10 Video Game History Facts That'll BLOW YOUR MIND 

“They just made what they thought would be fun.” It says so much that this idea sounds revolutionary.

7:35 - OK, the causality is a bit backwards here: games were designed in graph paper back then because displays buffers were tile-based in the 8-bit era for the most part. You can substitute "tile" for "character" too. And even machines that used bitmaps arranged those bitmaps in such a way as to make rendering 8x8 characters to the screen easy. Graph paper is a natural medium for design when when this is the case.

Ultima 7 throwing shade at EA is the kind of passive-aggressive energy I aspire to have in my life. Next time I'm mad at someone, I'm just gonna develop a whole game about it. 🎮😂

The CD-ROM consoles of the 90s contain more history than some textbooks. I'd love to see you guys do a whole video on that age of the console wars.

Man.. if they hated EA 30 years ago, what would they say now??

Funny thing about the scratch and sniff discs, the GT2 one of which i owned; i actually later worked in a department that used that same technology for fragrance. Known as microencapsulation, it's basically perfume inside timy polymer beads that rupture under pressure. Didn't realise it was UK only though.

The groundbreaking puzzle game Myst was created in the early 1990s using HyperCard, “virtual Rolodex” software that ran on Macintosh. The game was made entirely by two people - Rand and Robyn Miller. That’s pretty mind blowing!

I vaguely remember learning in school how to program pictures on a computer, translated from graph paper. This was 35 years ago or so. Haven't thought of that in awhile. It was TEDIOUS. Hard to imagine people creating whole games that way.

I just love it that the 1989 Master System is still offically sold and produced in Brazil as of 2021/2023.

My guy, Wozniak wasn't just "the other Apple guy" - he WAS Apple. Jobs was just the money man who gathered the initial investors and even then not only ripped Woz off by pocketing most of those initial money but bounced on the company shortly after the intro of the OG Mac in the 80's and stayed gone until the turn of the millenium. Woz designed, built and assembled all the OG hardware when Apple was just a startup. Jobs had no technical background and glommed on to Woz, just like Musk did with Thiel and co for Paypal.

Bro that dolphin story...I had to do a report on it in college. Ugh, I didn't think that memory would resurface from a Gameranx video.

Falcon's pronunciation of Steve Wozniak's name is how I'll pronounce it moving forward.

It's not about releasing videos everyday but it's about how you guys manage to keep it fresh everyday. My favorite gaming channel for a reason❤

Fun, I flipped through a Tomb Raider IV guide book, an actual book with like 200 pages with hundreds of color photos today. Now TR IV is not from the 80s but I did wonder how they managed to capture the screenshots. They are printed small but they look really good. Maybe Windows had tools already, maybe they had to come up with something. Printed guides from that time are crazy anyway. So much effort. Reminds me of how I recorded the music of video games by setting up a microphone in front of the speaker. I later figured out a way to patch the audio cable into a tape recorder and then forward it to the TV so I could listen to it while recording but... yeah I was obsessed with some games.

scratch and sniff aside, does anyone miss game manuals? did anyone read the old manual for doom 1, it had a sweet short story about the origin of doom guy. he was a engineer that was told to wait on the dropship while marines went in and when they all died he had to fight his way to another ship to leave.

When Tetris was created in 1984 by Alexey Pajitnov, a software engineer at the Soviet Academy of Sciences, it was originally designed as a test for new hardware rather than as a commercial product. Pajitnov created Tetris on an Electronika 60, a Soviet computer that lacked the graphical power of its Western counterparts, meaning the original game didn’t even have the colorful blocks we associate with Tetris today. Instead, it used brackets to represent the Tetris pieces. The game was later ported to the IBM PC by Vadim Gerasimov, a 16-year-old high school student working with Pajitnov, and it was this version that started to spread around the world, leading to its eventual global success.

How are you pronouncing Wozniak? What?

Please do a part 2. Really cool facts about gaming history

if you think the scratch and sniff disc was odd, you should have seen what Sierra did with their Larry Laffer 7 game love for sail (arguably the last Larry Laffer game that was worth playing excluding the remakes). Each game was packaged with a card with 9 numbered tiles (no bigger than than the CD case itself). Whenever you entered a room in the game, a voice would announce "Cyber Sniff 2000" and the the appropriate number on the card would flash in screen.... You could then scratch it to get a whiff of what the room smelled like. And in a game where one of the challenges was to score a perfect score in a veeeeeeeeeeery particular activity of the horizontal type .... well.... you can see where a sniff card could go ....places.

ECCO being a psychedelic trip is such a Easteregg

The weird sci-fi ending of Ecco the Dolphin was so bizarre, after I finished it I sat staring at the screen with my jaw on the floor. I never knew the secret background of who wrote it! It all makes so much more sense now, thanks!

Dude, Virtual cop. Just brought back OLD memories of my brother and I at the arcade.

For my computer science project in the 80s I had my friend who was an amateur photographer take pictures of all the screens for my dissertation. Most people didn’t do that, so their write-ups were full of mock-ups of what the software looked like rather than actual screens. I got top marks and I think at least some of that was because I found a way to take a screenshot!

