Quick, jump!
Whoa.
That barrel came out of nowhere.
Grab those coins.
Yes!
Nice.
Look out!
That turtle is coming in for an attack!
Uh... Kai, come on!
You gotta stomp him before he gets to you!
You mean Humphrey?
Yeah, whatever his name is.
You only have one life left.
Jump on his shell!
Or we could just say what's up.
Hey, Humphrey.
How's it going?
Oh, you know.
Same old, same old.
Happy hump day, Kai.
Stay cool.
Oh, wow.
I didn't realize that was an option.
You can't just go around stomping people out of their shells.
Gee whiz.
I live in here, and I'm still paying this thing off.
Yeah, I usually just introduce myself to people.
That's good thinking.
And with that in mind, hello!
I'm Joy Dolo, and this is Forever Ago, the show where we start at the beginning.
Starting at the beginning is for newbies who forgot to save their last game.
Oh, and this is my co-host, Kai.
Hello.
Every episode, we dive deep into the history of one cool thing.
Today, we're going bouncing around history on an epic quest to find out where video games come from.
Kai, I've heard that you are not a video game newbie.
So what's your favorite?
Well, my favorite games are like the older games like Tetris and Mario.
You know, Tetris and Mario is like of my generation.
You know, that's what I usually play.
And that was kind of what I played with with my sisters.
You know, like we would be together and we'd have the controllers, and you can only go as far as the wiring goes.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
You know, that kind of stuff.
Do you think of yourself as competitive?
Do you really like to win?
Oh, yeah.
I, like, compete with my high scores with my cousin a lot.
Yeah.
I play with him a lot.
Do you usually win?
No.
He's way better at, like, everything.
Oh, yeah.
Like, we do, like, Tetris competitions where I have my iPad and he has his phone.
Yeah.
And he always wins by, like, 300,000.
I'm like, are you kidding me?
That is not real.
You must be cheating.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm like, how are you this good at this?
Like you must have like some cheat code or something.
Yeah, 300,000, that's a big jump.
Has playing video games ever taught you a valuable life lesson?
Well, I mean, this is a hard question.
But it teaches me a lot of things.
Like, you can't spend too much time playing video games.
Because, like, I'm like, I'm going to play this for, like, five minutes.
And I look at the clock and it's already been, like, five hours.
I'm like, well, shoot.
There goes my whole day.
That's five hours that I'll never get back.
But that's the problem.
But it sounds like you have really healthy boundaries with video games, just realizing that you can't spend five hours doing it and just do a little bit of it at a time.
I love the old school.
I still have a Super Nintendo at home and I have Donkey Kong, Super Mario World, all of those 90s games.
And I still play them in 2D.
And I've tried to get into the 3D, you know, Wii's and, you know, the 3D kind of world.
But it just confuses me.
Like, I don't know how to go backwards.
I don't know how to go forward.
I know how to jump.
I just don't get it.
That.
That's the thing with like people that were like growing up in like the 90s or the 80s or like the 70s.
Yeah.
They're like, yeah, video games are fun.
Let's see what they have now.
And they're like, whoa, there's so many buttons.
What do I do?
Yeah.
And then I'm always like, no, it's so easy.
But then I realized wait, these people grew up with just like three buttons and like, maybe like a D-pad.
You know, maybe one day I'll venture into the world of Wii and that kind of stuff.
Who knows?
Video games don't seem very old to me, but I couldn't say exactly when they got started.
Yeah, I don't know.
How long do you think they've been around?
I would say six.
60 years, I think.
What do you think?
I think further back.
Farther back?
All right, Kai.
Let's AAB arrow up and jump to our pal Carrie Spivak to find out.
Hello.
Hi.
Hi.
Carrie is a reporter who we sent out on a mission to find out where video games come from.
Right.
Today, it seems like video games are everywhere, especially Fortnite.
Mm-hmm.
In 2018, over 125 million people played it.
And even if you're not a video game fan, you've probably seen baseball and soccer stars imitating Fortnite victory dances on TV.
