Retronauts - Retronauts Micro 038: Nick Arcade with Special Guests Laser Time

Episode Date: May 16, 2016

These days, we have YouTube, Twitch, and a variety of platforms to bring us endless footage of just about every game ever made, but kids who grew up in the '90s weren't so lucky. Despite our prehistoric existence, though, we at least had the short-lived game show, Nick Arcade, which gave a nation of cable TV viewers nothing but pure gaming action for roughly 23% of its running time. On this episode of Retronauts Micro, enter the VIDEO ZONE as Bob Mackey, Chris Antista, Dave Rudden, and Henry Gilbert explore the best kids' entertainment Florida is capable of. Be sure to visit our blog at Retronauts.com, and check out our partner site, USgamer, for more great stuff. And if you'd like to send a few bucks our way, head on over to our Patreon page!

Hello, everybody. Welcome to a brand new episode of Retronauts Micro. I am your host, Bob Mackey, and in case you didn't know, these micro episodes are ones that we do, uh, about subjects that maybe couldn't fill an entire episode. And this one is very different because I'm recording it in the Lasertime bedroom studio, not the kitchen studio anymore. My friends from Lasertime, guys, introduce yourselves. Henry Gilbert, hi, everybody. I'm Dave Rudnan. I'm happy to be here.

Somebody had to do it. And I'm Kristen T. And I brought sounds. And this episode is about Nick Arcade. I mean, you're going to be hearing, what's that? Yeah, I heard it. Yeah. So, again, this episode is about Nick Arcade.

It's something that I watch. probably way too much as a kid and we're going to explain what it is but again I was really obsessed with this show because it was really the only place you could see footage of video games think about that world of 1992 1993 there is no YouTube

there are no long plays it's like I can see I can see a footage of Gunnack I would have to rent that in order to see it so yeah wait for the news to like talk about the Super Nintendo launch have you heard of this Nintendo thing it won't play your old games

what's Nintendo thinking the Japanese are coming for your children's brains here's how these games are not very Christian. But just a few things to say about Nick Arcade. It premiered in 1992. I believe the entire first season was filmed in 1991, probably in one day. Given to how Nickelodeon Studios film stuff.

We'll return to Nickelodeon studios in a second because we have two Floridians on our podcast. You can probably say a lot about it. I have way too much to say about this. Okay, awesome, because nothing happens in this episode. So we did look at a specific episode. I'll talk about that in a second. But again, Nick Arcade premiered in 1992, ran for 84 episodes, and it re-ran until

1997. And I was probably re-watching it until then, because I had a sad life. I remember the saddest period of my life I was staying in a friend's house while she was gone paying very little rent and they had cable and it was during the time where I played Final Fantasy 10 from about 8 p.m. to 8 in the morning

and I watched nothing but G4 and then I found, did you notice the logo at the bottom of the YouTube clip that we watched? Oh yeah, Nickelodeon gas gas. A now defunct cable station please explain it. Game and sports. That's how I watched I rewatched like the whole season like during this really sad indoor portion of my life. Oh yeah I mean I think I spent like a summer off

in college just crashing on a friend's couch, watching guts. I watched it progress. I watched the show change as a 20-year-old, I think. I watched it on gas. Gas, a weird network, Nickelodeon is since abandoned. I think it might be the Nicktoons network now or something. But the super weird thing is the website existed for a short period of time, and I had the double-dair theme.

That song has only been released. One of the things the website has had was the uncut raw sound effects or intros for all of their game shows. I'm really surprised they would provide that to the audience. They didn't know what to provide because it was just a website in 2000. Were they just like, these could be ringtones I guess, maybe, I don't know. What do we have? Do we have any, is Mark Summers going to come talk to us? Never.

While they didn't have money, they just had a bunch of reruns of game shows, they can't replay anymore. Yeah, I watched it. Just finders keepers. I watched it all over and over again. I double dare. I watched this as a kid too, though it was never my favorite.

I had much sooner watch an episode of Double Dare or Guts before this, but... Double Dare is the one timeless one. Every one of those Nickelodeon game shows, I remember like 40 episodes in as a kid. I'm like, wait a minute, this sucks. This sucks! I don't like this at all. I never did. I get tired of it and never want to watch them again.

I wouldn't even say it's the best video game themed game show. No, Star Pulse or Star... Yeah, there was the one where... Video Power? Yeah, that may have been it. It's the one where the final round is where you literally stick games to yourself. That's right, yeah. You like go down a slide, so the first.

