Video Games - A Fistful of Quarters

Arcades were all the rage in the 80s. We were kids hell bent on keeping the planet safe from Space Invaders, traumatized by the inevitable destruction of the world in Missile Command and completely addicted to scarfing down dots with Ms. Pac Man. Whether we played at the arcade or at home on our Atari consoles, video games were our drug of choice.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
I'm Tony. I'm Eric. We are the sons of San Fernando.But we've been friends for over 40 years. We
grew up together in the San Fernando Valley.These are the stories of our experiences as
adventurous Gen X latchkey slackers from backin the day. And don't forget to hit the follow
or subscribe button so you don't miss an episode.

(00:25):
Oh, you know, I was parked somewhere the otherday. to meet up with a friend of mine and...
You have friends? We just won. Wow. Present,present, present. Excluded. Okay, right. Well.
And I was a parking meter, you know, parkingmeters now, it's all, you can tap to pay or

(00:47):
use credit card or whatever. But... Digital.Some of them, they still take coins. Wifi,
wow. Who has coins? Yeah, maybe actually maybethink about coins, which I haven't thought
about coins in a long time. Since the Aztecs.Yeah, not since, well no, actually since the
Aztecs. That's a whole nother story. But I'mone of those freaks, I still have to. You're

(01:08):
an Aztec? No, I'm a freak. Oh, okay. Yeah, Idon't think, I might be one 354th Aztec. Right,
no, you're German, you're all Germans. I'm notGerman, all jammin'. Jammin' German. I had,
I've changed in my car. Do you keep change inyour car? If I keep it in my car, it's accidental.

(01:29):
It's because I got changed somehow. I put itin the car and I never, it's not because I
do it intentionally like we used to do. We usedto have those little change holders in the
cars. They were made like, yeah, they had different,you had ones that were sized for dimes and
nickels and quarters. Yeah, exactly. Pennies.Yeah, yeah, I didn't know. I don't keep it
intentionally in my car. Do you keep changingyour car intentionally? Well, I, so I thought

(01:51):
I didn't, but I guess I did. I still had a fewquarters in there for meters that I just never
took out. For prostitutes. Because you know,they still- The quarter prostitute. They still
take, they still take coins, prostitutes. Yeah.And you'd be surprised what you can get. For
25 cents, really. Tell me, what do you get for25? I'm not an aficionado, I don't know. That's

(02:13):
a whole nother podcast, man. A quarter pro.But a quarter prostitute. Yeah, a quarter prostitute.
A quarter whore. Is that, yeah. Yeah, it's thesame as a quarter whore, but not as long in
the face. Or maybe, I don't know, maybe. Maybeshe is. What? The old quarter whore. But the

(02:33):
change, having quarters, it reminded me abouthaving quarters from when we played video games
back in the arcades back in the day. Alwayshad quarters on hand. Pockets full of quarters.
No, but this is the exact issue, is that wenever did have quarters on hand. When you wanted
to play a video game, you didn't have the quarteron hand. You had to go break that dollar. And

(02:53):
tokens didn't happen until later, when theywere like, you know, more of an arc. First
it was always quarters. Do you remember theguy? at the video arcade who had the belt.
Oh yeah, yeah. With the change belt in the middle.Shink, shink, shink. Because you didn't wanna
leave the game because somebody else would jumpin. He would walk around. Yeah, he'd walk around.
So as you're finishing playing Dig Dug, herecomes Doug. His name is probably Doug. I'm

(03:17):
sure it was Doug. Or Greg. Doug Greg. Yeah.And yeah, he had the little change thing. You
know, the little change thing. I can picturethat. You give him a five, he's like, it was
all filled with quarters. Yeah, it was all filledwith quarters. So you never had to like take
off and leave your machine. But do you wonderthough if Doug has back problems today? Doug
has more than back problems. Oh, he does? Yeah,well, maybe Doug may be dead. I mean, we're

(03:42):
talking about- Oh, Doug's most definitely. Doug'sdead? Well, think of all the germs he had from
all those dirty coins and the dirty bills. No,but germs didn't matter back then. We didn't
get shit from germs. All the guy at the arcade,all Doug the change guy at the arcade did all
day was handle dirty coins and dirty paper money.And give them to dirty children. And then he'd

