Retro Warriors 501 - Tengen

Ladies and gentlemen welcome to Russia where is it so 501? Woo! As we host a Baker and I always end up doing 5'5", but human Chris Saturn. Justin?

Saturn, we made 500 of these. Yeah. And now we can just phone it in. Yeah.

Well, we've shown it like we weren't before. Shush, shush up. I don't know that. Sorry, yeah, yeah.

No, we were very serious professionals. And now we're over, we've created our body of work, you know. And now we can just be the later Rush albums, where it's still, you know, it's still pretty good, but it's not as good, you know, as the earlier stuff. Yeah.

Um, you know, so that's where we are now. Late era Rush albums. I don't remember some guy I used to work with. I don't remember who was, but at one point they told me that they always get Rush confused with Beck.

I was like, how? Well, they're both single words. Yeah, I guess. So they also get to make up with share.

I think back share rush. Well, basically the same tool, all the same tool, journey, Boston. Journey is more than four four letters. No, I just meant like it's just one word.

Oh, single word. Yeah, Prince. Single word. Prince.

Yeah. Until it's after the later stuff when he was artists, formerly known as Yeah, that is different. That's a different thing. It's all this.

Usher. You know, all the. Like, um, we have the guy's own at the end of the episode. Oh, we're not supposed to call that.

We have the after party with our producer guy. I really wanted you to say how it's written where it's a question marketing like guy. So I'm putting the end of the show notes here guy is here. And then I was like, oh, is it our zone?

Oh, is it? Yeah. It was our zone, but only for boys. Yeah.

I was I was I was talking on, uh, let me know the date of someone about something and I was like, yeah, you know, like back in the 90s when all toys had to be a boy version in a girl version and there could never be a version that was for non gender gender. Yeah. Yeah. It was always like, oh, this is the boy version of the girl version and every toy had one.

So like for every polypocket, there was a mad Max and I felt like an insane person explaining this, this inevitable, like 20 year old. I was like, now it's how it used to be. Yeah. It was very weird.

Um, Toy aisles in stores are still kind of gender specific, but it's a little, it's slightly, there's a little more fuzz between them. Like there's some gray aisles in the middle that you're like, yeah, it's kind of swing either way. Uh, Lego used to always be in the boy area. Is it non-gender now?

It is. It is now for stores that do separate that way. It's now kind of in the middle. You got the middle section.

That's, that's kind of a stuff like a Lego and things like that. That kind of hits hits both sections. And then I don't know what we're talking about this. I'm going to go here.

Uh, guys get here at the end of the show. That's our point. So stay tuned after the ending theme to hear our producer guys show up. He's going to be on like episode four, nine, nine or five hundred, but he was sick.

So he ended up not doing that. But you know that because you listened to last episode, didn't you? Did you? A good little listener.

I can't get too weird yet. This is our first show of the night. Yeah. My week.

Yes, sir. I spent many, many, many hours fighting with Linux. My old friend has betrayed me. Linux hates me now.

I when I was at my current laptop with Linux, I learned that I had to use minimum kernel 6.10 if I wanted everything to work. Yeah. And this is on a 11th gen processor. So if you want to use an 11th gen processor, you have to use 6.10.

If you want everything to work, my computer is, I was going to look it up. I got it right here. So I bought this laptop right about a year ago. And at the time, the framework 16 had just launched and I was really, really wanting that, but reviews were still super early and there was a little, some early bumps in the road and I was just too nervous spending that much money on something that was as yet unproven.

So I ended up with this one. It's a 13th gen Intel processor. So you probably need the 13th, 6.13 kernel with a RTX 40 80s and Nvidia card, which is another problem. And multiple basic hardware functions do not work.

I cannot. My main problem was I have three monitors. So I have my laptop on a stand, which is its own monitor and then I have two monitors connected and it flat out will not do three monitors and I went back and forth and discord with some Linux support people and they finally just were like, you need to file a bug report with Nvidia. It was that bad.

It was, you need to talk to the manufacturer level bad and I was like, Oh, so I'm fucked. Like this isn't going to work. Go work. I bad frame timings and games.

My sound doesn't work unless I run this one specific hand written system service script that I have to manually add into every one of these installations that I do. And there were a couple of just weird issues like a non functional. I went through manjaro. I went through mint.

I went through pop OS bazite wouldn't even install just straight up fatal error during installation. Each of these distros I used every kernel they had available that was passed like 6.5 could just this laptop will not fucking accept Linux. It just flat out. I've been hearing some real bad things about manjar lately.

