Video Games II

Williams picks up the story. In the nineteen eighties, home consoles like the Supernintendo and the Atari revolutionize the gaming market, and in the late eighties and early nineties the competition between these companies starting to heat up. In nineteen Sega released their mega hit console, the Sega Genesis. The Genesis has blast processing. Super Nintendo doesn't. So what's blast processing do? And here's where it gets narrowed, because now all of

a sudden to we have a really competitive console. You still had a Tori bumbling along. They had a thing called the Jaguar, which they maintained was the first sixty four bit system and it never got off the ground. And then there was the three D O which was too expensive. This is video games writer Steven L. Kent, who we talked to in the last episode. Neo Geo had a home console that wasn't really competitive. Stephen says that Nintendo, the biggest player in the game's market, responded

to the Second Genesis by releasing the Nintendo sixty. So by the time that the n s D four comes out, now, all of a sudden, people think it's gonna be Sega versus Nintendo, especially because Sega has this arcade game out right now called Virtual Fighter, and all of a sudden, they're gonna be a lot more competitive in Japan with Virtual Fighter than they had been the past. But no one predicted that the next giant to enter the arena

would be Sony and their consul, the Sony PlayStation. And I don't think that people realized how serious Sony was. Sony had this Midas touch. They ruled the TV market. Tony Trinitron has Sony is exclusive one Gun Picture two for the ultimate in brightness, sharpness, contrast, and color. He's a very red the dazzling array of colors Sony Trinitron Picture Perfect. They rule the stereo market. I don't know a tweeter from a Wolfer from a Twitter. So I

bought the Sony Compact Stereo. So on the one hand, that makes them formidable. But on the other hand, maybe they're not gonna be so committed. If things don't work out, they'll just go their merry way and make a new Walkman instead. The Sony Walkman is that tiny stereocassette player with truly incredible sound. Put on a Walkman and see the world in a whole new light, the Walkman from Sony.

The one and only executives of thing I could see that the writing on the wall, they'd seen enough from Sony to realize Sony had quite an offering after all. So in the United States they compounded the problem by rushing to market. It was supposed to come out on September two, Sega Saturday and Saturday September two, then instead they released it as a surprise and E three in May,

making every possible mistake you could make. First of all, they released it a few selected retailers, which meant that if your toys r US you got something to sell. But if you're kV Toys, which actually had more stores, you didn't get in and you were passed. Some retailers responded by throwing Sega out of their stores. The next thing is only in five games, but the packings were wonderful. Virtual Fighter Too was fabulous when it came out in Japan,

it was a huge seller. Then Sony came out with PlayStation. It did much better than people thought, but didn't so as well as the Saturn. But then it came to the United States and people were wild about it, and sixty four wouldn't come out for another year. And by the time end sixty four did, PlayStation was on such a trajectory that no one else would kept up to it. So what made the Sony PlayStation so special? The first PlayStation was brilliantly designed. Sony gave you a hundred thousand

colleagons per second. Nintendo trying to compete by giving you more textures. But if you looked at games on the PlayStation, they looked better. Games on and sixty four looked like they were inflated toys. They had that rounded, sort of puffy look. The PlayStation also made a smart business move in terms of its format. It was the first major console to use disks rather than cartridges. That was a really good thing for the consumer. Because cartridges are very

expensive to make. You have to actually build wrong memory into them. Instead of a disc. You had chips inside those cartridges. That's expensive, but it wasn't just a question cheaper. You could fit so much on a single CD, and if one c D for any reason wasn't big enough, you can put a second CD in the package for next to nothing. So all of a sudden games are huge.

You get this huge breakup where Nintendo's constant partner in RPG games, Squaresft, looks at what Sony is offering and says, hey, guys, it's been nice, but Final Fantasy seven is going to come out on the PlayStation. An evil empire is sucking the light source from the planet, destroying all that's gettings packed. It's the one soul sort of fortune to save the world. If he succeeds, you survive. If he fails, you can always hit the reset buttons. Final Fantasy seven. So Nintendo

found themselves in an interesting situation. They had over nine of the market with ANYS and then they were down to about on the market with this Nest. Then all of a sudden, PlayStation comes out and there are thirty percent of the market But Sony's path to domination didn't stop there. In two thousand, Sony released their follow up console, the PlayStation two, which to this day is the top selling console of all time. PlayStation two came out, and

on the one hand, Sony had become very arrogent. The line I always get to kick out of was that they called the graphics processor the emotion engine on and somebody once quipped that the only emotion I ever got out of it was despair. It was hard to program. But Sony took the entire PlayStation one architecture, transferred it to a single chip and threw it into the PlayStation two for good measure, and it played DVDs. That one little box, That two box was a PlayStation DVD player

and a PlayStation two all in one. You can argue that they were harsh on their development partners, but they were generous to the consumer. As it turns out, Sony would desperately need the profits from their PlayStation consoles. That's

because there are other products weren't doing so well. All of a sudden, Samsung and LG come out with great TVs for half the price of Sony's, and Sony no longer owns the TV market, Sony Ericsson telephones disappeared, Nicon and Cannon started coming up with cameras, and Sony lost the digital camera market, and all of a sudden, PlayStation two as a guts and because it's the only thing that's keeping Sony alive, PlayStation's iron grip over the video

games industry changed everything. Many console developers like Sega and Atari, face layoffs, reduced output, or quit the console market altogether, until eventually Nintendo was Sony's only real competitor. That is, until one more tech company decided to try their hand at video games. Microsoft. They released their first console, the Xbox, in two thousand and one, but it didn't go over so well in countries outside the US. The original Xbox

was a dreadful idea for Japan. A lot of people attacked Japan and say, well, Xbox never had a chance because it was American and Japan would let it catch on. There's some reasons to feel that way, but looking at everything from the other perspective, it was way too big.

