294 · Win, Lose, or Draw
Win, Lose or Draw was a popular TV show requiring artistic skills and an ability to think laterally. A player on your team draws something on the big game board, and you must work out what it represents.
Riedel Software Productions made this for Hi Tech Expressions in 1990, an adaptation of the TV game show where one side draws and the other guesses, Pictionary style. We all like being the drawer more than the guesser, so we wanted this to work. It mostly does, but it never explains why you would play it instead of grabbing a pad of paper.
What works
- The guessing is forgiving. You type answers on a keyboard, and the game cuts you slack. Typing "pyramid" when the answer was "the pyramids" still got the points. Dots show how many letters the answer has, which is how a drawing we took for train tracks turned out to be just "track."
- The puzzle code. At the end of a game you get a code, and entering it next time keeps you from seeing puzzles you have already played. Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy, which Rare made, had nothing like it.
- Easy drawing controls. A toggles the pen up and down, and the D-pad moves in eight directions. Not great, but usable.
What doesn't
- The computer draws too perfectly. Every line is clean, with none of the scribbling or inside jokes you get from a person. When it gets abstract it can be poetic: an eye on a fishing rod was "eye catching."
- The computer can't guess. It draws for you but never judges your drawings. We wanted it to try, or to pit computer against computer.
- No undo. There is a button that erases everything you have drawn, and we hit it by accident now and then. We wanted an undo-last button instead.
- No quick mode. Nothing like "how many can you guess in two minutes" without playing a whole show.
Worth knowing
The TV footage we watched looked like a sitcom living room, with players writing words on the board and nobody stopping them. The NES version will not let men and women share a team, and practice mode is the only way to draw without a second controller.
The developer later became Running with Scissors, the Postal company. A 2005 plug-and-play version came with a pen and tablet, and its drawing is worse than the NES.
The bottom line
Skip it. Nobody voted it onto the Essential Games List. As a pitch it sounds better than Wheel of Fortune, but a drawing game is easy to play at home. With paper and some house rules, you will have a better time with friends than with this cartridge.
Written from our conversation in this episode.
- Draw your own pictures like the Hit TV Game Show
- NES Longplay
- Manual
- An almost great title for a show. It implies Drawing is a choice instead of winning or losing. It should be Win or Lose? DRAW!
- Overview
- Draw
- Men and Women cannot play on the same team
- No Computer
- Drawing styles
- Computer Draws
- Let’s talk about it
- You draw
- Requires
- Computer Draws
- The keyboard a necessary evil
- No space bar
- It will help you out - PYRAMID but the answer is THE PYRAMIDS still works
- Puzzle codes to avoid repetition
- Sequels and Spinoffs
- Hi Tech Expressions released two editions of the DOS version of the game in 1988, as well as a "Junior" version,
- A "plug-and-play" console version was released by Senario in 2005; unlike the earlier computer and console adaptations, this one allowed players to actually draw the subjects, using an electronic pen, for their teammates to guess.
- EGL
- Next week -
- NEStalgia Byte -
Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.
Win, lose, or draw. Draw your own pictures like the hit TV game show.
And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. And I'm Joe. It's almost a great title for a game show, win, lose, or draw. But it implies drawing is a choice instead of winning or losing, right? Like it should be win or lose, draw. I mean...
They wanted to make the pun work, but I guess I've never seen this actual game show because I did think it was like a Double Dare type thing. A little hint, shout out to next week, but like a Double Dare type thing where it's like you can either, you know, answer the question right, but if you lose, you have to draw in
order to make up your points or something like that. I don't know. I thought draw was like the... What you had to do. Got it. So it was like you thought it was going to be trivia and then draw if you didn't get the trivia, correct? Yeah. Draw is like the physical challenge in Double Dare. Okay, great. I'd say I didn't... This just went straight over my head. I thought it was just a very descriptive, boring title. Like it was just in the game you could either win or lose or tie.
