My apologies to Chris Perry who I accidentally left off the list of Patrons. Thanks for your support! Just for fun I added a couple of bloopers at the very end of the video. There were way better ones but naturally I didn't think of putting them in the video until long after I had deleted everything else. Great planning! Thanks to HistoricNerd for some help with the title and thumbnail. HUGE thanks to Jenovi & Retro Game Living Room for letting me use excerpts from their interview with Trip Hawkins. Please check out their channels: Retro Game Living Room ► ruclips.net/user/ZadocPaet-RetroGameLivingRoom Jenovi ► ruclips.net/user/Jenovi HistoricNerd ► ruclips.net/user/HistoricNerd You can support the channel at ► www.patreon.com/WrestlingWithGaming My Other Gaming Docs ► goo.gl/q2RjA9 Twitter ► twitter.com/wrestleswithgaming@gmail.com
@@thomasedwardharrison2879 but they were stubborn too, if they had offered better deals, could gain a leverage against nintendo. If a console doesn't have enough quality games, it ends early , like dreamcast.
lol. If you’re talking about Trip, he was considered a scumbag back in the day, parasite on some very talented initial developers. Don’t believe what RUclipsrs tell you - they just repeat the modern narratives they’ve heard lol.
My friend told me the yellow tab was extra memory and that’s why their sports games could hold so many stats, and I believed that up till ten minutes ago... 😯
Honestly yeah. Growing up in the 80’s/90’s I always remember playing these yellow tab games and was told they were “memory/graphics expansions” by friends lol. I love living in this time where the future has these videos explaining the behind the scenes of what, to me was, the greatest time in gaming history.
It's hard to believe I used to get excited when I saw EA's logo on a game, they published some of my favorite PC games in the 90s. SimCity, ThemePark, Dungeon Keeper, Desert/Jungle Strike...
The algorithm blessed me. This is a well edited, written and produced documentary. You've earned my sub with your clear effort towards your work. I look forward to future documentaries of this caliber.
@DG 1 To a point, back then they still had to have a finished product to make money. Now they can release half finished games, still make millions off it and call the fans toxic and racist for not liking it. What's worse is customers keep buying into it like sheep.
@DG 1 at least we can see that there's nearly a bigger indie and grassroots gaming culture nowadays. there's a lot lower of a barrier for entry for games development nowadays
@DG 1 There's definitely some that are worth checking out. not quite a hit, but fairly successful, lethal league is a good twist on normal fighting games. GRIP harkens back to old futuristic racers. a hat in time or games in development like billie bust up call back to early 3d platformers in tone and design. Dusk is a great continuation of horror and action shooters like quake or blood. and there's games like valheim for the more survivaley-rpg online titles, they hit like 7 million pc players in a few months. I think the key thing to keep in mind for indie games nowadays is that people don't have to pick a gameplay style or aesthetic because of technical limitations, but what they want to make purely by design choices.
@DG 1 If i remember correctly, there are some ways to get network play working on pc emulators for the old games, but some of those games are probably stuck in licensing hell. I know that's how fighting game tournaments have worked the last year. Also one thing to check out, there's a guy on youtube called alphabetagamer. he does little playthroughs on a host of games, no talking over it, so you can directly see what people are making either as free projects, or in-development stuff that'll eventually be sold
I always wanted to remove the yellow tabs, as they looked removable. I didn't figure they had any function, but I thought they'd be fun to take out and snap back in. I always respected that EA manufactured their own carts (actually quite a few companies did) but I never felt that they picked an aesthetically pleasing shape. The yellow tab was the most interesting thing about it, but otherwise the carts are rather ugly. My favorite carts are from Sunsoft in Japan. They look badass.
I tried removing one a few times but never managed either. In fairness they were very well designed to stay in place so tightly. Perhaps there was a metaphor for hardware manufacturers back in the day. Once EA gets a hold on you, that's it, you're stuck with it!
As a child I always thought that Electronic Arts sega games were 'bigger' games that needed more room because they came on bigger carts. I mean they had Might and Magic, Centurion, Desert Strike, and all the sports games.
@@CD-gk9ix I'd it's opposed to an underground rockstar becoming mainstream but remaining indie. EA is publically tradeable now. Therefore, the company has no control. If investors dislike their decisions, they walk. As long as Madden continues to earn money, investors could care less about how shitty it is.
Man, I tried to push, slide and everything else those tabs. I know they had to do something, I just had no clue what. Now come to find out they did.. nothing? I'm devastated! 😆
Don't we all though? Don't we all become what we hated? After the angsty teenage years have passed, we all grow bored and old. I tried hard to have a father, but instead I had a dad.
Everyone knew and called them draconian. EA weren't like them, but I'm sure if they had the choice to be they would definetly have taken that route sooner.
What's bothersome is the fact that Trip thought(and still thinks) using big words like "Draconian" make him or anybody sound "smart" and "charismatic". But in reality, it's just makes him sound like a greedy, cheap douche-bag! Legends out there say that he still harbors a grudge against Nintendo for not only stealing his audience away from PC gaming at the time forcing them to develop for consoles, but also still blames Nintendo for why EA in general has become what they became in the long run!
First, wow, the production on this video is stellar. This is the first video of yours that I have seen, but it won't be the last. Second, wow, I had not idea that was what the yellow tab was about. I thought it was like extra memory or something. This was extremely interesting.
Really great game. I beat so many people off their motorcycles... I loved upgrading the bikes and buying faster, better looking ones. Just the best game.
Dude, Road Rash 2 was my favorite racing game on the Genesis. Oh man, that triggered several fond memories =) Any of you remember Super Baseball 2020? I still laugh about how the robot pitcher's top velocity was upwards of, IIRC, 180 mph.
Wow this really unlocks a memory for me! I always wondered what the yellow tab was all about. And once again your editing and graphics keep leveling up, it's great!
As kids we had our theories of the yellow tabs purpose, one of them being add ons to make the graphics better. I'm not sure where they got that idea, maybe the sega CD thing.
I think this good retro channel is very professionally presented. That may also be said, not many videos come out here, but the video that I see here amazes me every time the quality is very high. I like to see that, most I already know because I am old and have been in it for a long time. But watch them anyway because they always have something to say that was not yet known or was not correct. I live in Europe so opinions differ but that's okay. The gaming experience is different in every other part of the world especially with retro games we were stuck with Pal stuff among others Keep it up !!
Great video. As someone who just turned 40, I got out of gaming altogether around 16 years old and only in the recent years, started gaming again. Having not kept up with the video game world for so long, I was kind of shocked at the hate EA was getting. Of course, now I understand the issues people have. But in my day, EA was the cool video game company...always sending out schwag, hats, posters to their fans.
Hey Brian, I just turned 40 a few months ago myself. We're getting old! It's crazy how EA has changed as a company over the years and as a result, gamer's opinion of EA. It really is strange to think of EA as the little guy that was looking out for small developers at one point.
I'm 33 and kind of the opposite, been gaming since I was 5 (though fallen out of the modern stuff when the ps4 hit) but never really cared about sports games so I never had an opinion on EA till the shenanigans started and their buying of the NFL license so 2k football got shut down :/ which has always just seemed unclassy as all heck.
@@TokaSFC André is right. NFL is about the handegg game. I think in england they call it Rugby. The united statians tend to mispronounce. It's aluminium and not aluminum. Quite a lot of canadian and united statian chemistry books can't get this one right. I'm not sure why united statians are proud of themselves and call themselves american. The proper term is united statian.