There were Japanese washer dryer towers where the footprint on the ground is about maybe a third bigger, maybe a half bigger than that Xbox, but Drink on the ground didn't have a lot of Japanese game scored, whereas Sony had a huge library of Japanese exclusives, and Nintendo, of course was Nintendo. And then there was the name too.

I never realized. It's been a friend of mine. Ryan Payton pointed out to me that here in the United States we say X marks the spot, and that's a good thing, but in Japan, X is actually kind of a negative. So the Xbox was sort of this negative box. It's the box not to have. They came nowhere near a million units, but Microsoft was self aware about the shortcomings of the Xbox, so when they released the Xbox three sixty in two thousand and five, they overhauled their

marketing strategy. The next x Box up would sell over a million, which is still paltry compared to the other Xboxes, but boy the effort and the elligence of Microsoft put into doubling their sales. They went into Japanese homes and talk to people. They worked wildly to attract good game designers, and they made a big budget in the Japanese market. Meanwhile, Nintendo struggled to stay relevant during the early two thousand's. They released the Nintendo GameCube in two thousand and one,

which sold less units in the Xbox. The GameCube never grew to account more than of the total games market. On the one hand, you look at GameCube and you say, wow, you know, so sorry to seem Intend to go away down. But then they turned around and come out with the Wi Next, which isn't a game system for gamers. It's a game system for gamers grandmothers. But I'll be the arnest they didn't recapture the market with the Wei. Nintendo

successfully diversified the world of video gaming. They created an interactive experience unlike anything before it, and it was the first console to be fully accessible to a wider, more family oriented audience, and it was a huge success, selling over a hundred million units and putting Nintendo back on the map. Stephen says that the game's industry learned a lot from Nintendo success. The more accessible games were, the more they would sell, and this sparked a new revolution

the cross gaming. So the accessibility of video games is they've become ubiquitous. It used to be that you went to the arcades or if you had two hundred dollars a time when two hundred dollars was really five hundred dollars. You bought an Atari and it wasn't as good, but you bought it. Now you can play the best arcade games from the eighties on your cell phone. Everyone's dat a cellphone because of go pay your coin as philosophy of using old technologies. Nintendo keeps the price on their

console is pretty achieved. But on top of that, if you can't afford an Xbox Series X, guess what you can probably affordy used three sixty. There was a time when the game companies were saying, yeah, you know, we're gonna get twenty billion dollars this year in sales, more bigger than Hollywood. Now they're getting closer to a hundred billion dollars in sales, and they're bigger than Hollywood plus professional sports plus the music industry combined. So what's next

for gaming? One of the big trends right now is virtual reality. But I will tell you that virtual reality really scares me. I was talking with someone recently who was telling me that he used to get so motion sick playing virtual reality games, but now he doesn't anymore.

And he was happy about that until I pointed out that your brain physically remaps itself based on the stimulus you get it, which meant that his brain had remapped itself to accommodate v R. There's been a lot of research don on v ART and the effects it has on our brains, but not all of it has been released, and I wonder about that. I'm nervous about what VR will do in the long run. But one of the more exciting advancements to think about is how visuals continue

to improve. As Stephen points out, graphics have come a long way from early video games. I remember looking at ghosts and goblins on the NYES and training to my mom and saying, you know, that's good artwork. My mom is looking at and going, really, you think so? Sony was so good, uh presentation. Nintendo was so good at presentation. Frankly, if you saw the first FIFA soccer on the three do that was the game that turned sports games from being flat guys on a flat field taking a flat

ball into having ambiance. The stadiums are there, and the stadium is part of the game. One of the things I love about video games. I've always loved about video games, and I don't think I'm alone in this is that video games can take you someplace you wouldn't want to be in real life. You can be a guy challenging the Greek and now I believe, the Nordica. You can be in a haunted house being chased by machine gun

toning zombies. Whatever you want. They'll take you into these places that you wouldn't want to be in in real life, or places that you couldn't qualify for for real life. You can beat the Williams sisters in tennis. If you're good enough on the tennis games, you can fight brock Lester. These are things that in real life are not possible, and video games have gotten so good at presenting them in a way that you look at it and you think it's got to be real, or it's almost real.

