370 · Pipe Dream

• It Takes about 5 seconds to get the idea. It takes a lifetime to get good at it. Really good
• It’s originally known as Pipe Mania but Pipe Dream is definitely the better name
• Isn’t this the hacking game in Bioshock?!
• Within BioShock, a variation of the game exists as a means of hacking vending machines, robots and cameras.[31] Alien Swarm, Saints Row IV and Warframe also use Pipe Dream-like minigames to represent hacking tasks.
• Pipe Dream like hacking is a main mechanic of Half-Life: Alyx, with players solving puzzles in 3D space as a means of hacking doors and electronics in VR.
• The game takes place on a grid where green slime, called "flooz," flows from a designated entry point. A dispenser holds five pipe sections, with the bottom piece placed when the player clicks an empty square. New pieces drop in from the top, and they must be used as-is, without rotation or flipping.
• The goal is to create a continuous pipeline for the flooz, meeting a minimum length requirement. After a delay, the flooz starts flowing and stops if it reaches an open end or the playfield's edge. If the pipeline meets the required length, the player advances; otherwise, the game ends.
• Before the flooz enters a pipe, players can swap it for the next dispenser piece, but this incurs a score penalty and a short delay.
• Later levels introduce added complications, such as:
• Higher minimum pipeline lengths and shorter delays before the flooz starts to flow.
• Higher flow speeds.
• Obstacles or pipe sections already on the field, which cannot be replaced.
• An end piece into which the flooz must be routed. Failing to do so ends the game, even if the length requirement has been met.
• Openings at opposite edges of the grid, allowing the flooz to wrap around from one to the other.
• Reservoirs that take a few seconds to fill once the flooz enters them, giving the player extra time to place pipes.
• One-way pipe sections that allow flow only in the indicated direction.

Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.

00:00 Pipe Dream. It takes about five seconds to get the idea. It takes a lifetime to get good at it. Really good.

00:24 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. Is that statement true? That could have been just like the opening argument for the game, I guess. Like that's what you could have said outside of the back of the box, you know?

00:47 I feel like I've got to break down that last part though. Like it takes a lifetime to get good. Really good. But it's saying really good like... So it takes a lifetime just to get really good. Or does it take a lifetime to get good? Well yeah, I mean, it'll take you any amount of time to get good at it, but you should know that any idea of you being good at the game isn't truly crystallized until a lifetime later.

01:14 Huh. Interesting. Just so you know. Got it. What if you had a whole warehouse full of plumbing parts coming at you, and you had to build a huge pipeline out of them? What if there was a big puddle of slimy green stuff called flues, and it was running through the pipes right behind you? Well, that's the idea behind Pipe Dream. This is like the pitch meeting.

01:40 That was actually an ad that they put out. And it has like a kid trying to like desperately grab onto a pipe as he like falls down a chasm of pipes. It's funny. That was actually a thing that they had that is the least exciting for a kid. Right, right. It's making it look like a horror game. Yeah. No, it actually kind of sounded more like you were trying to make the game sound like ridiculous. Like I kind of understand that like the kid hanging from the pipe like that I can visualize in an ad, but it sounded more sarcastic the way you said it. Yes, that's true.

02:22 You know, it took me less than five seconds to get the idea of this game. Do you know why that is? Because you played the game before? Because I played this game before in, isn't this the hacking game in Bioshock? Well, yeah. This whole thing has been reduced to a minigame in another video game?

02:40 Well, I mean, did you ever, I mean, like, you know, you had Windows as a kid. Did you play the Windows version of this game before Bioshock? No, I only had, my Windows games were weird. There was a skiing game where the eventually the abominable snowman would eat you or whatever. And that was weird. I had a game where there was like mice.

03:01 Yeah, you were the mouse and there were cats and you had to try to trap them while still being able to get the cheese. That one I'm not sure. That one sounds familiar to me a little bit. I feel like I had weird ones, too, that are not. Like, I had a pinball one, but not the one everyone talks about, like Galaxy Pinball or whatever. I think it's called Space Cadet. Is that what it's called? That is the Windows XP built-in video game, yes. Yes, yeah. And obviously we all had Solitaire. Solitaire. We all had Solitaire. I think we all had Chips Challenge.