Well, they were already public at this time. And when you go public you progressively lose control. Sshareholders and controlling stakes are constantly changing, and the board becomes filled with newer people and they hire other newer people to run the show. So the management is not the same as it was in the 80s and 90s.
@@VadersFist95 It's a reference, I think, to Nintendo originally being a front for Yakuza gambling. They made cards and gambling paraphernalia originally.
The level of production on this video is astounding! The animation of the inside of the Sega Genesis was mind blowing! I just had to hit the notification bell- thanks for all this great content!
As a kid I never really questioned when I saw carts that were different from the norm. From Tengen black carts, to Code Masters gold carts with the switch on the back, to the yellow tab on EA's carts........ I thought that they all just wanted to make something that looked different lol.
Incredibly well done. As a lover of Genesis-era EA, it’s depressing to know the current monster they have now created. The PC ethos is what made it great - so Sierra may be dead and gone, but they still have my respect.
I'm so glad I found this video. I remember buying these games from EA and I had asked a retail associate what the yellow tab was. He told me it was a battery that EA had to install on the cartridges because the games were so advanced.
A very well-made, thorough, informative video. So THAT'S why Electronic Arts had that weird tall cartridge with the yellow tab! But man, that company is nothing like they used to be!
@@JosephArata Problem with that, the people who can change the DMCA, get bribed err.. i mean.. lobbied.. by the people/compines who dont WANT it to change.
Oh yeah, that's exactly why tools like Frosty have existed for years now and they don't do anything about them, and in some cases are directly mentioned by devs and other employees. The previous Need for Speed community manager even played an old mod I made and said he would take it back to the dev team. Also last year they open sourced parts of CnC for the remastered collection so that modders could do what they wanted with the games. EA doesn't really care about going after modders or reverse engineers unless it's directly eating into their profits. Nintendo and Take Two on the other hand...
I knew when I first saw your early videos that you'd be big. I'm honored to have had some of my content featured here. Trip was a great interview participant on the r/retrogaming Podcast. The goal was to get more info into the retro sphere from Trip. I'm thrilled to see it used.
Dude, that's very kind of you to say. Like you Kim just trying to get more eyes and ears on some of these stories. You guys did a great job interviewing him. He's done a lot of interviews over the years but you guys had some really nice specific questions and good follow up ones too. A lot of other interviews just didn't do that. Thanks for stopping by zadoc!
@@WrestlingWithGaming Dude, and that's very kind of you to say! It's also interesting to listen to the story from the point of view of Al Nilsen and Tom Kalinske. Part of the interesting thing Tom and Trip revealed was that Sega was actively considering releasing 3DO in like 1992. Might make a good video topic. ;)
I remember at the time realising that the yellow cartridges were to signify that it’s a EA published game but never understood why they were the only company that did this. This is a great insight in to EA the company at the time and how far they have strayed from it since Andrew Wilson has been at the helm.
I had no idea what those yellow tabs were for. I always tried to pull them off thinking I might learn what they did, and now over 30 years later I finally know!
It’s funny... As a kid I never had a genesis but my friend had one and I always wondered about those yellow tabs. I’d push them and pull on them trying to figure out what was going on with them. It had to pull out somehow!! I thought at one point it was where you grabbed the cartridge to pull it out easier. I finally know the secret!!
I was also one of those kids who tried pulling out the tab. I mean, it was THERE. It was smaller and obviously a separate piece. I think it was hard NOT to grab that yellow tab and try to remove it.
I remember looking at my first EA cart which was Lakers vs Celtics and was more interested in the fact they were different looking in general and not so much the yellow tab alone. I concluded that the yellow tab was decorative which I guess was right.
Really interesting. And while what EA did at that time was important - that strong arm technique seems to have continued to evolve into the problematic corporation it is today. Great video
wow, I did not know any of this and I thought I knew just about everything behind the scenes. The editing was great, very informative. I subscribed. looking forward to more.
More importantly, if you don't want anyone reverse engineering your hardware, tough titties. Clean room reverse engineering like these guys did is perfectly legal, and you ultimately have no say in the matter.
I have a distinct memory of being 10 years old, going to Funcoland to buy Shaq Fu, seeing the yellow tab and asking the guy at the counter if I was supposed to press it like it was some kind of button, lol.
This back when EA didn’t have micro transactions or have anyone selling their FIFA UT codes. I know that EA is a bad company but they are struggling to become what they were back then. But when you make games with micro transactions then you’ll get the worst end of the stick and countries will ban micro transactions.
Yeah, EA was great for their first decade or so. When they started to go bad was when they got into the habit of buying up the competition as a way of consolidating their market position. Which, interestingly, is a tactic they only really started pushing after Trip Hawkins left to form the 3DO Company.
@@jasonblalock4429 i mean EA was always bad and that tactic was there since the begining from their creation onward they were always known to steal source code of others to build their games.
@Charles Vane Even then they ended up burning their shareholders when DICE's Battlefront II underperformed. It sold 9-million copies, but EA expected something ludicrous like 13-million.
Not going to lie. 10-12 year old me thought it had to do something with their saving function for most of the game. Like a memory card or something of that sort
@ZLaner Cheats Easy to say in retrospect. Being a company back then trying to literally restart a crashed market, one have to be extra careful. A market in shambles where people completely lost interest. One have to rekindle this interest. I'd say Nintendo did a good job at that. ... together with a few other rivals I have to add. "Many games" wasn't the real issue with Atari. It was the total lack of quality control. Trash title after trash title was released for the one pure reason of making money with no care for quality. Atari could just sit and watch as the trashy gaming companies destroyed the market en masse with no care for the reason to grab money. Consoles such as NES, SNES, PS1 etc all have some kind of quality control to make sure that bad/poor/trashy titles don't destroy their brand. Nintendo does have a much harder QC than the others, hence why I call it "draconian quality control". Both good and bad as it may be. Even Nintendo has been haunted by bad gaming companies. Look no further than "LJN Games"
@ZLaner Cheats LJN was a toy company who saw a second chance on jumping the "quick bucks for a little silly code-smashing" train. At least from their point of view. Secure a few licenses for content. Hire cheapest available workforce. Set an impossible deadline. Make sure label looks good and sell the crap. Kids aren't going to know anything better and their parents are clueless. So what's the risk? It is how toys work. Sure that can work with console games too, right? Later LJN got acquired by Acclaim Entertainment.
EA: “Nintendo and Sega are so mean, they have all these rules and regulations trying to stifle our creativity and productivity.” Nintendo: “We are trying to prevent a repeat of the video game crash, you know the thing that nearly killed video games for the US market. Something we worked really hard to reestablish, that nobody in the US marketing thought would be a good idea.”
Mostly it was about getting all the money and preventing competition. This control-freak impulse led to them holding on to cartridges in the dawn of the CD era. It's why they kicked Sony; they realized the deal wouldn't give them the lion's share of the profit, and it enraged Ken Kutaragi so that he challenged Sony to avenge themselves. It's why Square dumped them. Nintendo doesn't control the market anymore, yet somehow the game industry has not collapsed again...
