 days, were there any games that you found particularly inspiring? Or was it just kind of like a general feeling like, I need to write about these? Was there any one game you wanted to, like, evangelize? I loved Adventure when it came out. I thought, I loved Superman when that

came out. That came up before Adventure. I thought this was really, really cool because you have multiple screens. And I like logic games and those two fall into that category without being simple puzzles. And I like that. I didn't like the sports games on 2600.

And then finally, when the real sports series came out, well, now that made my book more important because since I'm talking about every game, I have a chapter on sports. And I start with home run and then go to Real Sports Baseball and Super Challenge Baseball and tell what the games are about.

I mean, ABC to VCS I'm talking about. So, yeah, some games I didn't like, but they still split out. I was telling my friend Patrick, the slot machine and I said that was like one of the most stupidest games you can get like even casino you're not playing with real money but at least you can practice your skills at blackjack where what do you get out of a slot machine you're not getting any money from it it's totally random and just pressing a button that I thought that was like one of the most useless it's like a skinner box or something like there's there's no real no purpose to it yeah interactivity to it yeah and that was one of the first games that they discontinued which I was happy you about. Yeah, so there were some pretty bad games for that. I'm sure it had great cover art, though. I'm sure it was like

this gorgeous, like, airbrushed, you know, seen of Las Vegas, yeah. Like a pretty woman in an elegant dress, like playing a slot machine or something. I can just imagine what the box art was like, but then the reality of the game, I'm sure, it was just, you know, like...

And they didn't even use the standard symbols on... I don't even remember what the symbols were in the game, but they weren't real slot machine symbols. I was a big breakout fan, and breakouts what inspired me to get to the VCS. I had a friend who worked at Crazy Eddie, which was a major electronic manufacturer in New York in the 80s, and I had a friend who worked for them, and he said I could use his discount to get a system, so I couldn't decide between the Odyssey 2 and the VCS.

And I liked The Odyssey 2 because I had the keyboard. I thought that was pretty cool but the VCS had breakout and so that sold me on it so when I bought my VCS I bought a casino because it was a limited edition who knew what that meant

a breakout and then of course it came out with combat then Super Breakout came out and I thought that was a good great game and they were pretty some pretty good game

Space Invaders was I thought was really good on the 2600 I thought the people disagree I thought a defender came out well in the 2600. I mean, of course, it's not like the real game, but it's close enough. Activision, practically everything Activision did what were great games. But the funny

thing is I bought not the flashback hardware, which I have all those, but they also came with software for the Xbox 1 and the PS4, 50 games. And I said, I could play against my kids. And I was finding that the games were pretty boring. Yeah, it's hard for. me to go back to Atari 2,600. Like I saw my friends had a 2,600, and I envied it, but we didn't actually own one. So I kind of really cut my teeth with Colico Vision and NES. ClicoVision I never got into for some reason. Clico Vision, I thought, was pretty solid. We ended up getting that because, you know, the market crash. And my parents wanted a computer for our home, so they were like, well,

we'll get a Calico Adam because it's cheaper than, you know, getting an Apple II or something or a Commodore 64 because it was on clearance. They just wanted to get it out, yeah. So that was kind of my introduction to computing at home was Klico Adam. And that was okay, but I could never get my, like, the Atari programs from magazines, you know, Atari 800 programs that I would find in magazines. Oh, yeah, well, antique and analog. They were great magazines.

Yeah, like I would type in these programs and they wouldn't work. And I was like, well, that's no good. Well, that's the thing Atari had its own subset of basic. They didn't use the pure basic language. And I found it difficult when I went to try getting a job as a basic program because I didn't know real basic. I knew the Atari Basic. And there were a lot of differences in it. Yeah, I would, you know, type in peak and poke commands without realizing, well, that's Apple II specific.

That's exactly the same thing I had. I'm not getting anything out of my Colico Adam with that. But it is, you know, kind of just a representation of how Atari Basic did use peak and poke. Oh, did it? Well, right, but I was talking about the Clico. No, but I'm saying, but regular, I don't think regular basic used peek and poker. I remember going for an interviewer, Pudential, for a basic job, and I'm talking about Pekin Pocke, I use them to put at storage areas, you know, and they're going, what's that? Right.

