0:00

Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio.

0:26

Welcome back to the show, Ridiculous Historians.

0:28

Thank you, as always so much for tuning in.

0:31

Let's have a shout out for super producer mister Max

0:33

Williams.

0:34

Why why

0:39

Sorry, a little pure moods for you there.

0:41

Did you guys enjoy this two game boys right

0:43

there?

0:43

Yes? Yes, especially the

0:46

Trust game Boys of agreeing

0:48

to that despite die hearing it.

0:50

I have big bullet. That's mister Noel Brown,

0:52

the one in online dole. How you feeling, were

0:54

you guys?

0:54

Og game boys as

0:57

owned original black and white uh

1:00

eight bit game boys.

1:02

I was a little too young to

1:04

get those weren't actually being sold by the time. But my

1:06

first game Boy was given to me by a friend

1:08

of my mother's, which was black and white.

1:10

Yes, yeah, I created and

1:13

won several game

1:15

Boy Tetris competitions I was.

1:17

Creating with it. Yes, how

1:20

many.

1:21

I don't know the formal title that

1:23

they have, but like people who've bet in Tetris because

1:25

it's like one of the highest.

1:26

Yeah, I've never actually beat it. Very few

1:29

people have.

1:29

I think the titles kind of dropped screen.

1:32

There is a beating of the

1:35

yeah you have to beat the last

1:38

level. The last real level is

1:40

incredibly hard. Were you so fast? Well,

1:43

no, you can't see what what titles are down.

1:45

You can't see what title is coming down. You can only

1:47

see the next tile.

1:48

Thirteen year old recently made

1:51

World News by hidiot Oh. Also, folks,

1:53

this part two of the Golden Ages. We love

1:56

this video game tie in. We're

1:58

so excited. We've had such a great time with

2:01

part one. We hope you enjoy it too. With

2:03

the game boy question, I

2:06

remember one game I got super into

2:09

was a Bugs Bunny video

2:11

game of puzzle solving and getting

2:14

carrots. Yes,

2:16

I assume Tetris never ended, but

2:18

I had no idea how deep the Bugs Bunny

2:21

game went.

2:21

It just went on.

2:23

I do remember that one. I had

2:26

an original game Boy. It was probably

2:28

late in that game. It was so such a popular

2:31

device that they sold it and without making

2:33

a new next gen version for many

2:35

years. I was born in nineteen eighty three, really

2:38

quickly, though. There are a couple of documentaries about Tetris.

2:40

One covering the stuff that you guys are probably talking about

2:43

is Ecstasy of Order The Tetris

2:45

Masters, which you can watch in its entirety

2:48

on YouTube. And then there actually recently

2:50

was a Tetris movie on Apple

2:52

TV that's just called Tetris that is

2:54

a like dramatized version of the Tetras

2:57

story. We're not really talking about Tetris

2:59

today, guys, but that is such a

3:01

perfect example of elegant

3:03

design meets.

3:05

Escalatingly difficult gameplay.

3:07

It can get crazy if you stay

3:09

the course, but for a casual

3:11

player, fun as hell's

3:14

a while away the.

3:15

Time, and the music is quite

3:17

sophisticated. I love the music. I still

3:19

play it when I'm writing stuff.

3:20

It gets stuck in my head out of the clear blue sky

3:22

sometimes, guys.

3:23

Yeah, the name of that game

3:26

I mentioned earlier, by the way, is Bugs Bunny

3:28

Crazy Castle. The Bugs Bunny Crazy

3:31

Castle. I definitely played that one. It

3:33

was so cool.

3:34

It's like a detective almost right, isn't

3:36

He has like a magnifying It's

3:38

all coming back.

3:39

It's a little flashes side

3:41

scroller. But weirdly enough, the thing

3:43

that bugged me about this and a lot of other players as

3:45

well, maybe ridiculous historians amongst

3:47

us, Bugs Bunny in that game

3:50

weirdly does not have the ability to jump

3:52

despite being a bunny, so

3:55

you can just walk around

3:57

and you have to find boxing club. Anyway,

4:00

as matter, we're talking about video game tie ins. Technically

4:02

that is a tie in because bugs Bunny

4:04

was a pre existing character right

4:07

from the world of animation.

4:08

That's right.

4:09

But we are going to we mentioned

4:11

a very sad story from Georgia.

4:14

We are also going to maybe begin today's

4:16

episode with another strange

4:19

story from Georgia. Nineteen

4:22

ninety six. Atlanta, Georgia

4:24

plays host to the Olympics.

4:26

The as our power, Lauren would say, the

4:29

actual facts Olympics and

4:31

every town that has the Olympics

4:33

come through, they spend billions of dollars

4:35

on all sorts of things. And

4:38

Atlanta tried to make a mascot, I'll

4:47

say, tried.

4:48

Do you remember the mascot.

4:50

I've never been a mascot. I've never

4:52

tried to create a mascot. You

4:55

know, people give designers

4:57

sometimes like oh, it's so easy, said.

5:01

Enough boy, howdy is it not?

5:04

It requires once again, a level of precision,

5:06

elegance and simplicity that

5:09

requires a lot of thinking, a lot

5:11

of very careful planning. And

5:14

uh boy, did they bork this one. And

5:17

you know whoever designed that monstrosity

5:19

is he got paid a mint.

5:22

Yeah, and it may have even been a thing. That

5:24

creator is John Ryan, and it may

5:26

have been a thing where it

5:28

may have been a thing where uh, the

5:30

producers or the other I

5:32

guess we call them stakeholders just

5:34

kept making requests.

5:36

So it may not.

5:37

Have been his visual vision by committee.

5:39

Another ship of thesis kind of situation.

5:42

Right, but how how

5:44

should we?

5:45

Uh?

5:45

And this is this is going to get to a video game because

5:47

this you know, the Olympics are huge, it's

5:50

a big deal.

5:50

What country hosts them?

5:52

I believe we're looking at Paris

5:54

this year, right, isn't that what's happening? I think

5:56

we're in Paris. They

5:59

have some very unique mascots

6:01

them. Well, we're gonna get to that because this is a

6:03

difficult job. It's sort of a fool's

6:06

errand in many ways because you're you're opening yourself

6:08

up to criticism no matter what the

6:10

end result.

6:11

Is and no matter what you

6:13

come up with. It's kind of a it's

6:17

a kobyashi maru. Right, it's

6:19

an unwinnable situation. You're welcome,

6:21

thank.