(04:03):
go- It's like a Roald Dahl novel. He'd go tohis, have his lunch, and he'd like, he would
wash his hands. And it would say, on the brownpaper bag. Doug's lunch. What do you think
was in Doug's lunch? Doug probably had. Eggsalad on white. Three day old egg salad. Three
day old egg salad on white with the crust cutoff like his mother used to make for him or

(04:23):
that his mother did make for him. He was 35and his mom still living at home with his mom.
Capri Sun? No, I think he was drinking a PBRfor lunch. What's PBR? Paps-a-loo ribbons.
Doug was drinking. Doug was drinking at lunch.No, no, I don't think Doug drank at lunch.
Come on. He had a pickle. Doug had a pickle.Doug had a pickle, though. For sure a pickle

(04:46):
and a ho-ho. A ding-dong? You know what? It'sjust, what's a half a- Chocodile? Is a half
a ho-ho just a ho? A ho. We're back to ho. Chocodile.Chocodile, you remember the chocodile? Everybody
was ripping off the ding dong. All you reallyneeded was a ding dong. By the way, wasn't
ripping off the ding dong, wasn't that a SnoopDogg record? No, no, it's Little Richard. Okay.

(05:09):
Whoo. Snoop stole it from Little Richard. Butthank God for Doug. Everybody stole everything
from Little Richard. Because without Doug, withoutDoug, we didn't have quarters to play our games.
And you needed quarters to play games. In thepre-token era, you had to have. I'm kind of
sad we're leaving the Doug topic, but you'reright that it was a thing and I There was a
time when Doug was replaced by a machine whichnever worked Yeah, put the goddamn you put

(05:33):
your dollar or five dollars It just kept spittingit out Yeah, it was just like bzzz
Yeah. With your hands. You figure if I put itin the 87th time. You're gonna get it. I mean,

(05:55):
forget being, Doug was a real gem to have aroundversus those machines. God love you, Doug.
Yeah, I mean, well he's dead. But the machineswere a pain in the ass. And then the best though
is when you did get it in and you had a five,a fiver. A five spot. You did get it, or it's
talking about the hose again? Or when you gotyour dollar bill unfolded sufficiently or your
five dollar bill unfolded sufficiently to getsucked in by the little motor thing and you

(06:20):
had that pause. There was a moment of silence.So you finally got it in. So it was always
like, bzzzzzz. And then you were like, bzzzzzz.Am I gonna get money? And it came back out.
Bzzzzzz. But then there was that one time, bzzzzzz.And then the glorious sound of the falling
quarters. Just like. You know, your parentswere in Vegas when they were at the slots and
they would have the coins actually drop. Thatsame feeling. Yeah, we had the same feeling

(06:43):
of the quarters dropping into that little metalcup at the bottom of those machines. And it
wasn't that we were winning anything. It wasthat we knew play was imminent. Play was imminent.
Yeah, exactly. And we're like, now we're scoutingaround. What do we hit first? We're at the
arcade, we're at the mall, we're at the Galleria.Let's say you have your, it's 1980, and you

(07:04):
have your choice of your first game. Whateveryou wanna play is open. What is it? Star Castle.
Star Castle, boy, that's dumb. I know, I'm goingdeep on- That's just dumb, though. Yeah, no,
but it's not. You know why? No. Because StarCastle was just nonstop floating in space,
kind of fun. It had all of the- Wait, Star Castlewas like the Tempest situation? Not quite,

(07:27):
so it was kind of asteroids-esque. Oh, right.I mean, asteroids had all the name. Asteroids
was great, though. It was huge. It was great.But you couldn't survive more than five seconds.
Well, and that's the thing. So in Asteroids,you constantly had boop, boop. Oh yeah, the
sound design was great. Boop, boop, boop. Butyou were constantly surrounded by Asteroids.

(07:50):
Interesting. And the more you shot at them,the smaller they got, the faster they went.
And they're coming in from all directions. Soit's maniacal. Right, it was maniacal. Now,
Star Castle was different because it was allbased on the center. So there was a ship. Like
Tempest. Like Tempest in a way, but different.Exactly the same, but totally different. Point
is that there was a ship in the middle and therewere counter rotating circles around it and

(08:13):
you were a ship on the outside trying to shootyour way in. Right, right, right. But that
ship was shooting out at you and then therewas another thing coming. So you had to keep
moving, but you weren't in danger of hittinga bunch of asteroids. Yeah, external. So you
could play it long. paraphernalia. So I gotto fly around like everybody in asteroids,
but while they were on their, you know, goingback to Doug getting more quarters, I was still

(08:38):
on my first quarter. Okay, can we just talkabout something though? That brings up the
concept of quantity versus quality. And I'mgonna say you were edging towards quantity,
my friend, and, and cause that's a garbage soundinggame. I don't know that I played it. How dare
you? Because you, all you were trying to do-Are you besmirching the name of Star Castle?

