358 · Classic Concentration

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00:00 Classic Concentration, a picture can be worth a thousand dollars when you play this terrific television game.

00:23 And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. And I'm Sean. Sean, tell them what they've won. Sean, a brand new grandfather clock. Sean, you win though like a lot of things on this game show. Sean, you do. There's a lot of prizes. There's a lot of cars and just descriptions of prizes that then get described some more. Yeah. Did you ever watch Classic Concentration, Mike? Sean, Mike? Oh, it's a bit of a tongue twister there.

01:09 Classic Concentration. Sean, you know what's funny? I watched a ton of Game Show Network. Never saw this once. Yeah. Sean, I said, I didn't know what to expect. I didn't know what Classic Concentration was. And do they call it Classic Concentration? That's what I was thinking too. Yeah, they do. They really do call it that. And Alex Trebek, our friend from Jeopardy, hosted it. Our friend from Jeopardy. From the four Jeopardy episodes we did. Now we finally get a crossover into Classic Concentration.

01:41 And actually, it was a little more shocking that it was a real game show because I played the video game first before watching the game show. And I couldn't believe it. I was like, wait a minute. This is just like a matching game? And then you guess what the picture is based on the blocks that are remaining? Like, there's no way that this is a real game show. And then I watched the real game show.

02:03 It is a lot of work for Alex Trebek and the two contestants. And it is like no work for anybody else on that show to make this happen. Like, so much relies on the banter between them. Did you notice that like, he has to like basically force conversation? No, absolutely. So which episode? Did you watch the pilot episode? I didn't. I watched one where like guy was like really good. He like had like an amazing run. He just knew where all the matches were. And he knew the pictures pretty early. I was very impressed with his skills. So tell me about the pilot.

02:40 So, you know, we're going, we're going from a baseline of, okay, let's just, let's just give you, if you haven't seen classic concentration, I feel like most of our listeners have, but just as a quick primer, you, you do the match, the matching, which gives you a prize. And it also shows you a bit of a like word, uh, puzzle with pictures and you got to say the thing. And the matching is like, the matching is just like Super Mario Brothers three matching game where you like, you know, you just turn over like the seven and the 18 and they reveal two different words. And now you have to like, remember those two different words. To concentrate on where those are.

03:15 Yeah. You have to start in the mushroom. Now you got to find out where the other star and mushroom are. And so most of the time, like there's like nothing to be done, especially in the early game when it's just like the first one or two matches and you can see like the corner of a light bulb and maybe, uh, a, uh, like a mouth. And it's like, what the hell is that supposed to be? So there's, there's really nothing for you to do, but go, uh, I don't know. And so the first episode that I feel like they just, you know, they didn't really do a lot of testing.

03:47 Um, they didn't get the kinks out. They didn't like just let people know, like maybe just say like, I'm not even going to guess. They like let people have a good three to four seconds to just go, uh, um, uh, and then it's going to buzz. So it's just even more awkward than the, the actual system already lends itself to it. It's very funny though. Alex Trebek, he, he, he, you know, he wasn't perfect in this, uh, in this show, but he's doing his, his best. Yeah. It's a really tough, it's a really tough job because I can't stress enough how boring the actual game is. I can't think of another game show that relies on such little skill. In the actual game.

04:34 And, and, and that this is like, this is going to become a huge part of the problem with this talking about this game in this episode is that the experience of what this game is, is you are looking for the word motorcycle twice, right? So you, you find it and then you match it and you didn't win a motorcycle, you know, like you didn't win jack shit.

04:55 And now that's just behind you on the board. And now you get like barely anything. So Sean, this is going to be a big moment, uh, depending on how this episode is going to go from here on out. But like how many pictures or how many things, how many screens did you have to remove before you could even trust, try to start guessing what was behind, uh, these numbers? Because again, remember folks, it's going to show a picture, but not a picture of like a boat. And then you guess boat. It's going to be like a complicated play on words, things with a couple of different images.