6:22

You, God jump and God jump in.

6:24

Uh.

6:24

I was they had I guess HBO

6:27

East too, which is a channel I get

6:29

now they play commercial free Star

6:31

Trek movie.

6:32

You get like cable type TV Max.

6:34

Yeah.

6:35

I for sports, you still have to do well,

6:38

objected.

6:39

Stream Okay, I always forget about the need for

6:41

sports.

6:42

They were playing all last Friday

6:45

the original series Star Trek movies. So I watched

6:47

Wrath of Khan in the Morning, which starts off with Kobyashi

6:50

Maru. Ki's

6:52

the alley in the Kobyashi Maru. I've got

6:54

how amazing she is in that movie,

6:56

and how which is shame that they screw

7:00

that one up. And I've got how dark that movie is.

7:02

It is very incredibly dark. But

7:04

you said, Kobe Asha Maru, you can't say a Star Trek

7:07

with me around, and Knox.

7:09

You're like Beetlejuice bro we gotta really

7:11

stop staying Star Trek.

7:13

Starrim Or Jonathan Strickland.

7:15

That's our one of three mentions before he shows up,

7:17

just to reeling back.

7:18

In really quickly, to double back a wepins

7:20

that originally Kobe Ashamru referring

7:23

to an unwinnable situation, right.

7:24

Like, and we see this in the culmination

7:27

of a lot of big things. You could argue

7:29

that the very last Star Wars

7:31

film was kind of doomed

7:33

from the start because how could you conclude

7:35

a story in a way that would satisfy everybody.

7:38

That's kind of, you know.

7:39

That's similar to what people were running into with

7:42

these Olympic mascots Atlanta

7:44

magazines. Max Blow has

7:46

a great explanation of

7:49

this and a great name, Max Blough.

7:51

Give me a break.

7:52

What sorry, Max Williams, But Max

7:55

Blow, it's got you beat. By the way, Ben,

7:57

there were four bugs Bunny Crazy Castle

7:59

games.

8:00

Right.

8:00

Didn't they have different cartoon characters

8:03

as well?

8:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that. But Max

8:06

Blow does indeed have

8:08

this to say. It would be hard to overstate

8:10

how shocking it was when Atlanta was awarded

8:13

the nineteen ninety six Summer Olympic Games Atlanta

8:16

over Toronto, Athens Melbourne.

8:18

The news, which came on a Tuesday in September

8:21

nineteen ninety, sent the city into

8:23

a frenzy dare we say, a tizzy

8:26

of celebration. But for Billy

8:28

Payne, who'd run the three year campaign

8:30

that led to the announcement, it was

8:33

just the beginning. Now came the

8:35

hard part, finding corporate sponsors,

8:38

building an eighty five thousand seeds stadium,

8:40

delegating the one thousand and one tasks

8:42

to ready the city for the world stage. Far

8:45

down on his list, designing a mascot

8:47

in time for the closing ceremonies

8:50

of the Barcelona Games in nineteen

8:52

ninety two, when the Olympic torch would be

8:54

passed to Atlanta, Paying quickly

8:56

appointed Hey Mascot Committee,

8:58

which created design guidelines and

9:01

canvassed for submissions. Ten

9:03

companies proposed to mascot. One

9:06

was chosen. The winner would

9:08

live an Olympic infamy.

9:11

And objectively we can say

9:14

we're kind of generous with the title winner

9:16

there, at least that's what the public thought.

9:19

Similar to Grimace is

9:21

he is somewhat a character that defies

9:23

explanation. He's got running shoes,

9:25

he's got Olympic rings that

9:28

incorporate into his appearance,

9:31

and he has a torch that emanates

9:35

stars.

9:37

I'm looking at him now.

9:38

He looks like the kind of mascot that you'd see

9:40

for like a public utility or

9:42

something you know, like like

9:45

the water department. He's

9:47

like an anthropomorphic water droplet

9:49

perhaps or a unit

9:51

of natural gas. He

9:54

does have these big, oversized shoes

9:56

he's got it's a very of

9:58

its era nineties

10:00

cartoon style. You know, it's

10:02

something I can imagine seeing on Fox Kids,

10:05

you know.

10:05

On Saturday morning.

10:07

I don't know, I can't help but also think that he kind

10:09

of looks like an anthropomorphized sperm,

10:12

that is something that always.

10:15

Shaped kind of blob character,

10:17

you know. And we know that his

10:20

original name is what is it with

10:23

a Z? And no

10:25

one knows, sir, No one knows. No

10:27

one knows.

10:28

They if you see the original

10:31

design, it's even stranger

10:34

for a couple of different aesthetic reasons.

10:36

But in defense of

10:39

the creators, they had to make something

10:41

that conformed to the request

10:43

of the Atlanta committee for the Olympic

10:45

Games. So what we see here is

10:48

the result of someone trying

10:50

to satisfy a committee's,

10:52

perhaps the times contradictory request.

10:54

For a long long time, up

10:57

until twenty twenty four, is

10:59

he was considered the worst mascot

11:02

of his type or of its type.

11:04

And now to your earlier point about the

11:06

Paris Olympics, they have had

11:09

the ignomonious

11:11

torch of worst mascot passed

11:14

to them. Let's get a look at

11:16

the Paris twenty twenty four mascots.

11:19

Lest we be seen as just dunking on

11:21

our own hometown guy.

11:23

Is He?

11:23

Yeah, I want to see it too, because I'm looking at

11:25

an article on Nbcolympics dot

11:27

com that's just a look through his

11:30

Olympic mascots over the years, and

11:33

a lot of them aren't great.

11:34

I'm not gonna lie. It's committee. Yeah,

11:37

it is. It is committee.

11:38

But I'm also like kind of like, what's

11:40

the big deal, Like sort of like who cares?

11:43

You know. It's not like something that people

11:45

are gonna remember. And honestly, the ones

11:47

they remember are the bad ones.

11:49

Is he.

11:49

Merch is kind of sought after. They're

11:51

sort of hard to find. So I'm

11:54

looking at do you tell about the Paris one? Though I'm

11:56

looking at them, I'm looking at it cold.

11:58

I'm looking at the twenty twenty four or

12:00

Olympic.

