(tone beeps) - [Falcon] Video games
are often complex tales of interesting, crazy events that come together and
form something wild. And also a lot of the time the history around them is the same. Hi folks, it's Falcon and today on Gameranx 10
video game history facts that'll blow your mind. Starting off at number 10,
the plot of "Ultima VII" is actually about how Electronic Arts is the root of all evil. The ultimate games are
mostly relevant these days 'cause the innovations they
brought to the RPG genre, but they're otherwise kind of
forgotten by modern gamers. I mean, it's understandable. The series has been effectively dead for a very long time now,
decades at this point. But you know what's always relevant? Throwing shade at EA and man
this game, spares no prisoners. All the credit for this one goes to this blog called Casual Aggro. Even as someone who knows
something about "Ultima VII," which is probably dating
myself here a bit, but I never noticed any of this stuff. The important thing to keep in mind about Ultima developer Origin is that they love to pepper their games with Easter eggs and little references. They're all over the place. Mostly just harmless stuff
like using names of people who worked in Origin and the games, but they're also not afraid
to go for the jugular. In "Ultima VI," where
you can find the grave of a certain Captain Hawkins referencing EA founder Trip Hawkins, which says he died a hard
death and he deserved it. If you think that's a little suspect, he's not the only EA employee
referenced in the game. A lot of EA devs get named
dropped like Joe Ybarra, Stewart Bond, Bing Gordon. I'm basing this off a comment by MCC Clem underneath the Casual
Aggro Post, by the way. I don't remember this stuff. It's been so long since I've played Ultima in any capacity, it's not even funny, but that's "Ultima VI." "Ultima VII," they go way hard. To start, the villain of the
game known as The Guardian is just flat out fully a
representation of Electronic Arts. You'll see what I mean in a second. There's also two murderers
working for The Guardian in the name named Elizabeth and Abraham or E and A. On top of that, The
Guardian has three objects that give him his power, a cube, a sphere, and a tetrahedron, which hey, remember EA's logo at the time? (Falcon chuckles) Funny thing is this was all done before Origin was acquired by EA, at least as far as I can tell. "Ultima VII" came out
the 16th of April, 1992 and Origin was acquired by EA
later that year in September. From the information I can find, "Ultima VII" was published
by Origin Systems, which seems to contradict Ultima creator Richard
Garriott's statement that, "When we joined EA we already blocked the EA as
the root of all evil plots. We completed as planned with blessings." Maybe the deal was already
underway at the time, I don't know. But that tweet from
Garriott at least proves they were taking shots at EA. Like you can't deny it when you say, "Oh yeah, we did that fully
with their cooperation. It's not the product of some
fans' overworked imagination." And number nine is a
scratch and sniff discs. If you're an old school,
PlayStation 1 haver from the UK, maybe this is something
you fondly remember, but I did not know this was a thing. You see, I am not from the UK. I'm not sure if there's an interview or any kind of explanation out there, but out of all the games that
came out on PlayStation 1, there's two that had proprietary
scratch and sniff discs. Those games were "Grand
Turismo 2" and "FIFA 2001," which, neither of which I can figure out why I would want to smell. Check out this picture we found of the "Grand Turismo 2" disc case. It's got these big bold letters saying, "Please rub the disc label of the GT Mode gently with your
fingertips or a small cloth to experience the
authentic pit-stop smell." To which I say what, why? "FIFA 1" ain't so fancy about it. She's got one line printed
directly on the disc, "Smell the pitch, scratch and sniff." Which I guess like a
grass smell could be nice. But I can't figure out
why you would do this. I want to know why you would do this but nobody's gonna tell
me why you would do this. Oh my dear bird, the reason why we made
scratch and sniff discs is because it still smells like the 1800s here in jolly old England. And well, we wanted to smell
"Grand Turismo 2," duh. And number eight, Steve
Wozniak, co-founder of Apple secretly submitted
scores to Nintendo Power. Here's a crossover I
never expected to see. Other than Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak is the other Apple guy. On top of being a pioneer of the personal computer revolution, he's also a "Tetris" whizz. And according to the man himself
from this Q&A on Gizmoto, he was the number one
top scorer in "Tetris" through 1988 on these
self-submitted leaderboards in Nintendo Power Magazine. He was so good that Nintendo told him to stop submitting his name because he was dominating the leaderboard. That's a funny enough story, but old Steve took things a step further and actually submitted his name in secret instead of backing down. He just spelled his name backwards and said it was from the