(08:58):
Yeah. 100% I don't feel like you had I don'teven know you all day long I will say I will
take quality video games over cool. Okay, thenwhat would you consider in the 80s? What would
you consider a quality video game? What areyou gonna take your quarter to if it's if the
machines are wide open? Where you go? I lovethe classics. Yeah, I will take a Miz Pac-Man
all day long Well, Miz Pac-Man wasn't even aroundon the early days though 1980 I know, we're

(09:23):
gonna have to do a check on that. Yeah, we mighthave to do a check on that. I don't know. Because
obviously Pac-Man came before Ms. Pac-Man. Pac-Manwas okay. Pac-Man was good, but it was a never
changing maze. The thing about Ms. was you gotthe changing maze, you got the lipstick. Ms.
had style. She had style. You got the ribbonand the hair, you had the lipstick. You had
the false eyelashes, which is incredible. Youhad the little in-between levels, you had the

(09:45):
story. You had, ready? Hold on. Do-d There yougo, I was a little flat on the end. But I think
you nailed it. It was high. I should have chosenanother key. No, it's all right. Frankly, for
my range. Yeah, you can always. Yeah, it's allright. You can do an album. I'm happy with
it. And change the key. There was another, ohwait, I got another one. Blah, blah,

(10:11):
blah. Was that? That was the one where they'rechasing each other. Oh, that's right. They
go one way. You did play a lot in this pack,man. They go the other way, and then they crash
at the end. Yeah, and they just boink in themiddle. Oh man, those things are burned into
my brain. Yeah, it's because we spent a billiondollars playing these. Wait, I got more just
jumped into my head. I mean, God, this is scary.I just got the Donkey Kong Jr. No, wait, is

(10:31):
it? No, it's Donkey Kong. Doon, doon, do, doon,do, do. Oh yeah, that's right. Do-d
You fast forward way ahead to something likeMario Brothers that was way past our time.

(10:53):
Oh yeah, well no, I mean I'm playing a song.But music soundtrack, I'm saying that we weren't
playing that in the arcades. Not in the earlydays. But without that sound, it's just not
the same. No. Okay, so I'm gonna give you anotherone. I'm gonna give you another one for sound.
Okay. And I want you to sing it. Sing it? Yeah.All right. Spy Hunter. I don't know, I never
played Spy Hunter. I never played Spy Hunter.Oh, but I got another one for you. Hold on,

(11:14):
you can come back to Spy Hunter.
That's- Do do

(11:45):
You can't get up there. It's too high. Again,I started too high. Yes, you got it right away.
Pole position. We're very well high. What, I'mtrying to think pole position. We played that
on Atari a lot. Yeah, but it was so much betterin the arcade because you had the steering
wheel. Yeah, the steering wheel at home. Yeah,and you had a pedal and you had a shifter.

(12:06):
You had to shift. Yeah, you actually had toshift. It was great. At home on the Atari 2600
with the cartridge. That was stupid. You hada joystick. Yeah, yeah, I come back. And you
were trying to drive with a joystick. No fun.The big was weight, the wheel was weighted.
You could spin it, you could just hurl it tothe left and it would spin in infinity. It
would just go vwee

(12:36):
Oh yeah, okay, centipede. Centipede was themost, yeah, the most well known. Talk about
a stressful game. Yeah, but that. Centipedeand millipede. If you really got your finger
action going on that ball. Here's the problemwith fingers on your balls though, is that
when I was swinging the balls left or rightquickly, you know what I mean, with my hands.

(12:58):
I'm just gonna stay silent. Occasionally yourskin would get caught. in the trackball spacer
area. Ball skin. No, did you remember your ballskin getting caught? Your hand skin getting
caught in the ball? All the time. Yeah, you'dbe rolling so fast, your hand would actually
get caught in the ring around the ball. I canfeel my hands getting caught in the ball area.