And memes about the game are all over the internet.
Oh, yeah.
But it wasn't always like this.
Video games have come a long way and it took a lot of tries for them to catch on in the first place.
It all began when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Dinosaurs?
Isn't that kind of far back for the first video game?
I'm talking about dinosaurs of the computer age.
Back in the 1950s, when a brand new fast food restaurant called McDonald's sold hamburgers for 15 cents, radios played a loud new type of music called rock and roll and people got a peek at the first color televisions.
Computers of that age.
Next stop on the Silicon Safari tour is mainframe habitat.
That loud roar you hear is, in fact, the fans.
In their natural habitat, fans kept these beastly computers from overheating.
Observe the computer's bulk.
It's made of several metal cabinets, each as big as a refrigerator.
They can weigh almost 30000 pounds and eat as much electricity in an hour as 3000 homes used in a day in the 1950s.
Excuse me, but where did people put these in their homes?
They didn't.
In fact, these giants were never domesticated.
They lived only in places like research institutions, colleges, or government buildings.
So, how did people play Minecraft then?
You're very funny, but there was no Minecraft back then.
These behemoths have less memory than most thumb drives.
The only games they ran were simple demonstrations like tic-tac-toe or checkers.
Ah, excuse me, sir.
No touching, please.
These spinning tape drives could take a bite out of you.
Now, where was I?
Oh, yes.
The games weren't made for public entertainment or consumption.
They were just to show what a computer could do.
All right, moving along this way, everyone.
The lorry...
So these early games went the way of the dinosaurs, extinct.
Goodness, those old games like tic-tac-toe and checkers and stuff, they're fun.
Would you still play those games, Guy?
Yeah, I play them a lot, usually at restaurants.
Because they give you paper and they're going to expect you to wait for your food.
The first modern computer game came along in 1962.
It was inspired by real-world events.
At the time, the United States and the USSR were in the middle of what was called the Space Race, a competition between the two countries for total space domination.
Ha!
We just sent satellite into Earth's orbit.
First!
Oh, well, we just did that too.
We just sent man into Earth's orbit.
First!
Earth's orbit is so yesterday.
We just landed a person on a little old place called the moon.
First.
The Space Race-inspired video game was called Space War.
It ran on a computer roughly the size of two refrigerators with a large circular display and a typewriter console.
The guy who programmed it was named Steve Russell.
He wanted to teach people how to fly actual spaceships.
And he wanted it to be fun because people learn faster when they're having fun.
Space War is really the first time that people take gaming to, I guess, what we would consider sort of a next level.
Shannon Simmons is the curator of electronic games at the Strong Museum.
It gets that idea of we didn't make this just for us.
We made it for other people as well, which is certainly a huge part of what impacts the gaming industry.
Other programmers loved playing Space War.
The game was even copied to other computers at universities and research facilities.
The first viral video game.
Well, not quite.
Space War was a hit, but only with techies who had access to these giant computers, which was a very small group of people.
What do you think was missing?
What do video games need to go viral?
You still need to have it be, like, accessible to the community.
Otherwise, it's not going to be able to go viral.
That's a really good point.
Yeah.
So far, video games were only played on expensive computers at universities.
In the end, it took two competing engineers to bring them to the masses.
But only one of them got the credit he deserved.
The first is a television engineer named Ralph Baer.
By the 1960s, almost every American home had a TV.
But TV was still primitive.
Broadcasts were limited to certain hours.
There was no streaming services like YouTube or Netflix.
Instead of just sitting and watching TV, Ralph Baer thought TV could be interactive.
He built an electronic box, called a console, that you hooked up to the TV so you could play electronic games.
It came with thin sheets of plastic that stuck to the TV screen, and these sheets were printed with colorful settings for the games.
One looked like a soccer field, another made a baseball diamond and one was for a haunted house maze, because the console's graphics were basic but innovative.
Moving dots on the TV screen, all controlled by the players.