Hmm. Yeah, it's just like describing like the basic element of game. Yes, exactly. And that's really the whole overview for the entire game, whether you're familiar with the show or have the home version or have ever played the idea of just... What is this? Like a... Pictionary. Not sure. Yeah, yeah. Pictionary. If you've ever just played a game where you draw things and people guess at them, that's what win, lose or draw is. You are just drawing or being drawn at and guessing. So first question for everybody. Do you prefer to be the drawer or the guesser? I prefer to be the drawer.
The draw-ist. The artist. The draw-ist. I think I'd also like to be the draw-ist because it's... I don't know. It's more fun to be able to like come up with a creative way to get the person to guess. I mean, I'm talking if we're drawing on paper and not on the NES.
Yeah, I don't know if this is like a type A thing or something, but it's telling that all three of us have that opinion because I think it is more stressful to be the guy who has to guess. I'd rather be the one... Like even in charades, it doesn't matter what the game is. I'd rather be the person who's performing the action or doing the thing than be in the hot seat having to guess and know all the pop culture references.
I'm thinking of that game, Heads Up, where you put the phone over the top of your head and people shout... Yeah, people like shout at you things. It's like, I'd rather be the one shouting things at this person who's very confused than have to be like, oh, how do you not know that? Like, oh, come on, it's so easy. It's like that stresses me out.
That's the difference. I would prefer to be the one being like, how can you not understand how I'm trying to communicate to you than on the other end, like I'm having trouble communicating to this person. So I think it's more just like a protection of my own psyche. It's dignity, Sean. Don't you know dignity when you're looking at it? I suppose it might be dignity.
That was a Simpsons joke for all the fans back at home. Yeah, I don't watch that. All right. Here's an interesting thing about win, lose, or draw. The video game. I don't know if it's true on the show. Men and women cannot play on the same team in the game. That would be illogical according to the game. I believe that is the game. Yeah, there'd be no reason. So it's kind of like also a battle of the sexes thing, even though that's its own board game. Did you guys watch the show at all?
I see. I saw it on the game show network back in the day. I didn't like catch a refresher to be a spot on for this episode. So I've never seen it again in my life. Like we described, I didn't understand what the title meant. But I did watch, you know, a good 10 minutes of the show. And yeah, I think the whole men versus women thing that that's that's by design. But I also I don't know if it was a if it had like a TV, a daytime TV slot, because the
only the only like guest stars that I saw were daytime TV stars. Sean, it currently has a daytime TV slot. It's still going still. It's still a show. I think Wayne Brady's like, are you kidding me? Yeah, not Wayne Brady. He does. Wayne Gritsky. He's got to do something musical, right? No, Wayne Brady does. Let's make a deal, which is another which I would love to see an NES game of let's make a deal because that would be bonkers.
But not deal or no deal. It's hosted by the guy from like Scream 2, which sounds very weird. But like, I don't know. I don't think that's true. I have like a picture of this guy in my head and I only know from like seeing it on during the gym. No, not David Arquette. That would be funny if that's what I was referring to. They're referring to the other guy from Scream 2. I only know David Arquette. You want to fill up some time while I try to figure out who the host is? Sure. So.
So, yeah, that was it also just didn't have to. It didn't seem to have many rules. It didn't seem to have much decorum. Everyone was just sort of talking over each other. And I get that. That's the point of like the playing the game is shouting things over and over and wondering why you're not getting it right.
But even when they're just sort of talking between rounds, it seems to just be like very casual. No one really is that excited to be there or like disappointed to be there. It's just like a chat. It was weird. Are they like I was gonna say because I switched over from when I'm usually watching my gameplay footage. Now I'm just watching muted win loser draw 1988 footage.
And it looks like weirdly like a sitcom to me like it looks like they're in like a living room set. Oh, yeah, definitely. It's a living room set behind them. Yeah, there's a guy playing a harmonica for some reason.
I don't know what's going on without context. But is it like these people all like quote unquote like daytime celebrities or something or are they like other actual like normal people contestants. This is my watching it for 10 minutes expertise. It there were two daytime television stars per team and then to quote unquote normal people per team, which were usually from the L.A. area. One was a teacher and one was a physical therapist or physical trainer or something like that. So they pit like two quote unquote celebrities and then to people that are probably hoping to one day become celebrities that are just still stuck with normal people jobs right now.