03:34 Unless you didn't have Chips Challenge. Didn't have Chips Challenge. What's Chips Challenge? That was another bundled, like, just in the apps folder in the start menu of, like, Windows 98. On the computer, though, this wasn't known as Pipe Dream. It was known as Pipe Mania. But Pipe Dream is definitely the better name. Oh, yeah. I mean, Pipe Mania, I guess, like, that gets across the, like, wow, this is crazy. But Pipe Dream, that's just a perfect little play on words. Or maybe you'll have Pipe Mania. Like, you'll be dreaming. Oh, wait. I did it again. Pipe Dream. You'll be manic.

04:12 Like, obsessive over the pipes. Hmm. That's funny. I thought I had it as Pipe Dream, but that could just be some Mandela shit. No, no. I mean, they might have been by that time. I'm just saying when it originally released on computers, because, you know, that's where it started. It was referred to as Pipe Mania. I think Pipe Dream is now just, you know, the way it's referred to in general. So I agree with you there.

04:34 But apparently... The Kleenex of Pipe Games. Yes. Yeah, yeah. And speaking of the Kleenex of Pipe Games, or just Pipe Games in general, I recognize this from Bioshock. But apparently this isn't, like, the only instance where it's, like, reduced to a... Not necessarily a hacking thing, but, like, a minigame inside of a game. Apparently it's also in Saints Row 4, Warframe, Alien Swarm. I just find it interesting. Apparently Half-Life Alyx? You were the one who played that, right, Sean?

05:05 Yeah, maybe I didn't get that far, though. I think that the codifier as, like, turning this into a minigame, or, like, the sort of stereotypical hacking minigame, it was definitely Bioshock, though. I gotta say, I didn't have this on Windows. I've never played Bioshock.

05:26 Not on my bingo card for this week's episode was that you both would be, like, pretty intimately familiar with this game from your childhoods. I just thought this was, like, the most out-there game that no one's ever heard of. Wow. Okay. We had very different experiences.

05:42 I'm not that young, okay? I played Bioshock, like, in my, you know, late teenage years. Well, yeah, but I'm assuming the Windows version of it was when you were a kid, right? Didn't have it. Oh, yeah, I'm the one that knows it from childhood.

05:57 Oh, gotcha. So, Sean knows it from childhood. I kind of consider you both very youthful right now, so I consider this still the childhoods. I was just gonna say that we're representing all three generations. Sean is the childhood, I'm the teenager, and you're now learning it as an adult. So, we could talk about this game pretty confidently.

06:14 We should probably just describe the game in case there is somebody out there who hasn't played Pipe Dream, which wouldn't surprise me, even though, apparently, I have some familiarity with it. The game takes place on a grid where green slime flows from, like, the entry valve of the pipes. The one piece that, like, kind of isn't. Or white slime. Yeah. Oh, it's not green? I think it's white. Okay. I assume that the pipes themselves are, like, those plastic spoons that change colors when liquid's on them, and the slime inside the pipes is green.

06:49 Like the blood in your veins. It's not blue. Yeah. Anyway, so that slime starts at the beginning, and basically, it continues to flow, so you have to continue to build pipes so that the slime doesn't just pour out. So, you have a selection of five different pipes with the bottom piece being the piece that you are putting into an empty square. New pieces continue to drop in from the top.

07:17 So, you kind of have this Tetris-style rotation of, like, knowing what pieces are coming, but you have to be strategic about your placement because you might not need the current pipe. The goal is to create a continuous pipeline so that the slime can keep, or they're calling it flues in the game. The flues. The floozies. Yeah. The floozies. The floozies can continue to flu or flow.

07:39 And then, there is, like, a, for each stage, like, a minimum pipe length that you have to meet. It doesn't end after you hit that, so you can keep going for even more bonus points, but you basically have to hit, like, you know, make a pipe that's eight pieces long or 15 pieces long. It continues to get more challenging as the game goes on. Yeah. So, one thing to clarify, though, because you made the Tetris comparison, one might assume, especially if you've played sort of the, like, you know, the minigame version, that you can rotate. You cannot rotate anything.

08:20 It's just, if you don't, if you have no use for this particular section, you just put it somewhere where, you know, you don't need it right now. Yeah, and I think that's a great distinction, but also, like, a necessary one for the game, right? It would be kind of broken if it's just, you know, you just turn the— Yeah, it would be kind of a boring game. Turn it at 90 degrees in any particular direction. It works in Tetris because the shape is still very specific, and so when you get the T block, there's still only so many ways you can place it as opposed to, you know, a turning pipe. You need it to turn in a very specific direction.

