Retronauts - Retronauts Micro 93: Sega Pico

Episode Date: August 10, 2018

In 1994, Sega released the Pico: a cute little purple-and-teal suitcase that ran on Genesis hardware and promised to enhance young minds rather than rot them. While it was a neat little piece of tech at the time, America didn't take as kindly to the Pico as Japan did--though Sega's little "learning computer" managed to touch a few tiny lives before it disappeared with only 20 releases to its name. On this episode of Retronauts Micro, join Bob Mackey, Henry Gilbert, and Pico enthusiast Sam Leichtamer (of GameSpot) as the crew explores the computer that thinks it's a toy.

Hello, everybody and welcome to another episode of Retronauts Live. I'm your host for this one, Bob Macky, and today's topic is the second. I'm your host for this one, Bob Macky, and today's topic is the second. Pico. Before I get started here, who is with me in this room here? Hey, it's Henry Gilbert. Ready to learn. And who else? And my name is Sam. And yes, we're talking about the Pico, and this was all Sam's idea. I worked with Sam earlier on an episode you'll hear in the future. But she said, oh, maybe perhaps as a joke, Sam, I'm not sure. Like, oh, I know a lot about the Pico and you expected me to chuckle perhaps, but I was like, no, that's an episode. And now you're here as a Pico enthusiast to tell me what it was like to grow up with the Pico. I'm a bit older than you. And when I saw that in a magazine, I was like, that's for babies.

So Picos are for babies. Now we have an actual baby on the show. I'm kidding. She's a grown woman, everybody. But she lived the Pico lifestyle in the 90s, and I'm sure it made you very smart, as was advertised in the commercials. I imagine that you were using the game gear at the time. I was the Nintendo boy. I read about Sega, sort of out of a jealousy that I wanted one, but I was really into Nintendo. I had a game gear and a game boy. I was very spoiled child. I guarantee all of my games made me be stupider, though.

Yes, yeah. I did see, I was tempted by a pico until it is a name of a thing until I saw it at Toys R Us. And I had the same reaction of like, this is for babies. And I'm not a baby. I'm a mature boy. I'm a strapping 11-year-old. The pico was a magical learning experience. We'll get into the actual pico experience in a second.

I want to go over some details. So, of course, the PICO is, Sika calls it the computer that thinks it's a toy. That was their pitch for it. And it is a learning computer, if you will, as Arnold would say. It makes you learn. It doesn't learn itself. And I want to give a little information about the context in which the PICO was released to give you an idea of what was happening in the world, in the world of games at this time. So Pico was a kid's learning toy.

and in this era, many things were happening in the world of games. Number one, we were in the depths of the 16-bit console wars. They were at their absolute worst, and only that Christmas would they end with Donkey Kong Country, which was sort of like basically the all-out assault against Sega. Nintendo tricking people into thinking that their Nintendo's were very powerful when they actually weren't, and people believed it, and it was an okay game, and that is really what pushed Nintendo over the edge of the winter.

Sega had, frankly, too many products on the market, and this was one of them, later this month, or perhaps earlier, I don't know the exact date of the PICO. It was November of 94, but also in November, the 32X launched, and that really, it was, and number one, it was disappointing, but number two, Sega had too many things on the market. Consumers were not educated. There was no internet. They didn't know what played what, so it was much safer to just get a Nintendo or just to get a blank and not. worry about all of the add-ons and accessories and different systems. It was a much easier proposition to just get one thing. Yeah. And this was, I mean, the date you gave was for the North American release, I believe. The Pico actually came out a year earlier in Japan. That's

right, June 93. Yeah. And it was quite smash it amongst children's. But with the, that's, that time, too, is just Sega. Sega got too full of itself, I think. I think they were thinking, like we've already beaten Nintendo so we can release like three things and make Nintendo the fourth console in America and it was as a child who lived through those console wars at age 12

like trying to pick out gifts I was just like wait is this for a letter to Santa I was like so is a 32X this or is it that like what is this thing correct me if I'm wrong Bob But I think it was, like, as assumption that their hardware, since it was, they thought it was better, that it would just sell itself, right?

They, I mean, in terms of pure technical specs, it wasn't better, but they had a lot of marketing that fooled people into thinking it was better by things, using words like blast processing and things like that. There had a few advantages over the Super Nintendo, but ultimately the Super Nintendo had more colors, had a sound chip. But their marketing team couldn't be beat until they got beat. But for a while, yeah, they, this 94 was their real, I think it was partially they got beat by Donkey Kong country in a marketing sense because they let their eyes off the ball. If they just focused on one thing for 94. Just the Genesis, not the Sega CD, not the 32X. I'm sorry, Sam, not Pico. Yes, exactly.