Old times. The good days. Yeah. So talking more about the books, how was the reception to the first volume of Phoenix? Like the, once you actually got it published. I feel like I saw it mentioned, you know, online and... Well, the reception was good, especially, I mean, EGM2, once they, you know, mentioned it. Electronic Games magazine did a full-page review on it.

All the magazines were covering it, which was great. The problem was it wasn't in stores, because it was self-published. So that was my biggest problem. But one great story I had is my brother-in-law was a graduate student at Stanford. and it was the end of the year and he had to go to his office to get something so he parked his car on the street, ran into his office he runs out and there's a guy who's walking

not looking where he's going, walking, looking down at a book and it was Phoenix. And I thought, my brother wrote that. So I heard that story, I just, wow, this is great. So it was mail order only, basically? Yeah, through, yeah, I got a PO box. So that's the way you had to get it.

So a lot of people didn't know about it. Stores did order. borders placed a lot of special orders. Okay. Barnes & Snowball, not as much. So I used to go to my PO box and there's another border order. It's great. So, but it did well.

And when I decided to the second edition, again, I didn't go for a publisher because I just liked handling everything myself. And the second edition did well, too, even though it was only two and a half more chapters. But I had pictures, so that changed things. And then the third edition, I felt the same way. You know, well, I need a publisher. It's just fun doing it myself. And the third dish, I wasn't happy with it at all. I went with a different printer.

I made the book 8.5 by 11 size because I thought this was, you know, these pictures could be bigger. And the printer I used the, it looked like they used toilet paper for the cover. All the covers folded. Plus the book was huge and unwieldy. So I wanted to get a real publisher for the fourth edition. Yeah, and the fourth edition came out last year. Is that right? The black and white one came out in December of 2016.

Right. And then the color one came out in July of 2017. Okay. And I had a publisher for that. I sent them the third edition so they know what's in it. They were interested. We signed a contract and everything. And then I start sending them chapters.

And then they turn around and says, oh, we want you to change this. We want you to change. Basically, they want me to rewrite the book from scratch. And I didn't want to do that. So then the publisher. She says, well, we have a new editor. She's a gamer. Probably she could be a gamer, but she has no game history.

So that's not going to help editing a book like this. But I quietly just kept writing the book. And when I, I wanted to get out of the contract. And it was a one-way contract. I couldn't get out of it. Only they could cancel it. So I was screwed. So when I finally finished it, I sent it to them.

And they turned around and said, we tried to tell you to change this and this and this. And sorry, we're going to have to cancel the contract. but they again they did say to get rid of the first chapter on computer history i listened to that one thing they wanted was the chapters to break them into sub chapters and with uh subtitles i thought that was a good idea i did that i don't even remember anymore the stuff that they wanted me to do that i didn't agree with and to this day even though i don't remember what they were i still don't agree with it so then i tried getting other publishers and uh i went to an educational publisher, a big educational publisher, we got past the peer review section, and they were

interested. And that's when I discovered about Create Space in Amazon. I said, well, you know, if I do through them, it definitely go on Amazon. So I told that publisher, you know, I'm going to just do it myself. And I was going to go proceed. Oh, and then what really saw me, I have a favorite mystery writer named Lawrence Block. And he's publishing books through Create's And I said to him, why do you do this? You can get any publisher you want. And he said, no, I like the convenience. I like the supplied the books right away.

They're manufactured very well. And that sold me. But then a friend of mine said, try McFarlane Press. That's the press that Brett Weiss used. And now Pat Hickey Jr. just used his, well, don't you try them? So for the hell of it, I sent them a query. And they were very interested. They want to send me a contract.

but she's worried about the amount of pictures I had whether I can use them and I can use them she wanted the name of the book changed and I agreed with that I mean Phoenix to form rise of video games really doesn't mean anything anymore especially I mean when it came out in 1994

the crash was the central point of the book we're 10 years past the crash which was 10 years past the beginning of the industry so that was the essential point sort of a natural anchor point yeah So I said, yeah, that makes sense. I'll get rid of the name. But I want to keep Phoenix in there somehow because people know that name.

