And now it's time for who smart it.
Psst, hey, smarty pants.
Guess where I am. If you guessed an arcade, you're right.
Well, it's also in the title of the episode.
Okay, that was a give me question.
I promise they'll get harder, like the boss level of your favorite video game.
Anyway, this place has so many cool arcade games.
There's racing games. Dancing games.
Hunting games. Air hockey.
Skieball. Tons of vintage games.
Plus some really, really vintage games like this pinball machine.
Oh, sweet, a new high score.
Congratulations. Winner, winner, winner.
Ooh, I won. One what? History lesson.
Oh, what kind of history lesson?
Pull the knob. Okay, but I'd rather get that giant stuff panda bear.
Whoa, where am I? Hey, welcome trusty narrator.
I'm Paul. Wait a minute.
Am I inside the pinball machine?
You most certainly are.
Watch out for the ball. Ow, I just got bumped by a pinball the size of my torso.
Sorry, I tricked you and shrunk you down and transported you inside a pinball machine.
What? Why would you do such a thing?
Because I'm such a big fan of who's smarted.
I wanted to give you and all the smarty pants listening and inside look at the history of arcades.
Oh, why didn't you just say so?
I've shrunk myself down plenty of times.
I've gone through the digestive system of a human and a cow.
Oh, good. I don't feel so bad for tricking you now.
Well, it's still not cool.
But I suppose we can use this as a chance to learn awesome things about arcades.
Like, were pinball machines the first ever arcade games?
Is it true that arcades have a bad reputation?
And whatever happened to arcades?
Yep, I can tell you all that and much, much more.
Just watch out for that pinball.
Ow, smarty pants. Get ready for a big whiff of science, history, and flying pinballs on.
Hello, smarty listeners.
This message goes out to all the teachers, principals, teachers, assistants, and school librarians.
First, I want to tell you all about the arcades.
I want to tell you all about the arcades.
I want to tell you all about the arcades.
I want to tell you all about the arcades.
I want to tell you all about the arcades.
I want to tell you all about the arcades.
I want to tell you all about the arcades.
I want to tell you all about the arcades.
I want to tell you all about the arcades.
I want to tell you all about the arcades.
I want to tell you all about the arcades.
I want to tell you all about the arcades.
I want to tell you all about the arcades.
I want to tell you all about the arcades.
I want to tell you all about the arcades.
I want to tell you all about the arcades.
I want to tell you all about the arcades.
I want to tell you all about the arcades.
I want to tell you all about the arcades.
I want to tell you all about the arcades.
I want to tell you all about the arcades.
I want to tell you all about the arcades.
I want to tell you all about the arcades.
I want to tell you all about the arcades.
I want to tell you all about the arcades.
Anytime, who's smarted can even be used to satisfy some common core curriculum or as part of assignments or lessons.
If you are an educator, just go to whosmarted.com and click Educators.
And Smarty Pants and Smarty Parents.
Please feel free to let your teachers know about this.
Again, that's whosmarted.com.
Click Educators for free subscriptions to Who's Smarted Plus.
Let's all get smarted together.
OK, before I get pinballed again, when did arcades first open up?
Well, trusty, arcades first opened up in the early 20th century.
And they were called penny arcades because you only needed a penny to operate the games.
Oh, wow. There's hardly anything you can do with a penny these days.
So what games were there in these early penny arcades?
The earliest games were very simple things like Skieball or fortune telling machines.
Or games that tested your strengths.
Many of them weren't even considered games because they weren't very interactive.
Instead, they were referred to as Amusement.
One of the most popular early arcades amusement was something called a MutaScope.
Hey, smarty pants, what do you think a MutaScope is?
Is it A, a microscope through which you see mutated cells?
B, a motion picture device where you look at small moving images through a lens.
Or C, an early kaleidoscope able to only show muted shades of green.
If you said B, you're right.
The MutaScope, a staple of early penny arcades, allowed folks to see small moving images by turning a crank.
Kind of like a miniature movie.