Really apparently they have their own separate repositories for certain applications. But the thing is because arches rolling and it will pull DLLs and libraries or not deal libraries from the main arch server. If those libraries get updated and you're pulling the older version from the manjaro server, it can break your entire OS. So well, my OS broke itself.

All right. I've just decided this laptop is just a Windows 11 laptop. A lot of the stem from I'm trying to I've. Decorpertize yourself.

Decorpertize myself. My Facebook is scheduled for deletion. I'm getting off of like Google Photos. We deleted the shows Instagram and Twitter.

We don't use any of those things anyway. Right. But it's just my data floating out there that doesn't get used and who knows how it's getting used by someone else. Right.

And you know, I've been on Federated Social Media. So I'm doing Mastodon and Limi and stuff and I was running PCAP on my phone for a couple days to see what all apps I have that are calling home and how can I deblote a little bit and just sort of separate myself a little bit from all the operations the debloted version of Windows 11. No, I'm not. I'm on these regular home edition, but I've got all the telemetry and stuff all turned off.

If somebody who's made a debloted version that gets rid of a lot of the pre installed stuff like a copilot and an edge and stuff like that. And even had copilot offered to me on my laptop yet. I've got it. So I've I don't know why, but I have it's weird because I re-installed when it was 11 on my laptop last night instantly grabbed.

I've not even tried to give it to me yet. I don't know why I'm waiting on it because I've already like the article bookmarked on like how to remove it. But so yeah, I was like, well, I'll go back to Linux. I made Linux on my computers for years, but I've always been like a budget king.

I buy the best bang for my buck three year old hardware and this was the first computer I ever bought that was like, I'm going to get the newest shit that I can. Yeah, that's a problem with Linux. I never do that and it didn't even occur to me that I was like, oh, yeah, you can't do that, Linux. You need that to your lag so that all your shit works without hassle.

I had I had tried to update my BIOS last night because Lenovo pushed a firmware update and Linux informed me about it because Lenovo does release all their firmware in such a way that you can install it through Linux through this Fwupd thing. Yeah. And so the known software manager pops up and is like, Hey, you got a firmware update. I'm like, cool, install it.

And it's like, no. It's because I've enabled secure boot on Linux and the firmware updater also needs a signed secure boot key. So I'm like, all right. So how do I get my signed secure boot key?

Yeah, it's like, I don't know, figure it out. And so I'm saying they're trying to figure out how to extract my secure boot key, but it also wants a certificate and I'm like, well, where do I get the certificate? It's like, I don't know, figure it out. And I couldn't figure it out.

And so finally, I was like, this is going to take less time for me to just install Windows 11 and update my firmware and then go back to Linux. And so I did in the second that Windows 11 installed instantly installed co-pilot. So I don't know how you managed to avoid it. I've been dodging it so far.

It popped up right between my start button and my search bar. There's like boom, co-pilot. I do not have it yet. Maybe I'll couple of updates behind.

I don't know. Unfortunately, the refresh, whatever, the super invasive thing where they record your screen is not compatible with my laptop. So I don't have to worry about that. Yeah.

I've just decided that future computers I get are going to be from Linux forward companies. It's going to be System 76 framework, Tuxedo, like any of these companies are like, no, we make computers for Linux by people that use Linux because I'm just so fucking sick of it. I'm so fucking sick of it. Yeah.

I'm conflicted because on the one end, I want to run Linux on everything. But on the other end, I always want to have bleeding edge tech. And so that's where you're at stuff. Yeah.

You know, a great, I've bleeding edge tech now and as much as I did, granted, this is a nice laptop. It's a good laptop. But Linux doesn't work on it. And that's that's a problem.

I also had to have a repair from the manufacturer twice. Yeah. So that doesn't bode well. No, that is not.

But outside of computing news, I this is kind of a weird thing to throw out there, but I get asked all the time about these two devices. I think because I've personally recommended them a lot and they show up a lot in the channels that we are tangentially related to. Sure. I've been talking a lot about the Miu Mini Plus for a long time.

And I recently picked up an RG 35xSP, which is still a terrible fucking name. And I think the SP might actually kind of be overtaking the Miu Mini as like my handheld du jour that for sure gets tossed in my pocket or bag when I leave the house. Okay. I think it I think it might be the one.

And when you said for sure gets tossed, I thought you're about to say in the trash in the trash. And I think it's because of RTC straight up. I don't play a lot of RTC games real time clock games. Yeah.

