How VHS Gaming Conned Us | Nostalgia Nerd

[@Nostalgianerd]

Please remember to SmAsH tHaT bElL

[@pompshuffle562]

Good video, although it might be a good idea for an epilepsy warning for the video challenger section but im not an expert

[@Clay3613]

Would you be interested in covering QUBE, the worlds first interactive television service from 1977? It pretty much made modern cable boxes, on demand services and viewer feedback.

[@Christopher-N]

(35:24) NUON by VM Labs: I doubt they would carry a compatible remote like what you're looking for, but when I need a remote for an outdated television-closer to the original remote than a universal remote-I go to ReplacementRemotes (dot) com, which is labelled as Dan's Electronics on the site. Admittedly, I've only had to order from them 4 times since 2010, but all 4 orders I got the exact remote control I needed (my latest order October of 2020). I don't know about international ordering.

[@LinuxinaBit]

GoodTimesWithScar intro music :)

[@meetoo594]

@@Christopher-N different games required different controllers as well, some needed an analog stick which wasn't a standard pack in with all machines. Pity they royally screwed up the marketing as the machines are pretty capable hardware wise but only 7 games got released and 1 of those only plays on a single south korean player.

[@keith_dixon]

My Aunt Ann and Uncle Larry got me one of these for Christmas in 1988. Everyone was super excited to try it out and quickly realized that it was not fun at all. I'm still grateful for the gift, they couldn't have known how bad it would be.

[@rippedtorn2310]

You're a good boy Keith .

[@jmtrad1906]

It's the same feeling of giving a unplugged controller to your small brother while you play.

[@jamous3226]

I just got PTSD

[@CeeJayThe13th]

Small brother

[@chincemagnet]

😆 ohh, memories

[@spillinthebeans4354]

Little brothers everywhere having their mind's blown as they read this comment.

[@PajamaManor]

This is the console that you’d give to your little brother so he won’t overwrite your save files again.

[@PoignantPirate]

Just an extra note: the captain power toys in the U.S. would actually respond to the TV show as well as the VHS. There were several other toys along with the ship that all had the small video sensor in them, so if you were watching the show on TV while holding the toys they would do things like flash, play audio clips, or let you shoot at the enemies and react to the events in the show. And every single one of the captain power toys would go absolutely ballistic during the 'armor up' scenes (aka:magical girl transformations)...

[@Freshbrood]

I LOVED Captain Power toys.

[@OhioCompanyTowns]

I remember this as well.

[@OhioCompanyTowns]

You could also shoot the screen with Captain Power.

[@povnw8985]

This is like the advanced version of giving your little brother the broken controller so he can think he's playing too.😆

[@JulianVR4]

Big bran NRG

[@retrogamernes3121]

It's never funny when you ARE the little brother though

[@povnw8985]

@@retrogamernes3121 ; It was to me when I got older and did the same with my little siblings, nieces, and nephews. It's the circle of life! Shit rolls downhill. If you can dodge a turd boulder you can dodge a ball!

[@jc.1191]

🤣

[@vincentshone8618]

Someone has to control Tails!

[@joeblow5214]

The amusing thing is that it tries to trick you into thinking you are actually pointing and hitting what you are shooting at when in reality you are just following the target.

[@glitchgatsby4290]

It's literally a company doing what my older brother did when I was 3, where he'd give me a controller on a single-player game and tell me we were playing together. Literally just an entire product line based around that.

[@scottcharney1091]

@@glitchgatsby4290 No, not literally.

[@wmlukepriest8012]

So far I haven't had a personal connection to any of the technology being discussed in any of Nostalgia Nerd's videos that I have watched, but the quality of research, writing, editing, etc. keeps me coming back for more. I don't have any of the nostalgia, but the nerd is fascinating!

[@JackstandJohnny]

Im realizing that as a child playing our Action Max, we never once hooked up that red light. My childhood was a lie.

[@pennstation5638]

We hooked it up trust me it didn't help lol

[@radicalraccoon]

Out of curiosity, did you at all brag to your friends how realistic the "graphics" of these games were and/or invite them over to share this...unique experience? Haha.

[@pennstation5638]

@@radicalraccoon within 5mins of standing there think you are actually playing. It hits you 😳 shyt they got me!! Then you hide this crap somewhere in your attic basement closet or you bury it so nobody knows you spent $80 - $100 cause you can't return it.

[@rustneversleeps85]

@@pennstation5638 Shouldn't you be able to return it if the creators claims it does something which it clearly doesn't? I mean if it's not an interactive game you'd think they'd have it spelled out in the fine print somewhere in case someone wants their money back? Or consumers had no rights back in the days?

[@pennstation5638]

@@rustneversleeps85 watch Action Max clip again they over exaggerated what the game did making it seem as if it was live action. Only the clicker and target worked. No the stores didn't do refunds. Bradley's lol would not take it back.

[@meidomiseri]

The way they used the vhs frames to hold scenes for Night Trap like that is actually pretty ingenious

[@PawStreetProwlers]

I remember we got an action max for Christmas one year. I had to wait till the older siblings got bored of it before I could try it. That was about 20 minutes.

[@tester9154]

😂😂😂😂😂

[@danobelelement7828]

My pops tricked me into getting that instead of Nintendo a few weeks before Christmas he was like you could get this now or wait for Christmas for Nintendo and of course my 8 year old dumbazz went for it

[@YomommasStankPoon]

@@danobelelement7828 heh. You got finessed

[@danobelelement7828]

Lmao Faxctz

[@borstenpinsel]

I'd imagine it would be pretty cool at first but as you play another round it dawns on you. Not only does it make a 2nd and 3rd game boring, it also takes away the fun of the 1st time when you realise it's a static video

[@SuperNicktendo]

Ah the 80s where the toys did everything you wanted provided you have a high quality television studio to edit out the frustration

[@McDADDyK]

Better than now where the games don't even work

[@penfold7800]

At least the computers in the 80s only did what you told them to and nothing else. I miss that.