What an interesting change from just watching TV between the hours of like three and five when there was a show on to like, being able to actually interact with your TV and play with it.
Yeah, because like they're like, yeah, I can watch TV, but there's so little on.
They're like, and this is all you can see.
And then they get a hold of this and they're like, whoa, I am in control of this.
It's all about choices.
That's actually Ralph in 1969, demonstrating the ping pong game on the home gaming console.
The TV behind him is black with a thick white line down the middle, the net.
On each side of the line is a paddle made of a short line of white dots.
Bouncing between them is the ball, just one small dot.
Ralph and his colleague each hold a controller with buttons and knobs to move the paddles up and down the sides of the screen.
Just like in real ping pong.
When their paddles connect with the ball, it sails from one side of the TV screen to the other.
Ready?
Here we go.
A one, a two, a three, and down I go.
And up I go, and down I go.
Now watch me fake them up.
I didn't do it.
After six years of work, in 1972, Ralph Baer's home gaming system went on sale for $99.
That's a lot.
Odyssey, the electronic game of the future that lets you do your own thing on television.
It was called the Magnavox Odyssey, and it was all set to kick off the video game revolution.
Soon, Ralph Baer would be rich and famous, a household name.
Only that's not what happened.
Okay, Carrie, before we get to what did happen, I think it's time for a little break.
Good idea.
All this talk of games makes me want to play a game.
Here's one for you.
It's called First Things First.
It's the game where we take three things and try to put them in order.
I have a list of three things and we have to decide which came first, which came second and then which came most recently in history.
Like, did Xbox come first or did PlayStation?
Exactly.
And the answers are sealed in an envelope here in the studio, so I'm in the dark, too.
No cheat codes.
I would never.
Okay, Kai, do you want to read today's three things?
Yep.
Here they are.
Playing cards, chess, and dominoes.
Hmm.
All very low tech.
What do you think?
I really don't know because I mean playing cards.
I'm not going to say playing cards because you think, how long have they had kings?
How long have they had queens?
That's a really good point.
Jokers and jacks.
Is that even a thing?
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm going to go dominoes, chess, and then playing cards.
And I'm going to say playing cards, chess, and dominoes.
We'll see if that works out.
Write down your guesses at home if you need to, and we'll have the answers after a short break.
Forever Go, we'll be right back.
Did you know that video games may be headed to the Olympic Games?
That's right.
Expert button mashers the world over may well have the chance to represent their countries on the world stage as Olympian gamers.
Button mashing?
Are you kidding me?
That's for total amateurs.
Oh, right then.
Meticulous and highly trained button manipulators the world over might compete in the 2024 Olympics.
Much better.
The International Olympic Committee is still mulling it over.
Can video games be considered a sport?
Plenty of people say yes.
We have professional teams and we compete all over the world.
But will the Olympic bigwigs let them level up?
Only time will tell.
And we're back.
This is Forever Ago, and I'm your host, Joy Dolo.
I'm here with today's co-host, Kai.
Hello.
Ooh, a coin.
Focus, Joy.
We have a game to finish.
Right, right.
Those things are just so shiny.
Anyways, it's time to finish First Things First.
Yep.
Today's three things were playing cards, chess, and dominoes.
And I guessed that dominoes was first, chess was second, and cards were last.
And I guessed playing cards first, chess second, and dominoes last.
Kai, do you have the top secret answers envelope?
Yep.
All right.
I'm going to rip this open now.
Don't rip the answers.
Oh, no, I didn't.
And the first thing was chess.
We were both wrong.
Chess started in the 6th century, and most historians believe the game started in India.
That was around 1500 years ago.
What?
That's old.
So second up is playing cards.
The first known cards come from China, and some historians think as early as the 9th century.
They were made using woodblock prints during the Tang Dynasty.
And then last but not least is Domino's.
And that was China again for the win.
The earliest records date back to the 12th century.
I should have thought that that was like made in China, because like it's kind of like the Mahjong pieces.
Oh, Mahjong.
I know exactly what you mean.
I think there might be a connection there.
