Speaker 1: All right, everybody, welcome back to the Surely You Can't
Be Serious Podcast. Today we're going to start our series
on games of nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 2: Oh man, I don't know. I don't know if I
can do it today. Man, I feel like I'm coming
down with pac Man fever.
Speaker 1: Nice.
Speaker 2: This is my dad joke of the day, Fever. You
don't even have to put.
Speaker 1: A quarter in to get this kind of content today.
This is Podcasts are free unless you want to be
a Patreon. Go to our Patreon page help support the show.
Speaker 2: We would love to have you as a Patreon for
less than a week's worth of nineteen eighty three money
going to the arcade. You can be an executive producer
of one of our episodes.
Speaker 1: That would be fantastic.
Speaker 2: Did you when you were a kid, did your mom
like give you a dollar and you went to the
video arcade and just hang out there.
Speaker 1: I begged for money all the time.
Speaker 2: Like it was. It became kind of a routine that
I would come home. I'd be like, are we going
to them all to day? Yes, We're going to the
all to day? Kind of have a dollar for this
arcade and I could spend She would go shopping and
I could spend two hours on a dollar, not that
I was playing that long, but I would just you know,
you watch other people play. It was fantastic. Absolutely, video
game arcades is one of my deep loving memories from
the early eighties.
Speaker 1: We're going to get into it. But there are video
arcades that I have fond memories of. Okay, there are
restaurants that had arcade games that I can remember growing
up eating at and like gas stations. There's a convenience
store by my house that had a couple of games
I played at. My church had three video games in
the pool room next to the family life center of
the gym.
Speaker 2: Nice I did not have that, but Central in Arkansas
we had fun City was the name of the arcade.
Fun City. It eventually moved over by the hospital. But
in the other mall, Phoenix Village Mall, we had Aladdin's Castle,
which I think had to be in every town in
the world. Yes, in the early eighties, Yes, and that
those were my early eighties video game places. And then
later on I was like you, I was going to
I would drive eight miles on my bicycle to a
convenience store that had Super Mario brothers to play that
game in the mid eighties. Nice and then in the
nineties I would play the player against player fighter games.
I played the Capcom Street Fighter versus Marvel. I would
play that at the Putt Putt Place in Fort.
Speaker 1: Smouth Showbiz Pizza in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was the most.
Speaker 1: Amazing place in the world because they had pizza, ski ball, pinball,
and video games along with those creepy stand up robotmatronics.
Speaker 2: It was scared out of you.
Speaker 1: Yes, but every it was like a labyrinth. You would
go into another room and you'd find more games, like, oh,
my gosh, I didn't know they had this game back here.
Speaker 2: So we're here at the beginning of a series on
video games. But these are video games that all came
out the same year, nineteen eighty one. Yes, it is
the year that we've already described as potentially having the
best two week period for movies of any two week
period in history. But it also had all of these
amazing arcade games released the same year. Yeah.
Speaker 1: People refer to this as the golden age of video games.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this if there's a pinnacle year of the
Golden age of video games, it's nineteen eighty one. I
think so, I think so, yeah, So how did we
get there?
Speaker 1: It is an interesting story of how we got to
stand up cabinet arcade games.
Speaker 2: So our story begins with the development of the atomic bomb. Okay,
so with the development of the atomic bomb. They have
this thing called thesilloscope, which I tried to learn about
before we had this podcast, and all I can say is,
it is too hard for me to understand what an
asilloscope is. It's got lots of uses, and one of
those uses happened to be in the creation of the
atomic bomb. And one of the guys who was a
nuclear physicist who worked on the first atomic bomb, invented
the first video game on the ascilloscope in nineteen fifty eight. Wow.
So it was called Tennis for two and it looked
we know what pong is, right, everybody knows what pong is,
but this was much more like you're looking from the
perspective of a spectator at a tennis match, where you
see the ball going over the net and back over
the net, and all of this took place on this acilloscope.
So that was nineteen fifty eight. The year before that,
the Soviets had sent the first man into space. Right
the year after that, JFK says we're going to have
a man on the Moon within the next decade. So
everything at that point was all about space. So the
second video that came along was a space game that
was invented by a guy named Steve Russell called Space War.
