My father worked for Coleco and can say why the Adam was glitch ridden: Coleco didn't understand basic ESD protection. He remembers walking into the building where they assembled the Adam and being shocked to see that there were no ESD Control anywhere. No grounding, no anti-static smocks, no "clean" environments. They were assembling computers in the same factories that were once used to make leather gloves :L
PCB traces are designed to carry 3 to 12 volts of electricity. Your average static discharge involves many times more than this, and can/will damage the PCB traces. Today's PCBs will instantly fry and be unusable if they are subjected to ESD, but the ones back then used thicker traces, and some even used outright wires and were more durable, but not immune to ESD. I would surmise that some of these computers were damaged by ESD but yet not damaged enough that it was obvious. Some of the traces could have been weakened/burned/etc by small ESDs, and the computers were released onto the market with damaged circuitry. Sounds plausible. If a PCB/traces/circuitry were damaged by ESD, or made weak, it could make for intermittent transmission of data through those traces, which would lead to a whole slew of problems. For example, if you had, say, a trace that ran from the spacebar to the keyboard controller that was damaged by ESD that transmitted data intermittently, then that means you'd get times where you'd hit the spacebar and nothing happens. Or, sometimes the computer might register spacebar presses when you didn't even touch it.
Moreso than the PCBs, microchips are extremely vulnerable to static electrical discharge, which is why you get those grounding wrist straps for doing home electronics work. Consider how it might be possible to zap holes in the relatively large traces of a circuit board (which actually can generally handle 240 volts easily enough, and heavier duty ones as found in CRT TVs and monitors maybe 20 thousand volts so long as the current is low) or blow out a large discrete transistor with the many tens of kilovolts that a static charge can build up... now think how delicate the microscopic traces and transistors inside a chip are compared to *that*. Build a machine with a few dozen chips in it (besides the CPU, in a machine like the Adam you've got graphics and sound controllers, serial/parallel port buffers and DMA controllers, and at least 8 if not 16+ RAM chips) without paying any attention to preventing static build up at or draining it away from the workstations and you're just asking for trouble even if the PCBs survive OK. A little zap could create latent not-quite-faults in any number of chips, which won't immediately show up in the limited pre-shipping test routine and will only start exhibiting after a few hours of actual use ("burn-in", which is something that more conscientious and expensive manufacturers will do in the factory) in the customers' homes...
Before anyone asks, this video was deleted from last week due to a few errors in the information, I though it better to delete the video and fix it, than to give you peeps an incorrect video. Apologies again for keeping you waiting :)
So just to recap: 1. Mystique - Hollywoodian porn makers turned video game developers. 2. Zellers - Canadian plagiarists that cashed in popular games of the time. 3. Coleco - Shoe company turned toymaker turned electronic toys manufacturer. 4. US games - Quaker Oats subdivision that made great games that didn't sell, went on to make edutainment products. 5. Mirrorsoft - An news outlet absorbed into a media empire by an entrepreneur that might have had connections with a nuclear weapons program. Also they made games I guess.
@@TheRealMattKronik I remember hearing about her father on the news when they talked about her, and then when i heard how he died here, my mind just put two and two together.
Missed opportunity by Quaker to do a platformer adventure game where you play as Wilford Brimley on a quest to save the world's supply of Quaker oatmeal from the dastardly General Mills empire.
Larry retracted a whole video because he noticed there were factual errors We live in a time where youtubers have more journalistic integrity than our own news media
I guess I'll keep writing and rewriting my articles when I get hoodwinked for the sake of informing people with my integrity. I mean, instead of giving people without journalistic integrity attention you could give it to the people who actively try to listen to their audiences. But I guess that's a fever dream, eh?
Coleco is kinda like Nokia, which was mainly a rubber company before mostly concentrating to tech stuff. I've had many a pair of Nokia rubber boots for example!
Add Nintendo. Originally producing Japanese playing cards, then when sales went down sold instant rice and founded a cab company, now one of the biggest players in the video game market.
I still have some of my old Zellers games from back in the day. Ocean City Defender was one of my favourites. It's interesting to see a mention of Mirrorsoft, so soon after The Gaming Historian's Tetris documentary.
I knew about a couple of things from the documentary, but I didn't realize how shrewd the then-owner of Elorg. was. It basically was what my "subtitle" read as it being a "Cold War era tale of..." ehh, you can find it if you're interested; I can't remember all the words at the moment.
This video came first, almost a week earlier in fact, as a this is a re-upload with a few corrections. It's still an interesting coincidence in timing.
I admit, Larry threw me off with not including a Peter joke at the start of the video, but instead opting to save it for a random point of the video. I applaud you, good sir!
Omg Zellers! God I remember them. They were great for clothes and shoes. TBH, they would have been fine, their stores just needed a face lift, as their stores were a little gross. Still though, great retailers(if super scummy with video games, i guess) XD Ironically, all the Zellers that became Targets in my city ended up closing down, because Canadians didn't want Target.
Zellers was awesome! They did get a little gross towards the end. When the one near me became a Target I was stoked because I LOVE Target, but it was simply not the same Target they have in the states. I think they ended up apologizing for it. But yo, do you remember the Zellers Restaurant?!
The only thing Zellers had going for it over Walmart was nostalgia. And most Canadians very much wanted Target like the stores they'd shopped in across the border, but Canadian Target didn't have the same brands or low prices, and its inventory system was a mess so many locations had bare shelves.