Good thinking.
Before the break, Keri Spivak was telling us about Ralph Baer's invention, the Magnavox Odyssey, and how it was about to completely change the world.
Right, Keri?
Well, about that.
Ralph Baer did have a brilliant idea.
He created the first home gaming console, and he was all set to reap the rewards.
But as Shannon Simmons from the Strong Museum says, it just didn't stick.
The Odyssey is a great example of something that, when you look back at it, you realize how incredibly sophisticated and innovative it was at the time, but it wasn't the right time to capture people, for whatever reason.
Enter Nolan Bushnell.
In college, he loved playing that space race game, Space War.
A few months before the Odyssey went on sale, he played the ping pong game at a preview event.
Nolan was a real entrepreneur.
He liked to take risks.
He was young.
He just had all this energy and drive and these crazy ideas.
This is Al Alcorn, who worked at Atari, the gaming company that Bushnell co-founded in 1972.
My first assignment at Atari was to design the very simplest thing that could be called a video game.
Nolan said he wanted me to make a game like tennis, with a net in the center and a ball that would bounce off the paddles.
And that was pretty much it.
Does this sound familiar?
The Magnavox Odyssey.
Exactly.
The game Nolan described to Al was just like the Odyssey's ping pong game.
After three months of work, Al's game turned out better than Nolan expected.
It was addictively fun.
But was the public finally ready to play?
Nolan and Al built a wood cabinet, added a coin slot, and installed it in a bar nearby.
After a couple of weeks, they got a call.
The bartender, who was very friendly with us, told us about people that were waiting at the door when he opened up in the morning, and they weren't there to buy a drink.
They were there to play the video game, and he hadn't ever seen that before.
The game was called Pong, and it was a hit.
Arcades started ordering machines faster than Atari could make them.
Nolan Bushnell became famous for starting the video game industry.
And because of Pong's widespread popularity, people often think Pong is the very first video game.
How do you think you'd feel if you were Ralph and no one gave you any credit for your great idea?
I'd be kind of upset because, I mean...
Everyone is like, yeah, Nolan Bushnell, he's so awesome.
He started video games and he made them popular.
Yeah, he made them popular, but that doesn't mean that he made them.
I think I'd feel the same way.
I'd feel kind of hurt and mad.
It's like plagiarism.
Yeah.
Like you don't just take it from someone and not give them credit for it.
Yeah.
Well, Bayer didn't get the credit, but he did have the satisfaction of knowing he was right.
Video games were the future.
Adults and kids were hooked on dropping quarters into arcade games like Space Invaders, Galaxian Asteroids Centipede, Donkey Kong, Pac-Man and Ms.
Pac-Man.
Ah!
Curse you little pixelated ghosts!
Too bad.
I guess you'll never nab that high score.
Oh, I will get that high score.
Time for my secret stash of quarters.
Isn't that your laundry money?
I don't need clean clothes.
I'll cover up that stench with the sweet smell of victory.
Fear me, ghosts!
The Pac-Man cometh!
It got to the point when in 1978, Japan experienced a coin shortage.
What?
And a popular urban legend suggested the missing coins could be found inside all the space invaders' machines.
That sounds accurate.
In 1982, Pac-Man was on the cover of Time magazine and even had its own hit song.
Just when it seemed video games were unstoppable, the industry suddenly crashed.
By 1983, there were too many competitors making too many games, and too many were duds.
But once they had a taste, the public wanted more.
Out of those ashes comes the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985.
Clearly it has staying power because, you know, Nintendo's still around today.
And soon Nintendo had competition.
There was Sega, Xbox, PlayStation.
The rise of home computers spawned games like World of Warcraft.
And as soon as smartphones became a thing, games for phones quickly followed.
Today, a lot of people think the future is in virtual reality machines, where you feel like your whole body is in the game.
It's very exciting, but not new.
Almost 30 years ago, Nintendo released something called the Power Glove, basically a wearable cyborg-looking glove that allowed you to control on-screen characters with hand movements was an utter failure.