And that's when I finally came up with Phoenix for the history of the video game industry. Actually, I had a contest for people to help me with the subtitle. But anyway, so they wanted me to change the name. I agreed with that. But their terms were horrible. Like Pat Hickie's book that just came out, they make very nice books. But his book is a 200-page book, and it retails for $40. Wow.

So if his book is going to retail for $40 for 200 pages, what's mine 800-page book on a cost? And I said, no one's going to pay $100 or a book. I just couldn't see that. And one thing they do is they deal a lot with libraries. I mean, they don't have books in bookstore, so that's what I want, get book and bookstores. So they don't do that, so I don't need them for that. I could do Amazon myself, but they do libraries. So we try to go into, well, can I have we do a split edition?

and you handle the library trade, and I'll handle the commercial trade. No, we have a standard contract. We don't deviate from that. So that's when I decided to go ahead and do the fourth edition on my own. Yeah, I've used CreateSpace, and there's ups and downs with it. Like yesterday, someone brought a book, one of my books, to our panel, and I looked at it and it started on page seven. They had just forgotten to publish pages one through six.

I was like, oh, I wish you had written to me about this because that's not how this is supposed to be. they'll workplace stuff, but you have to actually say, hey, I don't think this book is supposed to start on page seven. Yeah, the customer service is excellent. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's Amazon, so it's mistake prone, but they're also good about saying, whoops, we goofed. Sorry, that's on us.

So, yeah, it's pretty good. The pricing is kind of in between. It's not like as good as it could be, but it's definitely not $100 per book. So, yeah, I think that's a pretty good solution. And like you said, it is an 800-page book. So I didn't even know they actually went up that high. I thought they topped out at like 400. 828 pages.

That's the max. And that's what the book went to. Just totally coincidence, I used 828 pages. I didn't plan that. But my problem with them was for the hardcover edition. They don't do hardcover at all. And their color, they only do up to 400 pages or 450 pages. So I was trying to think, well, maybe I'll split the books in half.

But once the color one went to 860 pages, there was really no way to do it. So I had to go with Ingram, which is a book distribution. distributor. And the book's really nice to color edition, except I have to warn people now, but even though I sold practically over 100 copies of the hardcover edition, two of them fell apart. Yikes. One was mine. But it got a lot of use out of it. So I warn people, you know, just be gentle with it. Yeah, I mean, it's tough to have a book that big. Like, it's a lot of folios. They say over, they'll do over a thousand pages. I've got to get that song of ice and fire fandom in there.

Yeah, so going back to, you know, the original edition of Phoenix, you know, the original edition of Phoenix, You mentioned that at the time, there was no, you know, there was not a lot of information out there on the Internet. There was no Wikipedia. There weren't the sort of communities you have now. So what was the process of pulling together research for Phoenix? The process was, well, there were some books out since the 80s, which had a little history section in them, which wasn't always right. There was one history book, and I can't think of the name of it.

Well, I always said it was one history book for kids. but I went back to that book and there was only really one chapter on it and again it's not correct plus all the magazines I had over the years they would have some little bit history and so I had to gather one place to another I had my press kits to go by too

but basically that was it I didn't know anyone in the industry at that time or even how to contact anybody there was no internet nobody to look up so as I said I started the book in 87 and finally finished it around 92.

So you didn't do a lot of interviews or cold calls or anything like that. I mean, Steve Kent did all the interviews. Our books worked together. So, but no, I didn't interview anybody. Okay. Yeah, the only game history book I can think of or something similar to it that predates Phoenix would be Game Over by David Schiff. But that's company specific to Nintendo. Yeah, to Nintendo.

