MythBusters' Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage joined the crew at Tested earlier this year, and Savage later began a brief, semi-regular podcast with the tech site's original editors, Will Smith and Norman Chan. The show doesn't have a name yet — even after more than 15 episodes — but the three forge on, and on the most recent episode of Still Untitled: The Adam Savage Project, they discussed Savage's history playing video games.
Savage recalled playing Pong as a pre-teen boy, and later enjoying titles like Pitfall! on his sister's boyfriend's Atari 2600, but video games didn't come to shape his youth in a major way — likely because he never had "unfettered access" to them. "It's not like I made a decision like 'I'd rather be doing something else,'" he explained to Chan and Smith. "[Video games] just didn't become this obsessive thing, which it is for so many people."
He also described enjoying the world of the original Tomb Raider, but because he wasn't "into this dying thing," he enabled the cheat for invincibility so he could explore the world at his own pace. "The kind of problem-solving, and the kind of gaming that is asked for out of these games," he said, "just doesn't interest me."
Yet Savage would play Unreal Tournament with co-workers during lunch when he was at Industrial Light & Magic, a LAN party-like experience he characterized as "the most fun I've ever had gaming," largely because of the camaraderie. And he later discussed one gaming obsession he did have: using tip money to play Millipede on an arcade cabinet at a bar he was working in.
You can check out a video of the 25-minute podcast above, or listen to an audio version.