The first season of video power is just a cartoon, Chris. It is just lousy acclaimed characters, like Bigfoot, quirk. Arch rivals, basketball players. Bigfoot. Season two, I believe, could have had a cartoon component, but it was mostly a game show. And Dave is right, like, at the end of the game show, you would have a Velcro suit on. You would stick games to your body. And that was, like, a fantasy of mine as a tiny girl, like, oh, my God, think of that.

It still is for me now. But I hated that red-haired dude who hosted it, so I didn't watch the, yeah. I think it could have been, like, Johnny Power or something. He was, like, the Seth Green of his time, I guess. I have the intro. Nick Arcade, though. Oh, please play it, yeah. Get ready for the ultimate video challenge

as these two teams go head to head with the maze of electronic obstacles for the right to face one of our game wizards in the video zone. Stand by for liftoff. Here comes Nick Arcade. And now here's your host, a guy whose favorite excuse is,

wait, I can explain everything. Phil Moore. Oh, that's a creepy. That's a little odd. The one thing that, yeah, Nick Arcade did have, like, scheduling going for it. We're, like, with video power, it's like, when is this on? Saturday morning, it's syndicated. I don't know.

But Nick Arcade, it's like, I knew when it was going to be on, relatively. Yeah, I know too much about this. I don't know where to start. That intro, I miss. That was something they had on guts, too, of, like, woman's voice with dude hosting the show. The beautiful Mo. Yeah. Mop!

And that guy would go on to start on, like, a million seconds. I believe Mo became a voice actor But we're not talking about guts We're talking about Nick Arcade That's how boring Nick Arcade is like In hindsight it's really boring But I remember not only being really excited But like comparing

Except for the episode we watched I knew all the games being played And was very familiar with him And I could tell whether this person sucked more than me or not I do want to do a few more pieces of preliminary information Before we talk about the episode We did watch for this show Which is on YouTube you can watch it yourselves

But it's hosted by Phil Moore Who We're going to make fun of a lot During this episode I must say he's trying very hard he would do better than any of us would do in that situation and I think it's pretty cool that they hired a black host

for a game show that was not very common in 1991, 92 so I will say that that show this episode this episode in particular has so much

dead air Oh it does yeah And like the thing The thing that I became very synonymous with the show is because it's Phil trying to fill the space of nothing

Exactly Of nothing Not intended there Chris You can fill filling the space It's the video The majority of the show is walking to and from things. I know. And he just...

So for me, I would always like, whenever that cue came on, I'm like, God, I hope Phil's saying something. Because, like, this is excruciating. I think they eat up two minutes of game show just by walking to the next thing they're doing. It's like, this should really be edited. You need to brain me in here. I have too much to say that. Oh, no, no.

That's why you're on the show, Chris. And I do want to talk about where this is filmed, Nickelodeon Studios, where our guest acted on a show. Now, Henry and Chris, both from Florida, Nickelodeon Studios was the Hollywood of the late 80s, early 90s, I guess. You heard me go off on it. Yes, please explain to the audience, like, what is Nickelodeon Studios? It's now the Blue Man Group's like storage units. It's where they used to shoot TNA, Impact Wrestling.

Oh, wow, that too. Yeah, TNA was, sorry, Nickelodeon Studios was the first thing that opened up in Universal Studios, and it was this really weird movement in 1990, 89, where there was this dumb initiative to try and take Hollywood. Hollywood out to Orlando where everything was cheaper and everybody was non-union. Yep, Florida. Easy will to work state. Yeah, so to compete with Universal Studios, Disney also up to MGM. And they brought all their animators

out there to animate Disney movies in that lot on Universal. They're shooting Problem Child, Swamp thing. And Nickelodeon shows. Like, they were all shot in L.A. before. But like, all of a sudden, Orlando becomes this place where, like, if you read about most of the people who became on-air personalities, they're just people from

Orlando. And boy bands, right? And girl bands. Britney Spears is a hick from Louisiana. And Hollywood would not have cast her. No. But an Orlando studio did. Yeah, that's what I, it was fun. Phil Lamar was an aspiring stand-up comic in Orlando.

Oh, yeah. Sorry, Phil Moore. Phil Moore. That's how he was found. Like, he never would have gone anywhere or been on television had there not been in Orlando studio. He just seemed like a charismatic weatherman type. He has a very weird delivery, which, uh, and not a great host.