[@larkefedifero]

​@@penfold7800 DITTO! DITTO!! DITTO!!! DITTO!!!!! :-) Too many losers, useless anuses and jerky corporations cutting in on everyone else's lives these days. If someone or some group(s) need to cut in on my dull life to enhance *their* livelihood, what does that say about him / her / them?!?! The answer is that these *people* (since they're the ones behind everything) *have* no lives and need to get some. Pathetic... It's for this very reason I don't have a dopey iPhone or iPad and intend to avoid having one for as long as possible. BTW - you may want to reconsider voluntarily having a *chip* jammed under your skin in the near future just because everyone else is and you won't be allowed into certain movies, theaters, casinos, sports arenas, and shopping malls without one. At that point, I consider it "GAME OVER," and hopefully others with the same objections / rejections will agree and take action along with me... ;-)

[@IgorOzarowski]

@@larkefedifero you talking about the vaccine?

[@larkefedifero]

@@IgorOzarowski Actually, no...but I can see the parallel there. Difference is, coronavirus is something which, though invisible, is very contagious and very, very *real* . Thus, so is the need for innocculation. Whilst concerns about bots and other additives are reasonable, I haven't seen evidence of such as of yet. However, there is NO need for an organization or entity to require you to place a chip under your skin just to be able to use a certain type of phone or computer hardware OR software. THAT is true "Big Brother" territory and where dystopia has in fact begun. :-/

[@MikaelMarius]

Why hasn't ActionMax developed a lively homebrew scene? Imagine the possibilities... "Nana's 80th Birthday: The Game"

[@dalekman9999]

"Grandpas 8th Racist Rant of the Day: The Game"

[@mr.pavone9719]

Columbine Massacre Footage: The Action Max Edition.

[@MikaelMarius]

@@mr.pavone9719 lol that's awful Action Max presents: The greatest hits of Ron Jeremy

[@thatguy7155]

Mission impossible: german spy execution the game

[@nimblenavigator9520]

Hillary Clinton in Action Max's "Under Bosnian Sniper fire"

[@sealtyk]

Had all 5 games. Loved this as a kid. My dad wasn't super tech savvy but he would play this with me. Great memories

[@feralkitty33]

I was born in the early 90s and up until now I thought I had imagined the bear from the library that told me stories for hours.

[@noka79]

🤣😅

[@TJ-wg3ud]

I was born in the early 80’s and let me tell you that when teddy ruxpin came out it was amazing. My neighbor had one and i thought it was the coolest thing that a stuffed animal was telling us stories.

[@noka79]

Had one also

[@Axeman369]

@@TJ-wg3ud I remember that, we could never afford one so a kid in our school would bring one in on the last day of school because you were allowed to bring in any toy in for that day those were the days

[@AliciaGuitar]

Omg...i wanted one of those SO bad 🤣🤣🤣

[@superpj]

As a kid living in a trailer the Action Max was the most awesome game system. The local police that would come by for uhh, reasons, actually played the haunted house game a bunch then one day 2 of the officers came by after school and gave me Ambush Alley and it was probably the coolest day of my life. One time a few months later a neighbor got pretty drunk up and cops were called. One of the cops was walking around their trailer and I heard him radio it was all clear and the response call was "STAY ALERT BABY, STAY ALERT" They were quoting Ambush Alley in what I later found out was a drunk guy with his x-wife at gun point in the house.

[@kutter_ttl6786]

Sounds like you had some pretty cool cops in your area.

[@superpj]

@@kutter_ttl6786 I did. Except for the one that spent almost 20 minutes talking me into looking at a dead body. Then when he finally got me pumped enough to look, it was a bug he stepped on.

[@hellbillymods45]

@@superpj Hahaha, dude, that's freaking funny! Loved the story too, thanks for sharing.

[@coreym162]

@@kutter_ttl6786 Leave the cities and the cops are super chill.

[@Khorne_of_the_Hill]

@@coreym162 in the south it's the opposite; the cops and sheriffs in a city area don't give a shit about anything, but small town cops have nothing better to do than extort people for money

[@DirtCobaine]

That captain power toy was pretty genius. An arcade game that allowed pvp multiplayer. I would’ve loved it as a kid. Especially the cockpit flying open and ejecting to give you an actual consequence. Pretty sick.

[@calvinmercer8768]

I still remember the moment in dawned on me as a kid that I wasn't, in fact, changing my Sega Video Driver VCR game in any way with the steering wheel. Life lesson right there.

[@elreyyakko]

Same, I didnt steer for a moment and well,video kept going. Turned it off and never looked at it again.

[@kloggmonkey]

certainly sounds like one of those 'realization followed by a powerful sense of betrayal'-experiences from childhood

[@2wodrqwoa]

*anger*

[@elLooto]

Direct analogy to voting, right there :)

[@brentfisher902]

@@kloggmonkey It's like when you leave the Mormon church and realize that you could have been helping people in need instead of playing dress up and be holy in L.A.R.P. clothing.

[@frydemwingz]

I still remember playing this as a kid and figuring out it was a con and getting really angry at my mom. Forever.

[@PajamaManor]

I’m sure she was just as angry at you for having all that stuff laying around the living room. But it was really her fault because she should have just bought you the SNES like you asked.

[@frydemwingz]

@@PajamaManor honestly.

[@BeerBreath702]

Fucking brats.