*FAKE NEWS:* The last time Peter Molyneux had hair, multitasking operating systems had only been invented at MIT and trialled at timesharing systems. You thought it was a dodgy way of selling villas in Puerto Rico and the Algarve when it was actually the precursor to Windows XP. But seriously, check this out! ua-cam.com/video/Q07PhW5sCEk/v-deo.html
@ULGROTHA Many years later, he would review both Dragon's Lair games too, to help Don Bluth promote his indiegogo campaign for a Dragon's Lair movie. I'M STILL wondering what became of that project!!!! o-0
Hey Larry! I love your videos. Just dropping down in the comments to let you know that the Sinclair Research logo you use in the video with the red orb “s” is not from a hardware or software company at all. It’s from a biomedical research center that around 1986 I believe was still called Sinclair Cooperative Medical Research Farm. I actually work for that company! Probably not worth a correction to the video, but I just thought I’d let you know. Thanks for the great videos!
Another mistake, the video game crash of 83 honestly didn't hurt Coleco, their downfall was mostly because of the Adam computer. People always blame the crash because it's easy and a lazy explanation without doing more research
That corrupt Maxwell tried to buy Sinclair?? Say what what you like about Amstrad,but at least Alan Sugar understood how to manufacture (on the cheap) electronics ..shudder to think what that failed human flotation device would have done with the Speccy.
I've still got an Amstrad stereo tucked away somewhere, and it's more or less in full working order despite being more than 25 years old, and the same went for an Amstrad era Speccy +2 I had borrowed from a mate who never asked for it back until I accidentally plugged a replacement power supply into it with the wrong polarity and smoked some vital chip... Cheap, tacky, sometimes ill conceived, but he at least made sure the stuff he sold was functional. Returns are expensive things to deal with...
Surprised BioWare didn't make the list with their background as they were started by some doctors fresh out of medical school with some basic programming skills and they started making medical software and such before ending up in gaming.
There wasn't anything creepy about them. They were a a family department store, and a Canadian tradition for many years. Towards the end though, they did get a bit scruffy as the chain moved towards closure. During their prime they family oriented stores with reasonable prices. Mind you, I'm 57, and can remember when places like zellers were decent places to shop...before all the big box stores like home depot, and walmart came in and destroyed local businesses in many towns and cities in Canada.
I still miss zellars. Even one of them here was still abondoned after 7 years dont know if it still is cause i barely go to that town much let alone that part of town
#4 actually remindse me of something from here in Europe with a similiar story. 'Quelle' used to be the biggest mail-order retailer in Germany, their catalogue being basically found in every household and outselling even regular store chains. In the 80s they too sold their own Atari games, which were all hacks/bootlegs of other games. The most well-known probably being "UFI und sein gefährlicher Einsatz", known from the AVGN Spielberg games episode ("E.T. Go Come").
Well that's a strange sight, the Zellers storefront depicted at 4:32 is the one that used to be in my town! Never thought a relic of our town would be in a gaming video. Damn.
4:26 Holy shit, I think that's what the old Bowmanville Zellers looked like in the early 2000s. Man, what a throwback, I went to that location loads as a kid. 6:45 There's another two Canadian legends like this too, not the least of which being Sam the Record Man, which got destroyed by chains like HMV, but still has a single store left, independently run in the Belleville mall. The other is Lick's, an old stalwart burger joint chain that almost died completely a few years back because of mismanagement. There's still like five or six of them left at least.
The beginning of Nintendo as a video games company is an unusual, albeit fairly well known, story. Starting in 1886 making hanafuda cards, the big N went on to try their hand at all sorts of other businesses. From non-electronic toys, to taxis, to *ahem* hourly hotels. Eventually they started making game and watch games, and the rest is history.
There's a lot of that with long enough lived companies, Another example the Peugeot brothers started their business as a maker of salt and pepper shakers around 1810, the company later added push bikes, and finally automobiles. And like Nintendo still produce their earlier products. Though I think big N gave up on the love hotels from memory.
"Women's Rights Campaigners, Anti-Pornography Activists, Native Americans, Video Game Critics" ...and pretty much anyone with a lick of sense that saw it lol, this is one instance where all criticism was completely valid.
Larry Bundy Jr Great video! I really enjoyed the section on Coleco. However, if I'm not mistaken there were a few Telstar variations before the Telstar Arcade. My pop actually had the standard Telstar when it came out in 1976
I thought this video was just an urban legend, a haunted notification that pops up randomly on peoples phones in darkest nights when the wolves howl, leading them to black pages which don't exist....
I miss zellers. They were my family's go-to for everything. I remember walking in after the closing sales had been going on and seeing all the empty shelves with all the decorations removed and feeling so sad. It's been turned into a walmart but I'll always remember it as the zellers near the movies.
Oh goddammit Larry, you lulled me into a false sense of security so I was drinking coffee when the Molyneux dunk hit. RIGHT out my nose. NO ONE IS SAFE.
Ah yes, Zellers. I remember going to to the one at the mall near my grandparent's house ALL the time. Got tones of Pokemon Cards there. Then Target hit. One of the last Zellers is in my city of Ottawa too.
Yessss. I tried to watch it last week, without any luck. I then tried yesterday and again it was unavailable. I began to wonder if this was some sort of trolling scheme. Glad to be able to see it. Great as always, Larry!
Not only that, but they were the entire front for RS in the UK. Even though some of the products in store (particularly blank audio cassettes and rechargeable batteries) were Radio Shack branded, the shop had TANDY on the sign out front... pretty weird. Folded and had most of their locations taken over by the more homegrown Maplin, in the end. Shame. Never again found anywhere to get good quality C120s on the cheap after that.