When this show aired, I wasn't living in Florida, but I moved there. the next year and my dream was to get on a show like this like it was like my family can go on a trip to universal studios we will do the nick tour and i'll get to be on a on a on a on a game show of some sort when i finally did it and did the nick tour it was in 1994 so this show was long over but we walked by the set of legends of the hidden temple as part of the tour but no shows were filming then but i think they knew kids were expecting it and maybe it was like an audition process almost yeah but you totally i thought that's exactly what it was if i wear my coolest body glove shirt i'll be cast on an episode of what would you do i did see a garth brooks t-shirt in the audience

yeah yeah but so the tour ended with a miniature version of nick arcade which was okay here are you in the audience we're going to pick two of you from here to play sonic and knuckles and whoever can get the farthest is the winner and we'll get a free t-shirt and it was hosted by somebody who you could think, oh, maybe Nick is interested in putting them as a host, but this is their like test show. Better vamp it up. Henry Straightens out his eyebrows and a mirror at 10. Did they pass around a hat for Philmore

at the end? Just throwing it to all, everybody. I was really hoping me or my brother would get on there. My brother was, he's always been the more expert game player than I, my younger brother, but neither of us got to play. But that was the closest I ever got to being on Nick Arcade. I walked around the Clarissa set and

Gola Gola Island, a show I was at that time too old to care about it. I did watch a lot of Nick Jr. when I was homesick in the 90s. You're home sick. My of the B is where it's at. I know all about face. So I guess we should talk about the episode we watch. It's on YouTube. It probably will be forever just based on who's in it. If you want to look it up, it's called Elizabeth and Joe versus Melissa and Jason.

These are the parents and the kids from Clarissa explains it all. In case you don't know what that is, more explanation. That was a very, very revolutionary show on Nickelodeon in the 90s. I think their first sitcom, and it was from a girl's perspective, but it was not a feminine show. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's this cool alternative girl who's got they might be Giants poster on her wall. She makes video games and shit. She's

Ferris Bueller. Yeah, exactly. She's Ferris Bueller. It was also like created by a woman too. And it premiered in 91. I looked up when it premiered because I thought the audience in this episode is not given Melissa Joan Hart like anything. She doesn't say anything. No, she's your huge

breakout star. Why aren't you doing stuff? Why don't you team an adult with a kid? That didn't make sense to me. Answering trivia. against children. It should have been girls versus boys instead of parents versus kids. But I guess... But that's the whole ethos of Nickelode.

That is. Yeah, that is true. Parents that understood me. I'm surprised the parents won and they weren't slime. Spoilers. Yeah, maybe I'm just more easily excited nowadays, but I literally pump my fist when they don't swan. I'm like, that was a big shock. They won with one question.

I think we're jumping ahead of things, though. My shameful confession is I think I might be in love with Corissa's mom. Yes. I hate myself now, and I'm like, she's beautiful. Why did I never realize? Every mom fetish you've ever had. Yes.

She also has, like, the weird Haley Mills accent that's just gone nowadays. Like, I looked her up, she, that's creepy that. I looked her up, but I looked her up on Wikipedia. She's Canadian, and I'm like, that's not, doesn't sound Canadian. It sounds like this, like, I don't know. Transatlantic accent, I think you're thinking of, yeah. It's the episode fun. Meanwhile, Joe is just like, I'm a stock guy who will play like a suspected rapist on

on SVU or something. I just look like a sex tourism client in, like, law and order. There is, like, one point when they're playing. the, when they do the video challenge where he's just like standing and I think he doesn't know what to do. He's just kind of weirdly fidgeting. I'm like, wow. It's so awkward to watch is someone who tries to create both

entertainment and live entertainment. Yes, I know it's on a low level. But like how good the show should have been, but like no one's been told what to do. Exactly. Like things don't cut fast enough and like there's these are their celebrities walking out. Like do I stand over here? Like, why isn't someone telling him where to go? Hit your marks, everybody.

I don't think Phil Moore knows like, I don't think he can juggle both like saying like Clarissa Ferguson your real names like it's like it's all really weird and his introduction is also weird because he's asking these like very simple questions that like I don't know he's asking it so the answers are super he calls the adults the parents but they're not actually the parents of the kids and one thing I did like about this is like I think the show was engineered like in jeopardy you would like oh where are you from what do

you do for a living I don't think Phil Moore's prepared to ask adults he's question because the adults have real answers like oh I like canoeing like tennis and he like shuts them down immediately. Shut up. Because I think he's used to kids saying, I like basketball. Oh, really?

That's great sport. It's cool. Hey, what about you? Yeah. But I didn't think about it. Really? None of you got anything good to say about British Knights.

No one wouldn't be here without it. You can't pump them. In case, yeah, I think they did eventually get to pump up. But yeah, when the mom has a fun joke back about like, oh, well, I play for exercise because I couldn't win.