But here's the caveat. In literature, there's a term called the suspension of disbelief. I would argue that they achieved the suspension of disbelief in video games. Even back in the eighth bit era, where you were running Mario across polka dotted mushrooms, I gotta tell you I got acrophobic playing that game when Mario fell off a mushroom or a platform, I felt like I was dropping off the face of the world. They've been good at gain people

to suspend their disbelief with lesser graphics. It gets harder now because once you're spoiled with what exists today, if you've got a PS five or an Xbox Series X, it's hard to go back. You can pick up a game boy and still get lost in Tetris easily, but some of the other things aren't so easy. With the latest consoles, the PlayStation five and the Xbox Series X

games are now closer than ever to looking lifelike. After a quick break, we're going to sit down with familiar I Heart Podcast voices who also happened to be avid gamers, and we'll discuss what we are most excited about for the future of gaming. It's no secret that we have a big group of gamer nerds on the I Heart podcast team. A few weeks ago, we decided to chat with a few of them about our best gaming memories. Hi. I'm Trevor Young. I am a producer on Ephemeral, and

I'm very excited to talk about video games. Hi. I'm Annie Reese Um. I'm a podcast host for the show's stuff I've never told you and savor and I am also very very excited to talk about video games. This is Matt Frederick. I'm an executive producer on Ephemeral. Officially, I'm also a host of stuff they don't want you to know. And Hi, I am Max Williams. I am a producer here on Ephemeral, And yeah, I love video games.

So one of my first questions I had for the group to kick it off is a pretty obvious one, but it's just kind of what your first video game memory was, like, what your first system and game was. I'll start by saying, I'm pretty sure mine was getting like the bray Chunky game Boy, like the original Game Boy was I think the very first video game system I played. And I either played Tetris on it for the first time, or I played Pokemon like blue or

Red version, which would have been around like nine. I guess wow. Yeah, Indeed, one of my first video game memories is I have an older brother and it was kind of through him that I got introduced to video game So I was probably four years old, and I remember him playing. Like, my early memories get all mixed up, but I remember pretty clearly Turtles in Time Supernintendo version, and then he had like an X Men game that I really liked because the animation was storm. I thought

that was so cool. I think that's also Supernintendo. But we did have like a original Nintendo and I remember him playing I believe it was a Zelda game and also Mario in there. But by like early memories are of watching him play it, and it was kind of his domain at first, But then I I moved up in the world and started to play myself, so I'm I'm a little bit older. Uh Now I only know this first one because I have video footage of myself

and my father playing it. But it was a Mattel in television and it's had this controller that had a little circular metal thing that you used. It was very strange. It was a horse racing game where you don't really play the game, you just bet on which horse is gonna win. Less is a video game more like an interactive movie, very similar. Really, my first real memories are of an original Nintendo entertainment system playing weird games like Kung Fu and Solstice. Yeah. I think my first video

game memory was actually on the computer. I remember being a kid, and my parents were like, you guys can play video games, but they have to be educational. So it was a lot of like h G Games I believe was the company. It was like pot Putt Goes to the Moon and stuff. I think my first gaming system was similar to yours, Trevor. I remember having like the blocky gray game Boy, and Heven. I think I had Pokemon Blue and Ox had Pokemon Red because I was always like red schooler, I want Red being the

annoying little brother that I am. Yeah, what Matt was saying reminded me that like there was a whole era of like at home video game playing that like wasn't like proper consoles. It was like these like little boxes that would have like one or two random like kind of things on them that you could plug into your TV and like go. But it was really just like one or two things. It wasn't like a proper game console,

a cartridges or anything like that. Um, it was that kind of what that was, Matt uh the in television, I believe it had console, It had cartridges, very similar to like a cole Eco Vision that was like the other one that came out very early that I remember I never had an Atari, which was like the first system that had the cartridges you're speaking of. But yeah, I I don't know, man, there's something so amazing about a physical thing that you just plug in, especially with

the sound of it plugging in. I don't know when you're thinking about ephemeral things. You know, we don't even have discs anymore. You just download your games. But like getting ahold of that sucker uh and just that feeling, especially in the old nintendos. Man, Oh, it's great, which made the the experience of like a blockbuster or video game rental place all that more important and exciting. Yes, I mean, on that note, like where where did you

all like get your games from? Do you remember Christmas? If I got a game, it was Christmas. If I picked one up, it was a local video game store probably, which was probably a blockbuster. Yeah. Um, I, like I said about, my brothers were the ones that usually got the video games. And it actually caused some tension later because I bought like the console, but they had all the games. So when we went our separate ways, you

know who gets what? I claimed the PlayStation two because I fixed it with my own my own hands and screwdrivers. So that's fine. I still have it. So I don't think I started. We did get a lot of games um from Blockbuster. We rented a lot, especially for Sega. But I started buying once I got older. It's around PlayStation two era. I started buying my own games. Uh. And I once did a really annoying thing where I showed up with like just my allowance money, so it

was like quarters and stuff paid for this game. The guy was so mad at me, but that's how. That's how I had my money. I didn't know what to do, you know. I was actually just digging through some like I have a bunch of video stuff, like old stuff, and I found this copy of a paper Mario for the N sixty four nice and right here on the top it says property a block button. Because it was like, you know, you you can rent the games, but you can also pay. I don't know, like what was that

twenty bucks to buy the use game. I feel like there had to have been another place, but I don't remember going to a game stop or anything like that back then, or even if game stop was a thing yet. So yeah, I think just like blockbust, starties rented games and after a certain amount of times if I rented it, my parents were like, Okay, we're just gonna buy this because we're still of paying you know, the nine dollars or whatever it is to rent it for the weekend.

So my recollection is going to It was first called Electronics Boutique and then it became e B Games, and I'm pretty sure that got merged into game Stop. I could be wrong about that, but yeah, the first I remember, the first game store I went to was like E B Games and that's where I would get like my N sixty four games and sn E S games and stuff like that. Uh. And I'm pretty sure that was

like before games off existed. But the mall would have them, y'all just stores at the mall, just have them, right, Yeah, it was the whole thing. There was a I lived in a small town and there was a a mall, like a thirty minute drive away. It's a big deal. You go to E V Games and you're like, ah, this is heaven and it was big exciting dude. Well, and you had the arcade there too. Generally not at all malls, but if it was a good mall, it had an arcade and you know, if you're a kid.