[@rockfresh1993]

@@BeerBreath702 😂😂😂

[@rockfresh1993]

1992 playing the original nes

[@kriscynical]

I was born in '84 and just the _sound_ of you sticking that tape into the VCR astral projected me straight back to my childhood, my _god._

[@iluvcamaros1912]

The clunk-thunk sound along with the hum of it coming to life makes a VCR seem almost steampunk nowadays.

[@kriscynical]

@@iluvcamaros1912 Pair that with the crackling dissipating static of the CRT turning off and it's just 🤌.

[@wolfetteplays8894]

Just buy a used VCR and more tapes. It’s not like they’re illegal to own now

[@kriscynical]

@@wolfetteplays8894 The point of my comment really whistled over your head _that_ quickly, huh? That's not at all what I was saying or even implying, but A for effort. You must be so much fun at parties.😏

[@kriscynical]

@@wolfetteplays8894 Okay nevermind I just went to your channel and saw a little bit of your latest video. Fucking _yikes,_ dude. Touch some grass, get help, and re-home that poor dog, you doorknob.🤨

[@tophatjones179]

“He started going to the air force base every day, for work. Time and again, military base officials had to break the news that he wasn’t actually a pilot.” 😂🤣

[@Roxor128]

You really have to admire the fact that they managed to pull off what they did at all. It's all very much a case of making a system do something that was never in its spec sheet.

[@nukelex]

Watching the section on the ActionMax made me want to cry for all the children who received it and the parents who bought them.

[@tasantana1174]

Ya man at that time if it was 1987 or prior to that ,the NES was the sure way to go or Sega Master system before that you couldn't go wrong with the Atari 5200 or even the classic 2600 , ColecoVision etc. just lots of solid systems out there. I don't know why anyone would go VHS. I supposed the deceptive marketing contributed to people being duped into buying an inferior gaming product.

[@por77os]

Tv teddy was sold in argentina as an interactive bear but with no vhs. The bear simply reacts with the tv with the tv signal of state channel "canal 7". During the 90s

[@haruhisuzumiya6650]

and TV teddy in Australia

[@Whickerx7]

That would be be pretty cool nowadays. Back them it must have been amazing.

[@StriderBillman]

Microsoft did something similar with Teletubbies interactive toys that react to their tv show known as Actimates.

[@vonpiro2397]

Lo promocionaba Sofovich, que se ponia a hablar con el coso ese, una bizarreada.

[@ClamBake7525]

Even as a kid I had serious doubts about these things, so glad I didn't have to experience them.

[@negirno]

Living behind the Iron Curtain thus not getting access to these things also help. You could read poorly researched articles about these magical interactive toys in your kids magazines, though...

[@glyph241]

I Had At Least Some Fun With This: “Debuting in 1987, Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future was a multi-media brand which included a TV series, a toy line, and various tie-in products. So why am I writing about it on my retro gaming blog? Because at its core, Captain Power was a game.”

[@waverazor]

As a kid I really wondered how it worked, I remember watching a lot of VHS and it just didn't make sense to me

[@ClamBake7525]

@Eugene Cam What makes you think they could've afforded a VCR and the unit to play these games? May as well have gotten a NES. Super Mario Brothers is infinitely better to play/replay than watching the same tape over and over never even knowing if you actually killed your foe or not.

[@Len1977gt]

You probably didn't experience much as a kid

[@promontorium]

My family found Atmosfear in the early 2000s at a second hand store. We found the audio hilarious. We never got into the actual board game so sometimes we'd just play the VHS in the background as every few minutes a character pops up and says funny things.

[@0utlaw408]

I played it early 90s

[@yetinother]

I used to cheat at DuckHunt with my brothers when I was like 8 years old, I figured out by myself that if I pulled down the shade in the kitchen window just right, then I could make the square that the Nintendo light gun picked up. I could literally just point the gun at the TV and it would always pick up the square from the window. I could get a perfect 10 out of 10 for many rounds without even trying. Then when I finally lost from the game going to fast I would stand behind my brothers in-between the tv and the window, so there was no more white square for them to use.

[@LittleRainGames]

It doesnt detect the square shape, just the light. The system then checks where the electron beam is pointing, and if the gun recieves light at the same time the beam is creating the light a hit is count.

[@lmcgregoruk]

@@LittleRainGames Well when you pull the trigger, it first makes the whole screen completely black for one frame, then it make a white square where the duck was for the next frame, and it detects the intensity of the light from black to white to register a hit. That's why pointing the zapper at a constant light source like a lightbulb won't work.

[@vylbird8014]

@@lmcgregoruk His cheat wouldn't work with the legitimate duck-hunt, but we're looking at old degraded memories here. Perhaps he had one of the knock-off immitations.

[@blueredbrick]

Great fun. Pointing it at fluorescent tube light did the same trick. Duckhunt was cool. Good memories.

[@paulocuento9949]

nice. fond memories of childhood videogames are always cool

[@kriskropd]

As someone who grew up in the US during the 90s as a tv-console enthusiast, I've honestly never-ever heard of these until now.

[@robbylebotha]

They even ported these rubbish "games" to DVD. I kept seeing them up until even 2012

[@cassievania]

I remember Captain Power and the little car thing seems familiar

[@milkapeismilky5464]

I'm the same, never heard of these BTD

[@nmbmemphisbeast3690]

Lol I think it was sold in dumbass states I never heard or known someone with this and trust me we had every system just about except that Atari handheld

[@frost8077]

I've heard of VHS games before but I was confused as to what that even meant. This was a great video on explaining that, and the history and variety of these games. It's really fascinating how they could do so much with a single signal.