Yeah. Like, he's like, that's cool. Hey, Jason, what's up with you? Basketball and football, huh? Yeah. It's funny how he was, he was like, the pacing was good casual, let's walk to the arcade machines. Let's walk over here. Having done a little

on-camera professional stuff where you're winging it, like he, I understand his nightmare. We have nothing to fill this area of nothing, which we're also approaching a vast area of nothingness as we move on. It's such an empty stage. The reason I chose this episode is because it's much more tolerable than watching film more deal with kids who are not ready to be on TV, which is every other episode. These people are professionals. They've been in front of cameras before they know how to talk and have an audience. I think so. Melissa Joan Hart, like I, you know, I kind of crushed on her as little kid. Oh, me too. I expected

I don't know, little improvisational spark out of her. She was still nervous. She was still fresh. She was still fresh to acting. And this is why you're here, people. There's a pre-pubescent Ferguson. You're here to say Clarissa say the word Sonic the Hedgehog. All right. Melissa, you get to choose from Super R-type, Atomic Runner,

Gunnacks out of it because we played it, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, or Alpha Mission 2, which one of those four would you like to play? Sonic. Sonic, the hedgehog, too. Let's head on over. Here we are, Sonic. Well, this is a rock'em-sockham adventure sequel,

where the evil Dr. Robotnik is up to his old tricks again, and it's up to Sonic to rescue his fairy-willing friends. This game has multiple zones, and today, on Sonic, our expert challenge is to get 25 rings in Zone 1. Okay? You have 30 seconds to get 25 rings. Now, hang on a second. Jason, you have 190 points.

Your opponents have 50. Of your 190, I want you to write down your wager. Now, here's the music. He's done it. Very fast. All right. See, he's a genius moving the shit along. He does feel very, like, sweaty and desperate, though.

Like, oh, what I got to say, I got to say something right now. No, those man. But there's no, there's no music. There's no camera changes. It just has to be him talking where nothing would happen. Yeah, they forgot how low fie it was, that they have to write on, like, magnetic, like, dry erase. They're toys. They are toys.

They're toys. It's so cheat corn. Cornball. So what did he call Sonic a Rockem Socombe Adventure game? Sequel. But I mean, what a fake gamer host.

This is probably undoubtedly the impetus for the show. An idea to where you can pay and showcase your games. Because like I even as a kid, even now, like I am shocked by how little video gaming enters in the Nick Arcade. Yeah, there's, I mean, the video game content is very slight. And at the same time, it's just like games that aren't super popular. I think Sonic 2 is something that stands out. But I remember there being a lot of SNK, like NeoGeo games. It's like, I can't pay $300 for one cartridge.

I swear I remember one episode being, do you like to play Act Razor? Act Razor, too. What are you going to do? Well, you know, this was something that came up in the, I think it's related to something that came up in the Console Wars book, Bob and I have both read, which is about how Nintendo didn't give nothing to nobody.

Like, they weren't giving to TV shows and weren't giving to publications. Well, meanwhile, Sink, it was like, we will give you anything and everything. Oh, yeah. I think Neo Geo or S&K realized we got to get on that bandwagon too. We will give stuff if Sega's giving stuff to Nickelodeon, let's give it to them too. I believe there's some maniac out there who's written down every game that was used on Nick Arcade and none of them are first-party Nintendo games.

Certainly not now. I was glad to see Super Art type there. Yeah. Yeah, you would. Not with the Clerson's dad playing it. He just kept staring into ships like literally like, this is how I kill him, right? That's what every episode was. It was maddening.

Someone picking a game they'd never heard of. Oh, Ferguson knew gunknack so well. He was the only one good at playing a game. So he had a knack for it. And the thing is, like, their goals are so unrealistic on these games. The goals, like, you have to do this and this amount of time. Like, Ferguson barely met that goal. And he was playing, like, almost frame perfect.

I think Clarissa, like, had she not gotten hung up on that loop, she would have hit 20 rings. Yeah, she, but you need to know the spin dash. And, like, you don't know. So it was infuriated and see, you're like, spin, dash, do this. But that's in between all these video. The two times they play real video games is bullshit trivia stuff. The biggest problem with this show is that the framing device is sort of like Mario Party in which you're moving one character, you take terms moving one character across a very just rectangular board.