"Zellers will be a household name" Yeah as a garbage store we never ever went to. They were awful, like really low budget Targets. Which is ironic, since when Target came to Canada, they took all the old Zellers locations, then went out of business up here.
It was pretty much just Canadian KMart, but stuck in the late-90s instead of the late-80s. Just as depressing to shop at during their final years however.
greats videos larry. ive seen hundreds or even thousands of historical gaming youtube videos and i still find myself learning new facts when i watch yours.thankyou!
The only difference between the SG-1000 and the MSX was a about 1kb of memory so a lot of Taiwanese SG-1000 bootlegs were really just MSX carts slapped into a different shell, and put into an adapter which gave it that extra bit of memory.
I had one of those Coleco Pac-Man mini arcades as a kid in the Eighties. That thing took 6 C cell batteries! SIX! Barely lasted for 24 hours at that. I also had an ALF plushie with the pull cord voice box.
Is there any way I could get the official fact hunt book in an audio book form maybe with some sort of related images to play along side it? Maybe even put it in an mp4 format to save space and uploaded somewhere where I can watch it without downloading the full file?
I noticed something funny when I looked at dates relating to Quaker's video game run: 1968 - General Mills buys Parker Brothers 1969 - Quaker Oats buys Fisher-Price 1982 - Parker Brothers starts publishing Atari games 1982 - Quaker Oats purchases US Games and starts publishing their own Atari games Also, Quaker Oats used to be called Quaker Mills.
Sears did the same thing Zeller's did with Atari and Intellivision games, but it was because Atari and Mattel wanted to sell their games at Sears, but Sears had a rule that said the games had to be re-branded as Sears products to sell there. Sears sold consoles that vaguely resembled, but were fully compatible with, the 2600 and Intellivision, and their games were similarly compatible. I wonder if Zeller's had the same rule.
Nah, the Sears ones were a legit re-branding agreement. The Zeller's ones were just re-boxed Taiwanese knock-off games. That's why they could sell them so cheap. www.atarimania.com/list_games_atari-2600-vcs-zellers-taiwan-2600-compatible_publisher_47_2_G.html
Southern Ontario Canadian here. Our local Zeller's was a great in the '80s and early '90s, but as you say, when Wal-Mart crossed the border, that was beginning of the end. It became a low-end discount store and soon just looked and felt dingy. No judgement on the people who shopped there in its latter days, but it drove a lot of people away.
this video was deleted from last week due to a few errors in the information, I though it better to delete the video and fix it, than to give you peeps an incorrect video. Apologies again for keeping you waiting :)
I spotted another error. The Quaker Oats company wasn't founded by Quakers. There are a number of food companies founded by Quakers but Quaker Oats isn't one of them. The founder had read about Quakers in an encyclopedia article and thiught they made a good image. www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1553/is-the-guy-on-the-quaker-oats-box-john-penn/ According to the folks at Quaker Oats, the Quaker Man was registered as a trademark on September 4, 1877 - the first U.S. trademark registered for a breakfast cereal. "The name was chosen when Quaker Mill partner Henry Seymour found an encyclopedia article on Quakers and decided that the qualities described - integrity, honesty, purity - provided an appropriate identity for his company's oat product." Today you don't come across a lot of impure, dishonest oats, but consumers in the late nineteenth century couldn't take such things for granted. To emphasize the purity angle, the original Quaker Man carried a scroll with the word "pure" on it.
These videos feel like they are over in a minute but are always long enough to deliver quality content. Love your videos and can’t wait for the next one!
this video was deleted from last week due to a few errors in the information, I though it better to delete the video and fix it, than to give you peeps an incorrect video. Apologies again for keeping you waiting :)
Mega yeah he changed at least one minor thing. In the posting last week when talking about Zellers he said the "state of Ontario". I noticed in this version he changed it to "province of Ontario" which is correct. It's was such a small mistake that myself and some others mentioned in the comments, but obviously he seen it and being the the pro he is actually corrected it this time around.
Ale Titan He fixed a few errors. The original video stated that General Custer died during the civil war and that the Canadian province of Ontario was a State.
Fun (but sad) Fact about Zellers: The former stores that WERE Zellers became Target Stores, but Target Canada was a complete failure. The last of the Zellers empire died out early in February 2020.
Sponsoring it, anyway. Part of the bizarre early 90s fad for food and drink companies (and the occasional charity) sponsoring relatively naff games that might not otherwise have made it to market in order to try a bit of hardcore product placement right in front of kids' faces for hours on end... Pushover, Zool, Nightwalker, Cool Spot, Global Gladiators, and all the rest... ISTR Pushover actually got a sequel, but I can't remember what it was called? Anyway, I could really go for some Quavers right now, so the strategy obviously worked, despite the massive negative publicity backlash that eventually put a stop to it on any kind of large scale.
My father worked for Coleco and can say why the Adam was glitch ridden: Coleco didn't understand basic ESD protection. He remembers walking into the building where they assembled the Adam and being shocked to see that there were no ESD Control anywhere. No grounding, no anti-static smocks, no "clean" environments. They were assembling computers in the same factories that were once used to make leather gloves :L
[SYNCOM] Thanks for the interesting info!
Wait, how does static electricity make a console glitchy?
PCB traces are designed to carry 3 to 12 volts of electricity. Your average static discharge involves many times more than this, and can/will damage the PCB traces. Today's PCBs will instantly fry and be unusable if they are subjected to ESD, but the ones back then used thicker traces, and some even used outright wires and were more durable, but not immune to ESD. I would surmise that some of these computers were damaged by ESD but yet not damaged enough that it was obvious. Some of the traces could have been weakened/burned/etc by small ESDs, and the computers were released onto the market with damaged circuitry. Sounds plausible.