08:57 So now that we've laid down the rules, Joe, you know, since you're the one who didn't have any familiarity, did it take you five seconds to get the idea, and do you think you got good at it by the time of the recording of this podcast?

09:09 Yeah, it took me, you know, more or less five seconds to get the idea. Maybe there might have been a couple things that I, like, realized a little later, but, like, yeah, I got what I was doing pretty quickly.

09:19 I'll say, you know what, actually, the things that didn't come to me very easily just from playing it, I had to kind of, like, look up, was, like, am I trying to get this water off the screen? Or this flues, sorry, off the screen? Or, like, do I want it to go in at the longest distance possible? Or, you know, which is—that's the case. You want the longer the distance. You're trying to match a certain distance.

09:40 That's the one thing that, like, was not clear to me without, you know, kind of reading into it a little more. But, yeah, otherwise it was pretty easy to learn. As far as did I get good? No. It is super unclear. Like, if there is a reason to keep going if you've reached that distance. Right. Because, yeah, in the game it doesn't tell you to do that. It's just, like, make sure it's this long.

10:08 Um, I was kind of remembering, again, the Bioshock version, which has an outlet that you have to reach. Um, so I guess I kind of got colored by that past experience. Um, but, yeah, you're just kind of, like, freestyling, trying to get the longest stuff, getting bonuses with loop-de-loops and all that.

10:31 Um, it's kind of freeform. And there's, like, a weird way of, like, the game, you know, dishing out score for placing the pipes where, um, basically you get points for, uh, the slime, the flues, uh, as it reaches the next pipe. You get points for that. But then you also, uh, lose points for any pieces of pipe that you have that you didn't use at all to, like, in the puzzle itself. Like, those go away and you lose points. However, those points that you lose are a smaller amount or are a larger amount than if you just place a pipe over the pipe that you knew wasn't going to work.

11:16 And what I mean by that is, essentially, the game allows you to replace pipes, something that you can't do in a Tetris-style game, right? You can't say, like, oh, I didn't mean to put that T-block there. I'm going to replace it with this L-shaped block, right? In this game, you are able to kind of, like, go over your mistakes, provided you're still racing against this slime coming out. But it makes it a lot more manageable of, like, oh, I didn't get the piece I wanted, but it's fine because I can just kind of, like, place it over here for now and eventually just, like, fix it later.

11:49 Granted, that's a problem that only comes if you're able to, like, make it that long, but it still is just kind of, like, weird. It feels like it should be a little harder and you should have to, like, well, if you just get a pipe that sucks for you right now, it's like you just have to kind of, like, deal with that later and try to, like, make it work into your grander puzzle, not replace it. Yeah, what I found myself doing, you know, at first it would be putting things where I might be able to use it later and then replace it if I need to. But I will say that sometimes that did get me because sometimes I would be at a point where, like, okay, the floo's is almost to the end of my pipe so far and I'm racing against the clock.

12:31 So then I would just start putting things down and replacing them over and over again to quickly cycle to the piece I need and lose a lot of points that way. So, like, the punishment is there. Yeah, it does want you to be thoughtful as you lay your pipe.

12:43 What's that? Well, oh, sorry, I didn't. I just said it wants you to be thoughtful. Yeah, yeah. The most intricate part of any of these puzzles comes from when you have, like, the, like, depth pieces. So the pieces that kind of work on, like, two different... The crossovers. Yeah, the crossovers. And so you can eventually make it so that the slime goes over previously filled panels but in a new direction.

13:11 It's really satisfying when you do pull that off. I did manage to do it once in my playthrough and I really like just, like, you know, that's, like, oddly satisfying. When you're able to connect them in that way. I think the whole game kind of meets that oddly satisfying thing until it's not oddly satisfying because you suddenly can't, you know, like, you just can't do it fast enough or can't meet the requirement. In which case it's very frustrating to watch the ooze beat you.

13:41 Yeah, I was... Maybe this just comes from the decade more experience I apparently have with Pipe Dream. But I was having fun with the crossovers. You know, maybe more than once in my playthrough.