Mine's first general. right yeah it's a good source of information but it has only came out like i mean my was already finished when his came out right yeah he was he was kind of trying to jump on the uh the sort of nintendo panic around the nes parents are like oh i don't know there's this japanese system in my living room are they taking over my kids brains what's going on um so there was it was kind of writing on the coattails of that but yeah like i just you know i'm just saying like there weren't a lot of resources out there so so i'm actually the fact that you sort pulled this together from all those resources to me that that's actually really impressive like

it's it's difficult to just build something entirely by research that way you said you know you had press kits and books and things like that were you able to source new material as you were researching or was it built up mainly off just the things that you had acquired through the years it was true the things I acquired through the years I mean the early additions and there's mistakes in it like with the channel F, I couldn't find anything on the channel F. And I want to know why they changed the name from the video entertainment system to the channel F. And so I put in there that they changed it because Tari came out with the VCS and they didn't want people to confuse the issue. But I didn't know if that was correct.

I just put it out there. And then when I was researching the fourth edition, I got to fix this. But every source I came to said the same thing I said. So I didn't know if that was true or they're getting it from me. Right, the telephone effect. We finally went to Jerry Lawson, and he really didn't answer the question. He said it was a marketing decision, so that's what I went with. I mean, that's the best I can get.

There was one system that Viewmaster put out. It was like a tape system. I don't think I even knew about that one. It's in the book. Okay. But I read somewhere that it won an award from the toy manufacturers of America, and I wanted to know what award it won. Couldn't find it anywhere.

Went on the Internet. Everywhere I can't find it. I called the toy manufacturers of America, and I think the system came out in, sometime in the 90s, and their records didn't go back that far. So I just had to go in the book. It won this award. I don't know what the award was. I just said, it won an award. So, yeah, in putting together, you know, these revised editions, are you finding a lot of things like that now that there is more research available? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's like a treasure trove, things that we're not aware. Plus, the new book can change. a lot of Japanese history and European history

and just you know I go after one thing find out one thing and then I can cover more stuff it's like an archaeologist so and you still aren't getting a lot of like first party resource information for the books like interviews and that sort of thing

I still don't do interviews right okay that's an interesting approach like I find interviews really valuable what interviews is you're hearing one person's perspective and you don't know if it's if they're right or wrong and there's a certain co-founder of Vatari who told his stories for 20 years. That's true. And when his partner finally told his story, he contradicted everything.

So you're hearing in an interview that's his side and memories are faulty. And so you don't know if it's right. That's true. Yeah. I think, you know, for individual projects, interviews can be really valuable. But I guess it is kind of, you know, when you're dealing with something on the corporate level, like getting opinions. It's kind of like, you know, describing an elephant by having a lot of blind people touch it and kind of figure out like, what are we touching?

So, yeah, I can definitely see where that would be the case. So in bringing in the Japanese and European history into your book, like how has that process gone? Has that been more challenging than putting together the original edition or? No, actually it was because there's more information available now. And the hardest thing was getting all the systems. because I like to take my own pictures and stuff. So, no, the information is out there. Like I said, I just did it.

I think I have the Japanese history pretty much covered. There's still a lot of the European that's not out there yet. And if I ever do another edition, hopefully I could get, you know, find that stuff. It's just so daunting. The book is so big now. I mean, where do I go from here? Yeah, I mean, you know, as years goes by, there's only going to be more and more history to cover. But do you feel like the, you know, the material in the first edition, like, is that a pretty

rock-solid foundation at this point? There's not a lot of, you know, the basic information, like the rise of Atari and that sort of thing. The basic information is pretty correct. And every time, you know, if I find out there's something changed, I will change it. I'm not going to change something because someone told me, oh, this is wrong. I'll do the research first and change it. There is, even with the fourth edition, there is a errata page.

website for all, you know, mistakes that have been uncovered, there's mistakes in the black and white edition that were fixed in the color edition. But then the color one, there's still, I mean, I had, I had a fact checkers go over the book. I had an editor go over the book, but things still get through. I was really upset when the first review on Amazon came out for the fourth edition. And the person gave me a two-star review. And he said, well, this is wrong, this is wrong and this is wrong and turned out the early stuff it took me 10 years to write this new book and in those 10 years because I did the early stuff first and went to the a lot of stuff has been uncovered since then right I didn't know that right so he was listening to all this stuff and

some stuff I agreed with some I didn't and uh I wrote to him I did a follow up to his review and saying well this you're right this you're not right I don't agree with this turned out we became good friends now. And if I have a question now, because he, I call him this guy, a video game archaeologist, because he works in a library. He has access to information I don't have.

