WarGames (1983) First Time Watching! Movie Reaction!

[@bottlecaps2741]

I always love seeing people's minds being blown by the buttered bread and corn scene.

[@pvanukoff]

"Could we have pills, and cook the corn?" 🤣

[@jimhsfbay]

I picked up doing that from this movie.

[@positivelynegative9149]

Same. 🤣

[@machfront]

Exactly! David’s dad was his own brand of hacker. Heheh

[@flaviomiyake2089]

Samantha's reaction is priceless on this scene.

[@beatleblev]

The scariest lines in the film are: David: "Is this a game or is it real?" Joshua: "What's the difference"

[@scotthewitt258]

That was some great writing. Easily overlooked. Of course, for an artificial intelligence, all reality is virtual.

[@campagnollo]

I actually programed my Alexa to respond to that same question. Not as ominous though.

[@rbrtck]

What's scary is that it sounds like a politician.

[@mnomadvfx]

To be absolutely fair there's zero reason it should know the difference because it hasn't learned what the difference is. The game effectively IS its reality.

[@TesseRact7228]

Well, the brain does not know the difference between a dream and reality...

[@scgreek1114]

"You can't be running in here, someone could get hurt! " An homage to Dr. Strangelove, which you've already reacted to.

[@VolutedJoker]

Fun fact. The jeep accident was real, it wasn’t supposed to happen that way but they left it in. Thanks for reacting to it, it’s a childhood favorite of mine.

[@scottythedawg]

thanks for confirming that. I suspected it but now i know. 👍

[@MichaelGMunz]

Same. First movie my dad ever rented from the video store.

[@samantha_schmitt]

😮

[@ZavaXavier]

I bet that was scary to almost getting yourself hurt or killed.

[@SurvivorBri]

Stop saying fun fact. It's time we retire that term. And that fact is not fun. It's frightening.

[@deathsurge666]

As a 40+ year computer programmer, this film was dead accurate on how everything worked back in that era. Including Broderick’s character, because he actually hit the real computer geek of the time which never really matched the traditional stereotypes people had

[@georgemorley1029]

Phreaking, war dialling, brute force, social engineering, the film is a hacker lexicon.

[@adaddinsane]

The guys who wrote it did a shit-ton of research - they also wrote Sneakers.@@georgemorley1029

[@LogicalNiko]

Before The Matrix the go to movie playlist was Wargames, Sneakers, and Hackers. And even though Hackers had the most far fetched concepts it has Angelina Jolie, Pen Jillette and The Prodigy & Orbital, soo... But yes in a looong round about way of going through many many backend jobs in the sector...this influenced my current career in defensive cybersecurity (including government work).

[@misabissett2000]

My husband was a missileer several years ago and says parts of the capsule scenes are very accurate.

[@nemomarcus5784]

You need to watch Sneakers next.

[@MichFedorchak]

the spin wheel needs to be called, "Schmitt hits the fan"

[@RustyDust101]

This!😂

[@House0fHoot]

🤣👏👏👏

[@Stogie2112]

“Schmitt & Spin”

[@cog4life]

😂😂🤣

[@kevinstull8552]

Schmitt happens

[@j0ser1]

Matthew Broderick changing his grades in Ferris Bueller was a reference to his first really successful movie, War Games.

[@herrera3499]

I love the corn scene reaction by Samantha! LOL! Samantha: "Oh, Woah!!" TBR: "OK. Is that more efficient?" Samantha: "Yeah!" TBR: "You about to try that?" Samantha: "Yeahhhh!" 😆😆

[@ian_forbes]

Fun fact: The computer is named WOPR as a nod to an early NORAD computer which was named BRGR.

[@greenpeasuit]

Did Burger King sponsor this? If it had McD's, would the computer be BGMC?

[@MontagZoso]

Hope that was just a joke.

[@victorsixtythree]

Falken's attitude was the result of him having lost his son. He even said to Jennifer "we might gain a few years, perhaps time enough for you to have a son and watch him die..." Maybe he saw a bit of Joshua, or what Joshua might have grown up to become, in David and that's what changed his mind.

[@NoelleMar]

Yeah watching it again as an adult gave me a whole different impression. Now I see what a deep depression he was in. He can’t undo what he’s done, and to him life isn’t really worth living anyway. This is how he copes. I actually just had a flashback to Melancholia dear lord lol. Do not like that film, but this made me think of the depressed sister saying something about how life was evil and should be destroyed. And how calm she was at the impending apocalypse.

[@BoredMarcus]

while I think you're absolutely right, there is another side to it. I was very young, but I remember many people were very cynical about the state of the world. It was a very real feeling that just one incident, like a proxy war gone wrong, would make them do the unthinkable and start the missiles. That's why millions got on the streets to protest for peace. Many movies dealt with these scenarios, like "The Day After". Almost everyone thought the stalemate between the USSR and the USA would go on forever. And I think that's his sentiment here. He says even if we prevent this from happening in a few years something else will and then they're going to do it. I remember a book where the author said he doesn't believe that there is other intelligent life in the universe, because it's unavoidable that intelligent species get to a point when they can destroy themselves, so someday they will just do that. It's of course a strange concept, since other species may be completely different than us, but I think it catches the mindset of many people of the time.

[@f0rth3l0v30fchr15t]

@@BoredMarcus "The Day After" is pretty tame. Try "Threads" instead.

[@mnomadvfx]

I never thought David was the reason at all - David was at best just a messenger in his eyes. It was more to do with WOPR/Joshua, and feeling some measure of responsibility for it's behavior - perhaps even wanting to see it through the events. He sees it much as a father would a child that they could not teach an important lesson - a task left undone when he left the military. The reason this should be obvious is the joyous expression Falken has on his face when it declares that "the only winning move is not to play". The real Joshua may have been the child of his body, but WOPR was the child of his mind, and he was equally proud of it in that moment of epiphany.

[@BattleMatt]

Yep, 100% Threads@@f0rth3l0v30fchr15t

[@GKinslayer]

When this came out Reagan asked the Pentagon if any of this was possible. Seem the military were not happy since a lot of this was very close to being true. - Reagan was fascinated by the film, so much so that the following week he stopped a meeting regarding upcoming nuclear negotiations with the Russians to give everyone in the room a full breakdown of the plot. When he was finished, he asked General John W. Vessey Jr.-then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff-to look into just how plausible the film was. Vessey did some research and determined that WarGames actually was a prescient indicator of a rising threat in the (then) very new world of cybersecurity. A little more than a year later, Reagan signed a classified national security directive titled “National Policy on Telecommunications and Automated Information Systems Security.” It was the first computer security directive given by a president, all because he’d seen a movie about a kid who wanted to play some computer games.

