Retronauts - 551: Retro Indies at BitSummit ’23

Episode Date: August 7, 2023

Jeremy Parish and Diamond Feit emerge blinking into the Kyoto sunlight to discuss the most intriguing, the most entertaining, and above all the most authentically retro indie games they experienced only moments before at BitSummit 2023. 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

Hey, everyone, it's Jeremy. And before we start this episode, I just wanted to let you know that Retronauts is taking over from sea to shining sea. That's right. This coming weekend, we're going to be in Long Island Garden City, New York for Long Island Retro Gaming Expo, Cradle of Aviation Museum. A whole bunch of us are going to be talking about a whole bunch of different things during the show. So check it out if you happen to be in the Long Island area, the New York tri-state region, or whatever they call. it. Come and see us. Then the weekend of August 26th, I believe, will be in Hartford, Connecticut, not too far from New York, at Retro World Expo. That'll be myself and Nadia and Diamond. And then, the weekend after that, because I'm a lunatic, I'm going to hop on an airplane and go to Seattle and present a panel at Pax West about the history of baseball 2000 with its Game Boy programmer,

Robert Champagne, and also the creator of a really cool device that allows 16 Gameboys to link together by the name of Alex Bear. Bob will also be there for a cameo, maybe not on the panel, but at some point. Perhaps at the meetup after the panel, where you can bring your own Game Boy Color, Game Boy Pocket, or Game Boy Advance, or Game Boy Advance SP, and attempt to join us in setting a world record as we try to link 16 copies of baseball 2,000 for Game Boy together for a competitive head-to-head session. In theory, it's possible, and people have gotten it up to like 14 or 15. Will this be the time that we manage to make magic happen?

Maybe, maybe not. Come out and try to be part of the experience. And if nothing else, you can see an interesting panel about the history and creation of the game. That's August 11th in Long Island. August 26th, then Hartford, and September 1st, I think, in Seattle. A lot of chances to see people talk about old games. Anyway, come see us, and I will let you get back to the podcast now. Hey, folks, Jeremy here.

Before this episode kicks off, just a quick word of warning. the audio quality here is not amazing. That's because Diamond and I recorded this very improvisationally at Bitsummit, finding whatever spaces we could in order to record. It wasn't an ideal setup, but the two of us wanted to

record our thoughts where they were still fresh and share our perspectives on retro games and retro game-facing titles that we saw at Bitsummit this year. This week in Retronauts, we have seen the future and it looks really old. Hi, everyone, welcome to a very special and very noisy episode of Retronauts. I am Jeremy Parrish, and I am live and a live and a live at a live at a live at a

Bitsum at 2023. It's a post-mortem episode, and I'm here with... Hello, everybody. This is Diamond Fight. I'd like to remind you that both Jeremy and I are here in Japan's ancient capital, which means we are both Hayon Kyo aliens. Thank you. That's been your public service announcement for the day. That is correct. We are here in Kyoto, and the Bitsummit for the year is complete, and we saw a lot of games that look very old, but they are not. They are new. There might have been a few old games in there. I don't know. I saw quite a few games that were remasters of old games, spiritual successors to old games. Games made by people who just said, you know what, I like that old game, I'm going to make it myself.

And God bless those people because we need more of them. I agree. So this episode is just us sitting on the street outside of BitSummit because they kicked us out and wouldn't let us use the meeting rooms as a studio now that the show is over. but you can enjoy the authentic sounds of people walking around and talking strange cars driving by and of course cicadas

so many cicadas the cicadas are here to help drive home how incredibly hot it is here and how much the two of us are sweating as we sit in the shade at the end of the day talking about video games I guess I mean we're really thankful it is late in the afternoon

so we do the sun sun has gone down quite a bit. The shadows are long. So we have some relief. That's true. It's certainly not 2 p.m. anymore, but wow, today was a scorcher. It was, and I'm glad

that Bitsummit takes place inside because I could not enjoy video games in this kind of weather. But inside, the air-conditioned, dark, cool hall, it was good times. Oh, yeah. But yeah, I saw a lot of things that just I immediately grasped. I feel, I feel

I immediately grasped what the creators had in mind. Like, you know, people talk all the time about games that influence them, and sometimes they're kind of circumspect about it. They kind of dance around it, especially here where, in Japan

where I think the culture is not to pull people who are not part of your group, or aren't part of the conversation, into the conversation. So I think there's just a bit of respect. It's not like people saying, oh, I don't want to talk about my influences. It's more like, oh, well, you know, the people who influence

me may not know about this, and I don't want them to feel like I'm ripping them off or, you know, drawing attention to them in an unwanted way. Sure. But you can still look at these games and be like, oh, this person really liked Undertale, or this person really liked every British, UK, uh, microcomputer game ever made. Yeah. I definitely, I heard the words, I heard the words Chips Challenge at Bits Summit today. Did you?

Spoken aloud. So I know, was it, hopefully somewhere Stu was, big green, on his face. Was it spoken in English or Japanese? No, in English. The guy was just saying, oh, yeah. He rattled off a bunch of influences and he said the words Chips Challenge. Like, whoa, I know one person who will enjoy that. Yes.

I think there's more than one person, actually, but yes. I know one person. For sure. Okay, there you go. Yes, absolutely. It's a shame Stuart wasn't here, but he's in Prague instead drinking beer where it's probably not as hot. Yeah, well, I'm kind of jealous because he's probably looking at all those Mission Impossible filming locations.

Right? You know, he's got embassies, he's got restaurants, he's... Okay, no, that aquarium restaurant doesn't really exist. And it's not because they blew it up. This is a total sidebar, but... Mission Impossible came out, the first Mission Impossible, the movie, came out a few weeks after I came back from my first international trip ever, which was to Prague.

Wow. And so I was like, whoa, I know all these places. And wow, I've been in that square where that restaurant is located. and that giant aquarium restaurant did not exist. I would have remembered that. That place is nothing like you see in the movie. But everything else was accurate. You know, I had a similar experience with Dark Night,

the Dark Night, because they have a whole sequence in Hong Kong. Okay. And 2008 was the first year I ever went to Hong Kong. Okay. So I went to see that movie, and all of a sudden Batman's in Hong Kong. I was like, hey, I've been to Hong Kong. Hey, I was on that pedestrian bridge.

But, of course, I'm not really, I can't use expert opinions, but at least I was. I was super excited to see Batman go where I went. And I just felt that much closer to Batman. And what more... Who doesn't want to feel that's closer to me? What else can we ask for in life? Yeah, actually we just rewatched the last Mission Impossible to be fallout in preparation for the new one.

And, you know, we saw that back when it first came out, but we just got back from London, my wife and I. And a big part of the movie takes place in London. So we were like, oh, there's that. We were just there. Oh, is that the tape modern? Yep, that's the tape modern, et cetera, et cetera. It's always fun. That's one of my favorite things about being a world travelers. Like, when you see places you've been, you have suddenly this element of recognition

and an understanding of what's happening that you would be lacking otherwise. It can be a curse, though. Let's be honest. Sometimes if you know a place and you've seen it before or if you've lived there and then you watch a movie or say, play a video game, you can immediately react to it. I can tell you, I saw a game here. One of the games we saw today, not today, but at the show was a game called Seen Investigators. And it was a very interesting kind of a murder mystery game in that you're in an apartment and you need to deduce several things.