@@seraph127 at the beginning of it it was kind of necessary. I feel, to be that controlling. Heck because of the choice of placement of the NES consuls in stores is the reason why for a long time people just assumed video games for boy games. I will agree that they’re stubborn refusal to not consider discs would hurt them for a while. But you also got a remember one of the big driving models of Nintendo has always been “innovation through withered Technology” They have never jumped on the bandwagon of what is the latest and greatest technology like Sony and Microsoft do and instead use older and cheaper technology in innovative ways. This of course doesn’t always work but it’s hit more homeruns than strikes. As for Sony, Yeah it was an asshole thing to do but there’s also one other part of the contract you might not of known. One of the clauses in the contract would’ve allowed Sony to essentially take over Nintendo and take all of their IP‘s for themselves. End it wasn’t just Nintendo who screwed up when I came to Sony. When Sony decided to make their own counsel they actually went to Sega for a partnership. Sega laughed in their face about such an idea since they believed Sony wouldn’t do well since they weren’t a video game company and wouldn’t understand how things work. And while yes Nintendo doesn’t control the market anymore, And the industry has not collapsed again. That was a legitimate worry for them back in the day and the video game market has become more of a solid base than it ever was in the Atari ColecoVision age. But that also doesn’t mean there isn’t some unfortunate warning signs still when shovel ware is becoming more and more prevalent again, in waves.
@@ForTheLongCon it’s called perspective. I fully understand that it was business, and greed. Nintendo is a company after all that’s to be expected it’s part of the freaking package. I’m just saying that a lot of their actions back then were more beneficial for the gaming industry in America. And the people that were trying to screw Nintendo over in this situation was EA. And they’re Business practices make Nintendo Sony and Microsoft look like freaking saints.
Ah yes the story of EA the small indie company. Great video, as a kid I never even gave it a second thought I just thought it was how they made their games like how my Zelda carts were gold on the NES.
I think it was during this video that I finally realized that the glyph on the Yellow Tab was the Electronic Arts logo. I thought it was an image of a key or something.
The only time I'll play a newer EA game these days is if it's on PS+. Eg... Titanfall 2, SW BF2. Oh wait... I paid $5 for Mirrors Edge Catalyst. But it was only $5. Good thing too because now when I open it, it keeps error'ing out saying "Can't connect to EA servers" or some BS and can no longer do the competition crap. EA was a good company back in the day. I've got a bunch of old Genesis games with the yellow tabs on them. Not the sports games either. Nowadays EA is just "Evil A**holes". Rockstar is working on joining them if they don't knock off their bullsh*t.
EA really helped sell the Genesis/Mega Drive, at least in the States. They really were the muse for the hardware as the brought so many great games to the Genesis, including some exclusives like Road Rash 2 that are stone cold classics.
What a great and informative vid, bro! Thanks for this.. I love these behind the scenes stories. And I never thought the tab did anything. I figured it was some kinda stamp but I had no idea…
I remember being so intrigued with EA releases back then. They always felt very different, and obviously as I child I didn't know that was because a lot of them were originally PC games. I quite clearly remember messing with the tab, pressing it in, trying to unlock the cartridge as if there'd be some kind of cool secret inside or something.
I remember trying to pull those yellow tabs off as a kid. They just looked like they were meant to slide out for some reason to my child eyes. I never actually succeeded though.
Yep, I thought they are some sort of plastic cover for an extension hub of some sort- either extra gaming peripherals or connection with another sega console and multiplayer cable for 4 players.
Nice video. I really didn't know - I thought it was just how EA was designing there cartridges to stand out and not have any thing to do with reverse engineering of the technology of the sega genesis and it's cartridges.
Me too! I always had figured that because of how superior the gameplay, sound & graphics were in them, that it was attached to some kind of memory expansion chip or something....I guess it was all just a sales gimic! I can't believe my theory was wrong all these years, 😲
@@pex_the_unalivedrunk6785 I'd thought it was just another manufacturer of them...mainly due to ending up with a lot of Wisdom Tree stuff as well due to my mother buying pretty much all of their Genesis stuff.
There was always something different about how the music sounded in EA Genesis games. Especially when you heard it through the front headphone jack on the original Genesis console. There was something about the way the audio was processed on EA games that was different than on non-EA carts. With EA games, the sound coming from the headphone jack always had a very tiny bit of static, especially at low volumes. Not sure what the issue was with that. Didn't hear that static sound in every single NON-EA game.. at all. I remember I called EA about it back in the 90's asking why only their games had this weird distortion coming through the headphone jack. I remember the guy talking to me like I was dumb and saying the volume was turned up too loud or that it was "just me". Their reps were clueless and probably just followed some script baloney. Of all the game company reps I ever called, EA's were the biggest dicks.
Thank you so much for your the hard work and effort for putting this together and giving it to us. As a kid I never knew none of this issues were happening. Back then I was just so happy to be playing on this systems. Now older I appreciate learning the history of this things happening back then.
The NHL owes a huge debt to Trip and EA. The huge boom and expansion that the NHL experienced during the early 90s that the NHL continues to this day was largely built on exposure to millions of new fans playing NHL Hockey on Sega Genesis.
Excellent video! I never knew the secret of the tabs, but what's more shocking is EA was once a platform for artists and pioneers. Its a shame when you consider what they have become..
Love the presentation and explanation of the yellow tab cartridges. Something I've always wondered why they were different. Thank you for explaining it.
@@TheJadeFist I think EA might have had similar deal with the Saturn. Because here in Europe, EA has their own Saturn cases that are better than the normal sega ones. (the european sega cases are terrible) The manual seems to be printed on cheaper paper. And in discs it reads made in USA always. While almost all European Sega Saturn discs say made in EU. (Though my copy of EU VF2 says made in USA) So EA clearly made their own discs, manuals and cases. So I think they had a similar deal to their mega drive deal.
This story seems like an alternate version of the episode involving Nintendo and Tengen. Whereas EA was able to come to agreement with Sega about their reserve engineered cartridges, Tengen did not.
The reason why Tengen never did any reverse engineering on the NES because it would took to much work. No joke they say to get it done they would need to get a hacker who have nothing better to do
Seriously, it's like every company who had a rough start and fought to the top just imediately used thee power they gained to start doing the same to every other small business that threatens them and becoming just as cold and machine like as the companies that vilified them......It's like the case of the bullied kid who grew up to be a bully or the kid with a shit father who grew up to also be a shit father....I really don't understand this whole "I struggled so you should too" mentality
In an age of hit-or-miss games, I always felt safe, buying EA. A yellow tab meant quality to my friends and I; we also thought it meant extra memory, like so many others. Thanks for the great video!
According to the incredible “Console Wars” book you may have omitted one important detail. EA was hesitant on leaving PC gaming because they wrote off consoles as lesser toys only little kids play with. The only reason they gave the Genesis the time of day was because they let Konami port and publish one of their games, Skate or Die, for the NES which represented no risk for EA since Konami took the blunt of it. The sales of that one NES game they didn’t even publish were so high they eclipsed the total sales of various PC games of their own. They then proceeded to go into Nintendo’s draconian deal and publish themselves Skate or Die 2 and a couple of other games for even more profit. It was only then that they turned to greener pastures on the Genesis. Restrictive deals or not fact was even with them EA still made more money on one game they licensed to Konami on a console they wrote off as inferior than a bunch of their own games on PC over the years. That’s why Nintendo could get away with their shit, they were making a ton of people a lot of money nobody had a choice but to comply.
@@darthkai8242 Just saw that documentary based on the book and it was really good but it can only cover so much in 90 minutes. The book is so much better and goes into more detail. The documentary is an amazing complement for book readers since you can put faces to the names and see the events and tv ads described in the book but it shouldn’t be a substitute. The story told there is so compelling I wish they made a dramatization in a movie. Here in Latinamerica the doc is in HBO GO but in the US it was CBS ALL ACCESS but has since moved to Paramount+.