And I said space War because it was like all
one word. I had an exclamation point at the end.
It's almost it's almost like Star Wars put together, this
really bad, like holiday musical kind of thing. Thankfully that
never really happed. Yeah, right, So anyway, this video game
is called Space Wars and it's got space ships flying
around shooting at each other. It was really an eighties
looking thing. But this was much earlier on and the
program became what we call the day like open source,
where it was, you know, you could just share the
programming with someone else and they could easily recreate it,
and so there were all kinds of improvements being done.
And it was the first game that somebody said, you
know what, we need a better control and so they
made a joystick out of spare telephone parts. Really, yes,
the first joystick, the first joystick. Nice that was the
first screen video game. Then a little later on comes
this guy named Ralph Bayer. Okay, he was a German
guy who had moved to the US before World War Two,
had gotten involved with World War two, was a very
military guy. But he saw while he was working with
these computers, he saw the potential of combining computers and
television games because back then nobody had a computer, but
there were forty million people who had TVs, and so
he thought, I can set up these games on a
television set at the house. So this was the first
time that somebody said, let's make TV an active, participating sport.
That's pioneering. Thought, yeah. So he develops this thing for
Magnavox called the Odyssey, and it's the first gaming console,
had like seven games with it, and one of them
was essentially a pong game.
Speaker 1: Okay, so the first Odyssey Magnavox was released in September
of nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 2: Yes, so at this point, there are a couple of guys,
Ted Dabney and Nolan Bushnell working at this electronics place
called Apex. Okay, they find a common love for this
game called Go, which is not an electronic game. It's
a game from like twenty five hundred years ago. It's
the oldest game that's still being played. But this interest
in gaming and in electronics leads them to form the
company Atari The Atari The Atari. So Atari was kind
of this answer to the fact that all of the
games up to this point had come from military guys.
You know, you get nuclear physicists making bombs and other
ralph behers, military guy making these war games. They are
kind of the hippie response where Bushnell basically says, if
you want to come in in your T shirt and
your flip flops and you want to smoke dope and
you want to do whatever, I don't care project done.
I don't care what you do with restaurant. So Atari
became like this very kednistic sex, drugs and rock and
roll place to work. And so Nolan Bushnell gets one
of these guys, gets an engineer from Apex that he
and Dabney had worked with, and said, hey, I want
to I want to do a game. I've got this
contract with GE. He didn't have a contract with GE. Okay,
he goes, it's just kind of a training thing to
see if you know you're going to be up to
working with us. He totally knew the guy was the
best thing that they could get, but it was just
this challenge for him. Right. So this guy he's hitting up,
his named al Alcorn, Right, okay, and he says, what
I want is the game that's kind of like ping Pong. Well,
I mean they'd already seen the Magnavox Odyssey. They he
knew exactly what he wanted here. But al Alkorn programmed
the first Pong game. When he brought it to Bushnell,
Bushnell's like, it's okay, that's pretty good. Can you put
any sound with it? He's like, man, I got other
things going on. I can't you know, figure that part
of it. He says, like, in less than a day
he figured out how to make sounds with the chips
already involved in it. Said, it took him no time
at all. So he invented the complete game of Pong
within just like three or four days. Wow, they take
that and make a stand up video game out of it,
and that is the birth of the stand up video
game Pong. That's the first one. Yes, just a little
side note.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in the early nineties, I'd say this is ninety three.
I went to Saint Louis with a friend of mine
Craig Parrish, friend of the show, friend of mine. And
in Saint Louis by the Arch, within walking distance of
the Arch, they have the video game Hall of Fame
and you could play Pong along with everything else under
the sun.
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: And you talk about having fun, I mean we were.
Our eyeballs fell out when we walked in that place.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, it was fantastic. It was fantastic. Do
you remember playing Pong as a kid? I can't say
I remember playing Pong. Yeah, we had a gaming we
had a gaming console. We actually had a bally. I'm
not even sure what the game was we had, but
it had the twist knob kind of controls like the
original Pong had. It was awesome. I wish we'd find
something that had those twist knobs again.
Speaker 1: I mean I spent a lot of time at arcades,
that's for sure.