The problem was, it only lasted a minute or so, and only one person could use it at a time.
So are you saying those early arcades were kind of boring?
Well, for the times they were pretty fun, actually.
However, soon after arcades started spreading, something else came along that provided some pretty fierce competition.
And that's something was...
And you guess this, smarty pants?
What came along that was just as, if not more, exciting?
We just mentioned the mini version of it.
That's right, movies. Throughout the 1910s and 1920s, the movies drew people away from arcades.
So arcade game manufacturers had to think up more interesting games to lure people back.
Hey, smarty pants, which country was the biggest manufacturer of arcade games in the early 20th century?
Was it A, England, B, Germany, or C, the United States?
If you said England, you're right, yo.
Indutably trusty. Many of these early arcade games were actually based on British sports, like boat racing, cricket, or soccer, which of course the British called football.
For example, an early mechanical tabletop soccer game, kind of like Fuzball, was another common early arcade game.
Cool, I love Fuzball. I'm just not very good at it.
Okay, so once arcade games got more interesting, people started coming back to arcades, right?
Right, indeed. And the fact that the Great Depression happened kind of helped the arcades too.
Really? Sure. People couldn't afford much during the Great Depression, not to mention they were, well, depressed.
Arcades provided an inexpensive way to have some fun.
Oh, that makes sense. Right, smarty pants?
And from there, the fun never stopped, right?
Right? Oh no. The fun stopped all right.
Arcades started getting a really bad reputation once people found out many of the companies that made arcade games were the same company.
They were the same companies that originally made gambling equipment.
What's more, a lot of the American game manufacturers came out of Chicago, a city notorious for gang activity, and organized crime around the Great Depression.
But I don't get it. The actual arcade games were totally harmless and fun.
I mean, they were just games, right?
Right? On the surface, they were just games, yes.
But public perception started to shift.
The game manufacturers having ties to Big Bad Chicago and gambling was just one aspect.
Older people didn't like the idea of young people hanging out in arcades unsupervised.
Basically, they saw arcades as a place where the youth would go waste their lunch money on silly games that rotted their brains.
Okay, but it still seems pretty innocent to me.
Ow, looks like there's some kids playing pinball again.
Hey, get away. Shoot. Shoot.
Go eat a book. You're rotting your brains.
Ha, good one, trusty. Too bad they can't hear you over all the noise.
But you're right. Arcades were pretty innocent places.
Unfortunately for arcades, paranoid adults lobbied against them and local governments stepped in and started putting arcade games into two categories.
Games of skill? First games of chance.
They decided one type of game was good and the other was bad.
Seriously? So what's the difference?
Well, games of skill were things like strength testing games and sports games.
The kind of games where the better you were at it, the higher you'd score.
But on the other hand, games of chance had nothing to do with how good a player you were.
The results were totally random.
Take a pinball machine, for example.
You pull the knob and the ball goes wherever it wants to go.
The result is pretty random.
So what do you think, Smarty Pants?
Which games were considered bad?
Games of skill or games of chance?
The answer is coming up right after this quick break and a word from our sponsor.
Hey there, Smarty listeners, who Smarted is sponsored by Squarespace.
The all-in-one website platform that empowers you to create your online presence or launch your passion project.
I am in love with their new Squarespace Blueprint AI and SEO tools.
They make designing a personalized professional looking site so easy and it makes it easy for the search engines to find your site.
Plus, if you're launching a commerce site, their built-in, buy now, pay later options, make it even easier for your customers to go, kuching, and their AI-powered content creation tool is like a helper that creates text for your site that matches your brand's tone and style, making it even easier and faster to showcase your portfolio, start a blog, or sell products.
Ready to build your dream website?
Head to squarespace.com for a free trial.
And when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com, backslashsmarted, to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.
Something strange is going on with the wildlife-admitted park until nature-loving kids are the only ones nosy enough to get to the bottom of it.