If a PCB/traces/circuitry were damaged by ESD, or made weak, it could make for intermittent transmission of data through those traces, which would lead to a whole slew of problems. For example, if you had, say, a trace that ran from the spacebar to the keyboard controller that was damaged by ESD that transmitted data intermittently, then that means you'd get times where you'd hit the spacebar and nothing happens. Or, sometimes the computer might register spacebar presses when you didn't even touch it.
Moreso than the PCBs, microchips are extremely vulnerable to static electrical discharge, which is why you get those grounding wrist straps for doing home electronics work. Consider how it might be possible to zap holes in the relatively large traces of a circuit board (which actually can generally handle 240 volts easily enough, and heavier duty ones as found in CRT TVs and monitors maybe 20 thousand volts so long as the current is low) or blow out a large discrete transistor with the many tens of kilovolts that a static charge can build up... now think how delicate the microscopic traces and transistors inside a chip are compared to *that*.
Build a machine with a few dozen chips in it (besides the CPU, in a machine like the Adam you've got graphics and sound controllers, serial/parallel port buffers and DMA controllers, and at least 8 if not 16+ RAM chips) without paying any attention to preventing static build up at or draining it away from the workstations and you're just asking for trouble even if the PCBs survive OK. A little zap could create latent not-quite-faults in any number of chips, which won't immediately show up in the limited pre-shipping test routine and will only start exhibiting after a few hours of actual use ("burn-in", which is something that more conscientious and expensive manufacturers will do in the factory) in the customers' homes...
[SYNCOM] I want to disclaimer this post by saying that I do, in fact, believe you but I can't help but say "My uncle works for Nintendo..."
Before anyone asks, this video was deleted from last week due to a few errors in the information, I though it better to delete the video and fix it, than to give you peeps an incorrect video.
Apologies again for keeping you waiting :)
Larry Bundy Jr it's ok we were panicking on why it got deleted :)
Ah that explains it. I was all set and ready to watch only to find it just deleted.
I thought it was a copyright strike. Whew
Are my eyes deceiving me? A HONEST Games Journalist that is willing to admit they made a mistake and own up to it?
How's the book coming along Larry?
So just to recap:
1. Mystique - Hollywoodian porn makers turned video game developers.
2. Zellers - Canadian plagiarists that cashed in popular games of the time.
3. Coleco - Shoe company turned toymaker turned electronic toys manufacturer.
4. US games - Quaker Oats subdivision that made great games that didn't sell, went on to make edutainment products.
5. Mirrorsoft - An news outlet absorbed into a media empire by an entrepreneur that might have had connections with a nuclear weapons program. Also they made games I guess.
also the CEO's daughter was Jeffrey Epstein's pimp
Don’t forget ties to Epstein
The Robert Maxwell mentioned here is the father of Ghislaine Maxwell that helped Epstien.
Did you know that already? Or, did you put two and two together at the mention of Lady Ghislaine, like I did just now?
@@TheRealMattKronik I remember hearing about her father on the news when they talked about her, and then when i heard how he died here, my mind just put two and two together.
Missed opportunity by Quaker to do a platformer adventure game where you play as Wilford Brimley on a quest to save the world's supply of Quaker oatmeal from the dastardly General Mills empire.
Diabeetus
Ehh, Wilford Brimley was busy dealing with Cutman anyway.
Alan Rizkallah It’s The right thing to do.
The final boss would be multiple characters. And they would say to him..
DIE, OR BEAT US!
No, the goal must be to check your blood sugar and check it often to avoid diabeetus
Larry retracted a whole video because he noticed there were factual errors
We live in a time where youtubers have more journalistic integrity than our own news media
When did news media had such an thing called journalistic integrity?
I quite agree but 'journalistic integrity' and 'news media' in the same sentence?.. Surely not... Hehe.
I guess I'll keep writing and rewriting my articles when I get hoodwinked for the sake of informing people with my integrity. I mean, instead of giving people without journalistic integrity attention you could give it to the people who actively try to listen to their audiences.
But I guess that's a fever dream, eh?
@@arhambliss8606 Before the Reagan administration repealed laws that required news channels to give equal air time to opposing views.
@@garfieif8187 I feel like the laws got a little outdated once there stopped being only 3 tv channels and they could start being more focused.
Coleco is kinda like Nokia, which was mainly a rubber company before mostly concentrating to tech stuff. I've had many a pair of Nokia rubber boots for example!
Are as solid as their phones?
*Kicks down an entire house with them*
Add Nintendo. Originally producing Japanese playing cards, then when sales went down sold instant rice and founded a cab company, now one of the biggest players in the video game market.
Wow, that Stevie Wonder ad at 4:50 is amazing. Can you imagine the screeching rage if a company were to put out something like that nowadays?
tbr2109 I mean, really Steve? Really?
That was cringey af.
p sure it's fake
I don't believe that one was real to begin with
Its not real
So Larry took down the video and reuploaded it because of a mistake?
Integrity and the overall feel. *This is why I love these videos!*
Though Uncle Bob was actually born in modern-day Ukraine.
No Peter Molyneux jab at the beginning? I'm I really watching Fact Hunt?
But seriously, good video as always.
There's a starman waiting in the sky Your profile picture matches that comment perfectly.
Using like bots I see.
He recently spent an entire video TALKING about Peter Molyneux. I guess he wanted to give the guy a break this time.
Maybe that joke was retired now that there's been a dedicated Molyneux video.