But what is there beyond the Pokemans? Pokemans. Oh, okay. All the Pokemans, ROM hacks.

But like it's something about having my Miu and knowing that I shouldn't play my RTC games or if I do it's going to be an extra hassle. It has just kind of funneled me into the SP. So if you're not if if you're somebody who is not at all interested in Pokemon, do you still recommend the you mean instead? I don't know.

I'm still I'm going back and forth on them. I just I'm like this is really just a follow up because when the SP came out, I was like, I don't know I was going to be my Miu Mini Plus and I'm noticing because I haven't both on my like next to my my bed. So when I go leave the house, I grab one of them. Yeah.

And it's been the SP the last couple weeks. I I have never grabbed a handheld to leave my house with us. Just not a consideration that they always go with me. Yeah.

If I'm leaving the house, I'm going to be in the car for an hour at least. So only if I know I'm going to like a place where I'm going to have a ton of downtime. Do I ever even consider bringing the house? Obviously, but usually what happens, I keep a bag in my car with some essentials and they usually one of them just lives in that bag.

So in the bag is like, you know, medications for me and my kid and a little first aid kit and a roll of toilet paper and I got a jug of water in the bag. I live in the middle of nowhere. People don't know. I have a very far from civilization.

Also, I finally got I finally got my 8-bit dough Xbox themes, clear, translucent, green plastic keyboard and mouse combo set. Gross. Yeah. And they're so but ugly and so fun.

Yeah, I saw Andrews the other night. Yeah. This is the Retro 87 keyboard. This is the Xbox like officially licensed version of it.

The Xbox button does open the game bar menu on Windows, which is cool. It's way heavier than my other because I have the family commerce 87. This one's noticeably heavier and it uses different switches. It uses Kale jellyfish X switches, which have a little different feel, but it's I mean, it's it's still a very nice keyboard like the other Retro 87 are.

And the mouse is okay. It's okay as it looks like it is, but it matches and that's what's important to me in a mouse is that it aesthetically matches. That's not even know you know. So I forgot to put in the notes, but I figure I'll talk about it since we were already just talking about computer.

Shit. Yeah. So last night while I was playing with Windows 11, I figured I would test out my external GPU, my Thunderbolt GPU on my laptop via Windows 11. Just see how it goes.

Sure. And I'm frustrated now. Oh no, because my laptop is running just a basic I5 with just Intel graphics, real basic laptop. My desktop here that I'm recording on is a 11th gen I7 with a RTX 3070, right?

So for its time, it's pretty good machine, right? Yeah. My little 11th gen I5 laptop with the external GPU was running game significantly better than my desktop significantly better than my desktop. Okay.

Like solid rock solid 60 frames per second at 1440p on Final Fantasy 7 rebirth. What's the hangout? I don't know. And my guess is it's on my desktop.

It's an older Windows installation and I got a bunch of other shit running all the time. I've got this board and everything. Yeah. Whereas on that laptop, it was a fresh clean Windows 11 installation with literally nothing else running.

Yeah. Also, maybe it's the external GPU. I had a RTX 2080, whereas on my desktop, I have a RTX 3070, but all the reviews I'm reading say that the 3070 should be more powerful than the 2080. So I don't know.

I don't know. And I'm frustrated by it. I think it also depends. Well, I was going to say depends on the title, but rebirth is pretty new.

It's yeah. It's like a brand new game. Like I tried literally game for game between the two and like Silent Hill two and Resident Evil seven rebirth with the two games I tried and both of them were performing better on my laptop, which should be shittier hardware than my desktop and it's frustrating. Plus it's going through Thunderbolt, which means that there's extra latency there.

Right. It's just frustrating. It's very frustrating. But but that's just something I wanted to try also once I did put my Linux drive back into my laptop because that's going to be my daily driver.

I thought I'd try my my eGPU again on that on the exact same games. Couldn't get either one of them to load on the 2080. And so I went back to my Radeon RX 6600 on the eGPU and plugged that in and they started they didn't run quite as well, but they ran. Sure.

But my problem is whenever I have the Radeon plugged into my external GPU, none of the gnome applications like console or settings or text editor will load. They all just showed garbage graphics and no one can tell me why or so. Thanks computers. Yep.

So I know it's it's good times. It's fun. It's exciting. It's funny.