And then they play sure. That's right. They play Pictionary with each other and that's the show. And then there was like a host that I guess was famous in her own right, but I didn't recognize her. She looks familiar to me. Actually, this is the short haired redhead. Yeah. Okay. Who is that? I don't know. Guys, I'm back with some answers. Okay. Do you know who the short haired redhead is? No, I'll get that next. But so good news. I was right. This guy Jerry O'Connell. It wasn't scream to he played Sid's boyfriend that she assumes is the killer.
And that's great. But he was also the he was in Kangaroo Jack. People remember him from Kangaroo Jack more than this. But anyway, he hosts Pictionary on Fox. So it's so similar that I thought I was watching win, lose, or draw instead of Pictionary. Because I grew up in the win, lose, or draw timeline of the Baron Stain Bears.
Oh, yeah. Now that the worlds have collided, I just assumed that Pictionary was also win, lose, or draw. But anyway, he does that and he's the host of that and that's what's going on. So it's not incorrect to say that there is a version of win, lose, or draw. It's just not those exact rules. It's the Pictionary style rules. Yeah, that was another thing. When I was watching the show, like they don't even seem to have any care in the world about actually like following any kind of rule set. Because they're writing words.
If they can't get it, they actually write out a word and then the host doesn't do anything about it. And they're like, can you control them? Can you get a handle on the situation? Yeah, I saw that too in the one clip I watched. Someone just wrote a word on the board and I was like, well, that's not the game.
That's just reading. Humans just can't help themselves. That's why the NES version is better because computers know better than to write out words. Right. It's the same way that like why NES baseball is better than like actual baseball because the computer knows like if he was safer, he's out. There's no human error. I suppose the only thing with that would be like the show seems to be about good vibes only or the 80s version of that.
Um, and it would just be kind of a bummer to hear a host like sort of chastise a player for breaking the rules by doing that and being like you're stupid. You can't write that, you know, I guess I was expecting there to be a little more honor among the players. Just honor system. Your friends having a good time, you know, I mean, these are actors during the strike. It was funny that apparently there was a strike in 1988 too. Uh, again, 10 minutes of watching the show. This is all the information I have.
We got to fill up 30 minutes here. So Sean, where the scores is weird in the TV show version of win, lose or draw because the scores just seem very strange to me in the NES version where you can have like 328 points. Like that just doesn't seem like, you know, usually you do things in even numbers. Uh, so again, and when loser draw the show, uh, the 10 minutes of the episode from 1988 that I watched, uh, they just said, oh, this one's worth 200 bucks. But if you hand the, the, uh, if you hand the marker off, which I guess you can do, and then you're just barred from shouting out words that obviously aren't the drawing, um, then it's only a hundred dollars in the game. You don't win, lose or draw.
You just like get the hundred points plus, uh, every 10 seconds that you leave on the clock. So like if you're, if you're fast, you get another one point, which is weird because then you get totals like 204. Which I guess, you know, could be a strategic edge down the line, uh, to determine who's better and everything.
And speaking of the, the drawing and the actual gameplay inside the game, there are two, uh, drawing formats. And that is essentially, uh, the computer can draw and you can be, uh, the guesser or you can draw, but you cannot have the computer guess, which is disappointing. I would have liked to see the computer try to like analyze my drawings and say, I think you're trying to draw this, but that obviously can't happen. Right. Yeah. Right. But also like, it would know what you're trying to draw.
Like say again, because it, it would know what you're trying to draw also. Cause it gives you the prompt. So it would have to, it would have to like not look internally at its own information. That's true. Well, I'm just assuming that's another computer. Like there's a computer that gives the prompts and there's a computer that guesses the, the drawings. But, uh, that's not true. You should be able to pit them against each other and just watch, you know, computer versus computer games.