(13:20):
But if you got control of it, you could really,because you can move in all directions. It
was like, it was so, but there was another gamethat- Had trackball weight, tempest. Tempest
hatch, right? That was where I was going. Trackball,you just spin that fricking thing. That didn't
like that as much because you didn't feel likeyou had as much control. That was just like
spin the thing and then shoot. Oh, okay, soyou know what? Yeah. You just remind me of?

(13:44):
Track and field. I knew right when you did that,the track and field, the pencil hack. The pencil
hack. So for those who, okay, all Gen Xers rightnow talking about track and field, we say the
pencil hack, everybody knows what we're fuckingtalking about. I don't think we should explain
it. You should just let it be what, If you know,you know, because that the pencil hack was
amazing, but I'll, I'll one up the pencil hat.And this actually came from talkie. There's

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another, I learned this from talkie. This istrack and field. So, um, uh, around the corner
from, uh, where we went to high school, we hada seven 11, a venture of Boulevard and they
had track and field, they had it there for seven11 and you know what happened? There was the,
the hack, the pencil hack. Right. Yeah. Andbut what would happen is guys would go in there

(14:33):
with their pencils and do the, you know, thedouble buttons at one time. Right. Yeah. Or
just you get it between. But yeah, super fast.Right. Yeah. So what they did was the machines
were getting like wrecked because people werewhacking these pens. Right. So at one day we
go to play that game and they had these, wherethe buttons were, those buttons are hit with
a pencil. They had little guards, raised guardsaround. So you couldn't get a pencil to go

(14:57):
back and forth. And we're like, well, now youcan't go as fast because you had those to run
and then another button to jump or throw thejavelin or whatever. Fuckers. Yeah. We're trying
to stick it to the man and they, they unstuckthemselves. So I don't know if he came up with
this, but this was genius. What was it? Reachtoothbrush. Oh, because you have a down side

(15:20):
with the button on it. The reach toothbrushfor all is to know is angled. Right, it was
angled. And instead of a pencil, you could getover the guards with the angle, so reach toothbrush
got us right back to being at the top of thefucking leaderboard on track and field. That's
amazing. That's kind of amazing. That pencilhack was a phenomenal thing. And then to take

(15:41):
it a step. further with a goddamn toothbrush.So we spent a lot of money on track and field.
I loved that game. Worst video game of the era.I got one off easy. All right, let me hear
yours first. Cause I got to dig. Well, and forme it's the worst because it was so promising
looking and then just did not deliver. Oh, Iknow what you're gonna say. Go ahead. Dragon's
Lair. Absolutely, Dragon's Lair. It looked amazing.The cartoon was incredible. The animation looks

(16:05):
so good. Like, oh, you can control a cartoon.It seemed like the future. And it cost. Two
quarters. And it was at least two quarters.I remember it costing more than that. When
it first came out, it was 50 cents. Every gamewas a quarter. I'm gonna defer to your freakish
memory on that one. And then eventually, yeah,it probably became 75 or a buck or something
like that. Yeah, that's kinda what I remember,yeah. But it was double price. But what a stupid
fucking game. It was dumb. All you did was like,at a certain point, you would choose. Like,

(16:30):
and you had to choose at the right time, andit was like one left movement. That was your
only interactivity with the game. The worstpart about it was, the screen, when you made
that move, whatever the move was, when you hada chance to do it, it went blank for like five
minutes. It went blank for a second. Yeah, no,it seemed like an eternity. It was an eternity
game. You could go get a sandwich while it wasblanking out and come back. We couldn't afford
a sandwich because we had no money left becausewe gave all our money to Doug. That's right,

(16:55):
we did. Well, we fed Doug, at least. And thenthe great thing about the early arcades and
like Castle Park, that was a great one. Oh,Castle Park, a mini golf and. Mini golf. But
it's still there. In Onsapulveda, in ShermanOaks. They don't have any good games anymore,
but. Still, still great. and went there withmy kids, which is crazy, second gen. But the
great thing about that place was you could getsome air hockey in between the vids. Oh, dude,

(17:18):
nothing more violent than a good game of airhockey. The sound of air hockey is fantastic.
Now, back then, were you playing pinball atall? Yeah, yeah, we played, because a lot of
the pizza, so pizza parlors were another place.We went less to the arcade. Okay, so we had
video games everywhere. We had the Atari athome. Oh yeah. Which was always amazing. I

(17:40):
didn't have the Atari at home. Did you havethe Atari? I had Atari 2600. You had the 2600.
We weren't cool enough to have the 5200. Doyou remember what I had? You had, no, wait,
hold on. My cousin had it in television. Didyou have Kleco? No, no, wait, wait. Stephen
Cassidy had it in television. I know what youhad, it starts with an S. No. No, it started
with something else. It does! It does startwith something else. Okay, I've got that much.