And one thing I just thought of now is that, so in December of 1993, the Senate sub hearings on video game violence happened. You can watch all of those. You can see all of the out-of-touch adults who are still in politics, not understanding video games. but basically Sega was thrown under the bus, especially by Nintendo. Nintendo was saying things like, no, our games are for children. Adults don't play video games. You cannot make violent games because children will play them. My competitor is lying to you.

They made night trap to destroy children. Exactly. And it destroyed my brain. And there's so many people in prison who have night trap to blame today. But I think the pico, of course, it was a Japanese product and Japan was untouched by that violent scandal. I believe Sega embraced the pico because it would give them a more wholesome image. And that if you look at the commercials, especially, it's like this is beneficial to children. We are directly trying to help children when children are playing violent video games.

They're watching bad TV and things like that. I think they were trying to say, like, look at what the good we're doing in the world. Well, that was like an infomercial for the Pico also, which is really funny. It was like a kid watching the TV and it's like crazy stupid stuff happening. Some sort of Jerry Springer-esque TV shows on. Yeah, like your kids watch TV, but they could be. learning well it is a smart move from a PR standpoint of like the Sega representatives are being asked to appear and say the today show or good morning America and are being asked like hey you know

this stuff's really bad for kids I've heard or they're seeing characters kill each other in this mortal combat game and it's teaching them to murder people that now they have this stupid little suitcase they can pick up the don't you call a pigo stupid take that bag sorry they They have this, go-positive zone. They have this wonderful little suitcase, and they can pick up and say, no, we're helping children. Look at this. Like, we're not teaching kids to kill each other. Like, this is, we're interested in the children's future.

Oh, like, Nintendo wants you to play with a cruel ape. Outside of the console wars, though, there was a lot of different educational technology that was being developed at the time. That's true. So before this, in my era as a child, I remember things like the Socrates, which, like, a rich, family I knew had, and it was sort of like the PICO, in a sense in that it was a mock-up of a computer. You played it on your TV, of course, like the PICO, but it had more of a keyboard set up, but it was really the same, like, what if we made a computer for kids? But of course, the Pico is much more advanced than that. Yeah, VTEC also came out with, after the Socrates,

a bunch of different laptops that were for kids. I had a VTEC labtop. I forget what it was called. Was it the, they eventually bought the Leapfrog company, and Leapfrog would be basically the version of the PICO before the age of apps. Oh, wait, sorry. It was successful. It was successful. In Japan, in Japan. The PICO also was my I recognize that now is the kind of like edutainment software

in the computer labs at the school I went to that like my family didn't really have, I guess they had word processor type games that came built into the system, but like I was not going to tell, my parents weren't going to buy edutainment software. They just saw it as like, well, you have a budget

for a game. If you want to buy something that teaches you math, then you, then that will be your game gift. And I was never going to pick that over, you know, Mega Man or something else. I'll learn on the school's time. So I actually loved educational games so much, especially PC games. I loved educational PC games. I think they were, they were much higher quality and more fun than the ones that we played like eight or nine years earlier.

I had number much here. That was my favorite. Oregon Trails were kind of peaked in the late 80s, early 90s for me. Yeah, I mean, there was, where in the world is Carmen San Diego? Yes, that was quite good. And my systems, I didn't even play that game until a friend of mine got it on their PC. I loved it. As you can see, Retronauts is all about whose nostalgia is correct.

But, yeah, what were the other educational games of this era outside of Pico that you played? I'm really interested. You know, it's funny. When I think back, there was, I had a whole series of games. I think that were, like, done in part with, like, Scholastic or something. I don't remember the names of them, but I loved them. I also really liked sort of adventure-type games, like the Nancy Drew PC games that had come out. They would integrate adventure mechanics with edutainment all the time in this era.

Yeah, and I know the Magic School Bus had a whole league of PC games that were really fun. That school bus is all over the PICO, right? Yeah, the Magic School Bus had a game on Pico as well. There was just so many great games, educational games at the time. I think I learned like 80% of the math that I got. Because I, so I was a school, if you guys didn't take away from our last conversation, I skipped a lot of school. So I think I think PC games taught me a whole lot. They taught you to skip school and, well, no, they taught me things that I miss on the days I wasn't going.

Those, those games were really. Video games did lead you astray, is what you're saying. No, they didn't. But they also helped you. I think that video games kept me on track. I mean, all learning should be delivered through games, I believe. I think that would be best for all of us. Learning games were a very magical experience, and the Pico was my first one.

I got one when the year it came out as four years old. Wow. So one last thing about the context of the Pico era, as we call it, officially as it was the Pico era, the 90s. Nintendo didn't do anything similar, really. They were really devoted to the Super Nintendo. And the most similar thing they had to the Pico was Mario Paints, but it was really a creativity toy, not something that would explicitly teach you things. Big fan. Big fan.

I'm a huge fan of Mario Paint. Super Nintendo. I got the Super Nintendo the same year. I got the Pico. Oh, nice. Did you get Mario Pain as well? It came with it. Oh, that's awesome.