13:56 I'm better than you. Yeah, I like the crossovers. Don't get me wrong. I'm not... I actually think every piece... Every piece that they have in this game is interesting and enhances the game. And that's to say that there are pipes other than just the different directions. There are pipes that, you know, can slow the... You know, it takes, like, more time for the pipe to fill up. So you get, like, a little extra... A little reservoir. Yeah. And then you have the pumps, which, you know, speed up the flows. You have to be careful about where you're placing those. Don't place those until you have kind of an area already built out in advance of them.

14:37 You know, I think that's the kind of stuff that I was looking forward to as, like, as the game kept going on. Because it's not really a puzzle that you have to solve. It's a puzzle that you're building, right? This is a little different than other puzzle games we played on the NES. I guess what I mean by that is, like, Tetris has modes where, like, you know, you can just join in. And it's like, here's a bunch of, you know, already destroyed blocks all over the screen, right? And you have to, like, fill those out. And that's not necessarily a puzzle either. You're just dropping them down and it's a little more challenging. Here, you're kind of getting the same thing where, like, you know, there's a start point.

15:12 And you have to just kind of make this pipe go on for as long as possible. But then, like, as the game goes on, there are, like, you know, different mechanics are added to the game. And different, like, the edges of the screen sometimes open up so you can connect one pipe all the way over to the other side. Kind of, like, wrapping around the puzzle itself. Yeah. I think I get where this is more so a freeform puzzle game. It does not have a set solution. I think I prefer those in general to, like, a lot of the games that we've played that, like, you have that has the built-in reset button because of soft locking and all that. Because they have a way that they want you to play the game.

15:59 And this does, too. But it's more of a, like, kind of like a doodling kind of thing than a, what did they want me to do here? Like, it just gives you a bunch of tools to play with. Yeah, it's open. And there's levels of success and failure. You know, there's not just one answer. It's kind of an open-world puzzle game. Open-world puzzle game about laying pipe. Right. Oh, I heard you.

16:27 And then there's a, there's an actual, like, Tetris mechanic in the bonus levels of this game where it does just, like, remove the grid. And you are essentially dropping pieces of pipe. Dropping pipe? Yeah, you're dropping pipe down to the bottom of the screen as you're building up. I'm going to milk this. I was going to say, it's over, Sean. It's over. Come on.

16:52 Nothing's over. You can, you can carry it as long as you want. But I guess, you know, this mode is, is an interesting bonus level, like something to switch it up. But it's probably the most frustrating, the most likely to, like, end quickly. Because this one, you can't, like, overwrite your mistakes or, or hide things far out. Like, you just kind of have to hope that the pieces you get are useful quick and make as long of a pipe.

17:17 Lay down as much pipe as possible, I guess. There it is. Yeah, no, this is, this could only work as a bonus. And I, yeah, I did not like this, this stage at all. I thought it was fine. Like, I just kept dropping the straight forward, like, all the way up pieces. And I'm like, that'll be good enough. Because otherwise, it's, it, I have watched people. In fact, I'm actually watching, as we speak, somebody playing this bonus game. And they're like, oh, I'm actually going to, I'm going to plan out a loop-de-loop in this. That I'm just, like, dropping one on top of the other. Like, you can't, you can't do that. Like, that guy just knew they were going to drop.

18:00 Right. I mean, there's just too many things for your brain to be doing right now in, in the middle of these bonus levels. Like, imagine if you were playing Tetris, but, like, but also not only the, the shape, but, like, the color and, like, some other symbol on it mattered, too. Like, it just, it's a lot to keep track of. It'd be very difficult. Agreed. But theoretically, in the base game, uh, there are people who are able to, like, not only understand the structure they're building within the grid, but look at the next five pieces and say, you know, oh, yeah, I know exactly what I'm going to do for all five of these pieces. You know, like, they're able to plan, like, that far ahead. I guess that's the, uh, the part that takes forever to master.

18:40 A lifetime. A lifetime, sorry. Yeah, not forever. Nobody gets forever. Nobody does. But I think it's the added, like, they have gravity now. I think that's part of why it's, like, even somebody that's perfected the standard game mode is probably not going to be that good at the bonus stage. Yeah, you got to stack things on top of each other, even if they don't connect, just to get them to the height you want them.

