Video Games II

We wrap our historical dive into video games with the modern age of gaming, from Playstation to Xbox to Nintendo. Then, we sit down with iHeart's nerdiest gamers to discuss why our favorite games mean so much to us. Featuring Steven L. Kent, author of The Ultimate History of Video Games Vol. I & II., Matt Frederick, host of the podcast Stuff They Don't Want You To Know, and Anney Reese from the podcasts Stuff Mom Never Told You and Savor.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Ephemeral is a production of My Heart three D audio
for fell exposure. Listen What's that phones. On the last
episode of Ephemeral, we traced the dynamic history of video games,
starting with arcades. We looked at how games like Pong

(00:23):
and Donkey Kong changed the entertainment industry forever and eventually
how those games left the arcades and landed in the
homes of consumers across the globe. Here, our producer Max
Williams picks up the story. In the nineteen eighties, home
consoles like the Supernintendo and the Atari revolutionize the gaming market,

(00:47):
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?

(01:11):
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

(01:33):
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

(01:53):
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

(02:15):
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.

(02:39):
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

(03:01):
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

(03:26):
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.

(03:50):
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

(04:13):
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,

(04:35):
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

(04:56):
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,

(05:20):
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

(05:41):
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

(06:03):
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,

(06:25):
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

(06:51):
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

(07:13):
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

(07:36):
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

(08:00):
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

(08:20):
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

(08:40):
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

(09:03):
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,

(09:28):
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

(09:50):
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

(10:13):
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

(10:36):
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,

(10:57):
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,

(11:17):
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.

(11:41):
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

(12:04):
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

(12:26):
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

(12:49):
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

(13:11):
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

(13:33):
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.

(13:53):
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,

(14:14):
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

(14:34):
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

(14:57):
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

(15:19):
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,

(15:39):
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

(15:59):
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

(16:22):
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

(16:42):
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

(17:02):
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

(17:28):
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

(17:49):
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.

(18:10):
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

(18:32):
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

(18:54):
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

(19:15):
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

(19:36):
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

(19:57):
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

(20:20):
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

(20:42):
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,

(21:04):
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

(21:28):
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,

(21:51):
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

(22:14):
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.

(22:36):
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,

(22:57):
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

(23:18):
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

(23:41):
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,

(24:02):
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

(24:22):
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

(24:44):
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

(25:06):
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

(25:28):
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

(25:49):
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

(26:10):
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

(26:32):
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

(26:54):
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

(27:16):
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,

(27:38):
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

(28:00):
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

(28:21):
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

(28:41):
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

(29:03):
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

(29:27):
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

(29:47):
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

(30:09):
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.

(30:30):
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

(30:52):
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

(31:13):
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

(31:33):
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

(31:54):
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,

(32:15):
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,

(32:37):
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

(32:58):
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

(33:18):
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

(33:42):
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

(34:04):
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,

(34:25):
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

(34:45):
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,

(35:07):
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

(35:27):
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

(35:50):
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

(36:12):
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

(36:36):
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,

(36:56):
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,

(37:17):
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

(37:38):
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

(37:59):
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

(38:21):
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

(38:41):
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

(39:02):
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,

(39:22):
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

(39:43):
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

(40:05):
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

(40:27):
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

(40:49):
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

(41:12):
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.

(41:33):
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

(41:53):
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

(42:14):
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

(42:35):
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

(43:00):
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

(43:20):
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

(43:42):
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.

(44:04):
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

(44:24):
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

(44:47):
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

(45:10):
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

(45:32):
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

(45:54):
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

(46:15):
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

(46:35):
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

(46:57):
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

(47:18):
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,

(47:39):
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.

(47:59):
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.

(48:19):
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

(48:40):
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

(49:02):
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,

(49:24):
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,

(49:49):
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

(50:10):
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

(50:34):
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

(50:54):
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

(51:15):
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

(51:39):
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

(52:03):
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

(52:27):
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

(52:49):
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

(53:12):
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

(53:33):
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

(53:53):
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

(54:14):
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

(54:34):
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

(54:55):
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

(55:18):
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.

(55:39):
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

(56:00):
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

(56:22):
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

(56:44):
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

(57:07):
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

(57:27):
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,

(57:48):
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

(58:08):
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

(58:31):
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

(58:56):
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.

(59:17):
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,

(59:37):
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.