(18:03):
No, I remember, I must have played it. Of courseyou played it. It's killing me. We played Wolfenstein
on it, didn't we? No, that we played on a computer.That we played on an Atari personal computer
one. What did you have? I had... The Odyssey2. Oh, God, that's right. Not the Odyssey 1,
not the Odyssey 3. Odyssey 2 was twice as goodas the Odyssey 1. That's why they call that

(18:25):
Odyssey 2. Well, yeah, the Odyssey 1, that was,you had a selection of different pong games.
It was basically pong. And it was a single consolething. You did have Odyssey 2, I do, we did
play. What did we play on that? So, PickaxePeak was, that was the fake Donkey Kong where
you could build drone levels. It was their ripoff,yeah, yeah. It was great, I loved it. It had
a fake Pac-Man where the Pac-Man didn't. Oh,the Pac-Man on the Atari didn't change directions

(18:46):
either. Remember, it would just always say facingleft. Yeah, yeah, they didn't have the technology
with 4K worth of fucking power. That's so funny.You would go backwards with Pac-Man. And have
to eat him with his head. And he would eat himwith his ass. Yeah, or his ass. That was so
sweet. That Pac-Man on the Atari was, oh. Ifhe has ass in his head. It was called, there
was a Pac-Man version on the Odyssey 2 and itwas much better. And it was, and again, you

(19:07):
could build your. Munch Man. Yeah, Munch, Munch.Munchkin? It was something Munch. Munch Man.
I'm going to look that up. Okay. Munch something.But it was munch something. And again, you
could build your own screen, uh, mazes. Yeah.Which is fantastic. So I spent a lot of time
just building mazes. It was a much more creativeconsole. We had, so that was the thing. We
were surrounded by it. We had our consoles athome. You had Odyssey at home. I had, uh, Atari

(19:30):
2600. Adventure. Where you're at, where you'reat. Cursor. That was one of my, yeah, you were
a square. You were a square cursor. Yeah. Butthe dragons and the keys and going to different
levels and then the hidden stuff, you go, andthey had like hidden messages. Oh, adventure
was cool. Adventure was fucking great. I remember,I think the like the biggest like, would jump

(19:50):
ahead for me with the Atari because I didn'thave it, but I would go to like your house
or Don's house or whatever, Don Burn's houseor somebody would have it. Oh, Don and I played
the shit out of adventure. Right, adventure,but. The one that was really like, wow, this
is moving another level with the Atari was pitfall.Dude, pitfall was amazing. Had you know, jumping
on the vines. Well swing from the vines andthen jump. You jump on the heads of the alligators

(20:15):
as they were opening their mouths. And if youwere standing on their head, you're okay. If
you're standing on their mouth, you get eaten.That's great. All those different levels like
you're down subterranean. You're on top. Itreally lit the way. Lit. No, Pitfall was huge.
It was a game. It was literally a game changer.It paved the way for all the Mario games. That

(20:35):
to me is sort of the, was it before the Mariogames? Yeah, it was, right? Yeah, Pitfall was
way earlier. Of course the Mario games tookit to a- Pitfall was Activision. It was Activision
but it was on, they had it in the Atari. Yeah,but Activision was making all the killer games.
Yeah, that one was great. But again, I didn'thave the Atari. So I remember the one that
I also loved on the Atari when I was at Don'shouse was the tank one. Because that's what

(20:58):
came with the Atari 2600. It was the one thatyou got with. But it was a great game though.
Well, because combat had. You could bank yourshot. You could actually bank a cannon fire
off of a tank. A tank shell. Like one of thosewalls made out of, that's amazing. And it made
that noise when you got hit. It was great, thatwas fun. Combat was great because it had the