You need to figure out straight up who died. Usually these things are like, here's a scene of a murder, figure out how it happened. No, no, no. This was like literally who's been in this apartment, who's someone's cousin, who sat at this table, who died? You think the police would have that information on hand, but no. They need you to answer all these questions. Of course. Because you're a scene investigator.

As I invested, you know, as I go around the apartment, I'm picking up birthday cards, I'm picking up someone's wallet, I'm looking at their ID, I picked up an envelope with an address, and it says the Bronx, New York, and I had a zip code. Oh. And I looked, and I was like, I talked to the representative, not developer, but a representative speaking English. I was like, hey, do you mind if I'm a pedant? He's like, go right ahead. It's like, that is not a Bronx zip code. At least you were, you know, you were fair about it. Do you mind if I be a pedant? So I respect that. Little things, you know, little things like that can, you know, jab you in the side. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

But maybe, just maybe today I saved some future person who's playing scene investigators. They'll play it someday in the future and they'll, oh, there's the Bronx, and there's a correct Bronx of code. And now I can enjoy the rest of this video game. Yeah. No, it's like, you know, having lived in San Francisco for a decade, when I watch a bullet, I'm like, this chase does not make geographical sense. It's cool, but they certainly sacrifice. like an actual sense of moving through the city.

And what's with all these green beetles all over the play? Exactly. Anyway, none of this has anything to do with the games we saw at BitSummit that have a retro tinge to them, and that's really what we're here to talk about. So I'm not going to ask you what your game of the show was because then I would have to make a choice for a game of the show, and I can't do that.

So instead, let me just ask, what's the first thing that comes to mind when I say, what did you see? Well, which game? I would probably start with the Sunsov booth. That was one of the first places I visited. Unfortunately, while they had a standee for the recently announced Clock Tower Remaster,

I really hope they would have the game. They don't have, they had no Clockmaster. They had no Clockmaster for me to enjoy it. That's a shame. But they did have... They did have Anime Jennifer Connolly, though. Yeah. And they also had Heberake 2 Yeah, so that's a gimmick in the US Or is that Utoat Euphoria

I think it's a separate series Because it's like Heberleke I think is a Super Nintendo Or Super Famicom game That spawned a bunch of other No, the original was on Famicom Oh, Famicom, okay That one was Euphoria now that I think about it, yeah

But it spawned this whole series of puzzle platformers All with different subtitles So there was no Hebrosecate 2, as far as I can tell. Until today. And, you know, they haven't made a Heber Recki game in like two decades. But somehow they're...

Now is the time they're going to make two. And I was just instantly captivated, you know? Yeah, all right, so we are doing this podcast in a different setting. Due to equipment failure and street noise. and heat. So now there's a cafe noise instead. You're just getting the full live retrofauts experience. Please enjoy.

Anyway, so happy out of key two. Yeah, which is, you know, part of this long-running and yet also long-dormant puzzle platformer series. And it's funny, even though there's been so many Hebreke games over the years, now just two. They've gone to number two. They've counted to two. and I'll just say

aesthetically it's really lovely I really you know I think it had a sort of Yoshi's Woolly World you know Kirby's epic yarn kind of feel I think the characters were a little more cartoony like they stood out but the backgrounds and you know solid the quote solid elements in the levels. They didn't go all in the way

that Goodfield's games do and that's okay that's fine it has a distinct look They had a cool little felt and cotton ball diorama in the actual booth, which was great to see. It was like, you know, one of those diorama Famicom game covers come to one. But what is Haverey game for those who do not know, which is probably most Americans because it ever came to the U.S.? Yeah, I mean, I barely know what Havriq is. I'm sure I played one of the earlier games, you know, back of the emulation days because it just, it's kind of a weird game that stands out, especially if you look at it and, you know, it has.

because he and ba are basically the same character but with a little notation on it so it just looks funny in japanese and it just sounds funny when you say it out loud and i don't know if it might even mean something funny i'll be honest my japanese is not just enough here but in my heart i want to say maybe it means something about like getting drunk but i don't that could be fan fiction that could be japanese fan fiction but at least in hebracket too you're this little guy and you you pick up things and you throw him a little and I got into a boss battle where the boss could pick up my thing and throw it back at me.

So we were engaged in, you know, a deadly game of one-upsmanship, maybe. That was a very Wario-Land boss feel, too. You know, like the basketball around it. Or maybe Link's Awakening. You know, Link's Awakening had those bosses that would sort of throw things at you and you throw it back at them.

But, yeah, we're just kind of a really cute, very charming. Don't know where it's going. Don't know what's going. But the fact that Hebrekitu exists at all is just kind of one of those, you know, puts a smile on your face, you know? I agree. Hebroket too. And I noticed that Sunsoft is also still all in on Shanghai.

Yeah. Which, that has an interesting history because they didn't create Shanghai. It was an American named Brody Lockhart who created it for Activision, I want to say. and I believe Sunsoft licensed it in Japan for arcades and they just kind of ran with it like it's just been a thing in their library

and sometimes you know like a Shanghai game will show up on arcade archives on Switch or PS4 but yeah it's just you know making matches with Mahjong titles yeah but that's the funny thing because you know to most Americans if you say Mahjong they're probably going to

of Shanghai because it's a game based around Mahjong tiles. But of course, here in Japan, Mahjong is a game you play with the Mahjong tiles. So you can't release a game here called Mahjong, otherwise we'll think you talk about the other game. Right. So in that way, Shanghai is kind of the perfect cover. You know, it's like, oh, this isn't, you know,

what do you mean Mahjong? It's Shanghai. You match tiles. Yeah, but they're still making those. It's called Shanghai Legend is the new one. And I like that they have this big display of giant Mahjong tiles. piled out. Oh, they look, they looked so good, yeah.

Big plastic tiles. I mean, I wanted to eat them. I couldn't explain this. These don't. They look delicious. They kind of, I mean, if they look like anything food-wise, it was fondant and do not eat. Is it cake? No, it's Shanghai. Oh, no. But no, I had fun with that one, too, because

I don't know if this is groundbreaking or not, but the version they were showing actually has co-op play. So, um, I was there early on the first day, so it was just me and the staff, basically. But a very nice lady as part of the staff joined the game with me, and we were both matching tiles and taking them away.

And, you know, we ran into a dead end, as you do. But I couldn't have but think, oh, this is fun. It's a fun way to share time with people. And, you know, as she put it to me, it's like, oh, this way you can play with someone who's not very good at the game. Which was a funny thing to say to me because, like, I don't know how you can be bad at Shanghai. I mean, you can be better at it. But how bad can you be at matching tiles? Well, you have to understand a strategy for shame.

Okay. There are certain moves you want to make and certain moves that you should not make. And the way, you know, like every tile arrangement has different choke points. So anytime you have a bunch of, like, a really long line of tiles, you run the risk, because you can only match tiles on the edge of a stack. Yeah. Like a tier of the stack. and you run the risk of getting to a point where you have tiles in a long line

and they're nested in a way that you can't make matches, the tiles you need are all in there, but they're blocked off by one another. The match for one tile is a tile set is blocked off by a match for a different tile set. And you have to learn to kind of see those and avoid those and strategize to like not just make the most obvious magics. So yes, you can actually be bad at Shanghai. Like just refusing

to learn how that works. So I can sort of what is what you should say. It's like the Super Mario Galaxy. It is funny though. You mentioned the layouts. That was a good point because the game gave you a wide choice of layouts. And I remember I picked one that looked just like a space invader.

