When the USA Caught "Pac–Man Fever"

In the early '80s, America faced a dire existential threat...in the form of "Pac-Man Fever." A moral panic feared that a generation of kids would be lost to the insidious new video game craze. Inspired by First Lady Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No," America's moral scolds fought back. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Crime. It's a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hey, Elizabeth Dutton's Saren, I was just talking to the
decembrist about you.

Speaker 3 (00:08):
Were you.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Yeah, they wanted me to ask you something. Oh my
gosh what the whole band wanted to know this? He said,
do you think Elizabeth knows? I don't know, but I'll
ask her. They're like, okay, ask her. And the question
was this, do you know what's ridiculous? I do?

Speaker 3 (00:19):
Could tell him I do.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Will let me get my phone people.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
Hellos, Uh, this is what's ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Okay, I'm gonna report back.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
It's something that we've gotten a lot, a lot, a
lot a lot of mail about. Oh really, oh yeah,
oh buddy. And it's it's something that you will absolutely
love and something you could probably use right now. Okay,
because you you are getting over a cold.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Yes, I've been. Yes, both of us are getting over.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
I'm getting over a cold, which I kind of feel
like I'm always getting over.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
This is the worst cold I've had since I was
a kid. Oh really, Oh my god, it's kicking my
Oh my god. I got it from a kid. It's
a kid's called oh you did, And it's just kicking
the playground, like yes, I have remote controlled planes, and
I was like hey, and then I let them once
one kid because I'm like, yeah, you can play a
flag fir second, get back.

Speaker 3 (01:07):
Now I got to wipes his nose and then hands.
That's not how it happened, Sure it is. So anyway,
have you been using a lot of cough drops?

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah? Definitely, Like yeah, I don't ast say brands, I don't.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
What's your favorite flavor?

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Cherry cherry cough drops?

Speaker 3 (01:22):
Have you ever tried chicken soup cough drops? I can't
help it.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Dude, I thought we were having a real conversation. Was
so you drew me so far in taking advantage of me.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
That is why CEO of I Heart Admiral iHeart hired
me to do this, to do these mashups. iHeart Progresso
teamed up with I don't know progress, some factory to
make Progresso soup drops.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
I'm listening and there.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
Are cough drops that taste like chicken soup, and.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
That tastes like and when you're sick. People like that.

Speaker 3 (01:59):
So this is like, well, what if I'm on the
bus and I can't I can't have a pocket. I
don't know. So the Taste of Home you have.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
A gummy bear that tastes like carpet.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
I mean, why not Taste of all? I don't know
if you're familiar with this publication.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
Taste of Home. That's her publications report on the.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
Soup industry very Middle America in the South. There's a
lot like really like it's a website. But they also
I feel like they have like a cookbook series, like
there's gardening guns magazines. Garden guns pretty great anyway, Taste
of Home the Brave Alison Robt Shelley and Taste of
Home of her isn't she great?

Speaker 2 (02:37):
She just wrote a piece do you produce your Do
you live in a world I don't even know about?

Speaker 3 (02:40):
Well, you join us up here in the clouds. She
wrote a piece about this is what the internet famous
progressive soup drops really taste like? And not good?

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Bob shocking? How did?

Speaker 3 (02:55):
She said? I wish I could tell you the drops
tasted like a cup of homemade chicken. And then of
course people you can click through to their their recipe
for it. But the drops don't taste like souper, even
like chicken. She said, Now this is where this I
think you'll like this. The only flavor I have confidence
in naming is quote, crushed black pepper from a spice

(03:16):
rack that was manufactured in nineteen comes through.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
You're a big pepper pepper.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
Yeah, very strong.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
It's a it's a hey, I'm here kind of flavor.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
So it's it's basically like it's isomol. It's a hard candy,
but it's got it just looks like anyway, if you
go to progressovesoup drops dot com, they should be paying
for me for this hello, but they're not. They're out.
They're sold out, but apparently they're going to drop more.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
Who are all these jokers who buy these and they
give them gifts?

Speaker 3 (03:46):
You get you get twenty individual drops in a mini
soup can and then a full size can of chicken
noodle soup, so you can have an immediate comparison of
oh no, that doesn't taste the same to forty nine
plus ship.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
I don't understand this is all right?

Speaker 3 (04:02):
Yeah, I know, but you know what I'm goofing off.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yes you are. I'm proud of you that I'm not.

Speaker 3 (04:09):
Dark honoring the solemnity of our ridiculous stories. Right now,
this is too goofy.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
You're creating and saving space.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
I want to I want to honor the solemnity of
ridiculous stories. So that's ridiculous, ridiculous done, that's ridiculous, Elizabeth.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
Please tell me, please, like I got something. Please, this
is really ridiculous. I swear to goodness America, Land of
the Free, home of the brave, and I mean absolutely
shaken to its core by what, Elizabeth, the appearance of
the sudden and surprising threat that was man.

Speaker 4 (04:45):
Oh, this is ridiculous crime A podcast about absurd and

(05:10):
outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It's all weighs ninety nine
percent murder free and one under the ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
Totally they count, right, Elizabeth.

Speaker 3 (05:25):
Moral panics, I love them.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
Right, we talked about him before. I told you about
Senator Estes Favo and his mid century fight against comic books.

Speaker 3 (05:34):
Right. Remember, I'm still I have no idea how his
names spelt.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
It's basically spelled like that. It's real close to that. Well,
you're ready to hear about the United States versus pac Man.

Speaker 3 (05:47):
Please?

Speaker 2 (05:48):
What does it take to drive a moral panic? I'm
so glad you asked.

Speaker 3 (05:52):
I'm just a gog.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
For One, you need an existential threat, right, preferably one
that's mostly imagined. Those work best, and then they can
be as big as you want, as scary as you want,
as perfect Kitchcock would have loved it. Two, you need
some moral scolds to get all hot and bothered and
worked up and about it, right.

Speaker 3 (06:08):
My favorite.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
Three, you need the media to play along. They need
to do this because it helps them sell papers or
push ads at their viewers, their listeners, whatever. Right. But
the folks in the media typically they don't actually believe
in the moral panic they report on so breathlessly, but
they have to do it so breathlessly because that way
it convinces their you know it's serious, yes, because they

(06:29):
are the they impute gravitas.

Speaker 5 (06:32):
Yea.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
You know the whole question, why isn't anyone reporting on this? Well,
when the media is reporting on something, it makes it important,
so they know that, and yet they kind of like
forget it sometimes, or at least, you know, they're willing
to trade that for clicks or whatever.

Speaker 3 (06:45):
You get the idea, because.

Speaker 2 (06:47):
That's how you can get the panic going. They're like, oh,
we're reporting on it, it's serious now, pac Man. How
did that make our nation lose its ever loving mind.
Great question, Elizabeth, thank you, because we're so good at
losing our minds, like we love a moral penn.

Speaker 3 (07:03):
Oh sure.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
Now, before video games, there was already an adjacent lifestyle
that America wanted to believe it had finally shaken out
of its system. What was that lifestyle? Yeah, great question?
Is game this morning? It starts with a p and
it ends with a ball. That's right. Pinball. Pinball was
basically invented in nineteen thirty one. It is a coin
operated game.

Speaker 3 (07:24):
I love pinball.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
Great game, great game, comeback time.

Speaker 3 (07:28):
Since I've played?

Speaker 2 (07:29):
Really, how long you think?

Speaker 3 (07:30):
I don't know, fifty sixty years?

Speaker 2 (07:32):
Damn you should get back too. And I got some
quarters all, I'll lend you a couple. It didn't take
even a full decade before there was a moral panic
about pinball. It's starting. In nineteen thirty nine, city leaders
outlawed pinball in the City of Angels. Really, this ban
in LA lasted for decades. It was never actually technically repealed.
In nineteen seventy four, the California Supreme Court overturned the

(07:54):
pinball ban. Oh really, okay, Now, what was the result. Well,
Pinball comes out of the shadows where it had been
existing for decades. Now. In nineteen seventy six, two years
after that band was overturned, a staff writer at the
La Times pens this story about an amusement arcade that's
located at the Santa Monica Pier right now. The La
Times staff writer colorfully sets the scene by describing how,

(08:15):
quote two skinny twelve year old boys with long hair
smoke cigarettes manfully as they try to jiggle a pinball
machine for a higher score. A little further down the pier, quote,
three black hippies and wide brimmed leather hats high on
themselves and possibly something more potent, sit down to play
chess at the edge of the fiesta auto scooters end quote.
This was, like the La Times, a little sad obituary

(08:37):
to a bygone era of the amusement arcade.