And I still have the mouse and the pad that it came with. To think of a time when a mouse is this amazing, like, extra thing, like, it's a mouse. It was, like, the weirdest peripheral that Nintendo ever came out with. And they only made, like, three games for that mouse. Yeah. They had a couple more. They didn't let it release out of Japan. The Mario and Mario, or I believe that's the...

Yeah, Mario and Mario. That's my favorite of the ones they didn't release, just because it's so, it's such a weird corner of the Mario verse of the mushroom kingdom, especially with the, just they're walking around with a bucket on their head. They're just always, or something else obscuring their sights. It's a bucket. Yeah, for all... Mario drops a bucket on Mario said, and you have to guide him through a level.

But sometimes other characters, they have different crap on their head. I know, I was way into Mario Paint, and I remember this era. You could only save, you could only save, You could only save two things in Mario Paint to the cartridge. So I remember calling my parents up a lot to show them the latest thing I had made. I'm just getting very fatigued by it. Like, great, great. Make it better next time if you're going to call me up here.

I explored with Mario Paint for so long. Not only was I, like, completely enamored with it as a kid, but I also, like, as I got older, would try to, like, make my own songs in their little tool. I never got as good as any of the ones you've seen on YouTube, though. Man, I'm jealous of you, Mario Painters. I did play around with M.S. paint a little bit as a kid, which I, one of my favorite things was at my daycare. We had MSPaint program that was the Ninja Turtles, Paint the Ninja Turtles.

So it was just the, of a template and you just click in the colors of, and it really worked well with the Ninja Turtles because you could decide which turtle it was in the drawing based on which color you made their mask. But don't they have their unique weapons? In some of them. Others, though, they were just eating pizza. What if Raphael picked up Don's bow? I think it would look like this.

So you guys are talking about coloring in children's games or in these color book style games. Pico did this better than anything else. I believe it. It was magical. I mean, we'll get into the hardware of it in a minute, but it had a stylus. It has a touchpad. You could touch the actual storyware book. Before we get any further into this, I do want to play the commercial for Pico, one of them,

that really will sort of tell you the intentionality behind this, or at least the way Sega wanted some marketed. It's such a dry commercial. A child's mind is like a sponge, absorbing everything. Middle-aged men who want to be teenage girls next. So make it the right things. With PICO, it turns TV into your kid's first computer and turns on the power of their imaginations. With storybook software, turn the page and images come alive on TV. Kids learn numbers, music, reading, D-O-G, dog, and more.

Most kids spend three hours a day glued to TV. Pico makes it a smart three hours. So, yeah. Middle-aged men turn into teenage girls next on. Did you guys catch that on the TV? Yeah, a progressive message there. I know, I know, I know. No, the, well, that was, when I watched that commercial

over the first time, I was like, this was, you should not have the kids commercial made by the same team who makes your Genesis commercial. They're kind of a different group. They should have, you know, I think that the marketing of the PICO was a massive failure in North America because they could have really marketed it to children in, you know, You know, better. Make it colorful and silly and put that on Nick Jr. Make it a toy commercial for toys.

Yeah. I mean, this is speaking directly to the parents, of course, because, you know, your kid watches three hours of TV a day. I'm like, three hours, you lightweight. Yeah. Tell me when you get to eight when you're a kid. I was my babysitter. Exactly. Me too.

I was raised by TV. But, yeah, like the commercial, if you go online and watch it, it is a, it's like advertising to sort of upper middle class parents. The mom is, like, sitting in the background with her laptop watching her kid. interact with Pico. So I feel like that is the audience they're looking for. It wasn't that expensive of a tool, but I think they wanted people with a little more money to be interested in this. Well, it was expensive at the time.

Yeah, yeah. It wasn't like a computer, but it was like $160. Yeah, bam, that's a lot of money for a toy. And you're these parents who are terrified your children are watching Sally Jesse Raphael instead of something else. But yeah, I think, too, they had to aim a little higher because you're thinking of somebody like, if they're buying a PICO, they probably already own a Genesis. So this needs to be a family that will buy a second console in the lifespan of a console.

Yeah. I mean, I didn't have a Genesis, but I had a Super Nintendo. It was somebody's second console purchase at the very least. Yeah. So basic information about the Pico, it was released in November of 1994 in America and discontinued in February of 1998. though people have not done a lot of PICO research, including me. I tried to find the best sources I could. Apparently, it was supported long after this in Japan into the 2000s.

And this was a much more successful product in Japan than it was in America. And in fact, in Japan, there are over 300 storyware titles. And in America, there were 20 release. So that really gives you an idea of the sheer amount of games and just how much more popular it was in Japan. I don't know if the marketing was better, if there were. There was more of a demand for it. I don't understand why it was better in Japan. Well, in 1998, Sega of America, they didn't know what the hell they were doing at all.