Okay. Which is not a son's up property, but... It's not? Yeah. But I guess those shapes don't belong to anybody. So... They belong to Taito. I mean, the exact shapes, but you know what I mean. They have an invader-like shape. The reference, okay, got it. And I called it an invader shape, and the lady laughed, so she, they know.

Sunsuff knows. Anyway, yeah, it's a real interesting mix of games of Sunsoft group of game concepts in the case of Clock Tower, which is not actually happened. Yeah, it's cool to see them back. I mentioned this in the previous attempt of recording. got cut off. But Sunsoft is under new management, and their current president is just someone who's determined to... He sees the value in Sunsoft's properties. Like, you know, a lot of games that people associate with Sunsoft with things like Batman. Yes. But they're not all

licensed, and he recognizes that, you know, things like Iki and Shanghai and Clock Tower. and Peretti and gimmick all have value and that there's people who remember them fondly and also the core properties, the core concepts are strong enough that they can create a new generation of fans. So it's great to see it. Well, I think it would have done very well with the Blaster Master Zero series, which Integrates Made.

And actually, I just played the first Blaster Master Zero just recently this summer on a whim and had a good time with that. It's really well-made, yeah. But speaking of Indicreates. Oh, I didn't get to play their games because you have to have a ticket, and I was like, I'm not standing in this line. That's too bad.

Well, let me tell you, IndyCreates showed up this year, and they had two games. Well, I saw the one. Nope, they had two. It was interesting because they're both, you know, Indecreates games, but they're all very different. One of them, I believe, had already been announced a few months ago. It was a licensed property.

It was Blaze in the Deep Blue. Blaze in the Deep Blue. Again, also, complicating matters is that both these games have totally different titles in Japanese and English. So the giant signs are one thing, but if you look up online, they're a different thing. But Blaze in the Deep Blue, it's some sort of licensed property. And that's very much more of a traditional Metroid-Vani-style thing. It seemed very Metroid-Bani. But it seemed like also your powers were other people.

Yeah, like your only attack seemed to be summoning, like, a giant creature that did, like, one big strike. Right. But also, there was... So you run around as a girl. And one of her attacks was to take another girl and cause her to spin, like, a disc, and, like, roll that at enemies and cause them to explode. Yeah, there was also... There was also a character-switching mechanic, which I don't think... I don't think I got to use it

But there was definitely, on the control list It was like switch characters, switch characters Which reminded me of the Released earlier this year The Grim Guardians Is it? Okay, there's Grim Guardians and there's Gal Guardians And I keep forgetting which was the first title

And which was the second title Because they changed the name out of Some sort of copyright conflict Oh right, yeah, yeah Whatever it's called I had fun with that game too And that was also very much a swap characters game But yeah, this was

You know, obviously with the name it seems like you're underwater a lot, or at least you're in like a cave that's very wet. And I fought one of those big, what do you call it, like lampfish, lanternfishes with the big dangly thing in front. And had some pretty straightforward attack patterns, and it was very much about, oh, just hit it a lot and don't get hit by its, you know, blast. And occasionally it would suck a giant rock into its mouth and then mash the rock up, which hurt it, but also spit rocks at you. so it was kind of a weird match of attrition Okay Yeah, but in terms of like style

It's very much the indie creates, you know Wow, I just totally blanked on The series The blue Azure Strucker Gunbolt, that's it? Yes, Gunbolt. The Gunbolt series. Azure is blue, so I'm correct there. Yeah, it's got that kind of visual style,

lush animation, Ray pixel art. Mm-hmm. What was the other one? The other one, which I believe the English title, is Umbrol Strike or Umbrel Claw. That is not a good title in English. It's very straight. I mean, the Japanese one of the thing is more of a play-on-words, but they're going for something a little more basic in English.

And what I thought was very... Is that really basic? I guess Umbrel. It's better than Japanese, you know? But what I thought was really interesting about that game is you're playing a cat. Okay. Possibly the spirit of a cat, but you're definitely a cat. And as a cat, you're basically defenseless.

You have a dodge move, but you can't really hurt anything. So you can survive by dodging, but if you don't survive by dodging, well, you die. Okay. But then, big anime explosion, lots of kanji on the screen, because cats have nine lives. Uh, first. So the gimmick of this game is, if you die, you use. up one of your lives and the game very much counts these down in a very animated style and every time you die you come back and you're stronger so you're initially you have

nothing you have no offense you only have dodging when you come back a little bit you have like a sort of projectile it's not very it's not very strong it has a cool down but you can you can throw a projectile you come back again you've got a claw attack you come back a day you come back again you've got you know i think a double jump um and it's a one hit kill situation by the way so it's not you know you you don't really have a lot of you know leeway to make errors so even though it was a very short demo i ended up losing a bunch of lives and then i became like a sort of catman like anthropomorphic sort of badass like all of a sudden i was running and jumping and, like, slashing.

So, you know, the enemies suddenly became trivial, at least most enemies. So I think that's a really interesting way to build a game. You know, it reminds me of the recent, what they call the reverse Metroidvania. I want to say it's unleashed, uninvited. Oh, I'm sorry, the name escapes right now, but it's on PC, it's definitely on Switch. The gimmick of that game was it's a Metroidvania, but as you, fight the bosses, all the other enemies and bosses grow

a little bit stronger. So they get powers, but you don't. And in this umbral claw game you start with nothing and if you lose one of your limited lives, you get stronger, but of course if you lose too many lives, the game's going to end.

There also seem to be story implications for that because you as a cat, you were living with the memories of, you know, your owner, you know, a little girl, who you loved and you love the girl and the girl loved you. Joe and Arbuckle.

Yeah. And I got the feeling that the more you die, the less you can recall the girl and you start losing memories, but you gain strength. So, just all around the board, really interesting game. And of course,

because Indy creates, looks great, plays great. Even when you're a powerless cat, it's kind of like, what's going on here? I want to see more of this. So, you know, the ice anime game, I'm sure that's going to be a lot of fun to play. I'm sure that's going to work out. Hopefully it's not too horny.

You know, into Creates, I'm sorry. Sometimes they're a little too horny for their own good. But at least the cat game, I don't think it's going to be horny. I can only pray. It is not horny for cats. Well, I mean, if you turn into a cat man, then it's probably going to be mentally horny. If you turn it horny, if you turn into a cat girl,

all bets were off the table. Yeah. But, I mean, that's the internet now. The internet is just cat girl fever, you know? I mean, the other hand, I've got, I've got I'm just

shab-d-sibbered and I'm standing tears, tears, cannot, without, no,

no, no, make make-s- because if it's this this,

this And you know, this is this is I'm from, you know, God God bless it. So, you know, like the least

So, going to like the least one anything imaginable. There was a game called Last Command. Oh. That caught my eye. I don't know if you got to check it out. I did. I played that one. So there's a little card that they hand out when you walk by and they say snake cross bullet hell. But I don't

think that's really true. It's not like a Don Maku you know, Battle Garaga type game. It's actually very heavily inspired by Undertale. It's black and white. You know, white on black. And it basically kind of takes the concept of the the RPG battles that are shooters

and Undertale and says what if that were snake? So you're playing like the Nokia Snake game and you're moving around the field collecting objects and your snake gets longer and at first it doesn't seem like it's you know there's much going on

you like collect a bunch of collect a bunch of objects like data you're in a computer and it causes you to like finish the stage but after a while enemies start showing up and these are like you know you're just You're an abstract little snake blob, but these enemies are very well-rendered and large.