Like, you should be able to pit them against each other. So talk about computer draws first. Like, you know, a computer drawing pictures that you have to guess, uh, is a little different than a human, uh, coming up with pictures that you have to guess, because I guess the human brain can, can come up with so many, uh, ways right and wrong to, to, uh, solve, um, the prompt, right? Like, uh, it doesn't have to, it could be abstract, but the computer, uh, doesn't necessarily get too abstract in its drawings. Uh, from what, from what I experienced at least. It gets poetic.
Um, there was one when I was playing, uh, where the, like, they give you a hint and then they give you the image and then you have to give the answers. The hint was body language. I don't think that the actual thing that they were telling you to, to, to do was body language, but it was an eye at the end of a, uh, fishing rod.
And then they show you like the three, the other difference is that it shows you like all of the, it's like hangman in that way where it shows you all where all the letters would be. Um, but in this case it was eye catching.
So it's much more of like, it's still, it's kind of out there. And, uh, what was the word you used? Uh, Mike abstract. Yeah, it's more abstract, but it's not as abstract as instead of writing wind, you just like, you kept drawing lines and like, that was your way of almost like charading it to them. You know what I mean? Yeah. And it's missing that like scribbling design as well. Uh, the kind of, and I, by that, I mean all the lines drawn are perfect and constantly going. It's losing the train of thought and imperfectness that a drawing of a box would have by a human player versus like their box will clearly, uh, be a perfect 3d drawing of a cardboard box. Yeah.
And I don't know if this is how it worked in the show based on what you described, but like if you play something like, like Pictionary at home, you're probably playing with someone, you know, and you might have some like rapport with them where you're like, you've got an inside joke or you've got something like, Oh, I know Mike would get this if I drew it this way because of what we talked about and stuff like that. So you are missing that a little bit too.
Yeah. So there's really a lot of differences and it seems like this would be a pretty easy thing to turn into a video game, but you're adding it. Like we, like we mentioned, you're, you're removing the weird, uh, craziness out of it. If you're playing with the computer and then you've got this weird hangman element, which is not a part of the game at all. So it's, it's strange. It's strange that they're adding these things when they don't really need to.
Staying on the computer drawing element, uh, you know, when you're guessing there is a keyboard that you have to type in your answer to the solve. And in the past we haven't liked the keyboard for things like Jeopardy and stuff because of the time limit. However, uh, yes, the person still has to, the computer still has to keep drawing and that is counting down the clock, but 180 seconds I think is provided. And that is a good chunk of time and it's not anything too complicated to type in. So I do think the keyboard is a necessary evil. There's no other way to, um, to come up with guesses. Multiple choice would have been even easier because it would have made obvious wrong answers.
And the keyboard will go as far as doing something that, uh, I'm certain that Jeopardy did not do and it will help you out. So, uh, for instance, I got one where, um, the computer was drawing pure pyramids and, or just a pyramid. So I typed in pyramid and the answer was the pyramids, but it didn't say wrong. It knew that I was close enough to give me the points. And to be honest, I really appreciate that because I remember even as recently as like family feud on the PlayStation one, there was like bullshit where like, if you didn't even
like, if you didn't include the S to make something plural, it was like, no, that's not the, you're wrong. Like that's not on the board. And it's like, yeah, but it's just not the pluralized version of it. It is on the board. Yeah. I think that that's also a reason why they put the, uh, the number of letters on screen. Cause when I first, that my first round, the computer was drawing something and I was like, okay, that's like train tracks or something. So like I drew, I wrote train or like, I think at the last second I was like trying to think of what it would be like railroad or something.
And I kept not knowing what it was. And then I realized those, that was down there. Like I didn't notice that at first, the, uh, the dots that tell you how many letters there are. And it was, it was, um, track, but like now knowing that it's like, okay, you can use, you can understand what it is and use the process of elimination to like, say the version of the word that they want you to say.
Yeah. You know, now that you, now that we're sort of going into the nitty gritty of this, I'm starting to wonder if in the rules of the actual game, because you, you sort of type in the words, like just a word, and then you, you press enter after each word, if there is more than one word. Um, so I'm starting to wonder, maybe if they, if they shout out the word, you're allowed to write it down and keep it in like, you know, memory like that. I don't know. Uh, was Sean, if it's multiple words, can't you just, even though there's no space bar, can't you just type it all in as if it's a run on word, but the game will know?