(21:20):
tank stuff, but. You also had other, you hadaerial games. All kinds of games. You had plane
combat. It was amazing. All sorts of differentcombat. It was all basically the same thing
rearranged. But great, I thought that was areally beautiful game because here's why. What
made, in your opinion, I have thought aboutthis way too much. What makes a great video

(21:41):
game? And we really see- Oh, okay, I'll tellyou. Oh. I have the, at least to me, the thing
that makes a great video game is tension. Theultimate tension that- Dynamic tension, like
Frankenfurter says? Yes, yes. Uh-huh. Yes, Tim,do you throw in some Tim Curry? A little Tim
Curry, you always want to throw in some TimCurry. You do. There's never a point where-
You gotta love that man. Yeah, you gotta lovethat. You never have too much Tim Curry. No,

(22:05):
you can have too much green or yellow curry.Even then, I'm not sure that's true. You might
be right, but you definitely cannot have toomuch Tim Curry. You cannot have too much Tim
Curry. Continue. The tension of a game. So forinstance, we talk about games like Asteroids
that were amazing because of the tension thatyou get. They should have had a game called

(22:25):
Hemorrhoids. That would have been an amazingvideo game in the 80s. I'm not sure what it
would have looked like. I don't know where you'regoing with that, but I don't want to have any
part of your hemorrhoids. Where you got likeyou shooting out Preparation H and then. Like,
I don't know what you're shooting at. Like,I need to work on this concept. No, I need
to work on the concept. But I feel like a paireddown. No, I think what's happening is the anus

(22:47):
is just like, shooting off hemorrhoids. So yousee like what? You see like a circle in the
middle of the. Yeah. So it's a little more likeStarcastle. It really is. But then they start
shooting the hemorrhoid ass. Yeah, the hemorrhoidsshoot at you. And you need to shoot the preparation
H. So you're a preparation H too. that you flywith thrusters. Yeah, you kind of have, you're
almost like a Ghostbuster with preparation aids.Right, okay, okay. And you want to bust out

(23:10):
all the roids that are shooting at you. It wascalled H-ROID. Yeah, H-ROID. Okay, I'm gonna
develop this. Okay, while you're working onthat, the games that I loved had the most tension.
Ones like Tempest were maniacal, Centipede,Space Invaders, and probably the ultimate tension
video, oh, Defender. What's the, oh, Defender'sa good game. Defender was a great game because

(23:32):
you were constantly having to hyperspace. Andyou felt like you were moving forward, but
the ship never really moved. It only moved backand forward just a little bit. Well, but then
you would flip around. You could go both directions.That was what was great about Defender. Oh,
you could? Yeah, you could flip around by theother way. Defender was good. Defender was
really good. I kinda wanna play that right now.Yeah, you know what? Now that you said that,
I'm like, oh. I think you should stop and go.I got another good one, but continue. Just

(23:53):
give me the Y on the tension. I will, but theultimate on the tension was Missile Command.
No, that's not tension. horror. That game stressedme out so fucking hard. I hated that game.
But it made me want to play. So those games,those tension filled games wanted me, they
sucked me back in. They sucked me. Listen, letme tell you something about the games that

(24:15):
sucked you. Can I tell you something? You'rewrong. That is not what makes a good video
game. Okay. You tell me Mr. Video Game. I do.I know. I've thought ad nauseum about this.
I've really spent time. Expert. I've really,no, I'm not an expert, but I philosophically
thought about video games. Okay, Phil, tellme about this. And hemorrhoids. And I feel
like the thing that is the key to all videogames, the best video games of all time are

(24:41):
about user control. How much control do I haveover what I am using as my representation.
Example. In the video game. That's why Defenderis good. You're able to control back, forward,
shooting. Up, down. Up, down. In a very, verysimple way. It's not too complicated. That's
true. But you're the in command of your ship.But you feel like when you make, you put your

(25:03):
input in, whether I'm moving the joystick leftright up or down, that my input is represented
properly in the character that represents mein the game. And still feels fairly real because
you can't just, like a ship can't stop on adime. Right, right. Same thing. Right, you
have inertia stuff, you have kinetic stuff thatworks with physics. Physics games are great.
Asteroids did that too. Because even thoughit was a simple game with tension, it does

