10 Video Game History Facts That'll BLOW YOUR MIND

[@geoffreydevereaux3272]

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

[@nintendians]

too bad, rare ltd. isn't what they used to be back during the nintendo era.

[@BuildinWings]

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.

[@paulc5314]

The history of SEGA in the 90s was insane

[@mattylaa5070]

There was no war. Sega kamikazed. I'm glad I caught SF3 and Panzer Saga at the end. Good times. But then PS1 had grandia. So many awesome arcade ports on the saturn tho. Also so many awesome 2d games ps just didn't do. The 2d engine was pretty. And PS had wobbly graphics. If they'd just gone with polygons instead of quadrangles it wouldn't have been such a nightmare to program. Basically the saturn was a nightmare to make games on. Sony bought a shed load of developers and you could copy dreamcast games in any cdr as it ran on windows. Game Over Yeaaaahhhh. Well done SEGA (we still love you).

[@SOLIDSNAKE.]

Huh

[@Joreel]

​@@mattylaa5070There was a huge condole war between Sega and Nintendo. I remember all of it because I was in my late teens at the time. Those two companies did not like each other and were constantly one upping each other.

[@jsalas5400]

Sega Saturn was so underrated. Was way ahead of its time

[@DuncanBentleyOfficial]

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. 🎮😂

[@ChadThurston]

disgust is a powerful motivator...

[@doctorlolchicken7478]

Ultima 7 is one of my favorite games and I never heard this before. Now I can’t unsee it throughout the game. Not that I mind - EA has ruined so many games I had high expectations for.

[@ramrodbldm9876]

​@@doctorlolchicken7478 bozo if it was your favorite game surely you would know it's Easter eggs. Another fake fan that has 1 thousand favorite games.

[@talideon]

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.

[@danieljohn9257]

Exactly. 🤙🏼

[@listerofsmeg884]

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.

[@scorpion0498]

nice name.. smeg off lol

[@watchingyoutube_]

bro when you talk like that, it makes me want to rupture under pressure 💞 (real)

[@Joreel]

I remember there were a few companies here in the US that were trying to create a way to incorporate scents in PC games back in the 90s.

[@dowfreak7]

I don't quite recall it "just" from videogames, but the concept of scratch and sniff was around while I was growing up. So it does make sense that this niche little novelty thing also found its way into some videogames, when a random joke comic book could include a pack of smelly stickers.

[@ARIXANDRE]

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

[@evil7011]

I grew up with the master system 2. If I could get one new one. That would be the ultimate nostalgia for me.

[@ARIXANDRE]

@@evil7011 Here in Brazil, Tec Toy has the official Sega license to produce it. You should be able to find one dirt cheap on the internet.

[@writer.lennox]

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.

[@SalKhayer]

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.

[@daftbird7448]

Surprised they didn't censor the part about the whales 😅

[@mervunit]

they were giving lsd to dolphins and the lady had a uhhh relationship with one of them, am I remembering that correctly?

[@sentientcardboarddumpster7900]

​@mervunit yea, John Lilly lead the study. Pretty wild stuff

[@fahianhaque4413]

did the dolphin die later?@@sentientcardboarddumpster7900

[@thebonesaw..4634]

@@mervunit - Relationship is going a bit far but... she did whack the dolphin off. She claims she did it out of frustration, because she was trying to work with the dolphin and was having trouble getting him to focus. She had noticed that the dolphin had an erection, something that had happened in her presence previously and she figured if she gave the dolphin what it wanted, she could ostensibly get the animal back to the... task at hand (as it were). Yeah... dolphin people are fucking gross.

[@andrewscherman6165]

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.

[@Splucked]

🎯

[@rondroske3623]

Thank you. Glad at least some people know this.

[@landonewts]

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!

[@Konzertheld]

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.

[@kastus3768]

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

[@Seth-Halo]

Honestly I am kinda surprised ea is still around. Its a testimate. These guys hated them 30 years ago and i have a handful of end of year gaming magazines from the early 00s were the worst game company of the year was chosen as EA. Except for 1 year much to their surprise but then EA reclaimed its spot the next year. 20 (and 30) years later and they are still managing to stay around, making mediocre game after mediocre game while buying up studios with fresh ideas and closing them down when the new ip that they pushed to rush out doesnt automatically make a billion dollars on day 1

[@RvkKJ]

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❤

[@patmalloy3569]

Yeah it really boggles my mind that they can keep finding new, quality content day by day.