Yeah, that was like get rid of everything. Yeah, they're like, cancel everything. We have one thing we're going to be selling next year, cancel everything else. And I can get why they killed it then. But also, those for like 96 and 97, they barely knew how to market the Saturn. Well, meanwhile, like, kids' things were going in a totally different direction in the late 90s. I didn't even know about the Saturn until way later in life. Like, totally slow.

I mean, I was a Nintendo kid. I'm sorry, Pico. It was sort of a blink and you miss it. System, though, the Saturn. The launch was such a bad failure, and it was immediately, like, gutted in terms of the price. And then it just disappeared from stores. So if you missed it, I wouldn't blame you. I was, like, you know, I think I was, like, 20 years old when I, like, learned about the Saturn.

I, like, didn't know about it at all. Launch day for us, baby. I got a free Saturn in high school because I lent a friend a Dragon Ball GT tape. I'm wearing a Vegeta T-shirt right now, by the way. I lent a friend a Dragon Ball GT tape, and he was like, the next day he was like, oh, you know, my brother broke it in the tape rewinder. I'll give you something to make up for it. He gives me his Saturn in like 15 games.

Wow. I didn't protest, but I'm like, how much did you think this fan sub tape cost? It was like 20 bucks, but I didn't say anything. I gladly took his Saturn. That's a great story. I used to trade anime VHS tapes with my friends as well. I didn't know it was a going concern in Japan for so long until at an old job like 10 years ago when I was writing an article on like obscure Pokemon games. That's when I was finding this one on list.

It was like, and it listed Pico, I was like, well, no, not the Pico, right? I was like, whoa, I couldn't believe it. Yeah, a Pokemon game. Yeah, this game is online on YouTube if you want to watch it. It's very, it's just bizarre to see Pokemon exist in the Sega, the world of Sega. It shouldn't be. It should not be at all, but it did. It's a very simple game. It's a lot of just like tracing letters. Yeah, it's all about learning Katakana, I think. Most of it is. I could use that. Yeah, me too. Sign me up for Pico. Maybe you guys should pick yourselves up a Pico. It's only $35 on eBay. Oh, my God. I'm signing up now. My next trip to Japan, I'm buying that and the copy of that game. So it launched at $139 at retail.

It was eventually purchased and relaunched by Majesco in 1999 as a budget system, I believe, for $50. And then the story where titles were 20. But I don't believe they actually went to the length to actually bring out more games for it. I believe it was just the 20 games. That was in general what Majesco did with, I remember in like 2000 or so going to a Toys R Us and seeing that they had like a Sega no-escent. nomads and game gears back on sale. And they had the Majesco label on them. I think it was just Majesco either bought the rights to make new boxes of them or they

just bought their, uh, they brought their inventory and just slapped stickers on them. They bought the warehouse. They rated it warehouse. It was a smart move by Majesco. So I, uh, the numbers are really fuzzy again. It was hard to find like concrete research. I went to the Sega retro wiki. I went to Wikipedia.

I dug into message boards. No real numbers on this, but I believe the rough estimate of sales in America is around 400,000, and it's over 3 million in Japan, so there's a real disparity between here in Japan as to how popular it was. The Japanese games that came out where were also, like, way cooler. They had, like, they had a Hello Kitty game. They had a Sailor Moon game. There's so much anime tie-ins on the Pico, way more than the, there's not a lot of cartoon

tie-ins for the American titles. They're mostly all based on existing book properties like Richard Scarry, the Magic School Bus, and things. things like that. I don't know if there are any explicit. There's the Bernstein Bears. Yeah. I'm looking at the list.

I guess Sesame Street is the closest thing to a tie into a television show. But yeah, the Japanese side had a lot more anime games. Like games based on things that weren't educational, like Sailor Moon. Yeah, it's funny because I loved Sailor Moon. And, well, at that age, I liked San Rio. There was a Hello Kitty cartoon that was really popular. Okay. When you think about the things you do every day,

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price and coverage match limited by state law. I have a lot of notes about the hardware, but Sam has actually has experience with the Pico. Can you explain what it is, what it looks like, how it functions? Because I've never actually, I've seen them at retro gaming cons, but I've never opened one or interacted with one. It's a teal and purple clamshell masterpiece. Yeah, number one, teal and purple are the most. 90s-ass colors. I liked the Charlotte Hornets in the 90s.

The only time I watched basketball because of the colors of the team. So I had a lot of Charlotte Hornets gear because I like teal and purple. Yes, teal and purple with a yellow pico logo slapped on the top. Perfect. It had a handle so you could carry that baby around with you. I don't know why you would because it was really fucking heavy. And you needed wires too. It wasn't wireless.