Speaker 3 (08:40):
Right, it sounds dreamy, don't really?

Speaker 2 (08:42):
I totally wanted to visit this crazy Now? Do you
mind if I tell you about the demon game pinball? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (08:46):
Please doo.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
You might think of it as this harmless game of
flippers and steal balls. Often people do, know, Elizabeth, Yeah,
this game has a sordid history. The pinball crase starts
back in nineteen thirty one's they told you when it
first starts, the first coin operated game was called baffle Ball,
like baffled baffleball.

Speaker 3 (09:01):
Yeah, now like media type thing.

Speaker 2 (09:04):
Yeah, exactly, it's like dampening to Yeah. So they immediately
come worrywarts. They just go, oh my god, what is
this game the children? So they're terrified about what these
new pinball games are doing to the kids. This reaction,
it's the same coast to coast. It's not regional, it's everywhere.
I told you about the La band over in the
East Coast. In January forty two, Mayor of New York
Fiarello LaGuardia bands pinball in New York City. LaGuardia called

(09:28):
the cities like pinball impresarios, quote slimy cruise of ten horns,
well dressed and living in luxury on penny thievery.

Speaker 3 (09:39):
Was it like they were thinking it was attached to
gambling of some.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
Sort a little bit, but no, interesting, it was just
I'll explain that. So he was something of a moral crusader.
I'm not sure if you know about that, Mahira LaGuardia.
And so he has a Prohibition era or post Prohibition
era as well, mayor of New York, right, so he decides,
like we're in forty two. Prohibition's done, but we are
in the middle World War two. So he's like, I'm
gonna run some Prohibition style raige to you know, rouse

(10:03):
people to more like morality or whatever. And just he
hits some pinball parlors. So he's going down there, like
there are images of the mayor with a sledgehammer in
his hand ready to smash the glass tops of pinball machines,
and the confiscated pinball machines they get sent to munitions
factory so they can use them in the war efforts
once again forty two. So in these picks you can

(10:24):
tell it's clearly a post prohibition moral crusade energy, let's
rouse the people, you know, good for the war effort.
But imagine you're like an eight year old kid, some
New Yorker. You're hanging out to your local pinball parlor.
All of a sudden, you hear the banging on the doors.
Axes are splitting through the wood. Next thing you know,
you're getting loaded into the back of a police truck.
I mean, just imagine Elizabeth the poor kids. Now. Anyway,

(10:46):
the municipal bands against pinball all over the place. They
become commonplace all through the forties, fifties, sixties, even into
the early seventies. Pinball is illegal outlaw band associated with
lude and lascivious behavior.

Speaker 3 (10:58):
Was it banned in Oakland?

Speaker 2 (11:00):
Yes, totally, I thought I knew that. Do you remember
anything about this.

Speaker 3 (11:03):
I think my brother used to manage a bar where
they had a pinball machine and it was still illegal.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
You're still legally it could have been because a lot
of the books in your old state of South Carolina,
it's still legal. Pinball for under eighteen illegal, still legal
for people. Yeah, not supposed to do it.

Speaker 3 (11:19):
But it's like in the mid it was like.

Speaker 2 (11:21):
Twenty twenty fourteen when they lifted a local band.

Speaker 3 (11:24):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, that makes that lines up,
I guess.

Speaker 2 (11:28):
Yeah. Anyway, the pinball had a certain, as I said,
criminal coolness. Because of all this illegality and these bands
and so forth. It becomes the leisure sport of bad boys,
teen rebels, society's myth and throw. It becomes also this
backroom game, something you'd find like in a dive bar,
in a Greenwich Village like or Hell's Kitchen.

Speaker 3 (11:45):
Bar or in Oakland or Oakland, or porn.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
Shop in Times Square. You know, right back in Times
Square was gritty. This was when Time Square is gretty.

Speaker 3 (11:53):
Pinball machines, corn store.

Speaker 2 (11:55):
Totally, all those any adult bookstores that you'd say a
pinball machine, like, hey, I want to play the thirty game, right,
So pinball becomes synonymous with greaser rebels like Marlon Brando
in the movie The Wild One, he's a pinball player.
Same thing for the Fawns on Happy Days, like that's
why the Fawns is next with a pinball game. It's
supposed to show you he's like a bad boy totally,
and he's got the magic touch, like a he's the

(12:19):
bad boy's bad boy man.

Speaker 3 (12:20):
He can make the machine h Winkler.

Speaker 2 (12:23):
And you're right about the pinball Wizard, Tommy the Who,
their big rock opera that's in sixty nine though, so
that's more towards the end of this era. So but
it is still why it was a risky thing and
why it had this edge that they could ride and
make it like future cool or whatever they did with it.
Now back to New York City, LaGuardia. He's got his

(12:43):
band against pinball. It lasts until nineteen seventy six, which
is the same year Chicago repeals its band. Your hometown
of Oakland has its pinball band because of seventy four,
because of California. But then they have individual stuff about games.
You'll get into that in a second. So on the
California Supreme Court overruled it. It was for the whole state.
It wasn't just LA's band.

Speaker 3 (13:04):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
Now, following this reversal on the ban of pinball, La Times,
as they told you, they're reporting on this, they're finding
kind of cute. I found another story where they go
up to Hollywood Boulevard and they find teenage runaways and
underage male hustlers gathered in pinball parlors on Hollywood Boulevard
because it's still part of the CD part of Hollywood.
They're here's here's what pinball is doing.

Speaker 3 (13:22):
You're taking like these this kind of escapist thing that
people who don't have much else as a means escape
isn't Yes, it's like they're a very who you know.

Speaker 2 (13:33):
Living on the end is the game. You get a player,
you're still a kid, or you're.

Speaker 3 (13:36):
An eight year old the middle of World War Two,
and you're just like, there's this swirl of uncertainty that
you live in.

Speaker 2 (13:43):
Let them play them, let them hit the flippers, right,
come on. Ibout Another La Times article about that same time,
late seventies. It was quoted from a Beverly Hills real
estate developer who was in court to testify against a
fortune teller that was doing business in his tony neighborhood
and he wanted them out amazing, right, So he's testifying,
he compares the fortune teller to pinball to disparage the

(14:04):
fortune teller, he testified, and I quote amusement like centers
such as fortune telling stores, massage parlors, and pinball arcades
would seriously lower property values than Beverly Hills. He lumps
them all together like these degenerates. Now, even those cities
were reversing their bands on pinball in the mid seventies. Clearly,
there was still plenty of fear mongering about pinball, especially

(14:25):
in the suburbs where people still had spent now two
decades basically fleeing from the cities, and everything that they
feared was going to was failing. It was going direct
and lead to moral ruin. So the suburbs, as I said,
they feared those cities moral rot so they now believe
that stuff's coming to infect the kids. This includes now
legal pinball, so they're like, we're gonna have to do
this on our own. So they'd come up with vagrancy

(14:46):
laws to keep pinball parlors at in arcades from setting
up shop on the suburbs. Right, But the game still
came Elizabeth because you couldn't say no to profit. No
pinball threat. It can't be stopped. It spreads from the
back of the dive bars, the massage parlors, whole bookstars
and porn theaters, the dark pool halls and forgotten amusement
park like piers, and soon pinball shows up in shopping

(15:07):
malls of the suburbs. Right, pizza parlors newly opened arcades.