05:31 So no matter how skilled you are, the game relies on you revealing a lot of the board to even just come close to thinking about what, what double entendre or whatever they're trying to, uh, to play up here. I think you, you're going to at least need 50% taken away and they have to be in the center because most of the border is just white space. Um, and then in like in the dead center, you're not going to see much because there's, there's like a line break or like a plus sign to, to, to, for you to put different syllables together.

06:10 Um, and then you'll, you'll have like letters that could be, it could be a B or it could be an H or it could be something else. And so you need to get through a lot of it and you have to rack up a lot of, uh, words describing things you hypothetically, or sorry, that, that you fake one, um, to, to be able to, to put this, um, to, to put this, yeah. Play on words together. And I'm not going to say that like the plays on words aren't, uh, creative, uh, even though I'm also not going to say that they are.

06:47 Um, but there's just, there's just so much that you have to do in a very unexciting way to, to, to move on. Um, yeah. And I'll just say first time I played this, me and the computer together eliminated everything on the board, saw the final picture. It was my turn to guess. And I just still didn't know what I was looking at. So I, so I got it wrong. I believe it was the, before you go is the answer.

07:23 And so that is a B, uh, the four of diamonds, a sheep and, uh, the green go light. So I guess I could have gotten it, but I was also like kind of caught up on the four of diamonds thing. I didn't, I didn't think of just like B four. I thought the diamonds had to do. Yeah. The diamonds had something to do with it. And I don't know that a sheep is called an ewe.

07:47 Yeah. I, I, I, okay. So there was a couple where I saw that and was like, oh, you has to be the only thing. Um, but I still didn't get a lot of these. And even the computer didn't get a lot of these. So I didn't even see the answer. Right. It's, it's, it's just so frustrating.

08:04 How many, how many things could go like you have to match so many things to reveal an image. And then you look at the image and you're like, I'm not even sure I know what this is. Like it's kind of nuts, but you know, that's also the experience on the show as well as like, nobody is seeing like a little bit. This isn't like wheel of fortune where you reveal a couple letters and you can see the blanks that remain and come up with a word. This is a very complicated thing. We've played Pictionary where you draw something right. And even that is like open to interpretation because you're at least seeing the entirety of the drawing as it's being drawn here. You're seeing like such little information and the in-between gameplay.

08:46 There is no trivia to like answer a trivia question to then like, you know, reveal a piece of the board. The only other part of the game is just matching words. So that's a bit of a guess too. You're just like, if you go first on the very first thing, you're like, all right, one in seven. Why? I don't know. Like there was no reason to it. I need to start figuring out where things are. Yeah. It's like, this is such this. I almost scooped myself too early, but the fact that this entire game was just relegated

09:16 to a mini game in Super Mario Brothers three and didn't make you guess a picture at the end of it is just such a better version of this entire game. It blows my mind. This is one of the side effects of having to play every NES game released in North America because I really wish I didn't have to waste time on this. I feel like I'm wasting everyone's time talking about this game.

09:41 They clicked on the episode. They're going to listen to it. But here's my prognosis here or not. Here's my diagnosis. Here's my something gnosis. The creators of this game didn't realize that the only fun people are having with this game is seeing people win cute trinkets and maybe a car. It's the only excitement in classic concentration. The TV show are the prizes. And the other thing that's kind of a sideshow is the thing you have to guess. But that is also something that could just be like in the comic section of a paper next to the magic guy. Like it's it's just a thing that you'd like. Oh, that's that's that was fun to do.

10:30 It's not something you're going to buy a video game for because we had this complaint. Back in like Wheel of Fortune where they like they just you want to you want to trip to Miami. But even at least then and like that was nothing. But at least then they gave you like an image of what a trip to Miami could look like in 8-bit. Whereas here it's just the letters. It's just the word Asia trip.

11:01 Right. And it's just behind you on a board and you're hideous in this game. Oh, yeah. You always have it's like a weird mouth. It's like everybody's got a caricature face. Huge heads. And you get to do the whole like cycle through thing again to figure out who you want to be and stuff. And it's just like it doesn't matter. You're looking at the board like 99% of the game.