We talk a lot about like console versus PC gaming that discord comes up pretty frequently and and like I have these moments where like PC gaming is so great. Like I didn't mention it, but I was playing the seventh heaven mod launcher for fall fantasy seven and like the amount of care for that upgrades I can do to that shit and make it so nice and so modern if it almost like with enough mods, it feels like the remake that I wish we had gotten. Yeah, I don't like the way it looks on there. You keep the TV stuff.

You know, you just you just talk late and you can have HD TV people if you know if you want to have the Lego guys back, but it's it's it's like the freedom to really kind of run your games the way you want and then sit here and bitch about computing and how much it sucks for 30 minutes at a time. And this is this is why when when you or other people say that the switch to has no place in a world with the steam deck. I have to argue that this which who does have a place for people who want to put a game and play it. I never said this is hyperbolic.

I never said that it has no place in a world. True true. I was exaggerating a little bit there. I do think the steam deck has to have a non zero effect on the switch market.

Possibly. Yeah. Point one is non zero. Yeah.

I do think the switch to probably won't hit the same sales of the switch one did. Just the world's different. The market regulation. But yeah, I don't see how it does.

I think it'll do well. Good. Yeah, for sure. Anyway, other than that, I've been still shipping away at the pixel remasters on my xbox.

I finally finished Final Fantasy five and immediately went to Final Fantasy one and Final Fantasy five is such a slog and Final Fantasy one is so fast that it felt like whiplash because it took me 40, 50 hours to finish Final Fantasy five and then I finished Final Fantasy one in one day and it took like seven inch hours. It's a swift one. Yeah. It's just so nice to go from this like because I'm also trying to hit all the achievements as I go.

So in short, I have to get all the blue magic. I have to fill out the the the the bister area not miss anything and it's so much of Final Fantasy five is single visit things and then you miss it and so I'm having to get all the chess on there and hit all the bisteries on there and so I'm having to do checklists and fill out spreadsheets and shit and then I get to Final Fantasy one and literally nothing is missable. So it's just like, I don't know. Do it when you want to do it and it's just such a nice relaxing breezy experience.

Every time I play FF one, most of my time is me just forgetting where shit is or what I need to do next. Of course, I had that game memorized. So I'm just rushing through it. You know, let's do some news.

First up, Sony will no longer require a PSN account on their PC games, meaning that I might buy some now, at least on the new ones. They haven't said anything about the existing entries and maybe they've already patched them by the time we're recording. I I purchased at launch heldovers to in return to because it not only required a PSN login, but it was bought and didn't work. And I was like, I have this game downloaded and installed it and I cannot play it because I can't sign into a fucking PSN.

Nice. It's got my back on the scene for that one. This is exciting news. Less barriers to playing the games that we own.

Yeah, supposedly. Oh, Sony has also issued a DMCA takedown request to a user who patched Bloodborne to run at 60 FPS because also fuck you for running the games you own. Right. You bastards.

Yeah. Bye Sony. They fixed your shit and you show up and why my guess my guess on this is this is a you know, 10 foil hat territory. But my guess is that they are about to release a patch for PS5 Pro to allow Bloodborne to run at 60 frames per second.

Yeah. And they don't want the competition. I can see that. I can see that theory.

Konami reports record high quarterly profits. Now that they're selling video games again, we get weird. How weird. Video game company sells video games and makes money.

This is insane. Someone someone get Capcom on the phone. Let them know that it can happen. It can say.

Capcom has been releasing plenty of games and hitting record high profits. I don't know what you're talking about. Arm Mega Man's. Well, true.

None of them are Mega Man's. And the monsters. Yeah, those are good. Yeah.

New custom firmware for the SD2PSX and NimCard Pro 2 allow both devices to work as a memory card, as free Mac boot and as an ISO launcher, all from the same devices is huge. Yes. For this particular hardware, this is great. Yeah.

So for PS2, suddenly you have a single memory card that acts as your hardware mod, your software mod and a memory card all in one. Yeah, that's great. And it'll do custom memory cards for each game as you play them. So you have basically as much storage as you can fit on an SD card, which is very exciting.

I saw my free Mac boot card from like years ago or whatever. Yeah, I know one. And I put free Mac boot on a sticky note and stuck to that card because you had to have both of you regular memory card because free Mac boot was only free Mac boot. And I'm dreading the day that I dig that all out again and the sticky note has fallen off and don't wish it my pajillion memory cards was the correct one.

Just plug a man until you find it. You're gonna have to. Someone has gotten past the Donkey Kong kill screen. Saturn, take that Billy Mitchell.

Come on over here. Anyone that has not seen King of Kong may have to. Oh man. If you got to watch it, it's required viewing just so that this news is funnier.

