Documentaries · Hardware and games, 1982–1999
The Beige Years
Researched histories of the machines, companies and games of the beige-box era, argued from the documents. Each video has a page here with its chapters, its full source list and every image credit.
The library
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23No.
The Game Genie · 1990
Nintendo Tried to Kill the Game Genie. Then Came the Bill
The Game Genie case cost Nintendo its whole bond, but the court priced Galoob's lost sales with Nintendo's own joystick.
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22No.
Night Trap · 1992
Senators Called Night Trap Violence Against Women
Night Trap's neck drill was made to calm a toy company, yet senators saw it as violence against women.
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21No.
Prince of Persia · 1989
He Traced His Brother for Prince of Persia. It Flopped.
Prince of Persia got rave reviews but flopped, as Jordan Mechner tells it: "And it was a flop."
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20No.
Konami's licensed arcade brawlers · 1989
Simpsons Arcade Game: Konami Called It Another Turtles
The Simpsons arcade game was removed from the PlayStation Network in December 2013, with no reason given.
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19No.
Myst · 1993
How Myst Got the Credit for the CD-ROM Boom
Myst set a one-month record for a CD game in December 1996, three years after release: 320,000 copies, by PC Data.
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18No.
The Sega Dreamcast · 1998
What Killed the Dreamcast? Sega Did
The Dreamcast was stopped by Sega's own board, yet the same meeting accepted its chairman's own assets.
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17No.
The Cyrix 6x86 · 1995
Cyrix 6x86: The Chip That Quake Exposed
Cyrix warned of a quarterly loss the day before Quake came out, yet the game still gets the blame for its fall.
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16No.
The Creative Sound Blaster · 1989
Sound Blaster vs AdLib: Why the Copy Won
The Sound Blaster had the AdLib's own Yamaha chip, yet it cost more in the shops, and it still won.
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15No.
The Roland MT-32 · 1987
Roland MT-32 History: Built for Pianos, Made for Sierra
Roland MT-32: Sierra's games wrote their own instruments into a box that forgot them when it was switched off.
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14No.
The Nintendo 64 · 1996
Why the Nintendo 64 Lost Final Fantasy VII
Nintendo 64: in September 1995 Square announced a company to make N64 games; in February 1996 it signed with Sony.
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13No.
The Nintendo Virtual Boy · 1995
Virtual Boy: Nintendo's Red Machine and the Man Who Left
Virtual Boy: the manual does warn of headaches, but it ties them to misadjusting it; Yokoi blamed a liability law.
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12No.
Doom · 1993
Doom: id's Boast About Lost Work Hours Came True
Doom 1993: id promised "the number one cause of decreased productivity" before its network game existed.
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11No.
FidoNet · 1984
FidoNet: The Wrong Number That Rang Every Night
FidoNet's boards called each other for one hour a night, and a wrong number in its list rang a stranger every night.
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10No.
Iomega, maker of the Zip drive · 1980
The Iomega Zip Drive and the Click of Death
The Zip drive's legend says the click of death killed it, but Iomega's own filings point to something cheaper.
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09No.
Street Fighter II · 1991
Street Fighter 2: What Capcom Didn't Plan
Street Fighter 2 was the sequel its players forced on Capcom, and by one Capcom man's account, pirates set its speed.
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08No.
Palm Computing, maker of the PalmPilot · 1992
Palm Pilot: Its Company Was Sold in 1995, Before It Shipped
To ship the PalmPilot, its inventors sold Palm Computing in 1995 for about $44 million, then watched it slip away.
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07No.
NBA Jam · 1993
NBA Jam: The Night a Chicago Arcade Knew It Had a Hit
NBA Jam's on-court bodies were Chicago amateurs, not NBA stars; one of them was a club bouncer.
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06No.
Atari's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial · 1982
E.T. Atari: What Was Really Buried in the Landfill
Atari E.T. really was buried, yet its programmer Howard Scott Warshaw answered "I say false".
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05No.
Tetris and its licensing war · 1984
Tetris and the Game Boy: The Check Written in Moscow
Tetris was licensed to Mirrorsoft in 1987, while there was still no contract with the Soviets.
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04No.
3dfx Interactive · 1994
3dfx: From GLQuake to Nvidia, in Its Own Filings
3dfx's own merger filing said it would likely lose customers who competed with STB, yet the board signed anyway.
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03No.
US Robotics · 1976
US Robotics: How the Courier Won the Bulletin Boards
Buying US Robotics, 3Com recorded merger charges of $426 million in the first quarter of fiscal 1998.
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02No.
Mortal Kombat · 1992
Mortal Kombat: The Fatality Began as an Office Gag
Mortal Kombat was filler to Midway: four people, a hole in the schedule, and a budget around $1 million.
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01No.
Commodore 64 · 1982
Commodore 64: Discontinued in 1994 While Still Selling
The Commodore 64 sold about 12.5 million by its own sales records, not the 17 million the company put in print.
Method
- Sources
Every claim traces to a source.
Each video's page lists what it was built from: period magazines, court records, company documents, interviews and reference works, with links and the date each was read.
- Disagreement
Where the record disagrees, the video says so.
When two sources give different figures or dates, both are named and the video explains which one it follows and why.
- Voice
The narration is a synthetic voice. The research isn't.
The voice is generated from a written script. The script, the sources behind it and the argument are the work, and each video's page lists them in full.
Spotted a wrong date, a misread spec or a bad attribution? Send the video, the timestamp and your source. Corrections are logged on the video's page.
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