11:37 So I'm actually going to loop in Joe now to the show. There was no reason why Joe couldn't be here. He just chose not to come and now I'm bringing him in. So hey, Joe. I've actually been on the whole time. I've just been had nothing to say really so far. I thought I heard that breathing. Yeah. Not even the and I'm Joe part. You didn't feel like that was necessary.

11:54 No, I figured like let's just break the streak now. So I just want to try and prove a point about like how both difficult and unfun this game can be when it's starting out. And as we've been saying, the point of the game essentially is you're matching numbers and then those tiles are being revealed and then you have to guess after you reveal a set of tiles, you have to guess like what the image is behind all these numbers.

12:21 And that is. Oh, yeah, go for it. Well, I was just going to let you know that I did play the game. If that's the reason you're explaining. I don't know how I don't know where we are in this episode. I don't know what you have to explain to the audience. Can you read the room Joe? Yeah. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to make the album artwork this image. So if you're listening on any kind of podcast, you should be able to see the image. And then you guys I'm going to post it in our discord here.

12:48 And this is the image after like a few correct tiles have been revealed. I think six tiles in total have been revealed. So that means that you had to play quite a bit of like, yeah, I'm going to guess like 12 and 15 and then you get like two things like sofa and radio. So you're like, oh, that doesn't work. So you've had to do a few rounds of this just to get these six off. But not a lot has been revealed as you can see. So I want you guys to just, you know, the game would ask you. So I'm going to ask you, do you want to guess what this is based on the available information you have? No. I mean, I'm going to go, uh, um, and then say no.

13:28 Yeah. I'm also at a no right now, but you know, I feel like I feel confident that maybe like a couple more reveals, maybe I'll have something. Okay. Maybe a couple more reveals. You might have something, but again, it just begs the question of like, even if you just remove two tiles, like the very first two, why would the game even bother asking you? Do you want to take a guess? Like, how would you know? Because Alex Trebek asked.

13:50 I know, but how would anybody know? Like that's what, so that's my problem with the whole game. The whole game itself, not the video. Yeah, the whole game, right. Exactly. The game doesn't make any sense. Yeah, but you know, you don't know when someone is going to have enough, like the game doesn't know when someone's going to have enough information to solve it. You know? Because like to me right now, what I think this says is E off, mmm, carrot.

14:14 And if that's what it actually is, then I won at this moment. Mmm, carrot. But I've had times where like enough is revealed where I could be like, oh, that's probably a plus this, even though not that much is revealed. Like I've had times where maybe this amount has been revealed and it's been more obvious. So it's like the game's not going to know what's obvious to like right now. This one's like, yeah, no way anyone gets. No, but I didn't pick this one because it's hard by the way. This is just like, this is a genuine screen grab. Yeah. You know, I didn't pick this to make it. Yeah. I guess I picked it because I knew it would be impossible because not enough information has been revealed.

14:51 But I guess I could tell you what it is and you could tell me if you would have came to Oh, you don't have like another version where we like, we're going to guess again. You want me to do that? If you've got it. I need you to. Sure. I can. What'd you say, Sean? I'd like you to. Okay. I thought you said I need you to. Yeah. Yeah, sure. I can do that. Just, you know, continue to talk about the game for a minute.

15:16 Um, well, I, uh, I've never seen this game show. Have you seen this before? Oh, yeah, you weren't here, but I watched a couple episodes. Oh, okay. But have you seen it? I remember you saying you were going to look into it, but have you seen it before that? Like, did you know? No, I hadn't heard of this at all.

15:32 Um, I thought that it was like that, that like the whole classic part was just made up and, uh, for the video game, but that's actually the name of the show. Um, as if that was like a thing before, maybe it was, maybe a fifties show. Maybe it was a show on the radio. Um, I mean, I feel like concentration, we've talked about this before for like, what is it? Maybe like one of the Sesame Street games. Concentration is just like a card game or like, that's what I, that's what it probably is. Yeah.