[@yourlifeisagreatstory]

Check out Captain Power .. it was such a great vhs and PvP setup.

[@hyliahero]

Captain Power! Wow. I forgot that existed, but as soon as I saw it I completely remembered it. I was totally into that show when I was about five. How did I forget about a show I was so obsessed with. That was a major trip down Nostalgia lane. I wonder how many other things from my childhood I’ve forgot about that would blow my mind to remember? I’m gonna look up an episode of Captain Power as soon as I finish this awesome documentary.

[@davidmeyer6908]

Thank goodness I was born too late for these. Wolfenstein 3D and Commander Keen were my first forays into gaming, and they definitely did not disappoint.

[@joshuaa.5523]

Holy shit are you me? are you 35 too?

[@JanoyCresvaZero]

@@roberttodd2414 Yep. Sewer Shark is a particularly rare kind of turd, it’s so bad.

[@hitkid2456]

At least Japan saw that concept for what it was. The PC-CD had a damn good selection of games.

[@fisharmor]

You never new the joy of being on a cross-country road trip in 1982 and having your older brother say "Hey this hotel has Donkey Kong!" and knowing you had your evening planned.

[@MrVarhansen]

My first games were Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, Illusion of Gaia, Final Fantasy 2 (us). [Game set match, don't be jealous, I just had good taste, or at least my older brother did lol]

[@Anhviet19]

The action max somehow popped in my head earlier this week. I had one as I kid. The game we had was like a haunted house ghost game . But when it popped in my head I couldn't get past on how it worked just being a VHS tape. Glad I came across this video.

[@MrJC1]

"Even to this day, this kid, now a grown man, believes entirely that he is an ace pilot. it was the Action Max that made him this way, and it's that kind of technology that you need in your life"..... ahhahahahaha classic.

[@DrivingTheClassics]

Yep. I had the Action Max. I was SO excited to get that. I played it one time and it never came out of the box again.

[@scottcol23]

me too. played it once. Still have it though

[@sneakysnake7695]

@@scottcol23 you could probably get a nice bit of change if you find a collector for it.

[@scottcol23]

@@sneakysnake7695 yeah looks like about $130 on ebay. Ill keep it. At this point I don't even own a VCR or a CRT tv.... So its just a thing in a box.

[@WilDBeestMF]

@@scottcol23 Fully functional, it's basically just a thing in a box. Lol. It probably would make a lovely sound if you throw it out the window.

[@keithpatrick156]

Same here....I begged my dad for one, but when I played it, it was like "WTF???" I wound up taking it apart to see how it worked after barely playing it

[@CatMandiano]

Learning about all this old tech that easily encodes simple messages into tv broadcast raises the question of what ELSE is NOW encoded in broadcasts.

[@JRBowling1997]

We need to find out...

[@3rdalbum]

I'm impressed by having four different streams of video at the same time on a VHS! I'm also impressed by encoding data on the edge of a video signal and the data communicating with the Interactive Vision to draw onto the screen. That's really cool.

[@bobbobbity463]

That encoding is also how Teletext worked

[@jonathanellis6097]

Im an 80`s kid and this all passed me by, intresting stuff.

[@madmax2069]

Be glad it did.

[@loyale27turbo]

Beyond Awesome! ... Thanks for this very informative Video. I saw DVD consoles that played Nes games, illegaly by the way, here in Honduras.

[@TrevorAvrett]

I'm not a gamer or a collector, but you do such a thorough and passionate job archiving these things that I find myself clicking on your content from time to time! Thank you for sharing your passion and knowledge with the world.

[@iamzachinreallife]

I got “Video Driver” for Christmas when I was 6 or 7. I remember thinking, “hey, it’s a Sega product! It should be fun.” But then right after that I thought, “wait a second...it’s a video tape. Videotapes are pre-recorded, so you can’t actually control it.” Dissatisfaction and disappointment quickly ensued.

[@davidjames579]

Did you realise it was pre-recorded at age 6? That's pretty cool. That said, if it had been Laserdisc....

[@andrewmosley2588]

Ok lol. I call bullshit.

[@LandLordhumble]

Bullshit

[@Tarquin23]

@@andrewmosley2588 pretty sure you could be a 4 or 5 year old and realise that a VHS is a VHS and doesn’t do anything. I have, ironically, VHS tapes of me playing Mega Drive around that age and I absolutely knew the difference between a VHS and a game cartridge.

[@H2x2x2]

Man, you're the best 80's nostalgia tech channel that I've discovered. Subscribed a while ago, and slowly savouring, enjoying, and re-watching all of your incredible work. Thank you.

[@jjtimmins1203]

This show held my attention longer than my buddy's Action Max flight game. I knew he had it for Xmas but he wouldn't play it until I begged for a couple days. Then he reluctantly set it up and gave me the pistol. I thought it'd be like a mix of Afterburner and Top Gun. Ten minutes later I understood why my buddy hated it, and we never played it again. Forgot all about it until now.

[@igorszamaszow171]

I remember an old video by James Rolfe and Mike Matei, when they suggested that people should start making Action Max homebrew games. That would be neat.

[@Nostalgianerd]

I did consider it for this episode, but time was a limiting factor. But, if I can face it again, it would be a fun thing to do.

[@AcornElectron]

@@Nostalgianerd I’ll warrant you’d make more from the KZbin revenue from views than the sales of said game 😂😉🕹📼📼📼📼📼📼📼

[@meetoo594]

You should get that teddy to swear and growl, that would be epic.

[@neophobicnyctophile8264]

@@Nostalgianerd I was wondering the whole time if you encoded digital signals into the video feed...