[@shag139]

So awesome.

[@wadstur8429]

I never knew that. Just another reason for me to respect and love him even more

[@mnomadvfx]

The reasoning for this being possible is pretty clear. The people who drew up the script and made the movie actually researched the tech before they started filming. The military in fact.... did not 😅 My guess would be that up until that point the Russians probably didn't even contemplate that the American military would be so foolish as to leave such open security vulnerabilities in their systems.

[@BHryhoruk]

how do you know this?

[@ZavaXavier]

I remember that they had it on the news.

[@scotthewitt258]

"You're listening to a machine. Don't be one." More awesome writing.

[@ThomE216]

Love that line and delivery. Something for everyone to think every single day.

[@autohmae]

Would be even better if you didn't make a small mistake, quote is: act like one

[@scotthewitt258]

@@autohmae So sorry I'm not perfect. Have a nice day.

[@Stogie2112]

Natasha: “ ‘Shall we play a game?’ That’s from a movie that was…..” Steve Rogers: “Yeah….I saw it.” (The Winter Soldier)

[@mattjones7226]

"I understood that reference."

[@cypher515]

I love that Wargames was one of the first movies Steve saw.

[@Stogie2112]

@@cypher515 ... Rogers never took the film's advice about not playing the game. He always had to defeat someone to be the winner.

[@cypher515]

@@Stogie2112 That's also an interesting thought. But just because people see or even enjoy a movie, it doesn't mean that they get the point.

[@AbA_DBAA23]

I highly recommend Sneakers (1992) and the comedy Spies Like Us (1985).

[@LordVolkov]

The plot of Spies Like Us is insane, but watching Dan and Chevy run around like idiots is worth the watch. And bonus Frank Oz.

[@plutoniumcore]

Recommend The Manhattan Project with John Lithgow

[@LordLOC]

@@LordVolkov The scene when they are taking the test, I laugh my ass off every time. And the entire movie is hysterical.

[@someonesane]

I second the Spies Like US suggestion.

[@robertkendzie3]

The fellow playing Falken is an amazing actor - he also plays the villain in another Matthew Broderick film: Ladyhawke (also a great 80'S film)

[@LarryFleetwood8675]

John Wood (1930 - 2011).

[@timmooney7528]

the actor playing Falken is also doing the voice for Joshua/ WOPR

[@MontagZoso]

@@timmooney7528Yep!

[@chonkycheeze]

Amazing but scary fact: Four months after this movie came out, life almost imitated art when a computer error nearly led to nuclear war! It’s known as the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident: A glitch in the Soviet’s computerized early warning system mistakenly suggested the U.S. had launched missiles. Protocol called for immediately initiating a nuclear counterattack, but Soviet Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov doubted the alarm's accuracy, and refused to begin the process without corroborating evidence… which, of course, never came. It’s likely that his hesitation averted a full-blown nuclear war, and saved the lives of billions. WarGames is one of my favorite movies, and this was (as always) a wonderful reaction! Thanks for the continually great content, all!

[@technofilejr3401]

I remember hearing that Lt. Colonel Petrov had a liberal arts college background and he also was substituting for the officer who was meant to be there that day. He literally was the right person in the right place at the right time.

[@athos1974]

Just so everyone is aware, the was NO federal law in 1983 prohibiting hacking. It was not against the law. After President Reagan saw this movie he asked Congress to pass laws making it illegal in the years afterwards.

[@Corn_Pone_Flicks]

That's rather similar to the stock trading scheme in Trading Places.

[@FrankJReynolds]

I did hear that when the Soviets saw this film, they made it illegal in the USSR for a computer to be within 30 feet of a phone line.

[@kevinkerns4154]

No internet and the cold War threat was real. We used to do nuclear attack drills in school (sort of like the active shooter drills done today.. The jeep accident was real

[@jimhsfbay]

Reagan also watched ‘The Day After’ & it inspired him to start nuclear weapons negotiations with the Soviets.

[@NemeanLion-]

@@jimhsfbay I came here to say that. That would be a pretty good movie to react to.

[@gregall2178]

I'm always amused how fascinated reactors are to the corn-buttering 😀

[@scarlettmi]

Not just reactors. That moment was seared into my brain as a kid. If I was ever at a meal where both bread and corn were present, you could be sure I'd butter my corn that way and think of WarGames. 😀

[@gregall2178]

@@scarlettmi Funny thing was when I saw it I knew exactly what was happening. I had an uncle that always did that 😀

[@pauln44]

That was my grandpa's move. So when I saw this in theaters, it only registered as "Someone else does it. Cool".

[@Serai3]

That was improv, as was the bit about the corn being raw. None of that was in the script.

[@DaviniaHill]

@@Serai3 that is not correct, the writers literally say they saw someone do it in real life and put it in the script.

[@Surya112]

"The only winning move is not to play" is one of my all time favorite movie quotes. Such a good film.

[@TheMarcHicks]

Of course Principal Strickland-from Back to the Future fame-would recognize a SLACKER when he sees one 😉

[@benrositas8068]

That was Strickland? Didn't that guy ever have hair?!

[@SeenGod]

@@benrositas8068 your ego’s writing checks your body can’t cash! 😂

[@izzonj]

During the time this came out, fear of nuclear annihilation was pretty high. There were a number of very good, tense movies that came out then. This is one of the fun ones. Others like Testament and The Day After were devastatingly depressing.

[@Hexon66]

No it wasn't. Only those gullible people in the middle of the country who bought into Reagan's fear mongering.

[@gibbletronic5139]

"Threads" was better than those two. And you can watch it for free on KZbin.

[@LordLOC]

@@gibbletronic5139 I've seen this argument before many times now. Threads is incredibly well made (for the time of course, it shows its age now obviously) but The Day After is just as good and on the same level. As is Testament and even On the Beach (even the 2000s TV version, which is creepily good). And as someone who grew up during this era, I was scared shitless of nuclear war all the time, specifically after seeing The Day After. My mother forbid me from seeing it for awhile but when I was about 9 I found a VHS copy my friends parents made and yeah, had nightmares for weeks lol I'd imagine Threads would have done the same thing, only I finally saw it in 94 and I was already 19 so, you know, not a kid anymore :D

[@johndoe-zk7ro]

I would add the HBO movie “By Dawn’s Early Light” (1990) to your WWlll list…it’s well worth the watch

[@LordLOC]

@@johndoe-zk7ro Awesome HBO movie. I loved it then and still love it now. Great cast to boot.