12:01

Mascots for the

12:03

Olympic Paralympic Games. They're two anthropomorphic

12:08

hats, the Napoleon

12:10

hats the Phrygian hats,

12:13

like the triangular

12:16

thing that Napoleon would

12:18

wear. That's how most Americans will remember it. And

12:21

they've got the the

12:23

the horizontal points of the hats

12:25

are these little fingerless arms,

12:28

and then they have really skinny legs.

12:30

That go up into the

12:33

aperture of the hat.

12:34

Interestingly, though, I'm looking at this

12:37

one image of them, and maybe this is

12:39

a special version or something, but I think

12:41

it's not, you know how, you know, and there

12:43

are prosthetics that

12:46

can be attached to people who are missing legs

12:48

to allow them to run in high

12:50

impact situations. It's like they've

12:52

got they've got some give to them. They almost look

12:54

like a ski in a way, like a

12:56

bent kind of like the sum of spring

12:59

loaded or bring me kind of the

13:01

version of his mascot that I'm seeing as as

13:03

that for on one leg. So that's

13:05

kind of cool in a way, sort of an effort

13:07

towards inclusivity. I think

13:10

this French mascot is dope. I'm not gonna

13:12

lie. I think it's cool.

13:13

That's the Paralympic win. Oh and let me

13:15

correct correct this real quick.

13:17

Here the Phrygian cap where

13:19

the Liberty cap is not as fancy

13:21

as Napoleon's. It looks

13:24

it's definitely a cap. It looks almost like a

13:26

rap with some extra earflaps

13:28

hanging down.

13:29

I see, Ben, there is the Paralympics,

13:32

and there are different versions of this mascot.

13:35

So all this.

13:36

I think this is a very valid discussion and of

13:38

itself. But all this to get to is

13:40

he was kind of mocked

13:42

a little bit and panned at the time, but

13:45

he did somehow, you know, because he

13:47

was part of the conversation get the kind

13:50

of slapped together video game treatment.

13:52

I did not know this.

13:54

Yeah, they also, Oh nice,

13:56

we get to reference a guy, you know,

13:58

Thomas Wheatley, local reporter who was writing

14:01

for Axios Atlanta, and he

14:03

says, the

14:05

the Olympic Committee left no stone

14:07

unturned in licensing this

14:10

mascot Izzy in all kinds of

14:12

merch, refrigerator, magnets, t shirts,

14:14

hats, caps, you name it,

14:16

and of course video games. This

14:19

is where we introduce our first

14:21

game for this episode,

14:23

Isy's Quest for the Olympic Rings.

14:26

That sounds like it makes sense. You know, it's an Olympic

14:28

mascot. You gotta collect coins and try

14:30

to get the Olympic Rings.

14:32

I bet you. This is too obscurity even no

14:35

comes right up. Holy crap. It

14:37

was on Sega Genesis. It was this is a next

14:39

gen game. This is like, I mean, you know, relatively

14:42

speaking next gen to a lot of the ones that were talking

14:44

about in episode one, which were all kind

14:46

of early home console type games, which

14:48

honestly they were a next gen of their own in their

14:50

own right, because Atari was kind of the first. So

14:53

even regular nes had more

14:55

bit depth I believe than an Atari

14:57

system, Isn't that right, Max?

15:00

Yeah, so the Atari twenty six hundred

15:03

would have been the one on the same

15:05

tier as.

15:07

The regular nes.

15:09

Yeah, as regular nis actually correct, regular

15:12

nsa because the first, the most famous Atari

15:14

was like pre Nintendo.

15:16

Right right, and that was

15:19

you that that was

15:21

the thing that walked, so other gaming

15:24

could run well.

15:24

And that just goes to show too how the difference

15:27

between Atari and Nintendo

15:30

they were basically dealing with very similar hardware

15:32

in terms of power. It really showed how important

15:34

the game design was. And Nintendo

15:37

really has always made their bank

15:40

on the fact that they're the really good to designing

15:42

games. Because even today, the

15:45

the you know, the most powerful Nintendo system you

15:47

get pales in comparison to

15:49

you know what other companies like PlayStation and

15:52

Xbox.

15:52

Do, and that's literally by design.

15:56

And the backtrack, I mean, I met the Atari fifty six

16:00

twentyix hundreds are very famous one the nes

16:02

and the twenty are on

16:04

the same.

16:05

Right, So the twenty six hundred is the one people think of with

16:07

like the ET game, that's like the early really

16:09

craphole, the looking one. So even the regular NES

16:12

was a next gen from that. Sorry getting caught up in

16:14

this. So Izzy's a Quest for

16:16

the Olympic Rings would have been a next gen to

16:18

that because SNS was sixteen

16:20

bit if I'm not mistaken, So that was

16:22

a big old jump. And then you had your Sega

16:25

Genesis as well. I have zero

16:27

recollection of this.

16:29

Game, you guys,

16:36

Well, it was sort of a

16:39

it was sort of ticking a box for some people.

16:42

We do know.

16:43

It was not super in depth like Bug

16:45

but Bugs Buddy's Crazy Castle. You

16:48

can complete it in about an hour,

16:51

not even a crazy difficult speed run. And

16:53

then the lead animator

16:55

of the game, William Anderson, said,

16:57

yet, the Olympic officials had just

17:00

a couple of demands, can't change the character

17:02

design, makes sense. Have the Olympics

17:05

as a theme, of course, and they said

17:07

we'd prefer no violence. And

17:09

when these developers got to work, they

17:12

said it was one of their best experiences

17:14

to date. One William

17:17

Anderson, who is now the owner of

17:19

Awaken Games, was speaking to Thomas

17:21

Wheatley, and he said, look, we're a small

17:23

group of developers. We're really dedicated

17:26

to not only making the best games, but

17:28

having fun while doing it. So

17:31

you can get a copy of this game for Super

17:33

Nintendo for fifty to one

17:35

hundred and fifty dollars, or if for

17:37

some reason you need a price break, you can

17:39

get a box of six of them, six

17:41

copies of the game for six hundred bucks like

17:44

today. At the time

17:46

of the conversation with Axios, Yeah.

17:49

Okay, interesting.

17:50

I did find a page

17:52

on Internet archive from Game Pro

17:55

issues sixty nine April nineteen

17:57

ninety five. It had this to sid

17:59

this is back. You know, reviewers

18:01

were a lot less mean back in the day. I'm realizing,

18:03

at least for games and stuff, it was much

18:06

more felt like a promotional device than

18:08

it was a purely.