I don't know if you guys had this experience, but you get you get some quarters and your family just let you go to the arcade for a little while. I can't remember if my parents would leave me there, but I know that once I entered the arcade, nobody was there but me and the consoles, and uh, it's just amazing. Yeah, let's tuck our kades for a second. So two questions, Matt, maybe you can answer. Do you remember the name of the arcade you went to and

you remember what games you played on it? Oh? Man, it was in Clearwater, Florida, when I would go visit my grand parents. I remember that one, just really specifically in my head. It was just a small mall that was a short drive from their house, and I remember that one. And I remember the arcade at the roller rink, which was just a couple of games set up kind of on the periphery of the rink. But I remember playing, uh, like a couple of ninja based games there for the

first time ever. Let ninja gating, Like man, I just I have very clear memory of it happening, but I can't I can't tell you the details I went to a time out. It was called time Out and it was an arcade in Gainesville, Georgia, which again I grew up in a small town that was just like outing. If you're gonna go that way, it's a whole day. But my parents would drop us off and just leave us there. And I loved there's a zombie game. I really loved a Star Wars game. I really loved a

dinosaur one and a Hotted House one. Oh I love those are like the kind of point and shoot ones. But I was also really good at commachine. I was like so good they banned me from like no more no where you're cheating. Yeah, I mean I don't really have them any like distinct memories of like I guess arcades when I was younger. Oddly enough, when I was like nineteen, I actually end up working at it like

an arcade like place for about six months. But there was like this one place called like Startime or something with that. It's like like the suburbs nor like north of Atlanta and Olex and I would go to that and we just play House to the Dead like the entire day, just like keep hitting, like you know, continue putting the more money and stuff, and by that point it wasn't like tokens or chips. It was like the card.

But yeah, I would say most of my memories are like when I was like nineteen, I actually worked at like it was kind of like a Chucky Cheese, independently owned type place, and I was a technician, which meant it's like, you know, if a bunch of kids just shove coins into the wrong machine, um, I would take

it offline on jam the coins. But I remember they had like a misspac Man there, and they had like I think a Space Invaders there, And unfortunately I was still like too young to appreciate how awesome it was having those like really retro awesome machines. But I don't know, I feel like by the time I got really into gaming, like arcades were already you know, pretty phased out. Bless you for doing that work, sir. Pinball. Does everybody have

pinball memories? Does anyone have pinball memories? Yeah? Little, I feel like pinball was at the arcades I would go to, but like that was the only context that I would find it. Early was like in arcades, um, there just be usually like a corner or a wall of the arcade where they were pinballs, and my favorite ones are always the ones connected to movies. You know that I knew, like the Star Wars one or the Indiana Jones one

or something like that. Well, just as a personal connection for me, and I wonder how this connects with you guys, like the experience of playing a video game of any kind, including a pinball game, which isn't really a video game, you know, it's more integrated with video graphics and stuff later on, but it's associated for me with it because of the location, as you're saying to over the arcade, I have clear memories of my father and I playing and the joy that I would get when my dad

and I would like compete on a pinball machine, and then that translated later on to us competing in other like console games at the house, which is just this clear through line that I've got with my connection to my son now with video games. So I'll just I'll bring that back up later. No, that's great, Um, that reminds me. You know, I think I have a somewhat similar story where most of my arcade time was spent

at a place in Dallas, Texas called Nickel Rama. Because everything was in Nickel and Dallas is where my dad and step mom lived, and so I would go visit

them there. I didn't live in Dallas, and my dad was always working, so I never really got to hang out with him when I visited, weirdly, so I would like spend most of that time with my step mom, And that was just kind of our thing we did when I would visit, like pretty much like every day when I would visit, or like whatever weekends I would go, we'd go to the Nicole Rama And that's like really how my stepmom and I like got to bond and know each other growing up when I was a kid.

So we'd um, you know, go to the like two player you know, like fighting games like Moral Kombat or whatever it was, or like the Simpsons game where you work together and like kind of go across the map shooting weird guys popping out of trash cans. Like like that was just our thing. Like that was me and my stepmom saying so, uh, you know, she's one of my favorite people in the world, and I don't think

we would be as close without that arcade. Without Nicole Rama, I had a friend who had a pinball she had some pinball machines at her house because her dad really loved pinball machines, and it was the coolest. It was so cool. I was always very very excited to go and visit her. And I think that's another when I think of video games, there's that kind of element when you're a kid where you get jealous of who has

what game and what console and you're gonna go. I was gonna go to her house and play pinball, you know, like having these associations that she also had an Atari and I didn't have an Atari. I had a Sega, so we got to mix it up. Sometimes. I was always really jealous when my friends were like better very like certain games than me, you know, like I was always really bad at Super Smash on the N sixty four growing up, Like I just couldn't figure it out.