Speaker 3 (15:12):
Yeah, arcades, pizza parlor.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
That's the US in nineteen seventy six, God bless them.
At this point, we're seven years past nineteen sixty nine
when you said the who dropped their pinball themed rock
oper Tommy. So it's kind of cresting a new zenith,
if you will. There's a new energy to it. It's
not such a dark greaser sport. Yeah, but at this point,
also in nineteen seventy six, pinball machines were moving out
of the dark and CD pass the future comes a calling,

(15:35):
because that's just how it goes, and sometimes technology changes everything, Elizabeth, Right,
when American culture thought the nation's kids might finally be safe, boom,
here comes video games. You better believe America loses it's
ever loving mind all over again. Now, quick question, if
you had to name one person who would you would
say is to blame for the video games that came

(15:58):
to rot the minds of American youth? Do you name
that person?

Speaker 3 (16:01):
One person responsible?

Speaker 2 (16:02):
One person and one person is very famously you people
point out and go, that's that's the guy. He's the one,
your honor.

Speaker 3 (16:09):
I think it was definitely.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
It's a tough question. I didn't know the answer before
I researched this.

Speaker 3 (16:14):
It's uh, Lieutenant General Nintendo very close, Joe Asuzu both yes,
you two lea.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
All right, let's take a break. I'll let you guys
google the answer, and then we come back. I'll tell
you the answer. Elizabeth Zaren, did you google the answer?

Speaker 3 (16:49):
No?

Speaker 2 (16:50):
Okay, his name.

Speaker 3 (16:51):
Been sitting here is staring at the wall.

Speaker 2 (16:54):
Nolan Rotten bush Bush No, Nolan bush Noll.

Speaker 3 (16:57):
Nolan Bushnell like of Bushnell Binoci.

Speaker 2 (17:00):
I don't know, but I actually did not. That was
not in anything I read. So maybe his family had
something to do with that. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (17:07):
Very Zaren question.

Speaker 2 (17:09):
Yeah, it was good. So he's the American businessman who started.

Speaker 3 (17:12):
Not Zaren question would be like, oh, well, how old
was he in nineteen fifty six?

Speaker 2 (17:17):
Because I can't do math, That's why I ask those questions.

Speaker 3 (17:20):
So was he someone who preferred you know, editions or geez?
I don't know, man, what kind of researcher are you?

Speaker 2 (17:27):
I don't know. Did you ever consider looking up his
pants preference? So? Noan Bush. Now he's an American businessman.
He started not one, but two great video game institutions,
the Atari Company and Chuck E. Cheese Pizza Time Theater.

Speaker 3 (17:41):
Charles Entertainment Cheese.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
Yes, that's him. Wow.

Speaker 3 (17:44):
Wait, so the same guy started Atari. Ang you know
what today I learned totally right.

Speaker 2 (17:51):
And he also he knew Chuck E. Cheese was like
the hit about to be and he when he sold
I jumping out of the story, but he held on
to it when he went to sell it, It's like,
I want to keep this one, right, let me keep
the red the rat.

Speaker 3 (18:04):
Yeah, so I want the pizza rat. They're like, okay.

Speaker 2 (18:06):
I was doing research And The Verge had a great
story about all of this. They put in their story
from twenty thirteen. He said in a quote, to say
that Nolan Bushnell single handedly created the arcade would probably
be overstating it, but not by much because, as The
Verge also points out quote, it is also undeniable, however,
that the video game arcade would not have happened without him.
Huh So, Elizabeth, you could say video games really popped

(18:28):
up in nineteen seventy one. That's when the first coin operated,
commercially sold video game was out there, right, ok. Created
designed by Nolan Bushnell and his partner Ted Dabney. The
game was called Computer Space Space Space. The rig was
built into a thirteen inch black and white TV and
that TV screen was set inside this like sleek, futuristic
looking wood cabinet. And that's the first game. And it

(18:50):
was a flop, this total bomb. I mean, you couldn't
give this thing. Yeah. Trouble was it was too hard
to play. They made the game too hard to play,
and it's taught Nolan Bushnell and important lesson. Games should
be easy to learn yet hard to master.

Speaker 3 (19:04):
Oh that's good, that's a good.

Speaker 2 (19:06):
Yeah. The failure computer Space, though, was a seed planted
and it grew a mighty forest because you see, Elizabeth,
they didn't give up. Nolan and Ted kept at it,
and the next year they were back with a new
game based on tennis. They placed their new tabletop video
game into a local bar that helps, and it was
it was easy to play, but hard to master. This time,

(19:27):
their second video game is a hit. I mean it's
a huge hit, Elizabeth. Can you guess what game?

Speaker 4 (19:32):
This was?

Speaker 3 (19:32):
Pond?

Speaker 2 (19:33):
Yeah, buddy. With that, Nolan bush Now and Ted Dabney
start their own video game company. They call it zizig
z s y z y g y You know what.
That was the name of an X Files episode. Real
it was a famous X Files episode. I don't know why,
but yeah. They tried to incorporate their new company to name,
and they found that zizig z was taken. So in

(19:55):
June seventy two they picked a new name ATARII. It's
a name or a move in the ancient Chinese game
of go oh okay. Yeah, so they dropped Pong from
for the people they create Atari. Things are just about
to take off, which means, we know, moral skolds are
about to get back to business. So this second game,
as it's you know, hitting the market in seventy two,

(20:17):
it starts this mild video game craze, and Atari's value
starts to explode overnight. The company, though it's still small,
they have like six employees, right so, but over the
course of nineteen seventy four nineteen seventy five, Pong starts
to become a household name. Yeah, and everybody's loved. Everyone's
heard about it. People are wanting to play it once
they see it. They're like, oh, I got to get
one of those from my kids or whatever.

Speaker 3 (20:38):
Right, you've played it.

Speaker 2 (20:39):
Oh, totally. I played it back in the day, like
I had older cousins who still had the Yeah, they
had like the turn knob control. Totally, So your guy.
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caane he once wrote about
how he and then Governor Jerry Brown battled over some
games of Pong. Yeah, the two like pong at a

(21:00):
restaurant overlooking the Sacramento River. I like to think it
was like Chevy's by the River. I know it was
not by the river. I bet it was my old
town Sacramento.

Speaker 3 (21:08):
I just just I'm vibrating at a higher plane right now.
Herbcane and Jerry Brown.

Speaker 2 (21:14):
I got one more person to throw in this mix.
No Great Davis, chief of staff.

Speaker 3 (21:22):
Those two playing pong at a restaurant looking over the
Sacramento River. My life's mission is to now find out
what restaurant that was.

Speaker 2 (21:29):
Oh that's good. Look that up. I bet you could
probably narrow it down.

Speaker 3 (21:31):
I need a hobby.

Speaker 2 (21:32):
Apparently herbcane got beat by Jerry Brown. He wrote quote
Governor Jerry Brown beat me, his chief of staff, Gray
Davis beat me. Sacramento be editor c K. McClatchy beat
me Sacramento three s F zip. So now you want
to guess who hated pong?

Speaker 3 (21:50):
Anyone? Anyone?

Speaker 2 (21:52):
Pinball machine makers Perry Industry was like, oh man, they
could see the writing on the screen.

Speaker 3 (22:00):
The mids this is.

Speaker 2 (22:03):
No longer the cool edgy thing. I means they hung
around for a while, but it was clearly like this
is no longer the space. We just got legal. We
just got legal. So by the mid seventies video Games
with the Future, and so by seventy six, Warner Communications
right purchases Atari from Nolan Bushnell for twenty eight million dollars,
and then he goes, let me buy back Chuck E
Cheese Pizza Time Theater because he's already got that going

(22:25):
in the company, and he's like, let me have that.
They're like, of course, you can have your little Pizza
Time theater. Do you want the animatronic robots too? So
it's a genius move though, right, we say this all
the time in a gold rush, don't mind gold sells shovels,
yeah right. Bush now creates this family friendly arcade of
video games and he sells pizza parties perfect right, instead
of the old CD pinball amusement arcades people are used

(22:46):
to that you'd find on like a dilapidated pier. He's like,
what if we got rid of the greasers, the bikers,
the teen rebels, the hustlers, the drug dealers, the adult
bookstore owners, and we replaced all of that with an
animatronic animal band someone hinge selling shovels. At this point, right,
so the pinball starts going the way the Nickelodeon and

(23:08):
seventy six is you can start just tracking video game
with now and just a stratospheric lyne going straight up
the chart. Right.