[@neophobicnyctophile8264]

@@meetoo594 Put a Tom Waits cassette into your Teddy Ruxpin. And maybe some boric acid.

[@nickes6168]

When I was 11 or 12, I went with my uncle to a garage sale and seen that laser tag and thought it was the craziest thing ever to find THAT at a garage sale. Each gun and pack took six double A's each, which meant a total of 24 double A's if you wanted to play a round with a buddy. And the accuracy was about stormtrooper level.

[@scottcharney1091]

seen?

[@swampdonkey4919]

My parents wouldn't buy me laser tag. "You already have a Nintendo, it's better!"

[@Monsuco]

Makes you appreciate how influential Night Trap was. It helped push the tech behind these VHS games only to be dropped, picked back up by Sega CD and then spur the creation of the ESRB. Yeah, it still sucked gameplay wise but it influenced a lot of stuff.

[@jonathansoko5368]

Night trap has an important place in gaming history. They tried so hard to censor it and prevent it existing! I own a boxed copy for that reason.... It's dumb but ridiculous and fun to play with unexpecting people

[@billkeithchannel]

So sad the ending of Dana Plato who starred in Night Trap.

[@riffgroove]

Reminds me a bit of the XBOX Kinect. It worked horribly, but they wanted to get it on the market as fast as possible just so nobody else could steal the technology. Roughly a decade later, the technology is still in it's infancy.

[@the_hanged_clown]

4:52 so THAT'S where that toy gun came from! I grew up playing with that exact gun but as it was just another hand-me-down from a brother 10yrs my elder I never had any clue what it was for

[@dominicdelprincipe2583]

That was a really slick segue… It made the ad portion almost unnoticeable at the start of it... almost. Great job!

[@IvanFazekas]

You reopened a whole cubby hole full of memories I unconsciously stashed away - THANK YOU!! Omg the nostalgia - I remembered all the feelings that came with watching these commercials as a young boy and even remembered my teddy ruxpin and his buddy grubby. Just amazing.

[@misteridiot]

“... How am I firing a handgun from the cockpit of fighter jet?”

[@CarrotConsumer]

That's how fighting was done in planes in the old days. He's a traditionalist.

[@vylbird8014]

@@CarrotConsumer It was tried in the very early days of aircraft. The hit rate was an impressive zero. It didn't take long to realise that the solution was 'more dakka' - fit the plane with a machine gun or two and pump out enough bullets that some of them might actually hit.

[@abdelali9279]

GTA logic maybe

[@subduedreader5627]

@Cheryl [Phone] First try was a strip of armor on the propellers.

[@jeopardy60611]

@Cheryl [Phone] I think they came up with some sort of sync mechanism that times the shots so as to not hit the propeller.

[@calijguyman]

thank you for putting this up! I tried bringing this up to some friends a year or so ago, and everyone thought I was crazy!

[@005AGIMA]

"No one really knew what was happening in afterburner anyway". After 30+ years, finally I feel vindicated.

[@raycearcher5794]

Afterburner makes sense for about 10 minutes, then it's just utter nonsense. Space Harrier is kind of the same deal, but there's less happening at once so you can KIND of work it out.

[@Krystalmyth]

Ill be honest, theres no way to play that game well. I owned a standup cab for years before it melted and never got good at it lol

[@matthewjohnson1891]

Yes!

[@parteibonza]

I wouldn't mind finding one of the sit down versions. I would spend my meager salary rebuiding it and improving the speakers. It was my favorite game at the time. RENRUB RETFA foreva!!!

[@VulpisFoxfire]

@@parteibonza That and G-Loc were fun for the motion-control cabs. Though one of the only times I've had the chance to play the G-Loc one, it was partly broken and the seat was just tilted to the left the entire game, though IIRC the forward/back tilt still worked.

[@rolandkatsuragi]

Surprised how the rail shooter genre didn't take advantage on this technology

[@Trimint123]

One reason is epilepsy.

[@joemck85]

@@Trimint123 It wouldn't have been that hard to make one that worked without flashing lights, but you'd need a base unit and it would cost more than the little battery powered handheld Video Challenger. Pass the video signal through the base unit. A vertical (or horizontal!) bar off the visible part of the screen would encode X,Y coordinates of each target. Then the base unit compares the timing of a pulse of light picked up by the light gun as the electron beam passes where it's pointed. Then all they need to do is ensure all targets are brightly lit. As a bonus, since the video signal passes through a base unit, it could also do more tricks like obscuring parts of the frame, demuxing multiple 240p video streams, or just drawing the score counter on screen.

[@chemistryofquestionablequa6252]

Photo sensitive epilepsy is actually vanishingly rare. It's just that companies are terrified of being sued.

[@lcmiracle]

@@chemistryofquestionablequa6252 It could be 1% of Americans and it'd still be 3 million people. How about you getting sued by 3 million people?

[@findantu]

it kinda did in arcade.

[@TipsterLIVE]

I actually had a friend who owned an Action Max. Never got the chance to play it. But I remember seeing it and the original box in his home.

[@reddyredwolf3931]

Just a correction. Takara known for Transformers and Tomy known for Zoids are two different companies that later merged to Takara-Tomy. Also it's Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future.

[@Schwarzorn]

I was about to say the same thing. As soon as I heard “Takara-Tomy” in a video about 90s stuff, I was immediately thinking “Wait. That company didn’t exist yet!”.

[@pigs18]

Speaking of Transformers, I think you could use the Takara gun to shoot the Decepticons in the intro to one of the Japanese series.

[@barahng]

Zoids man, what a time. I loved watching that on cartoon network after school.

[@NerveFlux]

I had Action Max as a kid and yes jumping behind the couch and all over the place pretending to dodge incoming fire was a lot of fun.