(25:25):
the same thing you're talking about with Defender.You're floating around, you had the- The physics
were very interesting in Astro, in Hemorrhoids.That was tougher. Yeah, Hemorrhoids physics
are great. Oh, Astroids, Hemorrhoids. Continue,I guess, I don't know. Because it was realistic.
Yes. Yeah, you were- The physics were more realisticfeeling, and you had to learn it. Astroids

(25:45):
were great because the input was very simple.The controls are very simple, but you had that
thing of the inertia. where once you startedbuilding up too much inertia and you were going
forward at speed, it was difficult to reversethat. And that felt realistic. And that's what
a lot of the early Apple phone games, the earlyApple phone games were all about physics. And

(26:07):
those are the best games. And if the physicsis right, like Angry Birds, that's why that
was so popular. Because the physics of it isso good. It makes you want to come back for
another round. It's like, okay, I missed this,or I didn't get this quite right. But you get-
And you can get better. Yeah, you can learn.Right, there you go. So there were some games
that no matter what you did, you really weren'tgetting any better at it, or- Like Tempest,

(26:28):
you're just spinning your fricking ball wheeland getting your skin caught in your balls.
Are we still talking about video games? Whereas,like you're saying, or about to say, I'm assuming
you were about to say this, in Hemorrhoids,you could really learn how to- You could really
learn and the fact that it's called Asteroidis no better. You could really learn how to
control your ship. Yes. Yeah. Over time. Yeah.Over time. Yeah. And that's, it would cost

(26:51):
you. Which is the, that was the beauty of it.Yes. Super smart. But the, the game makers
knew that. Yeah. It's brilliant. And they knewthey would suck you in. Like, I will get better
at this. So that's my opinion of what makesthe best video game is user control. I don't
disagree with that being a, you know, a good.good benchmark. Missile Command made me want

(27:13):
therapy. Yeah, but it was so like it got yourheart racing and that was the thing you really
felt a lot. Okay, I'll tell you this games likeMissile Command and Space Invaders and Defender
you could not be concentrating on anything else.It really taught mindfulness. You really, no
you did. You had, I'm not kidding, you had tobe in the moment. You cannot be thinking about,

(27:35):
what am I gonna be riding my bikes with my buddieslater after this? What am I gonna have for
lunch tomorrow? What happened in fucking mathclass? You had to take a deep breath, put that
quarter in and then you had to be. on your ship.Or the entire world would be fucking destroyed.
That's a lot of pressure. It makes me wannago try Missile Command again and see if I can

(27:59):
bring a different mindset to it, honestly. Becausemost games, you have games where there is an
end. You can actually get to the end, very fewof those. Yeah. I don't really, I didn't really
love that because then you're like, well, thenthat's done. Well, like Adventure. Adventure,
yeah, Adventure did end. Adventure, you gotto end and then you throw the fucking cartridge
away. And all of the Mario games, you can beatthe big boss. finish the game and you know.

(28:21):
Wow. I wonder if Tom Waits played video games.I have a feeling he never played a video game
in his entire lifetime. I'm gonna put big moneyon that he never did. On the no video games.
He's too productive and prolific. He has notime for that bullshit. For video games. We
though in our early 20s had plenty of time forvideo games so we were living in an house with
like you know four dudes. You just sounded alittle um uh English cockney. We're living

(28:45):
in an house. We're living in an house. We'reliving in an house. Our house in the middle
of a street. That's a great song by the way.That is a really, that is a great song. Great
story in that song. Oh yeah. Namans in the winnabate,denim in the centibate, did a good time, did
a good time, such a fine time. Great bridge,what a, I mean what a bridge. Beautiful. That's,
that sounds incredible. We had that house though.Our house was the dude house. It was the band

(29:08):
house. And we had a Sega Genesis. And we played.Sega. Mainly, mainly two games. Wait, hold
the phone. Did you play? Do do

(29:43):
Now I got it, yeah. Thank you. Well, your performancewas subpar. I got all the, all the. Your performance
was not great. That's why, I would have gottenit if the performance was even mildly, mildly.
I got no par on my performance. I don't needto be par. I can be, you gotta accept me as
subpar. That's what I'm looking for in thisthing. You're sub subpar. You're sub Jack par.