18:09

We're gonna shred your shitty game.

18:12

By the nineteen ninety six summer games seem

18:14

far off, but not for Izzy, as

18:16

this reads like a press release. As the Olympic

18:19

mascot, he must search the torch world

18:21

to collect five Olympic rings that

18:24

keep the torch lit. In this ten

18:26

level quest, Izzy morphs into eight

18:28

sporting characters collecting power

18:30

ups and loads of bonuses. Nice

18:33

backgrounds bring colorful detail to

18:35

Izzy's world, but it's Izzy himself who

18:37

stimulates the game visually. His

18:40

numerous and determined expressions

18:42

make him an easy to like character. The

18:45

sound effects are enjoyable too, with great

18:47

splats, smashes and

18:49

blasting trumpets, and

18:51

then it refers to a smurfy soundtrack.

18:54

And this brings up an interesting point

18:56

because my question is would

18:59

people have been so what

19:02

they have dunked on? Is he so hard

19:04

if he had just started as a video game character?

19:07

I think not.

19:08

I think saying here's a fun game

19:10

about the Olympics.

19:12

Well, but Ben I was. I've been meaning to bring this

19:14

up.

19:14

It's been kind of nagging at me, this whole

19:16

idea of First of all, I completely disagree

19:18

the French. I think the French hat guys

19:21

are cool. The idea that they're somehow

19:23

worse than is He, I think is absurd. But what

19:26

how does one rank a freaking

19:29

anthropomorphic cartoon mascot

19:31

in terms of better or worse? Is

19:33

it how well they represent the

19:36

country? Is it how like

19:38

cute they are? Like?

19:39

What are what are the metrics for this completely

19:43

subjective. It's water cooler opinion

19:45

thing, you know, like it's it's one of when I say water

19:47

cooler opinion, it's one of those things

19:50

like the BS fashion articles you read

19:52

where people just want to kind of

19:55

participate socially by either

19:57

having a hot take or agree with

20:00

a thing that other people are talking about.

20:02

Uh, and we see we

20:05

also see again the power of nostalgia.

20:07

I think it's quite possible that it

20:10

will become a cool thing to play

20:12

this game in the near future

20:15

because the Olympics are back on again

20:17

and people are older

20:20

now and they're having those fond memories.

20:22

It's, you know, another thing that reminds us of

20:24

of course, is our next creature on the list or

20:26

next game? I should say checks

20:28

quest Quest quest quest.

20:31

Literally the motivation for this entire

20:33

episode absolutely another

20:35

one that I absolutely unfamiliar

20:38

with.

20:39

So we all know what checks cereal

20:42

was. Is it's still a thing. It's check

20:44

No checks was a serial? Right or was checks?

20:46

What am I thinking of?

20:47

It's a serial?

20:48

But then there's uh checks mix well, of course

20:51

check trail mixed with check checks mixed.

20:53

Though, was one of these things that was just kind of created

20:55

organically by humans in the wild

20:57

and then repurposed and

21:00

and did by Checks you know what I mean, where it's like people

21:02

were making it themselves, mixing it with all kinds of

21:04

other little little bits and snacky bobs,

21:06

and putting some seasoning in there, a little what

21:08

is it like Old Bay seasoning or

21:10

some kind of you know, kind of umami

21:14

bit of seasoning.

21:15

And then Checks decide, hey.

21:16

Wait a minute, you guys do we're gonna We're gonna

21:18

do this ourselves and call it something and act like we

21:20

invented it.

21:22

So chex Mix was huge. Oh yeah,

21:24

chexs Mix is still a giant.

21:26

You know. It Also is a giant in the world

21:28

of gaming is the Doom franchise,

21:31

And in twenty twenty five they're going to have

21:33

a prequel to the original

21:35

Doom. The trailer released this

21:38

week yea or

21:40

this week had ed this game

21:43

first off is pretty good because

21:45

it is kind of like to our earlier

21:47

point about Skins, it is a modification

21:51

of a pre existing game that was just

21:53

built to be a game. Doom, one of

21:55

the most famous first person shooters

21:58

of all time. Go to Daniel

22:00

Horowitz and his article chexs Quest

22:02

a twenty years later, retrospective on a

22:05

cereal based game. We

22:07

see that they took

22:10

this idea and they ran with it, and they

22:12

did something that you see. To

22:16

me, it's part of what defines really good

22:18

comedy. They play it with a straight

22:20

face. Chex's quest

22:23

is the when you are the player,

22:25

the stakes are supposed to be on the level

22:28

of playing Doom.

22:29

You know what i mean.

22:30

You gotta hunt the Flemoids

22:33

I'm sorry, or the Chechs Warrior the guides.

22:37

Yeah, you know.

22:38

Isn't that funny though, because there's nothing that will

22:40

dry your mouth out and gets your real flemy,

22:42

like eating a big old mouthful of checks

22:45

mix.

22:45

It's like this gets a breakfast

22:48

cereal or racist.

22:49

Play the high,

22:51

high fiber version of them.

22:53

This was aimed at This was

22:55

nineteen ninety six, so the

22:57

same year as the Olympics in Atlanta. It was

23:00

aimed at children who were at

23:02

least six.

23:04

To nine years old.

23:05

And the kind of modification

23:08

this is is what we call a total conversion.

23:11

They took a lot of the violence out of Doom,

23:14

or a lot of the the egregious

23:16

blood right, and

23:18

they I

23:21

gotta tell you, the gameplay is

23:23

pretty much the same as do.

23:25

It's exactly the same. The only difference

23:27

is you're not killing the Flemoys. The Flemoids

23:30

are immune from any type

23:32

of damage. You're

23:34

teleporting them back to their dimension, so

23:36

when you shoot them, it's sort of like Splatoon.

23:38

If anyone's familiar with the

23:41

the Nintendo or I guess it's on Switch

23:44

game Splatoon, it is a first person

23:46

shooter where you don't kill anybody,

23:49

you just blast them with ink. It's like paintball.

23:51

So it's a way of having the mechanics of

23:53

a murder game. Sands the murder

23:56

is that kind of the idem x exactly.

23:58

That's one hundred because, as Ben said, it

24:00

is. My dad fought it hilarious the time, and I was too

24:03

young to understand what Doom was. He's like, this is literally

24:05

Doom for kids.

