I just find this whole segment SO odd. It's like they're trying to lean into this negative vibe that video games are scary, and dangerous. Then they use examples that are in no way dangerous or scary. They're just different than things they did at the time, but in no way harm anyone.
They also use deceptive editing. First they talk about the 900 numbers which cost per minute. And it's true. Those absolutely existed for video games. You could call them, and pay like 99 cents per minute to listen to a pre-recorded message telling you how to play the game. Think of a guy reading off a gamefaqs walk through at a time when gamefaqs didn't exist. So that was one of your only options. The other option was magazines and books. Strategy guides came a bit later. I remember seeing them in the late SNES era. I remember a Super Mario RPG stratagy guide. I remember a Chrono Trigger guide. Earthbound actually came with it's own strategy guide.
But I don't remember that with NES era games. What are you going to put in your Super Mario 3 strategy guide? "Go right."
Yeah, you could list all the secrets, and put a map, and screen grabs of each level. But, how many pages is that really? 10? You could probably put the full level for 5 levels per page, and that turns into 10 when you front ant back each page. So SMB1 had 32 levels. That'd be 4 pages. SMB3 had 90 levels. So 9 pages for that strategy guide.
I think the problem was just NES games didn't have the complexity and length to necessitate a strategy guide. SNES had a MASSIVELY improved space to work with. games for the first time were massive enough to make a magazine sized book dedicated to this game. That's how much the games grew. That's how much content there was now.
But on NES, it just wasn't there yet. And the internet wasn't a thing in the 80s either. So these 900 numbers made BANK.
But the 900 numbers were not exclusive to video games. I remember the NFL had one probably in each city I would imagine. I remember commercials during NFL games that we could call and hear all the news and info updated daily, from our Cleveland Browns. Sometimes they had interviews with the players. I know my dad said a guy he worked with had called that number, and sometimes it was just the audio feed of what interview he did with sports center, or a local radio station. They also had a guy who just spread gossip. The one my dads coworker was convinced of in the early 90s, was that Bernie Kosar was going to buy the team because Art Modell was frustrated with the conditions of the stadium. Keep in mind, that was 1991. Art Modell moved the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore to become the Baltimore Browns. Until Cleveland sued Art Modell, and they couldn't be the Baltimore Browns. So they became the Baltimore Ravens. Which are still a team to this day. After they moved to Baltimore they claimed they had been fighting the city to get a grant from Cleveland to fix the stadium, but Cleveland said no. So instead of a billionaire owner fixing his own stadium, Art was asking for tax dollars, and Cleveland said no. So he left with the players. And Cleveland had to wait until 1999 to get the longest term worst team in the NFL. Since 1999 I think the browns have made the playoffs twice. And only in the first round. Bars in Cleveland make BANK.
I also remember a 900 number for the WWF (now known as the WWE) with the Mean Gene Hotline. They had a guy who interviewed wrestlers onscreen. Well, they gave him a hotline where he interviewed wrestlers daily for the hotline. Which is easy when all the rumors and gossip are controlled by you, since your show is scripted. So you can get Mean Gene to say "Folks, I think Hulk Hogan might be due for a comeback!" if you know that Hogan is 2 weeks away from being healed from an injury. You know you plan for Hogan to be at the next show. So you have Mean Gene give that out as gossip, then it turns out to be true. Now you got people addicted to getting the early news. And they're paying money per minute to listen to outcomes of predetermined matches, before the matches are even announced.
But the segment makes it seem like these 900 numbers for video games are predatory for just video games. They had 900 numbers for everything back then. Every sport had one. Every soap opera on daytime TV had one. Religion had a lot of 900 numbers. They had one that would give you the winning lotto numbers before the numbers were drawn. Which is weird because they were never right once. Nobody ever won money with their numbers. Ever. But they had a disclaimer before each call stating that they are not responsible for any gambling done with this information. Which is basically like saying "You agree not to sue us, if you don't win the lottery."
And then, immediately AFTER the 900 number part, they say that an 89 year old woman calls Nintendo daily to play legend of zelda.
THAT IS VERY DISINGENUOUS!!!
Because they didn't lie. I'm sure in 1991 there was an 89 year old woman calling Nintendo to talk to a game counselor to get help with her game. I'm not disputing that. The part that feels like they're manufacturing outrage is the fact that while Nintendo DID run a daily hotline where you could talk to someone, who would walk you through the game, they did NOT do so through a 900 number. They did it through 1-800-255-3700. That number does not charge money. That number is still in operation today. I don't know if you can still do the whole game guide over the phone thing.....but they will help you if you need. Like if you need to send something in for repair. Or if you need information on how to do a thing with your switch. Or where to find this product. I imagine game help requests had to have died off since......let's call it 2002. I know that would be pretty late to still be running a hint hotline, but I don't actually know when they stopped. Or maybe they didn't. Maybe they will just read gamefaqs to you over the phone. I guess I can't say I've attempted to do that in maybe close to 30 years.
I remember as a kid I would call about Metroid, and Zelda and Punch Out. That was was the late 80s. I think I stopped around 1996 when the library got an internet demo computer. And then you'd go to best buy, and they have all these demo computers of the computers they're selling. And back then, it was just a legit computer unrestricted connected to the internet. Now, I will admit I never attempted to go to a porn site while standing on the floor of a best buy. But as far as I could tell, they didn't filter anything out from the internet back then. I remember going to Nintendos website, and I had a notebook and a pen. I would just take notes. And it didn't even feel like it was inconvenient. I'm sure Gen-Z reading this story is like "YOOOOO!!!!! MY BOY WAS COOKED IN THE STONE AGE!!!"
But no. That's just how it was. You had the library. You had demo units at best buy. You could print from the library. I think back then it was 10 non-color sheets. That might have varied by library, but that was my experience.
I feel like I'm rambling....