We weren't ready for it yet.
It was too clunky and people didn't see the value of it.
Now we've got full on virtual reality.
So they had the right idea just at the wrong time.
And that's the thing about success.
It's not just about the right technology or even the right idea.
You need the right timing too.
It's impossible to predict.
But when it does happen, one thing is certain.
There will be good ideas that failed before it.
So what do you guys think?
Who deserves the credit for making video games take off?
I think that Nolan guy that made Pong, I think he does deserve the credit for making video games take off.
But that doesn't mean that he deserves the credit for the actual game that he made supposedly made.
I agree with you.
I think that he didn't really make it, but each of them kind of there was the idea and then he added on to that idea and the other person added and people just kept adding and that's what's happening now exactly, and people just keep adding.
So I mean yeah, we can give one person credit, but really it's really everyone's Well.
Thanks for taking us on a tour of video game history.
Yeah, that was awesome.
Sure thing.
I've got to run, though.
I saw a bunch of coins right outside the studio.
Wow.
You too?
See ya.
Yes!
The sound is just so satisfying.
Can't argue with that.
I know that this is a show about the past and all, but you know what I've been thinking about a lot lately.
Oh, I have a feeling we're really on the same page with this one.
You were about to say the future.
Sheesh, you really have a one track mind today.
I'm sorry.
Sorry.
The future was definitely the second thing I was going to say right after coins.
It was it was it was the runner up.
Right.
It was because who knows what the future will be.
Exactly.
The possibilities are endless.
We asked our listeners what they think video games will be like in the future.
And here's what they had to say.
When I think of future video games, I think of open world games.
You can just go wherever you want.
You can explore as much as you want.
The player will be surrounded by the screen and the control will be the person's body.
If you eat something in the game...
You can actually feel full.
I would have a mix of Minecraft and Fortnite.
A field where there's clues and then you have to find the treasures, and then there's, like lakes and rivers, you go through.
A creative mode Minecraft but 3D.
Put a headset on and turn your house into a haunted house.
Say the person is in a swamp or someplace that has a certain smell.
A smell will then be emitted into the atmosphere of where the player is standing.
Wow, those are some really interesting ideas.
Kai, what do you think video games will be like in the future?
Well, I think that they are going to be like, they're probably going to have really good graphics.
If you still like, use like screens or something.
But if not, it's probably going to be, like, you don't even need controllers.
You just need to do it with like your hands or something where it's like invisible or it just knows.
Like you could put like on a headset and then it knows what you're doing, because it has like brain sensors or something.
Oh, yeah, brain sensors.
I love that idea.
Totally hands-free video gaming.
When I think about super futuristic video games, I mostly think about fancy technology like that.
But now we're going to talk to someone who spends her days thinking about a totally different side of video games.
Sarah Bayless is a video game writer.
Hello.
Hi, Sarah.
Hi.
Hey, guys.
So what exactly does it mean to be a video game writer, Sarah?
So for our team this means that we are responsible not just for the text in the game, but the stories as well.
So the text is anything that's written from the little button that says click here to start to the conversations the characters have together.
And the stories are everything that the game is about, from the location, whether it's on Earth, whether it's in the past or the future on another planet, to what kind of problems the characters face and what kind of world they live in.
So when I'm playing a video game and I talk to other characters or like as I'm playing the game and I go along with the story, you write the story and like the dialogue.
Yeah, exactly.
Both of those.
Why don't I show you?
Okay, so you're going to walk us through part of the game you wrote and have us make choices, like we're actually playing.
Yeah, exactly.
Wait, so this is like a choose your own adventure.
Yeah.
Choose your own adventure interview.
Ooh, sounds fun.
Awesome.
I'm so ready.
So in this scenario, which was written by one of our writers named Devin, we are an adventure.
We've been exploring this huge land that's full of kind of monsters to fight and friends that you can recruit and get to know, people to talk to, secrets to find.
And while we've been traveling, we come upon two cows.