[@Xenoonmobile]

Spamming on YT won't save u from hell​@RepentandbelieveinJesusChrist.

[@Bobby-z6c]

I love waiting to hear the scorn and sarcasm falcon conveys in almost all his videos... it's literally the best part...

[@nightmarelycanthrope2230]

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

[@oneofthedead5611]

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.

[@RoboRoby321]

I find it criminal how switch games come in a huge case and it's just the game cartridge, it's got a huge empty spot in the cover beside it

[@MauseDays]

absolotely. mine where dog eared and well read. ^_^. i remeber civ 1s "instruction" manual was over 500 pages :P but i grew up with segas manuals and box art and all that fun stuff

[@Tiberius817]

I was just getting all nostalgic about this myself. I recently picked up Outcast 1.1 for a blast from the past and was reading through the manual, thinking about how I'd read through the manual before playing any game to get the back story and read how to play like I was doing homework or studying before a test. Which is weird because I was a terrible student who never studied, but at the time I could tell you all of the lore and translate many of the words from Outcast.

[@daniel....]

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.

[@doctorlolchicken7478]

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!

[@jaranth]

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!

[@sirnirvikingur]

Also the only research funded by NASA that ended up in the Hustler magazine, Carl Sagan must have been thriled wen that happen.

[@chrislair6832]

You should actually read into it a little bit. It gets way crazier than what he said in this video.

[@MyUsualComment]

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

[@mattylaa5070]

Steve was a knack

[@LemonyFreshPine]

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

[@Tarble9000]

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

[@gm3190]

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.

[@danoconnor2781]

Holy shit I forgot all about that! The guy doing the narration for that used to crack me up

[@Steve_ATL]

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.

[@TrappyLacky]

ECCO being a psychedelic trip is such a Easteregg

[@DamiaN06660]

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

[@MarioGarcia-pq9pr]

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

[@thegraydirewolf9325]

It's talked about all the time robocop.

[@theSweedio]

Dude what? The history of gaming is talked about all the time, especially on youtube

[@pumirya]

That Echo story is fantastic! 👍🙂

[@haunterdragon4580]

I thought the aliens in ecco were jellyfish

[@JamesHoffa1]

how could you spell it wrong when the whole point was the name being an acronym? Pay attention

[@frankbrodie5168]

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.

[@Itchybodclay]

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

[@pinksnootgaming]

Great video falcon

[@gameranxTV]

Thanks!

[@Mike-jr5hq]

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.

[@kathirsudan4897]

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

[@thegamingchef3304]

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..

[@vuxnut]

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

[@kylegerbrandt]

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

[@IAmKnightsDawn]

Little Nicky reference let’s go!!!

[@seanys]

How are you pronouncing Wozniak? What?

[@Sinnbad21]

He and Jake pronounce so many things wrong. I don’t understand how lol.

[@robertalexander-bk5zj]

It generates comments.

[@danieljohn9257]

I forgive him that because of how much I enjoyed the British accent he broke out. 😏😄

[@Jatt2613]

I always thought Ecco was just named that since dolphins use echolocation (so just a tweaked spelling of Echo to make it unique). Go figure.

[@mash2481]

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

[@grinnbearit8427]

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

[@hermiona1147]

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

[@QsQs-du9xp]

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

[@AntonioVillaran-b3f]

Nice Video !

[@gameranxTV]

Thanks!

[@TrophyTriumpHntr]

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

[@edwardaverilliii1658]

Truly fascinating stuff.. thanks for making this!!

[@aaronjones5742]

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

[@xxlamaxx1]

This is genuinely one of your guys best videos ever

[@Simonisms]

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

[@SuperlexPlays]

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

[@jsalas5400]

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

[@jaredingram5124]

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.

[@addixworld]

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" 😂

[@omarmohtady3002]

Bro I love this channel such good vibes

[@MolinaKojima]

I loved this video! Made me feel old af tho

[@scottamusprime2510]

10:02 The secret unlockable multiplayer characters in GoldenEye 007 had the photographed faces of the developers. Something I read either in one of the many players guides published for it at the time or in a corner of Nintendo Power magazine.

[@EricJackson]

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

[@zweimeterzwerg]

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.

[@chrisej5987]

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. 😢

[@iowyyn]

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

[@awsomeguy37]

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

[@FranWest.]