So, like, the first one is the Iron Guard knife. And he's, like, a dude on a horse with a lance, and he takes up, like, you know, a sixth of the screen. Yeah, big. And so you have to avoid him while grabbing the data points around the screen. But as you start doing that, he's shooting these lances across the screen. And this is where it starts to look like undertale, because the lance. because the lances are these red projectiles that speak across the screen. So you have

to use your little snake to avoid the lances, kind of maneuver between them. And as you collect the data points, you eventually build up enough to launch an attack against the night. And he has a health meter. And every time you launch an attack, it knocks down a chunk on the health meter. But

the demo, like at the end, shows a bunch of previews of future bosses. Yeah. It gets pretty... It looks pretty high intensity. but it's definitely Yeah, it's a really interesting approach for Snake. Anyway, I don't want to take all the oxenade out of this conversation.

No, it's... What do you think? I really liked it. I thought the colors were great. The fact that, yeah, most of the information you're seeing is black and white or shades of off-white, but then the enemies are launching these big attacks at you that are very sort of red and pink, so they stand out even more. It gives you good

visual hints. I like that you have a little dash attack. so you get to you know it aids you in dodging of course but also that's how you hurt the boss in that you have to collect the data points which makes you stronger and then you fire the data points at the boss's heart and once you you wound it enough it becomes vulnerable and then you have to dash into it and hit it and all this is timed it's not too tight but like you have to do things and get get them in and hit your thing and then move away because you know as the fight goes on the boss gets more and more aggressive.

You know, I think at first the boss just sort of sits there and maybe throw something at you. But by the end, the boss is crisscross across the screen and throwing lances and shooting little bullets that explode in the smaller bullets. So it definitely seems that the game is going to get harder as it goes along. You know, even each counter is going to get harder and harder as it goes along. So I thought it was really cool. And as I recall, I spoke to someone at the boot there. It's a game, it's made in Taiwan. And I think it might actually be out already.

Okay. But they were probably showing off either a new localization, or maybe it's coming to a console soon, but I think there's a version that's already out there. So if you heard this game and it sounds good, look it up. I think you probably play some version of it already. It's called Last Command. Last Command. Last Command. Not Blast Command, last command,

as in the end of commands. Yes, there we go. No more commands for you. Speaking of commands and black and white, a game that caught my eye, one that you actually played, And I just looked at it and was like, wow, that's interesting, was Al-Golimath. Oh, yeah. The AI programming dungeon crawler game. It's basically, the premise strikes me as, what if you made wizardry, but you did it as Mega

Man Battleship Challenge. So you'd have a party, and you basically program them kind of like the gambit system in Final Kind of say 12 a little bit, but as a dungeon crawler, and you basically just, like, from what I can tell you, just let your party go into the dungeon and operate under programming and see how far they can get. And it's almost roguelike in that sense, I think, and that you're not necessarily going to win

the first time you go out there. But it's just about seeing how you can optimize your team. I don't know, that was my impression. Yeah. But you can actually speak more to it because you are confident enough in your Japanese to actually play it. Whereas this was just like very, very good.

very dense programming instructions. I didn't even want to try. Well, the demo did have English. Oh, did it? It did. I blew it. But I spoke to the guy, I spoke the man in Japanese and about the game, and he was displaying me that in the demo version,

it was very straightforward, just like, you program the characters, you put them in the dungeon, they go in the dungeon until they die, then they come back out, and you start again. But each fight, you defeat monsters, and when you defeat a monster, you get some kind of programming node from them.

Okay. so when you start off all your party has the most basic simple of start random attack random target that's it's like Final Fantasy 5 when you start out as the freelancer you've got fight and run

basically but then you beat some monsters and all of a sudden you have a you have a heel command so you can give that to the you know the healer in your party and it's but it's a nice it's like it's a conditional statement

you're like if one of my allies has less than 50% health I will heal them if not I will attack so the more you progress in the game the more nodes you get the more options you get also if you add a node to a character

even if it's not hooked up to anything if you just put it on the character that raises their stats so there's always value in getting more nodes and assigning them to your characters so it's like junctioning magic in Final Fantasy 8 I'm going to describe this game entirely in terms of other RPG it's great

But these are all things I like So I'm excited I believe he said that in the proper game It will be about Making choices and deciding How far in the dungeon do you want to go Do you want to risk keep going or do you want to turn around? Because when I played it

The first floor was pretty easy Just very small enemies in my party You know just attacking randomly and which win And I should also say there is a fast forward button Which is very useful because you can't do anything in the battle So you might as well just fast forward if you're not surprised by the outcome. But when it got to the second floor,

I fought against these much larger monsters, and they, you know, they wipe me out. But when I went back and I had healing powers, I beat those monsters and I think made it one more floor, but then got worn down by another monster. But by that point, I had acquired so many more powers. Now I had healing powers. I had a mage that could buff my attacks of other characters.

I think I had a guard attack. So each time I played, I was getting further and further and further. So I think it's a really interesting use. You know, I feel like AI is kind of a buzzword right now, but this is definitely, you know, this is AI for good because you are the programmer. You are programming a computer to go through dungeons, which is like, yes, I mean, freelance dungeoners do need to make a living,

but I feel like shouldn't we have computers do the jobs we don't really want to do? Like, if there are goblins in a dungeon out there, shouldn't we send the computers down there first before we send down someone who's... Yeah. So I'm really interested in Al-Gol... Even though it's kind of hard to say it on Al-Gometh, Al-Gurum. I guess...

Al-Gor... I think it's going to be a portmanteau of algorithm and GOLM. I believe that's what they're going for. Because in my experience in Japan, they use Golem for a lot of just general automaton uses. Like this year... Here's Big Hit, Tears the Kingdom. All those robots you meet, in English they're called constructs.

In Japanese, they're called golems. Well, you know, it's part of the great Jewish tradition here in Japan. There are definitely Jews in Japan. There's got to, you know, I'm not the only one. No, it does seem really interesting. Okay, so those are some black and white games. Let's talk about something that's extremely not black and white. I don't know if you played this.

Moons of Darsallian. Dersalun? a game that looks like it really wants to be an Amiga game. The creator of this game was like, let's create the most British game we can possibly imagine. And so it is a game

like it has the Amiga aesthetic. It's so, so painfully Amiga. And it plays like a mashup of all these different British games. Exile, like, I don't know if you've ever played Exile. I just recently kind of dicked around with it for my Metroidvania Work series. and it's this like exploratory game

when you go to another planet and just wander around and try to find your way around it's got that kind of vibe to it you're on another planet and it's very kind of open but each area is broken into a stage and has goals

and the goal at least in the first stage in the demo is very livings-like in that you have to lead other explorers to an exit to a base safely and along the way you acquire a gun that allows you to create platforms

So you have to create branches and paths and things like that that the other explorers can run along but you have limited ammo for this gun so you have to kind of ration it and use it wisely. At the same time it also has like a jetpack solar jetman field because you do pick up a jet pack

and you can fly but it's got an overheat mechanic and limited fuel and it's kind of turrican-ish because you can shoot in all directions and you just have like free aim it just feels like they said let's let's umika it up let's make the most British thing ever

and it's it's very interesting and it's extremely hard and I feel like it's deliberately hard in the way that they design the controls because there's a jump button that's on a very it's like an unintuitive trigger but shoulder trigger for jumping but you can also use it to grab onto ledges and stuff

but then to fly the jetpack you press up on the controller so it's uh i thought the controls were pretty unintuitive but i feel like that's deliberate i don't know that i love it but just the overall package is extremely like it's a love letter to eight and sixteen bit micro computer games from the uk and i feel like it's calling out to stewart to review it so you miss that it was right next to gun dog the it's like a visual novel in space, very snatcherish. It's got the look of a PC-88, PC-98 game, except it's using a Game Boy color palette, which is a weird mash-up.