Speaker 3 (23:15):
Ball was like it had that like you're saying that
that like rebellious aesthetic of like you had to be
wearing tight pants or something. And it was suggestive, very suggestive. Yeah,
but then they took it to the next level with it.
Here just grab this joystick, yes, jerking around.

Speaker 2 (23:31):
It's more onanistic and less the communal.

Speaker 3 (23:34):
Exactly, that's what it. Yeah, and then here we are
like everyone just living in a bubble.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
Following that idea. And also it introduced like there was
like a certain violence if you want with the pinball,
and there's also more of a sexual direction with the
drawing back and hitting the ball then keeping it going.
You know, I got to keep this going clippers right.

Speaker 3 (23:51):
There was like crazy and then hit some stuff.

Speaker 2 (23:54):
Yeah, right, so you're like banging against the machine. I
was really into the game. It was about high score.
I'm taking that thing, go tut. So my point being
people don't really do that with video games. And also
it becomes it's about violence. There's a lot more like oh, mandy,
we run these people over throw.

Speaker 3 (24:10):
Like yeah, the goal is to blow stuff up or
shoot piece shoot people.

Speaker 2 (24:13):
Like destroy aliens and a lot more.

Speaker 3 (24:15):
You know, delightfully roll through up a hill and down.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
And around a little middle cage and they get banged
around with a bunch of little bumpers. So nineteen seventy
six we see our first game that comes out as
an ultra violent like oh, and people were like, this
is not like Pong. Right.

Speaker 3 (24:31):
The game was called Death Race Death Ray. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:34):
It was the Grand Theft Auto before GTA Okay, player
with drive a car. The goal is to run down gremlins,
which were like pedestrians you could hit. Your goal is
to hit pedestrians basically is like yeah. The video game
maker's marketing director. He explained that the game was quote
A it's a humorous arcade piece requiring dexterity. Yeah, you know,
you gotta be quick if you want to hit these pedestrians.
So but if you ask video game historian Steve L. Kent,

(24:57):
he'll tell you. Quote what kind everyone upset about Death
Race was that you heard this little ah when the
person got hit and then a little gravestone came up.

Speaker 3 (25:05):
No, what do you want.

Speaker 2 (25:09):
So then along comes sixty minutes the Sunday night news
program comes in hard for this first ultraviolent video game, right,
which leads to a wave of moral outrage from concerned parents.
And then they would to protect their future profits, this
company yanks it's game from the shelves. This capitulation that
it kind of it's like that first taste of blood for.

Speaker 3 (25:27):
The moral he won got some power.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
Now, so the moral scandal first one claims the first victim.
Now the moral scolds, they put pinball in the rear
view mirror and they never looked back. Now they're focused
on video games, right, But they couldn't still stop this
coming video green craze because it was leaking out everywhere.
And also it was fast moving and it wasn't just
one game. There's lots of games. But do you know
when it really went Yahya, Elizabeth, you want to take

(25:51):
a guess at what game pushed over like video.

Speaker 3 (25:54):
Games man, like Space in Vasi those are.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
All good one, yeah, and there was a bunch of
early couple hits and stuff, yeah, Space Invaders being one
of them. But pac Man's the one. I know. You
were born in the early nineteenth century was eighteen twenty.

Speaker 3 (26:11):
Or something like that, fifty six.

Speaker 2 (26:12):
But did you ever play pac Man in the nineteen
eighty you bet you my favorite Miss pac Man.

Speaker 3 (26:17):
I loved Miss pac Man, Yes, and I'll tell you
that I was the best. It was the peak of
my game with both Miss pac Man and pole position positions.
After you go, after you go skiing or snowboarding, you're
just like, you're just super odd. But you've been focused
on like avoiding and going fast and like quick reaction times.

Speaker 2 (26:38):
You're all hyped up.

Speaker 3 (26:39):
So then like you you get warmed up, but you
go in there and you play video games and you
just dominate.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
That's true.

Speaker 3 (26:45):
That's and you're Elizabeth at ten and you got braces
and you're like, I could beat Mesh pac Man on
day ecd.

Speaker 2 (26:53):
That's me a fair number two at the top of
the list. I'm gonna get number one.

Speaker 3 (26:57):
If I had friends, I'd tell him about it.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
What a picture pac Man legit.

Speaker 3 (27:05):
Like Mary's we were at in bowl cut on top
of that.

Speaker 2 (27:09):
That's I want to need to see picks. It did happen?

Speaker 3 (27:13):
I got it?

Speaker 2 (27:14):
So pac Man comes out in May nineteen eighty sequel,
misspac Man comes out in February eighty two. Pac Man
is considered the most successful video game of all time.
Miss pac Mans considered the greatest, one of the greatest
video games of all time. It always really highly Yes.
Together the two games launched what is called pac Man Fever. Now,
when America catches pac Man Fever, oh birds, suddenly everywhere

(27:35):
there's t shirts, hats, stickers, trapper keepers, lunch boxes. There
was even a Saturday morning cartoon TV show. That's right, yes,
only Rocky boal Boa and the theme song Survivors aka
I Have the Tiger. That was the only thing that
was more popular in nineteen eighty two than pac Man.

Speaker 3 (27:51):
Nineteen eighty two. It feel that feels way I I'm
thinking of it later on.

Speaker 2 (27:55):
Oh it lasted. I'm saying, well, this is when it
this is when.

Speaker 3 (27:57):
It Okay, I'm saying it was like Broke broke, Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:01):
Michael Jackson basically breaks in eighty three and eighty four.
People he was ahead. He seventy eight, He's got you know,
Off the Wall or seventy nine or whatever. Maybe it's eighty.
I don't actually do know know the year, but I think
the previous album and that it's been a thriller that
breaks for him. Right. So if you think I could say, oh,
when did Michael Jackson break, well these solo albums when
he breaks, right, But no, it's the second album. It's

(28:21):
kind of like the pac Man breaks at this point,
and all of a sudden, people are like, oh, and
all these worried parents they start focusing on this because
you know, pac Man's got ghosts. It's lightly violet. I
don't know, they own nuts about this, it is really,
it's just the fact the game is too popular. These
kids just want They're dishoveling quarters in these machines and
they're not doing their homework, they're not listening to their parents.
They're riding off the arcades with dark windows they can't

(28:43):
look in and see going on in there.

Speaker 3 (28:47):
Like associate with social media, which really does have, like
I believe, a completely addictive quality to it.

Speaker 2 (28:53):
Yes, it's designed, it's.

Speaker 3 (28:55):
Designed for that. But you see that with these you know,
with even like games now like iPad the iPhone games.

Speaker 2 (29:00):
Yeah, well, these games were designed to be games. Those
games were designed to be addicted, right, But even in.

Speaker 3 (29:04):
The beginning it was addictive, like you wanted to keep
playing it and make a high score, and yes, your
initials were ass but in.

Speaker 2 (29:11):
Some ways you could say that, like you know, solitaire
is addicting or you know what I'm saying, don't you
can obsess?

Speaker 3 (29:17):
Are you kidding me?

Speaker 2 (29:19):
I met the cards? But yes, okay, I'm talking about Okay,
I don't. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (29:23):
Advanced solitaire for those of us with a lot of friends.

Speaker 2 (29:27):
All right, I know you're always a couple levels above
me on these games. Elizabeth. We see all these gen
X memes these days about how the kids in the eighties,
like drank from hoses, stayed out until the street lights
came on. They smoked two packs a day while riding
their BMX bikes to after school shift at the steel
factory or whatever. The whole thing. Oh great way to go. Yeah,
you're on the Cold War. I don't know to your kids,

(29:47):
but uh, can you help me separate fact from fiction?
What do you remember of the bikes and roller skates
and arcades and shopping walls of the eighties. How close
to stranger things was it?

Speaker 3 (29:56):
I feel like it was it was in line with
that I that as a kid in the eighties we
rode our bikes all over the place nobody knew where
we were. Yes, we got up into all sorts of hygieninks.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
What were video game parlors? Like, can you explain to me?

Speaker 3 (30:10):
Because usually like we'd go to like pizza parlors that
would have them in there, or like there was a
Foster's freeze.