And every space is a different thing on it. It can neither be a puzzles, pop quizzes and prizes and prizes. Thank you. It's very illiterative and I lost my place. But most of this stuff is just like weird like Jeopardy stuff or weird like video video trivia stuff. And very rarely is it actually like a video game. game. Yeah, those are like, it's like the road to the fireworks factory. Like, why are we watching a video? Like, I don't want to watch this guy break karate bricks. Yeah, I watched this with my girlfriend, like, they're going to see a bunch of old video games. And the first thing was

like, how many bricks did this Taekwondo master break? Like, what the hell? Yeah. And then they run the fat he was. But again, Orlando, an Orlando karate master. And then they had this video trivia where it's like, we're going to make credits to this thing that exists. What is this thing? And it's just like immediately, it's the Constitution. It's just like the first credit that pops up. It's the Constitution. It's the Constitution. It's the takes them like 10 seconds, but like, oh, it's all to her being nice. It's like a beat's your remote control. Exactly.

I don't blame them for this, because one of the challenges, that's not a video game, was like, you need to name five villains from these images. We're going to flash at you subconsciously clockwork orange style. And like, every one of these is a rated R film. Exactly. How are the kids supposed to know this? How are, like, and the parents are like, well, that's

alien, that's Robocop. Well, and when they said Robocop and Batman, I was with them, I was like, well, I guess you guys think they're villains because you put them in there, but I didn't realize, I think Phil more poorly articulated that you're supposed to pick the five villains out of this collection of pictures. What if you were guessing, like, video game villains or something like that? Or maybe, I guess.

Other than Bowser Robotnik, who would you guess? I know, and especially with celebrities who aren't necessarily game fans. And that was a bit like, hey, Melissa, how do you know Newt is the name that girl? You should not be watching a rated-in-ar movie, young lady. She's up for the role. She could have been, maybe. So I do want to mention a few other things that happen on the show. they have these uh i mean so we have the video board game uh component and we also have these

mini games they play at the end of every round which uh everything is made by this company called sygnosis yeah who uh is mainly better known in europe i think and not really as well known in america made some big playstation games oh really like uh whitepaub yeah oh what that was them okay yeah destruction derby i believe yeah they're a first party sony company now i believe well i think they were dissolved into being a first party son company yeah sonny but i i played wipeout on the Saturn, so I remember the logo very clearly. I remember seeing some sad British people going, like, oh, Signosis is gone, like, yeah,

nobody... I did a double take when I saw them in the credits, so I was like, wait, that's the owl... Signos? What? Yeah, all of this stuff was made for on the Amiga platform, so everything you're watching is an Amiga game that they made for video, sorry, Nick Arcade. What was fascinating, like, reading more about it,

it's created by James Bethea and Katim Matif. And they're like, again, you might not know this industry if you're not from there, but Like, the Orlando area is, like, rife with VR specialists and, like, I make giant things. I make talking. I make singing robots. That is a Florida industry.

And that's what these guys come from. Their name is at the end of the production sting. But, like, they're not producers. They're programmers. Ah. They're programmers. And they created the game with an Amiga, like, they made it out of Amiga, I believe, a 10,000 square foot studio with the largest blue screen at the time. Wow.

Yes. And we will get to that. Should we get to that? The video zone, as it were? Well, first, that mini-game they have to play is garbage. It is crap. It's like a bad moon patrol. And I watched some other episodes for this.

And the mini-games are just a variant on that. You're stirring one thing left to right and avoiding stuff. Because they had to design a two-player-focused game. It all looks like the worst Jaguar game you've ever seen. I mean, my personal favorite back in the day was it was like a pong-like game. I forgot what it was called. But it was a pong-like game. And every time the ball hit the paddles, you would hear like a weird little quote.

It was like a pawn game set inside someone's brain. So like it would hit something and go, I'm green or ow, ow. I also, the thing that would, it reminded me what drove me crazy as a kid watching it, which is like, in the time they're given, Mikey will never get to the goal. The board is way too big to justify each square being like a two-minute thing they're doing, you know, between moving that. Oh, they did? Oh, really? Yeah, because people did make it to the goal because how many spaces they get each time?

Like four. Like two out of 20. Oh, wow. And then they have to cut to the, it. Got to commercial and go to the next board. Like, how many episodes this take to show you this isn't working? As a kid, it, like, it bothered me. But then watching this, I realized, like, yeah, the show's already so awkwardly timed.

