Retronauts - 501: Retronauts Episode 501: Cho Aniki

Episode Date: December 19, 2022

It's raining men (and mechs and bombs and protein) on the podcast this week as host Diamond Feit welcomes Retro Pals Danny & Alex to recap a one-of-a-kind franchise, Cho Aniki. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

You're listening to Retronauts brought to you this week by Omaha Steaks. This week of Retronauts? Oh, dummy da. Yes, welcome back to Retronauts. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Diamond Fight. I'm a podcaster being operated by several small podcasters inside. And this is episode number 500 and 1.

It's 5001. I'm sorry. I tried to get it for 500, but this was just too big. We had to go over 500. It's 501. And we've got a big show today with a big topic, and I needed multiple guests. Both of them joining me from Austin, Texas. please introduce yourselves in order of ascending musculature.

All right, Alex, you go first. I'm Alex. I actually am the more muscular one, I think. And I stream with Danny. Yeah, that's basically it. Hey, I'm Danny. We're retro pals, me and Alex. Alex is my husband.

We stream all sorts of strange, weird, and sometimes wonderful games. Sometimes. A percentage of the time, those games are wonderful. I mean, they can't all be winners, but I would say I'm definitely a fan of your channel on Twitch and YouTube, and I've seen you play some wonderful games. I've seen you play some, ooh, yeah. If you think you've seen the bottom of the barrel, you haven't seen retro pals. The barrel never ends. That's a hell of a tagline, Tanny.

Thank you. But today's topic is certainly the bottom of no barrel. No, I would say it is the barrel. It is barrel chested. Because we are talking about Chul Aniki, a, shall we say, eccentric series of games, certainly an unusual origin and an unusual situation. And it's sort of still going, but not really. It's in a weird place. We'll talk about it.

But let's start things off. Please, why don't you two go first? Tell me, where did you first discover this series? because, you know, as we'll get into, very few of these games have been released outside Japan. So how did you become aware of Chul Aniki? I actually learned about it from Danny, if I recall. Oh. I remember you first introduced me to it, I think.

Yeah, I think I had the Chow Anarchy talk with you. Yeah. No, no, no. Be like, well, there's this whole series of games you should probably know about. No, I think back in the day, you posted about it or something. But I learned about it from you, actually. Okay. Yeah, I've been a long-time fan.

The first time I actually heard of it was literally in 1994, I think it was. Wow. Because there was an issue of electronic gaming monthly. It was one of those huge issues that was like 400 pages long, like the size of a phone book. And they had a preview for something called Love, Big Bro. And they were all like, ooh, look at this game. It is so gay. Make sure you never play this.

And meanwhile, I'm over here like, I'm just. written all these weird Sega CD games. So I'm like, this sounds awesome. I want to play this. So do you think that was for the PlayStation 1 game or the... Oh, no, that was for the PC Engine CD version, Icho Anarchy. Oh, okay, okay. Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah, I love Big Bro. Okay. Wow. So I guess a port of that must have been teased and then eventually someone canceled it, huh? I did not encounter that my research. They sometimes just highlighted Japanese games to laugh at them, be like, look at this thing. This is never coming out over here. Good. Okay. Well, that sounds similar to me. Not quite that early, but I believe in probably the mid-90s, I believe it was game fan. My memory, it's game fan. I think they had a preview or maybe even just a first look at the PlayStation 1 game. And oh, it's, well, photorealistic men graphics. And, you know, I don't know if they were quite as judgment.

but they definitely, they were highlighting it as, look at this bizarre Japanese game, and I don't think there was any, I don't think there's any sense that it would even possibly come out in America, but I were reading about it and I'm like, what the hell is this? I want, I want to see this. I want to know more about this. And I don't think it was probably, it must have been another decade or so until, like, one thing, probably YouTube came around is when I started to realize, oh, wait, I can just look this things up and I can see you play them, and then I did.

And one of those videos was eventually your video, you know, Petro Pals, you did a wonderful video playing the first two games in the series, sort of going over the concepts and, you know, talking about it like a video game and not so much of, you know, no disgust for sure, but not even like, you know what I mean? It's not even like just sort of pushing it away. Or, or, oh, look how bizarre this. It's kind of like, no, this is a, it's a weird, it's weird, but it's like, they know it's weird. They're making it weird and it's fun, I think. You know, and I feel like a lot of people who've covered this. topic over the years have leaned the other way. And I feel like, no, we should, hopefully, I'm hoping today when we talk about the series, we are embracing it as a self-knowing bizarre creation that we want more. We want, I mean, I think, are we all in agreement we want more Cholainiki? Hell yeah. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. For many years, no one knew it to make of this. They didn't even know how to address it. They just wrote it off like, oh, this game must have been a mistake. I don't know how to talk about this. Well, let's let's go in.

So what is Chowaniki? How can we describe Chuanaki using our human words? I would say mostly it's a shooter series, with some exceptions. We'll get into that. But it's a shooter series. And the theme is humanity, fitness, as sexual. What do you think? How would you describe Chioniki to a blind person who can't just look at it?

I would say Choaniki is a shooter themed around muscle culture and specifically homosexual muscle culture. I don't know how else to put it. It's homoerotic, I would say, to an extent, not like it's the main theme. It's more like a developer trying to stand out in a crowded genre and ended up going way off the deep end to the point where it became a beloved series tradition to have a whole bunch of Speedo wearing men. and just kind of rising around at all points during gameplay. It's a tradition. We love it now. I think you nailed it.

This probably started as just how do we make people, how do we get noticed? How do we get attention for our shooter game? And certainly in a market, all these games are made in Japan. And even today, there are still plenty of people in Japan making shooter games. So in the 90s, probably five times as many shooter games were being made every year. So they're like, well, how do we get attention? What if we put dudes in it? What if we put big dudes in it?

And somehow that just became, no, no, we need more dudes. Yeah, right, exactly. Especially on the PC engine back then, because, man, that thing was Shooter Central. And not all of them were good. There was a whole bunch of bad ones. I think at some point it was just like, release a shooter. It doesn't matter if it's good or not. Just put it out there.

People will buy it. And the market became so glutted that it became a struggle to really stand. out. And I really think that's what happened. Sometime along the line, they were all like, okay, let's put in some muscle men in these games. And I guess whatever marketing firm was looking at that game, they were all like, wow, some kid really likes the Speedo guy. And they just focused on that. So I'm going to put on my hat as armchair localizer here.

Let's break down this title because it is a Japanese title, but because so few of these games ever got released outside of Japan, Chow Aniki is just Chowaniki. There really is no official translation. At least one game I know of has the name Muscle Brothers appended to it, but Choweniki is still there. And I believe my line stamps, I don't know. Did Texas say anyone have, does anyone use line in Texas?

I doubt it. And I think some people do. Like, if you like anime, you're going to love line. Okay, great. But there's a series of Chow-Aniki stamps online that I have. And I think whenever I view them in English mode, it just describes them as like Chow-N-I-K muscle brothers. Like, okay, I guess, well, are they brothers?

I don't know if they are brothers. But Chow-An-I-Ki, so literally Chol, Chow is like super. If you all heard about Dragon Ball Super in Kanji, that was Chol. If you play fighting games, you know, a super move in, in Japanese is called Chul Hisatsuasa. So Chou is just kind of like super. It's just, it's a, it's basically a prefix that can be appended to almost anything. Pretty much. Super Goals and Ghosts is Cho Maka, Mara, et cetera.

Exactly. That's a perfect example. Thank you, Danny. Aniki is literally big brother, but it's not necessarily literal because it can also be used metaphorically. And anyone has played a yakuza game or seen a yakuza movies. You've heard this phrase all the time. All the, like, the younger guys were referred to their, you know, their quote-unquote semai.

They'll just call them Aniki. And it's like, oh, it's my, and, you know, depending on subtitles or dubs, they might translate it as bro or they might just translate it as, you know, someone you respect. But, yeah, Chul Aniki is, you know, quite literally muscular bitch, super big brother, super muscle brother. So you can see why, you know, as you said, EGM called it like love, love big brother. Like, you, I can get that. So.

But in the end. It is Chowaniki. Choniki is itself. I can only hope that in the annals of history, you know, hundreds of years from now, Chowaniki will still be a known quantity because really, and we'll get in this later. I don't think anything else is quite like Chioniki.

But by all means, if you have recommendations, we'll get to that later. Okay. Sounds good. But let's begin at the beginning. The beginning, beginning, before there was Choniki, we had Gino, aka Wings of War.

It's W-O-R. Wings of War. produced by Masaya, a Japanese developer studio. So this game was eventually released worldwide on Mega Drive, Genesis, depending on what it was called in your territory. Against all odds, I'm kind of surprised to see this. It was ported last year, 2021, to the Switch and PS4 and Xbox One. I don't know who did this and why.

They brought out a bunch of old shoot-em-ups. They brought out the Claylancer and stuff. And, of course, Wings of War, just out of nowhere. That's cool. Yeah, it's, I'm grateful for it. I'm not, I do not. I would never say no. I'm just kind of surprised of the choice.