You probably weighed like half of a four-year-old. Like, I remember being four and moving it from, like, my, I had a little TV in my bedroom, and I had, and I would, like, try to drag it over there because I'd like, I want to sit on my bed, you know, drag the thing over. You literally had to, like, just drag it across the floor. Yeah, like, it was, it was not very light. It was very clunky. But it was really cool. You opened it up, and it had an area where you would put a cartridge that was shaped like a book. And what were the pages of that book like?

I couldn't get a sense for, if they were made of plastic or thick cardboard. or what was it? Plastic. Okay, they were plastic. They were plastic pages. And how many pages would there be usually? Like six, seven? Yeah, I would say around six pages, give or take.

Some of them were a little simpler than others. And some of them had much more simpler games inside than others. And then you would insert the book into the cartridge and the book cartridge into the slot. And there was a touchpad, but it wasn't actually a touchpad. It was a magnetic resonance frequency. Wow. Yeah. And it was pretty amazing technology for the day.

That sounds dangerous. For 94, it was really ahead of it. It wasn't like a pressed down. When I first looked at it in a video I watched on it, I thought it was the same as like a DS or whatever where it's pressed down, that it's the pad that takes the input, not the pen, but it is the stylist that does it, thanks to that magnetic resonance. That magnetic resonance.

That magnetic resonance technology. And you can actually, you touch the pad and you can also touch the things on the book itself to get things to happen in the game. So there was a, then there was also a button on the pen. So you would, in order to select things, basically, you know, you would drag the pen around and it would move where it wanted to on the TV. And to select things on the TV, you would press the pen into the, into the, you know, the track pad. In videos, is that basically you turn the page for a new experience. Like, there are different experiences on every page. Yes, some of them were very storybook, like the Pocahontas one, kind of like took you through

Pocahontas. And other ones were more just like, here's a new minigame. Here's another new mini game. Some of them were purely coloring books where every page was just like a new page to color. And the cool part about it was as a child, it was magical because I loved books. My mom was always reading. My mom and dad both were huge readers and always reading to me all the time. And I learned how to read really early on.

So I, you know, I loved books. I was just completely in love with books. And this was mind-blowing to my four-year-old brain. You thought Pico was the future of reading. I was like, holy shit. These books are alive. It was crazy. That's great.

I can't imagine what. I would think with this technology, if I was as young as you in 1994. It was like, and there was nothing like this then, you know, we're so used to touchpad everything now. Our touch screens and our phones and our tablets and are, so we're just, it's, it's normal. I saw a great video on Facebook, actually. It's one of those, like, things that just gets passed around. There's like 8 billion views on it, but it's of a little girl being handed a Game Boy color, and she's, like, touching the screen and, like, she doesn't know how to work it, even though all the buttons are right there in front of,

She's just touching the screen. So, yeah. Yeah. I guess, yeah. Thanks, that's how it works. So this was mind-blowing. I think my parents even thought it was cool. And the buttons on it, it did have buttons, though, too.

And they were, like, like, candy. Even where something like a GameCube controller, they were just big and colorful buttons. There's a huge red button, too. Mm-hmm. Most of the games could be done exclusively with the pad. You don't have to use the buttons that often. Like, a lot of the stuff was easily done with the pen. and it was cool like when so with the any of the painting stuff you know they would be like little color palettes on on the page and you would touch the page and then touch the touch the you know I don't know what to call it now like it's not a touch pad but the drawing board yeah the the other side of the tablet you would it would change colors it was magic it was really cool yeah that technology even though it used the genesis hardware it was the interface was something that most people hadn't really

used on the consumer level before. So I can definitely see how that could be totally impressive at the time. I highlighted all the games I had and I realized that I had a lot of games for the Pico. I want to mention one more thing before we get into the games. So the Pico, I'm not sure if you guys knew this, but the Pico had a sequel in Japan. It was so popular in Japan in 2005, the advanced Pico Bina came out. I had no idea about this. I only just found out about it via research. And if you look it up on wikis, there are like eight different models. And Some of them are themed after different anime characters, but it is very much like the Pico. Obviously, the hardware is much better because it was built in 2005.

But that is how much staying power that Pico had that a decade later, they had a sequel. I don't believe Sega produced it, but it is an official Pico, the Advanced Pico Bina. But, yeah, Sam, you have a lot of the games. Actually, I think you listed all of the games that came out for North America. Yeah, I did. And then I highlighted the ones that I had. That's a, well, about that new system, that's so funny to think in 2005 that if people had heard, their, Sega's coming back to hardware with the PICO sequel.

They're making a new PICO. I can see why they kept quiet about that in America. Is it teal and purple? No, it's much more muted in terms of the appearance. But yeah, teal and purple, come back. I know. We miss you. That's a winning color combination.