@@WrestlingWithGaming Great production. I like the renders, except the blinds casting a shadow across the CRT, which should be making its own light unaffected by the dark blue hue of the room :P
Some of EA's titles from then are outright classics. Might & Magic II and King's Bounty on Genesis are amazingly close to the computer versions, and General Chaos is a terrific and overlooked game.
Great video. I wonder to what extent the controlling license terms offered by Nintendo and Sega were a reaction (or overreaction) to the blight of shovelware that plagued the Atari system previously.
![Stromae, Pomme - “Ma Meilleure Ennemie” (from Arcane Season 2) [Official Visualizer]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/1F3OGIFnW1k/mqdefault.jpg)
My apologies to Chris Perry who I accidentally left off the list of Patrons. Thanks for your support!
Just for fun I added a couple of bloopers at the very end of the video. There were way better ones but naturally I didn't think of putting them in the video until long after I had deleted everything else. Great planning!
Thanks to HistoricNerd for some help with the title and thumbnail. HUGE thanks to Jenovi & Retro Game Living Room for letting me use excerpts from their interview with Trip Hawkins. Please check out their channels:
Retro Game Living Room ► ruclips.net/user/ZadocPaet-RetroGameLivingRoom
Jenovi ► ruclips.net/user/Jenovi
HistoricNerd ► ruclips.net/user/HistoricNerd
You can support the channel at ► www.patreon.com/WrestlingWithGaming
My Other Gaming Docs ► goo.gl/q2RjA9
Twitter ► twitter.com/wrestleswithgaming@gmail.com
Have you considered pinning your comment? Would it be bad if you did this for Chris? How acceptable is that?
That's weird, this comment actually was pinned since it also has the links to the others channels. Going to repin it. Glad you commented on it! Lol
@@RichLuciano1 Perfectly acceptable. Paying to be a patron doesn't make you entitled.
@@X22GJP Actually, if a mention in the video credits was promised as part of the patron tier, it becomes a good/service that is being bought.
EA became the money hungry bastages that they are now. Buying out developers and tanking the product.
This really highlighted how far EA has strayed from Trip's ethos.
Money
Right !!! Sheesh... they really fell far. Except for money... funny how that works. Smh
right? i had no idea trip is such a badass.
Capitalism has that effect
@@OneEyedMonkey9000 greed does it, without grand manifestos.
You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
Sega "died" a hero, and EA became EA
@@thomasedwardharrison2879 but they were stubborn too, if they had offered better deals, could gain a leverage against nintendo. If a console doesn't have enough quality games, it ends early , like dreamcast.
@@pbonfanti but now Sega is seen as one of the "least evil" triple A developers.
They are just incompetent.
@@thomasedwardharrison2879 they also like memes
lol. If you’re talking about Trip, he was considered a scumbag back in the day, parasite on some very talented initial developers. Don’t believe what RUclipsrs tell you - they just repeat the modern narratives they’ve heard lol.
My friend told me the yellow tab was extra memory and that’s why their sports games could hold so many stats, and I believed that up till ten minutes ago... 😯
I was told the same
That’s what I thought.......
Exactly the same rumor went around my group of friends.
Exactly what I thought too till about 5 mins ago! Haha
Glad Im not the only one.
Honestly yeah. Growing up in the 80’s/90’s I always remember playing these yellow tab games and was told they were “memory/graphics expansions” by friends lol. I love living in this time where the future has these videos explaining the behind the scenes of what, to me was, the greatest time in gaming history.
Yup... The 16 Bit generation indeed was the greatest time in gaming history
Trip Hawkins, the most 90’s name ever🤣
" He resigned from the board of EA in July, 1994" and then, the disease slowly festered to rot out the company.
I was a 90's kid, but my uncle was a 90's teen. His nickname has always been Trip. So if anyone has any doubt, yes that name is 90's AF.
Diamond eagle disagrees
@@jacksputrid Diamond Eagle may be right🤣
Trip is a pure 70s name.
And to think EA used to honor developers and now all they do is destroy them and make them work on Battlefield DLC.
@Joker Productions, it's EA's fault! They delayed the new Need For Speed along with Sony's Gran Turismo 7 to 2022 because of Battlefield 6!
Who woulda thought a group that wouldn't honor someone else's IP would continue to exploit IP.
It's hard to believe I used to get excited when I saw EA's logo on a game, they published some of my favorite PC games in the 90s. SimCity, ThemePark, Dungeon Keeper, Desert/Jungle Strike...
I miss when they did Nascar racing games now they are crap I forgot who makes them now but yeah
@@brandonlink6568 I felt the same way back then as a kid. They were a seal of quality, now it’s the seal of Doom.
Incredible video and top tier editing
Thanks man! Always appreciate you dropping by and your feedback. Well, not the CD-I feedback. Those are just vicious lies. 😁
You two are the GOAT’s when it comes to this type of content, love that you guys are even interacting with each other on here 😂
Came here to say this. The editing is amazing. Really impressive stuff.
Thanks!
two legends
EA then: "We think devs are total rockstars and respect them."
EA now: "We could not care less about our employees"
Most companies are like this now a days, treat employees like garbage and bigger bonuses for the executives
Power corrupts. They're the Sega now.
Couldn't care less about their customer base either, as long as they keep spending money.
How much of this was due to Hawkins leaving the company? Seeing a vid about EA from its foundings to now would be interesting.
@@Raison_d-etre Such a profound comment. Couldn’t have said it better myself.
“EA treated their developers with respect, like rockstars”
My how times have changed
Commies!
What do you mean still do... vs a company like Activision ??? haha
The algorithm blessed me. This is a well edited, written and produced documentary. You've earned my sub with your clear effort towards your work. I look forward to future documentaries of this caliber.
Thanks so much. I know that there are a lot of gaming channels on RUclips so I really appreciate you giving my channel a shot. Thanks again
EA started out as a really progressive company. It's a shame to see what they've become.
@DG 1 To a point, back then they still had to have a finished product to make money. Now they can release half finished games, still make millions off it and call the fans toxic and racist for not liking it. What's worse is customers keep buying into it like sheep.
@DG 1 at least we can see that there's nearly a bigger indie and grassroots gaming culture nowadays. there's a lot lower of a barrier for entry for games development nowadays
I remember when they were branded as "eoa"
@DG 1 There's definitely some that are worth checking out. not quite a hit, but fairly successful, lethal league is a good twist on normal fighting games.
GRIP harkens back to old futuristic racers. a hat in time or games in development like billie bust up call back to early 3d platformers in tone and design.
Dusk is a great continuation of horror and action shooters like quake or blood.
and there's games like valheim for the more survivaley-rpg online titles, they hit like 7 million pc players in a few months.
I think the key thing to keep in mind for indie games nowadays is that people don't have to pick a gameplay style or aesthetic because of technical limitations, but what they want to make purely by design choices.
@DG 1 If i remember correctly, there are some ways to get network play working on pc emulators for the old games, but some of those games are probably stuck in licensing hell. I know that's how fighting game tournaments have worked the last year.
Also one thing to check out, there's a guy on youtube called alphabetagamer. he does little playthroughs on a host of games, no talking over it, so you can directly see what people are making either as free projects, or in-development stuff that'll eventually be sold
I always wanted to remove the yellow tabs, as they looked removable. I didn't figure they had any function, but I thought they'd be fun to take out and snap back in. I always respected that EA manufactured their own carts (actually quite a few companies did) but I never felt that they picked an aesthetically pleasing shape. The yellow tab was the most interesting thing about it, but otherwise the carts are rather ugly. My favorite carts are from Sunsoft in Japan. They look badass.