24:07

Yeah, you've got and the power ups change

24:09

the weapons and ammunition shape to all be

24:11

serial themed and just

24:13

like just like any other first person shooter,

24:16

you win the game by beating the final

24:18

boss at the last level.

24:21

And I think it's.

24:23

Also a little bit easier than Doom because

24:25

you want people to associate the cereal

24:28

with fun. Alex

24:30

Walker has a great short history.

24:33

Excuse me, short official history

24:35

of Chech's Quest, which

24:37

talks about how brilliant

24:40

it was for the

24:42

cereal manufacturers to put a video

24:44

game in your boxes cereal as

24:47

a prize. I think that's the really brilliant

24:49

thing, because one of the best parts of children's

24:52

cereal is, of course the prizes

24:54

you get. And I got to say furthermore, in

24:56

recent decades, they've really started skimping

24:58

on the prizes. You guys, notice that I'm

25:01

an adult, like I can vote.

25:02

That's scary skipping on the prizes

25:04

and the cereal.

25:05

And yeah, if I'm not mistaken,

25:08

I think it's become a little less

25:10

popular to put them in the cereal

25:13

at all because of like potential choking

25:15

hazards. And so you get

25:17

some kind of coupon that you mail in to

25:20

get the prize after the fact,

25:22

which just ain't cutting that.

25:24

Right exactly, because that's

25:26

not the kind of delayed gratification kids

25:29

are overall into. Originally,

25:32

the game was supposed to be in a cornfield and

25:34

you had a flashlight. The

25:37

idea was you would make an

25:39

educational tool in the form of a video

25:41

game, similar to like Math Blaster or

25:44

the Oregon Trail. But the

25:47

team behind checks Quest said

25:49

let's if we're doing a video game, let's

25:51

do an actual video game. Let's look around

25:54

at other video games and see

25:56

what's taking off, what's already popular,

25:59

and let's try to do that. And it looked around

26:01

and the most popular one they found

26:04

was Doom.

26:05

At least.

26:08

This wasn't on a console rigially either, I think

26:10

it was on It was on personal

26:12

computers. And then they said,

26:14

okay, we'll make a first

26:16

person shooter.

26:17

We'll make Doom.

26:18

But checks and then they said, oh,

26:20

hang on, it's kind of tough to make a video

26:22

game in six months.

26:24

Yeah, it's super hard. And that's the thing

26:26

with a lot of these product tie in games is

26:28

that they're sort of an afterthought and

26:31

that they're you know, absolutely rushed,

26:34

and that is evident in the final product

26:36

because sometimes, to your point, bent, either

26:38

they're egregiously difficult and

26:41

look like crap, or they

26:43

look good but are really really really

26:45

short. Games were expensive back then,

26:48

just like VHS tapes were

26:50

expensive, which is why there was such a robust

26:52

rental market. So you certainly

26:54

wouldn't be quite as letdown if you rented the game

26:56

and realized you could beat it in twenty minutes, but

26:59

if you shelled out the that could be cause

27:01

for a meltdown.

27:02

Absolutely, And this is we have to remember

27:05

before the rise of the

27:07

video game online review industry

27:10

on YouTube and stuff, so you couldn't act.

27:12

It was much more difficult to just hop

27:14

on a website and watch someone

27:17

play the game and decide whether or not it was a

27:19

buy or a rental. And also these

27:21

guys they had another problem.

27:23

They had to get a co sign from

27:25

the FDA, one of the most famous

27:27

bureaucracies in the country, and

27:30

the FDA needed to sign off on

27:32

checks shipping all these cd ROMs,

27:35

along with food people would

27:37

actually consume. To your earlier point, they

27:39

had to adhere to the demands

27:42

of the FDA, which meant they

27:44

had to redesign weapons so they

27:46

looked as non weapony as possible,

27:49

non descript, and then they

27:51

had to really dumb down the

27:53

sound. It was a huge gamble

27:55

for General Mills, but it was also

27:58

a massive success,

28:00

so much so that just one

28:03

year later they released the sequel,

28:05

checks Quest. Two Flemoids take Chextropolis.

28:08

Yeah, I gotta jump in the emergency

28:11

like you're out of AMMO weapon. You get

28:13

in the game.

28:14

Is a spoon.

28:15

Yeah, as your melee emergency

28:17

weapon is bro what better

28:19

way is there to defeat Cereal?

28:21

You know, well, you're you're helping

28:24

them. Sorry, you're helping the Cereal. I know, I get it, I

28:26

get it.

28:26

I get it.

28:26

You're you're you're shoveling snot

28:29

with a spoon.

28:30

Basically, it's weird though, the snot thing, because another

28:32

thing that makes you real snotty is milk. You

28:34

know, milk gets you real. The whole thing is very

28:36

strange. A couple opportunities that

28:39

they may have squandered. I haven't played the game, so

28:41

I can't say. And again, it

28:43

would have been cool if they had allowed violence. Then you

28:45

could have officially been a serial killer. But

28:48

instead you're not killing the Cereal, you're killing

28:50

the phlem And when I was in

28:53

middle school, I had a very brief attempt

28:56

at trying to write some sketch comedy with a

28:58

few friends, and I came up with a really great step

29:00

that had zero follow through. It was

29:02

a parody of Beverly Hills nine o two one

29:04

oh called General Mills nine oh two one

29:06

oh, and it would just be about

29:08

you know, cereal drama. I

29:12

don't know whatever issues that cereal

29:14

answer for morphive cereal? Would it be between

29:17

the different imprints of the different types of

29:19

cereal that were on General Mills tbd?

29:22

But you know you can't argue with the

29:24

alliterative connection between Beverly

29:26

Hills nine oh two one oh and General Mills nine

29:29

oh two.

29:30

I yield my time, well done, and

29:32

people, just like you're saying, people know

29:35

when there's a good idea, you remember, you want to run

29:37

with it. General Mills is

29:40

in this crazy serial video game

29:42

casino and they keep winning. So after

29:45

they released chex Quest two and ninety

29:47

seven, they released che Quest

29:49

three in two thousand and eight,

29:52

and get this, they re released

29:54

it in twenty twenty. Checks

29:57

Quest HD.

29:58

Oh my goodness. They needed they

30:00

needed more resolution for that checks

30:03

You know, they had.

30:04

To pretty several bust universe now.