(30:04):
Hold on, I gotta pee. All right. So. All right,thank you for allowing me to pee. I appreciate
that. Cause you're a slave driver. You're aslave driver. You know what that always reminds
me of? Eric is a total slave right now. What'sthat movie with Steve Martin? Dirty Rotten
Scoundrels. Oh, yeah, may I go to the bathroom?We're sitting in the pause and the look to

(30:27):
the left. Thank you. Genius. And then the horrorfight. I feel like Steve Martin and Chevy Chase
are reverse talent in terms of, they both werebrilliant when they were young and then lost
it as they got older. You watch the new stuffwith Steve Martin, it's like, this is not funny
anymore. He used to be brilliant. I like the.Only murders in the building. I don't like

(30:48):
it at all. You know what I like about only murdersin the building There's one thing that I like.
I mean you can have your opinion. I don't meanto be so dismissive Yeah, I do mean to be dismissive.
That's I like The only thing I like about onlymurders in the building Martin short that motherfucker.
He's great. He's a goddamn genius everythinghe does He never misses never misses marksman
of grand scale Huh, we should do more JiminyGlick man the best of all time, but the one

(31:13):
that was Absolutely amazing was the hockey game.I think it was NHL's hockey and it was EA sports
I'm pretty sure it was sports one more timefor me EA sports. It's in the game I have a
feeling that's exactly what it sounds like.It's pretty bad. The guy who did it was Brilliant.
Okay, he really nailed it. Okay. I wonder howmuch money he made doing at least 50 bucks

(31:37):
What was great about this was to your point?We had great control, right? You could actually
switch control of which player you had. So youhad your five guys on the ice. So you could
be Gretzky and then you could easily switchyour control over to where like pass a puck
and then you could be Robitaille. Okay, so butyou know what that is? You know what that is?

(32:00):
You're describing foosball. You basically hada foosball level of control where you grab
one stick of players and you spin them and thenyou grab another stick of players, back and
forth spin, back and forth spin. By the way,spinning foosball players is completely illegal.
Is it legal? Oh yeah, you can't actually, youcan't spin players. What do you mean? Of course
it's what everybody did. No, it's what everybodydid, didn't make it legal. What do you fucking

(32:23):
think, where's the, where's the, my law's afoosball. Look it up. There's no, my law's
a foosball. Are there tournaments of, Yes, there'scompetitive, it's an Olympic sport. No it's
not. It absolutely is. You're wrong. A foosballis an Olympic sport. Shut up. The thing is,
you know I'm gonna believe you. But there are.You always know more about shit like that than

(32:45):
I do. I was like, it is. But there are realrules to foosball. No, there are not. Yes,
there are. Where? In the actual foosball, youcannot spin the player. Why? Look it up! Why,
why? What's the benefit of not? Danger. Becausethe danger, what would have? Okay. You're worried
about shooting the ball off the table. Intosomebody's nuts. That's what makes it fun.
Putting an eye out. Putting an eye out, yeah.It all goes back to putting an eye out. Yeah,

(33:10):
knocking a tube, yeah. Which is what we wantto do. the goal of all of our games. But our
parents always said, you know, don't play ballin the house. You'll shoot your eye out. Mom
always said, What movie? You shoot your eyeout? Yeah. I need more context. That's it,
that's all I'm giving you. Okay, we'll comeback. Okay, we'll come back to that. We'll
get comments. Somebody else listening has theanswer. But the hockey game, I just have to

(33:30):
say, one of the best things about it was, theymade it realistic and then they got a lot of
backlash. This is something you couldn't doin a game today. Why did they get backlash?
Because there were hemorrhoids in it? Close.Because
when you would hit a guy hard enough, you couldcheck in this game. Oh, that's cool, that's
fun. So if you checked hard enough. Their anuswould explode? Close, you're close. They would

(33:55):
shit the ice? Oh, I wish. No, they would bleedon the ice, yes. That's so cool, I wanna go
get a console and play that. No, it's gone,you can't get it anymore. No, you can get it
somewhere on eBay. Somebody might have the originalcartridge somewhere. For $40,000. Yeah, exactly.
And you could make Gretzky bleed. Wow. So youwould just totally, if you hit a guy hard enough

(34:17):
and you have right angle, the guy would be downon the ice and you see a pool of blood start
to go out. And you know the only thing betterthan that is if they shit themselves. Yeah.
Ha ha ha.
Thanks for listening to the Sons of San Fernando.Don't forget to hit that subscribe or follow
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(34:40):
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