Speaker 2 (30:17):
We went to local pizza places primarily. And then we
had an actual place called the Library in downtown Davis
that oh yeah, an actually dedicated arcade with a blacked
out window, and people were like, oh, that's where the
druggies go.

Speaker 3 (30:29):
And then they'd have the arcade like in the lobby
of the movie theater.

Speaker 2 (30:33):
Sometimes yeah, there's totally yeah. So shopping walls, bowling alleys,
roller skating rinks, these are all places. Yeah, the remaining
discover two from when you're not dancing. So this is
what the American parents become so fearful of this type
of chicanery and criminality, I guess. So they're all worried
about what kids are doing in front of like Space
Invader and Gallica and tabletop pac Man. So by eighty one,

(30:55):
as early as eighty one in the San Francisco Chronicle,
you'll see news stories with scare mongerie titles like quote
addicts gopher broke. How kids feed their habit, right, So
just imagine kids pumping quarters of the machines, little like
beady eyed kids going can I get to fix them
with games? I don't know what they were trying to push,
but that's the imagery, right. The best part of the story, though,

(31:16):
is this one local kid who spoke with the Chronicle.
Your man Peter hart Love. He pulled this story recently
when he did a look back at San Francisco's war
against pac Man, and in his story he found he
included this quote quote. Tommy Guerrero fourteen, who established a
local scramble record with a score of twenty five thousand,
says he has no problem bumming money to keep on playing.
What else am I supposed to do? He says? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (31:37):
What else? Is?

Speaker 2 (31:38):
You catch that name Tommy Guerrero?

Speaker 3 (31:40):
Yeah, I was wondering, is that's one of the same.

Speaker 2 (31:42):
Tommy Guerrero stop, future professional skateboarder, future super dope musician
who does like funk, jazz, low fi.

Speaker 3 (31:48):
Music, incredible?

Speaker 2 (31:49):
Is the best artist? Yes, he's amazing and they recognize that.
The reporters like, when we talk to that kid. Obviously,
the moral panic about pac Man it's not limited to
the Bay Area of New York. The Times. The New
York Times is reporting on the latest scourge, this ghost
consuming pac Man and his equally Poultergey's goblin wife and
how they're threatening American youth. Headline the Battle for America's

(32:12):
Youth dateline January fifth, nineteen eighty two.

Speaker 3 (32:15):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (32:16):
The story features is very worried mother Ronnie Lamb. That's
Lamb with two ams no b okay, as she's filling
her mister Coffee coffee pot a lot of product plus
mister coffee machine. So Ronnie Lamb tells The Times that
a quote these games are corrupting our youth. They're not wholesome.
They mesmerize our children, They add dictum and force them
to mindlessly pour one quarter after another into the slots.

(32:38):
We see fifteen year olds playing these games at ten
thirty on school nights and during school hours. We want
them out of our town now, Ronnie Lamb. She worries
that where she lives in the suburbs and as The
New York Time points out, quote, where there are more
children with more money to spend, and where she believes
there are fewer cultural activities than in the city. You
heard that, right, Elizabeth, This very concerned things that New

(33:00):
York in the early eighties is a safer option for
children than the boredom of the suburbs and the seduction
of video games. Okay, So, as Ronnie Lamb tells the
Times quote, suddenly they are everywhere in our mall, the
shopping centers, pizza places, movie theaters, little corner delicatessens, and
even the laundromat. We hear unacceptable language and see anti

(33:21):
social behavior in the arcades. Only the bad kids go
into them, and we worry about the young children, not
old enough to make value judgments. Those without strong moral
codes can be drawn in. They don't know they are hooked.
Oh again, Ronnie Lamb prefers the kids in New York City.
They will be safer from the scourge of video game
arcades in New York City. Yeah, yeah, Anyway, how times change.

(33:45):
So back to Ronnie Lamb and her worried little heart quote.
The game rooms teach gambling and breed aggressive behavior, and
so many are operated by scum coming out of woodwork
whose only interest is a fast buck. They say that
they do not allow them drinking of alcoholic beverages. But
I've seen bottles in the parking lots. Ronnie Lamb promises

(34:06):
the New York Times reporter that she and her army
of fellow concerned parents will be victorious over this community threat.
She says she lives in the town of Brookhaven and
that she and her army already convinced the town leaders
there to drop a six month moratorium one any permits
for new video game arcades, and apparently there's a lot.
There's like twelve pending. They shut them down. Oh yeah,
so how did she and her army do it? Quote?

(34:27):
Her relentless campaign has included circulating petitions, making speeches before
official bodies and community groups, sending out mass mailings, and
talking with state officials about legislation to control the games.
Other tactics have included making calls to the fire department
to check for overcrowded conditions at the more popular amusement centers.
Super Karen, I just like jumped out all that.

Speaker 3 (34:48):
Energy and time. Could you imagine if she focused it
on something uplifted.

Speaker 2 (34:52):
Yeah, like helping the local library instead of trying to
shut down, like construct something instead of destroying something constantly.
What if she was going out there browbeating them for
money for books for the library and more resources for that,
as opposed to going what are those kids doing in
the room? I can't see it.

Speaker 3 (35:07):
Now, there's too much no, no, no no.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
It pays off for at one point video games. The
threat it gets kicked all the way up to the
Supreme Court. They're willing to hear a case about what
this is going on. And meanwhile she's celebrating the fact
that President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines of Amelda's corrupt.
He bans video games in his whole nation because parents
there believe that pac Man was quote wreaking havoc on
the morality of the nation's youth. So old super Karen

(35:31):
Ronnie Lamb. She boasts about her side secret superpower against
video games. We are finding it surprisingly easy. Actually, some
of those who want to open these places are the
absolute dregs, and they are battling motherhood and apple Pie.
So she knows the symbols and how things appear, and
she's leveraging that. Now, Las, why I keeps saying Karen's
she knows her identity versus theirs. Yeah, and Apple pie

(35:54):
and motherhood, powerful combo now old Ronnie Lamb when she's
not done. She also spoke about how whether or not
she was a hatchet woman. She put it and I quote,
there are those who would say that I am a
hatchet queen of amusement centers. But I do not see
myself as a hatchet queen of amusement centers. I've even
been in those game rooms. I do not play the
games for the same reasons I did not gamble when
I was in Puerto Rico.

Speaker 3 (36:15):
I don't want to know.

Speaker 2 (36:17):
So at this point our story, pac Man is mostly
a symbol for this free floating and generalized fear of
video games and the worried ones. They don't have proof
yet or evidence of this threat, but they'll get some
take a little regularly, and when we get back, things
are gonna get even more serious. And We're back, Elizabeth,

(36:54):
Yes we are. I'm fun with this.

Speaker 3 (36:56):
I'm having a blast, pac Man.

Speaker 2 (36:58):
Do you have believed in America?

Speaker 3 (37:00):
I have no clue.

Speaker 2 (37:01):
So, as I told you, we got all these scolds
like our girl Ronnie Lamb, who are just leading this charge.
But they need they don't have evidence. They're always pointing
at things going. What's going on in that dark room
behind the windows? I can't see it, right, Yeah, I've
been in the room, like she's got to prove she's
been in there. You can see that they need something better.
So at this point we get terms like pac Man
elbow and Space Invader's wrist. Way, Yeah, the medical community

(37:24):
starts coining these catchy phrases for injuries sustain from playing
too many video games. Yeah, even PBS gets in on it.
The mcnail lear News Hour describes Fritz viewers how Atari's
game breakout was so all consuming for one young player
that he was driven to submerge his aching hand in
ice water just so he could go on playing. God,
look at my pos son with his fingers all and

(37:45):
twisted in bed. He's got the pac Man elbow. So
e Liz Abit toxicologist saying, this does fs the poison, right,
That dose makes the poison. So that basically means is
water can kill you if you drink enough of it.
It's not nothing is a poison, it's how you use it. Well,
this imagine threat becomes a powerful narrative because it's an
imagined poison, and it gets so strong because it's however

(38:07):
strong you need it to be to be toxic. So
beyond these new injuries, it gets so bad that it
becomes a backlash. To the backlash, now we got to
fight on both sides. The first big cool video game movie,
do you know what it is? The o g video
game movie. The movie is centered on a video game,
was called Tron. There was video game movies. That's the
first big hit that's actually cool. People are like, oh,

(38:27):
it was great or whatever. So that video game movie
came out eighty two, right at the peak of this
first wave of video games. Now the guy who directed it,
Steve Lisberger, he comes out in defensive video games against
all this fear mongering by Concerned America. San Francisco Cronnell
recorded how the Tron director said, quote, the older generation
has no qualms about leaving us with dirty air, dirty water,

(38:48):
and nine thousand nuclear warheads, but they worry about whether
video games are good for us. So, yeah, what do
you gotta say about that, Ronnie Lamb. So it doesn't
matter because those are real threats. But at this point,
the moral pan doesn't care about that. They no longer
they're not focused on reality. They're focused on what they're
imagining is about to happen? What's coming? Right? And that
panic it's too far?