But yeah, so at first glance, you don't see it because it's, it's a space shooter, great. But it's like, the hero is a muscular man with wings and there's not really a story that you can tell. And it's definitely a weird game, but it's not like hilarious weird. You know what I mean? Like, have you played much Wings of War? Did you play it when it was newer? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I used to have a copy.

It's like, man, I was just looking over gameplay of this game. It's so cool looking. It's more dark fantasy than comical at this point. There's a lot of body horror elements in it, I would say. There's stuff like occasionally you see the face of a muscle dude on like a ship or something, but there's like a spike going through his head. So like there's muscle dudes, but they're not having fun in this game. That's the big difference.

It's a muscle tragedy as opposed to muscle comedy. Yeah, muscle tragedy. I'm sorry Alex, you were saying? Oh, I was just saying they were in misery, not joy. It's just, yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I think the inspiration for this was more of the Conan the Barbarian variety.

You know, those movies that were all about showing off Arnold Schwarzenegger's chiseled physique and so on. The cover art in the U.S. was by Boris Vallejo, who also did several works for Conan. So I think that was the intended market there, just people into that big swords and sorcery fantasy sort of thing. The barbarian core. Barbarian core, exactly. But with more horror elements, there's like a guts level later on. It gets really intense. Yeah, I mean, I would say, just looking over the bosses, I did a quick review of all the bosses in the game.

And yes, some of them are just kind of like human mecca hybrids. And definitely one of the grosser ones, I would say, you know, this is 1991. But to me, you know, in my Resident Evil eyes, it looks like a tyrant, but like half a tyrant because its spine is just kind of flapping around. And it's like spitting blood cells and its heart is like a separate satellite that flies around it and you can shoot the heart. God, that game looks so cool. Yeah, all the monsters are really messed up looking. It's just got this great dark style to it.

But let's be frank, there is definitely one creature that I can only describe as a Freddie Kruger snake monster with a giant dick. I mean, it's just, I know exactly what you're talking about. I think that was in the guts level, actually. You go through this whole level full of blood and guts, and then at the end, it's like, you sell this a little short. It doesn't just look exactly like a dick. It takes up the entire width of the screen. It is very blatant. And also, it doesn't actually do anything.

It's just kind of like half the monster is phallic. And the other half is actually, you know, writhing and attacking and shooting fireballs at you. The rest of it, it seems to be an ornamental penis, but it's huge. Exactly. Yeah, more informed by HR Geiger, I would say, than any kind of. of homerotic context. It's just weird that it would be a recurring theme like that, you know. Yeah, I would say that that's the first hit, the first hint of maybe someone's idea in

the background. Like, what if, what if we put a penis in here? But it's not even the last, the last boss looks like I would say an undead fetus, which is about as horrible as it sounds. What a cool game. You're making me want to play it again now. Well, by only, if I've sold you in this game, by all means, buy it, it is available for retail and you can you can play it on on most of your systems right now uh yeah and it was

achievements yeah and it was like i said it was released it was it's officially released today again in japanese i don't know that i don't know how to explain the title in japanese genogu that sounds like it might be vaguely greek or something it's really you can picture it as some sort of like greek hero you know i mean if i didn't know anything else i would say oh it kind of looks like the guy from legendary wings but it doesn't really but it's a man with Yeah. Those are two games with buff dudes who have wings. It's, I don't know what to make of the title I always assumed it was made up. I think it may be a little more popular in Japan these days because Inugami Kotonay played it for whatever reason.

Oh, yeah. She spent many, many hours trying to beat Gnog, and that was a pretty good stream. God bless her for bringing attention to games like this, you know. She's got good taste, yeah. She was playing fatal labyrinth the other day. Oh, wow. Good stuff. Wonderful. If I can find that video, I'll link to it. What do you get for the person? who has everything. How about the gift of Omaha Steaks? When my family can't figure out what to buy someone for the holidays, for example, someone who mostly just shops for esoteric Prague rock records

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Merry Christmas! For the Super CD-ROM 2, which was an add-on for the PC engine in Japan, I guess that's essentially the Japanese version of what we called the TurboGraphics CD. I don't know. What was actually called in America? I actually, I never owned one myself, but... It was both the TurboGraphic CD and an upgraded version known as the Turbo Duo, which just added more RAM, basically. Okay. And so this was only released in Japan at the time.

However, many years later, this was ported to the Wii on virtual console just as is. And that was essentially the first – that was 2008. So that was the first time any one of these games got an official release outside of Japan. Yeah, that was completely unexpected. Yeah, I think – because 2008 was not that late in the Wii's lifecycle. But I think eventually, yeah, the virtual console just started getting raw Japanese games. Like, I, um, Rondo of Blood eventually came to the Wii virtual console, just as is. Like, here it is.

It's in Japanese, but, you know, it's past, Castlevania. You can play this, right? So, it's like you like this, right? Yeah, you can handle, you can handle Castlevania. Why not try Cho Anarchy, basically the same game. Uh, it was also put on at, what is it, what's a Project Egg? Yes, Project Egg is a, uh, it's a, it's a system in Japan where they, they port old video games to the PC.

Uh, I think you can still buy it today on Project Egg if you want to buy it, uh, because the Wii virtual console has been shuttered. But Chileneke is, it's another space shooter, but you've got a choice of characters here. You've got Ida Ten, who's a man, and Ben Ten is a lady. And they're, how would you, I guess they're, what, they're like, they're kind of wearing togas. Are they, are they fairies? Are they angels? How would you describe these two people?

They're very beautiful. I guess. They're kind of like celestial guardians, I guess. I thought they were Greek, just like Greek people. I have no idea. The whole thing takes place in space. It has this nonsense story. And, yeah, you don't actually play as the big muscle men in this one.

You play as Edatin and Benton. And it's, in many ways, kind of a much more traditional shooter than what would come afterwards. Yes. Like they were just testing the waters. Well, you mentioned nonsense story. We should explain that Editan and Benton, they're seeking to fight against the emperor Bill from the planet Bull. And, of course, in Japanese, that sounds like Botebidu, which is a pun on Baudibir, which is short for bodybuilding. And the emperor has, in fact, won 10 straight galactic bodybuilding championships, which I've got to say, this is 1992, so this is not ripping off Mortal Kombat.

This is mortal combat, you know, this is very, this is parallel thinking, I would say. Or Mortal Kombat ripped off Trojaniki. Yeah, that could have happened. It's awfully close. He's just like, I want, I want more muscle men. I mean, let's, let's be honest. Which series has more muscular, shirtless men? I don't know.

It's close. It's close. That's true. That's true. I mean, Goro has forearms. Does that make him more muscular? I think so. There's an argument to be made there, yeah.

Two more biceps. Anyway, the emperor is apparently running low on protein, and he's attacking nearby planets to get more protein. So, Editon and Benton are there to stop him. And, yeah, as you play, as you fly around, you're shooting things, you basically collect little helpers, and they're kind of like gradius options. Like, they fly next to you. They fire what you're firing. They can block some shots.

But I think if they block too many shots, they just, they fall away, right? Like, they have a limited capacity, I believe. Something like that. Yeah, they're limited use options. They stick around as long as you play good, so I never really see them much. I always found this game kind of tough. Yeah. I don't know why.

I would say most of these games are pretty challenging, yes. But, yeah, so there's more than one character you can pick from, but the ones I think that got the most attention are Samson and Adon, certainly they have names, and they are just twin bodybuilders. They're sort of, and they sort of spin around. They almost look like muscular torpedoes. They just sort of like quickly rotate, and they, you know, ones above you, one's below you if you get two of them. And yeah, they're just with you. And but the story is not about them, but they're there. Yep.

And you can see, you know, there's definitely some themes, similar themes coming from. from Wings of War, do you know, because you've got a lot of machines and you've got a lot of people, and some of them are sort of people machines, but they're not quite as scary anymore. You know, I would say some of them are even cute. Yeah, I remember this game being a lot more, well, I like to cute or less menacing. It feels less menacing than the other game. That's a good way to put it. Yeah, less menacing, more about visual non sequiturs than body horror, I would say.