19:07 Okay. Okay. Okay. And then the challenges as the game goes on mostly rely on them laying down more non-negotiable pipes. Yeah. These are non-negotiable. They are there and you have to just kind of, I guess that becomes a little more of like, again, it's still open to whatever interpretation. You're able to destroy the pipes you lay down to continue to build over them. It's just that's their concept for how do we keep making this tougher and tougher is basically less free spaces for you to build upon and more forced directions. And that really comes to its strongest part when you have the one-way pipes where they can only go in a very specific direction. So you have to very carefully plan the way you're even feeding the pipes.

20:39 Yeah. They got those. They got, that's like the only real constraint that forces your hand and direction. Everything else is more so forcing your hand in like how fast the, like that fluse is coming up from behind you.

20:59 Yeah. I guess sometimes there's things that force like you to go horizontally instead of vertically or vice versa. But yeah, only those arrow pipes like are a specific direction.

21:12 In the November 1990 issue of Nintendo Power, you were able to cut out a bunch of pipe pieces and a pipe puzzle and submit it to the Pipe Dream contest where basically you had to, they had a bunch of pieces already laid out and you had to connect the whole entire thing, like put these pieces so that wherever they land. Now granted in that one, you could obviously rotate the pieces. Um, so maybe not, maybe not that challenging. However, it also shows how much of this video game doesn't even need the,

21:48 like the NES power behind it. Like you can do it with cutouts. Like you can't play Super Mario Brothers with, with cutouts. See, but you do, you would need somebody to like use their finger and be like, Oh, and, and now the fluid's here and the fluid's there now. Like I, it could be like 3d cutouts and you can actually just have fluid running through. Yeah. Just like spray some water on it. Yeah. Use capillary action.

22:15 I'm trying to look up the grand prize for, for the winner was, uh, a trip to Seattle. Four days, three nights, round trip airfare for two hotel accommodations. You get a grand tour of Nintendo, meet Nintendo game counselors, talk some hardcore NES with them. You don't know what game counselors are. These are people that people would like travel to Seattle to meet. No, no, no. You would call them on your phone. You'd call a Nintendo hotline and then Nintendo game counselor, you would tell them like, you know, Hey, I'm really stuck on ghost and goblins. And they'd be like, what part? And then you would tell them, and then they would basically walk you through it over the phone.

22:56 Okay. It's a really cool, expensive thing. Yeah, no, I never did that. I don't think we could afford it. We couldn't afford that, but we could afford calling Toys R Us. And we did call Toys R Us for a N64 game called mischief makers. Um, we just didn't really even understand the game, uh, at all. So my mom let us call the people at Toys R Us. And, I think it was like an hour long phone call and they weren't ready for mischief makers. I'll just say that. I, I really wish I was there for this. Uh, also you get to have lunch at Cafe Mario where all the Nintendo people eat. That's what they're saying.

23:36 I guess this is the equivalent, like, is there still like a Nintendo presence in Seattle? Of course. That's where Nintendo of America is based. Yeah. But like, are there any fun like activities? Like, I know we, we've got the, the store. Yeah. I actually feel like it's more fun now than it was back then.

23:56 Okay. So you've been to Seattle. No, I haven't. I'm saying I would assume that Nintendo of America has only gotten more fun. Not for like, look, it's like going to Apple, right? You can't just, you know, stroll up to Apple park and be like, let me into the Steve jobs theater. Right. But like, it's, it's a thing that they have for, for people who are welcomed. So if you got welcomed to Nintendo of America's headquarters, I'm sure they probably have like a complete in box copy of every Nintendo game. Just like, you know, ready for you to look at and potentially play. I don't know. I'm, I'm spitballing. So this is all fact.

24:29 It's all fact. I've been there. Uh, I'm not going to keep the secret any longer. Nintendo invited me out when we started the show right before we started the show. Actually, I told him, right. They heard about us. Yeah. And they were like, well, only invited Mike. Yeah. I mean, why would they, yeah, they would not invite me. Yeah. They might ask Mike hid the invitations for us. That's, I guess Nintendo felt like this was a worthy conversation though, because of, uh, you know, like working with pipes and Mario's a plumber. So maybe there was like some kind of crossover going on there. Yeah. When I first saw that this was the game we were playing, I was like, is this related to Mario somehow? Is this going to be like in the Mario universe?