I don't know if it was a controller. I'm much better at it now, but yeah, just like drive Me drove me nuts that I was like always like last place on Smash, and I feel like since then, I've devoted my life to like getting better at that game so I can like not be in last place on Brawl or whatever the newest one is now Brawl was on. We the newest one is like Ultimate. I guess that's a really interesting, just larger topic to bring up the

competitiveness angle. You know, video games is really a bonding thing for friends in many ways, especially in the console era. You know, my my friends and I would always get together and play various games like that. For us, it

was more like Halo on the original Xbox. My friends and would get together all the time and just play Halo, and that's all we would do all night, and we couldn't wait till the next time we got to do it again, which translated later to M m O RPGs or you know, the online thing where we could be in our separate places. Once we went off to college and everything, we're still playing together. We were just separated. That's what I find really funny about my gaming now

at this point in my life. So, like, you know, I had a lot of friends who were really into gaming, really competitive. I would play with them. I was usually like one of the worst out of them. But I say about like nineteen twenty, that's when I realized I hate playing videogas to other people. I'm a solo gamer and I've embraced it in my like you know now going to my thirties. It's like that's why I got really into the Assassin's Creed and then Skyram fall Out

all this stuff. I'm like nothing about just like getting online and playing with people, even if I know them, like really Like it's kind of like my period of rest bit away from I mean a lot of this might tie into the fact that I was a bartender for many years. I was with people all the time, and I'll play with people on a cage, but I

don't really enjoy it. Yeah, I'd second that in a way. Now, I think I'm like kind of in between where there was like a time where I got a lot of like communal value out of video games, especially like Matt was saying in the m m O RPG Hey Day, Like when World of Warcraft hit, me and my friends were all up on World of Warcraft, like that was

like our thing. We didn't even like hang out. There was like a whole year where we didn't even hang out in person because it was so much cooler to be like in our like respective homes, on our computers, talking on our like horrible little like USB Mike. That was like what we wanted to do. That's how we wanted to hang out. But at some point over the years, like I don't know, like online gaming just started to feel more and more like toxic to me. Like I'd

be on it and people were like really bad. Like by bad, I mean like I would say horrible things and we're like just like really rude and mean, and um, you know, a couple of years ago, I got really into Overwatch, and so as playing like Overwatch like online a lot, and like man like just like the amount of like racism and sexism and all horrible things that I just like and just like abuse, you know, like people like berating you over like messing up a game

or something like that. It's just like not not worth it anymore, totally here you, Trevor. I tried recently to use the Oculus to do some online multiplayer gaming, and it was a horrible experience for that reason you just pointed out. And this is my opinion, but this is

what I think. These are probably a lot of younger people who are playing these games, including Overwatch, all these games they are developing, They are like testing out some of these more the things that they're not supposed to say the things that the way they interact with others, and you know, testing out that mean streak because maybe it's been done to them. And I don't that's not the case for every kid, but I think you're you're encountering that a ton when you go into an online

space now with video games with younger people. Again, I think they're just they're testing in a lot of ways because they're not going to get necessarily in trouble for saying those things that are kind of naughty and exciting for a kid's mind. Um, and they probably don't even understand what they're saying or what it really means. Just to defend the griefers in the a holes that you'll encounter. Sorry, that's not that they need defending. No, I get that.

I hope it is really that innocent, um, and it comes from a place of naivete. But sometimes it feels like I'm talking to adults who were those kids and just like never really grew up. You know, now they're like in their thirties or something and are still like saying horrible things. You know, I don't know, I mean that would track right, Yeah, I mean, you've got the whole game or gate thing. I'm it's like literally a woman getting death threats from adult men because she dared

to critique a game that they liked. So it's definitely, it's extremely it can be very very toxic and very dangerous, and unfortunately a lot of like, um, it's getting worse, Like there's actually been some surveys, some studies recently that we're going backwards, like there have been some progress made. So I'm very competitive, but I stopped playing online games at twelve because I was getting like harassed, and I've just never gone back and it didn't feel like a

a safe space. It is a weird thing for a twelve year old to be like, oh god, O can't I can't be involved in this anymore. It's interesting because I, like I said, I got introduced to video games to my brothers, and I was very competitive. However, it was always always in my mind viewed as this is a more masculine space. So I would play, but only if they would let me play. And like I, you all

probably remember this, but I bet some listeners don't. Games used to only have like one safe space or like two maybe, and they so they would go through and erase all my games, and it was just like a huge point of contention. Um so I always felt like I wasn't good enough for them, like they were way better than I ever could be. But then at the same time, like my other friends who were girls who didn't really play video games, thought that like I was

kind of strange because I was a girl playing video games. Uh. But I did go on to I Want a Super Smash Brothers competition in college. I went to a very technical school and it was se men and they all accused me of cheating and said there's no way she could have won. It's impossible, like we're shouting in my face. So I've never competed ever again. But I did win, and I want some money. Whoa congratulations first of all, But wow, that sucks. Character? What character ours, marr I mean,