But, yeah, it's very, like, very authentic to that era of game, like the late 80s. It's, you know, got the late Shoa era, anime designs. And, in fact, the guy I was talking to at the booth was talking about how the creators originally had one or two characters who looked more like late 90s anime characters and fans were like

you know everything about this is just authentic it's perfect it really captures the look of you know PC908-0-1 adventures except these two characters so they

re-drew some of the characters to look more authentically you know just less angular they've got softer poopier hair the bigger rounder eyes just like in that late 80s style so anyway

those are were both kind of right next to each other in a space, and they both got my eye because they're very much love letters, like I said, to totally different styles of games from the same sort of era. That's cool. I'm sorry I missed that

on Gun Dog. That sounds like it'll be very excited. You don't actually play as a dog. What? I know, right? It's some sort of riff on Gundam. Oh, okay. Yeah. I thought it was going to be like an action game where you play a dog and a meck. And it wasn't about that.

But it still looks pretty good. And it's sort of like, let's make a fake PC-9801 game. Hmm. Well, I'll ask you, did you, by chance, see Shino Nome? I didn't. I saw a sign for it, but I did not stop. Yeah, they had a very big banner, very nice colorful banner. This is a game that caught my eye before the show, so the idea that I would play it at the show was very appealing to me. It's available in early access right now, and I will probably pick it up after the show

because I really enjoy the demo. Okay. So I feel like they definitely took some inspiration from Sheer and the Wanderer in that it's rogue-like, it's overhead. So you are,

I'm guessing, some sort of medium and you're exploring an old Japanese house. So very Kyoto already. And you walk in room to room, you have a limited inventory. You can only pick up so much and so many things. You have a stamina counter. It's going down all the time. Not too quickly, but you can't dark.

The room, it's roguelike, so the room layouts are going to change. And the goal, as far as I can tell, is just to make it out. Okay. But there are going to be some yokai. There are some monsters in there. And there seem to be a variety of creatures. Some of them were very small. Some were kind of harmless.

Some are just sort of chasing around. Others are very aggressive. and you can use your tools to sort of deal with them as best you can. I know I had a gun that's a very prudent kind of flitlock kind of gun. But of course, very limited ammunition. I had some spikes that I could drop on the floor that, of course, they don't go anywhere. But if you can lure the monsters onto them, then they take damage and maybe they die from the spikes. Okay.

There was a candle to illuminate dark spaces. There were bags of ammo. There were food you pick up. So, you know, you can replenish your health, you can replenish your stamina. And it's just a really, you know, tense, but not too intense, sort of push and pull. As you're exploring the space, you're trying to find your way, but you're also got to, you've got to manage what you pick up. You've got to put things, you can put things down again. You might double back.

If you light a fire, you can use that against the monsters. You know, if you think about traditional, traditional Japanese house, they might have a big fire pit in the room. And also the entire thing is made out of bamboo. in the Tommy mats Very flammable Right But if you have an open flame like that And you can

You get a monster Also, as I'm the point The rooms are independent of each other But the monsters can chase you from a room And the monsters can also hear you In other rooms So this being a show floor demo I really couldn't hear the audio very well

But I know the description said If you listen carefully You can hear monsters in other rooms So you can tell Even without opening a door You can hear if someone's next to the room Kind of a Hunt the Wumpus situation. Yeah, a little bit.

So it's like Luigi's Mansion meets Sharon the Wanderer meets Paki and Rocky with the Hunt the Wampus in there. Am I oversimplifying here? I feel like we should probably just say Legend of Zelda 1 because it is, the rooms are very much Zelda-like and that each, most rooms have, you know, cardinal exits. But again, once the doors are open, the doors are open. There are warps.

Eventually, I found a map, and that helped a lot sort of orient myself try and find the exit. I found a key at some point to unlock a door but, you know, I believe I cleared it in about 12 minutes and at the time this was the first day they said they were handing out towels to the first 30 people who beat the demo and they told me I was number four and this was not early in the day so I felt pretty proud of myself

I don't know. I did I got a free towel congratulations so you know collusion sorry about that in retrospect but still it's fine as long as we're not paying you for this not at all bad news we're doing this episode for free my friend I uh yeah

I liked the way it looked I liked the way it played I had fun with it I feel like I can only imagine how much more complicated it gets there's probably gonna be more you know more floors

bigger monsters you know dark spaces maybe something with lingering effects on it you know I only saw a few different monsters but they all had different abilities different habits

there was a little like fire creature Think about the candles who chase you with Super Mario Bros. 3. They don't want to do anything, but they pursue you nonstop. But if you lure them onto a candle or a lantern, they illuminate the room for you.

And they stop moving because they're burning something. They found their purpose. Yeah. So I just thought that was really clever. You know, because at first I tried to hit them and the fire didn't really care about my weapons, but all of a sudden I could use it and that opened up a world to me.

So, yeah. Yeah, Shino-Nome. Kind of hard to remember, but very intriguing, early access right now. Check that out. Yeah, that is. So a game that I think we both played and probably both enjoyed was called Good Old Days. Yes. Which, I mean, if there was anything at the show that was targeted to Jeremy Parrish,

there was Good Old Days, which is very clearly a riff on the Goonies for NES and the Goonies 2. It's, like, mechanically, it plays much more like Goonies 1, where you have bombs. you can drop and there's skull doors you open up. Yep, yeah. And, like, the story is absolutely riffing on the Goonies to the point where it might be legally actionable. I don't know. But...

I know the little boy... But structurally, it's not quite Goonies, too, because it doesn't have the front back and it doesn't have the adventure scenes, but it's Goonies, one, but in a big, open-ended world that's kind of puzzle-like. I know the, you know, at the opener,

you play this little boy in their house, and, you know, they're... debt collector is there to get money. And as a way of intimidating, they say, oh, we captured your friends, right? All your friends, the nuggies. And I was like, oh, wow. They literally just took guineas and reversed the G-in-the-end.

Yep. And you're playing in the city your base in is Orostia. Yeah. Not Astoria. Right. Yeah. So they could probably find a little more subtle way to do that. But yes, the deck collector is actually a really interesting element

because even though it's an open-ended game-ish, it's timed, and your task is to clear, you know, misadventures of Trondon, you have to clear a debt. Yeah. So you have to collect $50,000, which, you know, that's a lot to ask of a little kid. Yeah. But you have to collect $50,000 and take it back to the house and give it to the debt collector by 8 p.m. that night,

it starts at 10 in the morning. And the time doesn't seem to count down, like, real time, but it also isn't, like, super. fast so I would guess you probably need to complete the day or two or three hours but that that doesn't add an interesting element of tension to it um that whole you know kind of warrior landish how much money can you get with a time element to it which is something different right and dying also gives you a time penalty yes so there's that element too knocks five minutes off I think yeah not not too huge but definitely I'm sure it's going to add up it's what it kills yeah

Yeah, and there are a lot of traps where the first time you come across them, you're like, how would I know that was there? Like, there's, you know, floors that break away. Yeah. And you can tell because there's a little bit of a texture, but if you don't know to look for it, it's very solid. Yeah. So you're just going to fall to your death and, you know, lose five minutes right there.