[@MrLlamajockey]

I remember getting Battlevision at Christmas one year. It was a pretty cool experience...once or twice... then it just became a hideout for my G.I. Joes to launch daring attacks on a friend's My Little Ponies.

[@andreasottohansen7338]

Now that latter half sounds like a much better time.

[@huntforandrew]

I still remember that Gargoyles VHS+Boardgame. Man that 90's were the shit.. No one knew what was gonna be the next big thing so everyone was cranking out all kinds of random shit. What a time to be alive.

[@wesss9353]

Nightmare was fun. I think I still have it somewhere. An hour long VHS and board game.

[@maxgood42]

I remember a VHS / game / story / AKA choose your adventure and we had to pause and then FF to a set time, based on clues that we had to guess the answer to, to continue the ADVENTURE. I also thought I had the power of GOD when I was finnaly able to save lines of data in text box feilds, with the AWSOMENESS of my new (second hand) Epson 286 .....🤣🤣🤣 /run... 20 GOTO 10 ..... /end...

[@slanderman3296]

I remember I wanted a creepy crawly maker SOOOOOOO BAD. I never got one

[@LordThanathos]

The TV Teddy was huge for a short while over here in Argentina: they somehow convinced one of the most famous TV hosts ever to marketing the crap out of it, so we had this elderly man with a vague "mafia boss" aura telling kids to turn on their Teddies on live TV, and then the bear would tell a short night time story just before 10 PM. In retrospective it was really funny, because they made the bear sound argentinean, in harsh contrast with the generic Latin American accent of the VHS tapes included with the toy. Good times.

[@positivelycurvedpikachu]

we need to get back the 90s. Milei 2023 - 3023

[@sforza209]

Wowwww! That sounds so cringe it hurts.

[@H2x2x2]

So much detailed research - should all be archived for future generations. Just incredible. Thank you.

[@mikebrown5819]

My friend had the Video Driver game in the 80s. As a kid I genuinely thought it was magic. (Not a very bright kid) but also shows how the marketeers took the premise of 'suspension of disbelief' to a whole new level :) Awesome vid this really took me back - Thx

[@KnarfBlack]

The SD footage upscaling creates some serious nightmare fuel every once and a while.

[@amicloud_yt]

i was just wondering what the hell is wrong with these monsters' faces!

[@popanollie1]

oh man this video brings me back to my first glitch gaming experience. the action max, if you slightly offset the sensor it will expose the white light in the corner, than all you have to do is shoot the non moving corner light. thanks for bringing a great part of my childhood back.

[@geodesical]

I was born in 1998 and seeing the Connor VideoSmarts unlocked memories I haven't thought of in years, I very vaguely remember playing one of those on our VCR in probably 2001-2003, I had no idea it was as old as it was! Thank you for bringing back some extremely early memories from my childhood!

[@jweebs1986]

Holy crap - I had one of those Connor Videosmarts systems as a kid. I’ve been trying for years to figure out what it was called so I could look it up and see it again. But no matter how much searching I did I could never find it. I had to KZbin search some videos of the content and now I’m playing a fun game of looking through the videos for bits and pieces I remember! You’ve lived up to your channel name for me with this one - thank you!

[@only1muppet]

After seeing this, I realize my siblings and I were luckier than some, in the gaming sense. We had Pong, then Coleco Vision, SNES and finally Sega. My sister had Teddy Ruxbin lol

[@MidMo4020]

I had G.I. Joe… and Voltron!!

[@Vallee152]

I didn't even know these existed before watching this

[@markhammer9975]

I played with the airplane gun one with my friend down the block in 1986 or whatever. I remember shooting at the tv and then running around shooting each other's ships. What a memory seeing this video. I was born in 79

[@abandonedmuse]

Same.

[@mkhachfe]

Me neither. How odd

[@marckhachfe1238]

@Rante Aligheri ? Joke by who? Google search reveals it did exist. Is this some sort of super dry/abstract humour im not getting? LOL

[@souljastation5463]

I knew Captain Power, because of the TV show and the the action figures toyline.

[@johndough3125]

32:09 Tv teddy grabs a knife, stands up “now it’s time to bring this interactive game to real life.” Then starts walking towards you

[@Krystalmyth]

"Please don't run away! You'll only die tired!"

[@InZomnia365]

Honestly, the Captain Power thing seemed like a really neat idea. If people still watched TV instead of streaming online at their own leisure, I could've seen something similar happen today with the use of a smartphone app.

[@Bt3615]

It's worth noting that Takara mandated that the japan exclusive Transformers Headmasters featured interactions with video challenger. This happened roughly at the same time of Captain Power (both show started airing in 1987 in the respective countries), but the Transformers cartoon in question used a very crude technique to achieve the same effect.

[@mightyfilm]

And it went deeper than that. They actually had Daniel Witwicky play with the Video Challenger in an episode or two. Of course, the actual "interactivity" with this series was just a seizure inducing version of the opening theme that came on about halfway through the show's run, basically having the home audience shoot at the flickering Decepticons. This was preserved for the US DVD release. Not the eyecatches or the next episode previews, but a gimmick for a long since dead toy from another country, without context was left in.

[@NeverAgain.BeNiceToPeople.]

And I thought my parents were just naive saying, "why can't we just put it in the VCR?" Talking about NES cartridges. Maybe they had seen one of these gaming systems :-)

[@appliedengineering4001]

FUN FACT: Did you ever wonder why the original NES has that really shitty front load mechanism for it's it's game cartridges? it's not because it's a better design. In fact, Nintendo knew it was going to be a piece of shit from the start. No, they did it because it emulated the feel of loading a video cassette into a VCR. During the post video game crash of 84. Nintendo made every effort to make sure that the NES did not feel like just another game console of the time. Just like Rob the Robot. Nintendo knew Rob was a gimmick, but it still help kick start the NES into the market.

