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Speaker 1: All right, everybody, welcome back to the Surely You Can't

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Be Serious Podcast. Today we're going to start our series

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on games of nineteen eighty one.

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Speaker 2: Oh man, I don't know. I don't know if I

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can do it today. Man, I feel like I'm coming

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down with pac Man fever.

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Speaker 1: Nice.

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Speaker 2: This is my dad joke of the day, Fever. You

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don't even have to put.

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Speaker 1: A quarter in to get this kind of content today.

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This is Podcasts are free unless you want to be

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a Patreon. Go to our Patreon page help support the show.

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Speaker 2: We would love to have you as a Patreon for

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less than a week's worth of nineteen eighty three money

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going to the arcade. You can be an executive producer

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of one of our episodes.

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Speaker 1: That would be fantastic.

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Speaker 2: Did you when you were a kid, did your mom

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like give you a dollar and you went to the

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video arcade and just hang out there.

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Speaker 1: I begged for money all the time.

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Speaker 2: Like it was. It became kind of a routine that

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I would come home. I'd be like, are we going

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to them all to day? Yes, We're going to the

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all to day? Kind of have a dollar for this

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arcade and I could spend She would go shopping and

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I could spend two hours on a dollar, not that

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I was playing that long, but I would just you know,

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you watch other people play. It was fantastic. Absolutely, video

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game arcades is one of my deep loving memories from

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the early eighties.

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Speaker 1: We're going to get into it. But there are video

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arcades that I have fond memories of. Okay, there are

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restaurants that had arcade games that I can remember growing

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up eating at and like gas stations. There's a convenience

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store by my house that had a couple of games

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I played at. My church had three video games in

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the pool room next to the family life center of

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the gym.

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Speaker 2: Nice I did not have that, but Central in Arkansas

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we had fun City was the name of the arcade.

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Fun City. It eventually moved over by the hospital. But

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in the other mall, Phoenix Village Mall, we had Aladdin's Castle,

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which I think had to be in every town in

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the world. Yes, in the early eighties, Yes, and that

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those were my early eighties video game places. And then

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later on I was like you, I was going to

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I would drive eight miles on my bicycle to a

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convenience store that had Super Mario brothers to play that

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game in the mid eighties. Nice and then in the

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nineties I would play the player against player fighter games.

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I played the Capcom Street Fighter versus Marvel. I would

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play that at the Putt Putt Place in Fort.

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Speaker 1: Smouth Showbiz Pizza in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it was the most.

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Speaker 1: Amazing place in the world because they had pizza, ski ball, pinball,

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and video games along with those creepy stand up robotmatronics.

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Speaker 2: It was scared out of you.

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Speaker 1: Yes, but every it was like a labyrinth. You would

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go into another room and you'd find more games, like, oh,

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my gosh, I didn't know they had this game back here.

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Speaker 2: So we're here at the beginning of a series on

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video games. But these are video games that all came

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out the same year, nineteen eighty one. Yes, it is

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the year that we've already described as potentially having the

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best two week period for movies of any two week

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period in history. But it also had all of these

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amazing arcade games released the same year. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: People refer to this as the golden age of video games.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and this if there's a pinnacle year of the

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Golden age of video games, it's nineteen eighty one. I

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think so, I think so, yeah, So how did we

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get there?

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Speaker 1: It is an interesting story of how we got to

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stand up cabinet arcade games.

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Speaker 2: So our story begins with the development of the atomic bomb. Okay,

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so with the development of the atomic bomb. They have

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this thing called thesilloscope, which I tried to learn about

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before we had this podcast, and all I can say is,

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it is too hard for me to understand what an

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asilloscope is. It's got lots of uses, and one of

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those uses happened to be in the creation of the

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atomic bomb. And one of the guys who was a

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nuclear physicist who worked on the first atomic bomb, invented

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the first video game on the ascilloscope in nineteen fifty eight. Wow.

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So it was called Tennis for two and it looked

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we know what pong is, right, everybody knows what pong is,

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but this was much more like you're looking from the

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perspective of a spectator at a tennis match, where you

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see the ball going over the net and back over

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the net, and all of this took place on this acilloscope.

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So that was nineteen fifty eight. The year before that,

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the Soviets had sent the first man into space. Right

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the year after that, JFK says we're going to have

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a man on the Moon within the next decade. So

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everything at that point was all about space. So the

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second video that came along was a space game that

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was invented by a guy named Steve Russell called Space War.