Oh, maybe. I never did. I think that happened to me. I think I just, I think I just assumed that they wanted me to do that. So, uh, I don't remember my specific example, but like the pyramids, it would have accepted it if you just would have typed in the pyramids as the pyramids. Okay. Uh, I guess that works too.
Yeah. They also provide an interesting, uh, feature here that again, something not present in wheel of fortune or jeopardy, which is a, you know, a big enough thing that I'm willing to call them out and give them a little kudos here. They give you a, uh, like a puzzle code so that if you, uh, basically like it won't give you any repeats based on the puzzle code you provided. And that's given at the end of the game. So this way you don't get those puzzles that you just played. And I think that's pretty damn cool. And it is worth mentioning that this is not made by the same people who made a wheel of fortune or jeopardy. Those were all made by rare. This is made by Rydell software.
Um, I'll see what else they made while you guys discuss this puzzle code feature. So when I saw it, I thought that that was literally just so that you could remember the same exact puzzles. I thought it was the opposite of what it actually did. It's like, oh yeah, I really liked this set.
Yeah. I thought, I thought it was good. I don't, I guess I didn't put enough thought into it to realize that that wouldn't make sense. But I thought the same thing. I was like, yeah, it's like, so I can go to this level. Yeah. But like, yeah, you're going to know the answer if you do that. Like, so I didn't even, uh, didn't even look into that, but I liked that a lot because,
um, we've had plenty of games like this. I, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to get ahead of ourselves and mention that I already played next week's game, but, uh, I'll, I'll talk about this issue in next week's game of repeating questions or problems. I mean, you know, back in, back in the dark times, there was a lot of people playing Jackbox games. And I think that that was, that was still a problem now, you know, like. That's, that's true. Yeah. Like, Oh, I remember this weird question and I know the answer to it, but no one else, either no one else does or everyone else does. So. Yeah. But now we have the ability to like update things at least.
Whereas like, this was just fixed. It's like, if you're playing this a lot, like you'll, you'll eventually just like know every. Well, that's why then you'd get win, lose or draw 2k3. Right. You get one every, every year with like a different, with a different win, lose or draw star on the cover and they always get injured.
I wasn't planning on doing like a developer thing or anything like that. So I didn't look into Rydell software before just now. And it's interesting because, you know, the video game dev industry in itself is always a, you know, a series of interesting decisions and franchises and you never know who owns what. So the company that made win, lose or draw and other child friendly games would eventually become the running with scissors company in 1996 and would go on to make the Postal series. Oh my God. These are the postal people.
Uh, as recently as postal for no regerts, uh, which came out in 2022. And apparently in 2023, they made poo stall Royale, uh, which is also just as funny. I have to imagine that nobody that was working at this company when, when loser draw was developed is still working at this company now. Oh, the founder. The founder. Yeah. Vince Desi. Wow. Worked on both win, loser, draw and postal. That's, that's pretty wild. Win, loser, draw was just a step, a rung in the ladder on his way to poo stall. Yes. That's what he was. It was all building up to poo stall Royale.
I don't know if it should be said poo stall or not, but it's clearly trying to be a poop joke. So that's why I'm saying it that way. Uh, all right. So, you know, we talked about the computer drawing and basically the format of the game, but now it's turn, it's your turn to draw. If you played with another person or just wanted to test out this mode when you were going through the game, I certainly did. And I guess I just want to talk about, uh, the drawing features. Uh, it doesn't really offer a lot. There's no like change your marker color or anything, but there is the ability to draw,
uh, kind of like an etch a sketch style, but at least you don't have to like always be drawing. So etch a sketch, maybe not the best, uh, analogy there, but that's where my head went. What do you guys think of the drawing? Were you able to draw as well as the computer or do you just suck at drawing in general? So you tried your best. Well, okay. So you've got, here's the controls.