30:06

There's multiple playable characters now,

30:08

and so a lot of lore. It's a legendary

30:10

game. Truthfully, it is a legendary. It is

30:12

very short. It is about thirty minutes to play the

30:15

entire thing.

30:15

I don't have a problem with short games, no,

30:17

no, no, no, I don't have a problem with them unless

30:20

I'm paying the same price for them that I'm

30:22

paying for you know, forty hour

30:24

RPG, you know.

30:25

And that's the best thing about chex Quest as

30:27

it never costs money.

30:29

Well, so it was always a serial tie in. It

30:31

was it was the prize. Yeah, you got it in

30:33

the box.

30:34

That's sorry you said that. I'm sorry.

30:36

I didn't fully understand the ramifications of

30:38

that is very forward thinking, you

30:40

know, a digital prize, uh in

30:42

the nineties, how about that.

30:45

Yeah, I'm just looking to confirm something.

30:48

Yep, chex Quest HD on

30:50

Steam. It is a robust game with multiplayer

30:53

features, and everything is also free.

30:55

Ah, it's always free.

30:56

Which makes it the best, the best deal

30:58

out of the four because the

31:00

other ones are free if you purchase

31:03

a box of cereal. So there

31:05

is still technically prizing. We

31:13

can't even get to stuff like, Oh,

31:16

Ronald McDonald McDonald's treasure

31:18

Land Adventure. That's a weird tie

31:21

in. There's a ton

31:23

of Ronald McDonald's games.

31:26

There's Donald Land in

31:29

nineteen eighty eight. It's a platformer that

31:31

just came out in Japan, where, weirdly enough,

31:33

they call him Donald McDonald.

31:35

I was about to say Donald Land. I don't understand.

31:37

Okay, that makes sense. He's Donald

31:40

McDonald.

31:41

I kind of like it. I like the

31:44

internal. I like how they added

31:46

an extra d.

31:47

It does add an extra layer of absurdity

31:50

to it, doesn't it. You know, it's sort of like having

31:52

two first names, right, you

31:54

know, you're like the first name and then a last name

31:57

that's also a first name, you know.

31:58

Yeah.

31:59

Yeah, and Gin published a nineteen

32:01

ninety two game called MC Kids,

32:04

which is sort of an also ran.

32:07

That looks one that one looks like incredibly

32:09

lying by the way, that looks like the worst one.

32:12

And then well we've got McDonald lang Global

32:14

Gladiators another spin

32:17

off.

32:17

To backtrack, though, ben, I would assume that would

32:20

be pronounced mckids.

32:22

Yeah, but they've got the dots. They've

32:24

got the initials M dot C dot

32:26

kids.

32:27

So there's MC kids, but it's definitely

32:29

MC kids.

32:30

But what is so what if it's dots, they're supposed

32:32

to stand for something? What what do they stand for?

32:34

Massively cool? Yeah?

32:35

I think it actually somewhere I read it

32:37

stood for Mick and mac and

32:40

the thing afterwards said this obviously makes no

32:42

sense because the acronym is uh EMC,

32:44

but they didn't think it out too far.

32:46

Basically is what a lot of people said.

32:48

It seems so, yeah, what

32:50

are we gonna play Grimace's Birthday?

32:52

Oh boy?

32:53

I love all the freaky, creepy pasta

32:55

memes that were spawned from

32:57

the whole Grimace Shake thing with

33:00

people like just consuming the Grimace Shake

33:02

and then immediately descending into some sort

33:04

of murderous David Lynch nightmare

33:07

hellscape.

33:08

Yeah.

33:08

I thought that was just absolutely peak

33:10

Internet of Today, really really good

33:13

stuff.

33:13

And then there is, of course McDonald's

33:16

treasure Land Adventure. There's so

33:18

many that there's so many

33:20

different McDonald's tie

33:23

in games that we could even

33:25

do another episode on those,

33:27

But for now, all you need to

33:29

know is that Treasure Land Adventure

33:32

has its own kind of fantasy lore.

33:35

Ronald McDonald is in a magic forest

33:37

one day, or the Magical Forest, and

33:39

he sees a piece of paper under a tree.

33:42

He finds it's part of a treasure map,

33:44

and he doesn't know where the rest of the pieces

33:46

of the treasure map are. But the other

33:48

pieces of the map, it turns out, are in the hands

33:50

of some dangerous bad guys. So

33:53

you play as Ronald McDonald on a

33:55

treasure hunt to find the pieces of

33:57

the map that will lead you to the treasure

34:00

fun.

34:00

Okay, so sort of an RPG, a

34:02

very light RPG kind of yeah,

34:05

yeah, yeah, Okay. Do you guys

34:07

remember Chester Cheetah Too

34:10

Cool to Fool?

34:11

Yes?

34:12

Yeah, did we reference in

34:14

episode one? Don't think we.

34:15

Got to let's spot

34:18

in Chester Cheatah of

34:20

the same air Chester Cheetah

34:22

you got his own video game two that

34:25

apparently had a really interesting

34:28

glitch in the gravity

34:30

of it that would cause him

34:32

to like be propelled into the air like

34:35

massively accelerating rates.

34:37

I found a cool Reddit fred with

34:39

a discussion on the Chester Cheetah

34:41

game. Then they described the glitch as

34:43

such, by some glitch of the game physics, Chester

34:46

was propelled very high into the air. Of

34:48

course, once you launch anything into the air, it eventually

34:50

slows down and then starts falling, another

34:52

side effect of gravity. The farther you fall, the

34:54

faster you fall. The game is probably doing something

34:56

like this. Trouble is, Chester might be

34:58

falling so fast always passes

35:01

right through the area where the game checks

35:03

whether he's on the ground. So one frame

35:05

he's too far above the ground, I eat out on

35:07

the ground. Next frame he's too far below

35:10

the ground. I eat out on the ground, so

35:12

the game just lets him fall forever.

35:15

So yeah, that's a

35:17

fun one.

35:18

Yeah, and there's so many others that were

35:21

like barely we

35:23

could maybe just laundry list some of

35:25

these. Pepsi Man Japan loves

35:28

a lot of these tie in games. Pepsi Man is game

35:30

where you play a pepsi themed superhero.

35:33

You're delivering pepsi to people. And

35:35

then on the Chester Cheetah stuff.

35:38

Yeah.

35:38

Two, we's got two

35:40

games. There's Wild Wild Pest, There's Too

35:42

Cool to Fool and Too Cool to Fool.