Speaker 3 (39:08):
Do you sag with that?

Speaker 2 (39:10):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (39:10):
Exactly.

Speaker 2 (39:10):
Problem gathering momentum and noise. Now it's it's its own thing.
It's creating its own weather. You know. It's so the
evidence for this, this campaign against video games. They need something,
so they start focusing on drug use and drug abuse
and making parallels. Video game arcades become dens of sin,
places where druggies go to do druggy things. But turns out,
as I told you, because the dark screens like well
you know, they have dark windows because you want to

(39:33):
have darkness in there for the video games, so you
can see nothing else being playing a video game. Also,
you can't see Batman, so anyway, So to show that
people are getting tough on crime. In nineteen eighty two,
left leaning mayor of San Francisco, Diane Feinstein later future
Center of California, steps into fight against pac Man and Frogger.
Feinstein leads this new battle to make the world safe
from Donkey Kong. As your Boy Peter hart Low pointed

(39:55):
out in his San Francisco Chronicle story, I found quote
it was February third, eighteen eighty two in San Francisco,
and the city had officially declared war on pec Man.
This new band makes it illegal for anyone to play
arcade games during a school day. The new law is
so popular of civic leaders around the Bay started adopting it.
Sure most of the cities in the Bay passed similar
legislation within a year and a half. Okay, Then, to

(40:17):
make matters worse, the US Surgeon General steps into the
fray way. Do you remember that one? The US Surgeon
General who looked like you'd meet him at an Amish
barn raising.

Speaker 3 (40:24):
Sea ee Cooper. Yeah, Tim, Look, sometimes I have these
flashes of knowing things.

Speaker 2 (40:30):
I always believe kidding me. He was the first celebrity
surgeon general. Yeah right.

Speaker 3 (40:35):
Though he did that wild beard totally.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
He was like his beard looking like he was happy.
I'm like em, he's got a happy beard.

Speaker 3 (40:40):
So he wants to sell you apple butter.

Speaker 2 (40:44):
It was the first time most people in America, or
a lot of people America knew the surgeon general's name.
Yeah right. He became an actual thing. He was always
on TV doing health hits on morning shows, and there
in his uniform and his happy lush beard and uh anyway,
this beloved, well regarded surgeon General. He wades into this,
this culture war, looking to cure America of the dangers
of pac Man fever. So it's November nineteen eighty two,

(41:07):
Surgeon General. He's in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania's giving a speech at
the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic. It's on child abuse
and domestic violence. Not a fun talk. After he's done,
he's doing a Q and A and someone asks about
the dangers of pac Man and Donkey Kong. Like, enough
about all that, what about pac Man and Donkey Kong?
So Seaver Coop starts explaining how the kids are getting
really into these games. He concedes it, he says, and

(41:29):
I quote, they are into it body and soul. Their
body language is tremendous, and everything is zap the enemy.
There's nothing constructive in the games. So the Surgeon General says,
the kids are becoming addicts and out there jonesing for
these video games, right, which throwing away their precious time,
leading to quote aberrations of childhood behavior. Right. So sea
Ever Coop he clarifies that there's no evidence about the

(41:51):
toxic nature of pac Man, not yet, but he also
he also explains he's offering his opinion. He says all this,
but he says that he believes the video game are
addictive and harmful.

Speaker 3 (42:01):
Well, he believed this man of.

Speaker 2 (42:03):
Science believes this, so doesn't have evidence, but he believes it.
At Elizabeth nice work, doc, wait, undercut science with and
feed the flames of a moral panic with what you believe.
So after seaver coop, he sees that he's like basically
stoked the fury and people reporting it's all over the news, right,
He's like, oh right, I'm Surgeon General. I gotta be
more responsible. So he tries to calm down to America's

(42:23):
fears and he tries to settle down the pitchfork mob.
So he releases a statement to clarify his previously quoted statement.
And you know who who reads like newspaper corrections, that's
how many people read his statement he released after the
first one. Yeah, same folks. Right, So the press reports
on how Surgeon General said video games are toxic and harmful.
This means pack man, donkey Kong, they're gonna turn your

(42:44):
kid into a videot right into a junkie. Yeah, So
this happens just before the holiday season in nineteen eighty two. Okay,
so what do you think happened to video game sales
in the holiday season of nineteen eighty two.

Speaker 3 (42:55):
I guess they just spiked at the no.

Speaker 2 (42:58):
They tanked the Yeah, this was when people still listen
to like the US Surgeon General. They listened to all
these experts. They thought, oh my god, we got to
protect the kids. This is heroin for a little Jimmy,
because these are brand new things. They don't have this
history of thinking of them. This is like a new,
brand new thing, and they're used to pinball already being
a danger, so they just transpose it onto video games
and they're like, this is even worse. Oh my god,

(43:19):
they're going right to they throw the eyeballs into their
soul or whatever. So at this point, the Atari twenty
six hundred is all the rage. That's the game machine.
Everybody wants this game. You can play these video games
at home on your own TV. So everybody's like buying
the games of cartridges. That's what they're asking for. And
Christmas and Hanukkah and the holidays, sees the baty one.

Speaker 3 (43:38):
You're bringing all of the arcade games.

Speaker 2 (43:40):
At home right, So that's what their parents are now
worried about. It's happening inside the house, Elizabeth. So that's
you can see why the Surgeon General going this is
toxic and harmful, and he's using words like you would
use about drug abuse. Sure, so once he says the
video games are gonna take your kid from you and
turn them into a heroin junkie, degenerate gambler who lives
in a van up by the racetrack, no atari for
that kid, right, this demon scourge. But there's also this

(44:01):
other demon scourge. Why there's a reason why people keep
comparing video games to drugs. Nancy Reagan anti drug campaign.
Just say no, yeah, Andy, wasn't Nancy Reagan scaring kids
with drugs? I mean she was. It wasn't like that.

Speaker 3 (44:16):
So in nineteen a lot about drugs.

Speaker 2 (44:21):
Yeah right, I learned all the best drugs, A menu down.

Speaker 3 (44:25):
I knew how, I knew what to say on the street, like.

Speaker 2 (44:28):
I don't want the Bennys. Maybe you'll mess with some
angel dust. No, but in eighty two, Nancy Reagan, she's
out there scaring the hell out of mister and missus America.

Speaker 3 (44:35):
Tell fourth graders about angel dust is so funny.

Speaker 2 (44:38):
Oh my god, completely right. I mean, well, like not
only like Nancy Reagan talking about like how how these
kids are like smoking like rocks and classrooms and trying
angel dust the ten year old friends in the bathroom, right,
and stealing PCP out of their mom's person or whatever. I
don't know how it's working. Shooting got school kids on
that dust on the back of the bus. So wild times, right,

(44:59):
But do you know where just say no started? Where
Nancy Reagan first said it? Or she put down hey,
put down the pipe kids, where Nancy Reggon knocked I mean,
I'm paraphrasing there. But it was here in Oakland. Wait,
it was in Oakland at Longfellow Elementary. Nancy was here
in nineteen eighty two at Longfellow, and the schoolgirl asked
her what she should do if one of her peers

(45:21):
offered her PCP or angel does her drugs? Right, the
first lady told the little girl just say no, And
just like that, an eighties catchphrase was born. Because they
had the TV cameras recording it and a whole way
of looking at the world takes hold right Dare program,
and all of a sudden you got no, just a
no school program. See to Shining Sea.