Speaker 2: Well, needless to say, al Alcorn got the job at Atari, okay, right,
and he becomes kind of one of the higher ups there.
And at some point this guy comes in and says,
I read your ad that says I want to have
fun and make money, so I'd like to come work,
and the girl at the reception desk is like, okay,
well you know I need you to come out. He's like, no,
I'm not leaving until you give me a job. And
she's like okay. And so she calls Al Alcorn on
the phone and says, I've got this guy up here.
He's like in a T shirt and flip flops. It
looks really like a hippie. He said, he's not going
to leave till we give him a job. What do
you want to do? And al Corn says, send him
on back, let me talk to him. So the guy
comes in disheveled hair, Al alcrn ask him. He's like,
where'd you go to school? He goes, I want to read.
He's like, is that a electronic school. He's like no,
it's a literary school. He says okay, well what was
your degree? And he goes, oh, I didn't graduate. And
he's like all right. He goes, but I really love technology.
I really have a passion for it. And Al says, listen, kid,
you look like you got potential. I may give you
a job. What's your name? And the kid goes Steve Jobs,
Steve Jobs, Wow, Wow, and Al hired him, and so
that was Steve jobs first job as Atari employee. That
is freaking amazing. Yeah. I love the crap that you
find as you go through this stuff, isn't it amazing?
Speaker 1: I'm glad he figured out that this guy had something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean you talk about he had a passion,
he had a fire. He also had bo.
Speaker 1: That makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the people at Atari had a hard time working
with Steve Jobs because he had kind of this attitude
and attitude problem, and he also smelled terrible. He believed
he believed at the time that if you ate only
fruit that you wouldn't have body odor. It turns out
that's not true.
Speaker 1: I wonder if he ate, like, you know, cherry, then strawberry,
than orange, than pretzel, than apple, then pair of them banana.
Speaker 2: I think he was really just fond of the apple. Oh,
but ching damn thanks zoom. Okay. So, one of the
games that Atari develops that is very similar to Pong,
but one that you can play yourself and with that
dial knob thing is a game where you have the paddle,
you send the ball up and it breaks the blocks.
You know what I'm talking about is this game called Breakout. Yes,
it is. It is called Breakout okay Now. The game
Breakout inspired a Japanese he's engineer to create his own
game okay Now. Japan, after World War two, had seen
the potential of electronic technology and it used it as
the focus in rebuilding the country. But remember that bit
from Back to the Future three now on this circle
fail says made in Japan. What do you mean that
all the best stuff is made in Japan? That encompasses
the difference between nineteen fifty five and nineteen eighty five. Right,
they went from being someone that was not respected to
the pinnacle best you can get stuff. So one of
the engineers in Japan who is fascinated by this game
Breakout as a guy named Tommy Hero Nishikato, and he
comes up with this idea of instead of throwing a
ball up, we're going to shoot up. And he's like, okay, now,
I just have to come up with stuff to shoot.
He thinks, tanks now on the good planes looks too hard?
How about people? People looks good? That's awesome, yes, but
let's shoot people. But the company he was working for
was like, no, we're not going to have a game
where you're killing people. And he was like, well, what
about what about droids? What if they were droids? Because
in nineteen seventy eight, the biggest thing in the world
is Star Wars. Yes, Star Wars, and they said no,
but we are willing to consider spaceships, okay, and so
he starts thinking about spaceships. He loved War of the
World when he was a kid, and so his idea
of a spaceship is something that looks kind of like
a spider or crab or something like that. And so
he creates this game where you have a spaceship firing
on invading spaceships that look like crabs and spiders, and
he names the game Space Invaders. Got it. I believe
we're up to nineteen seventy eight, nineteen seventy eight, nineteen
seventy eight, So we've two landmarks so far. We've got
Palm Yes landmark, which leads to Space Invaders landmark Yes.
And Space Invaders becomes so popular that markets in Japan
start they stop buying food and they start buying arcade
games because they realize they can make more money with
arcade games than they can selling food. Wow, Japan has
like only second time in its history has to start
producing one hundred gen coins again, because that's what they
use instead of quarters over there, because so many of
them are being fed into the belly of Space Invaders.