35:44

I didn't know this doesn't have any

35:46

actual Cheetos products

35:49

appearing in there.

35:51

Frankly, that's smart because Chester is

35:53

synonymous with Cheetos.

35:55

You don't even need them. All you gotta do is remind

35:57

people of Chester. Cheetos is in his name.

36:00

You know, guys, remember the golden era of

36:04

cartoon advertisements for cigarettes.

36:06

How come they never got a game? How come Joe Camill

36:08

never got a game? I guess that kind of ended

36:10

before these video game tie in

36:13

things really became a thing.

36:15

Yeah, I think because there was a video game crash

36:17

in nineteen eighty three for the industry.

36:19

So if they were making

36:22

moves to do something like that, you know, would

36:24

work a boozer beer based game, Yeah,

36:26

defleeing work. We talked about some of

36:28

those, we didn't get to

36:31

some of the most terrible, Like movie

36:34

tie ins often have a bad reputation. We

36:36

mentioned nineteen eighty two et. But the

36:38

New Suicide Squad was apparently

36:41

awful, as was a Ghostbusters

36:43

fight Club.

36:45

There's a fight Club video game? No, see,

36:47

that's how bad it was, was there really? Yeah?

36:50

Yeah?

36:51

It was released five years after the

36:53

movie. Critics and fans like

36:55

didn't dig it whatsoever.

36:59

It's weirdly

37:02

fred Durst shows up in it.

37:04

Oh Man speaking of viby,

37:07

nostalgia based and also potentially

37:09

creepy things, and that Fred Durst shows

37:12

up in I made a video of

37:14

this for our other show stuff they don't want you to know, but

37:16

highly recommend a film that I've already seen

37:19

three times in theaters called I Saw

37:21

the TV Glow.

37:22

That is the.

37:23

Most wonderful, affecting,

37:27

immersive kind of send

37:29

up of nostalgia pop culture stuff.

37:31

And one thing we mentioned on these episodes is

37:34

the way you remember things

37:37

looking a certain way that you were important

37:39

to you as a child, because you're remembering

37:41

them through the lens of the way it affected you

37:43

emotionally as a child. But then you look at

37:45

them again as an adult and you're like, wow,

37:47

this looks like trash. And that's true

37:49

of TV shows, that's true of movies, that's

37:52

definitely true of video games, probably more specifically,

37:54

because they just looked

37:56

like crap and you had to kind of fill in the blanks,

37:59

you know. And I remember seeing

38:01

turbographics sixteen Bonx Adventures

38:04

for the first time when I was like, you know, maybe

38:07

twelve something like that, and I thought it was

38:09

the most magical, wonderful thing I've ever seen.

38:11

Looked like playing a cartoon.

38:12

Go back to it now, glitchy and

38:15

blocky and not smooth or

38:17

cool looking at all. But anyway, sorry,

38:19

that's my rants about nostalgia, but check out, I saw

38:21

the TV glow. As far as other movie tie

38:24

ins, Disney was very infamous

38:26

for putting them out and having them be egregiously

38:28

difficult. There was The Lion King

38:31

and Aladdin, both of which I actually

38:33

owned on Sega Genesis, but the

38:36

Lion King notoriously incredibly

38:39

hard.

38:40

And Aladdin was the thing that answered

38:42

the question what if we could make Prince of Persia,

38:44

but bad, ye know what I mean. And

38:47

then we also see a problem

38:49

is with a lot of the film tie in.

38:51

Specifically, they're working with the hectic

38:53

production of a film schedule right

38:56

where they want it to be, ideally around

38:58

the debut. Terrible

39:00

Catwoman movie has its own video

39:02

game. The I

39:05

would also notice there is

39:07

a bad street Fighter game. It is

39:09

street Fighter the movie the game,

39:12

and it is so much

39:14

worse. Yeah yeah, Max. They have motions

39:16

are cracked. It's so much worse than the

39:20

other iterations

39:23

of street Fighter. Because the

39:26

film itself, you know, had a really troubled

39:28

production, and then the

39:30

actors, after a lot of them

39:32

ended up hating each other. They had to get back

39:34

and do motion capture for this game

39:36

that looks like it wants to be Mortal

39:39

Kombat dressed as Street Fighter. It's

39:43

just I don't know, man, this You read

39:45

the game reviews of this kind of

39:47

stuff, and I'll

39:49

tell you, actually, you know what now that

39:51

I'm thinking about it, I don't want to

39:53

get us on a tangent here. But Aladdin

39:57

was tough, but I did like it.

39:59

No, I realized

40:01

I owned Aladdin. I didn't own Lion

40:03

King.

40:03

But Aladdin, I remember distinctly the

40:06

level where you're in the Cave of Wonders and

40:08

you're on the flying Carpet and it's a side

40:10

scroller platform me one, and you have

40:12

to jump over and avoid all of

40:14

these lava flows and like

40:16

geysers of lava, and you have to jump

40:19

over it and then jump back onto your

40:21

magic carpet. And I remember, again,

40:23

if I looked at it now, probably wouldn't hold

40:25

up esthetically the way I'm picturing

40:27

it in my mind. But I very much owned

40:30

the Aladdin Sega Genesis game. But

40:33

there were tons of other ones as well, in

40:36

terms of movie animated

40:38

movies and specifically, But nowadays it

40:40

seemed we were talking about this at the beginning of episode one.

40:44

It seems like kids

40:46

are wise to this stuff now, and

40:49

kids aren't gonna just play a game

40:52

because it's based

40:54

on their favorite snack unless there's

40:56

something absurd or ironic about it.

40:58

So when you see these product tians, it's

41:00

now a lot more of this, like extra add on content,

41:03

like with the different skins that you can get

41:05

for a Fortnite et cetera.

41:07

Or the different fighting characters you can get

41:09

as DLC downloadable content.

41:13

In Mortal Kombat, you know, that's when

41:15

you can get Dark Predator.

41:17

And Yoda and Soul Caliber series.

41:19

Those were great because they have force powers.

41:23

I think what we're saying is, yeah, the trends

41:25

will evolve and the methods

41:27

will change. But even

41:30

though you know it's easy to dismiss some

41:32

of these things as perhaps cynical advertisements

41:35

or grabs for attention, this

41:38

we these strange bedfellows

41:41

of products and video games actually

41:44

resulted in some really cool experiences,

41:46

and the nostalgia is so real.