He didn't take a stab at Molyneux AT ALL in the video before the Peter Molyneux one.
I still have some of my old Zellers games from back in the day. Ocean City Defender was one of my favourites.
It's interesting to see a mention of Mirrorsoft, so soon after The Gaming Historian's Tetris documentary.
I knew about a couple of things from the documentary, but I didn't realize how shrewd the then-owner of Elorg. was. It basically was what my "subtitle" read as it being a "Cold War era tale of..." ehh, you can find it if you're interested; I can't remember all the words at the moment.
This video came first, almost a week earlier in fact, as a this is a re-upload with a few corrections. It's still an interesting coincidence in timing.
aka Atlantis is your fav
Fact Hunt is hands down my favorite UA-cam series
aw, bless you sir! :)
I admit, Larry threw me off with not including a Peter joke at the start of the video, but instead opting to save it for a random point of the video. I applaud you, good sir!
Omg Zellers! God I remember them. They were great for clothes and shoes. TBH, they would have been fine, their stores just needed a face lift, as their stores were a little gross. Still though, great retailers(if super scummy with video games, i guess) XD Ironically, all the Zellers that became Targets in my city ended up closing down, because Canadians didn't want Target.
Zellers was awesome! They did get a little gross towards the end. When the one near me became a Target I was stoked because I LOVE Target, but it was simply not the same Target they have in the states. I think they ended up apologizing for it.
But yo, do you remember the Zellers Restaurant?!
Same here in montreal. target left canada after a few months. They killed zellars for nothing
our zellers became a k mart lol
And darn 2020 was the year the last Zellers closed down.
The only thing Zellers had going for it over Walmart was nostalgia. And most Canadians very much wanted Target like the stores they'd shopped in across the border, but Canadian Target didn't have the same brands or low prices, and its inventory system was a mess so many locations had bare shelves.
I will never visit the UK out of my fear of Honey Monster.
StopDrop&Retro where in the world are you, we gave him a passport, he can come visit.
StopDrop&Retro I have never seen an earlier version of the Honey Monster, now I'm a little bit unsettled XD I thought he was cute and fluffy....!
His stomach is so warm & snug i hope he never shits me out.
Mr blobby is far worse...
Don't be silly, Boris Johnson is probably in bed right now (take that how you want :P).
Last time I clicked this fast Peter Molyneux still had hair
There's always that one jackass that feels the need to make this same exact comment every single video.
*FAKE NEWS:* The last time Peter Molyneux had hair, multitasking operating systems had only been invented at MIT and trialled at timesharing systems.
You thought it was a dodgy way of selling villas in Puerto Rico and the Algarve when it was actually the precursor to Windows XP.
But seriously, check this out!
ua-cam.com/video/Q07PhW5sCEk/v-deo.html
last time i saw a comment start with 3 posts like that, i was...about 10 minutes younger actually...
...yea...youtube...
Nightosphere and Baywatch was just starting.
noisyturtle how does it feel to be exactly the type of person your comment is about and not even realize it?
Lmao I would totally play 'Raiding tombs' and 'Grand Theft' 😂
I prefer Life Half and Eldza.
"Blade Mount" "Field of Battle: 2412" "Gear Metal: Solid" "Space is Dead" "Zarof: Sportmotors"
Marry's God
I would hesitate from buying Super Mayonnaise Brothers....
I like Mayro Kratt.
I never realized the Nostalgia Critic was an anti-pornography lobbyist.
christosvoskresye i didn't know he was a video game critic, outside of barts nightmare
It was just a visual gag. He said "critics", refering to early 80s critcics.
he's reviewed Bebe's Kids and Blue Brothers for the SNES as DVD bonuses but they're on his channel
@ULGROTHA Many years later, he would review both Dragon's Lair games too, to help Don Bluth promote his indiegogo campaign for a Dragon's Lair movie.
I'M STILL wondering what became of that project!!!! o-0
Are the Dragon's Lair reviews on UA-cam? Don't think I've seen those before but the Bebe's Kids one was hilarious :)
Hey Larry! I love your videos. Just dropping down in the comments to let you know that the Sinclair Research logo you use in the video with the red orb “s” is not from a hardware or software company at all. It’s from a biomedical research center that around 1986 I believe was still called Sinclair Cooperative Medical Research Farm. I actually work for that company! Probably not worth a correction to the video, but I just thought I’d let you know. Thanks for the great videos!
It's a testament to the scope and range of Larry's videos that so many people enjoy them
Slight error at 15:50ish when you say "when murdoch realised how lucrative" instead of maxwell. Otherwise - another excellent episode!
Another error - Robert Maxwell didn't set Mirrorsoft up, it was already set up when he bought the Mirror Group.
Another mistake, the video game crash of 83 honestly didn't hurt Coleco, their downfall was mostly because of the Adam computer. People always blame the crash because it's easy and a lazy explanation without doing more research
@@TheCrazierz probs didn’t need the snidey comment there my dude.
That corrupt Maxwell tried to buy Sinclair?? Say what what you like about Amstrad,but at least Alan Sugar understood how to manufacture (on the cheap) electronics ..shudder to think what that failed human flotation device would have done with the Speccy.
I've still got an Amstrad stereo tucked away somewhere, and it's more or less in full working order despite being more than 25 years old, and the same went for an Amstrad era Speccy +2 I had borrowed from a mate who never asked for it back until I accidentally plugged a replacement power supply into it with the wrong polarity and smoked some vital chip...
