How VHS Gaming Conned Us | Nostalgia Nerd

this vhs production is sponsored by squarespace vhs game consoles the 80s were flooded with more of them than you might hope more than should legally be allowed to exist and what's more is we poured over these machines we bought these machines and we even got these machines for christmas and then spent the whole of boxing day weeping into a pillow so what happened here were we scammed duped conned manipulated or was there actually more to these self-proclaimed consoles than we ever believed possible to really understand why these machines exist you have to get into the mind of the toy company executive you have to understand how these folks work and then you have to force yourself into their damp psychotic shoes pitch of a scene it's 1985 and the nintendo entertainment system has just landed in north america here was a console that blew every other games machine out of the water tired atari consoles didn't stand a chance even the graphically impressive colecovision was left in the nes's wake and after a lull in the industry america was quickly gaming again harder than ever before so what do you bring to this table well sega brought their master system and that did well in regions that the nes hadn't yet conquered such as europe and australia but for most toy companies they were completely unprepared for this resurgence and so they needed something fast and something impressive so what if you could offer gamers graphics that were the same as a tv show that were essentially real life i mean that was the goal wasn't it interactive tv people would snap that up in droves in a sense it had already been done in the arcades with cabinets such as dragon's lair and cobra command and to great fanfare so what if that inherently expensive laserdisc technology could somehow be brought into living rooms around the world and better yet at a price that would undermine the nes step up at the hs it's your time to shine [Music] now contrary to popular belief it was actually a company known as connor toys that would provide the basis of systems interacting with good old-fashioned vhs the first was the connor video smarts released in 1986 a rudimentary gaming device for under fives that asked questions answerable using the color coded pads on the console by connecting your tv or vcr audio out to the video smarts it would identify a tone after each question which varied in pitch this pitch enabled the console to understand which input was correct and if so you'd get a congratulatory sound the wrong answer would punish you with a different sound most of the videos were freaky as hell featuring this bizarre bear character thankfully older kids would receive the connor computer smarts the following year that wasn't quite as upsetting but relied on the same method to interact with the vhs encoding a few more possibilities into the tone and offering several interactive experiences look at the word on the screen and tell me if it is singular meaning one or plural meaning more than one but these first steps by connor would actually go on to inspire another toy company ironically a toy company that was actually helping to push the nes to success worlds of wonder wow founded in 1985 out of fremont california at its helm was former president of atari sales don kingsborough their first product had actually made use of cassette technology teddy ruxpin a cuddly bear that used audio cassette to tell a story seemingly from its own mouth now this wasn't a vhs but these cassettes were cunning in that they encoded extra data into the left audio track this data track would tell ruxpin how to move as he was reading the story contained in the right audio track pretty neat and of course ruckspin was a huge success their next highly successful product was laser tag launching in 1986. anyone who went to quasar or megazone in the 80s will be familiar with this concept you clip a pack to your chest grab a light gun and then jewel your foes trying to register the most hits against your opponents the same year nintendo of america would actually contract wow to distribute venez into high street retailers this was a savvy tactic designed to defeat the stigma associated with video games after their drop in sales a few years prior by associating the system with a highly successful and well-known toy manufacturer wow products were selling hot and fast so with their backing what toy shop in their right mind would pass up stocking the nes the strategy worked with the nes accepted into every shop going and selling bucket loads proving once and for all that video games were not just a passing fad so with all this under their belt the next logical step would be for wow to combine these three huge successes into one devastatingly successful product following in connor's footsteps i mean what could go wrong enter the action max poised to be world of wonder's third incredibly successful product and all this for only 99 in the us or about 79 pounds in the uk almost half the cost of an nes or sega [Music] i mean he seems excited and on the face of it this console looked and sounded incredible the first real action game system you get a light phaser something that at least resembles a console headphones something called a score signal and there's a game sonic fury setup is pretty straightforward the only lead that connects from the vcr to the console is an audio out and that's only if your vcr has one it's not essential so you simply insert some batteries and plug the gun and then this light into the console the light then sticks to your tv using a literal suction cup and this is where doubts start to creep in have you been misled was this going to be a quality gaming experience unit every time the circle starts flashing