Martha's pretty jacks make. It's wild to me though, you have the kind of self awareness as early as twelve to be like, you know what this is like toxic? I don't need this. Yeah, yeah, and it was really toxic. Also, I just I prefer storyline based games. I do, like I like party games like Mario cart and all that

kind of stuff. But like I really love a good storyline, and so this was it was common for me growing up to like I would watch my brothers play and my friends would watch me play like it like it's a movie or something, and I feel like that not a lot of online games are like that. So it was a couple of reasons, but it's definitely like it scared me to play online. What you were saying about liking games, I have a story anyways, I'm like totally

the same way. I think my my favorite game series are probably like the Final Fantasy series, the Metal Gear Solids areas things that I like have really like compelling, deep storylines to them. Certain Final Fantasy games. That's um for debate, but overall, I think like they're all written

pretty well. And um yeah, it's it's been hard for me to get into games like Fallout or like a BioShock or something where you're just kind of like in first person the whole time, like kind of exploring these worlds. That's just like it's fun, it's cool, but like there's no like characters to latch onto as much. There's no real like plot development. Fallout four, you're kidding me, Yes, there is. Get Out of Town. I'm gonna get canceled

for this opinion. My favorite game for PlayStation four is The Witcher, which is like that you go wherever you want, to do whatever you want. But then the overall story is in my mind so perfect and developed for a more mature audience. It's it's made for a gamer that's been playing since you know any Yes, there is that you guys are talking about, like you know, there's that spectrum.

So it's like I'm thinking about like Elder s Girls five Skyrim, which is like one of my favorites of all time, but there's really isn't another character you'd really ever latch onto and like that. That's what I've always felt like one of the big improvements and fall At four was it's like, Okay, here are these companions, some of which when you finished the game, you're gonna have to turn on, you're gonna have to kill. It's not perfect, but it is a lot better. But I'm really thinking

about my favorite play through. I'm thinking like Assassin's Creed too, and then I'm gonna include Brotherhood because that's that's the conclusion to that. And that was you know, you had a lot of like you know, on the tertiary stuff you could control, but it was a straight line storyline. You were going to start the game at seventeen years old and at the end you're killing the Pope's son. Spoiler. Anyone has played it yet, and I hadn't dead there yet.

I was waiting for those switch free Masters. Well, we'll think about games like the Legend of Zelda Linked to the Past. It came out on Supernintendo, and just how story forward that game was, even though it was in action game that you got to fight through tons of enemies and you never stopped to have a battle, You're just fighting. I don't know that that kind of game really changed the way I thought about video games in general.

And Super Metroid Oh god, yeah, I guess up to that point, like there was nothing really like that, right, There was no concept of like a a story or a motivation behind a lot of these games. It was just like character does thing. It is fun, you will have fun. That is the game. Did y'all ever go on a plane flight when you were a kid and like get a video game magazine? Oh my god? That

was again. This is me visiting my grandparents in clear Water every once in a while, we would fly instead of drive, and if we ever did, it was all about getting that video game magazine for the plane flight, and you just stare at all the amazing things that could be in your life one day. I love that. Yeah.

I think I maybe got like Game Informer at the like at the Hudson news stand or whatever, uh, and would like sift through that, like being really stoked about like the still images for Kingdom Hearts too or something. Can we talk for a second about just how hard games back then were, like the games on like Second Genesis for example, like some of those Sonic games, and if you all ever played those, but like it felt like certain games were just impossible to be Like, I don't.

I don't think I ever beat some of those Sonic games that were just like ridiculously hard. But I've heard like that was the point. I think that the technology has just come so far. There are some games I was really good at when I was a kid, and now I'm convinced like you compensate for like lag or Glitch, So now when I try to play them, I'm like trying, why isn't it turning? Like I think you get used to those things when you're a kid and you kind

of have it in the back of your mind. Okay, I'd start turning two seconds before I actually looks like I need to turn. So I'm terrible at a lot of games that used to be really really good at, and they were. They were very, very hard. I have

many memories of just even just the physicality that. Like there was another game where the buttons you had to press to just jump, like double jump impossible, impossible, And it's not like it laid it out anywhere, like now games are really good at being like to jump, press a back then it should just go for it. I don't know, you figure it out your own figure. There was a game on any S that I've played called Iron Sword Wizards and Warriors Too. That's what it was called,

and it was my favorite game. I loved it. I loved being this warrior in uh like a Google remember guls and Ghosts, a little iron clad warrior with all his armor and his sword. It was like that, but it was way more simple and way more difficult, and I never beat it. I have no idea how that game ends. I still think about that game, but I don't know. I just need to watch a walk through

on YouTube. I guess with somebody who's better than me. Yeah, yeah, I've got that with a bunch of Mega Man games that I would play on like PlayStation one and a couple of other consoles. Does Mega Man games were I think probably the hardest games I've ever played. Yeah, except for Dark Souls. Christ No, we don't talk about Dark Souls in this house. I never played Dark Souls, but I live with guys who played Dark Souls, and that

was painful for me. Yeah, just like f bombs and like hearing controllers like Smash against the Law on the other room. I went on vacation with my roommates when I was twenty three, and one of the dudes brought us PS three and Dark Souls and just sat in the condo on the beach the entire trip. What a horrible vacation playing Dark Souls because he was hooked and it was just pain and misery that we all have to listen to in this small little condo and Myrtle Beach.

You guys know Tyler and Chandler, right, Yeah, I know of them. These are two other producers who worked with us. We used to go in the basement and put on Dark Souls on the projector and take turns playing and dying horribly and getting so angry and throwing controllers, and Chandler would watch and go, you guys are dorks, but

we couldn't get enough. Do y'all deal with any like conservative parents or people who kind of like borrored you from playing like emiraated games and stuff like that, Like did your parents not let you play Grand Theft Auto or whatever? Yep. Yeah. I remember when Alex and I got our End sixty four, we were still pretty young. There was one rule we couldn't get Zelda because I had swords and fighting. We were a lot of play super Specs brothers. We weren't a lot of play Zelda.