Old, like, play meter magazines and stuff, you know, the arcade side. So I'll go to him for information. One thing I mention is that the Odyssey, the original Odyssey came out in Japan, and he says, no, it didn't.

And I said, I think it did. And he did some research, he goes, you know, I think you're right. And no one ever found a Japanese Odyssey, but what we think happened was that Magnovox exported them to Japan and just sold them, you know, over there. No, oh, Nintendo imported the Odyssey over. That's what the story was, yeah. Interesting. So he found something to prove it. We're still not 100% sure. But it makes kind of sense because Nintendo had a piece in the original Odyssey. I don't know if you're aware of this. I did not know that.

Okay, the light gun that came, you know, you bought for The Odyssey, Nintendo made light guns that they sold since 1970. Right, yeah, with like the duck hunt and everything. Right. So Magnavox hired Nintendo to manufacture the light guns for the Odyssey, and that's how they got into video games. Okay. Interesting.

Yeah, so that actually kind of speaks to the things that make me interested in covering video game history is uncovering these connections and saying, oh, like, now I see why these things happen, it's because of this chain of events. And finding those links and

connections is always, it's very satisfying. Well, the cool thing is, because I have the original Nintendo light gun, and it's a different technology than what Magnobox because Magnobox, the gun, recognizes the light on the screen, where the Nintendo one, the target, recognizes the light,

coming from the gun. If you could follow that. Like the original Nintendo, like not the Zapper for the NEPS. No, the original hardware. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're shooting a beam. Yeah.

And the target will recognize the beam coming. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where the Magnovox, it recognizes the light on the screen, which is like the opposite. But if you take the two rifles, the one from Magnavox and the one from Nintendo, you put them up, they're identical. Same casing and everything. Exactly the same, except Magnivox has the cord to hook it up to the machine.

Huh. Okay. So, yeah, that's like a missing Lincoln video game history right there. Interesting. have you been in contact with any of the companies that you cover? Because they, a lot of them do keep, you know, archival records. Like, I don't know if they do any more because they've moved to offices a few times, but Sega of America basically had a room where they just kept everything. No, I haven't. I mean, I've been basing myself on books. There was one Sega book I used. And apparently it wasn't a good resource. I was told that the information in there was wrong. Yeah, it's difficult to know what's right and what's wrong because, you know, you build on And like, this is something I've discovered in my own work, is that if you're building on things other people have talked about and written, there's that kind of like telephone game effect again.

Yeah, you're like you have the original information and then there's you and then in between things kind of shift around. So you have to do a lot of double checking. And even then it's easy to get things wrong or, you know, new information comes out where people are like, oh, well, we thought one thing and that's what we'd been told. But now there's something different. Like, you know, Final Fantasy, the video game series Final Fantasy, there was an interview almost 20 years ago in Next Generation magazine that I remember summarizing and submitting to a game site that was running at the time where the creator talked about the fact that, like a direct quote from him saying it was called Final Fantasy because the company hadn't been doing that well. And he was like, you know, this is, I've had it. This is it. If this doesn't work out, then I'm going. So it was his final fantasy.

So that's where the name came from. And so that became, you know, that passed into sort of the internet wisdom about the game. And then, like a year ago, the same guy gave an interview to a different publication. And he said, oh, no, that's not really true. We weren't going to go out of business or anything. I just called it Final Fantasy because I like, you know, the alliteration. I wanted something called FF. Well, that goes...