you should see the score start kilting the bundled title sonic theory takes you through some calibration checks and then you're into the action and that's when you really realized that this was just a standard vhs tape i mean of course it is what else could it have been the phrasing of the other pilots is as carefully orchestrated as possible to make sure they're never confirming that you've just made a definite hit or missed entirely because ultimately they have no idea the cassette will always play out exactly the same every time you run it regardless of your performance when an enemy is destroyed it's intentionally made so you don't know whether the fire came from you or your teammates we've been conned conned by the marketing conned by our own naivety but we're not entirely to blame here there's more to this hustle than meets the eye it took another altogether more interesting element to completely bamboozle us and that's the fact that this actually needed to be a working experience if in the loosest sense of course not everyone would jump on board but some had to at least believe there was something here worth investing in something deeper than a video cassette and that's not as easy as you might think so here's the real con converting a vcr and a vhs into anything other than a passive experience and that's what we're going to explore the action max was a showcase in fantastic marketing so imagine what worlds of wonder could have done with a squarespace website it would draw you in like vhs visuals to an 8-bit gamer there would be dramatic visuals of the console looking just like a console should edited into place in seconds there would be reams of information about how great a machine it is or seo optimized they'd even have pictures taken in the middle of the action viewable on mobile or desktop and all thanks to squarespace and if they watched this video they'd be able to do it all for 10 off their first website or custom domain using the link below those cunning worlds of wonder executives they know all the tricks [Music] with a normal light gun attached to a console typically when you press the trigger the screen will blank apart from the section where an enemy resides which flashes white if your light gun is pointed at this light as the crt gun scans across then a diode in the gun senses it and registers a hit back to the console if no light is sensed then you've missed that's fine but it's hardly possible to integrate that with a video cassette your typical vcr doesn't know or care when you've pressed a trigger so how can the action max tell where you're aiming well that red light which suckers onto your tv also contains a diode which senses light from this circle embedded into the corner of each video frame let's call it the master sensor so when a flashing enemy a target appears on screen this circle will strobe at exactly the same frequency so when you point and fire your gun the action max compares the light it is receiving from your guns diode against the light it is receiving from the master sensor if a pattern matches then congratulations you've shot an enemy not that you'd know it on screen of course in fact the only way you can tell is your point total will increase on the console's lcd display but cunningly action max titles also contain innocence or friendly fire targets the lights on these targets actually flash out of sync with the master sensor and so if you aim and fire at one the console will again compare the light pattern notice that they are out of sync and deduct points from your score deducing that you've just shot a friendly this method also allowed the console to have an additional scoring mode called reflex by having a constant master sensor the action max knew as soon as a target entered the screen and so in this mode the shorter the delay between that and you hitting the target would result in more points due to the unique nature of the dual sensor you can sometimes even run the console on an lcd tv as long as the picture is bright enough something of a novelty for light guns the top of the console has some controls we've got a pot for volume there's also a pot that tweaks the detection sensitivity allowing you to stand closer or further away from your tv regardless though the gameplay is identical for each of the five titles available on the system with the loosest of storylines on show [Music] there was a sixth title fright night but it was canned at the last minute probably the best for everyone involved in 1988 worlds of wonder filed for bankruptcy but here's where vhs gaming gets really interesting [Music] none of the problems encountered by worlds of wonder would stop a company called select merchandise from stepping up in fact select merchandise were already well known for ripping off other toy designs often with horrifying results here's their rip-off of teddy ruxpin gabby bear you wouldn't want to meet him in a dark alleyway let alone leave him alone with your child but select merchandise weren't altogether stupid they realized that the action max wasn't entirely successful and licensed their video challenger product to takara tomy in japan takara tomy who would later become just tomy obviously thought with their clout this device had legs and in many ways it did released in 1987 in japan shortly after the action max here was a system designed to offer almost exactly the same experience but in a much more low-key and simple manner and that is perhaps the reason why it managed to do a lot better oh and the price it was far cheaper than the action max retailing for only 59 pounds in the uk through distributor bandai in 1988. in fact my friend michael actually owned one of these in the 80s and i was fortunate or unfortunate enough to play it now