You get to the second level and you're fighting chess pieces. space. I mean, come on. This is pretty far from Genoke. I don't know how the two games are related, though they are very similar. It was two completely different studios, not much or any overlap in staff. I think it was just

taking inspiration, being like, we can make this better. We got the secret formula here. Secret formula's biceps. I think one good example is, you know, in Wings of War, I keep saying Ginole, whatever when I say, I'll get it right. In

that game, one of the bosses was sort of like this giant train. And it had like a head and it had sort of arms pumping back and forth that were sort of operating the train. And as we said, it looked freaky. It looked scary. It looked uncomfortable. In Chuluniki, there is a train guy and it's got a face and it's got arms that are pumping back and forth. But now it's kind of like, it's like Thomas the Tank Engine. It looks, you know, it looks kind of adorable. I mean, it's shooting at you. You have to destroy it, but it's goofy. It's silly. You know, you're laughing at it now. It actually does look a lot like Thomas the Tank Engine. Let's be honest. I guess there's attention. Mothers are working overtime to port Thomas Tankajun to all sorts of

horror games. So let's be honest. Some people are frightened Thomas. They were ahead of the curve. But certainly at the time, Chowiniki, you know, this is being played for laughs. Also, the music especially, the music is a lot sillier now. You know, Wings of War was kind of like metal adjacent. And now it's kind of, you know, a lot of like vocal samples. And I think it's kind of classical music sometimes, but also just kind of silly, like it's, it's lighthearted. Yeah, that's the soundtrack in particular is what tips it over for me from going to semi, half serious, half joking, to just being full comedy, because it's all like these distorted warbling vocals. It's not meant to sound good a lot of the time, though they do have like orchestral

backing. It's like a lot of work was put into it, and it has a really distinct sound. And I can't say that matches up with the game, but it's very memorable for sure. Yeah, I mean, I don't have a copy of myself, but I would assume this is, you know, the example of, like, the Red Book audio, like, it's probably just, you know, CD quality sound, because it's on a CD, so I think that it's, they went, you know, they went for it because they knew people were going to be listening to the music. Oh, yeah, absolutely. But there is, I would say, one hint in show

Eniki of where the series would go in the future, and that's late in the game, you encounter two giant twin muscle men, and, like, one comes from the ceiling, and one comes from the ceiling, and one comes from the ground and like their fingers are moving and they're wearing they're wearing some clothes but not that much clothes. I think they have like goggles on and like they're they're shooting like little fire like fireballs from different parts of their body and you have to, you know, you have to take them both out. And I feel like something in there, something with snap, something unlocked. Someone said, oh, this is it. We've got it. It's yeah, it's truly a beautiful

scene. I can see it in my mind's eye. That is basically where the series decides where it's going. that and another boss, which is like parroting the birth of Venus, there's a female-looking figure behind a curtain, and the curtain raises, and oh, my God, it's a bodybuilder. Whoa, who saw that coming? And that basically informed the entire series after that point, I think. That's actually from Eichoniki, but... Oh, is it shit? Yes.

No, no, it's a good example. It's a good example. But some of the boss characters from this game will definitely come back later, and we'll mention that. But, yeah, you can see it. But even like, even the last boss, you know, which, you know, as part of the official storyline is a bodybuilder himself, when you actually fight him, it's more like it's because he's actually, he becomes giant and takes up a big part of the screen. He's kind of gruesome and grotesque. So he's not like that part, you know, even though they've, they identified him as a bodybuilder, he's not that muscular. He's more of a monster.

But the big men that you fought before him, that's like, that was it. That was like, that's the moment where someone's like, okay, this is it. We got it. We need more of this. Yeah, that's such an interesting visual mix in that game. I really don't know where the tide turn during development, or maybe they just had it planned all during the entire time. But eventually it does dial itself up, but it never really gets past the whole dark fantasy elements. There's still a lot of that in there.

There's plausible deniability when it comes to being a serious video game. Dynamite Oh, well, something happens, because it takes three years, honestly. So it comes out, it comes out, the first game is Christmas, 1992. And 1995 is when Chow Aniki explodes with three releases in the calendar year. of 1995. I do not know why. I don't know what happened behind the scenes.

But Chihuanniki exploded, starting with February 24, 1995, again on Super CD-ROM. And here we have I Chow Aniki. I is literally love. So this must have been the one they called Love Muscle Brothers, Love Big Brose. And this is a direct sequel to Chowaniki. But they've changed some things. For number one, Samson and Aidan are now the playable characters. Eita 10, Ben 10, they're out.

and the men are in. And I would say right away, when you look at this game, to me, it feels like Perodeus. Like, it's all, it's all silly. It's all exaggerated. It's all like, isn't this genre so silly? And aren't we silly for making this game? But you're playing it, so here we go. Yeah, exactly.

From moment one, it's just like, this is the series now. We have made our decision and we're committing hardcore to it. This is nothing but big muscle men and speedos in space from cover to cover. It's what the people wanted, I assume anyway. And the characters, like, the characters are actually quite large. You know, in the first game, you were flying sort of, you know, horizontally, you know, Superman style or whatever. But these guys, you know, Samson, you know, in this game, they're basically standing up, you know, erect, if you will. And they're huge.

You could say that. I did say it. So they think of a lot of room, but the offset of that is you can basically spin at any time and then you can just go through things. Yeah. The way the game plays just really sets it apart, not just from the rest of the series, but really shoot them ups in general at the time. Because there's not just a fire button you lean on in that game. It's not just rapid fire shooting. Maybe you get a bomb. Maybe you get a sub weapon. This game, you get all your powers all at once, but you have to use them using street fighter style input commands. And you have to do this constantly. It's honestly kind of stressful, especially when you're learning the game. And as you play through it, it starts to feel more like a performance. because you have to realize which moves you've got to do for which situations. You feel like you're part of the bodybuilder ballet.

That's so interesting. So, like, the controls of it makes it feel more, oh, what would you say? Like, I don't want to say kinetic, but it puts you in the mindset of being a muscle bro then. Yeah, just the instantaneousness of being able to pull off these moves without having to switch to through a menu or something. You just always have these moves, and it's up to you to do all. all these inputs precisely. But the thing is, you can't do that precisely, especially when you start playing. So you just get brutalized. Very strange game. I like that you mentioned performance because, yeah, as you do the moves, you know, the Samson Adom will do different poses. So they are

essentially on a stage. But when they, you know, they bend over and they pick up their arms, maybe, you know, something flies out of their head, you know, so it's just kind of. Yeah. Between the animations and the button inputs, it's just, uh, it's a, it's a beautiful. thing to be old. There's also, as I recall, there's some big, like, there's some large illustrations in between levels and where you, like, you get really big close-ups of Samson and Aidan, and, like, they're just doing weird things. Like, they're posing, but also, like, they have a flower in their head.

Like, it's just, it's out there. Yeah. I always read those scenes as those two guys just trying to freak you out and being like, ah, you're okay. I just, I just assumed those scenes meant, like, with the flowers popping out of their head and everything, that they were kind of like, God help me for using this term hymboes, you know what I mean? A little bit, yeah.

It shows them doing Ikebana at one point, just like stuff you would not expect muscle men to do the whole flower arranging thing. Just getting outside their comfort zones for a nice little normal cutscene. Well, they're men of culture. Of course. And so some of the bosses here are frankly gigantic. And I think because they know you can become invincible at any time, you don't have to worry about giving the player. a sort of window. It's like, well, if you're in trouble, then just spin and get through it. But as you demonstrate in your video, it's like, you can't spin forever because you have to

score points? Can you explain the way this game works? Because it's kind of unusual, I would say. That's the other thing. Yeah, it doesn't have a traditional live system. It has a timer that counts down at the top of the screen. And it naturally counts down over time, a la gauntlets, so you're always racing against it. But it rapidly drains whenever you take a hit. So what you want to do is clear out all the waves of enemies, take as few hits as possible, and really look for power-ups. The strange thing about the power-ups is you can get a really lucky game if it decides to drop extra time, which is the most important factor there. And sometimes it just doesn't do that. It just drops points. So the game just creates these really tense moments where you

really have to buckle down and be like, oh, God, I got to barely scrape through this section. And then the next section is all like It gives you all the power-ups you need Very much a feast and famine kind of game It really keeps you on your toes And I think the bosses in this game It's not quite as varied as the last game It's certainly I would say it's less mechanical

But certainly there's still plenty of oddities I mean I would describe one of these bosses As an opera clown who you fight in the forest Yeah, that's really singing and like throwing leaves at you And then after that you fight a guy who's made of wood and leaf that I swear to God I've seen in Tekken. I swear I've seen this character in Tekken. Oh, yeah. He definitely evolved to be a Moku Jin for sure. But there's also, this was like a ripped snowman who throw snowman at you. It's just, yeah,

that too. Even, I think it's stuff like that that even more so people didn't know how to react to this game. Like, that coverage in EGM, it was just baffling. It's like, it's like two sentences. Can I just read it? Please. Okay, when EGM previewed, quote-unquote, Love Big Bro in issue 65, December 1994, page 94, if you want to look it up, they said, quote, this is the sequel to a terminally sick shooter. Play as Adon or Samson, two muscular beefcakes who strike poses that cause sweaty laser beams to emanate from their bodies. This sick shooter is backed with saccharine sweet girly pop tunes that would gag even the bangles. something's wrong if you don't lose your lunch over this. Oh, geez.

Then they had a couple of captions that said, Flash your figure among the giant heads and other screwy enemies. The queer creeps won't have a chance against your incredible physique. Hell of word choice there, EGNA. I didn't know they called them queer creeps. Yeah, very interesting. They used some of those words in particular. Wow.