It's okay. Do we do an epsilon King of Kong? We all just watch it and enjoy it. I think we've all just watched it over the years.

I don't even remember us doing an episode. So we've really got to do an episode on it now that Billy Mitchell saga has continued since then God it's it has gotten sad though. Yeah, a supermarket in Costa Rica named Super Mario has won a lawsuit from Nintendo over copyright ownership. It's been called Super Mario since like the 70s or something.

It's been decades. So I'm trying to figure this out because the news articles I read said that the guy's been running the supermarket since the 60s or something. But then also they say that the supermarket was established in 2013. And I'm trying to figure out what they mean by this.

You're an inch or something. Well, I don't know if like he renamed it in 2013 or if because the guy's name is Mario that rocks it. Yeah. So I don't know.

I feel conflicted by the news articles that I've read on this. Maybe I just need to read a better news source. You're buying at gaming news articles are just headline nills that don't actually research anything. How dare you just.

Mega Man 11 is officially the best selling game in the series with sales over 2 million units. 2 million feels really low. Yeah. Especially especially compared to Resident Evil where they have multiple games that have sold 10 million now.

Yeah. And the reason they're not releasing more Mega Man that would be wild guess. It's possible. It's possible.

2 million feels so stupidly low. Like that's insanely low. Well, you have to remember most of the games in the series launched on consoles where 1 million was massive. Yeah, I guess that's true.

That's true. Atari announces breakout beyond for modern consoles and the Atari VCS for some reason is still making that worth people's while I guess. Yeah, as much as I want to mock it, I have to commend them for not immediately dropping support for the eight people who bought the VCS. That's true.

A lot of money into this garbage console. And Atari very easily could have just turned around and been like, now we're going to support real consoles now. That's true. That's fair.

I'll give you that. Yeah. Automosha 2 remaster is coming to the same platform that got the OneMusha 1 remaster a few years ago. Shocking nobody.

I'm a little shocked. I didn't think they were going to do another one because that first one didn't really seem to make any impact. I think they're just ramping up for that new one that's coming out. I think that's the reason.

All hands on deck for like, let's check out this new OneMusha. Yeah, which seems exciting. All right. L.R.G.

announces the L.R.G. vault, a new store that rotates surplus and out of stock items. You mean they're not actually sold out of these things, Saturn? They were doing this thing every year at New Year's where they would open up their wall house and let you buy the the drag.

Because they, you know, intentionally keep some over stock for all the terms. Right. I'll have to do this for, yeah, damaged goods or whatever. Yeah.

And if it had been a sufficient period of time, they would open up and let you buy them. And I noticed this year in New Year's they didn't do that. And I was a little upset and it looks like they're just trying to turn it into a new business. Thanks L.R.G.

Good job. I do. Like, does this not apply? Does this not apply that they're going to have a business strategy where they withhold even more stock possibly?

Yes. Do you keep their store stocked? Yeah. I disagree with so much of what they did.

Valve will now warn customers before purchase of early access games haven't received updates for a long period of time, which is good because I think something around 98% of games on Steam aren't early access or at least all the ones I fucking look at. So that's exciting to see. Yeah. On the other hand, some developers of early access games have come out and been like, look, we give our updates to the people who backed us on Kickstarter, backed us on Patreon or whatever.

And it doesn't always trickle to Steam regularly. And we're worried that this is going to make it look like we've abandoned our games when really we're just focusing on the people who are giving us money. True. But also the people on Steam are giving you money.

So, you know. Yeah, if you're going to be on the marketplace, then right. Right. Maintain it on the market.

Yeah. I know it's more work, but right. Times it's work. Yeah.

Sony has delisted a ton of shovelware and spam titles from the PS Instor headline from IG and the day before this happened. Quote, I could make fart fart booby fart the game and maybe it would eventually get taken down. Devs reveal why the consoles are drowning in e-slop. Yeah.

So I give Sony credit for taking some action on this, which they're way overdue for it. This should have happened three, four years ago. Yes. At least they are making some effort, Nintendo still no effort.

But I do hope to someday see fart fart booby fart the game. Yeah, I want to. I guarantee you it's already on Steam. Someone has already fucking made this like asset flip fart fart booby fart the game.

And finally, MGS Delta releasing on August 28th, PS5 version will include original APISCAPE crossover, XFAR original APISCAPE crossover from the original game. Xbox and PC versions will include a new Bomberman crossover, which is much more exciting. Yeah, I was looking at some form. I don't remember which one was.