Imagine if they ended in, like, a segment early. What would they do? Yeah, exactly. Do they have it a contingency plan for if Mikey reaches the goal early? They would just put that loop off for film order improv, too. Like, we ran out of things to do. Or I think he could have just expanded his asking him questions at the beginning and stuff. I also, my conspiracy theory is that until the final segment,

they filmed without an audience like I think it was all piped in audience stuff I think you could hear the producers laughing at the very end when they come in on them for the last scene and they're in their you know action clothes you do see an audience there but I I think you don't see them

you'll see shots of an audience but that could easily be B-roll and then them I don't know how the audience is supposed to react to people inside a different studio and like what's the biggest CRT television available? I just seemed like the audience cheered more loudly when they got to play actual video games, which made me

think, like, okay, this is an audience of kids, because they are ecstatic that he's going to finally play gunnack. The filth seemed so, like, off, and I felt like he wouldn't be this off if he was reacting to live audiences of kids. There's some, like, dead silences. Yeah, there's a lot of dead silence. And also, remember, these are like,

this is like, Bullwinkle the Moose's Animal Show and Universal... This is a stop on the tram, essentially. These aren't people here to watch a show. They're at Universal Studios, who would probably suckered in. Would you like Did a vote an hour to this? We've got air conditioning, kids.

Come on in. Sit down, no lines. We will get to the video zone, which is kind of the highlight of this show. It's essentially, think about VR, except the VR headset is a TV across the room. And that's what the video zone is. I think it's actually, like, if people out there slamming VR are slamming VR from the sense of this Nick Arcade video, video zone, I think it took an FPS model to make VR, oh, that's what VR can do.

Exactly. Because this is super awkward. It's people trying to look at monitors while on a blue screen. and play inside of a game, but you essentially turn children into Muppeteers. You have to know, like, right is not left. Right is left and left is right because you're looking into a monitor

while climbing a ladder in real life. And I feel like maybe the Clarissa cast had access to the studio, like, after hours, because they were smoking joints back there. Because they were so good at this, and everyone else just sucks miserably. They still lose, but they are very good at doing these games. Well, my prediction, like, when I first got the link,

I predicted, like, I bet whoever wins does well in the final round, because these are actors. Like, they probably have used blue screen before. Exactly. And they have a good sense of space when they're being filmed. Yeah, like, they just blazed through those first two rounds. It's like the last round. I mean, Jason is the MVP of the show.

Well, actually in the humans being stolen one, they do pretty good in that. They do, yeah. But though, the show right before that, I forgot, it commits one of the, like, the greatest sins in game show lore, which is, and now it's the last question, worth 100 points. Anyone can win. It is so much like Mario Party. It's like nothing matter. Now it's time to decide who won. If you listen to Laser Time, I do trivia contest.

And always the last question is worth a billion points. Because that's how all Nickelodeon game shows work. This is all ridiculous. And you're all, like, you're kind of just watching this, just to, for me, just to make sure I'm better and smarter than anybody, any contestant here. Yeah, I think what kept me along on the show, even though when I watched it now, I was like, how did I as a kid pay attention to an entire episode? Me too. I had to keep going back because I was like, I totally would like, I totally would like. I think it was because as a kid, I was waiting.

like they're gonna play a video game soon and I can't wait to see it like it was just the tension I do think they up the video game quotient later they would allow Mikey to move a little faster yeah because I definitely remember Phil singing a lot more over dint dun dun yeah I think Phil loosened up a little more later ones too but

so I guess they were supposed to take on Merlock in the wizard level which is a great like anyone could make that up who has never played a video game Dave and I both reacted like fingers crossed for Mongo you always bring on Mongo Chris he was not to be seen so yeah these are all very Scorsia Scorsia, ooh. The tempress.

Yeah, Melissa made the big mistake in the last one of like, you're supposed to go down, not run past the guy. He's a, you take... Well, you wait for him to, like, he can transform to the bottom part, and that's when you run across. And the mom had a good idea of staying in that one spot waiting because you get the two on top,

and the one last orb on the bottom, and they came really close, but she ran through an obstacle at the end. Just looking at it when they fail the first time, it's like, now you get to start again. Like, this is... This game is on a time loop, and it takes seven seconds for the...

electric bolts to just stop the game. Like if they get, if they die once, it's over. Speaking as a terrible nerd, I think their hitboxes were way too big on the players. And also like, whenever I make a video for work, a YouTube video with gameplay, the first million comments are like, you suck, oh, you're awful. A YouTube

commenter would kill themselves watching this. They could not take how bad these people are at video games. The most popular video with Nick Arcade and it is called the worst Nick Arcade player. And that is great. Yeah, it's amazing. It'll make you feel good about it. Yeah, I mean, when it like, your random like two kids I just walked on to the set at Universal Studios.