Join Asha and Ollie as they team up on a journey to honor the deep secrets of the animal kingdom, full of secrets, subterranean headquarters, dangerous missions, a surly squirrel, a pedantic polar bear, and a yodeling leopard gecko named Phoebe, Earth Rangers Underground.
A mysterious new comedy adventure from Nine Story Media, coming this spring wherever you get your podcasts.
This message is sponsored by Greenlight.
As a creator of education for kids and families, I'm always looking for fun ways to teach kids life skills.
Whether those kids are in my family or my smarty family, that's why I recommend Greenlight, the debit card and money app for families.
With Greenlight, kids learn to save, invest, and spend wisely while parents can monitor their money habits.
The Infinity Plan offers even more, including family location sharing, SOS alerts, and crash detection for young drivers.
With school starting again, I love the chores feature, which helps kids get into their fall routine by rewarding them for completing household responsibilities.
Whether you're teaching financial literacy or ensuring your family's safety, Greenlight is the easy way for parents to raise financially smart kids.
Ready to empower your family?
Sign up for Greenlight today and get your first month free when you go to greenlight.com slash smartid.
That's greenlight.com backslashsmarted to try Greenlight for free.
Now back to who smarted.
Okay, we were just about to find out whether arcade games of skill or games of chance were considered bad.
Personally, I think they're both fun, but I wasn't alive back then to give my opinion.
The answer is, games of chance were considered not as pure, or in some cases, bad.
People figured if you're putting money in a game that had nothing to do with how good a player you were, it was just stealing your money.
They likened it to gambling and local governments decided to ban pitball machines altogether.
Banned them? But those crazy kids were just having some good, clean fun.
Not according to everyone.
In 1942, Mayor LaGuardia of New York City had thousands of pitball machines seized and taken to factories where they were melted down for parts to make munitions and other things to help with the war effort.
There's even a photo of Mayor LaGuardia smashing a pitball machine with a sledgehammer.
Oh my! Wow, maybe he could have let out his frustrations by, I don't know, playing some games?
You know, having some fun?
Smartypants, true or false?
The pitball machine ban in New York City lasted 34 years.
The answer is, true. It wasn't until 1976 that the ban was finally lifted.
But you know what helped?
Until 1947, pinball machines didn't have those flippers on the side that could help guide the ball.
When those were added, they helped turn pinball from a game of chance to a game of skill.
Whoa. Huh, no way. Well congrats on that, Paul.
So what happened to our kids during those 34 years of no pinball?
They didn't just sit there becoming empty and haunted, did they?
Did they? No, the games just changed.
See games like pinball and everything before it were mechanical games.
But in the 1940s, arcade games became electro-mechanical.
Sweet. So what did that mean exactly?
It meant that now arcade games had cool sound effects and lights and were able to be more interactive.
One of the first electromagnetic games was called Drive Mobile.
You controlled it with a steering wheel and you had to keep the car centered while the road moved.
It was pretty simple, but very fun.
Hey, Smarty Pants, what was the name of the first ever game in the 1940s to introduce mechanical sound effects?
Was it A, trap the weasel?
B, shoot the bear. Or C, snap the snapping turtle.
If you guessed shoot the bear, you're right.
Arcades were finally getting bigger and better and more advanced.
Electromagnetic games continued to improve throughout the 1960s.
But the golden age of Arcades was just around the corner.
Thanks to the introduction of...
Video games. Beginning in the late 1970s, Arcades began filling up with video games.
Kids and teens had never seen anything like this.
By today's standards, yeah sure, the graphics world, you know, kind of basic.
The games themselves were pretty limited.
But in those days, this was a game changer.
Unintended. Nice one, Paul.
I can see how going from electro-mechanical games to full-fledged video games was pretty thrilling.
I mean, these games had high-resolution graphics and colors, and the sounds were better, and while just playing them was way more exciting.
Oh yeah. One of the first big video arcade games was called Space Invaders.
It came out in 1978, and it left such a cultural impact that if you look through the emojis on your phone, you'll still find a Space Invader emoji.
Yep, that's what that little purple guy is.
Pretty cool, it's still so famous five decades later.