Cheap, tacky, sometimes ill conceived, but he at least made sure the stuff he sold was functional. Returns are expensive things to deal with...
knowing his ties with Israel, probably a Nuclear missile launching console to send their enemies a 40 kiloton party gift.
Oy Larry, I really think you should make a full video on Mirrorsoft, it's such a batshit story and there seems to be a lot of content there.
Kimble Justice already did one.
Surprised BioWare didn't make the list with their background as they were started by some doctors fresh out of medical school with some basic programming skills and they started making medical software and such before ending up in gaming.
amc2004uk That makes a lot more sense, given their company name.
i live 20 minutes from one of the last zellers. those stores always creeped me out
whats creepy about them? :)
There wasn't anything creepy about them. They were a a family department store, and a Canadian tradition for many years. Towards the end though, they did get a bit scruffy as the chain moved towards closure. During their prime they family oriented stores with reasonable prices. Mind you, I'm 57, and can remember when places like zellers were decent places to shop...before all the big box stores like home depot, and walmart came in and destroyed local businesses in many towns and cities in Canada.
I still miss zellars. Even one of them here was still abondoned after 7 years dont know if it still is cause i barely go to that town much let alone that part of town
#4 actually remindse me of something from here in Europe with a similiar story.
'Quelle' used to be the biggest mail-order retailer in Germany, their catalogue being basically found in every household and outselling even regular store chains. In the 80s they too sold their own Atari games, which were all hacks/bootlegs of other games. The most well-known probably being "UFI und sein gefährlicher Einsatz", known from the AVGN Spielberg games episode ("E.T. Go Come").
Well that's a strange sight, the Zellers storefront depicted at 4:32 is the one that used to be in my town! Never thought a relic of our town would be in a gaming video. Damn.
4:26
Holy shit, I think that's what the old Bowmanville Zellers looked like in the early 2000s. Man, what a throwback, I went to that location loads as a kid.
6:45
There's another two Canadian legends like this too, not the least of which being Sam the Record Man, which got destroyed by chains like HMV, but still has a single store left, independently run in the Belleville mall.
The other is Lick's, an old stalwart burger joint chain that almost died completely a few years back because of mismanagement. There's still like five or six of them left at least.
Then Target bought most of the old Zellers locations, then closed a year or 2 later, leaving them vacant.
The beginning of Nintendo as a video games company is an unusual, albeit fairly well known, story. Starting in 1886 making hanafuda cards, the big N went on to try their hand at all sorts of other businesses. From non-electronic toys, to taxis, to *ahem* hourly hotels. Eventually they started making game and watch games, and the rest is history.
1888 not 1886. I'm sorry, I had to comment!
There's a lot of that with long enough lived companies, Another example the Peugeot brothers started their business as a maker of salt and pepper shakers around 1810, the company later added push bikes, and finally automobiles. And like Nintendo still produce their earlier products. Though I think big N gave up on the love hotels from memory.
Hope your video doesn't get the yellow $. Yeah, I love your Fact Hunt series but I hate what UA-cam is doing to it.
A previous upload I did for Patreon has :(
good job with the bigotry post what do you have against Jews
what the yellow $
No, seriously, shove the edgelord shit, it's not funny. You could've just answered the question, I was wondering the same thing.
jewtube lol
"Women's Rights Campaigners, Anti-Pornography Activists, Native Americans, Video Game Critics"
...and pretty much anyone with a lick of sense that saw it lol, this is one instance where all criticism was completely valid.
But it is a funny game (wink).
Larry time. Chilling out while watching some fact hunt.
Son Goku Hell yeah.
Jeremy Johnson Dude, no call for that man
Don't kink shame him.
Your research is always so well done Larry! I'm jelous on where you find some of these.
Great video as always
oh i see you fixed that mistake about Gorge Custer
Larry Bundy Jr Great video! I really enjoyed the section on Coleco. However, if I'm not mistaken there were a few Telstar variations before the Telstar Arcade. My pop actually had the standard Telstar when it came out in 1976
I thought this video was just an urban legend, a haunted notification that pops up randomly on peoples phones in darkest nights when the wolves howl, leading them to black pages which don't exist....
I love that MirrorSoft Tetris music. Many a time I'd leave the Spectrum running on the start screen
Well at least U.S Games were actually based in the US, unlike U.S Gold.
You are the only only person I know that can make “fact hunt” sound like “fuck ton” when you say it
Forget the reupload thing, where is the peter molineux joke???
xavier martinez keep your hair on, it's in there.
You sure as heck better make a full video covering the Mirrorsoft insanity
Mirrorsoft: The Insanity and Shady Dealings of Robert Maxwell
2011: the year Zellers liquidated and sold many locations to Target for the brief and total gongshow that was Target Canada
I miss zellers. They were my family's go-to for everything. I remember walking in after the closing sales had been going on and seeing all the empty shelves with all the decorations removed and feeling so sad. It's been turned into a walmart but I'll always remember it as the zellers near the movies.
Sooooo if Canada is the hat on the US.....would that make Alaska the ponytail and Florida the gotee?
quentin brandt No, the dick.
Alaska is close to half the size of the entire continental USA, so it's more like a gigantic tumor somehow sticking out of the side of the hat
Dr Megaman Considering they have us the Palins, you are probably right.
NIN10DOXD Considering Hawaii gave us Obama, it should be the asshole of America.
Alaska is closer to 21% contiguous U.S. states not 50%.
As a Connecticunt I must say, hearing that Coleco was from Connecticut made me extremely happy for my tiny state.
Ian Hislop hated Robert Maxwell, some of the episodes of Have I Got News For You back in the day.
Robert Maxwell's daughter was an ally of Jeffrey Epstein.