16:05 But you'll win little knickknacks in the intern. Yeah. Now do the, do the, the contestants win all the things that they're uncovering like they do in the game? Or do you have to solve the puzzle in order to get the, you do have to solve the puzzle. I think you don't take home. Hey, you know what? I could not be an authority on that, but I'm assuming you need to win or you don't get the mink coat. That was my understanding as well. You don't just get it for matching. Okay. So here is a little bit more. Oh, okay. Wait, you know, like I don't want to reveal the whole thing, but yeah, I guess this one is a little easier.

16:45 The, the smell of money, the, the, the scale of money, the, the scent of money. I don't know what that middle thing is. Yeah. I tried to make sure that the middle thing wasn't revealed. Cause I think that would automatically give it away. And then what's the fun in that? Because now it's like, sure. If you get the whole board revealed, you'll be able to guess it. Yeah. Like middle school level. The, I don't even know what you'd call this phonetic things. Uh, I'm just going to go with the scent of a woman.

17:16 That's the M is up. The M is up. The W is upside down as an M. Yeah. And the knee somehow is, it's a man's knee. Yes. Um, it's the, uh, the collar of money. That's a collar. The collar of money.

17:32 Yes. Okay. Yeah. And surely everybody now can understand that when, uh, there are so few tiles revealed that it is pointless to ask what it is. Cause there's just no way. I don't think that. But wasn't that fun? Like, I think we kind of like. No, that wasn't fun at all. We had the show in microcosm. Like, Mike, I'm, I'm, I'm just, I get what you're saying, but I'm, I guess I'm confused about your gripe here. Like you should be allowed to guess whenever you're ready to guess. And it shouldn't be up to the host to be like, well, no, I'll never guess it. No, just say yes or no. No, but the game sucks. Cause it's basically just the super Mario brothers three match game.

18:07 And then like this other thing where you have to guess what the images are being revealed, but you can't really know what the image even is until you reveal all the clues. Like we, we, you need to see all the clues. So you're basically just playing the game against an AI computer that can see behind the wall. In that sense, the AI computer, we're talking about that. I completely agree.

18:28 But the, the idea that you have to reveal all the things like, yeah, that like, but it's not impossible to get it before everything's revealed. So just like, so that part doesn't bother me. It does bother me that the AI computer just guesses it like, like with like, you know, statistical odds or something. What bothers me most though, Joe is, is none of these things that, uh, that you're describing. What bothers me is that none of that is fun.

18:52 Matching words isn't a fun video game. Uh, it was reduced to a mini game. And then the like, look at clues and guess what it is by using, uh, you know, uh, your D pad to type on, on the screen is also not fun. So none of this video game version is fun. Like this whole game was not fun. I did not think this game was fun. I did not. I was not like, wow, I can't wait to play more of this game, but I'm not just being devil's advocate. I've grown up. I always liked those, like those men memory matching games. I think those are fun little, little games and Rebus puzzles. I think are pretty cool.

19:26 I think the, the, the sums are both like things that can be fun. I don't think it was executed. But are you regretting bringing me on yet? Yeah. This is actually how I kick you off the show. Joe, can you go back?

19:38 We have an, we have an essential game. Rebus puzzles are cool. Like the, the, like, yeah, they're, they're kind of, they're clever. Can you just slowly fade him out? Yeah. Say goodbye to Joe. Don't, don't ignore my essential vote for this. We've talked about how ugly everybody is. We talked about how the prizes don't matter. We talked about how this game is a mini game in Super Mario Brothers three. We talked about the game show. There's no Alex Trebek. Yeah. There's no Alex Trebek in this game, which seems weird because they were able to, use his likeliness in at least one of those Jeopardy games. Like-ness, Mike. Like-liness. It's very likely that they use his likeness in at least one of those.