So it's like, it's like the same guy, you know, telling... Well, that's why we go back to it earlier when we were talking about interviewing people because not only the memory's fault, date so you hear one thing if they change it which one's true then right so so yeah i mean the the question in covering video game history becomes like what's what's actually true like what is bedrock and everything else seems like shifting sands it's it's really hard to know where to get your footing i mean i'm happy that my book has a good reputation that people go to it and i would say 95% of it is true uh it does bother me that it's not 100% true if i can do that i would do it if Every time I find, like I said before, if I find there's a mistake, I'm going to fix it.

With the second edition, I printed new, I put out new prints with the changes, but that's not feasible these days. Yeah, I mean, I come across that all the time in my own work where, you know, I'm doing pretty regular publication. I'm not on the same, like, book publishing schedule that you are. But I still try to do, you know, the research that I need to. And I'll check with resources when I have a question or even a vague doubt about something. and there'll be times when, you know, I think I've looked something up and found the correct facts about it, and I put together something and publish it. And then people are like, well, no, this thing is wrong.

And I went and I looked it up and I fact-checked it, but I still got it wrong. And, you know, it's frustrating because you do the best you can, but there's only so much you can do. Well, also, sometimes with me, there was one mistake I put in the fourth edition. I don't remember the details, but I gave the wrong year of when I think, when something came out. And I was wrong. And what gets me is I wrote an article in a book where I had the information correct in it. And I just, you know, glossed over it. And as a writer, you would know that you read your own stuff. Even if it's wrong, you're reading it correct in your head. So it's, it's tough. Copy editing yourself is one of the hardest things in the world because you're like,

oh, yes, uh-huh, uh-huh. Like everything lines up in your brain the way it is on the page. So you don't really question it. And there's plenty of sentences of that. that could be read two different ways. And you're reading it the way you want read, but everyone else is going to read it the other way. Right. Oh, language. So ambiguous.

Yeah, but despite the challenges that this entails, like, I really do feel Phoenix is a really important work for, like, you know, it itself is kind of a bedrock for video game history. So I'm glad that you're still exploring, you know, like still working on the book and revising it because, like I said, you know, every year there's more history, but also being able to just bring in more resources, more facts and information. That's great. So, like, is there a point at which you, you think you're going to say, well, this is it. This is as in-depth and as, you know, factual and corrected

and everything as I'm going to get. But it depends how the industry changes for the future anyway. I mean, we're getting away, what they say, we're getting away from consoles. But who knows? Yeah, I don't know. I thought when this current generation started up, you know, that it was the end, and, you know, they weren't going to do that well, and everyone was going to move over to cloud-based services. And now the switch is like selling like hockey. Yeah, well, and PS4 is one of the most successful consoles ever. So clearly I was mistaken, and the, you know, what I was reading as disinterest in the console

industry was really just like that last generational cycle lasted too long, and so interest was flagging. But once new stuff came along, people were excited again. So, you know, the talk that we're hearing again about moving to cloud-based services and games as a service and subscriptions, that could also be like, well, this generation is reaching its end and people are interested in something new. But the switch is bringing back physical horror. Right.

Yeah, I mean, it's crazy. Like, for a long time, everything except Blockbuster games had moved to pretty much digital. And then Switch came along and it has cartridges that cost more than other formats than disc formats. And yet, there's so many of these kind of like, you know, B-tier, not in terms of quality, but in terms of budget, like these sort of mid-tier games that have basically vanished from retail all of a sudden coming back. So it's hard to predict how things are going to work. I mean, I'll investigate maybe five years, give this book five-year-old, and then see, you know, and I'm getting old. Yeah, but the great thing about something like video games and even writing

is that I feel like they're the kind of things you just keep doing. Like they're... Well, I have two more video game books planned. Okay. Which I'm co-writing with Rob Faraldi, who met in Portland. I can't say what they are yet. We're trying to work out publishing. Because I don't want to do it myself this time, the publishing.

So I think they're going to be pretty good. Do you think you'll revisit ABC to the VCS at some point? No, I got... I'm asked about that. I would love to. But the problem is... is with that is there's just so many home brews out there that I can't keep up with them. Yeah, it's a really slippery kind of slope.