25:06 It's funny. Cause it's not related to Nintendo really at all, but it just has to be in their issue of Nintendo power. It's made by bulletproof software. It's a pretty cool name. Yeah. Uh, second prize was a, uh, game of your choice. And a bulletproof software t-shirt. Now the t-shirt is bulletproof. No, it's just says bulletproof software on it. Are there any constraints on to what game you can get? It does. You know, it's funny. It does say free BPS, which I'm going to assume stands for bulletproof software, uh, game of your choice, but it doesn't specify like for the NES.

25:44 Yeah. Hmm. You know, like it doesn't say, it says software. Do they, do they do any like office, like utility? Software. I'm looking up what they, what else they did. Cause that, that is a fun experiment. So, um,

25:59 let's see, released in, you could have asked for, um, the MSX two version of Tetris. Okay. that's, that they are Tetris people. That makes sense. they're absolutely Tetris people. They are, they're Tetris. They're Hattris. They're Weltris. What is Hattris? And what is Weltris? Hattris is a game where, uh, it's exactly what it sounds like. What do you think you're doing in Hattris? What are you, what are you stacking?

26:26 Hats. Yes. Wow. Okay. Uh, but no, no, but not, not like in shapes or whatever. It's the, you know, like they're not like, Oh, L shaped hats or whatever. They're, they're like cool, you know, different hats falling from the screen. And, uh, they have to be arranged in specific patterns, uh, that fall on people's heads. And you have to put the hats on those heads. And what's Weltris then?

26:50 Welch is grape juice. Oh yeah, that's right. Weltris. I wasn't familiar with, so you'll have to forgive me. I'm, I'm just going to read off Wikipedia here, but, well, just was the first Tetris sequel, like by the guy who, what's his name? Alexey Pajitanov. Um, yeah, the, the creator of Tetris. This is like, I'm going to make a Tetris sequel and it's going to be called Welltris.

27:16 And what do you think you do in Welltris? What is the, what is the forget the Tris part, right? We know what Hattris was. Oh, wow. Well, I already kind of looked at it, a picture of it. So I have an advantage here and it looks very, interesting. What's the guess, Sean? Oh, I don't have a guess. I have no idea. They're falling down a well, and a well, of course, would be a 3D cube. I was going to say something very anti-Welsh.

27:46 It looks like just from these images, it looks like the pieces fall. You're looking at it like you're looking down the well from above, and there's four walls to it. It looks like the pieces fall on any of those walls and land flat in front of you. It's really hard to describe, but it's very simple if you look at a picture. Everybody look up a picture.

28:10 Well, I'm going to send a picture to the group chat for a second, just so you guys can see this, because I talked about the full-page advertisement of the kid trying to grab a pipe before he falls to his death, but that's not the only graphic image of Pipe Dream. They just like to put kids screaming on their box arts.

28:36 Is that a kid even in the background? It looks like a full-grown adult. Yeah. No, he's been falling for so long that he's aged. He grew up. Yeah, I get that. He was a kid when he started playing. Well, it does take a lifetime to get good. We're out of ideas, right? We've been out of ideas for Go More. The essential games list. No, we've been laying down the pipes of this episode the entire time, and the flues has not been catching us, but I think it finally caught us. Actually,

29:05 probably a good thing to mention, you don't have to lose for the level to end. You don't have to let the flues touch something in order for it to end. Wait, in any game? In any game, you don't have to lose. That's how I get to the end of any level. As I failed, the level ended. I did it. Huh. I don't think that analogy is going to work as much as you think. Why not? Because in Super Mario Bros., you have to win to get to the end of the level. But also, the level ends when I fail. This is my end? It's my truth that this game ends when I fall down

29:38 a pitfall. Well, I just didn't know about the... Because in the first stages, it doesn't have to happen, but there is a... What do they refer to it in the manual as? An end piece. There is an end piece that will basically fully connect where it was starting from to where it was ending and just finish out the puzzle for you and you'll get all the points. Yeah, if you're somebody that likes closure or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Again, falling back into that oddly satisfying part. Okay, now we're out of ideas, so we're just going to do the Essential Games List.

30:13 Pipe Dream, which is the better name, is simple enough that it totally works. I don't have any notes on the actual game. I wouldn't want them to make this any more complicated. You could create... Using the power of AI, you could probably create 75 other pipes that could potentially be in your lineup, right? And you could do that to change up the game and make it more interesting. I don't think that it needs that, but I also don't think that the game that we got here is enough to be more than a...