[@davidc2882]

The whole theater broke out in applause where the computer says, "There are no winners."

[@aeneasfate]

Michael Madsen (Kill Bill, etc.) Wasn't even thinking of becoming an actor at this time. He was studying to be a paramedic when he tagged along with an actor friend to a casting call. A chance meeting with the original Director of Wargames before he was fired and replaced for another Director launched his career far more effectively than those missiles.

[@thepoisonmonkeys]

Younger Americans do not understand that as children of the 70's & 80's that we used to live with the constant threat of nuclear war as a daily part of our lives.

[@cmbaz1140]

There is always a crisis always a threat...

[@MichaelJohnson-vi6eh]

I agree - we are a special kind of screwed up for constantly being the threat of the world ending.

[@treetopjones737]

The fear of Ronnie Reagan launching WW III with Russia.

[@AudieHolland]

So we loved to face our greatest fear in our entertainment. Still get chills watching the launch sequence at the beginning of the movie.

[@cog4life]

I was always concerned about Russia attacking us, not the other way around. But I wasn’t always afraid. Just something we were made aware of and did drills for. I knew what a bunker was. Lol. But I guess the bunker builders weren’t much different from the doomsday preppers of this generation. All trying to avoid the worst case scenarios.

[@patm5594]

I like the Generals quote " I would piss on a spark plug if I thought it would help"

[@momalwayssaiddontplayballi3973]

..."You cant stop whats coming" No country for old man. Same actor

[@Serai3]

That was an adlib. He just came out with that in the middle of the scene. Apparently he's a fount of interesting lines.

[@patm5594]

@momalwayssaiddontplayballi3973 yea that's right ....cool

[@patm5594]

@@Serai3 awesome

[@davidbeck7615]

My favorite is, "and im not sure if you wanna entrust the safety of our country to some silicone di-ode."

[@davidfausel9029]

I grew up watching this over and over on HBO in the 80s - so glad you guys watched this one! This director, John Badham, had a string of great movies in the 80s. If you get around to BLUE THUNDER, which was also released in 1983 along with Wargames, you'll be entertained. Its another "new technology" type angle in the story but it has some great action and stars Roy Scheider who played Sheriff Brody in Jaws.

[@THXbox]

Word. Although Lucas, Spielberg, and Cameron would dominate the Hollywood press, John Badham and Peter Hyams were directing the some the best, most memorable 80’s movies.

[@DarthMohammedRules]

Blue Thunder was great. I remember actually seeing that movie at the drive-in. In fact, it may have been *the last* movie I ever saw at a drive-in theater.

[@johnmguzman7491]

Thanks Mo❤​@@DarthMohammedRules

[@snorpenbass4196]

Blue Thunder is so ironic today, though, because (without spoiling too much) it's about how bad it would be to arm police with military firepower. Which... has already happened now, and yeah, it's pretty bad.

[@theashrook6129]

Good follow ups to this film are: The Manhattan Project 1986 (more kids too smart for their own good) My Science Project 1985 (more sci-fi adventure) Real Genius 1985 (comical)

[@FrankJReynolds]

Floppy discs started out being that big, about 8 inches. Then they went down to about 5 inches in the mid-80s. Then the little hard plastic ones in the late 80s, early 90s.

[@AddSerious]

it boggles the mind that TEXT messages hold more data than the 8in floppy did

[@adammakesstuffup]

Those 8" disks, you could see the 1's and 0's on the surface using a magnifying glass.

[@telemperor]

The disc most people remember now is the 3.5" one that is symbolized as the save button.

[@hiddenInsight486]

8" 5.25" 3.5"

[@RunningTogether]

I remember people jokingly referring to the 3.5” disks as “stiffies” because they weren’t really floppy any more. 😜

[@NemeanLion-]

That payphone trick used to work in the beginning, but it was fixed pretty quickly afterward. Touching metal to the microphone would short out the telephone line and that’s how they got dialtone. Except it was easier to just stick a pin through a hole in the mouthpiece and accomplish the same task.

[@Johnny_Socko]

That makes a lot more sense, because I remember that you couldn't actually unscrew the handset on public phones (to prevent vandalism), unlike home phones.

[@blechtic]

And the reason those worked at all was because the telephone system had in-band signalling, which was filtered out of the audio in the handset.

[@NemeanLion-]

@@blechtic It didn’t work on private payphones fortunately.

[@treetopjones737]

Tangent, remember as a child payphones had 3 slots for dimes, nickels, and quarters. #RotaryDial

[@timothystockman7533]

Ground-start payphone

[@adammakesstuffup]

6:45 That man is playing Galaga! Thought we wouldn't notice. But we did.

[@deathproofpony]

I understood that reference.

[@adammakesstuffup]

@@deathproofpony Well played.

[@danielkelegian5306]

Hell yeah!!

[@LordVolkov]

Another game based 80's thriller with Dabney Coleman- Cloak & Dagger

[@johnw8578]

And Henry Thomas (the boy from E.T.)

[@LordVolkov]

@@johnw8578 I always forget it's him until I see his face 👍 He's pretty great in Mike Flanigan's stuff recently too.

[@Zakatak-mf4iq]

This movie is actually likely inspired by the 1979 NORAD incident. Apparently a worker at NORAD accidentally loaded a tape of an attack simulation on the main computer. Because of this the screens both at Cheyenne Mountain and the Pentagon displayed a massive Soviet missile attack on the United States. In response SAC and the chain of command were alerted. According to some reports missile crews in the silos were ordered to insert their launch keys as a precaution. Luckily for all of us, tensions were low at the time so the brass double checked with early warning radar, and the stations confirmed that their werent any incoming warheads.

[@fionnmaccumhaill3257]

That's Ally Sheedy from The Breakfast Club.

[@treetopjones737]

Ally like myself is now a member of the "older middle age", 61.

[@gdiaz8827]

And short circuit another film about artificial intelligence

[@billymuellerTikTok]

@@treetopjones737 middle age is 45-50 - she's not living to 122

[@daniellanctot6548]

17:18 - "You can't fight in here. This is the War Room!" 🤣🤣🤣

[@Corn_Pone_Flicks]

Floppy discs used to be called that because they were literally floppy, like a Flexi disc. I was just a few years young than the kids in this film when it came out. This was right around the time the Soviets were making incursions into Afghanistan. It was a bit tense in those days. I feel like after all that happened, instead of prosecuting David, they really ought to hire him. They really do need people like him to test their defenses.