They should've used Trip Hawkins' chiselled face as a mold for the carts.
I tried removing one a few times but never managed either. In fairness they were very well designed to stay in place so tightly. Perhaps there was a metaphor for hardware manufacturers back in the day. Once EA gets a hold on you, that's it, you're stuck with it!
As a child I always thought that Electronic Arts sega games were 'bigger' games that needed more room because they came on bigger carts. I mean they had Might and Magic, Centurion, Desert Strike, and all the sports games.
I think we've all had that urge to try to pull on the tab.
@@thepumpkingking8339 thanks, will check it out!
I wonder what Trip Hawkins thinks of EA today
there was a video about how EA Sports went downhill and he didn't like the way EA is now.
Idk but if i saw ea was 5. Whatever billion it would be hard to not focus on the money
@@WestleyWolf link pls
@@nitrosherbert888 ruclips.net/video/eECvnIGeTxU/видео.html
I think he knows how Dr Frankenstein felt
EA is literally the story of an underground rockstar becoming a famous pop musician
Literally? As opposed to?
@@CD-gk9ix I'd it's opposed to an underground rockstar becoming mainstream but remaining indie. EA is publically tradeable now. Therefore, the company has no control. If investors dislike their decisions, they walk. As long as Madden continues to earn money, investors could care less about how shitty it is.
Man, I tried to push, slide and everything else those tabs. I know they had to do something, I just had no clue what. Now come to find out they did.. nothing? I'm devastated! 😆
I miss Sega..I wish they were still around
??????
They are...?
@@va8157
Only in software. They meant Hardware wise.
Apparently some shitty game company screwed them out of a lot of money. I know which one I'd rather have survived.
@@cidtheratboy too funny, but I am sure it had more to do with the Saturn.
It is crazy how EA has become what they hated
Don't we all though? Don't we all become what we hated? After the angsty teenage years have passed, we all grow bored and old. I tried hard to have a father, but instead I had a dad.
@@pex_the_unalivedrunk6785 speak for yourself, I'm still cool
@@pex_the_unalivedrunk6785 No? I dislike who I WAS, not who I have BECOME. I mean...that’s kind of the entire goal of growing older and maturing.
@@pex_the_unalivedrunk6785 speak for yourself
They've always been what they hate ...they just didn't want anyone else to be what they hate
I miss the 80s and 90s. Such badass times.
And when u brought a game for 49.99 u owned it. No pay walls..
EA calling Nintendo and Sega's practices "draconian"...
Irony much?
Everyone knew and called them draconian. EA weren't like them, but I'm sure if they had the choice to be they would definetly have taken that route sooner.
The EA in this video is long dead and what we have not is a suit made of its skin, worn by ones that killed them with in and took its place.
What's bothersome is the fact that Trip thought(and still thinks) using big words like "Draconian" make him or anybody sound "smart" and "charismatic". But in reality, it's just makes him sound like a greedy, cheap douche-bag!
Legends out there say that he still harbors a grudge against Nintendo for not only stealing his audience away from PC gaming at the time forcing them to develop for consoles, but also still blames Nintendo for why EA in general has become what they became in the long run!
It's true. EA became the way they are because they wanted dev companies to have more control...When EA went public, they lost control.
@@alexc2194 never heard of them being called that. Must need you and the EA team
First, wow, the production on this video is stellar. This is the first video of yours that I have seen, but it won't be the last. Second, wow, I had not idea that was what the yellow tab was about. I thought it was like extra memory or something. This was extremely interesting.
As a 3d modeller and designer, i got to admire the craft you did with the 3d animation work and the models
Just seeing that Road Rash 2 cartridge brings back so many great early 90's memories!
Really great game. I beat so many people off their motorcycles... I loved upgrading the bikes and buying faster, better looking ones. Just the best game.
@@joshuaa.5523 😂 same
Loved Road Rash 3 growing up. it was best on Genesis. The N64 version that came out years later was crap
Dude, Road Rash 2 was my favorite racing game on the Genesis. Oh man, that triggered several fond memories =)
Any of you remember Super Baseball 2020? I still laugh about how the robot pitcher's top velocity was upwards of, IIRC, 180 mph.
Wow this really unlocks a memory for me! I always wondered what the yellow tab was all about. And once again your editing and graphics keep leveling up, it's great!
Thanks man 😊. I'm jealous of all of your programming and building skills.
Lol funny name 😄
As kids we had our theories of the yellow tabs purpose, one of them being add ons to make the graphics better. I'm not sure where they got that idea, maybe the sega CD thing.
@@nothing2see315 I always figured it was just BS. Forever a cynic.
Always wondered what the yellow tab on EA games was ! Good to know, 30 years later 😅
You can still get the yellow tabs today by subscription
I think this good retro channel is very professionally presented.
That may also be said, not many videos come out here, but the video that I see here amazes me every time the quality is very high.
I like to see that, most I already know because I am old and have been in it for a long time.
But watch them anyway because they always have something to say that was not yet known or was not correct.
I live in Europe so opinions differ but that's okay.
The gaming experience is different in every other part of the world especially with retro games we were stuck with Pal stuff among others
Keep it up !!
Great video. As someone who just turned 40, I got out of gaming altogether around 16 years old and only in the recent years, started gaming again. Having not kept up with the video game world for so long, I was kind of shocked at the hate EA was getting. Of course, now I understand the issues people have. But in my day, EA was the cool video game company...always sending out schwag, hats, posters to their fans.
Hey Brian, I just turned 40 a few months ago myself. We're getting old! It's crazy how EA has changed as a company over the years and as a result, gamer's opinion of EA. It really is strange to think of EA as the little guy that was looking out for small developers at one point.
I'm 33 and kind of the opposite, been gaming since I was 5 (though fallen out of the modern stuff when the ps4 hit) but never really cared about sports games so I never had an opinion on EA till the shenanigans started and their buying of the NFL license so 2k football got shut down :/ which has always just seemed unclassy as all heck.
@@jacklindsey8400 I believe you mean Handegg....Football you play with your foot and a ball (which is round)
@@TokaSFC André is right. NFL is about the handegg game. I think in england they call it Rugby. The united statians tend to mispronounce.
It's aluminium and not aluminum. Quite a lot of canadian and united statian chemistry books can't get this one right.
I'm not sure why united statians are proud of themselves and call themselves american. The proper term is united statian.
@@WrestlingWithGaming Yes, the 40s are the ED years.
To EA: “you were the chosen one, you were supposed to destroy the commercial gaming industry, not join them!”
This needs more likes
Well, they were already public at this time. And when you go public you progressively lose control. Sshareholders and controlling stakes are constantly changing, and the board becomes filled with newer people and they hire other newer people to run the show. So the management is not the same as it was in the 80s and 90s.
Sega: You were the chosen one!
EA: I HAAAAAATTTTTEEEEE YOUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!
Well... they did destroy it in a sense
EA changed executives. Founder Trip Hawkens left EA in 1994. They've had many, many different execs since.
EA in '89: "How can we be better than the yakuza?"
EA today: "How can we be worse than the yakuza?"
It was always the later, never ever the former.
Hahahah! Pretty accurate.
Ah yes scummy business practices is way worse then fucking murder and everything else the Yakuza do. Fucking gamers man.
@@TheNewton Maybe look into a couple stories about the Yakuza mate. Might learn a few nasty facts.
@@VadersFist95 It's a reference, I think, to Nintendo originally being a front for Yakuza gambling. They made cards and gambling paraphernalia originally.