Glad gameranx gives credit to the redditors they use for their video content. It shows integrity

The Golden Eye story sounded similar to how Half-Life was created. The Valve team were learning as they went, had to scrap the first version, then knocked it out of the park with the second go.

This type of video is cool. The history of gaming isn’t really talked about, thanks for the video

Falcon gave us another amusing British accent. I never played any of the Ultima games. I do recall the Ultima Quest for the Avatar commercial. It painted a humorous picture of a book writer that wrote huge books until he began playing the game. The books then got smaller and shorter up to a mini one titled I Like Cake.

New video from Gameranx is always my favorite part of the day.

Who doesn't love the smell of a new game The game manuals always smelt so fresh!

“Oh my dear bird. The rrrrreason we made scratch and sniff discs…” falcons accents crack me tf up lmao

I live in America and we had that Grand tourismo scratch and sniff here aswell. What's funny is my cousin let us borrow Grant Tourismo 2 and I actually thought something was burning. I thought it was my console or something electrical. Wasn't until about 6-7 years ago I found out they had that scratch and sniff thing on their disc or whatever that smelled like tires. And that's what I remember smelling lol..

I started buying the video game magazines when the very first ones were being sold. And can remember the very variable quality of the game screenshots therein. Good memories of those days though. I was already in my mid teens by the time of the first video game boom in 1979. So I've been very fortunate to live through the entirety of the modern age video game experience.

Mario falling of the edgr after eating that mushroom in that one clip 😂😂😂😂😂

Walking towards 8M that's Crazy!!

That Echo story is fantastic! 👍🙂

LOVE the more historical feel to this one! More videos like this would be awesome!!

I love this list; it did actually blow my mind. Good job

Wow! That pic of Wozniak with an Apple IlC really brought back some good memories.

The alien dolphin thing made me think of hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. My brain instantly started singing "so long and thanks for all the fish, so sad that it has come to this" 😂

Pizza Connection 2 (a Pizza-Tycoon-game) had a disc that smelled like herbs you would put on a pizza. It was awesome! But so far I had'nt heard of any other games that did this.

Video idea: top 10 best voice acting performances in video games

"We cant tell you what the dolphin people did, but here are two proper nouns. you can google it yourself" Love it

Goldeneye being Virtua Cop makes so much sense it's crazy I've never heard about it, or heard about anyone even make the comparison

Number 3: crazy the amount of enemy variety he managed in 1 year vs. what they came up with in 6 years for the most recent sequel... Not to mention just the unique and interesting feel the whole thing had. 😢

I’m so proud of Falcon, he hasn’t mentioned soulsborne all month. He does play other games

*You have me inspired to start making vids.* Much love and major props to you Gamerman! ❤

Imagine learning about games and history in a single sitting. You go gameranx team! We need more videos like this.

Quick tidbit about the 007 game: It makes sense that the inspiration was Virtua Cop. In it's earliest development, 007 was actually an on-rails shooter.

Truly fascinating stuff.. thanks for making this!!

Great video falcon

If Microsoft had gone with "Windows Entertainment System" they would have been sued to "HIGH NOON" (The Original name to "Bloodgulch") by Nintendo. Lots of games actually used and still use Excel to run specific commands. Colin McRae Rally 2005 for example has a Speadsheet that controls the Rally Events, Cars, physics and a lot of other features in the game.

State of play confirmed Wednesday !😊 can’t wait to see your news on it Friday

Yes, Earth Coincidence Control Office does not exist. I'm glad all of us humans agree.

I always wondered what the porpoise of naming Ecco the Dolphin Ecco.

Honestly, an alien sitting in some office calling a guy is fairly believable. They wanted to discuss his cars extended warranty.

As a Brit who was about in the 80s/90s, I can confirm we were both addicted to scratch and sniff briefly in the 90s and used to smell of the 1800s. Only just got to the 1900 last year.

Capcom, got the license to Zelda by threatening Nintendo. They said they were going to make a remake of the first legend of Zelda with their permission or not. That remake turned into three different games that they could not finish. Miyamato had to come in to fix the situation. They turned three games into two games, Oracle seasons and Oracle of ages.

My favorite gaming history story will always be WoW's Corrupted Blood Plague It's very well known but the fact that it mirrored how a real world plague would function to such an extent that the CDC wanted to study it is still pretty surreal

Majora's Mask was built in a less than a year, however the devs did keep going back 10 months and building on what they learned each time XD

When Falcon said you don't wanna know what Margaret Howe Lovatt was doing with dolphins. He means it.

I'd love to see A video about top 10 strangest special edition of games. There are so many good ones out there! Ecco even had one

Ultima 6, Ultima 7 and Serpent Isle really got me into RPGs

The EA/Ultima thing still causes physical pain in the hearts of real fans. A legendary RPG series with lore for miles.

Exactly why Goldeneye is so good. They just made what was fun, what they wanted to make, and they had passion for it. This is what is needed for a great game. Also since they were new they had no preconception of what others would do. Powerful combo. This is why games suck now. They are either copying one another or the game is design by committee.