Yeah, I totally agree. So of the games that came out. I don't know if you want me to list them all Oh yeah like we can go through them There's only 20 There's only 20 games total And I only know about the ones that I had really Because I didn't get to experience the others

We can pause on the ones that you have And then we could talk about those So good Should I grade them? Should I be like 10 Grade them based on the pure concept Like a year of poo corner Give me a weekend Three out of 10

Adventures in Letterland with Jack and Jill Crayola Create a World Disney's Poked Honest River Bend Adventure Which was amazing I did see this online. There are, like, action segments where she's going down the river and everything. That one was so good. So well done.

Did it have a version of Just Around the River Bend in there? I don't remember, actually, but Pocahontas was my favorite Disney movie. So I loved it. Disney is Lion King, Adventures at Pride Rock. It was really cool. Had fun games. What kind of games were included in that? There was a game where you had to, I believe, like, collect bugs or, like, feed Pumba

bugs or something like that. That sounds on brands. Yeah, it was very silly. It was fun. Echo Jr. and the Great Ocean Treasure Hunt. That was majestic, as you would expect from an Echo game. Echo the Dolphin, I have some dangerous opinions about this, but trying to revisit this game that I never played initially in the day, it is a grueling, punishing game. And I find it pretty funny that there is a kid's version of this. What exactly took place in the Echo Jr. world?

I actually could barely tell you, but I know that it has to do with, like, gem, collecting or something like that. Did it teach you about sea life and dolphin life? It probably tried. I imagine it tried. There was like bubbles in the game. I remember that. I'm basing this all off rough memory.

It's been 24 years, guys. We were very excited about dolphins in the 90s. I still am. Well, I was also in love with Lisa Frank stuff. And so, you know. Dolphins are like a tenth of all Lisa Franks. Yeah, dolphins were like a cornerstone of my four-year-old style. I'm seeing

dolphins and tigers too for some reason in Lisa Frank World. Yeah. Then there was Game Magic Crayons, which was like a coloring game. And coloring was involved in a lot of the Pico games because I think it was really like it was a really fun thing for kids. I mean kids love coloring and then like this experience of coloring with the Pico

was really unique. So. You know, in both in most of these games and also Mario paints more explicitly they do feel like a reaction to MS. Paints and the popularity of like paint interface on laptop computers at the time. Like a digital paint interface.

It was so cool. You felt like a little artist. You'd be like, I'll take purple now. Click. And I'm like, you know. We're going to raise a generation of artists. And they did, but they all drew porn on the internet. They're all meme creators now. There was math antics with Disney's 101 Dalmatians. It is what it sounds like.

It's a lot of counting puppies. You're counting puppies. It came in a, there was a real resurgence of the Dalmatians in the mid-90s. Yeah, I don't know if that was before or after the movie. The live-action film was late 96, so just in time. You were getting ready for it. Mickey's Blast Into the Past, which I had that one. Muppets on the go?

I was a huge Muppets fan. I don't know why I never got that. Yeah, that would have been amazing. Musical Zoo, Pepe's puzzles. Who is Pepe? Is it the shrimp guy? Of the puppets? I don't think he existed then.

Maybe not. Richard Scarys, Huckle, and Loli's Busiest Day ever. That was a game that actually came. came with the Pico. That was the packet. I was wondering which one was a packet. This is Richard Scarry had his own, the busy town cartoon. It was on Nick Jr.

Yeah. And those books were around since the 80s, too, in the busy world. So Pepe is not the racist frog. He is a smiling penguin. We're all safe now. Oh, good. And he's not the prawn either. The Richard Scary game for the Pico was really fun.

I remember playing a lot of hours of it. And I also love the cartoon on Nick Jr. That was a smart packet. because that was the easiest one of all to connect to like, this is the books my parents read me a coming alive. That was a smart pack in. And I did watch a lot of that cartoon when I was homesick on Nick Jr. Nick Jr. was my usual daytime.

Well, what was I going to do? I wasn't going to watch a judge show and I wasn't going to watch a soap opera. So I guess just Nick Jr. The Magic School Bus Pico game was easily the best one because you travel to different planets. That was freaking cool. And you learned facts about all the different planets. And there was a very popular cartoon. I was too old for Magic School Bus, really, but I enjoy...

I see that connects with me in no way, but I do like seeing nostalgia for it. I feel like a lot of people got into it. I'm seeing a lot of Miss Frizzle memes. Have you ever seen the Magic School Bus meme with Captain Planet? I haven't. Oh, my God. It's all the kids from the Magic School Bus grew up to be the kids in Captain Planet. I didn't realize that.

Oh, it's amazing. We all became planetiers, eh? It's weird. look it up. You're going to see it and you can never unsee it. I want this ruin for me. Okay, yeah, it's good. I totally understand it. Please everyone at home, Google it and yeah, it all pans out.

There was, back to the Pico Games, there was a Sesame Street alphabet adventure. I didn't have that. Smart Alex's Smart Alice Curie's kids. Then there was a Sonic the Hedgehog Game World. I did YouTube this and I got to say the sprite work is really, really cute.