20:16 What else? What does the title screen look like? How do you get into the game? Oh, it, it takes forever to, to register your input. Oh, right. Yeah. I actually did think like, you know, am I plugged in? Yeah. I did notice that. Yeah. Also- This is what we're talking about in the 15 minute mark of an episode.

20:34 Well, no, because here's a funny thing, actually. This has, this has the official Nintendo logo in the title screen. I don't think that like, that happened too often. Usually it's just Nintendo in text, but this has the like red Nintendo logo with even the registered- Uh, you know, like- That is super interesting, Mike. Yeah. That's, that's pretty, uh, and it's also Nintendo of America. It's not licensed by Nintendo of Japan. Well, then that makes me think that Japan never got this game because it only works in English.

21:08 You ever think about that, Mike? Yeah, that's true. That's really true. Uh, but I just thought Nintendo of America would have to talk to Nintendo of Japan before they just go ahead and license any games. Maybe they, maybe they operate a little bit more independent. Maybe they're like a, you know, late teenager.

21:24 No, no, no. That's what got Sega in trouble, man. Well, you know. Nintendo's not allowed to do that. Different parents. Yeah, that's true. But, um, what else? Uh, so out of the numbers you can guess, you can guess between one and like what? One and twenty-five? Twenty-six? I don't know. Twenty-five. Twenty-six? What kind of board is that? It's a square. No, no, no. Hold on. There's another, there's another mode. There's another mode. So, we've got, we've got this thing where you've got the match, the matching puzzle that reveals the play on words puzzle thing.

21:57 If you win two of those, I think, in the show, I think you just win one of them, then you go to another smaller match puzzle where it just shows the models of cars. I think they are, they are actually real car brands. And, not just the brands, but also some models. Um, but they don't show you the car. Uh, and then if you get all those matched in 35 seconds, then you win the car. And they show you the car.

22:30 Um, I just wanted to get into that. I wanted to cover all the ground on the game. Great. I'm glad we covered that. That also feels like a rip of Wheel of Fortune. Yes. Uh, you know, like the final round and you just have to, you have like one. And then the game ends. And there's, there isn't even like a celebration screen. It just, would you like to play again? They give you a password though, in case you want to play that exact sequence again. Out of all the prizes that you can win, um, of which there are a lot of prizes. You could, in one round, you could win water skis and you can also win wallpaper.

23:08 Yeah. Is that something that people were like buying as a set and it was kind of hard to come by? Like, I don't really know much about wallpaper. Right. And, and not even that though. Just like wallpaper is like, I don't know, is that going to go with your room? Like, is that going to go with your house? Like wallpaper is very specific. And then like, it's, they're not like offering the installation. Like that stuff's a bitch to take on and then eventually take off.

23:30 That's why I'm also just like, it, was it also a form of like, was that like, you're kind of balling out to get wallpaper? Right. Water skis. Like now I gotta like, what do I do in the winter? I don't live near water. Like, yeah, there was a boat. I remember, I remember I want a boat or how, sorry. I want to, I want a jet ski and then I want a house boat, but I'm just wondering if this person lives in Denver.

23:54 Um, I don't know what they would do with that. I'm sure that if this were the actual game, then you could sort of get some cash value out of it, you know? Um. Oh, so water skis are not another way of saying jet skis. No. What? No, those are like literal skis that work on the water. Yeah. And now granted they're expensive, so it's not a bad prize, but I definitely thought you were getting jet skis when you got the water ski and now I'm a little disappointed. I'm really sorry about that, Mike.

24:22 Wow. So that just means that pretty much everything in round two sucks. Like round one was offering motorcycles, rings, mink coats, pianos, uh, TVs. Round two, water skis, uh, clocks, rugs. Yeah. There's the rug. T sets. Like what the hell? I think in the actual show, uh, there was a gumball machine that they won and it was like, why do I want a gumball machine?

24:51 Yeah. That's such an odd thing to win. Like, see sometimes like, like price is right. I get when you win weird stuff and you won like really weird stuff back in the like original run of prices. Right. Because it was literally supposed to be like, you're in a department store and guess the price of this item and now it's yours. Right. Like that all makes sense.