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And I said space War because it was like all

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one word. I had an exclamation point at the end.

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It's almost it's almost like Star Wars put together, this

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really bad, like holiday musical kind of thing. Thankfully that

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never really happed. Yeah, right, So anyway, this video game

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is called Space Wars and it's got space ships flying

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around shooting at each other. It was really an eighties

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looking thing. But this was much earlier on and the

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program became what we call the day like open source,

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where it was, you know, you could just share the

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programming with someone else and they could easily recreate it,

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and so there were all kinds of improvements being done.

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And it was the first game that somebody said, you

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know what, we need a better control and so they

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made a joystick out of spare telephone parts. Really, yes,

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the first joystick, the first joystick. Nice that was the

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first screen video game. Then a little later on comes

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this guy named Ralph Bayer. Okay, he was a German

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guy who had moved to the US before World War Two,

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had gotten involved with World War two, was a very

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military guy. But he saw while he was working with

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these computers, he saw the potential of combining computers and

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television games because back then nobody had a computer, but

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there were forty million people who had TVs, and so

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he thought, I can set up these games on a

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television set at the house. So this was the first

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time that somebody said, let's make TV an active, participating sport.

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That's pioneering. Thought, yeah. So he develops this thing for

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Magnavox called the Odyssey, and it's the first gaming console,

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had like seven games with it, and one of them

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was essentially a pong game.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so the first Odyssey Magnavox was released in September

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of nineteen seventy two.

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Speaker 2: Yes, so at this point, there are a couple of guys,

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Ted Dabney and Nolan Bushnell working at this electronics place

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called Apex. Okay, they find a common love for this

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game called Go, which is not an electronic game. It's

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a game from like twenty five hundred years ago. It's

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the oldest game that's still being played. But this interest

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in gaming and in electronics leads them to form the

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company Atari The Atari The Atari. So Atari was kind

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of this answer to the fact that all of the

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games up to this point had come from military guys.

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You know, you get nuclear physicists making bombs and other

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ralph behers, military guy making these war games. They are

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kind of the hippie response where Bushnell basically says, if

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you want to come in in your T shirt and

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your flip flops and you want to smoke dope and

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you want to do whatever, I don't care project done.

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I don't care what you do with restaurant. So Atari

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became like this very kednistic sex, drugs and rock and

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roll place to work. And so Nolan Bushnell gets one

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of these guys, gets an engineer from Apex that he

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and Dabney had worked with, and said, hey, I want

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to I want to do a game. I've got this

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contract with GE. He didn't have a contract with GE. Okay,

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he goes, it's just kind of a training thing to

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see if you know you're going to be up to

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working with us. He totally knew the guy was the

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best thing that they could get, but it was just

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this challenge for him. Right. So this guy he's hitting up,

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his named al Alcorn, Right, okay, and he says, what

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I want is the game that's kind of like ping Pong. Well,

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I mean they'd already seen the Magnavox Odyssey. They he

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knew exactly what he wanted here. But al Alkorn programmed

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the first Pong game. When he brought it to Bushnell,

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Bushnell's like, it's okay, that's pretty good. Can you put

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any sound with it? He's like, man, I got other

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things going on. I can't you know, figure that part

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of it. He says, like, in less than a day

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he figured out how to make sounds with the chips

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already involved in it. Said, it took him no time

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at all. So he invented the complete game of Pong

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within just like three or four days. Wow, they take

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that and make a stand up video game out of it,

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and that is the birth of the stand up video

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game Pong. That's the first one. Yes, just a little

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side note.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, in the early nineties, I'd say this is ninety three.

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I went to Saint Louis with a friend of mine

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Craig Parrish, friend of the show, friend of mine. And

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in Saint Louis by the Arch, within walking distance of

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the Arch, they have the video game Hall of Fame

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and you could play Pong along with everything else under

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the sun.

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Speaker 2: Uh huh.

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Speaker 1: And you talk about having fun, I mean we were.

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Our eyeballs fell out when we walked in that place.

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Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, it was fantastic. It was fantastic. Do

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you remember playing Pong as a kid? I can't say

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I remember playing Pong. Yeah, we had a gaming we

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had a gaming console. We actually had a bally. I'm

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not even sure what the game was we had, but

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it had the twist knob kind of controls like the

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original Pong had. It was awesome. I wish we'd find

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something that had those twist knobs again.

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Speaker 1: I mean I spent a lot of time at arcades,

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that's for sure.

