00:00.00 kinkella Welcome back to the pseudo archeology podcast episode 116 I am still your host Dr Andrew Kingkella and we are talking about the face on Mars and actually we've pretty much already talked about it. But what we haven't dealt with is Zach Mccraken and the alien mindbenders now. A little backstory to some of this I know this is gonna be very exciting and shocking to you at the same time but when I was growing up I was kind of nerdy. Oh yeah, let's just it's time I know I'm around friends. Yeah. Kind of a nerdy dude and in my nerd Dom I was really into astronomy I actually had a telescope um I'm one of the rare people on earth who actually saw Haley's comet in 1986 1987 and I also had. A um. 01:02.60 kinkella Subscription to astronomy magazine right? So I was really into all this stuff and sure the young teenage me totally knew that there was no such thing as a face on Mars but I loved the whole idea of astronomy I loved things like the viking mission. And I think as I brought it before I loved the show in search of even though I knew it was all full of it I just loved thinking about this kind of stuff you know and on top of just a joy for science as a teen in the early mid 1980 S I also like comedy you know I was a huge fan of like Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. My favorite book of all time is Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy and so I like it when creative people can use pseudo archeological concepts be they the face on Mars. Be they that the sphinx is way older than we think be they that we've been contacted by aliens right? Basically everything this show is about I like it when it's used to take me on a journey through story. That's just sort of fun and lighthearted. So. This video game came out in 1988 and it was called Zach Mcraken and the alien mindenders so what's the deal with this video game. This video game came out for the commodore 64 now any of you who are like. 02:34.53 kinkella I don't know 45 years old and younger you have no idea what that is so a commodore 64 was like the early days of computing you guys. This is before the world was just Apple Macs and Ibm Pcs right we're in a world of that where there's basically 2 kinds of computers. Yes I know for the pcs different companies make them. But it's all it all has the same operating system. You know what I mean in the eighty s it wasn't really like that there were all these other ones. It was like the t r s eighty that we all called the trash 80 right? The commodore 64 the commodore one 28 um, there was Apple products like the Apple two e that's the world of the early nineteen eighty s in terms of computers right? It's it's still where it's like it hasn't really been standardized yet and it was like oh you're a commodore 64 family you know and like the rich kids were like an apple family that that's that world. It's very different. It's funny I I haven't seen like shows on Tv at all that really capture this quite yet and if you own something any any of these computers basically ran the same. Which is if you wanted to run a program on them such as the video game Zach Mccrakeen and the alien mind benders what you had to do was first buy the game or the program. It would come on a floppy disc floppy disks were big. They were like four and a half inches by four and a half inches and they're super flat and wiggly. 04:09.74 kinkella You know they were floppy and you would put it in the disk drive and then it would have to load and as you played a video game or ran a program. It would constantly have to load every like 20 seconds as it needed more information. So in the case of the video game. Every time you like walked into a new room before you got there. It would go ye and then na na ni na na and na ni na na and ye and and and na na na na na na na na na na and then and that was the disk drive which you bought separately right? You would buy you had to buy the computer then the Dis drive. And a monitor all separate for the equivalent of of what I'm sure would be like $1800 today or something dude you guys it was insane. Um, the video games themselves were like fifty bucks in 1987 you know so these were these are expensive propositions. You didn't get 1 of these every day but games always progressed slowly right? You would sort of do 1 thing in a room and then you'd walk the character to the right side or left side of the screen. And that would be them walking into a new room and then it would load rain and in and in and and and in and in and and and and then the screen would change and you'd be in a new room. It was very 2 dimensional I think you would call it a point and click adventure game. 05:40.27 kinkella Ah, but very early and also on the screen so you have a very simple screen. You know pixels are really huge. Ah and you have like at the bottom of the screen several different statements like go left pick up the torch you know or whatever. And you would kind of click on those and the character in there who you are playing Zach Mccraen who's sort of a swashbuckling um Indiana Jones type as you go through this game and so this would this would take you like all afternoon just to barely get anywhere. Um, this came out that this ah game came out in 1988 right? So I'm like 15 or 16 years old I don't got a girlfriend. Yeah now I'm totally lame. So I buy this game but it goes with that same vibe of hitchhikers guide to the galaxy or this kind of thing. Um, it was produced through Lucas film which I believe they were called lucas arts that wing of Lucas film and what I thought was really great about that company at that time. Is they would make games that had some humor in them that was really rare to find you guys in like the 80 s it's like a video game with humor in it. You know and and that had some sort of ah story in it. Some sort of story with some sort of weight the game that came before Zach Mccrake and the alien mind vennders. 