[@NeverAgain.BeNiceToPeople.]

@@appliedengineering4001 thanks 😊

[@mrmeestah6177]

@@appliedengineering4001 that's extremely interesting and might I say a good move, because I was born in 93 but have played my fair share of original NES cartridges and that is one of the things I remember most

[@DanAtkinson918]

I had the Captain power ship. I got it for my birthday. It never seemed to work right and got shelved for the Nintendo. It was definitely a weird time in tech. I had forgotten about these. I remember all the VHS board games as well. Thanks for drudging up some cool child memories.

[@ViralKiller]

Still not as big a con as Rise of the Robots for SNES...

[@JayBlackheart]

You sho'll aint lying...

[@arvinrunstein5707]

Get over already, Eric! Your mother and I are sick of this crap!

[@kayskel5610]

Super pissed when i rented Rise of the Robots for the weekend....then a few weeks later i went to my cousins house and they were so psyched they couldnt wait to play this sick game they rented...

[@Xxsnipedawg72xX]

Oh I loved that game, such good graphics. Crazy gameplay. Much good

[@souljastation5463]

Rise of the Robots for _every system._

[@RevRedmondFarrier]

I remember getting Video Driver as a kid. I was quite pleased when I figured out how it worked. It seemed like such a brilliant yet simple idea to have a bar at the bottom that the car could sense to keep score. The game itself wasn't that fun to me, but I still played with it often just because the concept behind how it worked seemed so brilliant to me at the time.

[@davidjames579]

I think there's a sense of control and challenge in that you are trying to stay on course with the video image.

[@nightwatch3359]

I'm watching this and I'm laughing, feeling nostalgic and sad at the same time at just how much I miss those simple and uncomplicated days. I wish I had a time machine.

[@mrmeestah6177]

come on man take the red pill embrace the future and create it

[@sneffels]

i used to watch captan power and id see the sections of the show with the flashing parts and thought I bet this is for a game or something. I had never known that it was actually for a game since I have never seen the toy for it advertised or on sale in any of my local stores. Cool to know that it actually was for a game.

[@alerighi]

I wonder if to get interactivity the teletext signal could be used. You had basically a way to overlay text on any video signal (TV supported mixed teletext and signal, usually done for subtitles that were transmitted on a particular page), and also to receive input in form of entering a 3 digit number (but also the shortcut of the 4 colour buttons on the remote control). No other hardware needed other than a standard VCR. Teletext games were transmitted on normal TV channels. And you could easily record the teletext signal on VHS (fun thing: try watching VHS recorded in the past and you can go back in time and see the old teletext pages. Teletext signal was just a digital signal added in the time between frames so it was recorded by most VCRs).

[@SimonClarkstone]

The signal was always a little too blurry for teletext to work, I found. There was one broadcast UK channel that had a quiz game though; it used the fact that page numbers were BCD not decimal, so the colour buttons could link to pages with digits a-f in them that you couldn't type in with the remote

[@jedgrahek1426]

I absolutely loved Captain Power as a kid, and my dad was usually up at that time and would watch it with me lol... glad to hear you say it was worth checking out. It's like... Star Trek crossed with He Man crossed with The Terminator. Weirdly dystopian for a kid's show, but that's what made it so cool as a kid.

[@benjilee329]

I liked the show too. It just didn't get a fair shake at the time.

[@franklloyd3264]

Me and my brothers got all things Captain Power for Christmas one year so great!!

[@scienz]

the figures and the art in the vhs tapes were awesome

[@J_Dubb1]

I agree! Still have some of the figures and I loved it soooo much, very spooky story line tho for a 8 year old at the time! Rofl

[@kikodekliko1209]

You know you've got something good when the box itself has a message from the president

[@roombaclock]

Ah yes you know something is trust worth when theres teh fucking president

[@r_jd279]

Did that president turn from Japanese to a white dude towards the end? Anyways... ahhh... politics....

[@ColinHuth]

Just when you think things couldn’t get any weirder, you realize that the actor who shows up at 28:49, Bill McCutcheon, played Dropo in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. This is entirely irrelevant, but my night was made.

[@Eidolon1andOnly]

Woah, didn't even notice the first time viewing, but by golly, you're right. Good eye.

[@justanotheryoutubechannel]

That Video Challenger actually seems really cool! I can’t believe they ported a version of Road Blaster and After Burner 2 onto it. I imagine it must’ve been really fun, the first time at least, although it might’ve got boring once you realised the enemies always moved the same way and blew up at the same times.

[@TheOvadex]

The up-scaling on that old game footage was haunting....

[@ronniepirtlejr2606]

I am 51 years old. I grew up in arcades. I owned many of video game systems but, I've never heard of this!

[@ronniepirtlejr2606]

@@TheTillmanSneakerReview I agree! I would have been pretty mad spending money on a gaming system like that to find out, all you do shoot a blinking light!

[@tieran2009]

I'm 52, and I only know about the Action Max, because my best friend in college owned that with the Blue Thunder tape... and he brought it back with him after one trimester, since we both loved Video Games and we both loved Blue Thunder (Movie and TV Series) and Airwolf.

[@fuxbox]

Wow it's been so long! And I've been searching a long time for this rare thing I played as a very young boy. I started to think I imagined it. Captain power! Blew my little mind back then. Probably more the video than the actual "game" Thanks for reassuring me that actually happened lol

[@ColinHoad]

I remember the Atmosfear board game / VHS tie-in. Had a mate who owned it and I was incredibly jealous. The other concepts here range quite a lot in terms of their overall ingenuity but it's still impressive how they tried pushing the limits of the humble, passive VHS tape. Lovely stuff.