[@arandomnamegoeshere]

The security industry is dotted with folks who... had a youth full of digital indiscretions.

[@Serai3]

Oh, they absolutely hired him. There was no way they'd let him go back to civilian life knowing as much as he knows.

[@treetopjones737]

Recall there was a guy who got nicknamed Capt. Crunch because he used a whistle included with the cereal to cheat payphones at the time, blowing it into the phone receiver.

[@sparky6086]

We had 8 inch floppy disks for our keypunch machine which was sort of an upgrade for our IBM 29 punch card machine, back in the late '70's & early '80's.

[@arandomnamegoeshere]

@@treetopjones737 toy whistle that came in Capt. Crunch cereal boxes that just happened to sound at 2600hz - the command frequency used to signal the phone system control back when the control signaling were in-band. 2600 is a number that's deep in phreak / hack lore. Crunch worked with other phreakers to develop a Blue Box - a signal generator designed for purpose of controlling phone systems. The Steves (Wozniac and Jobs) sold blue boxes in early college years after meeting with Crunch. (Side - alas... Crunch aka John Draper has an air of unsavory suspicion around him... so he sort of fades in to the background of history.)

[@glasgowc1]

This movie was wonderfully subsersive in how it depicted General Beringer. You're supposed to start out believing that he's your stereotypical wild-eyed Cold War four-star warmonger, but by the end of the movie it's made plain that he's basically the smartest guy in the mountain. Every suspicion he had of the machines was correct, every judgment call he made (even the ones that didn't pan out in the end) had a logical, well-thought out reason before he made them, and every wrong decision he made was /only/ because he'd been given entirely the wrong information by other people. As soon as he knows what's actually going on, he doesn't miss a step.

[@kathyastrom1315]

Falken’s desire to be directly below a primary target makes perfect sense to those of us who were living through the Cold War and the fear of nuclear bombs. To get a feel for what surviving such an attack would be like, watch the 1980s film Threads. I saw it once, on its first U.S. broadcast, and will never forget it. Truly horrific!

[@mapesdhs597]

Some argue about whether Threads is better (whatever that's supposed to mean) than "The Day After"; personally I think Threads has the greater overall punch, for various reasons, but "The Day After has its merits too, especially baring in mind the limitations given the nature of its production. Have you also seen, "Special Bulletin"? It won an Emmy in 1983 for best miniseries or TV movie. It's on YT here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/qIa4qaiVopugqLc Alas Threads isn't on YT in complete form, but there are extracts from the main attack sequence and other portions.

[@kathyastrom1315]

I’ve been meaning to watch Special Bulletin -thanks for the link! I don’t think I’ll ever be able to watch Threads again, it traumatized me so much that first time. I do recommend it for everyone else, though.

[@mapesdhs597]

@@kathyastrom1315 Most welcome! Understandable about Threads. In the UK at the time the govt response was fairly angry, but the critical response was favourable, for obvious reasons. The govt didn't like it not only because of its more believable style, also and perhaps mainly because it severely undermined the govt's narrative of a "surviveable" nuclear war. Threads didn't hold back in showing this idea was absurd, right to the very last scene. It was shown in many schools in the years that followed, often on TV aswell, back when the media still had some guts and integrity. Have you seen the animated film, "When the Wind Blows"? It's also rather good, again because it's very relateable. It's not on YT in complete form, but the original trailer is: kzbin.info/www/bejne/b6GtfJeKpr6coLs Btw, should you ever want to see a simple and straightforward description of the varous kinds of weapon type effects, the channel Tin Hat Ranch has a good video series covering each in turn. There's no graphic footage or anything, just a basic explanation of the different sizes of bomb blasts, what they would do to a typical city, and how residents at different distances would be affected, if at all. In the mid 1990s I moved from where I am now (Scotland) to the north of England, a town called Preston. I was there for eight years. It has a lot of local industry, including a number of defense companies such as British Aerospace. In the basement of the flat I rented, I found a stash of canned foods and other materials (trash bags, bleach, tissues, etc.), stored there by the landlord during the early 80s; he told me that he and his wife had stocked up during the peak of the cold war fears, their personal survival plan as it were. He acknowledged that with hindsight it didn't really make any sense, the flat was right in the middle of the town, any full exchange would have meant their location would have been ground zero for at least one strike, but at the time it gave them a certain sense of being able to carry on with the day to day regardless. I felt sorry for him, he was a nice guy, an artist IIRC. What has changed is that back then the media were very willing to question the official line and encourage the public to think about the reality of what such a war would entail. Terminator 2 was in popular culture, the CND pressure group was active, a thorn in the govt's side. Today by contrast, the media just spins the official line, promotes the govt propaganda (hate and blame the Other), the newer generations don't have the same cultural awareness of how futile serious conflict would be. As a result, there isn't the same pushback against the war mongering politicians and others who stand to gain from war, whether financially or otherwise. Maybe this will change though, as GenZ seems to be sensibly more sceptical than has generally been the case in recent times.

[@bekindandrewind1422]

I live on Long Island which means if NYC is hit, I'm just far enough away to not be evaporated, but not far enough to be safe... Myself and everyone out here who doesn't own a boat will be trapped on this dammed island just like in 9/11.. And depending on the direction of the wind, we will most likely be irradiated by radioactivity and die a horribly painful and slow death.

[@kathyastrom1315]

@@bekindandrewind1422 I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie Testament? It takes place in a suburb of San Francisco in the aftermath of nuclear bombs, and it’s very much like what you describe. Great film, but depressing as hell.

[@honkenbonker]

The scene where the father is using bread to butter corn is the earliest recorded example of a lifehack and my favorite part of this movie.

[@Corn_Pone_Flicks]

Finding easier ways to do things wasn't invented in the 80s, no matter what you call the process.

[@OSVS_Mike]

That war dialer program sure bring back great memories of the 80s and my Apple ][+ computer. Miss the 80s.

[@476429]

I had it on the Commodore 64. 😀

[@DanielS2001]

This film and the program in it is the reason why they call war dialers war dialers.

[@treetopjones737]

Boot a disk, type a command: directory just to see what was on the disk.

[@Johnny_Socko]

@@treetopjones737 Wow, core memory unlocked! (Mine, not the computer's)

[@timmooney7528]

The acoustic coupler used to interface the phone to the PC was outdated by then. Modems moved to using direct plug-in connections for speed/ performance reasons. The reason they still used an acoustic coupler was to "dumb down" the process for viewer understanding.

[@naHousehippo]

Lmao, your wife's reaction to the corn being rolled on the sliced bread is hilarious!