41:48

Oh man, just a.

41:49

Couple that I'm just remembering now. I'm like having

41:51

a core memory unlocked Home Alone.

41:54

There was a video game based on Home Alone

41:56

on Nintendo that was terrible. And

41:59

I just found a Reddit thread that was what happened

42:02

to video games based on every

42:04

single movie, and it

42:06

really was a thing like whether they were live action,

42:08

animated or whatnot. So if you want

42:10

to dig into more of that stuff

42:12

and find, you know, little bits

42:15

of Internet debris leftover of

42:17

gameplay that stuff, you certainly can.

42:20

It's a very deep rabbit hole hap

42:23

happy hunting.

42:24

Yeah, And to jump in real quick, I want to

42:26

just talk about et for a little bit. We go much more

42:28

detail in our femeral episode about

42:30

this with somebody who knows way more about Williams

42:33

than I will ever know. But I

42:35

want to state some love and support for Howard

42:38

Scott Warshaw, who was actually the programmer

42:40

made ET, because he's putting in an impossible

42:42

situation. Basically, they paid

42:45

the studio for the rights of Fortune and

42:47

they gave him like a few weeks basically built

42:50

the game back then they can only build it stuf. He also

42:52

has one of the funniest creative games ever. It's

42:54

called Yars Revenge is

42:57

a direct shot at

42:59

Ray Kazo, who was CEO of

43:02

Atari who had been hired there to replace

43:04

Nolan Bushnell. Literally got hired away from

43:06

Burlington Coat Factory. That's

43:08

who they put in charge of thing. He was this guy's

43:11

this is Ray Kazzar is the guy who agree

43:14

who worked the deal for you

43:16

know, the ET game and uh

43:19

also you know basically killed Atari.

43:21

Uh.

43:22

And this guy, Howard

43:24

Scott Warshaw's on a lot of great things, like you know, uh

43:28

said raiders have lost ark and stuff, video games and stuff

43:30

like He's done a lot, and so it's really crazy

43:33

to see how bad et was because

43:35

there was nothing he could have done.

43:36

With that one, right, And that's something we have

43:38

to remember, just like is he the mascot,

43:41

there are a lot of hard working people who

43:43

are laboring under at times and possible

43:45

situations. Also shout out to the Atari Jaguar

43:48

as one of those.

43:51

And I found a jaguar ad. It it

43:53

has oh god, it has been it.

43:55

Ripping through the page kind of is one

43:57

of those where it's like claw marks or something.

44:00

I'm just picturing magazine ads for that

44:02

kind of stuff.

44:02

It's a kid who's playing a tough, bad

44:05

kid and he goes to the bathroom and plays the jaguar

44:07

pulls out of his pocket, which is hilarioucause jaguars are

44:09

massive and huge. But it's an actual

44:11

guy who had an acting career

44:15

who was not considered as a bad kid.

44:16

Let's say to that can career. I'm looking it up.

44:18

Yeah, yeah, well yeah. Jack Black did some video

44:20

game ads. It was for a game called Pitfall that you can

44:22

actually find that ad online with a very

44:25

young, fresh faced Jack Black. But while

44:27

you're looking at that at Max's when I add my last thing. It's

44:29

kind of full circle for this this doesn't

44:32

happen anymore. You know, these product high

44:34

end video games, these movie kind of

44:36

tempole tie in video games, unless they're

44:38

something like a Spider Man, are something

44:40

that you know has been in development for a long time, that

44:42

they know will sell because now the expectations

44:45

for the quality of the game must reach

44:47

are just so much higher, and the typical

44:50

development cycle for a big game,

44:52

often referred to as like a triple A game, can

44:54

be up to six years. So now

44:57

what's replaced the cheap quick

44:59

dirt, the cash grab of the the

45:02

the rushed you know, video game tie

45:05

in of yesteryear are phone

45:07

games as sure?

45:10

So I would argue though that the while

45:12

it's again like I was saying earlier, while

45:14

it's evolved, we still see those same

45:16

core trends. Lord of the Rings

45:18

has some terrible video games. Shout out

45:20

to their their Golumn game,

45:23

and Suicide Squad, which I mentioned earlier,

45:25

also had a really difficult game

45:28

release. I think the money is just too

45:30

good. I think you do make an astute point

45:32

about the mobile gaming, which

45:35

again is the evolution that

45:37

we see the cyclical, uh, the

45:39

cyclical process of

45:42

nostalgia bringing people back to

45:44

the things we loved as kids. So I do want

45:46

to say again, if it sounds like we're dumping on

45:48

developers and publishers

45:51

and so on, we're not dumping on the creatives

45:53

at all. It's uh, it's again. I

45:55

think one of the most important points sometimes

45:58

these strange bedfellows eight

46:00

stuff that remains

46:02

an awesome part of people's lives, and

46:04

I think it's really cool to acknowledge

46:07

that. I'm looking at the positive side. You

46:09

know, for every et, there

46:11

is at least two there are at

46:13

least two to three other games that people

46:15

will always pick up, regardless of how old

46:18

they are. And with that, this concludes our

46:20

two part history on the Golden

46:22

Era the halcyon age of video

46:25

game product tie ins. Thanks to our

46:27

super producer mister Max Williams,

46:29

Thanks our research associate Max Williams

46:31

and our composer Alex Williams.

46:33

Christopher Rasiotis and Eaves, Jeff Coates

46:35

here in spirit, aj Bahamas

46:38

Jacobs the Puzzler. Actually

46:40

we've got a date with him on the books

46:43

coming up real soon, so for another

46:45

Puzzler tie in episode coming

46:47

your way.

46:48

And then of course Rachel Big Spinach Lance,

46:50

our pal Gabe Luzier all

46:53

of you ridiculous historians, gamers and non

46:56

gamers alike. We can't wait

46:58

to travel with you to some new place is

47:00

In future episodes. We're gonna learn about

47:03

Popeye harems,

47:05

We're gonna learn like real harems.

47:07

We're gonna learn about karaoke.

47:09

We're gonna learn about the Swiss Guard.

47:11

So many things ahead light spoilers,

47:13

but we can't wait for you

47:16

to be riding shotgun with us.

47:17

I guess that's kind of what we do, Ben, We're sort of spoilers

47:20

of history. We'll see you next

47:22

time. Books.

47:29

For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the

47:31

iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

47:34

you listen to your favorite shows