The level of production on this video is astounding! The animation of the inside of the Sega Genesis was mind blowing! I just had to hit the notification bell- thanks for all this great content!
Thanks! I know that there are a lot of gaming channels on RUclips so I really appreciate you giving my channel a shot. Thanks again
Funny, I thought the yellow tabs were some sort of battery for saving games like some cartridges had.
As a kid I never really questioned when I saw carts that were different from the norm. From Tengen black carts, to Code Masters gold carts with the switch on the back, to the yellow tab on EA's carts........ I thought that they all just wanted to make something that looked different lol.
Same here, I just thought it was some companies wanting to stand out, and get noticed, I had no idea it was because of licensing agreements.
That's a good point, I think i was also use to some companies just doing stuff differently so I thought the same about the EA carts for the most part.
Incredibly well done. As a lover of Genesis-era EA, it’s depressing to know the current monster they have now created. The PC ethos is what made it great - so Sierra may be dead and gone, but they still have my respect.
Never seen this channel before. The editing is primetime tv level. And so was the story. Thanks for quality content!
Thanks so much!
Top tier comment. Your work is impeccable you could definitely be on a tv production team somewhere, keep up the work.
Thanks so much!
I'm so glad I found this video. I remember buying these games from EA and I had asked a retail associate what the yellow tab was. He told me it was a battery that EA had to install on the cartridges because the games were so advanced.
A very well-made, thorough, informative video. So THAT'S why Electronic Arts had that weird tall cartridge with the yellow tab! But man, that company is nothing like they used to be!
Now EA would DMCA people who reverse engineer their games.
There is no DMCA in Siberia.
Modders......
Like Nintendo.
@@JosephArata Problem with that, the people who can change the DMCA, get bribed err.. i mean.. lobbied.. by the people/compines who dont WANT it to change.
Oh yeah, that's exactly why tools like Frosty have existed for years now and they don't do anything about them, and in some cases are directly mentioned by devs and other employees. The previous Need for Speed community manager even played an old mod I made and said he would take it back to the dev team. Also last year they open sourced parts of CnC for the remastered collection so that modders could do what they wanted with the games. EA doesn't really care about going after modders or reverse engineers unless it's directly eating into their profits. Nintendo and Take Two on the other hand...
I knew when I first saw your early videos that you'd be big. I'm honored to have had some of my content featured here. Trip was a great interview participant on the r/retrogaming Podcast. The goal was to get more info into the retro sphere from Trip. I'm thrilled to see it used.
Dude, that's very kind of you to say. Like you Kim just trying to get more eyes and ears on some of these stories.
You guys did a great job interviewing him. He's done a lot of interviews over the years but you guys had some really nice specific questions and good follow up ones too. A lot of other interviews just didn't do that. Thanks for stopping by zadoc!
@@WrestlingWithGaming Dude, and that's very kind of you to say! It's also interesting to listen to the story from the point of view of Al Nilsen and Tom Kalinske.
Part of the interesting thing Tom and Trip revealed was that Sega was actively considering releasing 3DO in like 1992. Might make a good video topic. ;)
I wondered why they had the yellow tab and why they were taller. General Chaos was awesome.
So was Star Flight!
Road rash!
I genuinely thought i was the only person to ever play general chaos....ive never ever met another person thats played it let alone heard of it
@@scottwalker4050 My friend had it so we played it at his house all the time it was great.
All machine gun Assault Team all the way!!!!!
I remember at the time realising that the yellow cartridges were to signify that it’s a EA published game but never understood why they were the only company that did this. This is a great insight in to EA the company at the time and how far they have strayed from it since Andrew Wilson has been at the helm.
I had no idea what those yellow tabs were for. I always tried to pull them off thinking I might learn what they did, and now over 30 years later I finally know!
It’s funny... As a kid I never had a genesis but my friend had one and I always wondered about those yellow tabs. I’d push them and pull on them trying to figure out what was going on with them. It had to pull out somehow!! I thought at one point it was where you grabbed the cartridge to pull it out easier. I finally know the secret!!
haha i think most kids thought there was something special about the tab.
I was also one of those kids who tried pulling out the tab. I mean, it was THERE. It was smaller and obviously a separate piece. I think it was hard NOT to grab that yellow tab and try to remove it.
I remember looking at my first EA cart which was Lakers vs Celtics and was more interested in the fact they were different looking in general and not so much the yellow tab alone. I concluded that the yellow tab was decorative which I guess was right.
This is one of the best edited videos I've ever watched on RUclips that wasn't put out by a cable tv station. Great content too. Great history.
Wow, thank you so much! I try to keep things as visually interesting as possible.
The video editing tends to make be think of old school WCW. The channel name "Wrestling with Gaming" certainly described my 90s interests lol
Love the 3d rendering of the game carts. I always thought the yellow tabs were a grip to help the player remove the cartridge from the system.
Really interesting. And while what EA did at that time was important - that strong arm technique seems to have continued to evolve into the problematic corporation it is today. Great video
wow, I did not know any of this and I thought I knew just about everything behind the scenes. The editing was great, very informative. I subscribed. looking forward to more.
Maybe a lesson learned here? If you don't want a company to reverse engineer your hardware, don't joke about them reverse engineering your hardware!
Haha! Daring a company ran by Trip Hawkins to do something probably isn't a good idea in general
Almost as if to say, “Over my dead body!”
More importantly, if you don't want anyone reverse engineering your hardware, tough titties. Clean room reverse engineering like these guys did is perfectly legal, and you ultimately have no say in the matter.
may i reverse engineer _your_ hardware
Maybe someone should reverse engineer EA’s loot boxes and player cards 😂
Very impressive 3D rendering in this video on top of the great research. Thanks!
Thanks and good to see you bud!
I have a distinct memory of being 10 years old, going to Funcoland to buy Shaq Fu, seeing the yellow tab and asking the guy at the counter if I was supposed to press it like it was some kind of button, lol.
Vacaville?
Funcoland!!
Funcoland! That's a blast from the past.
Fucoland! Great memories. Long live the GME stock.
Dude, these videos are awesome. You mentioned Broderbund and Sierra in this video. I'd love to see a video by you, regarding their stories!
Editing is one of the best I've ever seen Great job and also excellent scripting!
Thanks!
This back when EA didn’t have micro transactions or have anyone selling their FIFA UT codes. I know that EA is a bad company but they are struggling to become what they were back then. But when you make games with micro transactions then you’ll get the worst end of the stick and countries will ban micro transactions.
Yeah, EA was great for their first decade or so. When they started to go bad was when they got into the habit of buying up the competition as a way of consolidating their market position. Which, interestingly, is a tactic they only really started pushing after Trip Hawkins left to form the 3DO Company.
@@jasonblalock4429 i mean EA was always bad and that tactic was there since the begining from their creation onward they were always known to steal source code of others to build their games.
@@fivehundrediq5212 Did you reply to the wrong person? I said nothing about Codemasters or Take Two.
This industry is bad because the customers allowed it to happen.
Forget micro transactions, let's talk about Activision & call of duty tho
So in summary, EA burned sega and now they just burn their customers
And their own employees. They burn everyone except their shareholders.
@Charles Vane I don’t buy them anymore 🤷🏻♂️
this might have started when some dude which ran SEGA into the ground became the CEO of EA.
@@Sypaka You might be onto something!
@Charles Vane Even then they ended up burning their shareholders when DICE's Battlefront II underperformed. It sold 9-million copies, but EA expected something ludicrous like 13-million.