Their thoughts were very clear, even if they didn't specifically say so. But the other weird thing is, like, in the months leading up to this, because I was looking through old issues trying to find this thing, they didn't have any coverage of PC engine CD games. They knew no one who read EGM was interested, so they went out of their way to dunk on this game, either because they found it interesting or that it thought it would get a reaction from the audience. I don't know, but it was memorable for me anyway, because that was the first place I saw it and realized I needed to play it. Yeah, I think what they attempted to do in jest became genuine because whatever, you know, they probably activated some people. I thought, like, oh, wait, no. Yes. Give me the queer, give me queer sweaty laser beams.

Give me the queer creeps. That's what I want to see. Didn't someone write in about that? And yeah, many years later, it was brought up again in EGM when one of the editors was talking about, man, some of the weird games I've had to play, I've had to play homosexual shooters. That's right, homosexual shooters. And then months afterwards, people wrote in being like, what's wrong with homosexual shooters? I want to play those. Tell me more about it. So the tide was starting to shift in the intervening years there. And EGM had to find itself being like, well,

maybe we have some gay readers. Maybe we should give them what they want. And they did. They previewed the new Cho Anarchy at the time. So way to go. Queer Creeps. How was the phrase to go? Love always wins. Love wins. Love wins. I'm going to be able to be. So later that year, just a few months later, September in 1995, we get Chul Anikhii Bacoletsu Ranthohen, which I would describe as explosive battle chapter. And it's also funny to be because this is Masaya, a few years earlier, they made a game called Ranma one-half, Bakuretsu-Rantho-Han, which is basically the same title.

And that game did come to America. It was one of the very few games that came to America with its license attacked. And they called it Ranma One Half Hard Battle. So in another reality, we could have gotten Chow Aniki Hard Battle. We got the wrong hard battle. That's so amazing. I actually had a copy of Ranma One Half Hard Battle. Yes, that was me.

That was my gateway to, like, anime pretty much. I don't know if I told the story, but I played that game. I found it in a bargain bin. and I bought it, I brought it home. I was like, I don't know what this game is, but these characters are wild. And my friend's like, yeah, it's like like the cartoon. I was like, what cartoon? And they just had the videotape.

It's like, well, I need more of this. So there you go. This, yeah, this could have been a huge, a huge, huge life moment. It had it come out, but it did not. This was never localized. It's never been released outside of Japan. You can buy it today on the aforementioned Project Egg. We should also stress, though, it's not a shooter.

Like I said, Hard Battle. It's a fighting game. they decided it's 1995 fighter games are in let's do this and I mean it's a fighting game but also like I would say this is unlike any other fighting again much like the shooter games are unlike other shooters they made a fighting game unlike other fighting games I think yeah that was their intent they were all like well we put a weird spin on shoot emups why not do it with fighting games and oh my god if for the people listening to this if you've never seen this game in action go look up some footage the graphics and animations are beautiful just like extremely detailed, very high quality pixel art, just depicting some of the strangest stuff you'll see on the Super Nintendo. What a game. So step one, there's no ground.

Everyone flies. You're just sort of, you're floating around. Everyone just are moving in every direction. You got a life meter and you have a special meter, but the special meter goes down almost constantly. Like if you do any kind of special move, or if you dash, your special meter goes down.

Which means if you don't know what you're doing, you'll just get dizzy every few seconds. because you think you're just trying to move around, but no, you're dizzying yourself. Yeah, it's more about meter management than just stringing together combos at first. You've got to learn how to not wins yourself. It's hard to find games to compare this to, especially at the time. Like later on on PS1, there'd be games like Destrega and Psychic Force, which were more about 3D arena combat. But back then, fighting games were just literally 2D, one-on-one grounded two guys fighting.

That's it. and this game went out and tried something completely new and different, and I got to respect them for that. Yeah, that's really interesting. It is most definitely ungrounded. Yeah. Yeah, I would say there's probably some of some, I mean, there's so many Dragon Ball Z fighting games, there's probably a few of those that have like some aerial components because those characters

all fly. Oh, true. But even then, like they start off on the ground, you know? Like they'll start on the ground and they'll take off. This game has no ground. There is no, there's no bottom. That might have been the influence. Yeah, those Super Famicomama, Dragon Ball Z games.

They made a ton of those. There were so many. I bet that's why they did it. I think most of them never came out here either. So they've given us, they came with a roster of eight characters. So, and there's nothing else. There's no secret characters. There's no final boss that you have to unlock.

No, eight characters, that's it. Which is a little, a little small for 95. But as you said, these characters have a lot of animation. So they definitely, they did not, this was no cash in. This was definitely a labor of love for someone. Yeah. You've got E to 10 and Ben 10 coming back from the original game. You've got Aidan on Sampson, but they're basically one character, but depending on if you're

player one, player two, you're either Aidan or Samson, but there's, you don't, it's not like you and Ken, like, it's just one guy. Mm-hmm. And you've got Bote, the emperor from the original game, but they've made him, they've toned him down a little bit. He's just kind of another muscle man. He's wearing more clothes than Aad on Samson, but of course, more is a relative term. I would say he's got like a spiky helmet and maybe a larger cod,

piece, but it's still basically a muscle man. Yeah, pretty much. And you got some returning bosses. You've got, I love it. Can one of you describe Adam? I think Adam needs to, we need to paint a picture of Adam for the, for the viewers at home. Freaking, Adam is in some of the other games, too. Doesn't you have like a glowing, flowing locks of hair or something like that?

Just a very beautiful man. And, oh, what's, what's his deal in that game? Is he the one who rides in the moon? Or am I thinking of someone else? No, no, exactly. It's, it's, picture the, the atom as depicted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. But instead of just, you know, having, having his bits out, he's sitting in half a moon. But as he moves around, he sort of, you know, he can extend his legs, he can kick, he can shoot things from the moon.

But he's also, he's always reclining, but somebody can tilt the moon in different directions. I think he can block with the moon if he sort of leans back. It's like, he's always relaxed. He's always in control. Got to love that at him. he's on island time no man is an island but the moon can be an island if it's your own moon it's true there's also there's something called sabu which is so it's from the

original game it's from it's a boss from the original game and in that game it was called sabu and marine like sab marine get it but in this game it's just sabu because it's only half of the the creature and get this is really hard to explain so you've got the top half of a robot with a big, you know, in Japan, they call it a regent hairstyle, but to us Americans, it's Elvis. It's an Elvis bot. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's robo Elvis. But only the top half of Elvis, and the bottom half is a big submarine, but there's a big building on its back. Like, I would say a lot of English materials call it a pagoda, but I don't think it's a pagoda because it's a very big building. To me, it looks like the, the building that

the house is the giant Buddha here in Nara. But like, it's a, so it's a massive building on a boat with an Elvis torso? That sounds like just the combination of a whole bunch of end jokes that got out of control. Yeah. We got to have Elvis. We got to have a submarine. Listen. It's got to be all these things exactly at the same time.

I know in the game when you first fight it, you shoot at it and it breaks apart and eventually like his hair comes off and you see it's got like missile launches underneath. So that doesn't happen in this game, but it is just a character that you you manipulate and you punch things and you throw things. Every character in this game has a giant beam attack where if you tap the button, you shoot a big beam.

But, of course, it drains almost all your special meter, so you can only use it very fleetingly. Speaking of mex, though, we need to talk about the new character, Mommy 19, who is, yeah, I would say Battleship, babe. This is before that Kan Kore, like, collection of Little Girl Battleship things that's rocking Japan in recent years.

Like, this is a... I don't know. How would you describe Mommy 19? I love her. That's how I would describe her. It just takes the concept of a ship's figurehead and just takes it to the next logical extension. It's just a woman popping out of the front of a battleship. And there's a bunch of dudes aboard her doing battleship things. What a great character. Right. So she's got a human face and she's got like, she's got some cleavage and some hair. But she also has like mechanical arms and legs. So she can do punches and kicks. Like, it's not like... Like, Sabu is a vessel with some arms, but he's still a vessel.

Whereas Mommy has limbs so she can actually, like, articulate them. But the men are always on her back, and they're always working. Yeah, it's like really being operated. Kind of like a biomechanical mermaid with some muscle men parasites on it. I don't... There's a whole lot going on here. Just a lot of one back. I would hope it's symbiotic, you know?

I would hope the mess. The Muslim men do something for her, and then she, I don't know, produces nectar for them. I would hope it's a symbiotic. The Circle of Life. One last character we have to mention number eight, who is actually from the original game, Uminin, who's kind of like, I swear, one website, one website described him as a condom, but it's just, he's like, he's like a stick figure with a lion-mouth face, but he's got a really big head. Yeah, he looks like the, the failed mascot for some kind of, um, mobile games company or something. I don't know what the deal is with that guy.

Yeah, and he's kind of stretchy in this game. Like, he's sort of like, he can sort of hold his breath and puff out and like limb, like elastic limb. He's, he's kind of a weird, you know, rubbery guy. And he's filling out the Loser Sia. He was one of the other option characters in that first game who didn't, I guess, didn't, you know, didn't ignite the focus groups as much as Adon and Samson did. But they never forgot of Umin, and he will come back in many other games.