Speaker 3 (45:38):
What's that little girl doing right now?

Speaker 5 (45:40):
Right?

Speaker 2 (45:41):
I would love to hear her side her?

Speaker 3 (45:44):
Do you regret asking?

Speaker 2 (45:46):
Do you remember, like I know we talked about like
Dare and how they showed you the menu of drugs.
But they also had things where they would have like
some teacher, like maybe like somebody who helps you cross
the street to get to your school. They would come
in and like put on like a dirt bag jacket
and had all of a sudden you got to practice
streaming no at them, and they try to offer you drugs.
You you know what I mean talking like this, I
was looking at they have like low life street dealer

(46:08):
in the multipurpose room, and the kids take turns going no,
screaming at them already.

Speaker 3 (46:13):
Like sister Mary, Catherine walks like a ga, opens up
her jacket. Your kids want.

Speaker 2 (46:21):
What would you kids say?

Speaker 5 (46:22):
No? Right?

Speaker 2 (46:24):
This explains how bout eighty three the moral panic about
video games is shifted focus entirely to the addictive aspect. Right,
kids are now video game junkies, and the first big
wave of video game popularity at bursts. Pac Man Fever
is killed by.

Speaker 3 (46:37):
The encroaching on the high fruit toast corns business getting
in on it.

Speaker 2 (46:43):
That actually hadn't taken hold yet, that we were close.
How big of a hit was this? Like it was
kind of complicated, right, because he had a couple of things.
You have one factor, which is there have been all
the sudden success? Do you have all these multiple competing
game players. I told you there's a Star twenty six hundred.
But then also so there was PC gaming, There was
Apple two, and then there was that came out in
nineteen seventy seven. They had the television machine that was

(47:06):
an eighty, the Calecovision, and the Commodore sixty four in
eighty two. Yeah, all these things were coming out, right,
So we were.

Speaker 3 (47:12):
Like, I did no friendo Nintendo come out?

Speaker 2 (47:15):
Oh well we'll get to that in a second.

Speaker 5 (47:16):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (47:17):
So as a result, the market starts getting overrun with
all these different gaming systems controllers. It's a mess, right,
So it's not cheap for the parents. They get the
wrong one. The kids are mad at them, like I
hate these games, right, So it becomes this thing. Right.
So the biggest sign though that the first big video
game craze is over, wasn't pac Man. It was a
game called ET. You ever heard about this game?

Speaker 3 (47:36):
Oh? I think, I know, I think that.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
This story so over the show. I co hosed very
special episodes. We've covered this one. It's an insane story.
I'll to give you some of the highlights. The game
was made for Atari. It was meant to piggyback off
the success of Steven Spielberg's movie about a waddling alien
with a light up finger. Right. The game was meant
for the Christmas holiday season, which meant had to be
rushed through design and production. The game designer worked butt off.

(48:00):
He's promised like a trip to Hawaii when he's done.
Then before that, he's flown to Warner Brothers in LA
to meet Steven Spielberg and show him the ET game
what he's got going. After he watches the demo, Spielberg's like,
couldn't you do something more like pac Man? This quote,
that's a direct quote. He said, couldn't you do something
more like pac Man? So they don't. They put the
Rush game into production. Atari figures this is going to

(48:21):
be a huge hit. They produce millions of cartridges, millions
four million. Pac Man fever is passing. They don't know it.
The craze is over. They don't know it. It turns
out nobody wants this stupid ET game that's nothing like
pac Man or not enough like pac Man. The four
million games produced, they get sent to stores. Three and
a half million games are sent back to Atari as

(48:42):
unsold stock and customer returns. Is often called the worst
video game ever. What does a tari do? Well, now
that they have the worst game ever, Well, they come
up with a plan. They decide, what's barry.

Speaker 3 (48:54):
The et game crazy?

Speaker 2 (48:56):
They go into a landfill and they go, where are
some people we can places where it could be forgotten forever.
No one will ever find it, No one ever, no
we ever did this. So they pick up Alma Gordo,
New Mexico, in the Land of Enchantment. They go and
they get a landfill. They buy up's a bunch of
a space they can. They get a bunch of backos
and trucks and a bunch of wet cement, and they go,
we got big plans. They're not gonna build a mazzle

(49:18):
lium to this thing, right, rev than me tell you
about Elizabeth. I'd like you to close your eyes, and
I'd like those to picture it. Elizabeth, you were standing
in a landfill in Alma Gordo, New Mexico. It's September
nineteen eighty three. The reason you're standing around waiting for
backcos and big rigs with tractor trailers is that in
the second quarter of nineteen eighty three, Atari lost a

(49:39):
boatload of money on this game, and you've been tasked
with making sure no one ever finds evidence of this
colossal failure. So you wait with your clipboard for the
heavy vehicles to arrive. Finally, you spot the convoy pulling
into the landfill. There are fourteen eighteen wheelers and a
handful of backos or caterpillars, all come from the Atari
warehouse in El Paso, Texas. Smart you hired private guards

(50:01):
to stand outside the fence and keep away nosey folks
and reporters from the local press outlets. You don't want
any evidence of this mass barrier. The back goes dig
open the earth as a front loaders forklifts work in
teams to take loads of ET video game cassettes from
the eighteen wheeler tractor trailers, all fourteen of them. They
dump the ET games into the fresh dug pit after

(50:23):
the fourteen trucks are emptied and the deep scar and
the earth is filled, next comes the fleet of cement trucks.
They come in, beeping and backing up into the scene,
much like the stolen and recovered body of Abraham Lincoln.
Your answer to ET is to ensure these games are
never again disturbed, So you drop an obscene amount of
concrete on top of them to seal the deal. The

(50:46):
cement mixture trucks pour wet concrete into this mass burial site.
May no one ever find these cursed ET games, You
think to yourself as you watch the concrete slush over
the burial pit. Elizabeth, nice work, by the way, way
to burry them a stake?

Speaker 3 (51:03):
Oh my goodness, thanks.

Speaker 2 (51:04):
Unfortunately it doesn't quite work. How about that in a second? Now,
the video game ET marks the death Now for Atari
pac Man Fever, this early video game craze. For the record,
in the second quarter of eighty three, Atari lost three
hundred and ten million dollars.

Speaker 3 (51:21):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (51:21):
In twenty twenty five dollars, that would be nine hundred
and seventy seven million dollars, almost nine hundred and seventy
eight million dollars. Wow, it's nearly a billion dollars they
lost in one quarter. Yeah, of course, like in Nvidia
just nearly lost a trillion dollars in one day from
AI bubble. But this is just at the time, this
seemed like a lot of money. So nineteen eighty three
it was devastating.

Speaker 3 (51:40):
This is eighty three. But I'm thinking, like I was
playing all this stuff later than that, and it's like,
I guess.

Speaker 2 (51:46):
It, they helps the helps strong again.

Speaker 3 (51:48):
Wrong.

Speaker 2 (51:48):
But I'm talking from the business standpoint of like, we're
gonna keep making more games. This is why you didn't
see more Atari games than eighty five six. Okay, So
at this moral panic, it looks like it's one. It's
claims of addiction and toxic games have worked. Noel and
Bushnell and his shovel business aka the family fun Center
Chucky Eaches, they started to face tough times in the
early eighties. All the new shopping ball arcades started to shudder,

(52:10):
as did those dark, windowed suburban businesses that scared the
parents so much. But then came Custer's Revenge, a video
game so offensive it spawned protests against it. In Custer's Revenge,
you were played as General George Armstrong, Custer. Okay, you
are Custer and you face Native American opponents. The Natives
are armed with arrows. They try to kill you, and
they fire them at Custer. That's you. And then this

(52:33):
is where it really gets bad. Custer. If you can
survive this reign of arrows successfully, you can reach a
Native girl who's bound to a pole. And if you
try to get busy with her, and you score points
for getting busy with the Native girl. What Yes. The
very first time this was ever unveiled at a demonstration,
two hundred and fifty people showed up just to boo
the game. They'd already heard about it from people on
the inside. I've never heard of the game is a

(52:54):
notable failure. They was up there with Ultra Violet game
Death Race. It was just pulled from the shelves right
Custer's Revenge. So in two thousand and three.