Not going to lie. 10-12 year old me thought it had to do something with their saving function for most of the game. Like a memory card or something of that sort
I kinda understand Nintendo's draconian licence model. They simply didn't want to repeat the game console market crash that happened in the 70's.
@ZLaner Cheats Easy to say in retrospect.
Being a company back then trying to literally restart a crashed market, one have to be extra careful. A market in shambles where people completely lost interest. One have to rekindle this interest. I'd say Nintendo did a good job at that. ... together with a few other rivals I have to add.
"Many games" wasn't the real issue with Atari. It was the total lack of quality control. Trash title after trash title was released for the one pure reason of making money with no care for quality. Atari could just sit and watch as the trashy gaming companies destroyed the market en masse with no care for the reason to grab money.
Consoles such as NES, SNES, PS1 etc all have some kind of quality control to make sure that bad/poor/trashy titles don't destroy their brand. Nintendo does have a much harder QC than the others, hence why I call it "draconian quality control". Both good and bad as it may be.
Even Nintendo has been haunted by bad gaming companies. Look no further than "LJN Games"
@ZLaner Cheats LJN was a toy company who saw a second chance on jumping the "quick bucks for a little silly code-smashing" train. At least from their point of view. Secure a few licenses for content. Hire cheapest available workforce. Set an impossible deadline. Make sure label looks good and sell the crap. Kids aren't going to know anything better and their parents are clueless. So what's the risk?
It is how toys work. Sure that can work with console games too, right?
Later LJN got acquired by Acclaim Entertainment.
EA: “Nintendo and Sega are so mean, they have all these rules and regulations trying to stifle our creativity and productivity.”
Nintendo: “We are trying to prevent a repeat of the video game crash, you know the thing that nearly killed video games for the US market.
Something we worked really hard to reestablish, that nobody in the US marketing thought would be a good idea.”
Mostly it was about getting all the money and preventing competition. This control-freak impulse led to them holding on to cartridges in the dawn of the CD era. It's why they kicked Sony; they realized the deal wouldn't give them the lion's share of the profit, and it enraged Ken Kutaragi so that he challenged Sony to avenge themselves. It's why Square dumped them. Nintendo doesn't control the market anymore, yet somehow the game industry has not collapsed again...
@@seraph127 at the beginning of it it was kind of necessary. I feel, to be that controlling.
Heck because of the choice of placement of the NES consuls in stores is the reason why for a long time people just assumed video games for boy games.
I will agree that they’re stubborn refusal to not consider discs would hurt them for a while.
But you also got a remember one of the big driving models of Nintendo has always been “innovation through withered Technology”
They have never jumped on the bandwagon of what is the latest and greatest technology like Sony and Microsoft do and instead use older and cheaper technology in innovative ways.
This of course doesn’t always work but it’s hit more homeruns than strikes.
As for Sony, Yeah it was an asshole thing to do but there’s also one other part of the contract you might not of known. One of the clauses in the contract would’ve allowed Sony to essentially take over Nintendo and take all of their IP‘s for themselves.
End it wasn’t just Nintendo who screwed up when I came to Sony. When Sony decided to make their own counsel they actually went to Sega for a partnership.
Sega laughed in their face about such an idea since they believed Sony wouldn’t do well since they weren’t a video game company and wouldn’t understand how things work.
And while yes Nintendo doesn’t control the market anymore, And the industry has not collapsed again.
That was a legitimate worry for them back in the day and the video game market has become more of a solid base than it ever was in the Atari ColecoVision age.
But that also doesn’t mean there isn’t some unfortunate warning signs still when shovel ware is becoming more and more prevalent again, in waves.
@@ForTheLongCon it’s called perspective.
I fully understand that it was business, and greed. Nintendo is a company after all that’s to be expected it’s part of the freaking package.
I’m just saying that a lot of their actions back then were more beneficial for the gaming industry in America.
And the people that were trying to screw Nintendo over in this situation was EA.
And they’re Business practices make Nintendo Sony and Microsoft look like freaking saints.
"They where a publisher that treated their games developers with more than just respect" Ooooh how the times have changed.
Ah yes the story of EA the small indie company. Great video, as a kid I never even gave it a second thought I just thought it was how they made their games like how my Zelda carts were gold on the NES.
Haha. It is weird to think of EA as tiny company looking out for other small developers.
@@WrestlingWithGaming kind of like how Activision started out as well, now both have done true 180's, and have become the big corporate bullies!!!
I think it was during this video that I finally realized that the glyph on the Yellow Tab was the Electronic Arts logo. I thought it was an image of a key or something.
This was a really fun and enjoyable video, very well done brother. Thank you!
Love hearing stories about 80s and 90s developers working around hardware limitations. War stories crash bandicoot is another good example of this.
Electronic Arts might make 5.63B$ but they won't get a single penny of my money.
😂
I'm sure they care
The only time I'll play a newer EA game these days is if it's on PS+. Eg... Titanfall 2, SW BF2. Oh wait... I paid $5 for Mirrors Edge Catalyst. But it was only $5. Good thing too because now when I open it, it keeps error'ing out saying "Can't connect to EA servers" or some BS and can no longer do the competition crap.
EA was a good company back in the day. I've got a bunch of old Genesis games with the yellow tabs on them. Not the sports games either. Nowadays EA is just "Evil A**holes". Rockstar is working on joining them if they don't knock off their bullsh*t.
@@brucewrigleysgumchewz4667 You’re gonna miss out on “It Takes Two”. It’s absolutely amazing!
Same
EA really helped sell the Genesis/Mega Drive, at least in the States. They really were the muse for the hardware as the brought so many great games to the Genesis, including some exclusives like Road Rash 2 that are stone cold classics.
Not to mention the Madden franchise
Only in America really. Their games weren't relatable to anyone else
@@RocketNothing
Of course they were.
Mega drive was also popular in Europe
Another banger! Great video. :D
Thanks BVD. Just trying to get on your level of 3D animation.
What a great and informative vid, bro! Thanks for this.. I love these behind the scenes stories. And I never thought the tab did anything. I figured it was some kinda stamp but I had no idea…
Thanks!
Imagine how much better the game industry could be if EA had gone out of business back then.
I remember being so intrigued with EA releases back then. They always felt very different, and obviously as I child I didn't know that was because a lot of them were originally PC games.
I quite clearly remember messing with the tab, pressing it in, trying to unlock the cartridge as if there'd be some kind of cool secret inside or something.
Who knew that the secret was cutthroat business tactics? lol
I remember trying to pull those yellow tabs off as a kid. They just looked like they were meant to slide out for some reason to my child eyes. I never actually succeeded though.
Yeah as did i! They kind of had a grip look to them. Something reminiscent of lots of action figures and toys back then
Yep, I thought they are some sort of plastic cover for an extension hub of some sort- either extra gaming peripherals or connection with another sega console and multiplayer cable for 4 players.
Yoooooo what is this editing!?! Top notch! Dig it!!!
I love videos like this.. The gaming historian was my first introduction to this type of video, I'm SO THANKFUL I found your channel! Subbed for sure!
This man needs way more subs, thank you for all the content over the years!!! much love bro.
I appreciate that, Chip! Hopefully one day I'll hit my 100K sub goal.
Mutant League Football and Hockey, General Chaos, Road Rash and more were some of my favorite games. What happened EA?
U nailed it man.
didnt they also have general chaos??? i loved tht game!
Well, at least we have Mutant Football League. And it isn't EA. And everything is included in one single low price. :)
All man I miss road rash
General Chaos was my shit
When I was a kid I thought there was a save battery behind it and the tab was there for convenience, until I took a few apart years ago.