How are they going to know? I have to look at that TV over there to know what I'm, is like, where my reality is. It's weird. I wonder they're not good at it. Most of the time the kids on this show are looking at you, like at the camera that's pointing at them and just like blindly groping at things

because they have no idea what's going on. It's why the Jim Henson Muppeteers are so great because they're so used to knowing exactly what their hand looks like in a TV screen that they're looking at. There was a great, like, recent think piece, I guess, on Legends of the Hidden Temple where it was like 2% of the kids who went on this one, and here's why. Like, they were given no preparation, like, they had no idea what they were doing, and their brains were barely developed.

So, of course, I'm not going to win. It's unfair, man. That's the beauty of this whole thing is that it's not done by TV professionals. It was being made just to fill airtime. I do miss that era of it. We talk about Nickelodeon all the time is, like, in the beginning, just a warehouse of Canadian and European programming that, because Nickelodeon couldn't afford its own content. and so they ended up making these shows like

and I was reading about the history of this these two producers they worked on Total Panic which is just like if you can think of like the view with no script or talent it's just a thing like and then we'll showcase a product and I was reading about these guys behind the scene of Total Panic we were all into games

and we liked games and we were working on Total Panic and then we were introducing games in one and that got a big response from kids they wanted to see the Game Boy and I went and looked up the clip and I didn't want to play it because you can't I don't know if everybody knows it's Andy Eddy who I've worked with before, a buddy of ours. It's Andy Eddie introducing the Game Boy to a Nickelodeon audience.

Exactly what it is. And it's funny to see him, yeah, as young Andy Eddie on TV who we've all worked with and he's the guy who like... His grandpa gamer. He's grandpa, he's been in it for a long time. He, I think famously told me the story about how he registered e3.com for the ESA because they didn't know what websites were. I wrote a giant article about the...

Capcom arcade and Disneyland and then just Andy posts him oh yeah I was there it was really awkward because we were a bunch of adults who worked for game magazines and they hired McCulley Culkin to come out and give us the tour and he's this he's 12 and confused and looked kind of sad

and he was like shut up he has to guide around he has to guide around adults on a video game press tour that is so weird no wonder he turned out the way he did this is a really fascinating time in just in Orlando culture at all

because I looked at this guy's bio and all the stuff he's done and they've worked on Iron Man the Iron Man movies. They've done a lot of effect work since then but like just that most of it was like cheesy, fair, interactive oh no, Shammu fell off the spaceship

and now we're in this turnbox ride that you see in Vegas. It's kind of like how the movie The Wizard is a commercial for Universal Studios at the end. It's like look at all the cool things you can see and go behind the scenes of if a man is chasing you. But the show, I think it's a good idea.

I think there's a great idea buried somewhere in Nick Arckey. But it wasn't done by television. people. Now it's e-sports, I guess. Yeah, I mean, Phil Marr was kind of the first e-sports announcer talking about, like, oh, she's almost up the loop on Sonic the Hedgehog. Doesn't quite get it. Let's give him some credit here.

I'm guessing he's seeing these games cold and he's narrating gun act. Best he can. Yeah. I love, I did love the low finest of like, and today's challenge, and he just takes a like five by ten card on the side of the cabinet, yeah, tape the cabinet, like oh, you're going to be getting 25 rings.

I do remember some games that like really should not have been had challenges Like a warrior too Yeah like once or twice there was like an RPG Where it's like defeat this many enemies Like what? How? How do you teach a kid act razor from the beginning

Exactly any kind of goal? It was on there a lot The cool thing about the show was they're both playing for charity Because they're rich and millionaires acting in Florida Obviously And the parents were paying Sorry the parents were playing for Amnesty International And Phil Moore asked like what are you playing for kids And they're like leukemia

He's like both my girlfriend and I was like Leukee doesn't need your help God And I think he did correct them But I think it's funny, like, again, the stakes on these Nickelodeon game shows are very low. They gave $1,300 to each charity, which seems like a small amount. It's like, what? Like, okay, tell the cast of Welcome Freshmen to pack a lunch this week, because catering is off for them. I mean, yeah, they had no budget.

I think we've heard that these people were not well paid. Like, that was one of the reasons why they wanted the Hollywood shift to Orlando to take that power and the unionization away from the Los Angeles film community. Yeah, I assume they made less than scale. Yeah, I thought Keenan maybe had said something. something about that? Like, Keenan Thompson. I wouldn't be surprised. Just an amazing dude who was on a terrible sketch show that you kids seem to love,

but that he's been doing sketch comedy. I mean all that, not Estableness. But he's been doing sketch comedy for like three quarters of his life. That's amazing. That's insane. Now, I, yeah, the show, oh, I also did like that Melissa, she talked about, she's really in the lighting engineering right then. I had that in my notes and like, I want to learn lighting.