As a matter of fact, all of the gaming arcade
they call like Invader Houses or something like that. Wow.
Speaker 1: I remember playing Space Invaders at the time and loving it,
but yet being frustrated because you can only shoot one
missile at a time, like one shot at a time,
and you if you.
Speaker 2: Miss, you're waiting to reload. Yeah, which was a pain.
I am. I am young enough that I probably played
Galaga as soon as I played Space Invaders or Galaxian
or anything like that. And I can remember for the
non Gallica games going what the heck? What what? I
can fire one shot at a time, But since nobody
knew what they were missing at that point, this one
shot at a time was gangbusters, both in Japan and
in the US without a doubt. It's the T shirt
that James It's a T shirt that James Halliday wore.
Speaker 1: Right, that's right, Ready player one boom, So just.
Speaker 2: Real quick on Space Invaders. Yes, again, it's they're using
the electronics to make the sounds, but he deliberately has
it sounded like a heartbeat. I remember the sound of
spaces It's four It's like four notes, four notes. Absolutely,
But just like Jaws, it got fast. As it got
more intense, the heartbeat sped up and it would stretch
you out. Yep.
Speaker 1: Space Invaders was one of the three arcade games we
had in my church.
Speaker 2: Nice. Okay, so we've hit landmark number one. Pong, we
hit landmark number two, Space Invaders landmark number three. A
guy named Touro Awatani notices that in all of these
arcades in Japan there's dudes and more dudes, and smelly dudes.
Is like dark and stinky in all of these arcades. Fortunately,
they love Space Eva Invaders enough to keep on going
despite this dark, stinky place. But the women are like no,
thank you. Right, So he thinks, how do I develop
a game for women? And as it turns out, women
actually probably have better small muscle control than men do. Yes,
but they weren't interested in the shoot him up games.
He's like, okay, what appeals to women? And in Japan,
apparently all women no matter what, get dessert after the meal.
That's just a thing, I guess. Okay, at least it
was back in the seventies. I have no further knowledge
on Japanese culture beyond that, are you trying to tell
me that women like to eat? Women like to eat?
And so that became his keyword, eat, eat, eat, And
so he's thinking about a game, he's thinking about eat.
He's like, I'm hungry, Let's go get some pizza. They
go to the pizzaia there in Japan. They're sitting down
talking about eating, talking about the game. Somebody takes a
slice out of the pizza as is delivered. He looks
down and sees the pizza with one slice missing and says,
I've got it. We'll have a character that looks like
this that runs around eat it.
Speaker 1: That sounds like a lot of fun to play.
Speaker 2: It does just run around and eat. And that idea,
just at that moment, was the first time that the
idea of having a hero in a video game had
ever come about. Okay, and so he develops the character
that he would go on to call puck Man. What
does puck man mean? Well, he looks like a puck okay,
and so we'll call him puck Man. Right, Okay, We've
got the ghost chasing him around. Never need to worry
about that we're gonna call him puck Man, except that
he's familiar enough with English to realize, wait a minute,
when this goes over to North America, a P is
really easy to change into an F. Good for him,
and so he's like, wait a minute, maybe I can
head this off at the pass. Let's instead of calling
it Puckman, call it pac Man. Pac Man nineteen eighty yep.
And so we've reached landmark game number three, pac Man.
So the games that we're about to talk about were
all in some way inspired by these landfard games.
Speaker 1: Yes, the best selling arcade games of all time number ten,
out Run it's a card.
Speaker 2: Game, okay, number nine, Oh yeah, our Run I remember Run?
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, number nine, Galaxian number eight, Centipede number seven,
Defender number six, Asteroids number five, misspac Man number four,
Donkey Kong number three, Street Fighter two number two, Space
Invaders number one, pac Man.
Speaker 2: So it's fascinating. All of those games were three nineteen
eighty two, except Outrun and Street street Fighter, and Street
Fighter most would say is responsible for the resurgence of
the video game in the late eighties early nineties. There
you go, all right, that will do it for the
history leading up to the Games of nineteen eighty one.
Join us next week for our next episode.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be so much fun. We are going to
have a great time. Get your quarters ready. We got
unlimited credits.
Speaker 2: Come back next week. You might just get an extra
life