4, Xbox One - we're officially in the eighth generation

of video game consoles. We made it. If you're as

old as me, you feel old, maybe a little creepy.

Maybe your back hurts when you get up in the

morning. Maybe the other parts of your body just hurt

for no reason. That's how long video game consoles has

been around. -My very first video game console was a

NES FamiCon. -The Gameboy. -Sega Genesis. -Probably the ColecoVision. -Was

the Nintendo 64. -The original NES, man. -It's important to

look back and ask ourselves, "How did we get here?

How did the industry evolve to where it is today?"

In the '60s, a man named Ralph Baer was working

at a defense company in Nashua, New Hampshire. He thought

to himself, "Why can't I hook something up to this

TV to make it more fun?" So he got together

with two of his engineers, and they cobbled together the

first of seven Brown Boxes. These were video game consoles,

early video game consoles that played simple games. They eventually

sold the final Brown Box to Magnavox, which rebranded it

as the Magnavox Odyssey. -From most of the 20th century,

the idea of actually being able to play video games

in your house was the fantasy. You couldn't do it.

Not until the Magnavox Odyssey, where people were actually able

to play video games in their homes. -The Odyssey itself

had a really rough start. I mean, it came out

and it was marketed incredibly poorly-- -Odyssey, the electronic game

of the future that lets you do your own thing

on television. -It was brand new technology that people didn't

get. -The Odyssey was odd. It's the best word to

describe-- But it was really the Atari 2600 that kicked

everything off for me as a home console player. When

you look back now at the Atari 2600 games, they

all look very basic, but at that time, they were

nothing short of amazing. They-- -The Atari 2600 was the

game console that everybody had. Well, I didn't have it

and I was really jealous of my neighbor who had

one. But this one was iconic. This was the system

that got people crazy about playing video games at home.

-It was as ubiquitous as a refrigerator or a TV

in most households. -In the successful years of the Atari

2600 we got to over $2 Billion business in the

United States, only on video games. It's kind of a

number that is important to understand because we will understand

what happened when video games go into what this universally

recognized as the big crash of video games in 1983.

-Game over. -There was a video game crash as a

result of just this flood of terrible games on the

2600. And for awhile, it seemed like maybe home video

games and video game consoles had just been a fad.

-And video games really went out of fashion altogether. -Then

something happened. What happened was Nintendo happened. Nintendo, a company

that has been around making trading cards for nearly a

century. They decided, "We're gonna make a video game system."

The key thing is they didn't call it a video

game system. In the United States, they marketed it as

a toy. They have Rob, the robot. They have the

Zapper, which was a little gun you plugged in to

the console. They didn't want people to think that it

was a video game machine because that had a stink

to it because of the Atari 2600 and the crash.

-With the third generation of home video game systems, it

was not a fair fight. The Nintendo Entertainment System mopped

the floor with the Sega Master System. -The Nintendo Entertainment

System is the console that changed everything. This is the

system, the little gray box that shipped and suddenly connected

with everyone. Whether it'd be Mario-- This is-- this is

Mario Brothers. This is the start of everything for Nintendo

and for the industry as well, all right? All of

a sudden, the new games had what they didn't have

before - a mascot, someone you could connect with. -It

was not just something that was big as a video

game system, but it helped launch Nintendo into being just

a cultural force. So everything from Nintendo cereal-- -Nintendo Cereal

System is a super power system of nutritious breakfast-- -Or

Fred Savage's famous, or infamous movie The Wizard. Power Glove,

this ridiculous glove that you would wear, in theory, to

control games better. It was more than just a gaming

system. It was a cultural phenomenon. -There can be only

one. -Sega challenges you with the ultimate video game -

the Sega Master System. -When I started my career in

this industry, I was testing games on the Sega Master

System, and quite frankly I didn't even know it had

existed. The only thing that was in my world was

the Nintendo Entertainment System at that time. -The Sega Master

System is notable in that it's what brought Sega into

home video games. -I saw-- I saw it, I put

my little pudgy finger on the glass, I said, "Mom,

that's what I want for my birthday. What is that?"

That was the second question. And they made that happen

and I got the Sega Master System. And man did

I pick a losing horse in this race, becoming a

Sega kid over a Nintendo kid, but it was one

of those things where that was your source of pride.

That was your identity as video games were getting a

foothold [unk], right? -There's certainly a rivalry, you know, somebody

else had a Sega Master System and you had a

Nintendo [unk]. You know, you picked sides in a war.

You kinda-- you had one, you didn't have the other.

And it was the beginning of a rivalry between Nintendo

and Sega that would go on for generation after generation.

It would take awhile before there was a clear victor

in it. -So you're talking about the NES or the

Sega Master System, or just video games of that generation,

you're talking about, literally for what I think, is the

foundation for what video games will be. Right, because there

was suddenly all these kids like me, who started to

grow up with these, and started to understand these characters

and these things and what video games would be. And

so, as we make that jump to the Super NES

to, you know, the Sega Genesis, what you see is

the video game companies realizing that their audience is maturing,

and so they need to as well. -And then the

fourth generation - the empire strikes back. Sega comes out

with the Sega Genesis, saying "Genesis does what Nintendon't." -Genesis

does-- -What Nintendon't. -I mean, Sega Genesis was Sega's coming

out party, you know. Sega Master System was the system

that I owned, and nobody knew what that was. But

Sega Genesis, everybody knew because it was when Sega came

out and adopted an identity and said, "We are this

blue hedgehog--" -Sonic 2 handles stubborn stains. Embarrassing bald spots?

No problem. But wait, you can play it, too. -Sonic

was just-- he had attitude. You know, history has shown

that Mario's a great character, but he's kinda just this

schlubby plumber guy who jumped on turtles and-- -It was

one of those things that Sega said, "We're the underdog."

And in a way, it summed up fans, like me,

right? Like we needed a rallying crowd-- -Genesis. -Does. -Genesis.

-Does. -There has to be a line on the sand

for what you are what you are a kid and

your parents won't buy you both systems. -Sega people could

look to the Genesis and say, "This is the thing.

This is what gets us over Nintendo." -Super power. -The

Super Nintendo was Nintendo putting its foot down and saying,

"We basically started this home console business, and we aren't

going anywhere. -It's been very unusual in gaming history for

any one console maker to have two great platforms in

a row. But Nintendo pulled that off. The Nintendo Entertainment

System was phenomenal. The Super Nintendo, I would say, it

was even better. -It was when Nintendo said, "We are

going to make these things that you loved in the

last-- on the last system franchised. These are things that

are gonna be here to stay because you loved them.

Here's another Metroid. Here's the Final Fantasy. Here are all

these different experiences that we're gonna give you and make

this definitive video gaming platform for the time. -Super Nintendo

kind of quietly proved itself out to be one of

the best machines ever made. -You realize there was no

ceiling to what was happening, and 16-bit was our first

taste of that. -The fifth generation was a [unk] show.

Can I say "[unk] show"? There's too many players here.

There's too many players in the fifth generation. Something's gotta

give.