They really cuted up Sonic in this time when he was getting more edgy. Yeah, it's funny to see him go in the edgier direction while this is like a lot more rounded edges and adorable Sonic. I watched a little play through of it as well. Same with a in that one you can play as either Amy, Tales, or Sonic. And they all have voices that are way different than you'd expect. Yeah. He does say yeah, like roughly every five seconds.

You know, I imagine that there wasn't a ton of memory and the tricks for the Pico. So they had, you know, there's a lot of music in those games also. Yeah, there's a choice that to be made. Um, there was a Bernstein Bears game back, going back to the popular books. Um, Baron, Barron Stain. Oh, Barronstein. Yeah. The Bernstein bears.

The Bernstein bears. That's a third universe. There's Barronstein, Baronstain, and then the Bernstein bears, so. Maybe it's because I'm from New Jersey. That could be. Bernstein fits in. Just like Springsteen. Yeah.

Um, and then last been at least, the great counting caper with the three blind mice. You know, that might be least. I've never played it. Okay. Yeah. If they can't even get the license for something like Sesame Street or Scholastic, they're just like, hey, three blind mice. Kids all know what that is. Mother do or other.

They've been blinded. It's also, it's depressing. They're mice who were blinded. And then mutilated. It's really, really dark. What is the point of that nursery rhyme? It's just like, look at how, look at all the blinded mice with their tails chopped off run around. It feels like from a time when all people had was.

Vermin? Well, there were vermin everywhere. And the only entertainment they had was to maim those mice. Nice and then see how they run. That's fun. We don't have TV yet. So, Sam, you're on a lot of Japanese releases. You'll be on a future episode talking about Sailor Moon games.

Yes. And the first one on here is a Sailor Moon game. Be Shojo Sanchi, Sailor Moon, S. Which is pretty solar, Sailor Moon. Have you looked into, like, how these games functioned? Were they all pretty similar to the American releases? Oh, my goodness. I was looking at the Sailor Moon games on YouTube, and I honestly couldn't understand what the purpose was for,

educationally speaking, for a lot of them. I saw this one, and it was a lot of. and it was a page with a birthday cake and you were just like putting candles on a cake. Decorate the cake? Yeah, it was interesting. But like not even with good decorations. Like, and some of them were story driven. There was a lot of Sailor Moon games for the Pico.

Yeah. That's not, you know, the little list I have here was just some of them that I liked that I thought would have been really good. Well, that just like the kid appeal of Sailor Moon, I guess, too, that it really, lots of kids were enjoying that show in Japan. Yeah, they were. I think. A few years later, they would be joining it in North America. Oh, yeah. And I think probably based on what you're telling me, Sam, and based on the games I'm seeing that were only in release in Japan, they didn't have to be as wholesome as the American marketing implied.

They could say, no, this is just a fun anime thing you interact with. Like, they weren't as explicitly about, this is better than TV. This is better than video games. You're going to be a better person by interacting with Pico. Yeah, no, they were, like, for instance, there was one for Tokyo Disney C, which is the Tokyo Disney Park. I've been there. Me, too. I've been there.

They have five different flavors of popular. Oh, man. Oh, man. I got it. Popcorn story, man. It was raining there. Me and my friends who went were like, we have to eat all the popcorn until we bought the thing that you get free refills on. But it has to be empty.

And so we went to our first one and we were slowly eating the popcorn. And then we get to the second one. We're like, we can't just throw out this popcorn. Okay, everybody, eat popcorn now. Okay, now finally we've got space for the next bag of popcorn. What is the best popcorn flavor that you've had there, both of you? My favorite was the white chocolate. I liked the strawberry flavor popcorn.

That was really good. That does sound good. Yeah. I'm jealous now. Your next trip. Let's move on. Let's move on. Let's move on this game.

Oh, well, Sanrio Puroland. That's also a theme park thing. It feels like in both cases, they're, hey kids. Marketing theme parks. Yeah, market the theme parks and also tell kids how cool this theme park is if you got to go to it. Or if you love the theme park, then you get to remember it. Like, it reminds me of how many effing animas have, like, the theme park epimates have, like, the theme park episode or where they're just like we gotta go to the theme park i'm so excited the i love that this uh san rio

pro land uh game is called love and dreams adventure well you need both of them yeah um i loved hello kitty so much uh san rio was i was such a big fan there was a curopee board game that came out when i was like five or six years old and uh yeah that was my my honestly is the twin is Batsmaru. That's her favorite. I'm partial to the twin stars. I'm like those guys. They're fun. Is a Gretzko like a Sonrio thing? Yes. Wow. I'm so

I shouldn't be surprised because all they do is make great characters that people want, but I'm still kind of shocked that they're still super relevant. The last, before Gretzko, I remember that the Sleepy Runny Egg was a big character online that everyone identified with, yeah. Like I didn't know

where it came from until I found out. I was like, of course. Like, they will anthropomorphize anything and it'll be great. I had a very San Rio weekend. I went to the Agretzco pop-up shop and then watched the toys that made us documentary on Hello Kitty. Love it.