Uh, you have a basically pen up and pen down toggle, and that would be the A button, I think. And then you can move in eight directions and it moves relatively smoothly so that you, you won't just like, it's not like a mouse where it'll just kind of go wild for you and you can't really draw cause it's not how you hold a pen or whatever. You're just using the D pad to move around. Um, so you can break the line as opposed to, uh, an etch a sketch.
And I mean, like it wasn't terrible. I played around in practice mode for a bit because I don't have a second controller for this. Um, and the only way to draw on, uh, in this game without a second controller is to go into practice mode. And, uh, yeah, it's not great, but it, it's, it's usable. Yeah, I was comparing it to Pictionary's drawing a lot.
And I think that Pictionary probably has the potential to draw more robust images because, because of the way it controlled. It was like you, it was like you turn the, the cursor in certain ways to like, you can like make a circle if you were like skilled enough, but it was way, way harder in Pictionary to control. This was just like intuitive up goes up, down goes down, left, right. You know, it's just very, very simple. So Pictionary is also a video game.
Interesting. Yeah. We'll be playing it in a year. Oh, am I, didn't we play, didn't, we didn't play Pictionary. What did we play that I already use as drawing? I don't know. Uh, well, it was, um, uh, anticipation. Oh. Anticipation. Was that the drawing one? I thought you were just. I have also played Pictionary before. But, but so that's why I'm confusing him, but the one we played on the podcast where you have to like turn that like little vehicle.
Oh, I see. I think. That's not Pictionary. I don't think you played Pictionary. I'm not just talking about something we didn't play. Anticipation does have a, a drawing mode. Okay. Then that's what I'm thinking. Um, but it's, I remember that also had like, like a button that would just make like a circle. Oh. Or, you know, you could add shapes and stuff.
I, I, that does ring a bell. Okay. That part doesn't ring a bell for me, but who knows? Okay. Either Pictionary or Anticipation together combined have a better, have a more robust version of this. But this is easier to use is all I'm, it's all I'm trying to say. Um, but I will say that I, I would have, I would have liked a, an undo last option button. There's an undo everything you've ever drawn button. Which you hit accidentally once in a while and it erases your whole canvas.
Yeah. Well, that's the thing, you know, in, in the actual show, you don't get an eraser. You just have to cross it out. So you better just take five to 10 seconds to cross out your entire image. Yeah. But there's not like a, a, a nuke option that accidentally makes you have to start completely over, like whites out the whole page. Well, that's, that's accidentally turning over and, uh, or ripping the page off. Yeah. You accidentally spill the white out all over the page.
It's worth mentioning. Those are the modes of the game though. And that there aren't really any like arcade or video game friendly style versions. And by that, I mean, it would have been fun to just include a format where you don't have to play through the entire game show to do some, some playing and guessing. It would have been great to have like a lightning round style thing, which I know is in the game or whatever, but I'm talking about just as its own thing. Like how many can you guess in two minutes or whatever? Like would have been nice to have modes like that to just add some additional features.
Because really the only reason that you would need to play this game, uh, is if you're going to use like the, the computer drawing for you. And if you're trying to play this with other people, you, I think this would only be an option for you, or you'd only consider this as an option if you just didn't have paper.
Like, yeah. I'm so glad you said it. Like, yeah, it gives you like, it provides you with prompts. But even then you, there had to be like a quick way to just think up some prompts, right? Like, I don't know. Just look around the room. Yeah. I agree. This, this is, that's kind of what I was thinking the whole time too, is like, what, what about this? What advantage does this have over actual like playing Pictionary or win, lose, or draw in real life? And the only thing that I don't think it works well anyways, but the only thing that could even be in that wheelhouse is having a computer draw so you can play one-on-one against somebody without each having a partner.
Without drawing. But like, is it worth it when this is the result? Yeah. No, this game will be very useful if you are the last man alive, because then you won't have somebody else to play with on pen and paper. No, it won't, because you have to play two-player. No, you can play one-player. Yeah, with the computer. You can play one-player. How do you play one-player? Well, you don't play against another team. It's just the other couch is empty.