We literally had brothers, had link plenty of swords in that game. Yeah, and it was all about fighting. Everything ange for me when I got a PlayStation and I got a game called Resident Evil, and I would play it quietly in my room at night, alone in the dark and scaring the crap out of myself. I remember my friend had to leave one night when he was staying over and we were playing Resident Evil and he's like, I gotta go home. I can't handle this. It wasn't.

I was hiding it from my parents necessarily. They just didn't understand what the game was or how scary it was to play, but they let you play it like they didn't sense there it from you. That was when I was quite a bit older, you know, old enough to play Resident Evil. I guess was I. I don't know, God, are we ever old enough to play Resident Even My parents were very much kind of what you mentioned earlier, Max,

where they were like all about the educational. I had a lot of like computer games I played that were very educational in nature, and I loved them. I actually still think about how fun those were. Um, so they that was kind of there. I like to like jump Start fifth grade. That was so yeah, I think I would play that now still. Uh. And they knew, like we had the Sega games, so they would see like we had a racing game, we had a like dinosaur game. But I think, like you said, Man, I think they

just didn't really under stand that much. So I too played Residon Evil and I definitely was too young to play it. That's also a game. One of the last games that I mentioned that I bought with all my allowance. I bought a Resident Evil game, and I was definitely too young to buy it, but the guy didn't say anything. I think if they had known, I don't know, they might have still been like whatever. Because President Evil is

kind of a strange one because it's zombies. I don't know why that makes it different, but I kind of feels like it does. Yeah, I guess they just didn't really understand. But I had a friend who was super conservative and she did not Her parents were super conservative, and she did not approve of me playing video games and she didn't like she didn't want me to play them around her. So I didn't counter that just on the educational games tip. I feel like all my parents

money went into my video game addiction. Now that I've made this, I made a list of all the games I played, and I'm just thinking about these things. Super Nintendo and Nintendo made a piano game. Are you guys aware of this? Like an early Guitar Hero type thing. It's kind of like Guitar Hero, but it was specifically to teach somebody how to play piano, and it was called Miracle. I believe because I think we had one.

It's weird. I remember specifically having a Miracle Keyboard. I can't remember if we had the game for it or not, but it was a just a cheap little keyboard and you could plug your Nintendo or your Supernintendo into it. But that's just really cool. Game systems did things like that. Yeah. I mean, I know Guitar Hero is not actually teaching anybody how to play guitar, but I feel like it definitely inspired a lot of people I know to actually pick up a guitar and try and figure that out.

And I think I introduce a lot of people to like a lot of music that maybe people wouldn't have known about otherwise. Hell yeah, dude, look at that. Matt just pulled out a guitar. Guitar. It's my PlayStation two. Nice. How out did those buttons work? Are? Are they like super sticky and barely work? Both are in perfectly working order. I loved d d R. I had the Matt Dance Dance Revolution. I still have them, and we, me and

my little brother would just play after school. We would play DDR, and to this day, there are certain songs I can't hear without being like step step step jump step, and we would just try so hard to like perfect all the songs, and we we had to like do some surgery on one of the mats because the sensors got all messed up. But that was that was fun. I had such a good time with D d R.

This is what I wanted to bring up. Um more things that consoles introduced that were perifer periphery peripherals, so how you say it's peripherals. Other pieces of hardware that you would attach to your game system to play specific games. The one I think many of us probably think about is the Nintendo Light Gun, the orange one. Did you guys play duck Hunt and all those? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,

Does anybody remember the Super Nintendo light Gun? Was it different? Yes, it was a full blown bazooka called the super Scope six, and it was a bazooka and you held it and you played games the way you would with a light gun. But so were you like bzooking like ducks and duck Hunters? Still? No, I remember you're shooting like missiles that are flying through the air. You've got your buzuka and you're trying to

shoot them down. Because I'm just imagining you're playing duck Hunt and you're trying to hunt them and you should have missed, lad and he just blows them. Dog goes to sorry dog splash damage. My friend had a she had like an early VR system, um like early early days, and that God. I hated it because it was like the graphics weren't good. It was really disorienting, and it just never did what you were doing. It didn't work very well. I guess the technology wasn't there. Yeah, I

don't know. VR never really appealed to me. However, I feel like the Wii is probably was like the closest thing to uh, making it sort of accessible or a version of it accessible, because it's all like very interactive, right, Like the whole point of the week console was like to sort of simulate VR and or like at least have movement correlate to things happening in the game. I just really quickly want to talk about the experience of

playing video games with your child. It's given me a ton of perspective just on what it was, what it must have been like from my parents to like release me into these video game worlds and trust that I would. I don't know. It's it's about decision making in a lot of cases, especially in newer games. Like what decision will my son make when he encounters a bunch of farm animals and Minecraft? How will he react when villagers

are around in Minecraft? And you know, having those conversations with him about well, you know, why would we just kill all of these guys or what what's the difference between if you'd kill the villager or if you trade

with the villager. I know that's kind of weird thing to think about, but I'm just imagining the learning opportunities that aren't just sitting down and you know, learning the way with the with the educational games that we used to play, but learning about interaction with other things in an environment. I both leave. There was a big study done about that and specifically like actions have consequences and learning that through video games and what that can look like.