The respawning seemed pretty generous, though. They didn't, like, put you way back and made you, like, you know, do a whole level again. But, no, no, no. But Mikey is less, uh, he has fewer, defensive options than not Mikey has fewer defensive options than the actual Mikey. He can drop bombs and have a timer. You can actually interact with them a little bit.

You can push them around, but you can't kick. You can't do the karate kick. So if you want to blow up a bat or a mouse or whatever, you've got to time your bomb and do it carefully. So it's challenging and tricky. But you're finding you're like blowing open saves that have the, you know, what I'd really scull on it. and collecting either money in there or keys,

and you have to use keys, silver and gold keys, to open into doors. And there's a lot of things that I, you know, encountered, and I was like, I don't know what this does. There's a phone booth. Yeah, that was mysterious. Yeah, it says, this isn't used, like, a normal phone booth, but it doesn't explain what it is.

But then if you look at the map, the legend on the map, the subscreen, like, marks out where the locations of the phone booths are. So maybe those are like Work portals or something Awesome, well, yeah I thought it was interesting The localization was clearly work in progress I know when I spoke to developers

One of them was very proud Like, oh, I speak some English Like, okay, great And, you know, the text in the game was Some of it was a little awkward Some of it was kind of spot on And I definitely got to chuckle out of the opening When the deck collector, you know, threatens the kid

And the kid just says, don't My dad, yes He just dropped an out bomb. I was like, oh, okay. That's not very Richard Donner like with you. I also thought it was funny that the deck collector looked like one of the Blues Brothers.

At first, I assumed the deck collector was also the gangsters, but no, the gangsters looked totally different. So, they're really defeated. They went for original character design of those guys. The boss of the gangsters looks like Ma Fratelli. Yes. She looks like Anne Ramsey. But then the rest are really weird. There's like a dude who kind of looks like Dr. Fred

from Maniac Mansion. And he's in like a hovering wheelchair. or something uh it's yeah it was really bizarre like they're they're a motley collection that's for sure

but none of them both like cipher from the Matrix laughs ha ha ha ha Yeah, anyway, I thought that looked pretty appealing. I would like to play more of it. I do love me some goonies. I do love me some legally distinct guineas as well. someone's, again, someone's got to make it, right? Yes, but these do not mention anything about jet packs to them.

I'll be so many. I think we have time to maybe talk about two or three more. Okay. You mentioned Everdeep Aurora. I didn't get to play that, but it looks really good, very Steamworld dig, like. Yes. But with a kind of a, like the structure of it. Okay, first it has a really great 8-bit micro look to it.

Yes. Very limited color palette, more colors, but not Game Boy style. It just has the look of, I don't know, what system would that be? Not quite spectrum, because it doesn't have the color clash. Candy, maybe? Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like one of those plus situations. Like, it looks like an old computer, but you can tell it has too many colors on the screen it wants to be an old computer.

But, like... That's like VGA minus. Resolution-wise, it looks like that, you know, and a lot of the characters are sort of single color to themselves. Right. And you get them... Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it has a distinct look, and then the level structures, It reminded me in a lot of ways

It's got the Steamworld dig thing that you're digging But it kind of reminded me of Warrior Land 2 And 3 Where if you sometimes press against places It's like, oh, I've just revealed this entire space Now I can collect treasures Yeah, it's an interesting game that You starts off and you're like evacuating something

And then you're hiding on the ground Because of some calamity And the goal I think is to find your mother so you meet a lot of characters while you're exploring on the ground and so it seems like this is going to be a very heavy narrative element because there really wasn't any combat that I could see it's more about digging and exploring because when you dig you know thank God these people play The Simpsons they know you can dig up

and left and right so if you find yourself in trouble you can sort of selectively dig different angles and sort of make yourself make steps for yourself the drill has a limited amount of battery life but there's you know charging stations scattered throughout the underworld so you can if you find a spot you can go back there and refresh your energy

I met a lot of people who are looking for things you know oh I'm looking for a flower I'm looking for you know a hat or something so a lot of these characters were much larger than me which I think is a good you know storytelling almost like environmental storytelling it really helps you feel like a kid when you meet these

creatures that are much larger than you and they're not just evil they're just bigger like they're the adults and you're a kid so I thought that was really intriguing I'm kind of curious how it works because if I feel like any game where you can alter the environment and potentially dig yourself into a hole literally like what happens if you trap yourself in a hole is there like a reset button is there a you know where there's a safe points that I didn't find out you know no you can um there's a frog We were a little frog buddy Frobert or something like that I don't think I meant the frog

Yeah I didn't get to play I myself because people were like crowding it And there was just no space But I watched someone and he had the ability to Call his little frog buddy And the frog would work him back up to the service

Oh To the last campfire that he visited Okay So that's That seems to be out of that one's Again it's very steamworld dig Like They'll see we'll dig, and when you get stuck, you can blow it back to the surface, and you can dig in all directions,

and it's much more focused around digging, then combat, you're collecting things, but it has a feel all its own, for sure. Yeah, I can't but wonder if there might be some Spelunky there, too. I know Spalunkey did pretty well here, and, you know, especially the idea of digging into a cavern, opening up a much larger space. I don't know if it's roguelike. I didn't talk to developers about that aspect of it, so I don't know how much of it is scripted. and how much of it is, you know, open to interpretation, but it seemed the kind of game you could definitely get lost in,

but, like, in a good way, not like in an angry way. Right. Like getting lost in someone's eyes. Oh, very romantic. Wasn't it? Yeah, that's a bit summit for you. Let's see. There's two more games I want to talk about, Akura and Castle in the Darkness, too. Is there anything else that you want to mention?

One second, one second. Okay, yeah, I got one more. There was a game I picked out before the show I've been started. You know, I'm a simple person. I look up the games before the show starts, and usually there's one game that catches my eyes, like, oh, that's the best name game of the show.

And this year, that name was Death the Guitar. Oh, yes, I saw that. and it's a really interesting platformer. I want to call it a mascus platformer, but maybe that's because I suck at it. No, that's another one I didn't get to play, but I watched people playing it, and I gave up on the prospect of playing it

because they just kept dying, doing the same thing over and over and over again, and they just would not give up. But they also wouldn't get me better, so I was like, all right, I can't play this. But really fun, premise, you are a guitar, you're a guitar out for revenge, and your only weapon is music, but your music is fatal. So you can run your guitar, can run around, you can jump, and you can

strum, which creates a sort of mini-area effect, and, you know, we'll basically kill anything that's near you. But as you run around and jump and, you know, kill these of the, I don't know what you're killing, something. It's like other people playing music. There's, like, a DJ who launches missiles at you, and there's just, like, dudes running around in hoodies and listening to headphones who, like, shoot lasers at you. But, like, everyone looks a little weird, so I don't know if these are actually supposed to be humans

or, you know, elves or something, but, you know, the basics, you know, the game sort of ramps up very slowly in that, you know, lets you run around things. If you strum your Tarnix, an amp, it will launch you into a certain direction, you can bounce on certain things, you can launch yourself through glass and break the glass. If you strung on certain the surfaces, it will sort of resonate

through the surface and kill anything on the surface. You can send charges and do like cords and then move platforms around the levels. And what happens pretty soon is the bad guys pick up guns. And when the enemies have guns, they do not hesitate. They are shoot first, ask questions, never types.