let me tell you what this doesn't have well wires for starters and also reflex mode it lacks the master sensor to make that possible but let me tell you what it does have and this is key various scoring levels depending on the target you hit the ability to be hit yourself an aiming sight which actually lights up if you're hit or you score points a six-digit lcd scoring panel and frankly a better selection of software sorry video cassettes here was a system that was cheaper and because of all those features a lot more fun than the action max this is one toy that select merchandise should have hung onto here's an exclusive uk title teenage mutant hero turtles because ninja was just a step too far for us island dwellers in the 80s a combination of the national viewers and listeners association and the gutter press made sure of that now sure we have to shoot flying pizzas but what's key is how those pizzas appear like the action max a pulsating frequency is detected by the gun to determine targets but unlike the action max enemies pulsate at different rates allowing more points to be awarded for hitting smaller targets also unlike the action max the diode constantly receives data even without the trigger being pulled so if you happen to be aiming at a firing enemy then the challenger will detect that frequency and deduct points from your score pretty neat it's also not as harsh on the eyes the pulsating graphics are interlaced rather than a solid block which reduces the intensity of the flashes making it easier to cope with tomy would also release actual video game based experiences such as roadblaster and afterburner which actually work really well and offer you those arcade graphics we all lusted for in the home i mean no one really knows what's happening in afterburner anyway so it plays pretty much the same another limitation of the action max defeated here is simultaneous multiplayer any number of players can grab a pistol and all shoot at the same tv screen comparing scores afterwards that's quite a compelling notion alternatively you can just dual wield and take down godzilla just as god intended the video challenger lasted a few years and certainly did better than the action max but nothing groundbreaking but tomi weren't the only company who wanted to jump on this dubious bandwagon enter mattel of course with captain power and the soldiers of fortune again in 1987 and again making use of vhs technology although this was an instance of a tv show coming first rather than the toy landmark entertainment group had a new concept dreamt up by gary goddard and tony christopher of a sci-fi show set in a dystopian future that would appeal to the entire family a shared viewing experience that would contain adult themes whilst remaining accessible for children a bit like a darker star trek it just so happened that mattel had also caught wind of this light gun tv based technology and wanted a show to pair it with voila the concept was born this was the standard ship you could purchase and with it came a videotape but the tv show also contained segments with which the toys could interact as well offering well perhaps the first streamed game experience fundamentally the captain power toy range worked identically to the video challenger in fact they're almost interchangeable with each other's video content but the toys had a couple of extra neat tricks the first was having a set number of lives if you were hit by too much enemy fire then your fighter's cockpit would eject and your game was over second was that the toys could be used against each other just like laser tag guns each vehicle had both a light emitter and a receiver the light emitter would produce the same frequency pulses as the tv show therefore allowing the effect to be mimicked in one-on-one battles sadly captain power only lasted one season a combination of poor show airing times usually at six am in the morning i mean what kind of mental family is all up at that time and an unclear target audience combined with high production costs meant it was a series destined for failure well worth taking a look at now though if you're fans of dystopian sci-fi now it would be difficult to class some of these products as games consoles despite their libraries of vhs tapes i'm really just interested in how these things work now even if they are quick buck toys jumping on the latest technology fad which brings us on to the sega video driver worth a passing mention at least distributed by tycho in the united states and action gt over here in the uk now this is a rather odd one and more of a gimmicky interaction than anything we've seen so far unlike the light guns here is an entire rig that fits in front of your typically sized crt [Music] depending on your pack there are two vhs titles california chase and road race also known as police pursuit and road racer in this setup flashing white lights at the bottom of the video frame denote obstacles which you must avoid if your little car is in the path of these lights when they flash then the front mounted sensor picks it up and you stop scoring points points are only awarded for general avoidance and are represented via this mechanical scoreboard although it's collectible now the video driver wasn't a particularly successful toy and was discontinued shortly after so that brings us on to the end of vhs interactivity no no of course it doesn't there's more but this is the point at which things could have taken a turn for the better and actually a step much closer to an actual game console if the hasbro control vision had ever made it into production interestingly the control vision story actually begins back in 1985 before any of these other gaming devices existed and was designed to go up against the nes its