But yeah, here he is. He's just the eighth character. You almost feel like he'd become like a shape shifter. Like he'd trant like 12 and Street Fighter 3. But no, he's just, he's just this silly rubbery guy with no expression. He's just a little latex guy with a noncommittal expression on his face. You got to love him. And I think for maybe Retronauts fans, certainly this was the case for me, you might have introduced this game as part of OneUp.com's short-lived broken pixels series of videos where they played quote-unquote bad games and made fun of them.

I remember that. But yeah, in the case of this video, I feel like even they admit on the stream, like, wait, why are we making fun of this game? This game is incredible. That's the thing. Yeah, it's so high quality. Like, it doesn't even play bad and have good graphics. It plays well for what it is. You have to know how to play it.

Again, if you don't know what you're doing, you'll be dizzy all the time. So you have to figure it out. You know, you have to read the instructions. I mean, look, I don't mean, I don't mean any hate for the, because a lot of the people, there's three men appearing in the video, I'm, I'm guessing they're all cis-het men based on their current activities. At least two of them are still very active in the podcasting, writing arena. I think, I think if they look back on this video, they would sort of, I don't want to say apologize, but I think they would acknowledge that maybe they wanted to do this video just

because the game is, the game reads it's very gay and they make a lot of jokes at their, at that expense. Like, some of the jokes are just saying the word gay out loud, like really loudly. Oh yeah. That was the style at the time. Yes, yeah, I remember them that time. And, you know, I'm not judging them because when I watched this video, I was cracking up. I thought it was hysterical because I didn't, I had no context

and I was just laughing probably at, like, with them, but at the game. And watching it today, like, you know, some of the, they do make some very funny jokes because it is, you know, it's a game that's meant to be funny. And I think at the time, when you watch it at the time, I think we should, like, you're laughing at it, like, no one knows this

is funny, but no, the people who made this game, they were positive. They made it to be funny. I don't know if they made it to be gay, but they certainly use those imagery. You know, I think that's kind of the underlying topic that of all these games. I think you have to ask yourself, are they making this game to be gay or are they making fun of gays? I don't know. Where do you feel about that? Because I feel like we should probably just say this out loud. What do you think about Joanie Gee? Are they making fun of gays or are they just, is it laughing with gays? Is it just funny? What do you feel about this? There's a couple different ways you can look at this. What do you think, Alex?

Well, I've been thinking about this a lot because I grew up, obviously I'm queer, and I grew up with queer parents in the 90s. So when I think of material and media about gay people in the 90s, from an American perspective, it's so like all over the place. Are you going to get something respectful? Are you going to get anything at all? I mean, American television wouldn't even depict gay people as a main character on any of their show. shows until 1997. And so when I look at Cho Anarchy, it's, I don't think it's like, wow, we love gay people and respect them. But I also don't feel like it's gay people are only here for us to mock and laugh at. It feels more like they were like, this would be a good thing. Yeah, why not?

You know, it doesn't feel hateful. It doesn't feel like it hates me. You know what I mean? it feels more like gay people exist, this culture exists, let's use it as a theme in our game, is how it feels to me at least. That's basically what I think, too. I think a lot of it is when deciding their theming, it was more about camp than anything else. Yes. These are very campy games to begin with. And I guess it just basically plays on the joke that like these men are just so, so muscular

and so manly, wouldn't it be funny if they were doing gay stuff? Yeah, yeah, no, it definitely feels like, because that's, you know, a trope of like, oh, the muscular guy who's into like, oh, really feminine stuff or whatever, it's a jokey thing, and it's definitely mocking it. But, again, coming from America in the 90s where it was like, if you show your, where they had to have like warnings on television before they would show a gay person, having just a game just have gay people and not really be a big deal was, is just kind of, you know.

Yeah, it was before Ellen came out. This is groundbreaking. Yeah, I actually researched that. This, yeah. Remember when the Cho Anarchy Brothers showed up on Ellen? That was cool. They never showed that episode again. Like, it's not, it's not, I wouldn't call it pro or anti-gay.

It just, it feels like it is. I don't know how else to describe it. It is its own thing. It is Cho Anarchy, and that's all it can be. Well, we should move on to the next game, which I think is definitely, I don't know if it's a high water or low water, but it's definitely, it's an extreme entry in the series. For the full title, I'm going to do my best here, Chul Aniki Kiu-Kuk-Mutaki-Ginga-Sai-Kyo-Otok.

I would say Strongest Man in the Galaxy or Strong Man of the Galaxy. Invincible Strong Men, there's a lot of Kanzi in there. Came out at the very tail end, December 29th for PS-1 in 1985. Again, the third game in 1995,

came out a few months later for Saturn, both only in Japan. However, and I'm as shocked as anyone, I would say, in getting ready for this podcast, I was looking at my Vita. Yes, I still got a Vita. And you can buy this as is unlocalized on, as a PS1 classic in the U.S. I did not know this.

Nice. Wow, cool. Of all the games. It was released in September 2010 for PS3, PSP, and later you can buy it and play it on Vita. It's on the Vita store. So as long as those stores, as of this recording, you know, at least the Vita is still active. You can buy this game and play it legally. which is, I mean, I don't know, is this the best example or the worst example of Joanneke?

What do you think? It's, yes, that's my answer, yes. I have very complex feelings about this game. Like, all you need to do is look at the intro video for about five seconds and be like, oh my God, this is a whole new level. They are just taking things as far as they possibly can. For those who haven't seen this game, it uses digitized graphics. These are real actors that they photographed and put in the game.

Some of the FMV sequences even show the photo shoots, which is pretty funny. So Edithin and Benton are real people in this. And so are the muscle men. All the muscle men are played by real people. And they're transported in the game world for a game that completely sucks to play. Sad to say, it is really unfortunate that game. Yeah, we should stress it. It's not just like Mortal Kombat where it's like, oh, no, we have characters who are.

are real people now. It's like they use digital photos to make almost everything. Like there are like bosses are made up of like almost photo collage. I would say some of these cretians are kind of like like Terry Gilliam Monty Python-esque animations of like, you know, heads that come out of the screen and open their mouths wide and like a leg will come out of their mouth. Like it's, it's really weird. Like and certainly. Yeah. And obviously again, it's meant to be funny. Some of it I think does read as gay, but also, I think most, like first, probably first and foremost, I thought this is funny and also it's gay. Right.

Yeah. It's funny and also gay. Yeah. It's weird. Gabe makes such a good first impression with, uh, the, the opening video and then like this, uh, this pre-stage where you're just a huge dude flying through a city, shooting down enemies. And, uh, then it turns into something more akin to, uh, the first chel anarchy. I think they were trying to get back to their roots with this game.

and it has problems. It has big problems. Unfortunately, the big problem with the game is that you feel underpowered for a whole lot of the thing. Unlike Icho Anarchy, where after you get used to it, you start to feel like you're really owning the game and you're super overpowered. This game, you take one hit, you lose all your power-ups, and the bosses suddenly take like 20 minutes to kill. It's just, it's a bummer this game. That doesn't sound good at all. No.

I wanted to like it so much because it has such a strong visual identity. and yet the gameplay just can't keep up. Yeah, it's too bad. I would say, it's certainly it's a visual, it's a feast. It's a visual feast. I would say, I would say most of the game just comes off as surreal, just because of how it looks. I would say, yeah, playing it is probably a challenge. It's, as you said, it's very difficult.

But I would say at the bare minimum, people should probably just go on YouTube and watch a play-through because the graphics. And also, again, the music, the music is also, again, it's a CD game, so they've got CD quality audio, and they've chosen to do some strange things with it. I just, they sure did. I mean, man, what a soundtrack. Just one level. Like you said, there's so much in that game that is surreal, even beyond the earlier games. What were you going to say? I was going to describe this one level like a boss fight that I would only describe as manship.

And it's this giant man. And you only, you only see pieces of him at a time when he flies on screen. and the whole time while you're fighting him and playing him and blowing off parts of his body, does someone just reading, and I don't know what they're reading? It sounds like it could be poetry, but, you know, honestly, it also could be a recipe. I'll be frank. I can't make out what they're saying. But they're reading it.