So you've got to move really fast. You've got a strum, you got to dash around. I mean, the goodness is your character can move very quickly. Yes. So you definitely have the advantage in a lot of situations. But the enemies shoot fast. They don't miss unless you are also very fast. Those DJ things are infuriated because they launch homing missiles.

Yep. Like six at a time. Yep. And if you, you can kill the DJ, but that doesn't stop the missiles, or at least the set. They won't launch anymore, but if they've already launched them, you have to now just run away and hope that you don't... And of course, everything's when it killed. So, if you die, you start the room over,

and the game certainly knows where it's bread is buttered in that it gives you a score that tells you how long it takes to beat these levels and how many times you died. And then it ranks you. So I do think they are going for a, you know, a Super Meat Boy kind of thing with that aspect of it. Maybe even a Celeste, although it doesn't really play a Celeste, but still, it definitely,

it knows you're going to die a lot. So it's not just me, but I do feel like I was much worse of the game that I would have liked, because I was really excited about the name. It's definitely cool. No regrets.

I'm certainly intrigued about to try it again, maybe. But, yeah, certainly one of those challenging action platformers, not a leisurely, you know, guitar-killing platformer. Yeah. So speaking of massacons, and difficult

platformers. One last game to talk about that we played is Castle in the Darkness 2. This wasn't actually on the show floor, but we got a private demo, and if you like Castle in the Darkness, you'll like this one. Yeah. I feel like this one is basically

super inspired by East 3. Like, I just recently played East 3, and immediately I looked at the cave with the tiers of wooden platforms and the enemies you're attacking

and the speed with which you attack and it just seems very East 3 like and also it's extremely hard the bosses can kill you in like five seconds just like East 3 my first takeaway was I was impressed by how much more agile the hero is

now like a lot of things have changed since the first game you're I would say your default movement speed is basically a a healthy jog you can you know you've got your your slash is a decent range

you can jump and slash you can level up now by killing enemies so there's that you get that advantage of it you mentioned ease to me my first thought was order of eclasia in that early on the initial monsters you fight even though they're very small

monsters they take a couple hits so you're kind of like oh man I guess I'm really really week. But within a few minutes, I was already dealing much more damage to them because I leveled up. And so I started feeling, I started feeling stronger right away. And there also, and there also was kind of a world map thing going on. That reminded me of Oroplasia and that you had, even though it's definitely a Mediterranean sensation, like, you'll see ledges you can't reach, you'll see platforms you can't, you know, quite get to. So definitely there'll be some backtracking, and the developer told me that you would definitely be revisiting areas

again later on and everything is interconnected. There is still a world map where you'll leave an area and you'll go to a map screen and then go to the next area. So the levels are not as tiny as Ordovaclaesia, but definitely there's some hints there. Interesting. Okay. Yeah, anyway, that seems good. I'm looking forward to playing it.

Yeah, very excited. It will actually hit consoles, which is nice. So, yeah, I think that one's still a week. ways away. Oh, yeah. Like, I was very fortunate to have the developer show me you know, like bits and pieces of the game throughout because the second

boss is unbelievably brutal. Did you fight the second boss? The bat? Like the kind of gargola thing? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The one that moves just like Sloggera from Casalina. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What do I know that from? And, yeah, it's Slogra. Yeah, it's, I would

say the game is very interesting aesthetically in that it looks a lot closer to 16 bit at first, but then some monsters like that boss have a lot more animation to them and, like, when you first see the boss, it kind of turns its head around and looks at you, and I audibly sort of was shocked.

I was like, ooh! Like, that was, it was a lot of animation. It wasn't just a simple sort of, you know, frame swap, you know? But yeah, the Garga boss was quite challenging, but I must say it wasn't challenging in the sense that, oh, geez, this is going to be impossible.

I just felt like, in a demo setting I've seen enough but like each time I was fighting it I was definitely dealing damage to it I got a little better each time I was struggling a little bit with the hitboxes but

I you know the developer showed me you know a little some moves and you know because he makes the game of course he handled them a little better but it showed me that I had the right idea sometimes I just wasn't quite hitting it in the right spot like if you don't quite hit its head directly and maybe you just hit its wing

you're not going to score a hit. So it looks like you're just missing. And I thought, oh, is it invincible? No, no. I just, I wasn't hitting the right spot. So obviously, the game is very much work in progress. So they're, you know, they're going to be fine-tuning this stuff, you know, for months, if not years. But looks great, felt great.

I think really exciting, you know, to revisit Castle's Darkness after so long. My personal favorite thing is that there's a map now. It's definitely a map. That was my number one complaint last time, that there was no. map this one definitely has a map and it's dynamic and it shows where you are and shows nearby save points so that's going to be a real boom to you know searching around and and finding things he told me that even though i got to that what was basically the end of that first level he said you missed a lot of secrets it's like okay i missed a lot of secrets he wasn't taunting me i think he just

he legitimately wanted me to know that i had more to find And finally, on the show floor, Diamond had a brief on-the-spot interview with York Tittle, whose bona fides should speak for themselves in the following interview segment. Hi everybody, Diamond Fight here, at the recent Bit Summit indie game festival in Kyoto, Japan, I ran into a celebrity in the bathroom. I don't know that he considered himself a celebrity. so he was very surprised

when I said Excuse me Aren't you York Tiddle? To which he immediately answered What's your name? Anyway Call it a meat cute

Call it a accidental happenstance But I was very excited to meet Yorg Tittle Because of my enthusiasm For Illbleed You may have heard me Discuss Illbleed On the podcast before

I wrote about it for this week in retro, but it's a 2001 survival horror game that's unlike anything else. And one reason it's unlike anything else is that it features Yorg Tittle playing a character named Yorg modeled after himself. Why is this?

Why would a Japanese video game add the likeness and name of a relative stranger from another country? This is exactly why I had to speak to Yorg Tittle about his unique place in video game history. Also, given the nature of ill bleed, I figured any opportunity to talk to anyone

involved in the production of that game was worth talking to. In my opinion, York's story, while brief, did not disappoint. I help you forgive the background noise. We were in the middle of the show floor, and you can hear music from your show. York's C-Smash VSR, a VR squash game based on Cosmic Smash for the Dreamcast.

York showed me a signed copy of said Dreamcast game. He was very excited to have a signature on his copy. I hope you enjoy the interview. Speaking here to Yorg Tittle in BitSummit in front of a C-Smash VRS demo, a VR version of Cosmic Smash from the Dreamcast. And we were to talk about Illbleed. So if you could please tell me the story about how you ended up in Illbleed as a guy named York. Hello.

Yes. So I, back in 1998, 99 or something like that, I don't remember exactly. was writing for the official Dreamcast magazine in the U.S. And there was a trailer, a teaser for a game called Illbleed, that had been leaks on the internet. And it had the famous words in it, you will shit with fear. You'll vomit with excitement.

Right, right, right. Oh, you'll shit with fear. That's where it was. You will, it was something like that. I'm pretty sure shit with fear. It was shit with you, vomiting, excitement. You're puke with pleasure. Yes.