[@edwarddeguzman3258]

“Up at 6AM in the morning, what kind of mental family is up at that time” a phrase spoken by every American kid …..

[@sonicclang]

Saturday morning cartoons were the only reason I would wake up on the weekends! I'd wake up at 6:00 am to watch hours of glorious television directed only at kids. It was bliss. Once 11:00 am hit, it was all boring grown up stuff again. My family went to church on Sundays, so this was a very sneaky way to make me not sleep in at all on the weekends :)

[@mr.9rinc3]

That space ship and car toy looked pretty fire tbh would've loved those back in my childhood

[@BocaRetroGames]

Crazy ammount of work you put on your videos, thats insane ! Amazing work

[@neoasura]

Kids today really don't know how good they have it in the gaming scene.

[@r_jd279]

Thanks for being kind and rewinding there at the end, sir.

[@Charredasperity]

I always saw ads for these in magazines as a kid, and even back then I thought "There's no way this would work" Turns out I was right.

[@brentfisher902]

This moment brought to you by Science: The One True Church.

[@mikesmith1290]

As a kid growing up in the 80’s, I knew VHS was linear, and these games couldn’t possibly be what they claimed to be.

[@kbhasi]

I sense that you were a smart kid.

[@killjoydod4937]

LOL Same here!! I had the Action Max and The Captain Power XT-7 fighter. It didn't take long to figure out they were nothing but high score challenges. The action max could count hits as fast as you could pull the trigger (and keep the gun on target). I remember being able to get either 37 or 47 points before the training mission was over in the Action Max jet game!!!

[@gordontaylor2815]

@@killjoydod4937 Of course, some people didn't mind trying to keep topping their previous high scores (or simply figuring out how to max out the counter). But even then there was no replay value besides that - like with FMV games, this was style over substance.

[@killjoydod4937]

@@gordontaylor2815 Well, reclaiming the top score from friends always made me want to "REPLAY" it!! There's a key word in this statement!! Look for it!! XD

[@CNash85]

That’s true enough, but it’s really only a couple of features short of an arcade-style rail shooter like Lethal Enforcers or Time Crisis. The stages play out in a linear way, the only difference is that you get feedback on your performance via graphics rather than just a high score system. In that respect, Action Max et al are an odd mix of FMV games and rail shooters without branching paths.

[@JustAGuyYaKnow42]

The ingenuity required for these games is amazing. I was gaming when these were out, but they somehow all flew under my radar.

[@lukeshdoesntknow]

Honestly a lot of these are pretty ingenious. Interesting to see how people worked around limitations of the time

[@The_Conspiracy_Analyst]

it wasn't "working around limitations", they were a complete con job

[@nickwallette6201]

I vividly remember that Action Max commercial from live TV. So _that_ made me feel old. But even then, I was skeptical of how a linear format was going to offer any meaningful interactivity.

[@leeartlee915]

Wow, I thought I knew (near) everything about video games wild history. And yet, this whole thing went right by me. Truly fascinating stuff.

[@Gurdia]

That was by far one of the best squarespace ads I've seen on KZbin. Almost all the other channels tell me how easy and quick it is to make a website. But you actually showed me how easy it is. If you could make a good looking one off website to show off in a video, then that definitely better illustrates how easy it is to use then just the usual stock video most others show.

[@crazyivan030983]

Wow, they tried to squeeze out everything they could from VHS :) greetings from Poland :)

[@bltvd]

In Poland did the Action Max use an 8-track tape machine?😂

[@wetbiscuits3062]

Ogórek

[@crazyivan030983]

@@bltvd hehe :) I don't know :) I was to young :) but true, we never was at the top of technology :) but it is not a reason to laugh :) check USSR how they killed our economy and technology :) best to You :)

[@mattkennedy6115]

@@wetbiscuits3062 cucumber? 😆

[@adenowirus]

@@bltvd Speaking of Poland and video tape, here's a bit of trivia. In 1968 Polish Television wanted to buy a tv studio grade video tape recorder from Ampex. Problem was, in the west there was an embargo on sale of such machines to Eastern Bloc countries. So the Polish Television ended up purchasing their first Ampex illegally through Yugoslavia. It was kept in a closed room in the basement of Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw (where the transmission facilities were located), only few people could access it, and it was officially labeled as "air conditioner" in documents.

[@brycevo]

The Godzilla game and TNMT game are actually really interesting and look like fun

[@gilardes]

My soul ached just by seeing these scammy abominations. I am literally glad that nobody ever got me something like this back in the day. I don't think I could handle something so utterly tantalizing and sheerly disappointing.

[@JinzoCrash]

Even as a kid, i saw light gun games in the 70s and early 80s as "trash". There was no way I wanted that at home, even if my NES later had Duck Hunt.

[@Krystalmyth]

some of these werent bad though

[@IxodesPersulcatus]

Spaceship dogfighting PvP toys that impartially tally up the score actually sound amazing even now.

[@VulpisFoxfire]

The PvP part was basically the same as Laser Tag/Photon/whatever that line is they're selling beside the Nerf stuff even today.

[@onerimeuse]

My baby sitter had the captain power ships and tapes. He used to use them to sedate my brother and I, albeit without batteries in the "controllers". I'm kind proud of myself, even at whatever age I was then, I had a pretty good sense that nothing was happening, but it was fun to fly the ship around anyway. Thank you, nostalgia nerd, you answered something I've wondered and forgotten to look up for probably 33 or so years (37 now). Very cool.