code name was nemo standing officially for never ever mentioned outside but also later coined by rob fullup as nintendo ends mid-october for its supposed release in autumn 1988. this is the console that was poised to really be the dragon's lair experience for the home the only problem was it needed a lot of development to get there the original concept was down to a company called axelon originally founded by nolan bushnell using a frankenstein kiliko vision as a prototype but with funding required would splinter off into hasbro's interactive division along with numerous industry brains including tom zito mark tummel atari programmer rob phillip and pitfall creator david crane at the core of this console to be was naturally the vhs tape but this wasn't just a one way blinkfest of lights the concept of nemo was altogether different and indeed some of the games originally designed for it namely night trap and sewer shark would later make their way to the sega mega cd so how would this fmv festival of interaction work from a humble video cassette well the video and audio outputs of the vhs would connect up to the control vision console the control vision would then process the input in real time and allow four different video tracks to be available to the player along with some other buffered visuals how it did this was both incredibly impressive and incredibly simple the ustv system consists of 480 interlaced lines which are refreshed at around 60 times per second it's actually slightly less than that but we'll call it 60. first the odd numbered lines are drawn and this constitutes one field next to the even numbered lines are drawn another separate field together these fields make one frame which results in a 30 frames per second video stream now usually each field is a continuation of the previous but a control vision vhs would instead have two completely distinct fields hidden in a single frame one might be a view of the living room the other might be the bedroom the control vision would then extract these images resulting in two 240p frames well in an ideal world the reality is that vhs can't resolve the same level of detail as a live broadcast and so it's actually lower than this but still adequate for gaming the next vhs frame would then hold yet another two completely different fields or scenes giving us four distinct tracks all the control vision was doing was just making use of the inherent characteristics of an ntsc signal and how vhs stores frames which could also be adapted for a power signal if the console made it overseas the only catch was the halved vertical resolution for each scene and halved frame rate but for a video game system this would have still looked incredible combined with some buffered loops fed in at the start of the vhs tape the control vision would then be able to switch between four continually live scenes and a multitude of short scenes held in ram allowing what would feel like a fully interactive video game experience well as long as you count night trap and sewer shark as fully interactive experiences unfortunately as 1988 rolled on various factors combined which caused hasbro to drop a plan the cost of vram chips was skyrocketing which would have forced the console price higher than the nes and combined with the production costs of making each of these games which was coming in at about a million dollars it wasn't seen feasible plus cd-rom was just becoming an affordable medium for doing the same thing as laserdisc but cheaper and better hence where the mega cd came in a few years later and these games thanks to tom zito's digital pictures finally saw the light of day but there was a console that did make it to market that was more interactive and still based around vhs tapes enter the view master interactive vision in 1989 you remember view master they made those little red slideshow gadgets but now they were stepping up their imagination into the magical world of home video view master had got wind of hasbro's potential new console and wanted a slice of that interactive television pie but they were going to do it a whole lot cheaper but still quite effectively it may look strange almost like a building pulled from the ass of victor kramarenko but it's also well it's strange let's be honest this is a system that was only available in the states and so it needs an ntsc television to hook it up to the vcr composite picture and audio need to plug into the console then the rf output goes from the interactive vision to your tv plug in the funky controller and we get a load of games like sesame street yay what see this yes let's look at it yes this says no now rather than separate video tracks the view master offers two distinct audio tracks the first is just your standard vhs audio track the second is encoded in this waveform down the left hand side of the screen that's cool because as long as you're using muppets for example you can get both audio tracks to match the on-screen mouths and actions see she wasn't worried about the globe she was worried about timmy timmy's our son oh that to me what's he up to this time oh captain what are we going to do [Music] giving you a feeling that your changing outcomes regardless of the videotape being the same thanks to matt from replay retro for letting me use this footage as i had some issues given my vcr is a pal vcr the right hand side of the frame contains a data spool which tells the console when to display other visuals or wait for input a border covers this data in normal use because the interactive vision can also superimpose graphics on top of the vcr signal allowing game elements to be shown or for part of the image to be concealed this allows for a kind of hack job multi-track feature where different outcomes can