town Next over Saratoga rather than Los Gatos, and it worked. It all sounds like a tall tale, but people on Reddit looked it up. It's actually true. There it is, Evets Kainzow
from Saratoga, California with a pretty legit "Tetris" score. And number seven, you ever wonder where the name Xbox comes from? Well, you know, Direct X, the thing that you're forced to update every time you download a game off Steam? Well, the console first
was started as a project by the Direct X team at Microsoft. Quick note, if you don't
know what Direct X even is, it's an API that allows
for direct access, get it, to computer hardware by bypassing Windows. Basically it's how games get
access to a graphics card when you're using Window. It's important and it's made by Microsoft. There were a lot of names
for the system early on, like the Windows Entertainment Project, which is way cooler sounding than Xbox. (Falcon chuckles) They're not even believable
as like a joke, is it? Also, Microsoft Total Gaming, which sounds like breakfast cereal, but the name they kept coming
back to was the Direct Xbox, like Direct X, but in a box. It's pretty obvious in hindsight. Somewhere in an email conversation they cut the Direct part
out and the Xbox was born. Apparently the marketing department actually didn't like the name and assumed that if they focus
tested people would hate it. But as it turns out, people thought it was
the best name by far. And number six, video games
used to be made on graph paper. Before PC creation tools became
commonplace and easy to use, the art of making video
games is a lot more analog. Instead of making worlds using
some kind of level editor or engine software, a lot of the time things
like levels and game assets had to be carefully drawn
by hand by designers and then handed off to
programmers to digitize. Like that's how games like "Super Mario Brothers III" were made by painstakingly drawing
them out in exact detail by laying tracing paper over graph paper. The process took forever. Like they were often
working morning to night just trying to draw levels. And even when the drawing was done, it could take programmers all day to get to the next level in the game. So if there were any problems, they'd have to start the
whole thing over again. And it's a hell of a process. So much of making games was done on paper and crayons back in those, just look at this "Zelda"
design document stuff. There's a reason so many of these games had a rigid grid-based format 'cause they were made on paper that had a rigid grid, graph paper. And number five, "Final
Fantasy XIV's" big turnaround can be credited to Excel spreadsheets. The Excel spreadsheet is basically the modern
day version of graph paper. And you'd be shocked at by how much game designers and developers
rely on Excel to make games. Many who worked on "Final
Fantasy XIV's" expensive, but ultimately successful turnaround, credit that game's success to Excel. But that's just the start of it because they're still using
these spreadsheets extensively, not just to communicate with
one another and share ideas, but literally to build encounters and elements from the game. Like look at this tweet from Perch Bird, which shows a spreadsheet
that plans out a boss fight from the Shadow Bringer expansion. You'd think this sort
of thing would be done using engine tools or some
kind of special hardware, but no, it is an Excel
document and that's it. Like it's not anything other than that. This stuff doesn't look like
it's just planning either. It looks like a lot of the hard data that's gonna get programmed into the game, which is pretty nuts. Programming in general is kind
of alchemy to me as it is, but stuff like this gives
me a newfound respect for the effort developers
put into making games. I don't get this. I don't understand it at all. And number four, most people
who worked on "Goldeneye 007" had never worked on a game before. So this is a legendary game. It's basically what popularized
first person shooters in an audience outside of
the core PC "Doom" audience. It also innovated the
genre pretty heavily. So imagine my surprise when I found out that not only was it mostly made by first time developers who'd never worked on a game before, but also that somewhere between
nine and 12 people made it. In an age where 100s,
if not 1000s of people are working on a single AAA game, and that's normal, The fact that something that sold so much and is so beloved was only made by a dozen or less people, is just nuts. The funny thing about reading
developer stories at the time was that for the most
part, they just had no idea what they were doing and they didn't realize what
they were making either. They just threw together whatever they thought
would be fun and that's it. Their biggest inspiration
wasn't even "Doom" or any other FPS from the time, their main inspiration was "Virtua Cop," which actually does make some sense because one of the few actually
experienced devs on the game had worked on the arcade
version of "Killer Instinct". So it makes sense that they