Falcon, I love your videos to bits BUT PLEASE could you do away with the blinding White background on the count down numbers?!! #9 - Scratch and sniff stickers were a huge thing back in the 80's and 90's. #3 Chrono Trigger - has time travel mechanics and was released in 1995.

[@satwiksinghal6482]

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

[@C0LPAN1C]

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

[@gameranxTV]

👍🏼

[@seraphin01]

as a big fan of Ecco, and one of my biggest gaming achievement is finishing Ecco on dreamcast, I did NOT know that!

[@Wiseman108]

Actually a small talented team working on a game can sometimes have much better results than a large team or multiple teams working on them. The reason is smaller teams tend to stick to a vision, stay more focused, and have better communication in general.

[@shoked99]

Wow, cool stuff. Thanks.

[@shaneneyome]

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.

[@GusTavo-iu4sg]

Off topic.. You guys are awesome, but you should definitely make a dark mode for the count down screens, it's too bright.. Besides that, all good!! Cheers

[@spencerreed8480]

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

[@juliobrian4757]

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.

[@stanettiels7367]

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

[@jamie7472]

I vaguely remember playing virtua cop way back when

[@Astar8th]

Walking towards 8M that's Crazy!!

[@EmptySoandso]

7:37 The fact that I have known people that plan out shields and heals with excel spreadsheets ... for a fight that might of been made with an excel spreadsheet boggles my mind.

[@Chill_Mode_JD]

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 ✌️🫠

[@MrAltaire]

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

[@ablazedark]

chris sawyer programming rollercoaster tycoon in assembly had just blown my mind. it seemed ridiculous, and it still does.

[@chromebox]

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

[@paradsecar]

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.

[@salmonchurro]

This channel is perfect

[@iluvskylines1234]

I had FIFA 2001 that had scratch snd sniff. Had no idea that only two games implemented this, thats pretty cool! It was also in Ireland, so it wasn't just the UK

[@squiddyhs]

Hey, major slur at 13:28 that should likely be cut out. Just FYI. (Also, great video game history fact video in general, y'all. I literaly come back nearly every day to watch gameranx, as it is. These history rundowns are extra cool.)

[@MissingNo_]

How hard did you have to look at the screen to find that?

[@squiddyhs]

@@MissingNo_ well a.) I edit content for a living so I guess I just scan/read things a bit differently, and b.) I figure gameranx is run by good people and they'd want to know that's there so they can blur it or something.

[@7StringBlazer]

...What a weird equivalency that sentence with the slur was. I'm black and I'm not even offended at seeing it, more slightly amused and *deeply* bewildered at how it just went from 0-100. There's a morbid hilarity in thinking you're reading a standard article on something mundane and then WHAM! you get slur lol

[@INikeAir]

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

[@Gedz817]

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

[@djhart25]

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.

[@smurfey002]

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

[@joelalvarez4423]

Absolutely enjoyed the heck out of this one

[@stealthyjun]

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

[@Justforvisit]

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.

[@SpartanHighKing14]

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

[@sae2705]

For all the detail you're trying to spare us on with Ecco, I'm sat here already knowing the whole story. And yeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, I don't blame you for omitting certain details. I didn't know the scratch & sniff thing though and I'm in the UK and had Gran Turismo 2, man I feel like I missed out on something.

[@ShadyPlatinum777]

Scratch and sniff was a strange thing in the UK. We used to have a day when you would get a booklet from the shops. Then smell the page that correspond with the show.

[@Galliao]

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

[@tubensalat1453]

Of course I agree, fellow human.

[@benwinegarner4797]

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.

[@anthonycowden3493]

There’s also a drunk history about the dolphin story. It’s hilarious.

[@irecordwithaphone1856]

I never heard about that ultima story, that is WILD. This video title is actually accurate, that fact was crazy

[@Lord_Deimos]

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

[@anthonybaleur9296]

golden eyes 007 has this kind of history ? damn if i knew when i was young , iv'e playend doom as well, but this is wild, 12 people on this legend

[@camscot1333]

Ecco unlocked CORE memories for me wow. Thank you

[@cheater00]

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

[@Volfur2251]

the history of Ecco isn't family friendly lmao

[@cheater00]

@@Volfur2251lmao i was thinking in-universe but I could easily see a jodorovsky style film with... "that" thrown in... LMAO

[@jonathangerrits7697]

the zelda mm fact gives me heart poundings