I think it was an Xbox specific form because some dude said, Hey, I'm a PS5 owner and now I'm really jealous because I want the Bomberman crossover. And I agree. Bomberman is a better crossover there. Which brings us I imagine like, you know how like Snake will have to like crawl over C5 to not blow it up.

Yeah. Just imagining snake crawling over Bomberman's bombs as if that'll somehow make him safe. I'm MGS Delta might be I know it's gonna be like $80 at launch. I'm sure probably.

But I think it might be one that I pay full price for. I think I could see myself, although I'm waiting for the monetization of it. Right. Well, I want to see what this model looks like.

Well, Silent Hill too has so far had no monetization. True, true, true. Which I hope it is the same. I'm honestly slightly upset about it because the Xbox and PS2 greatest hits versions Silent Hill 2 included this extra scenario with bonus story.

Yeah. And I was kind of hoping it would get released as DLC for Silent Hill 2 and so far no word at all. So I hope that that still does get released as DLC. But so far they're just choosing to have no post release monetization.

I'd rather take none than risk things like persona 3 remaster. Here's the season pass like I don't know. No, please stop. Well, I would take a season pass over.

Here's the same game released at full price again. And it's the only way you can get this bonus content like persona 5 Royal. Yeah. Yeah.

Anyway, I really hope this release monetization just sucks in general and that's not going anymore. Yeah. That brings me to the top of your hand which is Atari games. So, Atari games?

Is that the one? Yeah. Wait, wait. Well, it's Tingen.

Oh no. We can't call it Atari games. We kind of can. We'll get to the Atari games.

Why don't they just call it Atari games Saturn? We'll get there. This is a company behind those weird black NES cartridges. The ones that didn't work is good.

At least in my experience. Sometimes they could. Initial thoughts on encounters. The only Tingen card I had growing up was Fantasy Zone.

We talked about it recently. You might have noticed we did a little bit of content about Fantasy Zone. Just a few hours of me frantically screaming into a microphone about Opa, Opa and his eyebrows for four and a half hours. Look, it's important, Justin.

It's important at the time. It is important to me. It's important to me. So, that's the only one I had.

And so, we just thought it was weird. We were like, yeah, this one is weird. And then when I got older, I learned about unlicensed cartridges because I'd seen one of those baby blue Bible game cartridges. Oh, yeah.

And I was like, oh, I guess just that was a thing. I never knew Tingen was Atari until I was a full grown adult. And probably saw some YouTube video game history channel thing talking about it. And I was like, I don't know.

And it's not actually Atari, which is why they were Tingen. Right. Yeah, we only had the one grown up and it wasn't something we sought out. And I don't remember ever seeing one all of our games came second hand from our local video store or pawn shop and so on.

That was the only one I ever saw. Yeah. But ours was Fantasy Zone. Yeah.

Our first one was a road runner. And then I didn't, I also didn't hunt them down or seek them out. And we had rid of a handful of unlicensed games. Like we rented baby boomer at one point.

That was a mistake. Yeah, it was. That was a color dreams game. And we had pretty sure we had rented a couple of it a few times as a on license.

So, you know, I had them. I didn't understand why they were weird and differently shaped at the time until the whole Tetris controversy happened. And then suddenly we all knew exactly why. I'd rented Tetris a couple of times too, the thing in Tetris.

So you know, we learned it once that happened and then the magazine started to cover it. But even then it was only magazines like EGM and GamePro that were covering it. Nintendo Power for some reason never mentioned it. They just didn't mention those games at all for some reason.

How's that? They must have not noticed them. Their head was turned to the other way. Why does Nintendo hate rolling thunder?

Who knows? You know, what got me was why did Nintendo Power never mention Pac-Man one time ever? Like that's a big game. And then suddenly in 93 when NAMCO re-released it, Nintendo was like finally on the NES.

Yeah, we'll do it. By graphical info, like with all things Atari the name comes from Go, Tengen is the center point on a go board. Yes. Tengen was founded January 11th, 1985 as Atari games.

Yes. Also founded December 21st, 1987 as Tengengan. Yes. June 28th, 1994 rebranded at the time as Time Warner Interactive, which then also dissolved February 7th, 2003, merged into Midway Games.

Yes. And the founder was sort of Hideyuki Nakajima. Kind of. We'll get to that, yeah.

And it was also also founded July 9th, 2024 as a new company making NES and Game Boy Games. Yes. So prepare to be thoroughly confused for the remainder of the episode because I don't know that it ever actually makes sense. Nope.