Well, now's the time, Melissa. Is she still acting? Yeah. And taunting Kevin Owens? Yeah, she's a pro wrestling fan. God damn it. You open this up to wrestling conversation on this podcast. That's my fault.

But, yeah, it's okay for our trust. But, like, that's so noble. Like, kids in that era were just getting, like, spoiled and would become, like, drug addicts, alcoholics. She's learning lighting. Like, it's kind of nicer career thing. I think it was proven she had her head screwed on more right than the average teen star. Ferguson turned out okay. I read he was a, he's now a software engineer for HBO.

Wow. Yeah. Other than Britney Spears, like everybody came out of all of that Orlando scene very well adjusted by not, I think by not being in Hollywood. Yeah, though they were still near Lou Perlman and they had to survive. Yeah, that guy's trouble. So yeah, thanks for listening to Retronauts Micro. This is a fun experimental episode longer than normal. That's cool, like Nick Arcade.

I wanted to talk about it at some point. I wrote an article about it. Oh, God. We can make this into an hour and a half if you want. Since we went long, Mikey did make it all the way to the end. Yes. God bless you, Mike. in your Valiant Quest to walk too many spaces.

So yeah, as always, please look for us on Retronauts.net or USGamer. Sorry, retronauts.com or USgamer. And please check out our Patreon at patreon.com slash Retronauts. Just a few bucks a month can get you some great stuff. And the entire show is basically run with your money. So if you keep paying us, we'll keep making it. That sounds like a good deal to me. Everybody else, what do you do?

Where can we find you? I never thought to say that about Laser Times, Patreon. But we do have one of those. It did help launch Talking Simpsons, the first. season is still there. I'm guessing your audience is familiar with Talking Simpsons. Oh yeah, yeah, please promote it. Yeah, Talking Simpsons, Bobby and Hanks' idea to turn, a chronological

look at the Simpsons through the years from the beginning. A beautiful show, I'm having a great time. I just did a panel in Milwaukee and so many people came up to me about Talking Simpsons and they're telling me, like, we have listening parties where we get together and watch the episode and listen to your episode. And I was just like, wow, I made that happen? We made that happen. Do you think this will have a

listening party for that episode? Oh, I hope so. If you have a retronous listening party, let me know. I'll come with some beer. We watched, again, we watched the Clarissa episode. Is that what it's called? I believe, let me look it up. Please keep talking about it. I looked up, Clarissa explains it all Nick Arcade on YouTube to watch it earlier today. Watch that episode.

It was, my girlfriend and I watched it, my girlfriend not in the games, didn't have cable growing up. It was still a blast to watch something that old time. So it is called Elizabeth and Joe versus Melissa and Jason, and there are so many episodes online. I think this episode will remain online forever just based on who's in it. It's like a 90s and a solger bomb. This is like, probably much like a lot of the games you talk about in

retronauts is lost. And we'll never be re-released. It will never be seen again outside of YouTube. Outside of the internet for free, just do it. Henry, what do you do? Oh, well, geez, I mean, not to... We're all on Lasertime Podcast.com, but I personally do a lot of comic book content on there, as well as the comic book podcast, Cape Crisis, and a bunch of interesting to your audience.

Comic book video games, we have played a lot of them, and you can watch that on our YouTube page, YouTube.com slash Lasertime Network. a complete play-play-through of death and return of Superman. You guys have got to see that Batman Forever Arcade game. Yes. It is a nightmare. It's a nightmare. It was insanity.

I doubt, can you watch all 40 minutes and still keep your mind intact? We probably have the best video game salute to the game for Nickelodeon guts. The entire internet ever has. I'm not even telling you how to search for it, but it's on YouTube.com slash Lasertime Network. And I host the Cheap Podcast, Pro Wrestling Podcast. If you want to know more about the wrestling. that Melissa Joan Hart is feuding with that you can find out on cheap podcast.

What about Ferguson? Who's he mad at? Chris Benoit. Oh, okay. Wow. He won that battle. And I would be remiss if I didn't talk about our own The Laser Times video game podcast. Vigigame Apocalypse, where we're

former guest, Michael Opar is. And I'm on it sometimes. Yeah, yeah. We all talk about video games and the events of the week in that world. Cool. So thanks so much for listening everybody. Please check out Laser Time stuff, and we'll be back next week with a brand new main episode. Later.