7:45 - music from Cannon Fodder. Instant like :)
4:11 Die Hard Trilogy music! The Nostalgia!
Oh goddammit Larry, you lulled me into a false sense of security so I was drinking coffee when the Molyneux dunk hit. RIGHT out my nose. NO ONE IS SAFE.
Ah yes, Zellers. I remember going to to the one at the mall near my grandparent's house ALL the time. Got tones of Pokemon Cards there. Then Target hit. One of the last Zellers is in my city of Ottawa too.
Then Target died less than a year later because they made all the same mistakes.
Makes me sad.
17:05 This story is even more sinister now, given that the boat is presumably named after his daughter Ghislaine Maxwell
Zellers sounds like a Canadian version of woolworths.
Zellers was one of the biggest brand store here in canada when i was a kid and teen. You couldnt say canada without thinking of zellars
Yessss. I tried to watch it last week, without any luck. I then tried yesterday and again it was unavailable. I began to wonder if this was some sort of trolling scheme. Glad to be able to see it. Great as always, Larry!
Am Canadian, can confirm the history of Zeller's is accurate. ;) Love you, Guru Larry
Definitely wasn't expecting the Ghislaine Maxwell connection. Holy crap! Like father like daughter I guess.
what about Tandy? A leather tanning company that became the Radio Shack shell for their computer brand?
Not only that, but they were the entire front for RS in the UK. Even though some of the products in store (particularly blank audio cassettes and rechargeable batteries) were Radio Shack branded, the shop had TANDY on the sign out front... pretty weird.
Folded and had most of their locations taken over by the more homegrown Maplin, in the end. Shame. Never again found anywhere to get good quality C120s on the cheap after that.
Yikes, give us a warning before linking a Linkara video please!
Should I want more? I mean, on that particular subject? I'm not sure I see the logical progression here.
You want MORE Tandy madness? Look up Linkara's videos on the Tandy Computer Whiz Kids.
Hey I live next to one of the 2 Zellers left. Used to see Zellers everywhere as a wee lad. Also those targets went bust like 4 years ago.
"Zellers will be a household name"
Yeah as a garbage store we never ever went to. They were awful, like really low budget Targets. Which is ironic, since when Target came to Canada, they took all the old Zellers locations, then went out of business up here.
AnDanDan target sucks
AnDanDan Sounds like a Canadian KMart.
I know Target blows. Thats why it went out of business here too.
And I've never been in a KMart so I can't compare.
It was pretty much just Canadian KMart, but stuck in the late-90s instead of the late-80s. Just as depressing to shop at during their final years however.
I love Target and never had a problem with them
greats videos larry. ive seen hundreds or even thousands of historical gaming youtube videos and i still find myself learning new facts when i watch yours.thankyou!
Ah, bless you, thank you! I do make sure my content is topics that no one else has ever covered online before. My upcoming videos are 100% original.
Hang on, what? The ColecoVision is basically an MSX in a box? Holy crap!
That pretty much explains why most MSX emulators can run Coleco games.
Lone Star yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Yeah, I knew ColecoVision and the Sega’s SG-1000 had a bunch of overlap, but didn’t know about the relationship to MSX until now.
The only difference between the SG-1000 and the MSX was a about 1kb of memory so a lot of Taiwanese SG-1000 bootlegs were really just MSX carts slapped into a different shell, and put into an adapter which gave it that extra bit of memory.
I knew about where Coleco got their start but I never knew about the Colecovision being an MSX under the hood.
Wait... that Maxwell... who owned a yacht called the "Lady Ghislane?"
Oh... no...
I remember seeing this last week
Yikes Department he fixed some incorrect info and reuploaded
Great video as always, Larry! Thoroughly enjoyed it.
Wait why did he remove this video to begin with?
Probably some odd copyright
Mindy Auron I guess you're right?
There was some incorrect infomation in it. so I wanted to get it right for my viewers :D
Larry Bundy Jr glad to know you decided to correct it. Not many would do that. Keep up the good work
One Gaming Cause we teased him for calling Ontario a state, sorry Larry! Still love ya :D
Wow, I remember hearing about Maxwell's "boating accident" as a kid.
Stick around till the end to hear some of the back story to the Jeffrey Epstien story.
I had one of those Coleco Pac-Man mini arcades as a kid in the Eighties. That thing took 6 C cell batteries! SIX! Barely lasted for 24 hours at that. I also had an ALF plushie with the pull cord voice box.
HELLO YOU
Great episode man, I learned a lot in this video. keep up the great work.
Is there any way I could get the official fact hunt book in an audio book form maybe with some sort of related images to play along side it? Maybe even put it in an mp4 format to save space and uploaded somewhere where I can watch it without downloading the full file?
I noticed something funny when I looked at dates relating to Quaker's video game run:
1968 - General Mills buys Parker Brothers
1969 - Quaker Oats buys Fisher-Price
1982 - Parker Brothers starts publishing Atari games
1982 - Quaker Oats purchases US Games and starts publishing their own Atari games
Also, Quaker Oats used to be called Quaker Mills.
Krakout music in the background.
Thank you. That music was hauntingly familiar. Glad someone remembered!
I remember Zellers fondly. Total nostalgia trip.
Side Note: Target lasted only 2 years in Canada. Whereas Zellers was around for over 90.
Last time I was this early Peter Molymeme still had hair.
Marcus Aurelius So never?
But surely the costs of buying cartridges would be more than they would earn from selling games at $6.99? Why would they do that!?