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Speaker 2: Well, needless to say, al Alcorn got the job at Atari, okay, right,

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and he becomes kind of one of the higher ups there.

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And at some point this guy comes in and says,

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I read your ad that says I want to have

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fun and make money, so I'd like to come work,

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and the girl at the reception desk is like, okay,

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well you know I need you to come out. He's like, no,

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I'm not leaving until you give me a job. And

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she's like okay. And so she calls Al Alcorn on

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the phone and says, I've got this guy up here.

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He's like in a T shirt and flip flops. It

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looks really like a hippie. He said, he's not going

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to leave till we give him a job. What do

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you want to do? And al Corn says, send him

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on back, let me talk to him. So the guy

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comes in disheveled hair, Al alcrn ask him. He's like,

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where'd you go to school? He goes, I want to read.

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He's like, is that a electronic school. He's like no,

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it's a literary school. He says okay, well what was

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your degree? And he goes, oh, I didn't graduate. And

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he's like all right. He goes, but I really love technology.

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I really have a passion for it. And Al says, listen, kid,

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you look like you got potential. I may give you

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a job. What's your name? And the kid goes Steve Jobs,

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Steve Jobs, Wow, Wow, and Al hired him, and so

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that was Steve jobs first job as Atari employee. That

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is freaking amazing. Yeah. I love the crap that you

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find as you go through this stuff, isn't it amazing?

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Speaker 1: I'm glad he figured out that this guy had something.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean you talk about he had a passion,

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he had a fire. He also had bo.

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Speaker 1: That makes sense.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, the people at Atari had a hard time working

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with Steve Jobs because he had kind of this attitude

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and attitude problem, and he also smelled terrible. He believed

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he believed at the time that if you ate only

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fruit that you wouldn't have body odor. It turns out

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that's not true.

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Speaker 1: I wonder if he ate, like, you know, cherry, then strawberry,

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than orange, than pretzel, than apple, then pair of them banana.

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Speaker 2: I think he was really just fond of the apple. Oh,

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but ching damn thanks zoom. Okay. So, one of the

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games that Atari develops that is very similar to Pong,

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but one that you can play yourself and with that

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dial knob thing is a game where you have the paddle,

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you send the ball up and it breaks the blocks.

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You know what I'm talking about is this game called Breakout. Yes,

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it is. It is called Breakout okay Now. The game

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Breakout inspired a Japanese he's engineer to create his own

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game okay Now. Japan, after World War two, had seen

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the potential of electronic technology and it used it as

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the focus in rebuilding the country. But remember that bit

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from Back to the Future three now on this circle

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fail says made in Japan. What do you mean that

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all the best stuff is made in Japan? That encompasses

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the difference between nineteen fifty five and nineteen eighty five. Right,

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they went from being someone that was not respected to

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the pinnacle best you can get stuff. So one of

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the engineers in Japan who is fascinated by this game

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Breakout as a guy named Tommy Hero Nishikato, and he

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comes up with this idea of instead of throwing a

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ball up, we're going to shoot up. And he's like, okay, now,

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I just have to come up with stuff to shoot.

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He thinks, tanks now on the good planes looks too hard?

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How about people? People looks good? That's awesome, yes, but

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let's shoot people. But the company he was working for

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was like, no, we're not going to have a game

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where you're killing people. And he was like, well, what

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about what about droids? What if they were droids? Because

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in nineteen seventy eight, the biggest thing in the world

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is Star Wars. Yes, Star Wars, and they said no,

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but we are willing to consider spaceships, okay, and so

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he starts thinking about spaceships. He loved War of the

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World when he was a kid, and so his idea

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of a spaceship is something that looks kind of like

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a spider or crab or something like that. And so

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he creates this game where you have a spaceship firing

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on invading spaceships that look like crabs and spiders, and

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he names the game Space Invaders. Got it. I believe

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we're up to nineteen seventy eight, nineteen seventy eight, nineteen

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seventy eight, So we've two landmarks so far. We've got

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Palm Yes landmark, which leads to Space Invaders landmark Yes.

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And Space Invaders becomes so popular that markets in Japan

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start they stop buying food and they start buying arcade

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games because they realize they can make more money with

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arcade games than they can selling food. Wow, Japan has

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like only second time in its history has to start

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producing one hundred gen coins again, because that's what they

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use instead of quarters over there, because so many of

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them are being fed into the belly of Space Invaders.