Yeah, but somebody, like, they don't answer when it's their turn, unless I just missed the one-player option. Yeah, you just make it so that you choose whether you want men or women on team one, and then because you need to have somebody in team one, and then for team two, you could have men, women, or no one. Oh. It's just an empty couch. Maybe I'm thinking of Pictionary. God damn it, Joe.
On the sequels and spinoffs side, High Tech Expressions, another game development studio, released two versions of Win, Lose, or Draw on the DOS Microsoft systems. Those games came out in 1988, and a junior version came out shortly after. Really only mentioning this because I'm sure it's a lot easier to draw with a mouse than it is with an NES controller, and because of this junior phase that was just... Like, do you think... Obviously, this is a joke, but, like, do you think Donkey Kong Jr.
formed off, like, the whole, like, video game Jr. version of things, or is this a holdover from board games where, like, board games would get, like, Monopoly Jr. edition? It seems crazy that we've had, not only just on this system, but in general, this, like, dumbing down of what aren't even really trivia games anymore. They're just game shows, and they're like, yeah, well, they need a junior version as well. I don't know. I mean, I think it's just a cultural thing, because have you not seen, like, Beer Pong Jr.? I have not. Is that really a thing? No, I'm making it up. That'd be funny, though. It's, like, with apple juice.
I'd play it. And this version is near and dear to me, because it's what I grew up on, and it is a plug-and-play console version, which was released in 2005. And believe it or not, it actually lets you, like, it comes with a tablet that you plug and play, and you have a pen, and you draw on that tablet, and then it goes on the screen. So that's pretty cool. Granted, it doesn't really work that well, and so the drawing is actually even worse than what you're able to do on the NES, because the pen has to really make some real hard physical contact with that tablet. I'm going to get a tablet, but don't picture, like, an iPad. It's basically just, like, a whiteboard that you're putting an electronic pen against, and
I just wanted to take a moment to say, like, forget the win-loser draw plug-and-play. Do you guys just remember plug-and-plays in general? They were, like, huge in the mid-2000s. I'm just surprised that in the mid-2000s? Yeah, like, just the plug-in, like, you know, like, they made it for everything. Yes, you're right. For some reason, they'd have, like, a SpongeBob one. Yes, I had the SpongeBob one. I had one that had, like, over 100 games, and most of them were, like, variations of Solitaire, but for some reason, I was, you were saying plug-and-play, and I was hearing speak and spell. I don't know why.
I was like, that's before our time, Mike. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sorry. I'm not trying to be nostalgic for something that I don't have any nostalgia for, but the plug-and-plays, I definitely have nostalgia for, and I would say I even went as far as, like, owning, I own the plug-and-play version of, like, Texas Hold'em. Yeah. Where everybody got their own controller as well inside the plug-and-play, so it's like,
these things were, like, full consoles that you would get for less than $40, and they would have a bunch of games on them, and you never knew if you were going to get something awesome. Like, I think I got one time, it was, like, a Namco collection one, and it was just a joystick that you plugged into your TV, and you got to play all these Atari 2600 games,
and that was great. And then there was, like, the SpongeBob one, which just absolutely sucked. There wasn't a single good game on it, and they were all really phoned in. And now, working at the company, I understand why, but for the most part, you know, these plug-and-plays were a gamble. You just bought them because you either liked the IP or wanted to experience some old video games. Was that some shade thrown at Nickelodeon, Mike? It was a little bit of shade, but only because I could understand that, like, we don't really have a games team. This was probably thrown together by somebody who was just like, you, make the plug-and-play.
Well, especially in the early 2000s when, like, video games were still, like, I don't know, I feel like video games were still not seen as, like, big things by grown-ups. Yeah, I don't want to get too big on a tangent, but, Joe, I'm sure you know about also the, like, Nickelodeon, on, like, Nick.com, there was that baseball game with, uh... Yeah, the Hey Arnold. Was it a Hey Arnold baseball game? It was, like, some baseball... Oh, I mean... It was some Nickelodeon character's baseball game where, like, one pitcher is just way too unfair to the player.