So if we're just kind of normal people, we might talk to the cows and they're going to say moo back and we carry on with our adventure.
But it could be that you have this particular talent where you can actually speak to animals.
So I go up to the cows and I talk to them and I can find out that these are not just any cows.
They're actually humans that have been transformed.
You won't believe it.
She won't believe it, Mabel.
She'll think we're mad cows.
Truth is that we are not, in fact, cows.
We're people.
Captives, to be exact.
So will you help us?
So now you've met these cows, Geraldine and Mabel, and you have a decision to make.
In the game, you're presented with three options.
The first option, you can ask how you can help them.
The second option, you can ask them for milk.
And the third option, you just take your leave and walk away.
So what do you guys think?
I think we should do the first option.
You want to ask them how you can help?
Yeah, because the second one is just weird, because I mean, they're humans.
That's a good point.
I guess so.
You don't want that milk.
I would definitely see if they want some help.
Just get us something to drink.
What my friend here means to say is that there's a cure for our condition.
If we could drink it, we could regain our former forms, as it were, and steal away.
OK, so what do you guys think?
Should we do as they ask and help them and go find this magic potions?
Yeah, we have to.
Right?
Yeah.
I just don't want to turn into a cow, actually.
Well, I'll do whatever I can.
So if you guys decide to help the cows, they are going to tell you that you need to go find this magic potion in the cellar of this witch.
You've got to face some exploding rats that are kind of swarming the place.
Oh my gosh.
Oh boy, exploding rats.
And eventually, after all that's done, you're going to retrieve the potion for the cows.
So you take it back to Geraldine and Mabel and they are very happy.
Great.
These will take effect any moment now.
I can't thank you enough.
I don't think a thank you is enough, Mabel.
So the cows decide to repay you for helping them out, and they mark your map with the location of something special.
I mean, that's better than a normal thank you.
Meanwhile, the potion is starting to work on these poor cows that have been through so much.
My potion's starting to work, Mabel.
Here we go.
And they're turned back into humans.
We did it.
Well done, team.
I'm happy we didn't just walk away and leave them there.
Or just take their milk for their nourishment and just leave them there.
We did the right thing.
You really did.
How do you write a story like that?
So the kind of core of our job and what we spend the most time doing is making sure that, no matter what the player decides to do, the game will react.
Yeah, it seems like you'd have to write a bunch of different versions of the same story.
Yeah, exactly.
You know how a movie is linear, which means it's got like a beginning, a middle and an end.
And there's just one version you can see.
A game is like the branches of a tree or like a spider web.
You have the same beginning that you share and the middle will be different depending on which choices you make in the beginning.
And the ending will be different depending on which choices you make in the middle.
So what we want is not that there's one way to play the game and one way we hope everyone will play.
What we want to do is give everyone the chance to pretty much do whatever they want and know that the game is going to react to it.
Well, thanks for coming on the show, Sarah.
Yeah, thanks.
Thank you guys.
And I'll see you later.
Well, Kai, this has been a wild ride.
No kidding.
We've been to the age of dinosaur computers to a time when you needed spare change to game at all.
And we traveled to the future of video game storytelling.
Do you have a crazy good idea for a video game?
Head to foreverago.org and tell us about it.
Forever Ago has been brought to you by Brains On and American Public Media.
It's produced by Elissa Dudley, Molly Bloom, Mark Sanchez, and Shannon Totten.
We had engineering help from Evan Clark and Tui Mao.
Production help comes courtesy of Lauren D. Our fact checker is Ryan Katz.
Special thanks to John Raby, Monica Bushman, Jonathan Shifflett, Taylor Kaufman, Ned Liebrook-Stryker, Gordon Henderson, Eric Ringham and Christina Lopez.
Is there anyone you want to thank today, Kai?
I'd like to thank you guys for having me being here.
And I'd like to thank my mother for bringing me here and bringing me into this world.
Awesome.
Well, I think it's time to say good.
Wait, right above your head.
Yes.
Bye.
Bye.