had arcade games on the brain. From the stories I've seen, the crunch on this game
was absolutely crazy. They're working 10 to 12
hour days, seven days a week for a really long period of time. But it sounds like their
enthusiasm for the project was really what kept them going. And I guess that's why the game ended up being unique as hell. The guys weren't just
trying to, eight games that they were playing at the time, they were trying to do something new. Could have been a disaster too. But this handful of developers managed to make a working game
that wasn't just playable, it was legendary and has a
major influence on the genre. And number three, "Majora's
Mask" was made on a bet. This game is a favorite among "Legend of Zelda" fans for a reason. It's got a unique atmosphere, it's got weird time travel mechanics. The time loop thing hadn't been done in a lot of games at that point, especially not any 3D
ones that I can remember. At least no mainstream ones. And originally the follow
up to "Ocarina of Time" wasn't meant to be that ambitious. According to an Iwata Asks interview, the original version was just gonna be a Master Quest version
called "Err of Zelda," which would mirror the map and remix the dungeons to be tougher. But that really, I mean that was it. Eiji Aonuma, the creator
of "Majora's Mask," wanted to make something
more ambitious though. So Shakiro Miyamoto challenged him to make a Zelda game within a year. Otherwise they just put
out the Master Quest game. Eiji Aonuma stepped up to the challenge and managed to make the
follow up in last than a year, mostly by reusing assets
from the original game. "Majora's Mask" overall is a smaller game, but what it does differently really does give it a unique feel. The time travel mechanics alone, make it one of the most ambitious games in the series. So finding out that it
only took a year to make and that it was essentially made on a bet, it makes it even more impressive that the game we actually got ended up being as good as it was. And number two, how video game screenshots were done before Capture tools. I can't understate how easy we have it now compared to capturing footage and taking screenshots from games. It's trivial on the PC now. And also basically every modern console has features built in like this. But back in the early 80s, getting a clear picture of a game was not an easy thing to do. Most of the time the
only real option you had was to take a picture of the screen, which meant you contended
with light exposure, scan lines, fuzzy transfers. You had to use film, you had to take it to the
store to get it developed. It was an ordeal even if you
managed to get a good picture. Even with the right tools
for the job, it was a lot. And there were lots of
problems like this picture posted by Kareem 2K on r/gaming, which shows the kind of
thing people had to do to get pictures of their computer screens. It's basically a giant viewfinder you slapped over the PC monitor to block out all reflections, it's insane. Even with stuff like this though, it really wasn't a certainty
you would get a decent picture. Imagine trying to get pictures of something like a Game Boy. For handhelds they basically
had to use special tools like The Wide Boy, which was used to play
Game Boy games on the TV before the Super Game Boy for the Super Nintendo was even available. Getting screenshots is as
easy as pressing a button now, but in the early days it
required expensive equipment, skill and patience. And finally at number one, where Ecco the Dolphin's name comes from. The "Ecco" games are some of the weirdest, most out there games of all time. And there's the reason for that. You ever wonder where the name comes from? Well, you're probably aware
of the cliches about dolphins, like they're more intelligent than humans. All that came from this
Duke named John C. Lilly. He's a complete madman
who was totally obsessed with communicating with dolphins. So what does that have to do with ecco? Well, I'm not making this up, but while in a sensory
isolation chamber high on LSD, Lilly says he was contacted by an alien being calling itself the Earth Coincidence
Control Office, AKA Ecco. That's why Ecco the Dolphin is called that because some drug adult
lunatic obsessed with dolphins also believed that he
was contacted by aliens who ran a bureau that had that as a
abbreviation, it's crazy. But at least it kind of explains why aliens show up in the
dolphin game for whatever reason. It also explains why the game's kind of
psychedelic in general. There were some real weirdos studying dolphins back in the day. And when I say studying, I don't want to get into exactly
what we mean by that word, but let's just say it carries
some form of implication. You do not want to know what Margaret Howe Lovatt got up to. The dolphin people are gross. At least allegedly pretty gross. Why anyone would decide
to make a game based on it and all that nonsense, I don't know. But it's pretty wild stuff and at least it kind of explains what the hell is up with the "Ecco" games. And that's all for today. Leave us a comment, let
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