I vaguely remember playing virtua cop way back when

Ecco 2 was an intense game. I never see anyone talking about it. Needed to find all the walkthroughs and ended up finding a level cheat and its insane the depths and details the game had. Would love to play it again

Nice Video !

The GT2 scratch and sniff discs were also released in the PAL region (Australasia) we had them here in New Zealand...it was a cool concept on paper, but the scent was very weak and vaguely smelt like rubber. The PS2 I think came with a demo disc that let you do some coding with the system - it came pre-loaded with the Snake game and was the first time I was exposed to coding; all I really did with it was mess around with speed values and lives but it was cool to get a look under the hood and see how games were put together.

This, was a super interesting watch. If there are some more examples for future videos. Yeah. That. Do that.

Kyle Bosman of Easy Allies ran a year-long stream called Bosman V Wozniak, where he attempted to beat one of the high scores submitted by Steve. It was a great series. :D

Nice!

Ecco The Dolphin would make the wildest, most fascinating TV adaptation ever.

Additional interesting fact to Number 4: Many of the people who worked on "Golden Eye 64" would also work on the likewise as good "Perfect Dark" on the N64 and then would went on to form the Studio "Free Radical Design". If that name doesn't ring a bell yet: They're the ones behind the back at its time massively popular and stellar good "TimeSplitters" Trilogy. And recently have been shut down by the Embracer Group.

I knew Majora's mask was told to be made in a year, that's why we have the same NPCs from Ocarina of Time in it, but I didn't know it was a bet.

Bro I love this channel such good vibes

In the 1980s I used to draw game assets for the zx spectrum on graph paper It was really fun trying to create recognisable characters and objects with so few pixels

Never even heard of Ecco the Dolphin, but it reminded me of a flash game I played the ish out of as a kid called Dolphin Olympics. Just googled it, and found a playable, ported version that's exactly as I remember too.

Hahaha. One of my favorite podcasts did an episode on one of the dolphin study people. You're not wrong. Absolutely nuts! Lol great video I love learning about the history of game development.

Ah yes, i remember t having the Super Gameboy for the SNES. Nothing like being a child & getting destroyed by the Elite 4 constantly on a big screen for all to see 😂

I loved this video! Made me feel old af tho

I did not know that about ECCO the dolphin 😂😂😂

Excel is not the only spreadsheet program. Excel does spreadsheets, but not all spreadsheets are Excel. Sincerely, Spreadsheet Mafia

Fun fact, paper prototypes are still relatively common practice to a certain extent in the game industry.

I love those old games. I played some of them when i was younger when i go to my uncles house on his Pc. Those were the days

VIRTUAL COP!! thats what the game is called , i have been searching for this game i played in my childhood . THANKS GAMERANX!

I cannot believe you missed one of the craziest facts in video game history: WOOD was going to be the name of the revolutionary id Software FPS until John R accidentally dropped his notepad and saw the game title upside-down. WOOD became DOOM, and the rest is history....

The games weren't "grid like" because they were designed on graph paper, they used graph paper because that's how a lot of that hardware worked. Especially sprites, but a lot of other things, too.

Absolutely enjoyed the heck out of this one

It was nice to see echo gwy brought up. First game my parents got me for my genesis back in the day.

The Ecco bit was spot on, dude was nuts no question, IMO it’s people like him and Tim Leary that set psychedelic research back years with their wild notions and antics, excellent work Falcon! Stay trippy you old birb you ✌️🫠

That's an interesting fact about how Xbox got its name. I always assumed that Microsoft was trying to capitalize on the early 2000's trend of adding "X" to the beginning of everything to make it more eXtreme. I thought that, combined with the Surge/Mtn Dew green color scheme, was Microsoft giving us the eXtremeBOX as a contrasting alternative to the more conservative, staid presentation of Sony's PlayStation.

Here’s one: Activision was made by disgruntled Atari employees that wanted to create a developer-friendly company. They even made their name higher in the alphabet so it would show up first in stock exchanges. Then Activision became worse than Atari and a group of disgruntled employees broke off and formed Acclaim entertainment, which was even more high up in the alphabet than Activision. Acclaim Entertainment doesn’t exist anymore though cause they spent way more on weird marketing gimmicks and tasteless cash grabs than good games at the end.

Cool ! This _and_ weird stories coming

Oooooh, this is a SWEET topic !!! I especially enjoyed the little history facts we got when you explained hidden Easter eggs and secret dev tricks.

As a kid I used to draw the artwork from manuals (yes I'm ancient) using graph paper.

If you read or listen to the book console wars it actually tells the story of the developer pitching the Ecco game while at a work dinner. The book holds a lot of great history about video games and the industry.

Wow, cool stuff. Thanks.

I tested Goldeneye at Nintendo of America. We were playing multiplayer all day in 12 hour shifts in a separate part of Nintendo's QA department.

scratch and sniff was cool those days, we also played with sticks and stones

Its been 5 days since i watched a Gameranx video😢. I missed you, Falcon!!!