The good old zellers days
Krackout theme at beginning 😍😍😍
The Return
Sears did the same thing Zeller's did with Atari and Intellivision games, but it was because Atari and Mattel wanted to sell their games at Sears, but Sears had a rule that said the games had to be re-branded as Sears products to sell there. Sears sold consoles that vaguely resembled, but were fully compatible with, the 2600 and Intellivision, and their games were similarly compatible.
I wonder if Zeller's had the same rule.
Nah, the Sears ones were a legit re-branding agreement. The Zeller's ones were just re-boxed Taiwanese knock-off games. That's why they could sell them so cheap.
www.atarimania.com/list_games_atari-2600-vcs-zellers-taiwan-2600-compatible_publisher_47_2_G.html
Fact hunt book prologue: Peter Molyneux
Southern Ontario Canadian here.
Our local Zeller's was a great in the '80s and early '90s, but as you say, when Wal-Mart crossed the border, that was beginning of the end. It became a low-end discount store and soon just looked and felt dingy. No judgement on the people who shopped there in its latter days, but it drove a lot of people away.
What happened to the original video a week ago?
Celcius1au It was deleted since it contained some factual errors.
Larry needed to add more factuals errors for WatchMojo.
with Robert Maxwell I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, with his daughter Ghislaine also being a Mossad agent.
Why was this video originally deleted
this video was deleted from last week due to a few errors in the
information, I though it better to delete the video and fix it, than
to give you peeps an incorrect video.
Apologies again for keeping you waiting :)
I spotted another error.
The Quaker Oats company wasn't founded by Quakers. There are a number of food companies founded by Quakers but Quaker Oats isn't one of them. The founder had read about Quakers in an encyclopedia article and thiught they made a good image.
www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1553/is-the-guy-on-the-quaker-oats-box-john-penn/
According to the folks at Quaker Oats, the Quaker Man was registered as a trademark on September 4, 1877 - the first U.S. trademark registered for a breakfast cereal. "The name was chosen when Quaker Mill partner Henry Seymour found an encyclopedia article on Quakers and decided that the qualities described - integrity, honesty, purity - provided an appropriate identity for his company's oat product." Today you don't come across a lot of impure, dishonest oats, but consumers in the late nineteenth century couldn't take such things for granted. To emphasize the purity angle, the original Quaker Man carried a scroll with the word "pure" on it.
Larry you fucked up. That's a picture of Maurice R. Greenberg, former CEO of AIG
These videos feel like they are over in a minute but are always long enough to deliver quality content. Love your videos and can’t wait for the next one!
Thanks, I try to make them as brief as possible, anything longer and it would become boring :)
Why the reupload?
this video was deleted from last week due to a few errors in the
information, I though it better to delete the video and fix it, than
to give you peeps an incorrect video.
Apologies again for keeping you waiting :)
Interesting note about Zellers - the physical spaces were sold to American retailer Target, who also went belly up (in Canada) during January of 2015.
Why the re-upload?
Mega If I'm correct there may have been a error in the video that he didn't notice.
Now we have to spend three days doing unrelated tests only to learn that House is correct... and still sneaking meds.
Mega yeah he changed at least one minor thing. In the posting last week when talking about Zellers he said the "state of Ontario". I noticed in this version he changed it to "province of Ontario" which is correct.
It's was such a small mistake that myself and some others mentioned in the comments, but obviously he seen it and being the the pro he is actually corrected it this time around.
Scott Mckerral There were actually two he also mentioned that General Custer was killed during the Civil War.
Mr. JH thanks I did not catch that one. I'm Canadian so that's why the Ontario one jumped out at me.
Nice shoutout to Zellers, cheeky pirates they were. My hometown Zellers did become a Target but they pulled out too and it is now a Walmart. ;)
Why was this re-uploaded?
There was errors or Larry was fighting the monetization bot again.
Ale Titan He fixed a few errors. The original video stated that General Custer died during the civil war and that the Canadian province of Ontario was a State.
Walmart has become the only retail shop in Canada now. Talk about monopolisation!
Another solid video as always.
"Colored Tetris shapes mating" will be my new catch phrase for pixelated sex.
I didn't think there could be anything more ridiculous that the Quaker Oats thing, but this guy never disappoints
I have lived in Connecticut my WHOLE life, yet I have never heard of the Connecticut Leather Company ever. But I HAVE heard of Coleco!
Yeah our Zellers closed I remember then got replaced by Target which in turn closed. Bless you Newfoundland :P
Fun (but sad) Fact about Zellers: The former stores that WERE Zellers became Target Stores, but Target Canada was a complete failure. The last of the Zellers empire died out early in February 2020.
I remember Smith's crisps making Pushover.
Sponsoring it, anyway. Part of the bizarre early 90s fad for food and drink companies (and the occasional charity) sponsoring relatively naff games that might not otherwise have made it to market in order to try a bit of hardcore product placement right in front of kids' faces for hours on end...
Pushover, Zool, Nightwalker, Cool Spot, Global Gladiators, and all the rest...
ISTR Pushover actually got a sequel, but I can't remember what it was called?
Anyway, I could really go for some Quavers right now, so the strategy obviously worked, despite the massive negative publicity backlash that eventually put a stop to it on any kind of large scale.
@mspenrice
One Step Beyond.
I remember zellers and miss them. Had an amazing food court and an awesome video game section.
Kid 1: "Are you getting the latest Quaker Oats game?"
Kid 2: "No, I was going to get the new Pokemon game."
Kid 1: "Pfft. Weirdo."
4:53 I've never seen a videogame ad quite like that.
The Quaker Oats guy doesn't really look like their founder actually...