I don't know. I remember there was a Hey Arnold baseball game I used to play, but I never heard about that, uh, that imbalance. Yeah. It's just funny to think that, like, that whoever designed that for the web game was just like, yeah, and this guy's gonna be a piece of shit. Nobody can hit him. And nobody can stop us from doing the final segment, uh, because you're gonna have to listen to it whether you like it or not. You can hit pause, but eventually you'll have to unpause and listen to this. So are the rules of the universe. And, of course, the segment I'm talking about is the Essential Games List.
I think Sean already said what all three of us were thinking when he said that there's no reason to play this if you have paper, uh, because then you don't even have to worry about puzzle codes to avoid the repetition. You just have to make sure you don't repeat. And if you do repeat, it's probably fine.
Win, lose, or draw is the kind of game that is probably, like, on paper sounds better to, like, yeah, we're gonna make this for video games because now we can use the, uh, you know, like, electronic drawing and stuff. Like, that actually sounds better to me as a pitch than Wheel of Fortune. But actually, you can't really play Wheel of Fortune at home. Like, you could get some cute, uh, the game of lifestyle wheel that you spin and then guess some letters and stuff, right? But it would be a bigger set piece thing.
Win, lose, or draw is actually more complicated on this NES game than it is just establishing some ground rules. Whatever the house rules are, right? There's, just make the house rules. Just do that and you'll have a better time. At least you'll have a better time today. I can't say about in 1990. But you'll have a better time today playing just the, the version with your friends of win, lose, or draw than playing the NES win, lose, or draw. So no, not essential. Sean? Yeah, you know, I do kind of take back a lot of the criticisms I had. I did just read about the, uh, global paper shortage of 1990.
Uh, I had no idea. Uh, I was too young to actually, like, understand what the world was going through. But I think that's why we have digital versions of this game. And I think that's actually really important to keep the heart of Pictionary adjacent gaming alive. So while that may be the case, I can't, like, use those historical examples to make this an essential game. But I at least understand it better now. Yeah, it really kept drawing alive during that time. Because, you know, it's like how Disney brought musicals back. It's like drawing was kind of a, was a dying art. Uh-huh. Um, but I will just say that it's, I'm, it's obviously not essential.
But I want to say that it definitely was Pictionary I was thinking of. Because I found it. It's very hard to find any footage of anyone doing this part of Pictionary. But it is in the game. I found the, uh, the manual. So, uh, this game is not essential. And it is not the game I was thinking of. So it wasn't even the game you were thinking of. That's great. This whole time, this whole episode, you were just thinking about Pictionary.
No, that didn't actually, uh, make too much sense. Obviously, I was thinking about this game. But, uh, I didn't know which game I was thinking about when I was comparing it to another game. Sean, did you actually know about the paper shortage? No. That is so funny. So Sean mentioned, obviously, in his Essential Games list vote, the paper shortage of 1990. And I just wanted to do a, just a quick Google search or whatever. And I did find a New York Times article from February 9th, 1988, talking about how we are on the road to a paper shortage. And by 1990, production could be significantly curbed. I totally made that up. Well, sorry. Fantastic.
You, uh, yep, you've created a whole, I was coming from the Berenstain universe, and now I'm in the Sean paper universe. Yeah. You had an abundance of paper. The things, the things that I say end up happening 20 to 30 years earlier. It's no secret that next week we're, uh, playing Double Dare. Joe mentioned it several times. I guess you could say he's very excited about it. Uh, yes, we both work at Nickelodeon, so obviously we're familiar with Double Dare. But Sean, you know, you don't work at Nickelodeon, so maybe you're not excited. Are you excited? Double Dare, any nostalgia?
You'll hear next week. Yeah. If we need anyone to be not a corporate shill. Yeah, you guys kind of are that. Sean will be the guy. Yeah, I've actually already been told that I need to only say positive things and put it on the essential games list. Well, I'll see if I can keep it off. Or help me put it on. Obviously, the Nickelodeon shop.com still sells NES copies of Double Dare, and we would lose money if I gave it a bad review. Yeah, we actually sell them in the building. There's like a little kiosk right outside the building where we sell the cartridges.
We'll see if we can keep it off.
