-5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Xbox One. -Wii U, PlayStation
4, Xbox One - we're officially in the eighth generation
of video game consoles. We made it. If you're as
old as me, you feel old, maybe a little creepy.
Maybe your back hurts when you get up in the
morning. Maybe the other parts of your body just hurt
for no reason. That's how long video game consoles has
been around. -My very first video game console was a
NES FamiCon. -The Gameboy. -Sega Genesis. -Probably the ColecoVision. -Was
the Nintendo 64. -The original NES, man. -It's important to
look back and ask ourselves, "How did we get here?
How did the industry evolve to where it is today?"
In the '60s, a man named Ralph Baer was working
at a defense company in Nashua, New Hampshire. He thought
to himself, "Why can't I hook something up to this
TV to make it more fun?" So he got together
with two of his engineers, and they cobbled together the
first of seven Brown Boxes. These were video game consoles,
early video game consoles that played simple games. They eventually
sold the final Brown Box to Magnavox, which rebranded it
as the Magnavox Odyssey. -From most of the 20th century,
the idea of actually being able to play video games
in your house was the fantasy. You couldn't do it.
Not until the Magnavox Odyssey, where people were actually able
to play video games in their homes. -The Odyssey itself
had a really rough start. I mean, it came out
and it was marketed incredibly poorly-- -Odyssey, the electronic game
of the future that lets you do your own thing
on television. -It was brand new technology that people didn't
get. -The Odyssey was odd. It's the best word to
describe-- But it was really the Atari 2600 that kicked
everything off for me as a home console player. When
you look back now at the Atari 2600 games, they
all look very basic, but at that time, they were
nothing short of amazing. They-- -The Atari 2600 was the
game console that everybody had. Well, I didn't have it
and I was really jealous of my neighbor who had
one. But this one was iconic. This was the system
that got people crazy about playing video games at home.
-It was as ubiquitous as a refrigerator or a TV
in most households. -In the successful years of the Atari
2600 we got to over $2 Billion business in the
United States, only on video games. It's kind of a
number that is important to understand because we will understand
what happened when video games go into what this universally
recognized as the big crash of video games in 1983.
-Game over. -There was a video game crash as a
result of just this flood of terrible games on the
2600. And for awhile, it seemed like maybe home video
games and video game consoles had just been a fad.
-And video games really went out of fashion altogether. -Then
something happened. What happened was Nintendo happened. Nintendo, a company
that has been around making trading cards for nearly a
century. They decided, "We're gonna make a video game system."
The key thing is they didn't call it a video
game system. In the United States, they marketed it as
a toy. They have Rob, the robot. They have the
Zapper, which was a little gun you plugged in to
the console. They didn't want people to think that it
was a video game machine because that had a stink
to it because of the Atari 2600 and the crash.
-With the third generation of home video game systems, it
was not a fair fight. The Nintendo Entertainment System mopped
the floor with the Sega Master System. -The Nintendo Entertainment
System is the console that changed everything. This is the
system, the little gray box that shipped and suddenly connected
with everyone. Whether it'd be Mario-- This is-- this is
Mario Brothers. This is the start of everything for Nintendo
and for the industry as well, all right? All of
a sudden, the new games had what they didn't have
before - a mascot, someone you could connect with. -It
was not just something that was big as a video
game system, but it helped launch Nintendo into being just
a cultural force. So everything from Nintendo cereal-- -Nintendo Cereal
System is a super power system of nutritious breakfast-- -Or
Fred Savage's famous, or infamous movie The Wizard. Power Glove,
this ridiculous glove that you would wear, in theory, to
control games better. It was more than just a gaming
system. It was a cultural phenomenon. -There can be only
one. -Sega challenges you with the ultimate video game -
the Sega Master System. -When I started my career in
this industry, I was testing games on the Sega Master
System, and quite frankly I didn't even know it had
existed. The only thing that was in my world was
the Nintendo Entertainment System at that time. -The Sega Master
System is notable in that it's what brought Sega into
home video games. -I saw-- I saw it, I put
my little pudgy finger on the glass, I said, "Mom,
that's what I want for my birthday. What is that?"
That was the second question. And they made that happen
and I got the Sega Master System. And man did
I pick a losing horse in this race, becoming a
Sega kid over a Nintendo kid, but it was one
of those things where that was your source of pride.
That was your identity as video games were getting a
foothold [unk], right? -There's certainly a rivalry, you know, somebody
else had a Sega Master System and you had a
Nintendo [unk]. You know, you picked sides in a war.
You kinda-- you had one, you didn't have the other.
And it was the beginning of a rivalry between Nintendo
and Sega that would go on for generation after generation.
It would take awhile before there was a clear victor
in it. -So you're talking about the NES or the
Sega Master System, or just video games of that generation,
you're talking about, literally for what I think, is the
foundation for what video games will be. Right, because there
was suddenly all these kids like me, who started to
grow up with these, and started to understand these characters
and these things and what video games would be. And
so, as we make that jump to the Super NES
to, you know, the Sega Genesis, what you see is
the video game companies realizing that their audience is maturing,
and so they need to as well. -And then the
fourth generation - the empire strikes back. Sega comes out
with the Sega Genesis, saying "Genesis does what Nintendon't." -Genesis
does-- -What Nintendon't. -I mean, Sega Genesis was Sega's coming
out party, you know. Sega Master System was the system
that I owned, and nobody knew what that was. But
Sega Genesis, everybody knew because it was when Sega came
out and adopted an identity and said, "We are this
blue hedgehog--" -Sonic 2 handles stubborn stains. Embarrassing bald spots?
No problem. But wait, you can play it, too. -Sonic
was just-- he had attitude. You know, history has shown
that Mario's a great character, but he's kinda just this
schlubby plumber guy who jumped on turtles and-- -It was
one of those things that Sega said, "We're the underdog."
And in a way, it summed up fans, like me,
right? Like we needed a rallying crowd-- -Genesis. -Does. -Genesis.
-Does. -There has to be a line on the sand
for what you are what you are a kid and
your parents won't buy you both systems. -Sega people could
look to the Genesis and say, "This is the thing.
This is what gets us over Nintendo." -Super power. -The
Super Nintendo was Nintendo putting its foot down and saying,
"We basically started this home console business, and we aren't
going anywhere. -It's been very unusual in gaming history for
any one console maker to have two great platforms in
a row. But Nintendo pulled that off. The Nintendo Entertainment
System was phenomenal. The Super Nintendo, I would say, it
was even better. -It was when Nintendo said, "We are
going to make these things that you loved in the
last-- on the last system franchised. These are things that
are gonna be here to stay because you loved them.
Here's another Metroid. Here's the Final Fantasy. Here are all
these different experiences that we're gonna give you and make
this definitive video gaming platform for the time. -Super Nintendo
kind of quietly proved itself out to be one of
the best machines ever made. -You realize there was no
ceiling to what was happening, and 16-bit was our first
taste of that. -The fifth generation was a [unk] show.
Can I say "[unk] show"? There's too many players here.
There's too many players in the fifth generation. Something's gotta
give.