And this is sort of outside the scope of what we're talking about today, but video games have been used to train people to do things, and one thing I find really interesting about them is that sort of aspect of when you're designing a game, you do have to kind of get into like how the human brain works, and like are they going to get that they need

to go over here? All these really interesting design elements, but essentially trying to codify humans and what are they going to do in the space, which I find like really really really fascinating, and and the ways that they can they can be used as kind of a teaching way but also like a reflection of of yourself. It is weird how video games for me, at this point in my late thirties are are in a it's an escape.

It's an avoidance almost of real responsibility, things that I know I need to get done that I just need a break after working or after doing something stressful, um, go into a different place, disassociate a bit weirdly, um m m. And I've been doing that since I was a kid. When I was stressed out with school or something, I would want to play my video game. Uh. That's why Ultimate Online was a real addiction a problem. Yeah,

I'm with you. It's weird. How to me that like feeling of escapism and addiction and all that kind of stuff like like carries with you your whole life in a weird way, like games provide that I think that'll probably carry with us. I don't know what do you guys think, Like how do you see gaming, um like being a part of your life over the next like say ten to twenty year is what do you think it will be for you? It's a good question, So yeah,

currently I use them. They're definitely kind of an escapism and kind of like babysit your brain sometimes just when do this. I really really enjoy story games, as I said, and I think there are some video games that the story is so good. I guess what I'm saying is to me, I feel like in the future, I'm going to still be playing these same games because it's almost like an interactive movie, which I do like. I know some people don't, but I really like getting caught up

in the story and getting to control it. And there's so many instances in my life where I'll look back and I'm a grown woman and I'll stay up all night because I want to know how the story ends, like I'll be up, I can't stop, I can't stop, I kiss out, like I know how it ends. Um. So I think that for me it's going to be it's gonna be like that. I would be very it would be funny to me if I like suddenly love something like animal crossing and like switches. But I think

it's I'm going to stay the course. I'm pretty sure I'm going to keep like ten twenty years from now, I'm still gonna be playing video games. Yeah, same, And I think my answer is probably similar, but I'd add that I feel like video games as a storytelling vehicle is like improving so vastly with every new generation of games.

Like God of War, for example, just like blew my mind with like, um, like how well it was written, like the kind of like emotional density of it, like the how real the characters like felt both in their like dialogue and the way they look and a moat. You know, It's like games are becoming so advanced now that like it's it's no longer just like the kind of clunky, you know, dialogue box sort of storytelling from

you know, not even that long ago. I feel like even in the early is like go back and listen to some of that dialogue on a lot of popular games, and it's just like really kind of cringe e and like not great, but like, man, they're getting so much better at that, Like they're getting real voice actors and like them, the c g I is getting to the point where like it really looks like they're saying, you know, almost like a like high budget, multimillion dollar like animated

film or something like that. So I'm really excited to see like how the storytelling and like both in terms of visual effects and in writing like gets better over the next ten to twenty years. You know, I feel like we're gonna get like a Citizen Kane of video gaming here in the next few years. I feel like it's inevitable. When I think about gaming in the future, I think it's going to probably stay the same. I mean, I feel like it's just like part of it's a thread,

the tapestory of like me as a person. It's like it's such an important thing, like working on this. This is like, you know, these last few weeks, I'm like, oh man, I'm being so nostalgic. I'm thinking about things like I'm thinking about how bad my brother always tried to cheat every video game and still lost. He was still lose to me, but he would tried really hard to cheat every some time. It's like, I don't know, I like, I don't see myself, you know, being my

fifties and not having video games around. I just think it's like, you know, if I do have a family. One day I do have kids, I think I'm gonna be like, hey, here are video games, because they don't give me excuse to play video games with you and stuff like that. I love what you said, Max about video games being a part of the tapestry. That is you like, I'm looking at a list right now. I can just see it. This is my life right here

in a list of titles. Um. And at the top of the list is that in television video game system that I had when I was a little kid. I don't have clear memories of it, but I remember um sitting in front of this old CRT television with my dad, specifically my dad, and we were playing, Uh, do you remember the old game Centipede? We were playing Centipede together.

Recently took my son to david Busters and there was a Centipede game, like an arcade game with Centipede, and it was cool and new and looked neater and had flashing lights and everything. And he looked at it and he just wanted to play. He said, Dad, play with me. So I sat down with him and we played a

bunch of rounds. And I think just using video games in the future for me as an excuse to spend some quiet time with my son where we get to bond and learn about things and have those moral choices that I was talking about, and just, I don't know, using them as a weirdly a tool to kind of shape his outlook on the world and the way he views other people and things within it and himself. As you were speaking to Annie, like through this character, how

do I see myself? That's what I'm gonna do. This episode of a Thema was co written by Max Billiams and Every Yung, with production by Max Williams and additional editing from Jesse Fonk. Stephen L. Kent is the author of the Ultimate History of Video Games Volumes one and two. Some of the great music this episode, like the piece you're hearing now comes Curtis to the artist mon plays you.

If you've listened to Ephemeral for a while, you've heard a lot of their work, and we're happy to announce we'll have an upcoming episode interviewing the artist for now here more at Loyalty Freak music dot com and big thanks to our return guests Matt Frederick and Annie Reese. We'd love to hear from you about your favorite games, What are your best gaming memories. What do you think the future holds for video games? Let us know on

social media. We're at ephemeral show and for more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.