I always thought the same thing!
Really cool channel to stumble across. Love the information you deliver on this niche subject. Thank you.
Nice video. I really didn't know - I thought it was just how EA was designing there cartridges to stand out and not have any thing to do with reverse engineering of the technology of the sega genesis and it's cartridges.
Man I always thought the yellow tabs were where the save-game batteries lived 😳
In the 90's I thought that yellow tab cartriges was some kind of special chip cartridges.😂
Me too! I always had figured that because of how superior the gameplay, sound & graphics were in them, that it was attached to some kind of memory expansion chip or something....I guess it was all just a sales gimic! I can't believe my theory was wrong all these years, 😲
I thought the same , maybe the bigger cartridges were for a larger chip to hold bigger games (think Sega 32x) ha ha
@@pex_the_unalivedrunk6785 I'd thought it was just another manufacturer of them...mainly due to ending up with a lot of Wisdom Tree stuff as well due to my mother buying pretty much all of their Genesis stuff.
I did too!!! Haha 😂
There was always something different about how the music sounded in EA Genesis games. Especially when you heard it through the front headphone jack on the original Genesis console. There was something about the way the audio was processed on EA games that was different than on non-EA carts. With EA games, the sound coming from the headphone jack always had a very tiny bit of static, especially at low volumes. Not sure what the issue was with that. Didn't hear that static sound in every single NON-EA game.. at all.
I remember I called EA about it back in the 90's asking why only their games had this weird distortion coming through the headphone jack. I remember the guy talking to me like I was dumb and saying the volume was turned up too loud or that it was "just me". Their reps were clueless and probably just followed some script baloney. Of all the game company reps I ever called, EA's were the biggest dicks.
Can't spell SEGA without E & A!
Boo!
Except unlike EA, SEGA actually cares about their fans
@@thomasedwardharrison2879 except they kinda don't...
Dang the production on this is really impressive. Well done
Thanks!
From Triple Play to Mutant League Football to Jungle Strike. Back in the day that yellow tab meant QUALITY.
Triple play rocked
Great video, and the production values were amazing. Nice work!
Much appreciated! I'm trying to up my game on each video.
Oh for the days when EA wasn't evil and the name just meant quality.
I dunno, it seems kind of evil to reverse engineer and blackmail sega.
Back when EA stood for Electronic Arts
Back when EOA stood for Electronic Arts, going by the logo
@@MichaelPuterbaugh that was a cool logo, and the last time EA was good
It's in the game
Now it just stands for "Evil Assholes".
Thank you so much for your the hard work and effort for putting this together and giving it to us. As a kid I never knew none of this issues were happening. Back then I was just so happy to be playing on this systems.
Now older I appreciate learning the history of this things happening back then.
The NHL owes a huge debt to Trip and EA. The huge boom and expansion that the NHL experienced during the early 90s that the NHL continues to this day was largely built on exposure to millions of new fans playing NHL Hockey on Sega Genesis.
Sports games made me a fan of every sport at one time or another.
Alternate title: How a company turned Evil
Nintendo accidently created the PlayStation by pissing off Sony
Sega made EA to rise by pissing off EA
Excellent video! I never knew the secret of the tabs, but what's more shocking is EA was once a platform for artists and pioneers. Its a shame when you consider what they have become..
The contrast with EA today and back then is insane, it's really heartbreaking actually. :(
Love the presentation and explanation of the yellow tab cartridges. Something I've always wondered why they were different. Thank you for explaining it.
I really liked the video and especially the background of your scenery. I just signed up! 👊
Imagine if they had gone the reverse engineering route a generation later-the Saturn, PlayStation, and N64 would have been much more difficult.
Well for the Saturn and Playstation CDs would have been alot cheaper and easier to produce than carts.
I think Nintendo would've caught wind of what they were doing to Sega and would've said no way to EA until they get on good terms with them.
@@TheJadeFist I think EA might have had similar deal with the Saturn. Because here in Europe, EA has their own Saturn cases that are better than the normal sega ones. (the european sega cases are terrible) The manual seems to be printed on cheaper paper. And in discs it reads made in USA always. While almost all European Sega Saturn discs say made in EU. (Though my copy of EU VF2 says made in USA)
So EA clearly made their own discs, manuals and cases. So I think they had a similar deal to their mega drive deal.
This story seems like an alternate version of the episode involving Nintendo and Tengen. Whereas EA was able to come to agreement with Sega about their reserve engineered cartridges, Tengen did not.
I was wondering if there was some parallel connection.
The reason why Tengen never did any reverse engineering on the NES because it would took to much work.
No joke they say to get it done they would need to get a hacker who have nothing better to do
“Sega made the costs too high”
Proof that current actions are based on past trauma
Seriously, it's like every company who had a rough start and fought to the top just imediately used thee power they gained to start doing the same to every other small business that threatens them and becoming just as cold and machine like as the companies that vilified them......It's like the case of the bullied kid who grew up to be a bully or the kid with a shit father who grew up to also be a shit father....I really don't understand this whole "I struggled so you should too" mentality
In an age of hit-or-miss games, I always felt safe, buying EA. A yellow tab meant quality to my friends and I; we also thought it meant extra memory, like so many others. Thanks for the great video!
Fantastic video!! Kudos for preserving video game history
According to the incredible “Console Wars” book you may have omitted one important detail. EA was hesitant on leaving PC gaming because they wrote off consoles as lesser toys only little kids play with. The only reason they gave the Genesis the time of day was because they let Konami port and publish one of their games, Skate or Die, for the NES which represented no risk for EA since Konami took the blunt of it. The sales of that one NES game they didn’t even publish were so high they eclipsed the total sales of various PC games of their own. They then proceeded to go into Nintendo’s draconian deal and publish themselves Skate or Die 2 and a couple of other games for even more profit. It was only then that they turned to greener pastures on the Genesis.
Restrictive deals or not fact was even with them EA still made more money on one game they licensed to Konami on a console they wrote off as inferior than a bunch of their own games on PC over the years. That’s why Nintendo could get away with their shit, they were making a ton of people a lot of money nobody had a choice but to comply.
@@darthkai8242 Just saw that documentary based on the book and it was really good but it can only cover so much in 90 minutes. The book is so much better and goes into more detail. The documentary is an amazing complement for book readers since you can put faces to the names and see the events and tv ads described in the book but it shouldn’t be a substitute.
The story told there is so compelling I wish they made a dramatization in a movie.
Here in Latinamerica the doc is in HBO GO but in the US it was CBS ALL ACCESS but has since moved to Paramount+.
Damn, this is a well made doc. Excellent work @wrestling with gaming
Thanks Slopes! Putting the editing together was a bit of a pain at times but overall I'm pretty happy with how it came out.
@@WrestlingWithGaming you should be. You always do a fantastic job with the content, research and production. Keep it up! 👍🏼
Ditto !! Top notch production values - congrats!
Thanks!
@@WrestlingWithGaming Great production. I like the renders, except the blinds casting a shadow across the CRT, which should be making its own light unaffected by the dark blue hue of the room :P
I've always wanted to know why EA games had a yellow tab. Awesome, video this channel just became a new favorite.
Some of EA's titles from then are outright classics. Might & Magic II and King's Bounty on Genesis are amazingly close to the computer versions, and General Chaos is a terrific and overlooked game.
Great video. I wonder to what extent the controlling license terms offered by Nintendo and Sega were a reaction (or overreaction) to the blight of shovelware that plagued the Atari system previously.