It just kind of is. Yes. The Saturn takeaway of the founding and standard confusing Atari nonsense that we've all come to know and love by the crypto coin, hotel, retro video game, FMV game, handheld with a keypad company. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That's about right. So just to get the basics out of the way, Atari was founded in 72 and was bought by Warner Communications in 76.

And in 2003 long before Warner came in. No, I did not. Last very long before Warner showed up. Nolan Bushnell had made some money and he was like, oh, I can make all the money.

Yeah. All right, man. Here I am. Right.

So Warner announced that they had lost $500 million on Atari, which adjusted for inflation as $1.57 billion. Oh my God. In just the first three fiscal quarters of the year. And 83 was the crash or people that.

Yeah, that was the crash. If you're outside of America, probably 83 is known as a crash. But here, 83 was the video game market crash. This is what that was.

Yeah. And it was largely fueled by Atari. They were the ones who were losing all the money, which granted they were those companies. Chase the chuck wagon center.

It's hard to say to hide. Well, Atari didn't make that. That was. Well, Ralston Purina.

Every fucking time it's funny. Every fucking time. Ralston Purina Foods made a video game. Oh, God.

Anyway, also that company is now a division of Nestle. So Nestle owns the rights to chase the chuck wagon. Where's our HD remake Nestle? Yeah.

Bachelors. And of that adjusted $1.5 billion in losses from three quarters of a year, that almost exclusively came from their home video game division and mostly because of the failure of the Atari 5200. God, that's brutal. That's a lot of money out the door.

Oh, yeah. Notably, Atari already had the 7800 in production and basically complete at this point to the point where they already had several produced units boxed ready to be shipped to retailers. And then they sold Atari to Commodore founder Jack Tramiel and he decided not going to release it, not worth it. That's just more lost.

He's not making so many sound business decisions. Yeah. They ended up holding off on it for like five years almost. Yeah.

And then they sold it as if it was a brand new console. It's so dumb. Anyway, could you even imagine? Could you even imagine if they've had the PlayStation 8 this whole fucking time?

Right. They sold their house made in a warehouse. I mean technology moves faster now. You just I mean, kind of move fast in it.

Yeah, it moved fast enough. Then by the time they released it, it was antiquated technology. Yeah. Anyway, so the arcade division of Atari was still quite profitable.

So when they did sell Atari to Jack Tramiel, they decided they would hold on to the arcade division because that was making money. Warner wanted to keep that. So they sold Atari's home software business and their computer business and the Atari name to Jack Tramiel, which when they didn't have a name for this arcade business that Warner now owned. Yeah.

And the Atari name was still, you know, worth something in the video game space at the time. They sold to it. So they licensed the Atari name from Jack Tramiel that they had just sold to him so that they could use the name Atari games for the arcade business. All right.

They could not call themselves Atari. Right. They was separate, but they call themselves Atari games and they could not sell anything directly to consumers. That was the rule.

You know how you sell things and you can sell it. You can sell businesses. Yeah. You can sell businesses.

The next console that will play the the market from Ross and Purina. So they could they could sell things to businesses. They could sell things to the store. Sure.

But if they wanted to sell things to consumers, they could not use the name Atari. So Atari games was immediately intended to be split off from Warner just because they, you know, didn't want to be in the video game industry anymore. But they still held some ownership of it. So to help fund this new company, Namco shows up and they convinced Namco to purchase 60% of this new company, Atari games with Warner still.

We talked about recently in our name. Yeah, in our name. Co-exon. Yeah.

So the former president of Namco of America, Hideo Kojima was basically PlayStation. At least in the role as president of Atari games. This was his division now. He was in charge of it.

And they immediately started, you know, pretty strong. You know, they started their operation in the 85 and they had a bunch of successful arcade games. You had Marvel Madness, Paperboy, Gauntlet, Super Sprint, 720 degrees, APB. They also had licensed games like Empire Strikes Back, Indiana Jones, Tiplodoom, and Roadrunner.

All successful arcade games. Yeah. But despite this, Namco's president, Masaiya Nakamura, we talked about in the other episode he was unhappy with the competition between Atari games and Namco. So he sold most of his of Namco's stake in Atari games to a group of employees, including Nakajima in 87.

So now suddenly Atari games is partially owned by Nakajima and the employees of Atari games, partially owned by Warner, partially owned by Namco. Surely that will never cause a problem. How could this be confusing to anyone? I know I'm not confused.