Hey, Smarty Pants, true or false.
When Space Invaders first came out, it was such a global hit that some arcades in Japan had nothing but Space Invaders games.
The answer is... true. Yep, Space Invaders was at that point the most successful game of all time.
It would, however, be surpassed a few years later in 1980 by another arcade game that left an even bigger mark on pop culture.
Hey, Smarty Pants, any idea what that big, impactful game was?
If you said Pac-Man, you're right.
Pac-Man took the world by storm, and there are a couple of reasons it's such a big deal.
First of all, it was one of the first video arcade games that didn't involve shooting, or racing, or combat content that was generally targeted towards boys.
Everyone loved Pac-Man.
Guys, girls, older people, younger people, you name it.
Everyone had Pac-Man fever.
There was Pac-Man clothing, Pac-Man lunch boxes, a Pac-Man TV show, and of course the Pac-Man fever song.
Pac-Man sat alone at the top of the arcade heap.
That is, until Miss Pac-Man came along and broke every record.
Once again, arcades were in their glory.
But again, it didn't last.
Why? What happened? Why did it end this time?
Have you ever heard the phrase, history repeats itself?
Just like adults were concerned that arcades had a bad influence on kids in the early days, the same thing began to happen in the 80s.
Except this time, the grownups had a good reason, and that reason was, violence.
Violence? The content of some of the new arcade games was pretty rough.
Stuff like shooting people and running people over with cars.
Parents worried all this violence would have a negative impact on their kids' minds and could lead to actual violence.
Yikes! And just like in the 1930s and 40s, arcades tended to be places where kids, especially teenagers, would hang out after school unsupervised.
Adults didn't like not knowing what their kids were up to in these places.
That, plus the violence in the games themselves, spelled the end of the golden age of arcades.
But while that meant the decline of video arcades, it definitely wasn't the end of video games.
Not at all. Thanks to home game consoles like Atari, Nintendo, Sega, and later Xbox and PlayStation, kids and families could have their very own arcade right in their home.
Not to mention you saved a fortune in quarters.
And parents were happy because they could supervise their kids and monitor the games they were playing.
Seems like a win-win. Yeah, unless you're an arcade.
Right. But you can still find arcades on beach boardwalks, malls, chucky cheeses, and here and there.
There's even Dave and Busters, which is an arcade for adults.
Yep. Arcades still live on, because it doesn't like to play a classic stand-up video game every now and then.
Or a nice game of pinball.
Ow, I gotta say, Paul. Pinball is a lot more fun to play from outside the machine.
I understand. Ah, that's better.
Ah, drats. I'm out of quarters.
Do you love who's smart but don't love all the ads?
We get it. But we also need the ads to pay for the show.
However, there is a way you can listen to who's smart without any ads while still supporting us.
Just subscribe to Who's Smarted Plus.
And for a few bucks a month, you'll get every episode Add Free.
Plus, an extra new episode every week and monthly bonus content.
Our annual subscription even comes with a seven day free trial.
Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts or on our website, WhoSmarted.com.
Just click subscribe. And teachers click on educators to get Who's Smarted Plus for free.
Thanks for smarting with us.
A four-way shout-out to long-distance smarty fans Jack, Liam, Pat, and Blake in Brisbane, Australia.
We're so glad you find Who's Smarted interesting and funny, which is just music to this narrator's ears.
Because that's exactly what we're going for.
Thanks for smarting with us.
You four smarty pants. This episode arcades was written by Phil, Joust, Jeremy, and voiced by Adam, Dig, Doug, Davis, and Jerry Colbert.
Technical direction and sound design by Josh, Donkey Kong, Han.
Our associate producer is Max Centipede, Kamaski.
The theme song is by Brian, Space Invader, Suarez, with lyrics written and performed by Adam, Text Davis.
Who's Smarted was created and produced by Adam, Text Davis, and Jerry, Marble, Madness, Colbert.
This has been an atomic entertainment production.
Eek, Help, Spike! Oh no, Molly.