07:06.31 kinkella Was maniac mansion that came out maybe the year before maybe 87 or something like that and that one was huge. It even spawned I think a sitcom that ran for a couple years and you guys might have heard that name maniac mansion before now. Maniac mansion was. Built upon kind of all the b movie stereotypes kind of the 1950 s monster movie that kind of thing right? And what made it fun and funny was they played on all those kind of tropes and all those kind of cliches of late 1950 s monster Movie Mania you know and that game was a really big hit so Lucas ah lucas arts I should say thought they'd do the same thing again and this time instead of doing like 1950 S B Movie Monster stuff they're like dude we're gonna mine the pseudo archeology world so they put in everything that you and I love and hate at the same time right? They're gonna put in. Face on mars they're gonna put in the pyramids. They're gonna put in Stonehenge. They're gonna put in aliens as an alien mindbenders right? They're gonna use every trope and cliche. It's like they just went right through chariots of the gods. 08:36.48 kinkella And just picked out all the stuff. Oh they even do like a maya thing in they're do right? They they take it all out and they're like we're gonna have fun with this and I love the idea you guys I think the idea is genius now what did the buying public think they were lukewarm at best. Be. Hers you guys. They were too early on with their idea this idea of this kind of really fun. Psudo archeology world where you have this hero going through it and trying to pick stuff up and trying to figure out mysteries and stuff and sort of going on adventures in this point and click adventure world. The computer couldn't keep up with it. Man. The programming couldn't keep up with it so you end up just. Going like room by room super slow union union union union union and you get to the next place and there were also so many holes in the game too like I remember if you did things wrong. Oh there was also the bermuda triangle. If you did things wrong, you could get in a plane and just be flying to the bermuda triangle forever or you could go to Mars and go to the face on Mars that's that's what reminded me of all this right? The ah zach mccraken had a face on Mars and you could go there and you could go. 10:01.70 kinkella Into the face on Mars had like a doorway you'd like go inside and of course there's this like alien computer room but you could get there and then just run out of oxygen and it wasn't like video games today video games today you can like just cruise around in that world. You guys know what I mean. Like on Minecraft. You can just enjoy the world of Minecraft and there's so many video games like that today right where you can just kind of fly around for a while or like ride a horse for a while and it's all 3 dimensional and one of the joys is just kind of letting your mind wander. Right on some of these games you can just make like a campfire and hang out by a river all night if we had had that kind of technology in 1988 Zach Mccraken would have kicked ass. It would have been so much fun. But we didn't. Did have great ideas though. As I said you could go into the face on Mars had like a doorway in the side. You could also go into the sphinx right? And of course both of the rooms. Ah in these 2 places were similar and you had to kind of figure out. How to use clues you got in both places to sort of ultimately the idea of the video game was of course to stop the alien mind benders from bending. Everyone's mind. Um. 11:31.22 kinkella I looked over a couple things online about Zach Mccrakin just so I could remind myself and remind myself at the time there was ah 1 thing that I hadn't realized that the the idea of the aliens what they were doing how they were bending humans minds was they were sending a. 60 cycle hum basically across the world and for any of you who play guitar single coils on a guitar produces sixty cycle hum so I just thought that was kind of funny right? It's one of those things where they just have humor all over the place and you're ultimately. The the core thing to find in Zach Mccraken are of course crystals I think there's 3 crystals you have to find and you put them all together and then that of course turns off the sixty cycle hum oh and even though this video game takes ah was. Sorry, let me say that again even though this video game came out in 1988. It is supposedly taking place in the far off world of 1997. So even there right? They they put it. You know. 9 years in the future. It's it's got a lot of lighthearted fun I find it super super attractive right? I love stuff like that. This is how pseudo archeology should be done right? I think in terms of. 13:04.55 kinkella Technology and just sort of the video game going public in general this game along with maniac mansion kind of provides a link between stuff that had come before there was a hitchhikers guide to the galaxy game that was a text adventure right? We had those before. These kind of point and click ones. So there's still some text in this game but there's imagery the hitchhickers guide game was purely text and I used to love those right? Those kind of things but ah Zach Mccrackkin provides a link to later things like mist. Right? That game if you guys know that world that's sort of the next layer up where now we have a little bit more 3 dimensionality now we can kind of cruise around in these worlds a little bit more it would have been it. Let me say that again. It would have made it so much better if we could even see like a 3 dimensional map in Zach Mccraken of maybe the the world and of Mars right? where we see like oh okay, we go to Stonehenge there. It is we go the pyramids of Egypt. There's the bermuda triangle oh there's the face of Mars on Mars oh there's easter island there's a part with the moy of course, um, and actually even Elvis comes in a little bit I mean what again, what's not to like this game that had such good ideas. 14:36.90 kinkella You guys I think this is my favorite way so far that I've found to use the foolishness of pseudo archeology for something positive and when we come back my final thoughts on the face on Mars and Zach Mccraken and the alien mind-benders.