This is totally clear. Totally normal business-y things. Right. So these sections of company held by different entities, some of which are individuals and some of which are companies that can sell products but not to consumers, only to other businesses.

Right. Well, I mean, they, what they discovered is they could sell things to consumers, but not under that name. Tell me more. So in 87, they decided they wanted to sell things to consumers, but again, they can't do it under the Atari name.

Sure. And the homework it was growing. It was growing fast, mostly because of Nintendo. Yep.

Not because of Atari. No, not because of Atari, like Nintendo. I know it's interesting. This is a total tangent, but the longer we do the show, we started doing the show.

I feel like a lot of things kind of didn't need saying. Yeah. But now that we're a decade in, we're 500 episodes in and I'm seeing younger people engaging with this hobby, I'm realizing a lot of things do need saying. For example, in the mid and into the late 80s, they're at least in this market, in the North American market and some other markets, Nintendo was the only game in town.

True. Yeah. I mean, other companies existed, stuff happened, but nothing, nothing was Nintendo big. Yeah.

People will see that like the Sega Master System existed. Sure. It existed. Atari 7800 existed in the US.

But as someone who was a kid in that time, when you would go to the toy store and you would go to the electronics store, you would go to Sears, and you would look at the shelves, it was Nintendo. You saw Nintendo, that other stuff might be in a bin somewhere. Yeah. Nintendo was filling up the shelf space.

Yeah. Nintendo existed like a non-Nintendo game consoles in North America in the mid to late 80s, existed the same way that like there are technically Linux based phones on the market now. Watch names, some of them. Right.

I would say that the shelf space that Atari and Sega were taking up by 87 give or take would have been equivalent to the shelf space that plug and play consoles are taking up when you go to a store now. Oh, I like that analogy. I could see that. Yeah.

Yeah. It's like there. You can find it. Some stores don't even have that sliver.

But if you go to a big enough store, you might see a sliver of like, oh, there's a miniature bad dudes arcade there next to the PS5 section. That's weird and a side plush below it. Yeah. That's the kind of attention that Sega and Atari were getting at this point.

Yeah. So anyway, where were we? Yeah. So Atari games once in on this, they are making these games and arcades.

They want to sell them to people who have money. So they found the loophole was to use a different name. So they created Tingen, which again, they just stole another term from go because that's what Atari does. Why not?

So initially, they had negotiated with the Nintendo to try to get a sweetheart licensing deal because that's what Namco had in Japan. And they still had at this point, they were still mostly owned by Namco. So just before Namco sold off, they were just taking the company. And when that failed because Nintendo of America realized the money is in the licensing, they signed on to a deal to make Nintendo games while simultaneously immediately starting work on circumventing the NES law catch.

Yeah. And for people that don't know, Nintendo's licensing in the NES era was, and I mean licensing like using our characters, I mean, making a product on our system was notoriously stringent and archaic and restrictive. Very strong. Which is why you saw companies like Konami making the ultra games label to at least more games than Nintendo would let them, which sounds bizarre today.

You know, you're on eShop now and it's all just like, well, booby booby fart booby the game. It was fart, fart, booby fart, fart, fart, booby booby fart fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, booby fart the game. That's what it was. Your fart to booby ratio is officer.

I'm thinking of the sequels. All right. Yeah. But at the time it was a problem because this industry is exploding.

Yes. While Nintendo is locking people into five or fewer games a year. Yeah. And they are not letting be.

And granted, there's an argument to be made that it made since the time. I mean, what arguments for why the video game market in North America crash and 83 was flooded by low quality titles. Right. I don't know how true that is or isn't, you know, on paper years and years later really looking at the data, but that was how people felt at the time.

Yeah. So this is a lot of companies are trying to get around these restrictions from Nintendo. Right. Yeah.

It was my original point. Yes. Yeah. And Atari games approach was just let's just break the hardware.

Right. Whereas we're on the claim, we're just like, let's found separate companies to keep selling shit. Atari games was just like, fuck this, we'll make our own game games. It's just, it's so crazy.

Could you imagine if a company right now is like, we want to release PS5 games, so we're reverse engineer, the PS5 DRM just released unlicensed PS5 games. Like they would get sued into the fucking ground so fast. The thing is, it wasn't without precedent at the time because barely five years earlier, Activision had done the same shit to Atari. Yeah.

It was a Wild West man. You just take people's shit, reverse engineer and be like, we make it now. Yeah. And you're like, we can't do that.