30:49 More than a check it? Check it out. Sure, it's harmless. But it's... No one's... I don't know, maybe, but I don't know if anybody would want to spend a lifetime to master this game. You'll get by just fine playing it as it is and say, yeah, I understand this video game. I don't necessarily think those are the best kind of video games. The ones that just... Just because they're simple enough and you get them and you can play them and be okay at them, like, I usually, even though there is, like, unlimited replayability, I usually jump off those pretty fast. And so I'm also going to jump off Pipe Dream here. What about you, Sean?

31:28 You thinking... You mentioning the idea, like, it's a very simple game, but also the idea of, like, oh, you could, like, throw 30 different kinds of pipes in here. Makes me wonder if, like, maybe one day over the next couple hundred years we'll see, like, a Bolatro-like, but it's with pipes. It's, like, simple enough, you know? But it doesn't have quite the staying power as cards, but... That just was, like, a random thought that you gave me there. I agree that this is... Like, this works better as a...

32:08 out-of-the-box sort of Windows software or, I guess, a hacking minigame. I don't know how much this MSRP'd for, but I hope it wasn't too much, considering what the game actually entails. I think it's fun. I have a lot of memories with this of just screwing around on the computer, but, yeah, I don't know how much I could... I could consider this a fully-fledged video game. Not essential. Joe? Yeah, largely similar thoughts from me.

32:43 I did find this interesting. I thought it was a pretty cool puzzle-y experience, and it was satisfying, as we talked about. It's even kind of satisfying to watch. But, um... But, yeah, overall, it's a... It's nothing to write home about. It's just kind of... It's going to blend in to the background of the NES game library for me. So, uh, I think, overall, it's like, yeah, I like the new category you invented of check it, because I think it's a check it, because I don't even know if I'd say, like, it's a play it. Like, it is if you want to, I guess. If you find it, it sounds interesting, but it's also, like, it's a take it or leave it.

33:19 So, uh, I'm gonna say no, not essential. Uh, Sean, you just talking about, like, the MSRP, I have to imagine the game was not, um, sold at a discount or anything, just because it has less stuff. Like, that would be nice, but it's not true. However, you made me check, like, well, what's it going for? I'm price charting right now? And you can get a loose copy of Pipe Dream for $8.70, but that would be a rip-off, because the complete in box is the cheapest complete in box I've ever seen. I'm talking about a box, a cart, a manual. They're saying you can get it for $22.

33:55 That's pretty good. Complete in box from the cardboard? Like, how many of these are around that they're only $22? I don't know, did you ever play Chex Quest? No. So, Chex Quest was a video game that was included for free in Chex Mix. Not Chex Mix, Chex Cereal. And that's like, you know, this is kind of like something that I'm thinking, like, oh, maybe this was just like, uh, a really cheap, like, like a Burger King game. Um, I would, that I would, I see historical, uh, like, things you can compare it to as maybe they were nice enough to not charge $70, uh,

34:38 in 1990 money to, to, you know, the customer. That's funny because I remember a, uh, Trix cereal video game that I got with my, like, you know, with my cereal that I could put in the computer and I played and I just Google searched that and apparently it's lost media and nobody can figure out if it really ever exists. Oh, wow. Yeah, Chex Quest was just a Doom clone, so a lot easier to do I myself was a big, uh, Captain Crunch's Crunchling Adventure guy. Oh, so they all did it. Yeah. Chex Quest was the best, though. I'm, I'm seeing Captain Crunch's Crunchlings Adventure right now and it's kind of scary graphics.

35:19 Yeah, yeah. You take care of a little Crunchling, everybody knows what those are, and you have to do little activities with them, like, like riding a skateboard backwards and climbing a mountain. Tamagotchi? It's like half Tamagotchi and then there's like three mini games to help train them. This is peak And like by Tamagotchi it's like you feed them, you train them.

35:39 There's a food meter, a happiness meter, and then like there's just a button for go online. Yeah, I never knew what that did. All right, maybe more 1996 to 1995 then. All right, well, if you want to stay in 1990, next week we'll be playing Rally Bike. And who knows? And who knows? And who knows?