be presented simply by covering up the unwanted outcome with a graphic so this system allows for actually a surprising deal of interactivity and even randomness to events for example in this egg searching game the console can choose to change which chickens the eggs are hidden behind each time offering some degree of replay value six muppet-based titles were available and one disney title called cartoon arcade like the others the interactive vision ended up on the inevitable trash pile having never made it outside of the u.s and it was discontinued by the end of 1990 which brings us to a side note of vhs gaming in 1991 the atmosphere or in some regions nightmare board game was released created by australians philip tanner and brett clements this is another form of vhs gaming but your main focus here is the board game itself with the vhs acting as more of a freaky timer than anything else and actually it's a concept which worked incredibly well you can play atmosphere 10 times in a row and the experience will always be different because of the randomness injected by the board game itself something which is lacking in a lot of these consoles i want to play with the young one now hansen equally as terrifying around this time tomy decided to have another stab at vhs interactivity and so released their take on teddy ruxpin tv teddy this remarkably heavy chap would get filled with batteries and then sit on your sofa waiting to receive signals from an rf transmitter connected to your vcr video out which then loops into the back of the tv encoded within the video is a data stream that is transmitted to tv teddy telling him what to say and how to act basically he won't shut up wow that's pretty cool tv teddy works on a similar basis to the interactive vision in the overscan area to the left is a gray bar which actually encodes wave data into each of the horizontal scan lines with white a peak and black indicating a trough giving us a transmitted waveform about equivalent to a phone call eight kilohertz hence why he sounds like this [Music] t can stand for telephone like a one in your home t can stand for lots of things oh thank christ for that and so you might think we've reached the very limits of vhs gaming the heights of what is possible has been squeezed out of a medium intended really to watch movies on at home and you're probably right but there was one further trick up its sleeve welcome to the world of toby terrier and his video pals a video and toy line from 1993 produced by tiger electronics [Music] i think he might need a vet to be honest i happen to have one in a shop showcase which is interesting enough especially taking it apart but it also gives you an insight into the less rose tinted version of the 90s now toby uses veil to receive data from the tv veil stands for video encoded in visible light and it's a technology created by veil interactive technologies compatible with most video signals what it does is fairly simple we spoke earlier about how the ntsc signal is broken up into 480 scanlines well what veil does is discreetly vary the average luminance of a set of these lines to encode a bit by doing this throughout the entire frame it can encode 120 bits per second this isn't perceptible to the human eye at all but toby terrier over here has a sensor on his collar that can pick up on this variation and so when pointed at the tv can be programmed to perform appropriate actions for what's on screen toby was even more like a console than you might think you could plug in various cartridges containing different phrases for different experiences this technology was taken to another tiger toy in 1994 called battle vision this stepped up the interaction by requiring you to hit certain guns at certain points during the video in order to thwart off enemy attacks if you fail to do so that gun would blow up at the end of the video you'd be left with a battle station in a varying state of disarray depending on how well you'd performed in a way it's like an upgraded version of the simon electronic game this technology was further utilized in the batman animated series produced from 2004 to 2008 with kids able to purchase all kinds of batman accessories which would interact with their morning tv viewing but this really spells the end for vhs gaming by that point the video cassette had well and truly been phased out and instead we had dvd of course dvd allowed for its own interactive experiences which were really just evolved versions of the vhs game we even had a dvd-based console such as the new one by vm labs and hopefully once i've acquired a controller for this one that's something else we can look into in the future as for us being conned by vhs gaming we were only really conned because these developers these engineers were able to stretch the cassette format so very far but then cond isn't the right word convinced is more apt we were convinced that vhs could be interactive we were convinced that it could be entertaining and you know what actually it was if only for a short while a combination of naivety and willingness to believe to demand better graphics at the time led us down this path and so it was really the exact right time to unleash this combination of entertainment onto the world what was truly manipulated here was the format of videotape itself a format designed exclusively for playing and recording non-interactive linear watchable content which had been almost transmogrified into a world of interactive gaming almost until next time i've been nostalgia nerd [Music] toodaloo [Music] do [Music] you

Channel: Nostalgia Nerd

Views: 705,823

Keywords: game console, action max, vhs

Id: WI133HNGNfk

Length: 37min 32sec (2252 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 31 2021