They're reading it with passion. It sounds like they're doing love poetry. That's arguably the series peak where, like, there's a giant, huge muscular man in a speedo in space who is dispensing smaller muscular men in speedos who's shooting. you. That is Chia Anarchy at its purest right there. Yeah, so many of these

creations are just like, I feel like you can make an entire game based on these one things. I know one of the bosses that stood out to me was a I think, and also this is extreme, it feels redundant, but this is an extremely Japanese game like in imagery and

audio. And one of the best examples is there's a a Bun Raku puppet, which is a very classic, you know, it's a very, it's a very classic technique here in Japan where multiple people will operate a single puppet, like one person will do like the head and one arm, and the other person will do like the other arm and maybe the body, and they work together. And they wear these sort of black masks. So they're called Kudoko. Like you're basically supposed to ignore them. They dress in all black. It's like don't

ignore those men in black. Just look at the puppet because the puppet is emoting. Ah, so they're like stage hands. Yes, exactly. Okay. So in this version, the PS1 Choyeniki, you've got a robot Bunaku puppet that comes out being operated by two Kudoko and they're wearing the black hoods but they're also naked and you know with little like Speedos on and they're right

you got to fit the theme yeah yeah so you got two two muscle men operating a mechanical puppet that's shooting missiles at you and firing laser beams and you've got to like blow the thing apart and it's just all the whole time in the background there's an audience watching you and there's probably something falling from the sky

like every every stage in this game is so, so much. It's so extra, I think, is what the kids would say. Yeah. Because it's constantly, things are constantly exploding and moving and transforming and things opening up to reveal new things inside it. And it's also, it's not all men. Like this one, Kim was not all men during Chuanicay because at one point you fight what I

would describe as a photorealistic frog, except it has a shell on its back, but it's got a tail? Yeah, that boss, and it keeps getting weirdly stretched and stuff. Yeah, it stretches out and then spits, like, polygons at you. And it's just, I don't, I don't know. I don't know what else I could say about this version of Cholaniki. I don't know either. It's just, it is a, like you said, a visual feast.

It kind of sucks to play, but, yeah, highly recommend you, uh, you look up video of this game. Yeah, the one thing. The one thing I remember about the Saturn version of this game is that, I used to own a copy, and I sold it on eBay for $69.69 and $69. Real proud of that one. Good. Real high mark in my eBay career. Dear God, I had a mouthful of water, and I somehow did not do a spit-take.

Oh, my God. I'm gonnae. The o'clock I'm I'm always I'm always

my my my my my miss Ohmy Oh my

Oh my So I went I'm up I'm Well, after that, after that banner year of

1985, uh, Chihu Aniki takes a little bit of a break and would not resurface again until the year 2000 with, uh, but, you know, coming back in style, Chul Aniki, Otoko No Tama Fuda, uh, a February release for the Wonder Swan, Japanese only, of course. The title, Otoko's Tama Fuda, Otoko is man. And Tama Fuda, if you're thinking,

hey, that sounds like Hana Fuda. You're right, and you're also a nerd. Hanafuda, of course, being the Japanese playing card game. You know, Nintendo fans know it as that's what Nintendo, you know, cut their teeth on, making Hanafuda cards. But they call Tama Fuda, Tama being a word for spirit. But Tama also means balls. So, you know.

They know. Good choice. You know what they're doing here. Good choice. But it's a mobile game. Oh, the freaking Wonderswan. It's a handheld game in 2000. So what is it?

It's, of course, it's a handheld RPG like Pokemon. Yeah, of course they're going to go for that Pokemon money. Like, if you've looked at the Wonderswan library, I swear to God, it's like 70% games like this. RPGs with just inscrutable card mechanics specifically. Most of them have Digimon in them. But this was the rare case where they put the Chow Anarchy Brothers and everyone in there. Yeah, they've got a variety of characters coming back from earlier games, but you said it. It plays like a card game, you know, you have duels against each other, and, you know, I'm sure you, I'm sure if you get good to this game, you can surprise someone, you know, with a speedo card, but I'll be honest, it's a 22-year-old Wonder Swan game, a system I never owned, so I have never played this game.

I'm going to try play along those cards in Yu-Gio. Do you have a Wonderswan in Austin? Oh, no, we don't. I was trying to think between the two of us, surely one of us has a wonder swan. No, I've got a NeoGeo Pocket. You got a nomad. Yeah, I do, but no wonder swan. No wonder swan.

We've got to get a swan crystal one of these days. That's the premium model. You know, you mentioned Neo Geo Pocket. That would have been the perfect system for a Chioniki spinoff because, of course, the tagline was I'm not boy. Oh, yeah. You know, that would have been money in the bank as much as money. Joe Anki money would have made, I don't know. Missed opportunity for Synergy there.

Oh, S&K, so close, but so far. Anyway, moving on to the next big quote-unquote title, Cho Aniki Seinar Protein Densets. And this was a October release on the PlayStation 2 in 2003. Masaya did not handle this one. This is being handled by X-Nots and Saikyo. And let's be frank. So right there in the title, you've got protein.

and I would say say now to protein so I would describe this title as the legend of the holy protein that's basically how it works and the the photorealism is gone

they're going with sprites and polygons in my opinion this this looks uglier than the PlayStation 1 game I don't know maybe it's just the era but like everything's very blocky I don't think it looks very good

yeah it looks like crap and not like in a really high effort way like the PS1 game it just looks kind of low budget Oh, really unfortunate looking. Low budget, yeah, with a capital L. So you're not playing a Samus Aidan again. They're back to being helpers.

You're playing a glob of protein? I mean, it's basically a little... Yeah, it kind of undulates a little bit. It moves. It's an off-white. Yeah, look, I apologize. I had an episode a few months ago that got a viewer discretion warning because we talked about the Warriors. We cuss a little bit. I don't know how else to

describe this. When you fire your special attack in this game, you and your helpers all ejaculate a stream of white energy. Yes, that's accurate. It shoots out, it shoots out full force and sort of slowly peters out into nothing. I just, I'm sorry. If there's any one's kids out there, I'm very sorry. I'm face-pulming. I just don't want to say. But this is what's in the game. I just don't know. I mean, I think it's, is it called the men's beam in this game? I think it's called the men's beam, right? I think so, yeah. At least one of these games is a men's beam. I think this is the classic men's beam. We didn't mention this entire time that Adela and Samson have giant holes in their heads. Yeah, that's why I was calling

them hymboes, because they have a hole in their head where their brain should be. Oh. They seem really stupid, and I mean that affectionately. Is that a game theory? It is my game theory. It is my game theory. Yes. Yes. It's all about gay hymboes. Man, call Matt Pat. Look it up on Google. And so the bosses, again, are back to, I would say, again, not quite body horror, but definitely going back to more manish things. You've got like a hawkman who's got like drills for legs and a hard hat on. You've got a spider who I would call a tamantula. And yeah, there's a lizard with a man's head inside his mouth that the YouTube guy described it as charm. Mander, capital M-A-N, I think that's that you can't beat that.

Ooh, that's pretty good. There's something else that I would only describe as a troll wearing a maid costume, so it's like a maid cafe troll. Like, it's kind of ugly, but it has like a big blonde wig on, and it's wearing panties, and it shakes its boobs and, like, fire his hearts at you. And the whole time there's a lady singing about cats, because she's got a cat's tail, too. So. Cool.

Yeah. Why not? It's cute, but it's hideous, and it's trying to. kill you. Definitely. It's certainly, I feel like it's, it's, this is 2003, so I feel like it's made for people who might have remembered the PlayStation 1 game, but probably didn't play any of the games. Like, hey, this is that game you liked about weird people, right?

Well, here's our weird people. But it can't match, it doesn't match the weirdness as the PlayStation 1 game, in my opinion. That's a good way to describe Joe Anarchy, the game about weird people that you like. I got that sense, too, that they were trying to soft reboot the series. basically, I guess, gauge interest for continuing it or something, which is what people do sometimes. But that was during the PS2 era when there was a lot of strange misfires, especially with Sega games, like when they tried to reboot stuff like Altered Beast and Golden X. And I kind of lumped this game in with those, which isn't fair because it actually plays pretty well.

I'd say it's a better game gameplay-wise than the PS1 and Saturn game. I mean, 2003, so the PlayStation 2 Gold Rush is in full effect at this point, right? I mean, at this point, everyone's making, and there's got to be at least 3,000 games in the market and more coming at this point. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, that launched 2000 in the Japan. So, yeah, by 2003, it's the biggest, the biggest console, you know, on the planet. So at that point, yeah, it's like they saw the sales start pumping out the games, reunite the old team. And didn't they, it was Psycheo that they teamed up with this one, like people who actually make traditional shoot-em-ups, like the strikers and gunbirds.

series. So it was some of the original Cho Anarchy developers plus Psycheo, which is kind of like a super group. Yeah, that's not like a super team. Except it's like a super group of like B tier. So it's like a mid-group, I guess. Expendables, perhaps.

Yeah, that works. Yeah. Either way, it worked out pretty well. It looks ugly. It plays kind of strangely, but it doesn't have that underpowered sense that you get from the worst Choanokey game, so I approve. As far as I can tell, this has no official re-release or ports,

so if you want to play it, you either find a hard copy or use the internet. But moving on to, I would say, the vanguard, as far as bringing Cholaniki outside of Japan, in 2009, we have Cholaniki Zero. And in Japanese, they actually use the kanji day, so it's, again, leaning in the Japan-ness. It came out in March of 2009 for the PSP in Japan, but one year later, it was officially localized and reliance. East in the U.S., and they call it Cho Onicky Zero, and I think they put Mussel Brothers on the title screen, but officially it's called Cho Onakee Zero, developed by Extreme Company, and it's not a prequel, but it's not a sequel, I would say it's kind of, I would think, you know, as you said, like a soft reboot of kind of like, hey, here's this game we've had forever.