Yes, that's beautiful. Very classy introduction to it, it was. And I was just intrigued by the madness of it. And I got in touch with the creator who was so flattered that I had made contact with him from the U.S. And his name was Nishigaki, Shina Nishigaki. Yes. And he was a lovely man. Yeah. And I said, well, I would love to do an article about Il Bled for the official Dreamcast magazine.

And I convinced my editor-in-chief, Simon Cox, who was a dear friend of mine now, to let me write an article about it, which then turned out to be a cover feature, a six-page article, I think it was, and with beautiful art, and we turned the whole sort of article into this, you know, B-movie sort of thing.

It was really gorgeous. And it got the attention of a publisher in the U.S., and he managed to get a publishing deal in the U.S. Because the game had been dropped by Sega in Japan as well. It was supposed to be published by Sega, it wasn't in the end. Because that was another game that came out, 2001, when the Dreamcast was already... Yes, that's right.

And so he was very grateful for that. And he came over to New York, and we went to, like, random steak houses. Nishigaki's Island before he sadly passed away. Yeah. He actually opened his own steak restaurant as well in Japan. Wow. He was a massive steak of Fisunato. Okay.

So with him, I discovered places like Smith and the Volenski and other things that would never afford if I, you know... Because I was a student, essentially. Yeah. and yeah and he was so grateful at some point he surprised me

he surprised me he said like I we have put a character in your name called York as Baker I'm like

why Baker because you're like a detective because you found us and then you also found us a publisher and it's Baker Street

so that was the logic behind that which was lovely and then I saw my face and was literally my face in the game and he says like this is creepy

and weird and so I Maybe the first ever, like, Avatar human in a game? I mean, maybe Nishikasad even invented the Metaverse, for God's sake. But there I was an ill-bleed, a game that I had difficulty even in playing. It was so random. It is a very strange game to play. I have no idea how to play it.

I still, to this day, I'm a terrible ill-bleed player. But the atmosphere is fascinating. The acting, of course, is absolutely awful. I'm partly responsible for that because I was on the key. cast, and it was the weirdest recording session. It was in San Diego. Lanny Manella was directing the voiceover sessions, and she was doing, like, 20 different voices for it,

including all of the boys and things. It was weird, but it was very nice, but it was at a time when, I guess, games weren't supposed to have actors for each individual role, and then some people would just, like, do everything. Yeah, there was that tradition period where, you know, you had some games would cast everybody for everything, and other games where it's like they'd have one person who they met in an office somewhere. You're like, oh, you speak English, here.

You can play three characters, right? I remember the African-American character in the game being played by a white dude, and I was very uncomfortable about that in the meeting session. I said, can you find a black actor? Especially his performance was so bad. He's just like, all right, bro. all right bro here i am the big black character and you're like what the what the hell is this even

allowed you know whatever um so so there's a lot of weirdness but uh that's how i came to ill blade that's how illby came into my life and i loved it i loved it passionately um and loved nishigaki san very very very passionately he was just a fucking great guy and the fact that he just suddenly disappeared yeah is uh it's one of the great tragedies really because he was he was a visionary

I mean he was like you know swearing and a bunch of other Japanese creators weird and incongruous and sometimes not necessarily commercially sound but he had

ideas that to this day we see we gradually start trickling into games you know and he just didn't quite pull him together in a way that made sense to people unless they knew how to connect those dots but those ideas were fucking precious and I understand why that game has such a long tail

and such a slow long tail and people finding it and realizing wow this was a work of art absolutely I mean and you know while there's definitely some influences have come around again like there really is nothing else like I'll bleed you just can't no one else is making a game out there where you're hunting for traps with a VR headset,

but there's monsters, but you're inside an amusement park, but maybe you're going to die for real. And, you know, the chapter you're in particular is also one of the weirdest chapters in the whole game, which is saying something. Like, it's behind the scenes of the deadly amusement park, but it's also like a game. Yes.

But you also knew that I wanted to be an actor. So, because I was studying at NYU, I was studying acting so you thought it was fascinating and that's why you wanted to give me my break within this Hollywood thing like inspired story and I'm like it's okay but um oh man I don't know it was it was such a unique thing because we barely communicated with each other in the same language right but we had the soul connection um it was just it was so good to hang out with the man I miss them Are you from New York, then? No, I'm from, I was born in Belgium.

Okay. And, yeah, and I'm half German, half Polish, born in Brussels. Yeah, and I studied at NYU. Okay. And that's where we met. And yes, and so, yeah, I was in New York at the time. And then I moved to Los Angeles, and then I moved to London, and I'm in London. Okay.

Well, I was kind of curious. So you wrote about El Bled, and he had this sort of preview. So what state was it in versus how it ended up, finally? Because I know they changed some things around, and obviously they added a character with you. So, like, do you know how much... It changed a lot. Yeah.

When I wrote the preview, I'd only seen videos. Oh, okay. And I had conversations with Ishigaki-san, and he was essentially still making shit up as he went. Yeah. And I loved that. I was like, wow. It's like, to me, it felt like he was making jazz.

Yeah. you know he was riffing and I could totally because I have a pretty good bullshit detector I could see it he was coming up with stuff as he was telling me about the game he was come up with ideas as he was telling me about it and then he would drift off

and make clearly make mental notes for like yeah I sure I should do that and then he would come back to me and it's like I love this like because I you know with this lot of games that were always the same goddamn things or it's always the same mechanics and whatever and he was just riffing

and yeah so it's one massive improvisation in a way yeah he was a great dude all right well thank you for sharing your story about that and about Nishigaki who you know you know the more I read about the more I wish I could have you know met him talk to him and I know he would have loved an event like this where everyone is out here just doing whatever they can you know I know there was a tribute yesterday to Kenjino who passed away 10 years ago

but I feel like Ishigaki, excuse me, Nishigaki would be in the same camp, I think. Absolutely, they are in the same camp. They're sort of, not forgotten, because we haven't forgotten about them, but they're definitely, they have more light shine in them, and so the more people like yourself do it, the better, because he belongs in the history,

gaming history, and it made your way. I agree. Well, thank you for your time. Thank you so much, thank you. And that And that wraps it up for this episode of Retronauts. Thanks for listening. Hope you enjoyed it despite the noise.

As always, Retronauts is about. 90% supported by fans, listeners, and community through Patreon. To keep this show going and to get cool stuff in return, check out patreon.com slash retronauts and subscribe to us for a few bucks a month, which will give you access to every Monday's episode a week in advance without advertisements or promotions. Or you can up the ante and subscribe to the exclusive content level. $5 a month gets you not only early access to our Monday episodes, but patron exclusive episodes every other Friday, as well as weekly columns and mini-podcasts by Diamond Fight,

Discord access, and other goodies. As for us, you can find me, Jeremy Parrish on the internet, here doing Retronauts at Limited Run Games.com, doing stuff like making maps for Castlevania games, and on my YouTube channel called Jeremy Parrish. I'm also on social media, but that's a disaster these days, so let's not talk about that. And you can find Diamond online at Retronauts and also on social media under the name Fight Club, F-E-I-T-C-L-U-B. We'll be back next week with another episode unless you're a patron, in which case we'll be back in a few days with another episode. I'm going to be able to be.

I'm not going to be. And so, and I'm going to be. I'm going to be. And so, but,

but, I'm a I'm a, and I'm, I'm going to be able to be.