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As a matter of fact, all of the gaming arcade

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they call like Invader Houses or something like that. Wow.

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Speaker 1: I remember playing Space Invaders at the time and loving it,

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but yet being frustrated because you can only shoot one

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missile at a time, like one shot at a time,

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and you if you.

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Speaker 2: Miss, you're waiting to reload. Yeah, which was a pain.

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I am. I am young enough that I probably played

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Galaga as soon as I played Space Invaders or Galaxian

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or anything like that. And I can remember for the

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non Gallica games going what the heck? What what? I

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can fire one shot at a time, But since nobody

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knew what they were missing at that point, this one

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shot at a time was gangbusters, both in Japan and

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in the US without a doubt. It's the T shirt

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that James It's a T shirt that James Halliday wore.

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Speaker 1: Right, that's right, Ready player one boom, So just.

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Speaker 2: Real quick on Space Invaders. Yes, again, it's they're using

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the electronics to make the sounds, but he deliberately has

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it sounded like a heartbeat. I remember the sound of

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spaces It's four It's like four notes, four notes. Absolutely,

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But just like Jaws, it got fast. As it got

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more intense, the heartbeat sped up and it would stretch

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you out. Yep.

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Speaker 1: Space Invaders was one of the three arcade games we

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had in my church.

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Speaker 2: Nice. Okay, so we've hit landmark number one. Pong, we

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hit landmark number two, Space Invaders landmark number three. A

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guy named Touro Awatani notices that in all of these

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arcades in Japan there's dudes and more dudes, and smelly dudes.

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Is like dark and stinky in all of these arcades. Fortunately,

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they love Space Eva Invaders enough to keep on going

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despite this dark, stinky place. But the women are like no,

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thank you. Right, So he thinks, how do I develop

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a game for women? And as it turns out, women

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actually probably have better small muscle control than men do. Yes,

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but they weren't interested in the shoot him up games.

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He's like, okay, what appeals to women? And in Japan,

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apparently all women no matter what, get dessert after the meal.

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That's just a thing, I guess. Okay, at least it

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was back in the seventies. I have no further knowledge

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on Japanese culture beyond that, are you trying to tell

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me that women like to eat? Women like to eat?

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And so that became his keyword, eat, eat, eat, And

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so he's thinking about a game, he's thinking about eat.

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He's like, I'm hungry, Let's go get some pizza. They

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go to the pizzaia there in Japan. They're sitting down

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talking about eating, talking about the game. Somebody takes a

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slice out of the pizza as is delivered. He looks

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down and sees the pizza with one slice missing and says,

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I've got it. We'll have a character that looks like

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this that runs around eat it.

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Speaker 1: That sounds like a lot of fun to play.

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Speaker 2: It does just run around and eat. And that idea,

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just at that moment, was the first time that the

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idea of having a hero in a video game had

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ever come about. Okay, and so he develops the character

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that he would go on to call puck Man. What

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does puck man mean? Well, he looks like a puck okay,

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and so we'll call him puck Man. Right, Okay, We've

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got the ghost chasing him around. Never need to worry

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about that we're gonna call him puck Man, except that

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he's familiar enough with English to realize, wait a minute,

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when this goes over to North America, a P is

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really easy to change into an F. Good for him,

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and so he's like, wait a minute, maybe I can

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head this off at the pass. Let's instead of calling

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it Puckman, call it pac Man. Pac Man nineteen eighty yep.

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And so we've reached landmark game number three, pac Man.

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So the games that we're about to talk about were

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all in some way inspired by these landfard games.

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Speaker 1: Yes, the best selling arcade games of all time number ten,

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out Run it's a card.

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Speaker 2: Game, okay, number nine, Oh yeah, our Run I remember Run?

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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, number nine, Galaxian number eight, Centipede number seven,

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Defender number six, Asteroids number five, misspac Man number four,

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Donkey Kong number three, Street Fighter two number two, Space

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Invaders number one, pac Man.

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Speaker 2: So it's fascinating. All of those games were three nineteen

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eighty two, except Outrun and Street street Fighter, and Street

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Fighter most would say is responsible for the resurgence of

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the video game in the late eighties early nineties. There

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you go, all right, that will do it for the

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history leading up to the Games of nineteen eighty one.

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Join us next week for our next episode.

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Speaker 1: It's gonna be so much fun. We are going to

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have a great time. Get your quarters ready. We got

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unlimited credits.

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Speaker 2: Come back next week. You might just get an extra

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life