[@minasotah]

"Protovision, I have you now" Awesome Star Wars reference

[@skycommanda7934]

"If only he applied this to school" TBR such a parent now lol

[@billymuellerTikTok]

41 is old

[@MikeB12800]

The Manhattan Project is a great 80’s movie. Project X with Broderick is good too. Of course Red Dawn.

[@scotthewitt258]

Excellent suggestion. Based on or at least "inspired by" the "Nuclear Boy Scout". He built a working breeder reactor in his mom's shed.

[@RaptorNX01]

I was about to recommend Manhatten Project. similar vibe to this.

[@WrathOfTheGoth]

Manhattan Project is a personal favorite. Project X makes me cry to this day. Red Dawn (the original) is still a classic bit of SHTF fantasy.

[@plutoniumcore]

John Lithgow in the last sequence is brilliant

[@MySandstrom]

This was another awesome movie to see back when it came out on the big screen.

[@kentonkruger8333]

Yeah the Norad screens all flashing at the end was very intense in the theater.

[@twolveslb43]

You should research the false alarm of a nuclear strike received by the Soviets and how one man did not notify his superiors when it was happening probably avoiding nuclear war as well as Able Archer which both occurred in 1983. Shows how close we came to this being a reality. Crazy that it happened the same year this movie was released. As a Gen-Xer, we lived in constant fear of an accidental launch resulting in a retaliatory strike.

[@sparky6086]

I was on that field problem, Able Archer '83. We normally encoded our microwave & UHF line of sight data & voice links, but there was always at least a few links which went unencoded, because the equipment was broken or worn out. But for Able Archer '83, we happened to have fresh, reliable equipment, so all our data links & telephone conversations were encoded. Since this was the first time, that the Soviets couldn't understand any of our communications at all, they thought, the Americans must be serious this time. What compounded this was, I'm sure, that the Soviets because of various nuclear disarmament talks, knew that my unit did radar data telemetry for the Pershing II Intermediate Range Nuclear Missles, then deployed in Germany. The Soviets thought, we were going to launch, but us soldiers on the ground, operating the equipment were just doing our job exceptionally well, oblivious to what was happening with the Soviets. It wasn't until years later, when I heard about Able Archer '83 on a Cold War documentary, that I realized, how close we came to nuclear war, since Able Archer '83 was mainly an Army Signal Corps exercise & wasn't outwardly a huge deal. It didn't involve all types of units from different branches of the military, like Reforger did for instance.

[@technofilejr3401]

Young people nowadays don't realize how many times the world almost ended on a goof.

[@tokyosmash]

One of my favorite 80’s movies

[@laurakali6522]

Couple more ideas for you guys….Bad News Bears (the original), Little Darlings, Tootsie, Arthur (the original), 9-5, Seems Like Old Times, Ordinary People, Taps, Teachers, Less Than Zero, and Mask. All great late 70s-early/mid 80s films.

[@red-stapler574]

This movie and Sneakers (by the same writers) are probably the most accurate movies about computer hacking. The technique of dialing every number in a specific prefix is known as war dialing, because of this movie.

[@houdin654jeff]

The practice of dialing every number via computer came to be called War Dialing because of this movie. And yeah, some of David’s techniques would technically be called social engineering, most offices try to teach employees how to avoid such traps like writing down passwords or letting people join your group to get into (or in his case, out of) secured buildings. Also, the bit with the pay phone was due to some research done involving a famous phone phreaker named John Draper, aka Captain Crunch. He got the nickname after learning that a toy whistle given away in Cap’n Crunch cereal could produce the exact tone needed to trick a pay phone into thinking it was beating cleared. Basically, by blowing one long whistle, then tooting the numbers you wanted to dial (ie, 254 would be a long burst, then two toots, five toots, four toots, etc.), you could get free phone calls. When Draper showed this to the phone company, they fixed the vulnerability… and had him arrested.

[@martinwarford1389]

Finally! I was wait for someone to mention phreaking. It became more sophisticated than a cereal whistle, a box "blue box" was used to emit tones, at 2600mhz? to manipulate the phone system to get free calls and other stuff. It's said that the Steves (Wozniak and jobs)who founded Apple were into phreaking. Wozniak made his own version of a blue box and jobs was in charge of selling them, paving the way for them to create Apple computers. Wozniak was the nerdy build/invent/program shit guy. jobs was the marketing/sales guy who got too much credit. Anyway...When the phone companies changed their equipment phreaking became very much more difficult, if not impossible through the whistle/tones method.

[@inhumanmusic1411]

NORAD didn't have any big screens as depicted in the movie. They had to install one because tourist expected one to be there. Another movie to watch that's a similar subject as this one is Colossus: The Forbin Project. It's a older movie and has a much darker tone.

[@dachannien]

Colossus hews pretty closely to the book, which was a fascinating early look at the dangers of trusting an AI with deadly power. Unfortunately, the two sequel books went waaaay off the deep end, and were pretty disappointing as a result.

[@brianlanning836]

"I wish this thing had a voice." lol That voice was famous.

[@rustygunner8282]

“Colossus: The Forbin Project” is an excellent but dystopian take on this.

[@anncosten3222]

"The only winning move is not to play" is still to this day, one of the most pertinent lines in FILM History. Especially to those of us who lived in that era. Genuine fear of Nuclear Anhilation. Sometimes, when i look at what has become of this world and humanity, i do think that maybe........................🎈x99!

[@hgman3920]

Hell yeah!!! You're finally watching one of my favorite Cold War flicks! (together with Dr. Strangelove)

[@treetopjones737]

The genius of Peter Sellers.

[@carlossaraiva8213]

The jeep crashing adds a nice cool element of realism and tension to the scene. It was not scripted, it was an accident caugh on film that occured during filming.

[@RunningTogether]

Glad you reacted to this completely classic Cold War movie. I’m not sure people who grew up after that Prof understand how absolute the idea of nuclear annihilation being possibly just around the corner was… It was in TONS of pop culture and media in one way or another, nearly omnipresent really. All the cartoons I grew up watching had at least some hint of an apocalypse… i.e. Transformers, Thundercats both had the main characters fleeing the destruction of their home planets due to war, and older cartoons like Star Blazers (The theme song of which even sang about if the main characters failed in their mission “Mother Earth will disappear!” 😨 ) and Thundarr the Barbarian presumed the destruction of Earth happened in 1994 (which was 14 years in the future) although due to an asteroid, not war. But basically all of the popular kids cartoons referenced it, you couldn’t escape the idea. Nowadays kid shows are often about relatively normal everyday life a lot more, even when they are sci-fi or fantasy. Anyway, this movie is a classic and still very relevant as you observed. Great reaction!