Would you like to play it? And certainly, if you read the American English press releases, they are leaning into, you know, this is 2009, they're leaning into the bro culture. that was so prevalent on the internet. I would say if things have gone differently, I could have pictured them teaming up with a sponsored video from Epic Mealtime, like, maybe put some bacon in there. Like, I just...

Includes a subscription of Maxim. I was thinking Maxim. Like, the press release makes a joke about right-said Fred. Like, that's the level of humor here. Ah, fun. But it, like, got an actual localized release. It was Axis. It was, like, doing a whole lot of professional work at that point.

I guess the time had come. They maybe saw that a niche was forming, maybe from the EGM letter section, if nothing else. I was going to say Ellen was out. Yeah, Ellen's out. It's time to release Cho Anarchy. That was the official statement, yeah. I mean, you've got this very small window. So 2008 was the virtual console release.

2009 was the Japanese PSP release. So in 2010, you get this version in the U.S. And as I said, you also got the as-is port of the PlayStation 1 game. So, like, for about a two or three-year Pindle there, someone was trying to make Joanna a thing in the United States. And I'm guessing sales-wise, it just didn't happen. But they tried, and these games are still out there. And indeed, if you were a longtime PlayStation Plus subscriber, you got a copy of this

game for free. So maybe check your download list. You might own this game. Maybe you can just play it if you want. That's right. I forgot it was a PlayStation Plus game. Yeah, they were giving away PSP games for a long time. That's so funny of all the games.

I guess that's a good way to release it to an audience, though. It's free. Might as well play it. Maybe I'll be into the mildly homoerotic muscle man game. Who knows? So we should say it goes back to be, you know, it's back to basics as a shooter again. You get a choice of hero and you choose one supporter. So again, you're not technically controlling Adon or Samson again.

You're doing E to 10 or Ben 10, but maybe you've got, you've also got Umini, Uminin in there. And you've got some choices. It's all Polygon. It's PSP. So, of course, you know, it's that 2.5D look that was so popular. And the boss list, it's kind of a mix of returning characters from old games and some new creations, which is why I say it's not a prequel, but it's not a sequel. It's just kind of, you know, it's its own thing. It's an independent timeline, I guess.

Yeah. Maybe it's like called Chow Eniki Prime. Could be, yeah. It almost feels like a greatest hits of Choaniki series, bosses and enemies and stuff. and the stuff that it does add honestly doesn't really compare to what's been in the series before. It feels like a step backwards

in terms of weirdness. Maybe they were trying to mainstream Joe Anarchy, which is a terrifying thought. Make it for Normies? Mm-mm. Why would you ever? Exactly. I must say, I did appreciate

that one of the bosses was a callback to the cyber tyrant thing from Wings of War, which I thought was a nice touch. Oh, yeah, that's cool. Yeah. That game had its heart in the right place, for sure. Yeah, it's floating heart that you had to shoot with your muscle man.

You got a muscle melon. You got a big Kappa. You've got a thing that I can only describe as a human centipede on wheels. You know, it's like two guys doing the roller wheel flexing thing, but one of them's got their head in the crotch of the other, and they're all firing weapons at you. And it's in a Rose Garden. So it's like that's got the Japanese barra pun about muscular men. It's just, yeah, Adam is back. Sabu's back.

Pirate skeleton underwater? Why not? Yeah, sure. I don't know. I don't have many memories of this one. I played it a little bit. I thought it was okay. I got the sense it has that kind of design I didn't like from the previous games

where you can get underpowered feeling. But that's the last show, Anarchy game there was, as far as I know. So we better respect it. Yeah, I was. Press F to play. I was in the early days of my press work at the time. So I'm pretty sure I saw this at TGS in some form or another, either as pre-release for the Japanese version or as a hype for the American release after the Japanese version came out. So it might have been like in English, like, they might have been in a booth like, hey, it's coming in English next year. So I don't know what time I played it. I don't think I wrote anything about it, but I definitely knew when I sat down, when I got my hands in demo, I was like, oh, Chuaniki. I know what this is. So I recognized it, but I hadn't, I barely. played any of the games at that point. So it was just kind of a curiosity to me that I probably

didn't care much for because again I'm not a big fan of the 2.5 craze that was going on. You know, it's like when I bought the Castlevania Chronicles XPSP game, like I immediately put on the Sprite version. I didn't want to play it with the polygons.

Yeah, no one remembers the 3D remake. Yeah. Pretty much. That was all over the PSP, you're right, between stuff like Mega Man powered up and all that. Everyone wanted to move to kind of cheap-looking 3D. Yeah, I like, I mean, Mega Man PowerUp, I think it's one of the better ones. But then you've also got, like, you know, Ultimate Goals and Ghosts where it's all, yeah, like Arthur.

Yeah, I don't know. But in fact, that was not the last Chow Ennekey game, but it was the last console game. The property continues exists in various forms on mobile games, mobile phone games, most of which we won't even bother breaking down because they were only released in Japan. They're probably shut down anyway. I just want to give a shout out, though, because in this year, our year of the Lord, 2022, there was a brand new game called Dancing of Chol Aniki. And it was a rhythm game for smartphones. Oh.

Yeah. It debuted in February and shut down in August. Oh, God? Yeah. I would ask if that's a new. I would ask if that's a record for shutdown, but I know it's not. No, I'm sure. Mobile games just launch and die.

But, yeah, every single day, God, there's just another game we'll never get to play. That's a shame. Might have been nice. Yeah. Again, you can find launch showers for it. I'm sure you can find some gameplay online, but you cannot buy it. You cannot play it. It's just, it's already, it's already vanished, like, like sweat from a bicept.

It's in gamer heaven, along with the King of Fighters dancing game. Is King of Fighters for Girls still out? I think that's still out, right? I think so, yeah. Was that S&K heroines or something? No, no, no. There's a game called King of Fighters for Girls where it's like it's because like you're supposed to look at the handsome men as opposed to the women.

Oh, wow, that's a good idea. Oh, okay. Man, they're branching out. If it's not still operating, it was operating. I didn't make up that title. It's a real title. King of Fighters for Girls. I was saying they should make a King of Fighters for Girls.

They should. I've always been saying this. So that's the end of Chileneke as far as releases go. So we're going to sort of wrap things up here by talk about the series as a whole. We've touched on some of these larger themes right now. Do you think it's actually gay? How much gayness do you think is actually in Chil Aniki? Because honestly, the more I think about it, I think back to the early 2000s, and I think of, we've talked about Japan and this culture.

I guess we have to talk about hard gay, right? We should mention hard gay. Yeah. Good old hard gay. Hard gay, he doesn't really do the act so much anymore, but he is an active comedian in Japan. And for a good 10 years there, he was dressing up in sort of a leather suit and the, you know, the Tom's of Finland, you know, little hat and the big sunglasses. and he would sort of dance around suggestively and call himself hard gay and he would just get really close to people and make them a little bit uncomfortable and that was just that was it and he became

an early internet video sensation because a lot of his stuff got put on lines you know fans subtitled and you know got a big following so it's like to me that's actively making fun of gay people like at least the gay culture whereas like Chaloniki there's nude men here but and there's definitely, I mean, there's a ton of, like, fallacies, let's be honest. But is it gay? What do you think? I mean, it does feature a lot of visuals from Japanese queer culture regarding, like, roses and things like that.

But if something is wearing the, like a t-shirt with a bunch of gay men on it, are they gay? You know what I mean? Like, it's, I don't know how to describe it. It uses, like, the visuals and this and that. but it doesn't, it's gay without being gay? Does that make sense? Does that make any sense? That kind of makes sense to me.

You were mentioning the stereotypical hallmarks of the gay man, the leather pants, the cop hat, the leather straps. You don't see any of that barely in the Cho Anarchy games. It is squarely focused on bodybuilding culture, at least at first. Later on, you start to see stuff in Cho Anarchy and I Cho Anarchy where some of the enemies just, they're in a position shooting bullets at you, only they're looking like they're 69ing, ha ha. And later games, it just dials up the phallic imagery to a ridiculous extent. But it doesn't seem to be really focused on gay culture as you think about it. It is clearly just aimed at the bodybuilders. Yeah, go ahead. I was going to say, it's not about, it doesn't feel like it's about a gay culture as it exists. It feels like gay culture as they imagine it. And it's not that – it's not that me – I'm sorry, like I mentioned, growing up in the 90s with gay parents and everything, I actually gravitated, I should say, a lot towards more Japanese media and anime and stuff, I think because I could see gay people and they weren't constantly being demeaned. And that's the thing. It doesn't feel demeaning to any of the gay cultural stuff they're putting out there, if that makes sense. Yeah, you look at old stuff like this that features jokes about gay people, and often it's just like, oh, God, that's awful. That age terribly. No one wants to see this. But like, there's so little of that in show anarchy. There's no slurs. There's no, like, blatant homophobia, I guess.

It doesn't feel hateful. It doesn't feel hateful, you know. It's not celebratory, but it's just, it's just funny. It's more like a parody. It's a, it's a kitsy piece of a pastiche of some weird thing with body. Builders. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I could see that. I would say, certainly I noticed in reading the Axis press release in English, they certainly didn't mention any, they certainly didn't use any kind of gay or homosexual language. Instead, they took up the masculinity.