25:10 Uh, what, why are we tying in prizes to just the knocking of the matching of things? Like, doesn't it feel like you're winning a lot in this game for doing the bare minimum? That was, that was the late eighties, early nineties. Like, do you remember, uh, on Nickelodeon back in the day? Um, they give a kid. Toys R Us spree. Yeah. Like it was all this about shopping. That was nuts. Yeah, no, it's true. And yeah, everybody got water skis in the eighties. So now we're paying for it with inflation. That is true. That is the prime, prime factor in modern inflation. And I have never seen a single person in water skis. Same. And I've been to Hawaii. Wow. Always got to name drop Hawaii, huh?

25:56 Name drop as if it's a celebrity. I've been to Hawaii with Alex Trebek. Well, now you're name dropping. Yeah. But I, I also didn't. So don't quote me on that. Uh, I think we've wasted people's time enough at this point, right? I think we can push it a little further. Yeah. Um, you know, it's weird. The game FAQ section, uh, of all the solutions doesn't include that one that I was talking to you about earlier. The, uh, clothing softener.

26:26 It's just clothes softener. No, I know, but it's sure, but it's not there either. Wow. Isn't that weird? Like you just make it up. No, no, no, no. It's, it's definitely in the game, but I'm saying something happened here where like, this is an incomplete, uh, game FAQ. Can you report it? Are we going to get this guy in trouble? Eh, he released it in 2002. It's 14 kilobytes and it's version 1.1. So he didn't say it was finished. Okay. You're right. But you shouldn't be putting a one point anything. If you think it's incomplete, he didn't finish the FAQ, but we're going to finish the episode with the essential games list.

27:09 All right. So I'm going to pick the numbers one and 17. Uh, the tile for one reveals to be no. And the tile for 17 also reveals to be no. That means that this game is not on the essential games list. Uh, I just did not like this game at all. I, I can't, you know, it's the kind of thing that like can just be experienced so quickly now that it's kind of crazy that it was ever like a big to do at any point in human society. Like this, I experienced everything I needed to in this game in five minutes and I didn't even enjoy those five minutes. I didn't make notes for this podcast for this episode. So sorry for the rambling, but like, this is, this is one of the least enjoyable video games. If you can call it a video game that I've, uh, experienced Sean.

28:00 I I'd like to apologize to the listener. Um, I know that we may not always know what to talk about and we may not always have very, uh, like thought provoking things to say in, in our episodes, but I always think that we at least have something to talk about. And this time we really didn't, um, for a significant portion of it.

28:25 And, uh, I just want to thank you for stopping by and letting us complain about this. Uh, uh, would you call it an adaptation, uh, this adaptation of a game show, which I think, you know, like if you just got it on in the background as a television show, it's like, it's not a great show, but it's also not the, the worst show. But I think this is the worst game show to turn into a game, unless you're going to also give people real prizes. So like maybe it had to be more like, uh, like a live service, like, uh, uh, like the queue kind of game. Like what was that game in the mid aughts or late aughts? It was just like queue show or like where everybody on the internet.

29:09 Oh yeah. Yeah. What was that? Uh, with the, it was a quizzy thing. Um, yeah, I didn't talk about that, but as of now it's, you said worst game show to turn into a video game, but I would think that would be like the newlywed show, you know, like, cause you, how would you do the one player mode? Yeah. You didn't know anything about the computer. Okay. Well, I know because you know what, you could turn that first. You could turn in, you could turn that into like a story game.

29:36 Yeah. You have to like, you go on like a, a game of life kind of style mode first where you learn about the computer and everything. And then you go on the show with sure. Yeah. And then you get divorced after the show and then you have to go to the casino and win back your life. It could be like a multimodal, like a genre shifting game. Um, yeah, this is just a simulator of winning knickknacks and then it stops and then you can do it again. So yeah. That's a real strategy by the way. Uh, if you want to win back your wife, uh, go to the casino. Gamble. Thank you.