[@vovindequasahi]

The biggest point when it comes to AI is the question: "Is this real or a game?" and the fucking thing answers: "What's the difference?". That sums up why you never give power over people's lives over to a machine.

[@DocMicrowave]

The origins of Skynet. I loved this film in my youth. Still do now. I grew up in the 70's and 80s when computers and what they can really do was just being discovered by the general public. Lol, I miss my Commodore 64. Good times. Thanks for the reaction.

[@Hiraghm]

They didn't have a no-fly list back then; no TSA. They even still had a smoking section on planes.

[@Beuwen_The_Dragon]

A better time

[@zmarko]

Hope you feel better TBR!

[@zerocool527]

Yes

[@SCAP3I2]

Love that someone's finally reacting to this movie! Such a good 80s paranoid Cold War thriller, that unfortunately feels current again.

[@bmw128racer]

A similar, but much more serious film worth considering is "Fail Safe" from 1964.

[@treetopjones737]

Comedy about that subject, "Dr. Strangelove." Peter Sellers

[@LordLOC]

Fail Safe and On the Beach, two of the best "end of the world nuclear war" movies from the 60s.

[@bghammock]

@@LordLOC Seen Fail Safe and read On the Beach .. there's a movie too? How'd I not know that?? Hummmmm. Thanks!

[@LordLOC]

@@bghammock There's a movie from the late 50s or early 60s yes, and then a TV miniseries (or it might have just been a TV movie I don't remember) that came out in the early 2000s with Armand Assante as the American sub captain believe it or not lol The older movie is a classic, and very, of the time let's say. The newer TV whatever has some, sketchy CG interjected that does not hold up, but I think does a better job telling the story of the impending doom of it all.

[@Madbandit77]

@@treetopjones737 "Fail Safe" and "Dr. Strangelove" both came out in the same year and released by Columbia Pictures.

[@diaphanouswaffle]

Yes, I recognized (watching this again now) the 4-star General (Barry Corbin) from the excellent tv series "Northern Exposure" where he played Maurice (a wealthy pompous former astronaut). I'm 50, saw "Wargames" as a kid & thought it was great...though also scary, bc the threat of nuclear annihilation was very much an active & present concern for our generation.

[@aeneasfate]

Wargames makes a sort of unofficial trilogy alongside Real Genius ('85) and The Manhattan Project ('86)

[@craigorr9713]

Yes, they had large floppy discs. Back in the '80s we mostly had 5-1/4 inch discs, but 8 inch discs were still around. 3-1/2 discs came later in the '90s

[@micpar2]

Check out TheDay the Earth Stood Still and the Thing both from (1951). THEM! (1954) Forbidden Plnet and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).

[@falcon215]

I was in my early twenties when this came out and at the time tensions of the Cold War were running high. The threat of a potential nuclear confrontation was actually pretty real and you could see references to it everywhere in popular culture: movies, books, television, songs, etc. so the premise was something people were taking pretty seriously. The early computers are wildly primitive by today's standards but I think the story still packs a pretty suspenseful punch. Great reactions as always.

[@davidm1926]

Falken had a sweet house. I was just prompted to see if I could find out something about it - found a blogger that discovered that the house, in California, was used in a couple other movies, but was demolished in or around 2009 :(

[@jhilal2385]

US nuclear protocol follows the "2 man rule" at all levels: 1) If the President (National Command Authority = NCA) or successor orders a launch, a second person (e.g. Cabinet Secretary) must agree. Each has a secret code to identify themselves and uses a sealed daily code to verify the order. 2) When NCA issues the launch order, 2 designated officers (Generals or Admirals) separately verify the NCA & concurring person's ID code and daily codes, then pass the order to the weapon's operators (bomber crew, submarine crew, missile silo crew) with sealed daily codes unique to each operator unit/crew. 3) Upon receiving the order, 2 officers must confirm the validity of the codes. 4) 2 officers must concur to begin the launch procedure and give commands if needed (e.g. to ship's crew to ready the weapons) 5) both officers must concur to deploy/launch the weapon using 2 separate physical keys (and now also digital computer codes) at the same time to enable the launch. The keys are physically separated so that 1 person cannot turn them both at the same time) 6) both officers must activate the system at the same time from separate control consoles to launch the weapon(s) Soviet submarines used 5 physical keys: Captain, 1st Officer, Zampolit (political officer/Commissar), Tactical Officer, and Weapons Officer

[@BryanAlaspa]

This movie was such an amazing thing at the time. The ending - I saw this in the theater. In a dark movie theater, all of those lights, the big screen, everyone in the packed theater was on the edge of their seat. I do think the audience applauded at the end of it. And, of course, this stuff was all cutting edge at the time. Now, our phones have so much more processing power than anything in this movie. And this movie came out long before Ferris so the computer changing the grade thing in Ferris was a nod to this.

[@JstaGrl329]

Great reaction guys, this is one of my favourite movies. It came out before Ferris Bueller and so the joke of him changing his grades in Ferris Bueller is because he changed his grades in war games. Good catch. 😊

[@hulkslayer626]

He doesn't change his grades in Ferris Bueller.

[@JstaGrl329]

@@hulkslayer626 you’re right, totally right, it’s his sick days he changes but it is a nod to war games 😁

[@hulkslayer626]

@JstaGrl329 yes, definitely a tip of the hat to his former movie 😁

[@greendragonpublishing]

This came out when I was in high school, just getting into Comp Sci, and it REALLY hit home for me. LOVE this movie. So many great lines from it... like... "Shall we play a game?" :)

[@porgyt7177]

TBR: this movie ages Extremely well. (takes a sip of TAB).

[@Rowgue51]

Still one of my favorite movies of all time. Having been roughly the same age as the main characters in this movie at the time that's being depicted and heavily involved in the same scene it strikes a special chord with me. You could not ask for a more perfect portrayal of what it was like to have been growing up during the period being depicted.

[@socalpaul487]

You should also watch "The Manhattan Project" 1986. Also Cold War era "Fail Safe" 1964. I went to HS and College with one of the world's most famous hackers, Kevin Mitnick. Barry Corbin, the General, was great in "Northern Exposure" and "Lonesome Dove".

[@blueeyedcowboy8291]

This movie still holds up. Great suggestion, Pete! Such an intense movie and as usual an amazing reaction.