It's a very masculine game, which I don't know if they're trying to cover their butts, or if they're trying to avoid making a joke, or if they're, I don't know how, what their thought process was, but I noticed they did not, they did not lean into any sort of queer angle as far as marketing, which I guess. makes sense because 2009, that would be probably a death sentence to them. Yes. That could be the core of it, then. You're just looking at making fun of bodybuilders.

It's just, like I said before, masculinity, when you paint it as a satire like that, you really start to poke fun at like the things that are traditionally considered masculine. And you become so muscular and so manly that eventually it just turns around and becomes something ridiculous. I think that's what they're highlighting was show anarchy. Yeah. I guess we should also mention there's a idea in Japanese culture like macho

If you say macho in Japanese It's not necessarily about being like a tough guy But you're definitely like it means like I'm a muscle guy Like they'll have like macho cafes or a macho You know like a macho theme for an event And just the idea is oh we're gonna have a lot You know a lot of ripped guys or a lot of you know Maybe shirtless dudes opposing like so

You know bodybuilders or again Mocking either mocking them or just sort of Embracing them So I feel like that That's still there in the culture So that could be sort of a remnant of where Chonaki's heart is at today And that you still see this sort of goof

And there's a I can't think of his name. Kaska maybe. There's a comedian who appears on Japanese to see some frequency And he's like he's a comedian first But he's also in really good shape And he's not alone

There's a couple guys like that Who like if they get in good enough shape They'll sort of become famous For being in shape as well as their jokes And depending on how their their career goes, they might lean more into the muscle than making jokes, but it's like, that's an example of a guy who, like, he'll take up his shirt and pose and people will sort of laugh with him, but else, like, they have an knowledge of the fact that he's, he's in really good shape, you know,

so. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. In a way, there is something disarming about a hugely muscular man, like, whoa, is something vaguely cartoonish about you, and yet you're incredibly powerful and could crush me with your hands. Mm-hmm. It's all about that contrasts between manliness and extreme musculature is where Chowell

Anarchy lies. Yeah. If Chuanicke is, quote-unquote, mocking anything, it does feel like it's more centered on the ridiculousness of, like, say, fitness culture with, you know, getting the protein and everything than, say, like, an anti-gay statement, which I don't think it is at all. They should make a video game based on that bodybuilder form where they couldn't figure out how many days were in a week. Yes, they should.

I think that'll be the next viral hit. So game companies get on that. So the last question here is, are there any other games like Chialaniki? That's a loaded question, but are there? I don't know. Oh, man, check it out. Muscle March. I was thinking muscle March.

100% muscle March. This is a ridiculous Wiiware and arcade game where you basically had to do different flexing poses in order to get through various obstacles you encounter. Pretty much you're just a series of bodybuilders running down the street at full speed and you have to pose in order to not slam into everything. Now you say it. Now I remember that. That was Japan only, right?

Did that get released abroad? That actually got a U.S. release for Wiiware, unbelievably so. Because it's such a very short and strange game, and yet they brought it out. Good for them. Also, something I want to mention about both Cho Anarchy and Muscle March is, you know, in America, when we have a lot of bodybuilders, they look very menacing. They're always, they're very smiley and happy. happy in both Cho Anarchy and...

I've noticed that. Yeah, they're always happy. They're happy to be there. Yeah, they're very friendly. They're putting on a show for you. Certainly, Adon and Samson have huge grins in almost every game. They're massive grins. They look very happy.

They look very happy to be there. And I think that's kind of nice. There's also a couple of Super Famicom games that kind of have that same satire slash parody approach to muscular men. There's a beat them up called Gourmet Sintai Baragado. which is an incredibly rare game that got re-released on cartridge recently. Just a really weird beat-em-up with big beefcake dudes and big muscular ladies. There's a cooking mini-game in between rounds that you have to collect food as you play and mix them together to make for the most protein-filled meal, stuff like that.

And I would also recommend another Super Famicom game called Dea Tona Sama, Apare Ichibon, which is an overhead view action game in the vein of Paki and Rocky. It stars one of those Bacatono guys who transforms into a huge muscle man. And it's just, it's that same sort of ridiculousness that you'd find in Chow Anarchy, except Paki and Rocky-styled. Great. Well, I think I remember Musselmarched loosely, but yeah, those other games are new to me. Thank you. Because I tried, I could not think of any games off the top of my head, so.

Well, show Anarchy is pretty singular in its own. And so any game that's only kind of like it is an outlier on its own. Well, hopefully someone up there has the money and the connections to bring Chow Aniki to the Switch. We need Chow Anarchy on Switch. It's got to happen. Cho Anarchy collection. Everything is on Switch except Chorneke. Yeah, yeah. Do it upright. Get all the games in a single collection with Limited Run. Include a blow-up bodybuilder. I was going to say include a Speedo.

Yeah, that too. Oh, my God. Limited Run games. That's right. Jeremy. Are you taking notes, Jeremy? He's frantically taking notes right now. We got to do this, Jeremy. We got to do it. For the people, it's what the people want. Mm-hmm. Do one of those steel book cases with a bicep on the front.

Oh, it can be like embossed. Yeah, so you can feel. Yeah, yeah. So you can feel the chest. Mm-hmm. That's perfect. Just put abs. It's got abs.

Yeah, the only game with abs. All right. Let's wrap it up. I think we've had a lot of fun today, talk about Joe Henneke. I hope we inform some people. I hope some people who, if you love Joanneke, I hope we did it justice. If you've never heard of Chihuaheke, I hope we've made your day because Chowaniki is, I think it's joyful. I think this is definitely, I don't know, is it gender euphoria?

Is it muscle euphoria? I think it's, I think it's a positive. I think it's a net positive to the world. I agree. It is both. It is both. When I see Chowaniki, I'm like, dang, I am valid. There is a kind of euphoria in Chowanke.

And I'm not going to try to describe it, but it is a form of euphoria that you only have to experience for yourself to understand. I concur. Well, why don't you two, in any order that you feel like, why don't you to please wrap it up and tell us about yourselves and where people can find you on the internet with the assumption that maybe Twitter are we working and maybe it won't be. I hope so. Hey, we're retro pals. We're the world's only married streaming team of retro games. That's verifiable. Don't bother looking it up.

We stream at Twitch.tv slash Retro Pals. We focus on extremely strange games, as you might expect, from being invited on to talk about show anarchy. Lately we've been focusing on stuff that's like tangential the games. We've covered pinball games from the 90s. Sometimes we read old magazines. We watch old tips videos. But what I really like to do is to do these showcases featuring a whole bunch of games over a different time period or from the same publisher, playing a bunch of games from back to back to back

and coming up with conclusions after we played the entire catalog. Those are always really fun. Kind of given an overview and a perspective of like a certain time period or a genre or something like that. You can find us on Twitch and our archives are on YouTube.

Just look for Retro Pals. Yep. And we're on Twitter at Retro Pals Twitter.com slash Retro Pals HQ, but like... For the time being. For the time being, yes. We shall see.

Yeah. Yeah. Do you have any backups? You're making a Tumblr or? Um, we're working on it. I'm going to sit through the like 30 different Twitter replacements people have developed over the last two days. I've got to do my research. Yeah, I know.

I've joined it almost everything I can find. But speaking of me personally, I am a fight club on most services, F-E-I-T, that's my last name, C-L-U-B. That's a place where gay men hang out sometimes. Oh, yeah. Look that up on things, you know, Twitter, Twitch. YouTube, link tree. I've got a link tree that I try to collect all this stuff together these days. But of course, this is not just me. This is Retronauts. And you can, you can follow retronauts, retronauts.com. You can go to patreon.com slash retronauts, the real, where the real money

is made, because for $3 a month, you get all our episodes one week early and higher quality. We do that for you. But for $5, which is just $2 more from the $3, again, this is a little bit of money you know that's like it's not even not even a protein shake not even a protein shake uh you get two exclusive episodes every month you get weekly episodes from me i write a column then i read you the column you know i do it for you we've discord discord discord ain't going anywhere you can come join our discord we chat in there and um all that patreon dot comsells retronauts on twitter um we don't really stream these videos these days but yeah you can look us up and um yeah so as we close out If you were a Chioniki boss, what would you be?

Man, I'm going to go with the classic, the Thomas the Tank Engine train with really buff arms. Only it's like my face instead of Thomas's face, so it's super creepy. Someone draw that. I was just going to say, I want to be, you know, the cat chip from Perodeus, I want to be that, but muscular. Oh, very muscular. Even better. Yeah. I'm thinking a slot machine?

Can I be a rip slot machine? I'd like to be a ripped slot machine. Yes, yes. And the lever that you pull can be a huge bicep. Yeah. Oh, man, that's good. Yeah, perfect. Let's not speculate as to what comes out of the slot machine.

But, uh, good night, everyone. Good night. See ya. No!