Yeah. Love it. But the common theme with all these games is that there would have been, you know, classically for girls, right? I think that the Pico is probably very popular among young girls. I have to just have to make the assumption

because they don't release any demographics about it. But at least, you know, I loved it. You know, that makes sense, too, that in Japan, like America, I think they really gender consoles as for boys. So maybe the Pico got to be the gendered as for girls machine. There were so many Disney Princess games on the Pico. And I didn't, the only one I got was Pocahontas. So I'm still waiting for Ariel one day. There was a like a, this could not have been the other one, but there was a like a proprietary gendered for girls console in Japan that we talked about on our Girl Games episode.

but I don't remember the name of it. But what's that? Bluff. That was not the name, but I'm sure it was fine. Games for girls, because the rest of the games are boys. Yes. You can't have the fun games. You have this Barbie game.

That's what you want. My heart. Decorate a cake, why don't you? So Sam, this is the final word on the PICO. I believe this would be the only Pico release in the podcast released in the past five years. Or maybe ever. So this is your chance. Like, well, like, what do you have to say about the Pico?

What did it do for you as a child? and, like, what do you remember most about it? Well, I guess after now we've been talking about the Pico, it makes me think, why don't we start integrating books back into the digital space again in a different way? Like, this was so unique at the time, and as a child, it was magical for me. I imagine that if we were able to bring books back into this digital game space, that it would be just as interesting for kids.

Well, you know, Sony did try that with their AR-powered wonder book. That's true, yeah. It was kind of like, I thought a little bit about the Pico when they premiered that thing. It was a nice little thing, a try, but it also was, at least in America, I don't remember making much of a dent at all. I think it just depended on parents owning a PS3, which I don't think many really did. No real support. There's more of a European-led thing anyway. But I guess what I'm saying is specialized educational toys for kids are amazing, and I would love to see more.

things like this, especially if I have a family in my own, you know, I'd nerd out over this sort of thing. If any fellow PICO fans are listening, high five. We need to turn the kids on the PICO. Yeah, your take gives me gives me pause, Sam. I'm wondering, like, do kids know, I mean,

maybe parents can answer this question, maybe I'm being naive, but do kids, do kids understand books as the main interface to absorb words? I mean, are all they all on tablets? I'm sure everything you're talking about now is an app, or, or is like a leapfrog thing?

I'm sure it's all just apps now. So I'm wondering, like, do kids even recognize books as just like, this is how you read? Or do they immediately go to a tablet to understand that? I'm really curious. And I don't think that's a downfall of society. I just think things are changing. And I wonder if books have this same presence. Technology is rapidly changing.

Yes. Always. I will say I buy all my books digitally now, and it saved me a lot in terms of moving. So, same. Thank you. Thank you, technology. And thank you, Pico, for existing. changing Sam's life in some way.

I think it was positive. But before we wrap up, let's talk to Sam. You're our special guest. Can you tell us who you are, where you come from, and how we can help you and check out your content? Hello, hello. My name is Sam Lighthammer, and you can follow me on Twitter at Lighthammer, not heavy hammer, but a Lighthammer. And I'm a social media producer at GameSpot, and sometimes I get to make cool content on occasion. Awesome.

And as for us at Retronauts, we are Patreon-supported. if you go to patreon.com and pledge three bucks a month you'll get every episode of this podcast a week ahead of time and with no ads and at a higher bit rate it's the ideal way to listen and I believe it comes out

to like 50 cents per podcast if you break it down and that's not a lot if you want the ideal listening experience and it pays for everything it pays for the studio space all of our equipment it pays for dinner for guests

and it pays for just everything you can associate with producing a podcast all of you folks are so generous for helping out and if you want to help out the show go to patreon.com slash retronauts, and we'll give you a little something in return. And, of course, there are higher level rewards if you want to donate more, and we appreciate even a dollar a month would be great to help us out.

Just say, thanks for all the podcast fun. Henry, how about you? Where can we find you? Well, I'm at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G on Twitter. You can find me there. And I work on a podcast with Bob as well, the Talking Simpsons, and what a cartoon podcast, where Bob and I go through a different episode of The Simpsons in chronological order,

We're getting into season eight now, and we do on What a Cartoon with special guests. We go through a different cartoon each week, including Dario, which we did with Sam here. In this very room. La, la, la, la. And you can find both of those on your podcast machines, or you can support that at Patreon and get them a week at a time and add free at patreon. At patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. Yes, and I've been Bob Mackey, your host, and I am on Twitter as Bob Servo. Please follow me and say hi and let me know what you think of this episode.

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