[@shag139]

Well he was old he was 41…oh we that’s old. Always gets me especially since I was 13 when it came out. And holy hell it’s 41 years since it came out! 😭

[@davidgagne3569]

According to the director's commentary on the DVD the big heavy door to the facility was not heavy at all. It was made of plywood and painted. The sound of it closing was an effect added later.

[@MrDevintcoleman]

Listen, I don’t know if this is where I learned it, but buttering a slice of bread and using it to distribute butter onto a hot cob of corn is truly the way. I’ve done it for years and it always causes the same reaction you guys had haha!

[@terryhughes7349]

Great reaction. This movie still holds up.

[@syrmatt]

This movie couldn’t help but be a hit which it was. One important thing to keep in mind had a more elevated sense of tension then most Americans believed a nuclear war was imminent. BTW, Sunnyvale, CA is a real place even now and the phone area code is 408 and not 311 like the movie shows. I know all this since I lived in that town most of my life and still exists.

[@wwoods66]

Sunnyvale was the home of the Air Force's "Blue Cube", through which the military's satellites were controlled. No doubt it was plugged into NORAD. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onizuka_Air_Force_Station And of course, Sunnyvale's in the middle of Silicon Valley, so a reasonable place for a computer game company in the '80s.

[@clearsmashdrop5829]

Unfortunately, the Blue Cube is gone now.

[@nicks.5552]

10:12 “I didn’t know floppy disks used to be giant!” That’s back when they were actually floppy for real.

[@DylansPen]

In 1983 nuclear war with the Soviet Union was more than a real possibility and this movie had a hard hit at the end when Joshua figured out the only winning move is not to play. This is an updated version of Fail Safe from the mid 1960's which is a much more serious and sober look at this subject and well worth watching as well.

[@LogicalNiko]

Fun easter egg double meaning on the screen: WOPR: "CAN YOU EXPLAIN THE REMOVAL OF YOUR USER ACCOUNT NUMBER ON 6/23/73?" "People sometimes make mistak" WOPR: "YES THEY DO." OR "You can't be running in here. Somebody could get hurt" -- is a joke reference to the famous Dr Strangelove line "Gentleman! There is NO Fighting in the War Room!"

[@mayorjimmy]

First watched this movie when it came out. At the base theater at Loring AFB.

[@jon-jacobdeal3164]

The Moose is Loose on Loring AFB! What a beautiful place to have been an Air Force brat.

[@PV1230]

hah. during the virtual impact scene, you can see Loring AFB on the electronic map for a moment.

[@nicks.5552]

7:00 Teacher: “Why do nitrogen nodules cling to the roots of plants?” Schmitt: “God?” Jennifer: “Love.” Schmitt: “Oh, I was close.” Nice. 😊

[@CarolinaCharles777]

Oh man, this takes me back to my childhood! :)

[@scotthewitt258]

"Confidence is high" means it is pretty likely it is an actual attack. I doubt anyone secretly does "surprise" drills on Cheyenne Mountain. So, the people would not expect "spoofs" on the radar and the launch trackers.

[@santiagohardy2728]

I watched Wargames a week or so after it opened in a packed Cinerama Dome movie theater here in Hollywood proper. The last act of the film, The strobing light effects of the war games theater's monitors at NoRad was something to behold on the B I G screen. It looked so COOL! That movie came out in the midst of the mid 1980s nuclear war panic phenomenon that was happening. The made for TV movie The Day After Tomorrow and the British version Threads both followed said phenomenon in 1984. When Sheedy says: "How about...Las Vegas" it makes me laugh every time i hear it.😂

[@medaugh]

Crazy that The Day After was prime time family viewing. Pulled big ratings as I remember . Also we can't forget the most realistic nuclear annihilation movie Spys Like Us

[@santiagohardy2728]

@@medaugh Yep, i recall the ABC Sunday Night Movie had a "Viewer Discretion Advised" prompt at the end of every commercial break just before the movie picked back up. I was in 7th grade junior high, we actually had a mandatory exploitation of the movie by the school staff before and after the film aired. The panic was REAL. What an era it was. Sigh....

[@santiagohardy2728]

Edit: The Day After, Not The Day After Tomorrow (my bad)

[@cliveklg7739]

One of my favs from the 80s. "Manhattan Project", 1983 also I believe, is great too. Similar styled movie.

[@Trapper50cal]

I lived at the base of Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs (where NORAD is) as a kid (13 yrs. old), so when this came out all us kids thought it was the coolest.

[@Dularr]

I was in Colorado Springs when Independence Day came out. When the aliens destroyed NORAD.

[@shanester1832]

That one computer guy I recognize as the doorman in Crocodile Dundee. Always interesting to spot people that had a period of small pop-ups here & there and then where's they go?

[@jasonaugustine3370]

This movie had one of the best insults I have ever heard The teacher asks Matthew Broderick, who first suggested the idea of reproduction without sex ? His answer was Your wife ?

[@iAmEbolaWoT]

Another movie around this timeframe that holds a special place in my heart as much as this one is called "The Manhattan Project". It has the same intensity with a different theme. You would probably enjoy it as well.

[@jamesdamiano8894]

Another great fun early Matthew Broderick movie is “Biloxi Blues”. You guys would love it. Also, Dabney Coleman who almost always played a jerk is in a fun movie called “Yound Doctors In Love”. An amusing movie basically spoofing daytime hospital soap operas.

[@treetopjones737]

Dabney - He played the jerk boss in "9 to 5"

[@Serai3]

Dabney is also comic gold in "9 to 5".

[@Madbandit77]

Young Doctors In Love is brilliant and criminally underrated. It not only makes fun of "General Hospital" (some of the cast members at that time show up here, including Richard Dean Anderson and Demi Moore) but older TV hospital dramas like "Dr. Kildare" (lead Mike McKean does a great impression) and "Ben Casey". It's the first film directed by sitcom producer Garry Marshall ("Happy Days", "Laverne & Shirley", "Mork & Mindy").

[@willx8837]

lots of fun facts about this film. The voice of the computer is the actor who played Dr. Falken, just slowed down. Great reaction guys

[@cbobwhite5768]

Howdy Doody was a Saturday kids show, western and circus theme, Howdy Doody was a puppet. Ran from 1947 to 1960. There was a clown, named Clarabell. He didn't talk, just mimed and honked horns, that hung on his belt. You might recognize the name of the man that played him, Bob Keeshan.

[@FrankJReynolds]

I was in the studio audience for David Letterman in 1987, and one of the guests was Buffalo Bob from “Howdy Doody.” I think he brought the puppet with him.