And I'm a perfectionist. I want all or that's it. So, again, I would love to, but I don't see it happening. Yeah, I've kind of run across that with my attempts to chronicle like the NES and Super NES libraries. I want to do some post-release content, you know, post-licensing content. But where do you draw the line? you say, well, only things that have received, you know, an actual physical release, but then there's some things that were, you know, given a run of 50 copies. So those are selling for

hundreds of dollars now. Do I need to include those? It just, it's really hard to kind of draw the definition. And even within the licensed space, you know, there's multiple versions of a game, like, you know, stadium events, world-class track meet. That's, that's a really famous example of one version that's worth like $20 and one version that's worth a thousand times that. And, uh, Yeah. So it's something that people like us who are actually trying to write about history have to worry about. And I think people who are just, you know, reading about it or listening to podcasts about it or whatever, like they don't have to worry about that crap. It's just kind of like how do we organize things. But I feel like it does make a difference because the choices historians and archivists make in terms of organization and what cover and who to talk to and what resources to look for. Like that shapes the, the, the histories that we create. And, you know, we are ultimately editorializing and adding our own flavor and our own, our own perspectives to the history we create.

We are not objective in any sense. So, I mean, you know, you didn't like Nintendo for a long time. But I didn't put that in my book. No, no. But, you know, like, and I, you know, for a long time didn't really care for Sega games. And so these, these things inevitably come out and people complain about this podcast because we don't cover Sega enough. Oh, they're complaining about everything.

Sure. I mean, one of the reason I don't review games. is because, I'm saying, who am I to review games? What do I know? And, like, I'm not a fan of fighting games at all. And you could have the best fighting game in the world. I'm not going to like it. So how could I review a game like that?

So I just like being objective, telling the facts, straight is, and that's it. So just to kind of wrap up here, I guess, what would your advice be as someone who has been writing about video game history for 35 years now, basically? I mean, if you want to go back to ABC to the EBS. Since 82, so... Yeah, so what would your advice be to people who are interested in exploring game history on their own and trying to figure out what really happened out there? Read my book.

But people who want to, you know, to kind of do their own research and their own explorations. No, do all the research you can and just make sure it's correct. Because the problem is that there is a lot of bad information going out there, too, especially on YouTube. and people, especially YouTube, take it, well, that's what they said. That has to be the way it is. And there's not enough research going out on some of the YouTube channels. So if you're going to do one yourself, just make sure it's correct.

A lot of people are vicious out there. They will get you if they know it's wrong, including me. All right. Well, that's actually good advice. That's, yeah. All right. So just to wrap, where can people find? find you on the internet and where can they find your projects and purchase your books and

so on and so forth? I have a website, Relentapress.com, which is built in 2000, and it looks that way. But I'm on Facebook. There's my page, Leonard Herman. There's the Game Scholar page. Phoenix 4 has a page of its own. Basically, my page will tell about my upcoming projects as I get them. The problem is it's also a personal page. A lot of personal stuff gets on there. But that's where I am. I'm on Twitter, but I really don't use it that much.

And I come to shows when I can. All right. And your books are Phoenix Four and ABC to the VCS. Well, ABC is out of print. Oh, is it? It's been out of print for years. Okay, well, you guys can't have my copy. The only other book I have in print right now is Ralph Baer's book,

which I published and edited. video games in the beginning. Both of them are available on Amazon also. That's a pretty good book, too. I'm really proud of that one, Ralph's book. And I guess I'm working on two other books. I'm working on a novel now, which is unfortunately taking all my time.

All right. Well, thank you for taking your time to share your perspectives and history here. And good luck with the next book projects you're developing, whatever those may happen to be. Oh, thank you so much for having me on. It was great to meet you and to talk with you. All right.

Well, and the usual spiel applies for Retronauts. Retronauts.com. iTunes. Support us through Patreon at patreon.com slash Retronauts. And I can be found on Twitter and other social media. Jeremy Parrish, GameSpite on Twitter, on Facebook, etc. Thanks for listening, everyone. We'll be back in a few days with a full-length episode.

Look forward to it. You're going to be able to be. And so, I'm going to be. You know, Thank you.