Speaker 3 (53:02):
Creep like DIRG came.

Speaker 2 (53:03):
Oh yeah, so, researchers, these are the games also helped
kill the video game early video game pase weird. In
two thousand and three, researchers at Iowa State looked back
at the early degenerate days of video games, and they
noted that the era of Atari was mostly abstract violence
outside of Custer's Revenge, and Nolan Bushnell said that this
was intentional. It was an intentional choice on his part
because there's a huge difference between blowing up a tank

(53:25):
or flying saucer and blowing up people. That's how he
parned right As the co founder of Atari, also added quote,
we felt that that was not good form, and we
adhered to that all during my tenure. Right. So, but
at this point it's too late, because the eighty three
crashes nearly killed video games. They never become a thing.
The moral skolds have won, except for nineteen eighty five,
the Nintendo nes and the Sega Master gaming systems come

(53:47):
over from Japan, and people were like, whoa, and they
really changed the game, so to speak. Sure, they marked
the beginning of the modern video game era. And and
then now arcades they were still going at this point,
but the tide has started turning to home, all to
home gaming. Eighty five more arcades are closing than opening.
The same year. One of the longest run arcades in
Times Square closes, a place called Broadway Arcade. Fun fact,

(54:08):
that's also where Lou Reed once got married. A Times
Square Arcade. The Broadway Arcade, Yeah, it was opened for
fifty years before. They'd had pinball before that and moved
back from Times Square was dirty. But nineteen eighty five
New York was reclaiming and cleaning up Times Square. The
Broadway Arcade was treated like its dirty neighbors, the adult
bookstores and the porn shops. So the arcade was left

(54:28):
out of any plans for the future of Times Square.
It's not seen as a family entertainment, so it was
forced out of business, part of a seat er pass
that New York wanted to forget. So one of the
loyal customers at the arcade told The New York Times quote,
it's a moral crusade. A lot of good things like
the Broadway Arcade will get swept out with the bad.
So for a pinball operator in a video game impresario,
this was not such a big shock. They had to

(54:49):
see this coming. They've already paid a dirty business. But
it's still really a shame to lose this fifty year
old treasure because of a random moral crusade. But and
this is what happens in world crusade. You lose what
side of what's good because you're so focused on what's bad,
and you're in such a rush be satisfied by all
this emotional highs of it. Things can get swept up.
And also you're so certain because you're mad and all that.

(55:10):
The moral skulds though they didn't fully win because now
we have barcades. This is places where people can go
and drink and play nostalgic retro video games. Yeah, they're
like video game parlors for fun time drunks, the thirsty
ga no no more like places actually called barcade. That's
a business. Yeah, and that's like and you can, which
is interesting. That's where Pong started was in a bar, remember,
a local bar. That's how it became a hit.

Speaker 3 (55:31):
I think they sell the like upright arcade video game
thing like I want to get one Costco totally. I
was actually for headquarters.

Speaker 2 (55:40):
I was thinking that. By the way, in twenty thirteen,
some treasure hunters got approval to dig up your et
video games, and in twenty fourteen they found some. There's
a whole documentary about it if you want to watch. Okay, well,
I guess your cement mixer plan with so flawless Elizabeth,
December twenty fourteen. The Smithsonian Institute. They added an excavated
et game cartridge two exhibition collection, Yes, preserving Forever the

(56:03):
worst video game ever, marking the end of the pac
Man Fever, and the first video game craze. So, Elizabeth,
what take away?

Speaker 3 (56:11):
Oh? You know, I keep thinking of that lady railing
against the video games. And it's like, if you're going
to expend that kind of energy has to be positive energy.
And I say this. You know, we joke about the
Winter of Dark Elizabeth. This summer, I don't want to
do that anymore. Like, I don't want to be mad
and so like, because it's not productive and it doesn't

(56:32):
feel good. And so it's like, if you if you're
upset about the way things are, then like, come up
with a good thing.

Speaker 2 (56:39):
Constructive, obstructive, connect something.

Speaker 3 (56:43):
Concerned these kids. Oh I'm so mad. Don't don't try
to give.

Speaker 2 (56:47):
Kids another choice, a better choice, an easier path to
a better choice.

Speaker 3 (56:50):
Exactly, come up with a solution.

Speaker 2 (56:53):
Support them as individuals making choices, because that's going to
be their future when they are adults. Teach them to
make that and help them do that, and brother and go.
I'm just gotta clear that I'm gonna get rid of those.

Speaker 3 (57:02):
Don't give a list of negatives, come up with some positive.
That's my takeaway, Zaren, what's yours?

Speaker 2 (57:07):
I didn't think you're gonna ask. I don't even have one.
I mean, okay, here's one off the off, off the cuff.
I do want to buy a couple of old video games,
and maybe I don't even where to put them, so
I will probably put them. I'll put them in h Q. Yeah.
Would you be in Petersher? Do you play like a
game like Timber where you chopped down as many trees
as you can into you get attacked by a swarm
of angry bees?

Speaker 3 (57:26):
Sure?

Speaker 2 (57:27):
How about Frogger? Will you try to get across traffic
before run over and turned into a frog?

Speaker 3 (57:32):
Get hit by a car?

Speaker 2 (57:33):
The arm wrestling game? Oh? Hell yeah? Yeah, there you go. There?

Speaker 3 (57:39):
Is it gonna be the stand up or the table
top kind?

Speaker 2 (57:42):
Maybe one of each? I get joust as a tabletop.
That's what the like? The flying ostriches in space going
from like I don't know past right or whatever? Yees yeah,
I like that marble madness.

Speaker 3 (57:54):
Oh look at that we got we could we could
open Yeah exactly.

Speaker 2 (57:59):
Eat y'all in the mood for a top. I am
always in the mood. Can you favor us with Oh
my God, I love che Hello.

Speaker 6 (58:16):
My name is Stop and Dragon. So from Atlanta, Georgia,
and I just want to take a moment. You told
my appreciation to the Ridiculous Crime Crew and everything that
you guys do. I really appreciate every single episode. I
never miss one, and I really hope you guys get
some awards and accolades or whatever in the near future.
I'm an eighties baby, so I grew up with the

(58:38):
best cartoons of the best theme songs, and the theme
song to this show it's awesome. Bump Bom the Ban's
the greatest.

Speaker 3 (58:46):
I think that might be my favorite talk to Yeah,
thank you, brother, that was amazing. That makes me so happy.

Speaker 2 (58:50):
You gotta get love to trap on that one.

Speaker 3 (58:52):
Nice to trap for the theme song, but also eighties
babies to eighties babies. I just I really thank you.

Speaker 2 (58:59):
We needed that you and that that is an award,
Like I know, that's.

Speaker 3 (59:03):
What I'm saying, Like that's the kind of award I
would love to get it. So when you guys say, yeah,
that's awesome, thank you.

Speaker 2 (59:11):
Well. As always, you can find us on Ridiculous Crime
on Instagram and blue Sky. If you like blue Sky,
we also have our website Ridiculous Crime dot com and
obviously we loved you talk back, so please hit us
up on the iHeart app record one. Maybe we'll hear
your voice here, or you can email us if you
like a Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com and please,
if you do, start the email dear producer d all right,

(59:33):
thank you for listening. We will catch you next crime.
Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett,
produced and edited by the man who once believed Tron
would be our future, Dave Pustein, and starring Analis Rucker
as Judi. Research is by Pong all time top I

(59:55):
scorers Versa Brown and Alex. Our theme song is by
the Pinball with zards Thomas Lee and Travis Duck. The
host wardrobe provided by Botany five hundred guest hair and
makeup by Sparkleshaw and mister Andre. Executive producers are the
only man who ever beat the cursed et game, Ben
Bowlin and the man who taught Elton John to play pinball.

(01:00:16):
So damn well, no.

Speaker 5 (01:00:18):
Brown, Red Crime say it One More Time Crime.

Speaker 1 (01:00:30):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts
from my heart Radio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.