[@markhamstra1083]

And the U.S. didn’t start deploying ICBMs in silos until 1962, so the whole “We’ve had men in silos since before…” comment doesn’t really make sense.

[@chefskiss6179]

I think if they redid this movie today the line would have to be updated to something like "̶G̶e̶n̶t̶l̶e̶m̶e̶n̶ People, we've had m̶e̶n̶ many a persons in these silos since before any of you were watching Star Wars!" 😂😂😂

[@markhamstra1083]

@@chefskiss6179 What kind of gender-biased sexist are you to think your line would be acceptable today?

[@chefskiss6179]

@@markhamstra1083 I dunno 😂 ;)

[@theTemplar08]

I was 10 when I saw this, i live about an hour from Seattle.

[@IggyStardust1967]

I got my first computer (Commodore 64) the year this movie released. This movie was on HBO the following year, and my grandmother saw it. Because of what David did with his grades, my grandmother FLIPPED, and refused to allow me to have a modem connected to my computer (Full Disclosure: I didn't even have a DISK DRIVE for the computer yet! I was using cassette tapes for data storage!), because she thought I would do the same thing HE did with his grades. Oddly enough, she wasn't all that concerned with me potentially hacking into government computers and possibly starting WWIII.... but "changing my grades"?! OH, HEHHHLLLLLLLL NAW!!!!! It took me until sometime in 1985 until I could convince her I wouldn't try something like that. I've been "online" ever since, and STILL haven't tried hacking into a school's computer to change my grades (39 years later)!!! 6:47 - Ah, the old arcades..... I literally lived in one from 1980 (13 years old) until 1984 (17 years old).... and now I have a small collection of games in my dining room. If anyone needs proof that my wife loves me..... just look at our dining room. =D 7:58 - To be honest about it... that set up made my computer set up look like a toy. My Commodore 64 had a single data-cassette drive for storage, and hooking it up to a television set (black and white, I might add) wasn't an expensive option... it was my ONLY option (couldn't afford either a colour TV OR an action computer monitor until a few years later). 8:00 - The floppy disks used for that system were old, even back then. 8" Floppy disks that could hold only a couple of hundred bytes of data. Oddly enough, the smaller the disks got, the more data they could hold. 5.25" disks could hold 160 kilobytes of data, 3" floppy disks could hold 880 kilobytes of data. Then we moved on to Compact Discs and later, DVDs... which got into the megabyte range per disc, and later the gigabyte range. Now we have tiny "cards" that hold almost a terabyte of data on a thing that is smaller than your pinky fingernail. 9:32 - Computer magazines were very popular back in the 80s. I still have my collection of "Compute's Gazette" magazines, which were specifically for Commodore computers (PET, VIC-20, Commodore 64, and later, the Amiga line). They included programs that you could type in to do all sorts of things. It's how I learned how to type. 10:00 - This was also something we did when searching for Bulletin Board Systems (an early version of websites, each on their own phone line, and operated by independent computer owners.... google it). Numerically dialing phone numbers wasn't (and still isn't) illegal. It was one way to find computers local to you that were "online". At the time, we searched for BBS computers, rather than anything illegal. Remember, back then, only "local" calls were included in your phone bill. "Long Distance" cost extra to connect, and "International" was even MORE expensive (and often required an operator to connect the call). 10:18 - While I have an 8" floppy disk around here somewhere, I never actually used one for data storage. I only have it for historical purposes. However, I have thousands of 5.25" floppy disks around here, and used them for my Commodore 64. I also have thousands of 3" floppy disks, which could be used on both my Commodore 64, Amiga computers, and my earliest IBM Compatible computers. Nowadays, it's cheaper to just buy an external drive case and a multi-terabyte hard drive to plug in. As it stands, my current PC has a data storage capacity of 19 terabytes across 8 hard drives. 12:15 - "Malvin", the tall skinny nerd here.... the actor's name is "Eddie Deezen". He is a friend of mine on Facebook, and a really good person. I've been fortunate enough to meet him in person. There is a movie that he had a starring role in that you might like: "Midnight Madness" (which MAY be on Disney+, but I can't swear to it... but it IS a Disney movie). Fun fact about him: He auditioned for the movie Revenge of the Nerds, but was considered "TOO Nerdy" for the movie. Think about that for a minute.... "TOO nerdy" for a movie called "Revenge of the Nerds". Even he thought that was funny. 12:50 - "Back doors" were actually REALLY common back then, so this was not really "new" information. ;) 13:15 - It was the first game on the list. (resists urge to call you a Schmitt-head. ) 15:23 - Ah, the "text based" graphics of online games back then..... Makes me nostalgic, I can't lie about it. 15:50 - When you think it's "just a game", it's easy to be excited about it. Why do you think there are people who worry about remotely controlled weapons? It makes the real-life battlefield feel like a video game, thus removing any/all potential morality issues out of the equation. 18:45 - Also, I forgot to mention something. The modem that David has was called an "acoustic" modem, where you literally placed the handset of the phone into receptacles fitted to place them. The modems that I started with simply had jacks to plug the modem into your phone line rather than the actual phone. Also, also, back then, the speeds I was using was 300 bytes per second, two years later, I had a newer one that was 2400 bytes per second. Basically, one byte = 8 bits, or "1 character (letter/number)". Considering that we are now into the hundreds of megabytes (1,000,000 bytes) per second.... you can only imagine how slow 300 bytes per second (BPS) were by comparison to MBPS (MegaBytes Per Second). The next "upgrade" will be GigaBytes Per Second (GBPS), which is 1,000,000 Megabytes Per Second.

[@treetopjones737]

Calls just 10 miles away could get expensive.

[@treetopjones737]

If someone was using a BBS, you got a busy signal and had to wait. It was somewhat similar to Twitter but no private posts, and text only.

[@impishsongster333]

I live an hr away from Portland Oregon, and go there often. There's a place called, Ground Kontrol Classic Arcade & Bar, on 5th Avenue, in downtown Portland. When you make your way through the entryway into one of 4 main rooms, the first thing you see is the bar that looks exactly like the WOPPR computer, complete with blinking lights. As you walk closer, you see the awesome details, then if you turn you see the huge dining area with high ceiling, and a huge wall of gigantic screens, mimicking the control room at NORAD. I thought it was so cool that they recreated parts of this movie. And I was so happy I was old enough, and movie buff enough, to get the reference. If you're ever in Portland, it's crazy fun, with tons of classic arcade games. And old school change machines, changing bills for quarters. Prices are set at 80's prices, 25 cents per game. Shall we play a game?